by Parry, Owen
“Could be any number of reasons for that, I suppose. Not least her embarrassment at the end to which her distant, but undeniable, relative had come. I suspect most any lady in this city would be inclined to revise her memories of intimacy with the victim. Myself, I’m never surprised when a lady amends the truth … although there are times when I’d like to know why she repaired the facts exactly the way she did.”
He brushed a few crumbs from his breast, ignoring a hundred others. “As for the late Mr. Pelletier, we must assume she knew nothing about his recent decline in health. But it strikes me she might have no end of other reasons for wishing to disavow any contact with a figure who has excited such controversy. All sorts of reasons for a fine, high lady like our Mrs. Aubrey to shy away from acknowledging any business she might’ve carried on quietly with François Pelletier. Acourse, you could only be suggesting a business arrangement. Not a social relation.”
I pressed ahead, although it was poor manners, and wrote: “There have been suggestions of indecencies.”
Papa Champlain read that and laughed. “Sure, now. You wouldn’t want to corrupt your investigation with idle gossip, cher. Anyway, not a man or woman I know doesn’t have something worth hiding. This town’d be duller than a Saturday night in Boston, if they didn’t. But I don’t recall hearing anything much about the Widow Aubrey’s private affairs. Nothing much that would have any bearing on the matter you’ve undertaken to resolve. Truth is that we mustn’t be ungentlemanly. And when all is said and done, a good deal more is said than done.”
He paused to gaze down the long slope of his waistcoat, past knees that had not touched each other in years. “Greedy woman, though. Terribly greedy woman. I’ll allow that much. Wouldn’t want to do business with her. If squeezing a profit out of every poor soul she touches is indecent, then I suppose there’ve been indecencies aplenty in that woman’s life. But that’s the worst I’d choose to say of Jane Aubrey.”
Disappointed I was. I had hoped to hear lurid tales. Such nastiness of temperament is shaming to me as a Christian, but the truth is that I wished to hear of sins.
How is it that we like to think ill of our brothers? Our Savior told us to let the sinless fellow cast the first stone. Yet, it is words, not stones, he should have warned us against. Rocks are hurled openly. We see the damage by the light of day. But wicked words are daggers in the night.
The truth is that I had not liked Mrs. Aubrey, who seemed as dry as a water bottle after a summer march. But how small of me it was to wish to hear Magdalena’s charges of sin confirmed, to be told that Mrs. Aubrey’s past was sordid.
I wish I were a better man than I am.
Well, I was worn and weary. I will allow myself that. And tiredness troubles our judgement. The calming salve and then the bowl of mash might as well have been opium for the sleepiness they brought me. And I had heard so much that day, so many contradictions, that I could barely keep my questions straight.
I managed to remember two last questions I needed to put. I wrote: “Do the words ‘fishers of men’ mean anything unusual to you?”
Mr. Champlain lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “The words of our Lord, Jesus Christ. When summoning his disciples. Always made me wonder what he expected ’em to use for bait.”
I scrawled: “Nothing else?”
He lifted the opposite shoulder. “Sure, now. I suppose you could take an unkind view of the term … attach it to some fellows you might meet up with over on the corner of Bourbon and Canal. Or along Rampart. Gamblers, ne’er-do-wells. Pickpockets, Irish robbers. Fancy-man coloreds. Fishing for folks’ money, if not for their souls.” He twisted up his mouth and tried the words again. “Fishers of men …”
As my host mused on the phrase, his servant, Constantine, captured my eye. Turning a corner with a plate of buns, he heard his master speak the words in question.
For an instant, the servant buckled. He nearly dropped his tray, although he recovered.
He saw that I saw him.
Mr. Champlain clapped his hands as the aroma of warm dough and cinnamon overwhelmed us. I knew I could not chew and the scent tormented me.
The other servant, Horatio, brought in more coffee. I could not drink it. That, too, was a sorrow.
“Better paint him up again, Constantine,” my host told the servant. “Paint him back up while he’s still awake. I’m afraid the good major’s falling under the spell of that care-charmer sleep, the son of sable night …”
The servant went to fetch the pot of ointment and I scrawled out my last query: “What does the word ‘pirates’ mean to you? Anything in relation to Miss Peabody?”
That, too, baffled Mr. Champlain. “Well … I’ve heard some of your Yankee businessmen called that. And worse. General Butler’s brother, for instance. The ‘colonel.’ I’ve even heard it applied to certain merchants on the other side of Canal Street …”
The servant returned with the pot and swab. Our host told him, “Once you’ve got him all painted up again, Constantine, you let him take the rest of it along. Wrap it up for him to carry.”
The negro bent over me again. I opened my jaw as wide as the damage allowed.
After fussing for a moment, the servant stood up straight and said, “’Scuse, Marse Papa.”
“What’s the matter now?”
“I can’t rightly see in this here light no more. Can you moves him yonder for me, over to the lamp, suh?”
The master of the household looked at me. “Major Jones? Would you kindly pass on over to that big lamp? So Constantine doesn’t accidentally stick that swab someplace it shouldn’t go?”
I trailed the ancient servant across the room. He stopped where a painted lamp perched on a table. Behind me, Mr. Champlain and Mr. Barnaby bantered about the quality of kitchen staffs.
Seating myself on a chair whose pride was past, I opened my mouth and allowed the servant to perform his ministrations. He cooed and tutted, as if treating a child, giggling now and then as darkies do.
Twas only at the very end, and only for a moment, that he dropped his smile and let his face grow somber. Affecting to apply a final coating, he brought his cheek close to mine. His breath chronicled old age, bad gums and coffee.
“Them fishers of men be everywhere,” he whispered. “You gets home, you looks inside this here crock, marse.”
ELEVEN
I DID NOT LOOK INSIDE THE POT WHEN I REACHED MY hotel room. Not at first. Another matter distracted me.
The girl was gone. And the room was crimson with blood.
Now, when you are wearied by pain and wanting sleep, and when within a pair of days you have tumbled from a roof, been buried alive, bathed with snakes, suffered a queer paralysis, faced a slaughtering dentist, then met up with a fellow skinned alive, your enthusiasm wanes.
I could not summon the vigor to respond as boldly as I might have done. Blood seemed as common as water in New Orleans.
If the splashes of gore were insufficient to rouse me to a passion, I should have been shocked by the howl Mr. Barnaby raised. Twas a cry of misery so rich it would have moved the prophets and made poor Job feel lucky in his sorrows. Never had I heard such a wail from a white man, unless it come from that ruffian preacher whose son was killed in our fuss in Mississippi.
The hopelessness in Mr. Barnaby’s bellowing should have pierced my soul. But it did not. As sad as it is for a Christian man to say, blood has been too common in my life. And I was wearied to the point of cruelty. He only made me impatient and disdainful. Here was Mr. Barnaby, a man who had dueled and killed, who had shot men in my presence the spring before, crying like a child and helping no one.
I found it preposterous that he should come to feel so for the lass in a spate of hours. Men and women do not love at a glance, but only want the shiny thing they see. Love untried by time is merely appetite. Had poor Juliet lived, she likely would have found herself abandoned as soon as fickle Romeo glimpsed Joan. The reckoning comes as the calendar’s pages fall. We
dally in the next one’s arms, insisting that the stars look down in envy, and make our honor cheap as poor Marc Antony’s.
I am no skeptic when it comes to love, but fear the strayness of infatuation.
Mr. Barnaby bayed like a hound, rushing from wall to wall. As if the girl were but hiding. He thumped the panels, again and again, in search of secret passages, and called her name as if they had been wed. I could not stop him from turning over the mattress.
Only blood.
Had we been out of doors, I would have drawn my Colt and fired it heavenward to shock the fellow back into his senses. But such things are not done in fine hotels.
“Mr. Barnaby!” I barked in my old sergeant’s voice, still having a bit of a tussle with my jaw. “Stop this! Stop it now!”
He paused and looked toward me in astonishment. As if my presence had been plain forgotten.
“She’s gone,” he said, as if I had not noticed.
“Go you down and fetch us Captain Bolt. If you can find him.”
He gazed at me. You would have thought him uncertain of my identity. I was about to repeat my command, when the poor fellow spoke again.
“I ’as to find ’er, Major Jones.”
“Mr. Barnaby … get you down and summon Captain Bolt.” When he did not respond, my temper blackened. “Do it now, man!”
“I ’as to find ’er, I does. I know she’s alive, sir. Why take away a body what’s already dead? She must be alive. Alive and wanting ’elp …”
“Find Bolt. Bring him here. Wake him up. Kick him, if you have to. Do whatever you must. But tell him I said he must come up at once.” I squared my shoulders so he would not mistake me. “If you wish my help in the matter of your Master Francis, you will do as I say and remember yourself as a man.”
That sobered him a bit, though not completely. Slowly, he began to stir to duty. “I ’as to find the lass,” he insisted, pleadingly. “Before she’s dead and done with.” But his posture straightened as he touched the door.
His cries had drawn a crowd into the hallway. There were civilian officials with neckcloths undone, shirtless officers with their braces down, and one young woman painted bright as a mail coach. She giggled at Mr. Barnaby and myself.
I pushed my companion off on his way and told them, “Just go on with you now. Go along. There is nothing here that is your business. Go along.”
I shut the door and sat me in a chair not badly bloodied, trying to make sense of the muddle of gore. And something struck me that I should have noticed the moment we entered. Blood there was, indeed, but no sign of a mortal struggle. Not a lamp was overturned, and the pitcher, basin and night pot rested unbroken. Nor did the pattern of bloodstains tell of a fight. The blood was spilled too evenly, as if to paint a slaughter where there was none. Twas probably not the missy’s blood at all, but gore drawn from a dog or a sheep. Or a goat.
A kidnap there might well have been. But the butchery was staged.
The knowledge should have driven me to action. But I was so worn down that all things blurred. Ideas I had clutched an hour before, convinced I had made progress in my task, fled me as I tried to recollect them. I was not certain of a single fact, and the lass grew as unreal as a ruptured dream. I rested my cane between my legs and let myself slump down.
I should have been outraged and bent on justice. I should have burned with pity for the girl.
Instead, I fell asleep, still in my cape.
CAPTAIN BOLT SHOOK me awake with irritating violence. I rushed up from my slumber, calling for my old regiment to rally. Often, when I am startled out of my sleep, I imagine myself in India again. Sometimes, when I am glum, I fear I long for it.
“Hoo-ee, look out!” the captain cried as he swerved to avoid my blows. I think I took him for a murdering Pushtoon, although there was no ghost of a resemblance.
I mastered myself in a moment or two, but was in such a grump that I did not apologize. I even growled a bit.
“God Amighty!” Bolt called out, “I was only trying to wake you up, Major! You were snoring like a drunk Irishman and a sick mule sewed together …” He glared in Mr. Barnaby’s direction. “This friend of yours says there’s been another murder.”
When we are hard asleep and too soon awakened, the world seems lurid with a nightmare truth. Our spirits fail. That is why our enemies strike before dawn. But discipline will tell, see. If my temper was poor, I restrained it and only said, “Look around you, man. The blood would seem to tell a tale, I think.”
I did not explain that I thought the matter false, that the gore was not even the girl’s, in my opinion. I wished to see what the fellow would say for himself. I should have offered comfort to Mr. Barnaby, there is true. But I was in a crank. And newly wary. I did not want Bolt blabbering in the streets. If we were meant to think Magdalena dead, no doubt the ruse had a purpose. The captain would be no help in finding it out.
I had another usage for him, though.
Bolt glanced about himself. As if noticing the great, darkening splashes for the first time. There was blood on the planks and panels, blood on the bedding and furniture.
“Who’s dead this time?” he asked. His interest was not impressive.
“The maiden!” Mr. Barnaby interjected, fighting a sob. “The fair maiden.”
Mystified, the captain looked at me. “He don’t mean that high-yella gal? Does he? That scrawny thing you were snuggling yesterday morning?”
“Likely her,” I said, too worn to be irate at his suspicions.
“If that don’t beat all,” Bolt said. “I swear to God.” He was not quick of wit, to say the least.
My temper come up again, though. Not at the limitations of his character, but at his neglect of elementary duties. Aggravated by my rebellious jaw, my lecture was not gentle.
“Listen you,” I said, “and listen well. It is tired I am of the doings in this hotel, which you and your soldiers have been set to guard. I am tired to a vomiting, Captain Bolt. If your masters have set you to watch me like a dog, you could at least observe my door often enough to keep stray murderers out. Look you, boy. Here is what you will do, and do not argue. Do not say a word until I finish. Or we can visit General Banks in the morning. To ask if you might not be rewarded with a posting to the front, where officers do not lounge about hotels, dreaming of fine dinners. Heed what I say, or I will see you become a soldier proper.”
Grunting for emphasis, I reared up like the sergeant I once was. “The moment it is light enough to wake the residents, you and your men will search this cursed hotel from top to bottom. Do not pull faces at me, boy. Even if you find nothing—which is likely—it will tell these criminals their free run is past. You also will send a fellow to the paymaster to tell him I will come to inspect his accounts. Tell him to expect me in the afternoon. And warn him that I know the look of ledgers. If he objects, then he and I will visit General Banks. And you will go in your person to the provost marshal. To demand, in my name, any information he possesses about an organization called the ‘Fishers of Men.’ And he is not to put me off with Bible stories. He is to speak of men in their living flesh.”
I stabbed the air with my finger, which is unmannerly. “Lastly you will come down the stairs with me now, while I take another room. Where a fellow can sleep for a brace of hours without the creaking of secret doors or social calls by all the city’s assassins. And you will post a guard upon my room, with orders that no one, living or dead, may disturb me until I am ready to be disturbed. And that will not be until the hour of noon.”
Wheeling about, I faced poor Mr. Barnaby. I fear my temper was flowing in full flood. But who among us is perfect?
“And you, sir. You may sleep wherever you wish, then make inquiries anywhere you want. Ask about the lass, if you will. Living or dead or translated into gossamer. But you will also ask about these ‘Fishers of Men,’ and no nonsense. If you argue back to me and weep about a girl you have only laid eyes on, or waste another moment on penny romances, by God, si
r, I will let your Master Francis rot in a Union prison a year beyond the end of this blasted war. Have I made myself understood?”
I looked from one man to the other, in a mood to devour raw flesh. Although I do not mean that literally, of course.
“Do you understand me, gentlemen? Do you two understand what I have said?”
I did harbor some fear that they might not have understood me, given the impairment to my speech. But both men nodded, Mr. Barnaby pale as fresh milk and Captain Bolt as nervous as those brothers must have been when Joseph let them know the game was up.
“Good,” I said. I took up my cane, then stomped out the door, marched along the hallway and paraded down the stairs. Followed by my well-chastised companions.
The clerk behind the desk was the same fellow I had upbraided the night before for lassitude. He did not like my looks when he saw me coming.
If nothing else, the fellow had sound instincts regarding authority and seemed to have learned that I must be appeased. I got my new room and half a hundred assurances that it contained no contraptions for shameful doings. I also got my guard from Captain Bolt.
Mr. Barnaby shambled off like a wounded pachyderm. He was glum as Mr. Carlyle pondering the deeds of Robespierre.
Now, you will judge me a hard man—and I have already admitted to my temper—but I saw full well that Mr. Barnaby by himself could enter doors where I would not be welcome. His fellows would speak more openly when not compelled to make a show for me. I wished to give him time alone which he would not take unless it were forced upon him. He was a lonely man and worried, too. Such fellows cling, Lord bless them. But I needed him to sink back into his city for a time.
It is like this, see: A stranger in New Orleans is an audience, for whom the city’s natives play their roles. The place is a great theater, and every child and grampus is an actor. There are real theaters, and music halls, as well, giving plays and shows despite the times. But the performances of the foremost rank occur in the streets and parlors. And, perhaps, elsewhere. I leave it to you to imagine the intimate scenery.
