Days of the Dead

by Barbara Hambly

  “But after the third one, barely a toddler—who hadn’t even been born when that eldest brother died, also a toddler—Madame Valory said that all three had eaten whelks just before their fits began. And in all three cases, since the children were so young, it was the first time that each child had eaten a whelk, or indeed any sort of shellfish. They lived out in Pigalle, far from the river. It was only when they grew old enough to walk down to the quais with their mother that they came into danger, and a sister who was born between the first two suffered no ill effects. The youngest child didn’t have the same degree of sensitivity as the others did, and by slipping a tube down her windpipe I was able to keep her breathing until the attack passed and the swollen tissues relaxed.”

  He stood still by the end of the bed, cheek resting against the bedpost, looking at Rose, her stays loosened, her hair unpinned and lying over her shoulders. Seeing not her, but the shrieking, sobbing girl clinging to the other orderly at the clinic, and the swollen face of the terrified, convulsing child.

  “I asked one of the senior doctors, Dr. Pelletier, about it later, at the clinic,” he went on. “He said that some people do have these—these morbid sensitivities, he called them. Galen wrote about them in the second century A.D. Dr. Pelletier said he’d personally encountered cases in which a child was stung by a bee, and died of it, with much the same symptoms as my poor little whelk-eaters. Pelletier thought that most people in whom such sensitivities manifest must die as children, with no one knowing the cause.”

  “And Fernando didn’t . . .”

  “Obviously, because his father refuses to eat any of the foods native to Mexico,” said January. “Then before he was old enough to go about on his own, he was sent to Germany—where he wouldn’t encounter such things as chilis, or cactus, or peanuts, or deep-fried ant-paste tamales—whatever that is. He didn’t know he had a sensitivity to such a morbid degree.”

  “Then his death was . . . was an accident?”

  “That’s what it sounds like.” January stripped off his shirt and trousers, poured hot water into the basin. “There was something in one of M’sieu Guillenormand’s dishes that everyone else at the table could—and did—eat with impunity, but that killed Fernando, as surely as arsenic or monkshood.”

  “Good heavens.” Rose gazed for a time into the darkness beyond the candle-glow, appalled, bemused, and fascinated by the scientific puzzle. “And if poor Hannibal hadn’t chosen that moment to try to speak to him I suppose he’d have been only one suspect of many. Though how we’d go about finding out what it was. . . .”

  “It should be easy enough to find out,” said January. “M’sieu Guillenormand knows every ingredient of every sauce like a father knows his children—always supposing the father isn’t Don Prospero. What I’m worried about,” he added, “is how the hell we’re going to convince Capitán Ylario that this isn’t just something I’m making up to get Hannibal’s head out of the noose.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “My dear Herr Januar, I trust that your object in accepting Sir Henry’s invitation tonight wasn’t to try to actually speak to President Santa Anna.” The Graf von Winterfeldt bowed profoundly to Rose, shook January’s hand, and raised his quizzing-glass as he turned to survey the crowd in Sir Henry’s sala—something the Prussian could do with almost as much ease as January could, being nearly January’s six-foot-three-inch height. “Most of these poor fools will be lucky if they get near the Napoleon of the West before he departs to rest himself before descending upon the northlands in the character of the Hammer of the Texians.”

  “I’m afraid I must take my chances among them,” said January quietly. “The matter is one of life or death.”

  “My dear sir, every one of these gentlemen here considers his problem one of life or death. I myself have been trying to speak to the man for months about the tariffs, as have my counterparts from Russia, Britain, and France. Everybody else just smuggles, and I can’t imagine why the King doesn’t simply give me bribe-money for the customs inspectors. It would make everything easier.”

  “Yes, but think how dreadful that would look in the account-books.” Rose unfurled her fan: with her spectacles on and her hair in neat loops and braids, there were few who would identify her with the wicked Elena of Consuela’s tertulias—except, possibly, the Prussian chargé d’affaires himself.

  Von Winterfeldt laughed and said, “You probably have the right of the matter, Frau Januar; I cannot imagine Frederick Wilhelm permitting an entry to go to the Privy Council as ‘bribes.’ ”

  “He could simply list it as ‘laundry,’ I suppose. Or you could.”

  “I could at that,” mused the minister. “The King would even probably approve the tripling of the laundry bills in the interests of cleanliness—I shall have to try.”

  Across the room voices rose, General Cós—Santa Anna’s brother-in-law—bellowing at one of his subordinates over the punch-bowl. The assembly being largely diplomatic, there was less of an air of jumped-up vulgarity than there had been at Consuela’s or even at the opera, but January recognized quite a number of the President’s wealthier supporters—and most of his general staff—gathered around Cós in an atmosphere of expensive brandy. Capitán Ylario, rigid in his neat black coat, stood with a group of von Winterfeldt’s younger aides: “I should go tell him about Werther Bremer,” said January softly.

  “That’s kind of you,” said Rose, and January shook his head.

  “With luck he’ll stay in town tomorrow to visit Bremer in prison, and we’ll have a head start getting out to Mictlán.”

  On his way across the room he was stopped by Sir Henry Ward, asking news of his mission: “After trying to run interference between the Army and that meddling ass Butler—because God knows what will happen to British investments in this country if America comes in on the side of Texas—it’s quite a relief to deal with a simple puzzle of how one man can be poisoned at a dinner from which everyone else walks safe away.”

  January smiled a little at the minister’s jest. “I think I’ve arrived at an answer for that, sir, but I’d rather not say until I’m certain.”

  “Wise man. When you find out, though”—Ward leaned close and stage-whispered behind his hand—“let me know, because there are any number of people one meets in my business for whom one would not weep, if they did not survive the dessert course.”

  “I’m sure I have not the slightest idea to whom you refer, sir,” replied January with mock gravity, and Ward sighed with equally exaggerated martyrdom.

  “Just as well, my good sir, just as well.”

  “If you can arrange for me to have a few words with the President . . .”

  “Well, I shall do what I can, of course,” said Sir Henry doubtfully. “But the Generalissimo has a nasty habit of staying for half an hour and then disappearing—I understand there’s a cock-fight of particular ferocity taking place somewhere in the barrio of San Pablo later tonight, so I don’t hold out much hope of his remaining long. Still, I’ll see what I can do. . . .”

  The minister passed on, to join his wife in talking to Rose, two of the very few women in the room whose dresses were not a decade out of date and plastered with jewels. The babble of voices reminded January of the white folks’ parties he’d played at in New Orleans, French and Spanish striving over the gay strains of a small orchestra in the room beyond the sala.

  Then a voice cut into his hearing in English: “I don’t care if he’s a Brit, it’s a goddamn insult to ask white men to drink under the same roof as a nigger.”

  January turned his head sharply, to see, as he’d expected, a little cluster of men standing around Anthony Butler, like an island of black in the flamboyant colors of the rest of the assemblage. Butler didn’t even look embarrassed, though he saw January over the heads of the crowd. The speaker—the same pig-headed, pale-eyed secretary who had taken January’s card in to Butler a week ago—met January’s glance with a kind of defiance: You gonna make somethin’ of it, boy?
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  “Hale, you don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about.” John Dillard set down his punch-cup on the sideboard. “You step with me this way an’ I’ll introduce you to a man who fought under General Jackson at New Orleans—against the damn Brits. An’ if you need a better reason to shake a true man’s hand, you better tell me what it is.”

  Every line of Mr. Hale’s body and face shouted He’s still a nigger, but he followed Dillard through the crowd. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” lied January in his most perfect English when they were introduced, and Hale bowed stiffly, shook his gloved hand, and lied back, “And I yours.”

  No “sir,” of course, but one couldn’t have everything. January even got a condescending handshake from Butler, and congratulations for having followed Old Hickory into battle, though, of course, Butler wasn’t going to waste much time on a man who’d never be able to vote. January wondered if he’d brought his footman with him, and how he could find that out.

  “Santa Anna’s been dodgin’ Butler like he owed him money,” muttered Dillard, remaining at January’s side when Hale and Butler’s aides and secretaries had gone on their way. “Probably thought he was safe here tonight, Butler bein’ the last person to drink champagne with the Brits, him havin’ fought in ’twelve when they burned Washington City. You’d think Santa Anna would actually stick around and rule the damn country once he’d won the election, instead of disappearin’ all the time. . . . What kind of a president is that? No wonder the country’s bein’ run like a back-alley crap-game. You see Old Hickory gettin’ homesick and lightin’ out for Nashville every couple weeks when the weather in Washington City don’t suit him? Faugh!” The Tennessean shook his head. “But we’ll get him this time. He’s been dodgin’ our petition about Texas since our boys whipped Cós’s arse at Béxar—we’ll make him at least admit we got a side in this, too.”

  “You think it’ll do any good?”

  Dillard glanced sidelong at him. “I think it’ll at least show Old Hickory that we’re not just a shipload of owl-hoots and filibusters come out from New Orleans to stir up what trouble we can so we can get some profit out of it.”

  “Andrew Jackson is a sick old man,” January said bluntly. “And at the end of next year—or the end of next month if he takes a chill—he’ll be succeeded by a slick little New York ward-boss who isn’t going to risk his position among northeastern businessmen by starting a war with Mexico. He’s not going to help you.”

  Dillard’s chin came forward, and he drew breath to say something along the lines of What the hell you know about it, nigger? But by his eyes he knew January was speaking truth.

  Quietly, he said, “Then we’ll fight without his help.”

  “I know you will,” said January just as softly. “Santa Anna has nearly thirty thousand men. Ill-fed, untrained, badly armed—but they’re brave, and they’re tough, and they’ve got a general who doesn’t care how many of them die to win him his victory. Twenty-five hundred women and noncombatants were slaughtered in Zacatecas. It’s not a situation I’d want to take my wife into. Are you married, Mr. Dillard?”

  “Not yet,” said Dillard. “Soon, I hope. And I hope—I know—Señorita . . . that is, the young lady . . . understands that there are things a man must fight for.”

  The music of the orchestra halted; there was a small commotion around the door. A footman’s voice called out in French, “His Excellency President Antonio López de Santa Anna; Madame de Santa Anna; Don Prospero de Castellón!”

  “De Castellón!” Dillard’s eyebrows went up; his face altered and brightened and looked suddenly young, as he had in the diligencia when Rose had asked him about the land that was the home of his heart. “What the hell’s he doin’ here?” And looking sidelong at him, January saw that the light in his eyes had nothing to do with Anthony Butler at last getting the opportunity to present a petition of Texas grievances to the President of Mexico.

  As von Winterfeldt had prophesied, every diplomat in the room promptly surged toward the splendid crimson-clothed figure in the doorway. It was like being caught in a rip-tide. January was separated from Dillard in a discreetly elbowing flood of ministers, secretaries, and chargés d’affaires all clamoring in politely modulated shouts for attention. January backed to the wall, knowing that the last thing Santa Anna would appreciate would be the sight of a large black man tossing diplomats aside by the scruffs of their velvet-collared necks to address him. He wondered how much Ward would remember of their conversation—like von Winterfeldt, the British minister had his own life-and-death questions of tariff and trade to fight for.

  Santa Anna’s plumed and gold-laced aides formed a flying wedge around the dictator, while the Napoleon of the West himself nodded gravely and extended a palm gloved in spotless white kid to shake this waving hand or that. As always, the dictator appeared unruffled, grave, philosophical, and a little sad, as if he were a martyr to reason and progress in a world of chaotic folly. Señora Santa Anna, a tall and skinny woman in an extremely fashionable blue satin gown (The Josephine of the West? January wondered), had already been enfolded in the coterie of diplomatic wives.

  “Señor Enero!”

  Startled, January turned to see the lovely Natividad emerge from the fringes of the press like a foam-borne Venus rising in a pungent aura of attar of roses.

  He bowed low, even as his mind discarded the idea of asking for Natividad’s help. With Santa Anna’s wife present, there wasn’t a chance she’d even be able to speak to the dictator—he wondered if she was going down to Vera Cruz with some appointed stand-in to take a furnished house near the President’s hacienda, or whether she’d be passed along to someone else before departure. “Señorita.”

  “My mother tells me that your wife asked after me. That was so kind of her.” Natividad spread her fan and raised velvety eyes to his. Frank, sweet eyes, without much intelligence but without malice, either. “I was sorry to depart from Mictlán without taking leave of you and your wife. She was so good to me. Not like . . . well, not like some of the other ladies there.”

  Given that Natividad’s marriage to Don Prospero, had it materialized, would have resulted in Valentina’s being repudiated as a bastard and Doña Imelda’s losing her sole chance of marrying her son to the daughter of the man who was supporting her and her entire family, January could scarcely blame the other ladies for being cold. But looking down into that child-like face, he guessed that the scheme had been the mother’s, and not Natividad’s.

  At a guess, Señora Lorcha would have been horrified to see her daughter speak to a black man where others could see her do so.

  “I understand,” January assured her. “And Señora Enero does, too. Of course, the President, with all the press of Army business, had to depart promptly, and it was only reasonable that you should not make him wait.”

  She beamed with relief at his understanding. She was clothed in opulent yellow silk—in what was clearly supposed to be the latest Paris mode—and her nearly-uncovered bosom was draped in enough diamonds to blind Argus. January remembered the Yucatán peasants, marching in sandals in their ragged cotton trousers, and wondered who had paid for the jewels.

  Natividad glanced back at the group near the door—which seemed to be getting thicker, if anything—and said, “I feared that . . . that Don Prospero was very angry at me for leaving so . . . so abruptly. Did he speak of it?”

  Still close beside the door, Prospero was smiling, shaking hands with profiteers, colonels, mine-owners, and men from the Army quartermaster’s office, a startlingly dapper form in old-fashioned court-dress, gold-laced velvet coat, and white knee breeches of the kind that hadn’t been seen since the days when the Bourbons had ruled Mexico. Yet the garments themselves were brand-new. There must be tailors somewhere in Mexico City still eager to turn out whatever sort of apparel Don Prospero considered appropriate. January guessed if he’d turned up in an Elizabethan doublet and trunk-hose, he’d have been welcomed as lavishly by those w
ho sought to sell things to the Army of Operations.

  Prospero seemed sane enough, and jovial. With luck he’d go along with January’s request for a written order, and wouldn’t object on the grounds that he wanted to wait and see what Fernando himself had to say about his own murder. Santa Anna was looking restlessly at the door—anything in the nature of a fuss or argument, January guessed, would be met with “Speak to me of this later. . . .”

  Natividad’s soft voice continued behind him. “Mama tells me it’s foolish, but . . . I hope Don Prospero’s feelings were not hurt. Of course I know he was ready to . . . to have me marry his son . . . and Mama says that means he cannot truly have cared for me. Still, he was so kind to me, and I would not want to wound him.”

  Inwardly January shook his head at the thought of such concern for the feelings of a man who would blithely have condemned her to live under the same roof with the jealous Werther and the vindictive Fernando. There had to be some pagan goddess somewhere looking out for this child’s affairs, for naturally no saint would have rescued her. . . .

  Or did the saints, too, petition for unspecified miracles from God under false headings like “laundry”?

  Tactfully, he said, “It’s difficult for me to tell what Don Prospero is actually thinking, Señorita. He is volatile, as you know, and he has . . . a bitterness about women that may misinterpret perfectly innocent actions.”

  Natividad heaved a long-suffering sigh that threatened every one of the few square inches of her bodice. “Don’t I know it! Whoever that Helen was that he’s always talking about . . .”

  “Helen was a woman in a story,” said Rose, joining them. “She, too, ran away from her husband, the way Don Prospero’s third wife did from him.” She followed Natividad’s gaze to Santa Anna’s wife, in her circle of ladies.