‘Truly,’ whispered Rose through her teeth, ‘I’m all right. I don’t think it’s very deep.’
January took a clean shred of the torn sheet, poured a little water from the bedside ewer on to it, and gently sponged the blood from his wife’s side. Rose shut her teeth hard but shifted her shoulders a little so that she could watch what was going on; Olympe had told January not long ago that when she’d birthed Baby John, Rose had insisted on having a mirror set up so that she could observe.
‘I think the blade snagged on my corset.’
The wound, as Rose had surmised, was a shallow gash about two inches long, which ended against the slight red pressure-mark where a corset bone had compressed the skin. Very gently, January ascertained that the blade had caught on her seventh rib as well.
She added thoughtfully, ‘I never thought I’d give thanks for wearing the thing.’
He couldn’t speak, but bent his head and pressed his lips to the side of her breast, just above the wound. A moment later he felt her hand stroke his hair.
When he looked down, he saw the wound repeated in the clothing that lay on the floor. Jacket, blouse, and the brown linen of the corset, though bloodied, weren’t ensanguinated. Years of tending sailors and stevedores at the Hôtel Dieu in Paris, when they’d been carried in after fights in the river-front bars – of binding the wounds that drunkards and their wives inflicted on one another – had taught January that a blow that punctured the stomach or gut wouldn’t necessarily look horrible. The bleeding would all be inside, unstoppably filling the body’s cavities while the patient slid into darkness.
He took a deep breath. Virgin Mary, Mother of God, thank you … ‘Did you get a look at him?’
‘Only that he was white. I take it you didn’t catch him?’
He shook his head. ‘White, or Indian?’
‘It sounds idiotic, but I don’t remember. I think if he’d been an Indian—’
The door opened. Thiot entered with a brass can of steaming water and a small bottle of the potent, colorless medicinal alcohol. ‘Is there anything else you need, my friend? You must excuse my wife – she talks like a parrot for the sheer joy of making noise. Is Madame Janvier all right?’
January held up Rose’s corset, showed the short rent in it that ended against the stout bone. ‘She thrust him away the minute he crowded up against her,’ he said. ‘When any woman in the world would have steadied a stranger—’
‘Any woman in the world who hadn’t just had her brother stabbed.’ Rose drew up her bloodied chemise over her breasts. ‘I think if I hadn’t been thinking about the men outside our house – if I hadn’t been thinking about Jeoff’s death – I wouldn’t have leaped like that. People fall against one in the market all the time.’
Her breath checked in what could have been a little gasp as January moved the chemise sufficiently aside to daub the cut flesh with first the water, then the alcohol. But her voice remained matter-of-fact. ‘The minute I knew I’d been stabbed I told Hannibal to go to the house. Baby John is there,’ she added, to January’s blank look. ‘And Zizi wouldn’t know to keep someone out who came to the door.’
‘Baby John—’ He spoke his son’s name stupidly, as if he’d been struck over the head.
Rose could have died …
Baby John …
‘We don’t know who these people are,’ said Rose softly as Thiot departed – the opening of the door let through a dissipating mutter of voices from the yard. By the sound of it, the nine days’ wonder of a white man stabbing a woman of color in the market had very little staying power. ‘Or what their connection is with Great-Granpère’s treasure. But they clearly think Jeoff told us something about the treasure – or that we told him something. If they’re not already on their way to Cuba with whatever information Jeoff had in that yellow envelope of his – if they want to make sure of me, or of you – I think the next move would be to get hold of Baby John and use him as bait to lure us into a trap, don’t you?’
‘Damn them—’ The words – not even in their true meaning of the vengeful fires of Hell – seemed to him like the ineffectual peeping of a cricket against the suffocating rage that swept through him.
His eyes met those of his wife, gray-green – true libré eyes – and very calm. She hadn’t even taken off her spectacles, or the black tignon that closely wrapped her hair, so swift had been the attack, the remedy, the aftermath of thought …
In those eyes he saw his own thought reflected.
They’re still watching the house. They’re going to try again.
Olympe came to the house that forenoon, after January – and Paul Corbier, done up again in theatrical blackface in case need arose later to switch roles once more – carried Rose home. The voodooienne bore a large wicker basket of bandages and medicaments, and when she left the basket held Baby John, sleeping after a drop or two of valerian and invisible in a bundle of towels. January had suggested that she take away her own two children as well, but both Zizi-Marie and Gabriel had refused to go.
‘I’m not leaving you two alone here in the house come nightfall,’ stated Gabriel, and his sister had nodded firmly.
‘Somebody’s gotta stay awake tonight, while the two of you get some sleep.’
‘I can’t let you,’ said January. ‘These people aren’t fooling around.’
‘Well, neither are we.’
The afternoon rain started up just as Olympe was leaving. Gabriel, who’d been sent to Shaw’s rooms on Basin Street with a note about the attempted murder, returned at the same time, with the information that the policeman had been gone when he’d arrived and wasn’t at the Cabildo either. ‘God knows if anyone will bother to tell him that a white man attempted to murder a woman of color in the market—’
He frowned as a thought snagged at his mind, but Hannibal – who’d been posted to the attic with a spyglass – came down at that point and asked, ‘Rose didn’t happen to make a copy of the family tree you sent along to him, did she?’ They were sitting on the gallery, outside the open French doors of Rose’s room – every French door in the house stood open, to let the rain-scented breeze blow through from the river – where Rose lay sleeping, a dim shape barely visible through mosquito-netting and the afternoon’s silver gloom.
‘I think I could draw it again,’ provided Zizi. She was of an age and disposition to be fascinated by the histories of families and had looked over Rose’s shoulder last night as she’d worked. This wasn’t unusual – every woman January knew among the libré and plaçée ladies could spout volumes of who was whose cousin and which families were related to whom – but Zizi-Marie made a serious study of it and would make notes and draw up charts from these reminiscences. She darted indoors and fetched a piece of paper and a kitchen pencil and settled at the bent-willow table where January, Hannibal, and Gabriel sat with a pot of coffee between them. ‘She said it wasn’t very complete,’ the girl added as she worked. ‘She’d need to hear from her sister-in-law before she had all the details.’
‘I don’t think we can wait to hear from Madame Vitrac.’ January looked aside from the sheets of rain that were rapidly turning the middle of Rue Esplanade into a yellow-gray river. Returning from the market, he’d seen an indistinct form loitering beneath the trees in the rain, but the man was gone by the time January drew near.
‘You think they’re gonna try again?’ Gabriel’s voice was somber and a little scared, but his dark eyes gleamed at the thought of adventure.
‘I can’t see any reason why they won’t.’
At that point Abishag Shaw climbed the wooden steps from the banquette, sheltered by an umbrella so old that it had probably been first used by one of Noah’s neighbors in the Great Flood. ‘I been to the market.’ He shook the umbrella – and himself – like a wet dog before approaching the table. ‘Half the vendors is gone already, an’ of the rest couldn’t nobody give a description of the feller – naturally – ’ceptin’ he was white. He was wearin’ one of them broad-brim s
louch hats, wasn’t he? Some thinks he was dark-haired, others say he’s blond. Mostly they say he wore a beard, but I’m bettin’ that’s the first thing that’ll go. Mrs January gonna be all right?’
January nodded. ‘But we’ve got to get out of this house unseen … Rose’s brother Aramis, down on Grand Isle, might be able to tell us who else was in the family – who else would know enough about the Crimson Angel to be hunting the treasure.’ He turned Zizi-Marie’s diagram around for Shaw to see, and the policeman took from his pocket the much-smudged original that Rose had drawn up last night. ‘All Rose could remember of family stories was that Absalon de Gericault had at least one son – name unknown – but there might have been others born in Cuba, after Granmère Oliva left for Louisiana, that we don’t know about. And we don’t know what cousins or nephews might have lived under his roof also, and how much they knew; or whether this “blind old man” that Mammy Ginette was forced to guide to the ruins of the plantation in Haiti told anyone – before or afterwards – of the treasure.’
‘Or if the blind old man was the only one she guided,’ put in Hannibal. ‘A warning to Rose’s brother Aramis might not be out of place too, if these people are out to silence members of the family. Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames … And they probably won’t be convinced,’ he added plaintively, ‘by your just taking out an advertisement in the Bee saying you haven’t the slightest interest in looking for it. In these under-financed times, everyone in the United States can be presumed to have an interest in looking for it.’
‘Mrs January gonna be up to the journey to Grand Isle?’
‘In a day or two she will be. The wound was little more than a gash – which is not how I’m going to portray it to anyone who asks.’ He looked from face to face around the little table. ‘All of you – if anyone asks, Rose was badly hurt. By tomorrow she’ll be in a raging fever –’ and please, God, don’t make my words come true! – ‘and the fever will climb, which will be a good reason for me not to leave the house, either. Meanwhile, she and I can slip out and journey down to Grand Isle. Can you keep an eye on the place for a night or two?’ He turned his glance to Shaw. ‘Gabriel and Zizi, after the first few nights you’re to go back to your mother’s. Lock up the house – I’m not going to risk you getting hurt,’ he added, when his nephew opened his mouth to protest. ‘Check on the place in the daytime, but don’t come here alone, and don’t ever let yourself get into a position where someone can come on you unawares.’
‘But you know who they are!’ protested Gabriel. ‘You said yourself, Uncle Ben, they’re staying over at the Verrandah—’
‘Which is where I’m goin’ when I leave here.’ Shaw folded his long arms and spat over the gallery rail without checking to see if there were pedestrians beneath. ‘But I’m bettin’ they’s outta there an’ gone, now they tipped their hands. Killwoman an’ Conyngham is names you find among the Muskogee Creeks, an’ there’s whole counties of ’em in Alabama that you couldn’t hardly tell from white men: they owns plantations an’ slaves, wears shoes an’ goes to church. I’ll get a letter out tomorrow to the sheriff of Escambia County, askin’ if the names Maddox, de Gericault, Killwoman or Conyngham mean anythin’ to him, for all the good that’s like to do. We’ll be lucky if’fn he can read.
‘Problem about bein’ hunted, Gabe,’ the Lieutenant went on, turning to the boy, ‘is the hunter has all the advantage. Even knowin’ your hunter’s name – even knowin’ his face – in heavy brush, or in a town the size of New Orleans, you don’t know which way he’s comin’ at you ’til he’s on your back. An’ the only way to make sure he don’t come at you again is to turn an’ fight him when he comes, or lead him into a trap, both of which can be pretty risky propositions if he keeps his head.’
He held out his hand and clasped January’s in a strong grip. ‘I’ll watch over these two for you whilst you’re gone, Maestro. But you got to watch out for yourself.’
SEVEN
When the rain ceased and the banquettes smoked and the light turned molten with coming evening, Olympe returned. With her was Cora Chouteau, Rose’s girlhood friend, with dishes of dirty rice, as if to a house in trouble. January made sure to emerge from Rose’s room on to the front gallery with the dragging steps of a man stunned. He crumpled into one of the wicker chairs and buried his head in his hands; when Olympe came through the same door and approached him, he turned in his chair and clutched her like a drowning man.
It was not a difficult role to play-act. All he had to do was call to mind Ayasha dead, Ayasha his beautiful first wife, who had died in Paris of the cholera – was it only six years ago?
For a moment, the tears he shed on his sister’s bony shoulder were real.
When January looked across to the neutral ground, he could see a familiar shadow slip behind a tree.
On the threshold of evening, other women came. Virginie Metoyer, the only one of the sisters across Rue Esplanade not being entertained by a gentleman friend out at the Lake (unkind gossip added, This isn’t her week … ). Marie Laveau, red-and-orange tignon tied into the seven points that in all New Orleans only she was permitted to wear, like a crown of fire, marking her as voodoo queen of the city, her tall daughter padding silent behind her with her basket of herbs. Liselle Ramilles, whose late husband had played at the same white folks’ balls and parties as January did; Célie Jumon, whose marble-carver husband January worked with on the board of the Faubourg Tremé Free Colored Militia and Burial Society; La Violette, the coffee-seller from the market. January came out periodically on to the gallery, to pace, or to sit like a man numb with shock, while in the bedroom behind him – the jalousies had been closed, so that only needles of candlelight shone through the louvers – he heard the reassuring murmur of voices, Rose’s among them.
‘For Heaven’s sake, Cora, I’ve done worse to myself in the kitchen trying to make dinner!’
Rose – though capable of estimating the ingredients for fireworks or intricate chemical compounds to within a few grains – was a truly dire cook.
It was well after dark when the women left, the tarry darkness of overcast clouds that gave no coolness. Cicadas roared in the trees. Mosquitoes whined above the many-voiced chorus of frogs. The women came down the stair from the gallery all together in a group, talking softly among themselves. A corner of the crookedly-set house utterly blocked the feeble rays shed by the lantern that swung above Rue Burgundy on its iron chain, and from the black pocket of that shadow, Olympe called, ‘You sure you be all right, Ben?’
‘I’ll be well.’
‘We’ll be back come morning.’
He lifted his hand, as if mute, unable to reply. The women moved off up the banquette. Nine women, when only eight had entered the house with their rice and their shrimp and their expressions of sympathy.
January slumped on to the chair again and sat there, the picture of grief and shock, for as long as he could stand being bitten by mosquitoes, before at last he rose and stumbled into the house.
‘They’re still there, all right.’ Hannibal emerged from the cabinet where the ladder-like stair ran up to the attic. ‘It would be a shame to put on a performance like that for no audience.’
‘Shaw was right.’ January went into the room considered ‘his’ – the traditional bedroom of the master of the house, though he seldom slept there – and fetched, from its hiding place beneath the floorboards, his fowling gun and the bag into which, through the course of the day, he had collected all the money in the house from its dozen hiding places, a hundred dollars in silver and gold. ‘The hunter has all the advantage in this case. He can say where and when. All we can do is wait for him to strike.’
‘You think they’ll try breaking in tonight?’ Zizi came out of Rose’s room, where she’d left a candle burning beneath the china veilleuse.
‘I have no idea.’
‘At least we have enough food,’ said Gabriel cheerfully, and he waved toward the dishes on the dining-room table. ‘M
amzelle Marie even brought strawberries for breakfast tomorrow.’
January slept and dreamed uneasily. Even knowing that Baby John was safe at Olympe’s cottage, even knowing that Rose was safe, asleep in Hannibal’s garçonnière behind his mother’s house with her friend Cora sitting guard beside her, still his dreams were troubled. Again and again he saw Rose turn from the barrow of tomatoes in the deep shadows of the market, saw the cloaked man fall against her and, when she leaped back, fall again in a savage, grasping lunge.
Saw Rose sitting on the pavement bricks, taking her hand from her side, her palm red.
And I went after the man?!?
Rose sitting there with blood on her hand and I CHASED THE MAN INSTEAD OF GOING TO HER SIDE???
Even if he’d caught him, January knew that, as a white man, he had only to drop the knife and say, ‘I don’t know what this nigger is talking about.’
He saw her as he’d earlier seen her that afternoon, when in her first exhaustion she slept, veiled in the mosquito-netting, while the rain pounded down outside …
Pain, fear, grief for her brother sponged from her face by sleep. Like the young girl she’d been all those years ago, when her mother’s death had sent her to her white father’s little plantation on Grand Isle. Chouteau, where the slave woman Ginette had come, looking for her lost granddaughter.
Showing the child-Rose the Crimson Angel. Making a little model of the plantation, telling her about what Saint-Domingue had been and about guiding an old blind man there.
In his dream he saw Mammy Ginette in the market hall, trying to push her way through the crowd toward the barrow of tomatoes, holding the Crimson Angel up in her hand. Calling, ‘Rose! Watch out, Rose … !’ as a cloaked man stepped up beside Rose, tripped against her, fell with a knife in his hand …
Crimson Angel Page 7
