Rebels of Babylon

by Parry, Owen

  He smiled again, for that was his natural state, no matter the emotional climate. “Oh, it’s another failing of ours, you won’t have to draw a pistol to get me to admit it. No, sir. We all think we’re just clever as old Talleyrand, Fouché and Marie the butcher’s wife all balled up into one. Truth is that we’re not so much clever as intricate. This is an intricate city. To the outsider, it passes for a clever one. But that’s only because it has more layers than a twenty-dollar whore has petticoats. We make passing the time of day as slow and complicated as an audience with Louis XIV. Damnation, now, we were clever we never would have mixed ourselves up in this fool’s war.”

  He would have talked all night, if I had let him. Talked, but said nothing. Along with food, talk was his remaining joy.

  “And Miss Peabody? Can you say that you did not lie about her? With your suggestions that she … misbehaved?”

  “Oh, now. I was only describing the possible avenues of behavior open to the ladies here in New Orleans. I spoke philosophically.”

  “You implied she was a … that she was given over to immorality.”

  “Did I? I don’t recall exactly. Acourse, we may have different understandings of immorality. If you mean that I suspected her of a less than perfect decorum by your standards …”

  “Admit that you blackened her name. By suggestion.”

  He began to find me tiresome. His smile failed. “Major Jones … has anybody ever told you that there are things in this life you really don’t want to know? Has anyone ever whispered that in your ear? Have they, now? As for Miss Peabody, the truth is that none of us will ever know everything that happened—or that didn’t happen—with the doors shut and the shutters closed up tight. But never underestimate the appetite of the female. Pretend she is a doll, and she’ll devour you.”

  “That is no answer.”

  “See, now. You know what the difference is between a handsome woman and a plain one? Besides the obvious? It’s just this, cher: the beauty gets to take her pick of follies. But the plain girl has to seize the folly that’s offered her. She may never get another chance.”

  “Not all women choose folly. Do not judge the female race by Mrs. Aubrey.”

  His smile returned, but now it was a small thing. “I knew we were coming around to her.”

  “Was she the doll who devoured you?”

  He laughed and slapped his girth. “Does it look like any woman on earth could swallow me up?”

  His laughter had a brittle, desperate sound.

  “You said yourself,” I reminded him, “that the people of New Orleans are endlessly curious. But curiosity is not a local matter. I am curious, too. I like a story that has a proper ending. Tell me about Mrs. Aubrey and I will go.”

  He twisted his mouth like a rag that wanted wringing. But he did not answer.

  “Why did you bring her down after all these years?” I demanded. “How many was it? Forty?”

  “Forty-two.”

  “You waited forty-two years for a lover’s revenge?”

  His eyes hunted down the pink swells of his cheeks. “Nothing’s ever quite that simple. Yes, I waited. But I didn’t know exactly what I was waiting for. Until she began her business with the negroes. Selling them back into slavery. Yes, sir, I knew about that. Didn’t take Descartes to figure it out. I knew that much, I admit it. And it offended me, cher. It offended me to a degree you will not credit. Because you know only a little of me.” He smiled again, almost merrily. “And I’m a big man, as you can see. Based on size alone, I take some getting to know.”

  “She broke your heart?”

  He let those words sink through the floor until their echo seemed dead and forgotten. Then he surprised me with the smallness of his new voice. “I broke my own heart. Fool that I was. God knows what she told you herself … Jane Aubrey does like to rearrange things. Fact is, yes, I loved that woman. But I chose to do so. At first. I loved the idea of loving a married woman—she was just a few years off the boat from England. Yes, sir. The much-heralded English rose. Her mother had married a New Orleans man—second marriage—and she brought Jane along. Married her off, quick as could be, to Gene Charboneaux. Not a bad man. And not a good man. Crooked as Satan in a poker game, but he had the gift of making himself good company. Even while he stole you blind. Told myself I would rescue that damsel from a thief and a liar. And I failed to understand that I was turning myself into a liar and a thief. I pursued her, Major Jones. I don’t deny it. But, frankly, it wasn’t much of a hunt.”

  He looked at me with flesh-smothered eyes. “Truth is, she wasn’t a beauty. Though she had a little something. By God, I swear I didn’t see it coming. Just thought I was in for a little dalliance, something out of a book. But once I got the ball in play, Jane took over the game. She fell in love with me. Like the lash of a whip and the burning of the flames. So wild it frightened me. I’d just been playing, cher. But she raised the stakes higher than I knew they could go.”

  He scratched an ear with the quick strokes employed by a hound. “Oh, I’d filled her up with all sorts of crazy, romantic tales. I was in love with romance, cher …much more so than with any flesh-and-blood woman. Told her I was going to carry her off to South America, set up a kingdom amid the revolutions, make her a queen. Child’s nonsense. Silliness, and nothing but. Just me talking for the sound of my own voice. But Jane hung on every word.”

  He twitched at a sharp-edged memory. “I got what I wanted, Major Jones. Yes, I did. That’s the tragedy of it. I got what I wanted. Once in my life. And it ruined my life. Thing is, once … once she gave herself to me … once it wasn’t a fine dream anymore, but something real and mean around the edges of all that glory … then she started closing herself off. She was the romantic one, see. I was play-acting, but she was the real article. The romantic kind that prefers a dream to imperfect flesh and blood, to sweat and bone. I didn’t see it coming, not for an instant. Once she made me truly fall in love with her, so hard it was like being smashed on rocks every minute of the day … once that happened, she slammed her door in my face. Said she couldn’t love me, after all. That what happened between us was only ’a little error of the heart,’ as the French say. That she had a husband, responsibilities. All the things women say when the truth is impossible.”

  He twitched again. “Poor Gene Charboneaux had a miserable end. Miserable. I wasn’t the only one, you see. Just the first. Far as I know. But, God almighty, I did love that woman. Ruined my life.”

  His eyes were no longer with me. “I have many failings, cher. Vices in the multitudes. But I never could quite destroy what I felt for that woman. Nothing like her. Nothing on earth, or in Heaven. Scorch you like the fires of Hell, then just get up and walk away.”

  He took up a ball of dough, then set it down again, untasted. “Talking immortal love, until she had you convinced, until you believed it yourself. Then, once she had you on your knees, she’d just walk away. Counting her money. Only thing she ever really loved, I do believe. Maybe it was the only thing she trusted.” Muddling layers of chin, he shook his head. “Couldn’t kill it, what I felt for her. Just couldn’t kill it. So I never married. Just could not do a thing that cruel to another woman. Not that it doesn’t happen all the time. But I claim my own peculiar sense of honor. Might even say I cling to it. Thought Jane might marry me after old Gene was gone, but I never even got to ask her. She married that poor fool Aubrey before Gene was half-way in the ground. Richest fool that ever sailed up this river. Killed him, too. Acourse, he was a sailor and the Lord knows what he brought to the marriage bower. Besides his money. God knows, that woman loves money. I hope to God, I pray to God, she’s found out just how much good it does a body.”

  Although it all sounded a terrible muck to me—and I could not think nice thoughts of Mrs. Aubrey—we are made to engage our fellow man, to offer comfort.

  I said, “The queer thing, Mr. Champlain, is that she loves you. Even now. But you must know that.”

  I was not prepar
ed for the outburst. Bricks shook and mortar crumbled.

  “Then why didn’t she come away with me, the damned whore?”

  I had to let the air calm. Twas acrid as the smell of exploded gun-powder.

  He wept before me, an old, misshapen man. Shedding tears in front of his servants, which I do not think is done.

  “I would’ve taken her to the ends of the earth! To Heaven or Hell. Instead, she ruined our lives. It was stubbornness. Nothing but damned stubbornness. And fear. She was afraid of love, when it came back at her. Didn’t trust it. That’s the sin and the shame of it. She didn’t trust love. Only money.”

  “This very night,” I said, still hoping to soothe him, “I saw her cling to your portrait.”

  He looked at me as if I understood nothing, and never would.

  “It’s easier to love a portrait than a man,” he said.

  I COULD NOT sort it out and no longer wished to. I took me back to my hotel and slept. Doubtless snoring like Mr. Irving’s Dutchman.

  Is anything more tangled up than love? At times, I think it is our greatest blessing. Then I see it wielded as a curse.

  We are strange beasts. After the day and night I had passed, you would have thought me fated for mad nightmares. Perhaps of my mother, or of my loss in India. Of burning men, of Hell, of spoiled lives. But after saying my prayers and giving my face a wash, I slept as soundly as a babe on laudanum.

  A knock upon the door of my room awakened me. Twas a bell clerk, sent from below. He bore a silver platter, upon which lay a single visiting card.

  “Waiting for you down to the lobby,” the lad told me, before I even had time to read the name. “He says how I’m to ask if’n he can come up.”

  The card announced H. BEYLE.

  Roused from a mighty slumber, I could not place the name. I stood there in my nightshirt, trying to gain some purchase on the world, and only woke up properly when a gentleman passed and deplored my impropriety.

  The insult was just, but smarted. Then I remembered the person who was H. Beyle.

  Twas that ancient Frenchman from the shop. Come to collect his payment for the stick. Like the Devil himself come round collecting souls.

  My first impulse was childish. I wanted to hide the cane.

  Of course, I did no such thing. I stepped back into my room and returned with a nickel for the bell-clerk. He did not seem as pleased as he should have been.

  “Send a body to collect my night pot,” I told him. “And ask Mr. Beyle to allow me fifteen minutes. Then he may come up, see.”

  The lad was just short of insolent. And no one appeared to take away my night pot, which I feared might leave the room seeming unpleasant. I barely had time to shave in cold water and pull on my shirt and trousers before the Frenchman rapped on my door.

  I dreaded what was to come. For I did not want to give up the cane, but feared that he would ask an exhorbitant price. Through all the tumult of the past days, I had debated with myself how much I might pay without becoming a fool. For though we may be blessed with money now, we will not have it long if we are wasteful.

  The only good fortune I saw in the situation was that I had less than fifty dollars in hand, the remnant of my borrowing from the Navy. Any sum agreed would need to be fetched, giving me time to amend impulsive behavior.

  I told myself I might go as high as one hundred dollars in bargaining. Then I added another fifty. Although the sum was mindlessly extravagant for even the finest blade in a shaft of wood.

  I wondered if Mr. Beyle would ask for more.

  They are a nasty, greedy lot, the French.

  The fellow was exactly as I remembered him, crooked over like a human question mark, with a narrow face deployed between permanently raised brows and a mouth that never quite closed. His white hair was too long for a proper gentleman.

  He had got himself up dapper, though, for his visit. My Mary has always been a gifted seamstress and I learned enough of such matters from her to recognize that his clothing had been cut for his crippled form by a master’s hand.

  “Ah, Monsieur le Major!” he cried. “But have I come too early? It is ten.”

  Good Lord, it was. I had slept like Rip Van Winkle.

  “Come you in, then, Mr. Beyle,” I said, accepting his hand. It slid in and out of mine as if he feared a hurt. “Sit you down. I think that chair is the pleasantest.”

  “Merci, merci. But your face is much improved, I think. You have not so much the toothache now, the damage? Bon! But then you will be in better spirits than you were upon our first rencontre!”

  I wondered if that meant he would charge me more. Or try to. I put on a strict expression, almost dour.

  “But you realize, of course, why I have come?”

  “For payment.”

  “Yes, that is true. How I wish I could report to you that I am making a social call! But men must attend to their business. Only then can friendship … but what would you say? Blossom.”

  I wondered if the price would blossom, too.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Ever so blunt! So much the Anglo-Saxon! But I think the Welsh are not Anglo-Saxon, yes? But you live side by side with them, of course, so you have become the same. I see that I have awakened you, you must pardon me. Perhaps you have not had your morning coffee? But I think the soldier always rises at dawn!”

  Before dawn, if the soldier is a wise one.

  “Well, I do not wish to detain you unnecessarily,” I told him. Having slept late, I felt the press of the day. “Tell me your price, sir.”

  “I fear to tell it. It is very high, I think.” My heart sank. I really did want that cane.

  “How much is ‘high,’ then?” My voice quivered as I spoke. And not only because I wanted coffee.

  “It is high, but I think you can pay this price. Perhaps … as you are a man of honor … I think it is a price you will be glad to pay.”

  When those who wish to sell you a thing call you a man of honor, it is generally prelude to an attempted theft.

  “Look you, Mr. Beyle. I am resolved to pay no more than … a hundred seventy-five dollars.” I considered his face, then added, “That is, I meant to say one-hundred eighty-five dollars. I misspoke.”

  He whisked my offer away. “But that is nothing, monsieur! I did not come to bargain.”

  Then what the bloody blue blazes had he come for? I nearly asked him in those very words.

  “But I see that you still do not understand,” he continued. “So I will explain. It is not the money of which I speak. I tell you already that the cane is yours. It has welcomed you into its history. It has chosen you. I could not take it back. It would be impossible!”

  I did not trust a single word he said. Though even in that moment, I could not quite dislike him. Twas only that I could not make him out.

  “The cane is yours,” he repeated. “I do not ask a price, that is not the word. I ask a favor. That is better. A favor that I think will not bring harm to you.”

  I did not like the sound of that. Perhaps he wanted some sort of letter to help him pass his contraband through customs. I was about to set him straight about my code of morals and the difference between myself and the local citizens, when he leaned forward. Narrow he was as a child’s cut-out toy.

  “Entre nous, Monsieur le Major, our mutual friend, Monsieur le Barnaby, is in danger. He has alarmed … certain elements … not only by his relationship with you, you understand, but through the matter upon which you have been engaged. I do not pretend to know every détail …but I have heard whispers. He has stepped on the toes, as you say. Toes he has not even seen. I think there is more to affairs than you understand. More than is meant to be understood. Once you are gone, he will not last the month. He has not been sensible. Always, he has known the noir. For so many years, he has made friends with the negroes. But always before he is discreet. Above all, that is what New Orleans asks! The discretion. In public, you must take the proper side. He has chosen the wrong one this time
.”

  He gripped me with a gnarled, slow, tortured hand. “You must take him away! That is what I ask! You must make him believe that he must go. Please. This is the thing I ask of you. Not for the cane. For your friend—I think he is a friend to you, as well? As he has been to me?”

  “But … this is his home.”

  The Frenchman made a pouty mouth, as if addressing a child. “Monsieur le Major! But I think you are a man of the world, non? As is Mr. Barnaby. As I once was myself. No, no! This is not his home. His home will be where he loves. Is it not so with you, mon pauvre frère?”

  “My home is in Pottsville, Pennsylvania,” I informed him.

  My tone verged on the disdainful, but he surprised me with his reply. Old he was, but not entirely foolish.

  “But is that not because your wife is there? Is there not a part of you that lingers elsewhere, perhaps? The cane … it chooses the wanderers, I think.”

  “Well, then, the cane is mistaken, sir. I intend to return to Pottsville and to stay there. I have had enough of the great, wide world.”

  “But, monsieur! Perhaps the world has not had enough of you? We cannot always choose such things for ourselves. But we will not argue. This is not the important thing. The cane … it is not impatient. It can wait in a chest for a generation, even longer. As you have seen. But will you take Monsieur le Barnaby with you? To your Pottsville?”

  “You are not jesting? You believe he will be killed?”

  The old Frenchman looked at me. “He has enemies you cannot imagine. Enemies he cannot imagine. He has crossed lines wiser men do not approach.”

  “But what if he won’t go?”

  “Then you and I will have done our parts, Monsieur le Major. As his friends. But he will go. You will persuade him. I know this.”

  He drew out his watch from his waistcoat, feigned shock at the hour, then said, in studied haste, “D’accord? We are agreed?”