Crimson Angel

by Barbara Hambly

  Like a corpse floating into momentary view in a river’s sluggish tide, January’s mind cast up a sentence from one of Lucien Maurir’s articles: effects were observed over the course of forty-eight hours …

  ‘Don Absalon offered Mamzelle Calanthe a lot of money, if she’d go stay at L’Ange Rouge, at the feet of the mountains in the Cul de Sac. My mama begged her not to go. But Don Absalon, he said she’d have her own house there, and many servants. He sent both his plaçées, both Calanthe and Emmanuelle with their servants. Later he sent M’aum Amalie there as well. So Mama and Reina were there together. Mama was shocked, that a man would send his wife to the place where both his mistresses were.’

  ‘Did Madame Amalie object? Or try to flee?’

  ‘Flee where, señor?’ The woman regarded him with a matter-of-fact sadness in her hazel eyes. ‘Her husband sent her to that place, and her family were all in France.’

  Like Doña Jacinta. The best part of a day’s journey, over rough country haunted by bandits and rancheradores, lay between her and the nearest people who weren’t relatives of her husband.

  ‘The Cul de Sac country was mostly cattle ranges, and she was not a strong woman, and with child besides.’

  ‘But your mother fled.’

  ‘On the night of the hurricane, señor. The rain hid her tracks and kept the men from following her.’

  ‘She’s lucky she wasn’t killed.’ January had been outside during hurricanes. It wasn’t an experience he cared to repeat. ‘Why did she flee?’

  Salomé Saldaña shook her head. ‘She made her way across the mountains and got some fishermen to bring her here to Cuba. She stayed in Havana for a time, where she met my father, and worked as a hairdresser, but she never felt herself safe. I asked her once what she was afraid of, when I was a little girl, and that was when she told me about Dr Maudit. Then, when so many French came to Cuba, she got my father to move to Pinar del Río, where his cousin had a farm. That was where he found her. Maudit.’

  ‘How did—’ January began, but some sound in the night – the bark of a dog, Ilario calling out, ‘Who’s that?’ – made the woman jerk around as if she’d been given an electric shock. She sat frozen, listening, her lips stretched back against her teeth with terror. January wondered how far Enrique’s influence would go in holding her here, and if it would be long enough for him to discern the pattern that was beginning to form up in the darkness at the back of his mind.

  The stableman Ilario had come to his rooms in the Calle San Pedro and arranged the meeting, even as, yesterday, it was Ilario who had led him to a café across the street from the American Hotel on Calle Obispo, where they’d idled for half an hour before a group of men had emerged from the hotel: Is that he, dear brother? Acceptance by Cousin Enrique, and by the shadowy confraternity called the Suns of Liberty, who whispered of Cuba as an independent country, had the effect with which January was already familiar from his dealings with the network of men and women in New Orleans who aided runaway slaves. Once someone in the group vouched for you, you found that there was always somebody who knew what you needed to know – or knew somebody else who would know it.

  January hadn’t needed to be told which man he meant.

  The family resemblance wasn’t striking, but it was there. A description of Jeoffrey Vitrac would easily fit Bryce Jericho. It could well have been he, not Jeoffrey, who had gone to the Café des Refugies in New Orleans, of whom Jean Thiot had said, ‘He had the look of her … Same nose, same chin …’

  ‘The man in white?’ he had asked, and Ilario had nodded.

  ‘Bryce Jericho he is called in the registry of the hotel. Those others with him are his servants. Brown and Green, they are called—’

  Less noticeable names than Killwoman and Conyngham, certainly, and possibly these were not the same men. Their dusky-dark faces looked far more African than Indian.

  ‘There are others of his party at the hotel as well. I am told they are asking about these Americans who escaped from the rebellion in May and about the “old slave-woman” who helped them. This Jericho showed my friend the red-winged angel you spoke of.’

  L’Ange Rouge, which last he’d seen in Vitrac’s hand.

  Bryce Jericho. Beyond doubt, the son of Guibert de Gericault. He looked in his mid-twenties, active and strong. His white linen suit was crisp, unstained, and fit him well, his gestures those of a man used to command.

  The men who’d killed Jeoffrey Vitrac in a New Orleans alleyway.

  The men who’d stabbed Rose in the market. Who’d shot Aramis on the edge of his own cane field.

  The blood will bring you gold, the orisha Ogoun had said, Ogun whose talisman he wore around his neck. And the gold will bring you blood …

  The men who would kill Salomé Saldaña to keep her quiet, unless she got out of Cuba within days.

  Stillness returned outside. Salomé let her breath trickle from her lips, though she didn’t stop trembling.

  ‘And Maudit asked your mother to take him back to Saint-Domingue?’

  ‘He was nearly blind.’ The woman looked back at him, eyes gleaming in the tiny glow of the tin lantern. ‘He had a slave who led him around, a zombi: you looked in his eyes, and there was nothing there. Maudit called him Caliban. He’d do whatever Maudit said. Guard him, fetch him food, kill for him like a trained dog. But there wasn’t enough in his mind even to know to pull down his pants when he made water.

  ‘Maudit told my mother, she had to take him back to L’Ange Rouge Plantation, in the Cul de Sac. My mother told me there was treasure hidden there. M’aum Amalie’s diamonds, and gold besides. Don Absalon had let Maudit draw to his credit for whatever he needed. That’s how he bought the slaves he cut up. That’s why neither Don Absalon, nor his son Don Guibert, came with him to L’Ange Rouge. They didn’t know what he was doing there—’

  ‘Are you sure?’ broke in January. ‘Are you sure they didn’t know?’

  Her eyes widened at the thought. ‘How could they know?’ she whispered. ‘How could they know that he did such things? No, señor. He hired Maudit to make M’aum Amalie well enough to bear him a son, you see. My mother knew that, everybody knew it. He needed a strong son, one who could make the journey back to France and push and quarrel with the lawyers there, so he could get the lands and the title away from M’aum Amalie’s brother. “You make her give me a strong son, a big boy,” he say to Maudit – this my mother heard from Mamzelle Calanthe, who heard him say it to poor M’aum Amalie. “You take whatever it cost.” But Maudit took the money and spent it on slaves to cut up, to sacrifice to the devil.’

  To sacrifice to the devil of his pride, anyway, reflected January, remembering those precise drawings in Les Procédées de la Société des Sciences Francaise.

  Or was it the devil who had whispered to Dr Faustus, who had sold his soul, not first for the charms of Helen of Troy, but for knowledge? Adam’s original sin, the fruit of the tree of knowledge …

  ‘So why did he send his mistresses there?’ January asked. ‘And what became of them?’

  ‘Huh.’ She sniffed her contempt – stronger, for a brief moment, than her watching and her fear. ‘Nasty sluts, my mama said, and both pregnant by the houseboys before the first month was out.’

  ‘Houseboys?’ He’d read the lists of slaves for L’Ange Rouge Plantation, and there were no young men listed as working in the house.

  But Salomé had already taken up her tale again. ‘When the French were thrown out of Cuba, Maudit came and found my mother. My mother came to me that night and begged me to go with them. I won’t be alone with him, she said, though he was a blind man, and old, near to eighty he was then, like a dried-up spider. I won’t be alone with him and his zombi.’

  She froze again, at the sudden flurry of urgent whispers outside the door.

  ‘It’s them,’ she gasped. ‘The men hunting me. My mother said—’

  She scrambled to her feet, and had January not caught her by the wrist she would have been out th
e hut’s single window, which looked out on to the jungle behind them.

  Nails scratched the wooden door. ‘Put out the light,’ whispered Ilario, opening it. ‘Men coming, blancos. This way.’

  January flipped open the lantern door and blew out the candle, never releasing his hold on Salomé’s wrist. A hand closed around January’s elbow in the dark. He felt his head scrape the lintel of the doorway as he passed through. After the velvet blackness within the hut, the ragged moonlight fleeting through clearing seemed bright. Three or four men, bearded like Enrique Jivara and, like him, in the ragged clothes of peasants, surrounded January and Salomé and led them into the jungle.

  ‘Don’t let anyone go back to that hut.’ January kept his voice to the ghost breath that he’d used as a slave child, eluding the patrols along the back roads and bayous at night. ‘They’re killers—’

  ‘No fear, brother.’ Ilario’s hand steadied his elbow as they descended to the gurgle of a stream. Starlight flickered on a tiny falls. Windy darkness swallowed them, smelling of the sea.

  The thin wrist in his grip twisted, trying to pull away. ‘They said these men were asking for me,’ Salomé whispered frantically. ‘My mother said they would come. All her life she said they would one day come after us.’

  ‘Even after Maudit was dead?’ With his free hand January dug in his pocket, pulled out all his coin and slapped it into her palm. He felt her grow still as she estimated the unmistakable weight of the silver.

  ‘Take that and get off the island,’ he said as the bearded revolutionaries hustled them deeper into the trees. ‘Can you arrange that, Ilario? There’s thirty-two American dollars there.’

  Hannibal had better be winning tonight …

  ‘I can arrange it.’

  ‘Then tell me what happened in Saint-Domingue.’ He spoke to the darkness, to the hard shape of bone that he held on to like a traveler in legend gripping the coat-tail of a demon. ‘Did you go?’

  ‘I went.’ Her voice was barely audible above the rattle of the palm fronds overhead. ‘I was twenty, and had just had my daughter, my child, Mélusina. I left her with my husband and went with my mother, with Maudit and his zombi. Fishermen took us across. Even now, fishermen and smugglers cross back and forth to the island, you know, though these days there is little enough to buy. In those days Christophe and Pétion were at war with one another, north against south, blacks against mulattoes. Maudit was killed within hours of coming ashore. Mother and I hid in the jungle – the partisans who killed Maudit would have killed us too, for being fair-skinned – and we finally found fishermen to take us back here. But Maudit had reported to the authorities, before we left, that my father and my husband had poisoned white men with our complicity. They had been arrested, and we, too, were being sought. I managed to get Mélusina from my husband’s sister, and the three of us – Mother, Mélusina, and I – fled to the partisan bands in the mountains, to make our living as smugglers and healers and fugitives. Because of Maudit. Because of L’Ange Rouge.’

  January stood silent, his hand still locked around her wrist. They’d come to the edge of the trees, where the land sloped down to the sea. Moonlight shimmered through the fleeting clouds, edged the waves in silver as they ran up on to the beach.

  Baby John was back at home in New Orleans. Asleep in Olympe’s cluttered little parlor, surrounded by vévés and gris-gris and the beaded gourds where the loa hid. Safe, January hoped …

  As he prayed Rose was safe at Don Demetrio’s plantation.

  January tried to convince himself that Hannibal was right, that the chances were good that even if Don Demetrio didn’t entirely believe January’s outraged tale at the inn, of how ‘Pablo the stable boy’ had deserted them in the middle of the jungle, that the planter would wait to see if, in fact, Hannibal would come back. Rose was a hostage, collateral for Hannibal’s return, and as time was reckoned in Cuba, it was early days yet. Hannibal – and Jacinta – had been gone for less than a week.

  Virgin Mary, Mother of God, keep her safe. Let her be there when I get back …

  When I get back with the news that I’ve seen the son of Guibert de Gericault.

  And that he looks enough like Jeoffrey and Aramis to be their brother.

  He shivered at the thought of what he knew he’d have to do now. Hannibal will take care of Rose, anyway …

  ‘The Crimson Angel belonged to M’aum Amalie, didn’t it?’ he asked, and she nodded.

  ‘But she was dead, Mama said, by the time she took it. Maudit had it with M’aum Amalie’s diamonds, and the gold he’d got from Don Absalon to buy slaves, and jewelry from Mamzelle Calanthe and Mamzelle Emmanuelle. It was hid in his house, but Mama knew where, and we lived on that jewelry for years after we got back from Saint-Domingue and the police were hunting for us. The Crimson Angel was the last of it. Señorita Loveridge – the girl who was staying at Los Flores, the plantation where the slaves rebelled last spring – she showed me many kindnesses during her stay there. How could I let her be raped and killed by angry men? And I’m an old woman now, and the Suns of Liberty take good care of me. Of course I gave the Angel to Loup de la Mare, to carry them away to safety. I think the thing must have had a curse on it, the way all things did that Maudit touched.’

  January was silent, thinking about Lucien Maurir’s research. About those precise, medical engravings, and the blood on the golden angel’s feathers.

  About Jacinta Jivara, and an isolated plantation in the Cul de Sac.

  He drew in his breath to speak, thought about it for a moment more, then asked, ‘Was there ever a rumor that Guibert de Gericault wasn’t his father’s son?’

  She almost laughed. ‘Of course there was, señor! Every woman in Cuba – especially those of the rich! – face those rumors, every time they give birth. Particularly when a woman like M’aum Amalie, who was never brought to bed of anything but wizened little monsters that never breathed, poor things – save for the one sickly girl – suddenly brings forth a strapping lad like a young warhorse. Of course people will say she played her husband false. But Michie Absalon kept her strictly, and sent her to L’Ange Rouge at Candlemas, the moment she missed her courses, to be kept strictly to her room and watched over day and night by this Maudit.’

  She shuddered. ‘Such a nursemaid! It would be enough to make you birth a monster, seeing no face but his for eight months.’

  ‘Then your mother fled,’ said January after a moment’s calculation, ‘when the child Guibert was born?’

  ‘That I don’t know, señor.’ She glanced again toward the darkness of the trees, where a trace dappling of moonlight caught on the barrel of a rifle held by one of the men. ‘Let me go now, señor. I have told you what I know. Maudit died badly. The partisans on Saint-Domingue knew who he was, and he lasted many hours, staked out on the beach with his entrails pulled out for the seabirds to peck at. But his shadow has lain over my life, and over my mother’s. Leave off searching for that treasure – for Madame’s diamonds, and Don Absalon’s gold. It is an accursed thing. Your life will be better without it.’

  ‘I have no doubt that it’s accursed,’ January replied. ‘But if I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as you’ve spent yours – if I don’t want to lose those I love, as you lost your husband – I need to find what Maudit hid, and find it soon. And I’m afraid,’ he added, turning his eyes to the dark of the ocean, ‘that means Haiti.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘Well, old Rosario at the Fonda Velasquez did say Amalie de Gericault got herself sent away to the other side of the island to keep her out of trouble,’ pointed out Hannibal, who returned to their room on Thursday morning about forty-five minutes after January did so. He was ashy with fatigue and his hands shook, but he carried a jug of coffee from their landlady, a couple of pottery cups and a plate of pandolce with the casual ease of a waiter. Chickens were crowing, and the first hot streak of sunlight gilded the thatch on the western side of the yard. ‘Could that be what Maudit tucked away with h
is pickings and the girls’ jewels? Proof – can one have medical proof of something like that? – that Guibert de Gericault wasn’t actually the son of Great-Granpère Absalon?’

  ‘There’s none that I’ve ever read of.’ January took the breakfast from his hands, and the fiddler sank, coughing, into a chair. ‘And for Great-Granpère’s purposes, the proof would mean nothing to anyone after 1789 anyway. Besides, Guibert’s son Bryce has the same nose as Jeoffrey, the same jaw …’

  Hannibal dug in his pockets and dropped a couple of handfuls of reales and francs. ‘I’m sorry about the cash. The Marquesa cheats like a Greek – a terrible slur on the Greeks, now that I think of it. I would say “cheats like a Congressman”, but that’s a terrible slur on the Marquesa. And proof that Guibert wasn’t the son of Amalie would likewise lose its killing power in the summer of ’eighty-nine, unless, of course …’ He paused trenchantly, brows raised.

  ‘Unless, of course,’ January finished for him, ‘the proof was that the alternate parent in either case was a man or a woman of color.’ He poured coffee in the cups, divided the pandolce in two. ‘What did Guibert say in his farewell letter to Don Demetrio? “Every other white man you saw” had an African ancestor somewhere. “Hell, our butler was lighter than I am!” And it would be reason enough for Absalon to exile Amalie to his more distant plantation …’

  ‘Until he saw how light her child was.’

  ‘Which would be proof of nothing if her lover were an octoroon or musterfino. And when presented with a strapping, healthy, and apparently perfect white boy, do you think Great-Granpère was going to turn him away? The reverse would be true as well. And it is a weapon that would still be sharp after forty years. Proof – if such proof existed – that would be worth killing over, if de Gericault has any sort of position in society anywhere south of Mason’s and Dixon’s Line.’