Crimson Angel

by Barbara Hambly

  In Havana, due to the heat, most of the wealthy lived primarily in their courtyards, unless it was pouring down rain, which was pretty much every afternoon at this season. The not-quite-so-wealthy who rented out the lower rooms spent most of their time on the open arcades above the courtyard, and at least in the Orrente establishment the cook, Anazuela, provided for the roomers as well, to her own profit and probably, January guessed, at her employers’ expense.

  From Ilario the head-groom, January also inquired about entertainment in the town (approximately a thousand taverns within walking distance of the Calle San Ignacio all hosted balls, of greater or lesser formality, pretty much every night), when confession was heard in the cathedral (daily – there was no church of any kind in the Barataria, and January felt like he hadn’t bathed), and the danger from rancheradores, or slave-stealers (extreme). It would not do to inquire too closely into the affairs and whereabouts of Salomé Saldaña, purveyor of smuggled goods and associate of runaway slaves.

  ‘Evidently, there are three mountain ranges on the island,’ reported Hannibal, when he encountered January in the cathedral square that evening. January had donned his livery to go to confession, the knee-breeches and short jacket, in addition to proclaiming to slave-stealers that someone would make a fuss if he disappeared, serving to mark him as someone who probably wasn’t carrying any money. Beggars swarmed the streets. ‘The Sierra Rosario around Pinar del Río, to the west of here, the Sierra Maestra south-east around Santiago, and the Escambray in the middle to create a pleasing, artistic effect. The American consul’s secretary – a helpful young gentleman named Butler – assures me that there are practically no slaves hiding out there and if there were they would never do anything so ill-natured as to attack or burn a plantation—’

  ‘Did he somehow happen to gain the impression that you were thinking of investing in such a thing?’

  ‘If he did I have no idea how he could have conceived such a notion.’ Hannibal gravely scanned the cathedral square for one of the mule-drawn hackney cabs that infrequently plied the streets. Infrequently, January had already deduced, because in general those wealthy enough to afford the cab fare were wealthy enough to own their own two-wheeled volanta and at least a mule to pull it. Those who couldn’t walked, and put up with the beggars, who were not, he had thankfully observed, either as numerous nor as aggressive as they were in Mexico City. ‘He also informed me that not only were there no escaped slaves in the mountains, but there were also no persons so ill-intentioned as to seek representation for Cuba in Spain’s government – if you can call what’s going on in Spain these days by such a term – or, God forbid, independence from Spain altogether, and there never have been. So it would be perfectly safe for me to swear allegiance to Spain and acquire a plantation here, should I wish to do so … Ah.’

  He stepped to the edge of the shallow platform on which the cathedral stood – the plaza had, January recalled, begun its life under the Spanish name for swamp – and signaled a dilapidated chaise emerging from the Calle Empedrado. The driver ignored him and drew rein beside one of the arcades that rimmed two sides of the square: ‘He could be a private coachman,’ January warned as Hannibal moved down the steps toward the man.

  ‘I refuse to believe even the most poverty-stricken pettifogger in town would own an animal that sorry,’ retorted the fiddler, with a gesture toward the dejected mule between the shafts. ‘And unless you wish to act as a bully-boy keeping the mendicants at bay all the way back to our rooms, I suggest you help me in heading him off. At least there’s no law here against you sharing the vehicle with me …’

  Hannibal had reached the bottom of the steps and advanced about a yard toward the chaise when a man emerged from the arcade. January identified his clothing as a gentleman’s – short Mexican-style jacket, black silk cravat – while the man himself had a native Cubaño’s swarthy complexion, in the instant before three soldiers in the red-and-blue uniforms of the Spanish forces stepped from the shadows at each end of the colonnade and another two – with a crimson-breeched officer – turned from where they had been loitering among the passers-by around a coffee stand. A water carrier nearby shouted, ‘Jucos, run!’ and the well-dressed Cubaño made a dash for the cab.

  It was only a matter of a few yards, but one of the soldiers brought up his rifle, and the driver, panicking, lashed his mule and fled – an act that did him little good, as the soldier fired after him and, amazingly, hit him. The driver toppled from his high seat and screamed as the cab’s iron-tyred wheel went over his leg, but nobody was paying attention. The Cubaño Jucos tried to dodge back into the colonnade, and the soldiers surrounded him, seized him by the arms and, though Jucos threw up his hands in surrender, knocked him to the pavement and began to systematically beat him with their rifle butts.

  January was already down the steps and headed for the downed cab-driver, who was clutching his broken leg and sobbing. A market woman grabbed January’s arm, pulled him back. ‘You want to go to jail too, brother?’

  Hannibal, who stood within a few feet of the driver, had been dragged back when he likewise made a move toward him.

  January said, ‘For what?’ But a lifetime of instinct rose up in him, and there was no reason to think that slave-dealers didn’t pay regular visits to the jails of Havana – as they did to those of New Orleans and of Washington City – in search of ‘runaways’ who could then be sold.

  The square was clearing out, as if every building in it were about to burst into flames. Hannibal and January were hustled back with the crowd into the colonnade opposite: ‘The man’s a mambí – a seditionist,’ said the market woman. ‘A troublemaker, speaking against the King.’

  The soldiers picked up their victim by his arms and legs, his head lolling, blood stringing from his pulped face, and carried him away in the direction of the Plaza de Armas. The driver lay where he’d fallen, and as soon as the soldiers were out of sight, market women, water sellers, servants, beggars hurried to him. January followed, digging in his pockets and wondering what he could use to get the bullet out. ‘You’re not going to help him?’ The elderly market woman caught his arm again and jerked her head at the men clustering around the driver. ‘One of them could be a police spy.’

  A couple of boys had caught the mule – it had smashed the cab into the side of the cathedral’s platform – and men were helping the driver inside. January said, ‘I can help, I’m a surgeon,’ but they looked at him doubtfully.

  A man in a drover’s rough jacket and boots stepped in front of him. ‘Many thanks, señor, but he is best in the care of his family.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. His leg is fractured, and he has a bullet in him …’

  ‘It will be taken care of.’

  Someone mounted what remained of the cab’s box and took the reins. A man whose guayabera smelled of fish took January’s arm, said, ‘A man’s friends and family are his best care, surgeon.’ And there was a glint in his dark eyes that told January that his claim wasn’t believed.

  Gently, Hannibal murmured in Latin, ‘I think they think you’re a police spy, amicus meus.’

  January stepped back. The cab was already gone.

  Beggars followed them back to the Calle San Ignacio, but none importuned them for coin.

  TWELVE

  ‘According to the helpful Mr Butler,’ said Hannibal, when the account of these events had been related to Rose back in the quiet of their courtyard on the Calle San Ignacio, ‘in addition to those who wish to establish Cuba as an independent nation, there is an even larger segment of the population – whom I don’t imagine are the sort of people who get beaten up by soldiers in marketplaces – who have been trying to open negotiations with the United States to get the island annexed as the twenty-seventh state. These are mostly the owners of plantations, who naturally find they have a great deal in common with the owners of American plantations …’

  ‘They will until it occurs to the plantation-owning Congressmen that their Cuban
counterparts are all Catholics.’ January set down the tray he’d fetched from the kitchen in the traspatio: chicken, fried plantains, and Moros y Cristianos – black beans, white rice. In addition to cooking for those who rented chambers, Madame Anazuela appeared ready to serve anyone who cared to come in off the street at dinner time, at rough trestles set up by her daughters in the courtyard.

  ‘I don’t expect he – or they – think anyone is any more serious about their faith than the Americans are,’ remarked Rose. Hannibal’s visit to the consulate having culminated in an invitation to attend a soirée that evening at the Marquesa de Lanabanilla’s town palace, she had already put up her hair in an elegant chignon, and Dominique’s borrowed garnets glinted in her ears. ‘Americans turn Catholic all the time and become Mexican citizens in order to receive land grants without the slightest intention of even paying lip service—’

  ‘It was a serious mistake to disband the Inquisition.’ Hannibal shook his head sadly and took the pottery jug from the tray to pour coffee for all of them, followed by a dish of extremely dark muscovado sugar. ‘I suspect that milk came out of a goat rather than a cow, but let us not be prejudiced. God made goats as well as cows – on an off-day, admittedly – and they’re perfectly amiable creatures … I gather, however, that Cuban planters would prefer to deal with American planters rather than the Regent of Spain.’

  The afternoon’s rainfall had cleared the air. Though the courtyard’s high walls sheltered it from the sea breezes, Havana’s harbor – and the closeness of the Caribbean – prevented the city from turning into the Turkish bath that New Orleans did in the wake of the afternoon rain. On the second-floor gallery that circled the courtyard, maids and valets scurried back and forth with pots of pomade, fresh shirts, and polished shoes, and Ilario and Bernardino brought the team of black horses around to the zagún to harness them to the volanta.

  January wondered whether his errant wife and her soi-disant protector were going to come face-to-face with their landlords at the Marquesa’s soirée, and if anyone would care. He hoped not: he’d already bribed Ilario to return with the carriage after dropping off the Orrentes wherever they were going, to carry Hannibal and Rose to their destination. A good thing Rose’s mother spent all those years trying to educate her daughter in the graces of a plaçée after all …

  ‘And anything’s better than total independence,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Since the sugar-planters can’t guarantee where the franchise line would be drawn. The people who actually fight for freedom from Spain would be small farmers and town artisans – people who have no stake in slavery … Like poor Señor Jucos, according to Ilario. They’d probably have to free and enlist slaves to help them, in order to have enough manpower to win.’

  ‘Can’t have that.’ Rose spread her napkin across her pink silk lap.

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said Hannibal, ‘according to Mr Butler, there exists, in the Santiago province, an ingenio called Hispaniola, owned by one Don Demetrio Gonzago. Since Mr Butler himself has only been in Havana a few years, he was unable to tell me if this Hispaniola had anything to do with the plantation of the same name in America, or with the de Gericault family … of whom I am a relative, by the way,’ he added. ‘Seeking information about the rumor that I was in fact related to the Comte de Caillot …’

  ‘Considering what’s happened to other relatives of the de Gericaults,’ warned January, ‘I’d be careful how many people you told that tale to.’

  ‘Id cum veritas dicere.’ Hannibal smoothed his graying mustache. ‘But even the most bloodthirsty of American Democrats secretly nurses awe at the glitter that cloaked the Ancien Régime, particularly once revolutionists revealed themselves to be very common indeed. According to Butler, the Gonzago family has owned land in the Cauto Valley since 1742, and he has promised to introduce me to the appropriate people at the Palacio tomorrow to learn more about where and when Hispaniola came into Gonzago’s possession, and who owned it before. More can be learned,’ he added apologetically, ‘at the soirée tonight … one reason for my acceptance of the invitation.’

  ‘I’m perfectly resigned,’ returned January, in his most martyred tones, ‘to an evening playing solitaire. Or maybe going out to a baile at the local tavern with Anazuela—’

  Rose slapped him with her napkin.

  ‘It would serve you right,’ remarked Hannibal. ‘I have it from Ilario that she ate her last three husbands alive, like a mantis, leaving only their watch chains and shoes.’

  In the event, January was forced to neither of these expedients for the evening. When Rose departed – resplendent in Dominique’s second-best ball-gown (‘Hannibal promises to buy me another tomorrow …’ ‘My seconds will be waiting when you get back from shopping, Mr Sefton.’) – in the Orrentes’ borrowed volanta, January and the valet of Mr Montrose of Virginia – William – walked down to the local tavern that Ilario had recommended and spent a quiet evening playing dominoes and listening to local gossip. The mambí Jucos – Damaso Juscobal, a journalist whose newspaper had been shut down by the government the previous year – was dead, though whether he had been shot while trying to escape, or had attacked his guards with such ferocity that they had been forced to kill him in self-defense, wasn’t clear from official accounts. January told William about it, and some of the other men there – a few of whom knew a little English – came over to listen and to ask for the story in Spanish.

  ‘What happened to the cab driver?’ January asked one of them when he had done. ‘He seemed badly hurt.’

  The men glanced at one another, but one of them replied, ‘He’s been taken out of town, dear brother.’ Like most Cubans he used the informal pronouns, and terms of affection, more than a Mexican and certainly more than a Frenchman would have, and the street-Spanish of Havana was markedly different from that of Mexico City or New Orleans. ‘One cannot be too careful, you understand. Don’t worry yourself. His mother is a Santera, an Oliate. She will cleanse his wounds and wash his head, and keep him safe in the forest.’

  ‘Good,’ said January. ‘I’m glad.’ And, when William protested about heathen practices: ‘My sister is a mambo. She learned the ways of herbs and healing from the women who taught her, and to my mind they’re better than some of the muck regular doctors come up with.’

  They walked back to the Calle San Ignacio as the cathedral bells tolled midnight – early, for Havana, but William said that he wasn’t supposed to be out and Marse Charles would ‘take on’ if he came home and his valet wasn’t there. So January took a couple of candles out to the courtyard – the night was exquisitely warm – and sat at the little table where they’d eaten supper, reading the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine until Hannibal and Rose returned.

  ‘I met a woman in the tavern, fell in love, and married her,’ reported January, closing the borrowed pages. Joaquin – valet to another of the courtyard’s inhabitants, Dr Schlagmueller – had told him that his master, one of the most fashionable physicians in the town, was incapable of understanding a word of it. ‘I hope you don’t mind?’

  Rose assumed an expression worthy of Sarah Siddons at her most tragic, put a hand to her forehead, and collapsed into January’s arms.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done,’ said Hannibal mildly, and he felt the side of January’s coffee pot to see if the contents were still drinkable. ‘And me without smelling salts.’ The cook’s youngest daughter appeared momentarily in the archway that led to the traspatio, then darted off, to fetch two more cups.

  Rose sat up on January’s knee. ‘I have a good mind not to tell you about Don Demetrio.’

  ‘My new wife was tragically run over by a railway train.’

  ‘That’s better.’ She fished her spectacles from her reticule. ‘Hispaniola Plantation once belonged to Great-Granpère Absalon, all right. The Condessa de Agramonte remembered him, but the plantation itself lies so far from Havana – five days by sea at this season of the year, and well over a week by land – that he wasn’t well k
nown here.’

  ‘He had a reputation as a philanthropist and a scholar,’ added Hannibal, and he gave the returning girl – with her two gold-rimmed coffee-cups – a quarter of a silver reale. ‘In Cuba, I’m not sure how they’d identify a scholar: someone who can make it through a newspaper unaided, I think.’

  ‘He was one of the first sugar-planters in the east of the island,’ said Rose, ‘and went about it very scientifically. He had only one son, my informant said – of course, Granmère was already married and living on Hispaniola Grand Isle – Guibert, whom the Condessa recalls as exceedingly handsome. Both Absalon’s name and Guibert’s came up in discussions of possible matrimony, and the Condessa refused to consider either on the grounds that she didn’t want to go to the other end of the island and never see her family and friends again, a position with which I can sympathize, even if Absalon weren’t in his sixties at the time. Guibert was twenty-one. She remembers there was a huge party for his coming-of-age.’

  ‘No other children in the household?’

  ‘Not that anyone recalled. Upon the expulsion of the French, the plantation was sold to the Vizconde de Contramaestre, who owned – and still owns – most of the Cauto Valley. Don Demetrio Gonzago is the Vizconde’s nephew.’

  ‘I suspect,’ said Hannibal, ‘that we’ll have more luck speaking to this Don Demetrio than we would trying to track down Salomé the Smugglers’ Friend. Particularly since, as you pointed out, I have announced to all Havana that relatives of the de Gericaults are at large and asking questions. Nobody at the soirée seized me by the hand and cried out, “But your long-lost cousins are here in this very room, asking about the de Gericaults and the Crimson Angel—!”’