Die Upon a Kiss

by Barbara Hambly

  A woman, thought January as he, Hannibal, and Kate the Gouger made their way back toward the Place d’Armes. It was something he hadn’t expected to hear.

  Grimy light filtered from the windows of the bars and saloons, glinted on the criss-crossed lines and X’s of wheel-ruts like some indecipherable, muddy map. Along the building-fronts, where tufts of filthy grass made the ground firmer, men jostled along in their high boots, homespun shirts, and rough flannels; eyes gleamed in the shadows as they passed. Music scratched and razzled. A woman in a calico dress staggered out of the Turkey-Buzzard, fell on her knees in the gutter before January, and whimpered, her hair hanging down over her face. In the saloon the men roared with laughter.

  When January stooped to help her to her feet, she spit on him, pulled her arm free of his steadying hand, and staggered away.

  A woman.

  “You have any insight into what Madame Montero was doing Wednesday afternoon?” he asked as he and his companions resumed their walk.

  “May I see your watch?” Hannibal answered, and paused in the bar of ochre light from the door of the Ripsnorter Saloon to look at the time. “Half past nine. I wondered how long it would take you to ask me that question.”

  “Admittedly, it doesn’t sound very much like her.”

  “It doesn’t sound anything like her.” The fiddler snapped the watch-case closed and handed it back. “I can’t see Concha depriving herself of the pleasure of stabbing Lorenzo Belaggio in the back herself—that carving-up of the corpse does sound like a woman, doesn’t it?”

  Kate shoved him in not-quite-mock annoyance and said, “I’ll carve you up, pard.”

  “But in fact Consuela did what any sane woman would do upon arrival in a foreign city: she went shopping. With Madame Chiavari and her husband, I gather to devastating effect.”

  “Just asking.”

  “Wednesday is a trifle early for it to have been any of the ladies of the St. Mary Opera Society,” Hannibal went on, hopping across the ankle-deep slough where Tchoupitoulas crossed Gravier Street, and offering a gallant hand to Kate. “The company arrived from Havana only Tuesday, and if the motive for mayhem had anything to do with the subject matter of Othello, while I can’t say no one would have had time to become murderously offended, it does sound rather quick. Particularly if one had bullyboys to locate and hire. It argues for familiarity with the town.”

  As he made his way toward the Théâtre d’Orleans after parting company with Kate and Hannibal, January had to admit that the fiddler’s point was a good one. Everyone in the Swamp knew the Gower boys were for hire. But someone from out of town would need a local informant.

  January arrived at the Théâtre barely in time to help Rose set flares in the sides of Mount Vesuvius for the Act Five finale and to crouch beneath the stage to work the steam-cocks that generated what appeared to be volcanic smoke. Though he was far less fond of the forced, barking style of singing favored by the French opera, it was still plain that both the Princess Elvira’s singing and Fenella’s dancing were considerably superior to those displayed by their alter-egos on the previous night.

  Sparse applause echoed discouragingly in the half-empty theater. January hoped that if Monsieur LeMoyne were present, he’d make as good a story of it as he could when he reported to Davis in the jail. The owner of the Théâtre had enough problems without hearing his show had failed.

  Afterward January walked home with Rose in the chilly mists, Rose with her tignon and dress smelling of sulfur and paraffin and smuts of ash on her cheek. They drank coffee in the market arcade and ate beignets and ginger-cake, and watched maskers driving their carriages full of Ivanhoes and Greek gods and Indians and Turks through the square, the steamboats on the levee all lit up like jewel-boxes and music pouring out of saloon doors and houses. They giggled and groaned about Vesuvius’s shortcomings, and re-wrote the ending of the opera with the heroic fisherman and his loyal companions being locked in a barn on the far side of Herculaneum and missing the revolution entirely. When January walked Rose up to the gallery of her little rented room, he put his hands on her slim waist and kissed her gently; felt her stiffen for one instant at old memories, old hurts. Then her hands slid swift and light around his shoulders and her mouth grew warm under his, tasting at first, hesitant, then crushing, devouring, and yielding to be devoured.

  January walked home feeling curiously breathless and light, as if he’d found a note from God under his pillow, saying, Everything will be all right.

  Everything will be all right.

  He went to Mass early the following morning. At a guess, the man he hoped to see at the Cathedral wouldn’t attend until later—if he attended at all—and January knew he might have to wait, and watch, a good part of the day. The early Mass was mostly market-women, black and white and colored, though January recognized Dominique’s friend Doucette LaBayadère, hurrying in early that she might the sooner hurry home. Home to wait for her protector, in case he should chance to come . . .

  He lit a candle before the Virgin’s statue after the Mass was done. Told over his beads in prayer as the priests’ voice rose: Adorate Deum, omnes Angeli ejus. . . .

  For Marguerite, he thought. Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, hold her hand.

  And another one, in gratitude, for his own sake and that of Rose.

  Everything will be all right.

  Emerging from the sanctuary’s dimness, January saw silhouetted before him in the doorway the tignon of a tall woman just going out—a tignon tied in seven points, like a halo of flame. Only one woman in New Orleans wore such a style—she who wore it would permit no imitators. “Mamzelle Marie,” he called, and Marie Laveau turned back to him and smiled.

  Unlike Olympe, the voodooienne was a devout Christian, worshipping the God whose light she saw through the different-colored lenses of both loa and saints. “Will you have coffee with me?” he asked her, and they settled themselves on a bench near the fruit-sellers and cafés that ranged the upstream side of the square, where he could watch those who came and went through the Cathedral doors. After Mamzelle Marie had asked his judgment of Marguerite’s condition, and they exchanged opinions on Philippe duCoudreau’s discretion about where January had been when Marguerite was attacked (“He’ll keep his lip tight, never fear that,” she said), he asked her, “Did you know Sidonie Lalage?”

  “That I did,” said the voodoo queen. She was dressed quietly, in accord with the surroundings, her dark wool frock the dress of a well-off carpenter’s widow, which was what she was. Like his mother, and the more prosperous libre women both respectable and plaçée, she wore corsets, the whalebone giving her clothing and posture a straight, queenly dignity. Only her tignon, blue-and-violet madras that framed a face in which the high cheekbones of an Indian joined strong, clear features of both African and white, showed what she truly was: none but the reigning voodoo queen could wear a tignon wrapped into seven points.

  “Sidonie’d come to me many nights, for ouanga to make him love her, for powders to make him care. She’d ask me for little charms and gris-gris, too, to bring him luck in gambling, to make the saints send him money. This was back in the days when he had little. He’ll be happier when he worries less about money, she’d say. He’ll treat me better when things are better for him.”

  She shook her head, in her Indian-dark eyes the wisdom one acquires when one is queen of secrets; patience and tolerance learned only by peering into the ugliest of shadows. “I couldn’t convince her it doesn’t work so.”

  January said nothing. Had Isabella Marsan, he wondered, gone to Mamzelle Marie with one of her husband’s colored gloves, for a mix of steel dust, sugar, and honey to draw him back to her? Had Dominique at least thought of asking Olympe to make her a packet of gunpowder, flaxseed, wasp-mud, and filé to cast across Chloë St. Chinian’s doorstep?

  They both watched Liane Troyes as she emerged from the Cathedral, her opulent figure sheathed in mourning, her soft brown-sugar face framed by the darkness of a veil
. Would she seek another protector? January wondered. Or had her experience with Marsan turned her against the life of a plaçée?

  One thing was certain. Even behind a veil, and in the smoky gloom of the Blackleg Saloon, there was no way that woman could have been mistaken for white.

  “She’s lucky, that one,” said Mamzelle Marie quietly. “Lucky Marsan did not turn on her as he turned on Sidonie. For such men as he, no matter how careful a woman is, no matter how still she sits, he’ll always find a reason to be angry.”

  “What else do you know,” he asked, “about Vincent Marsan?”

  But at that moment he saw, coming around the corner of the Cabildo, the man he sought. After Shaw’s description of the purple toga and gilded wreath, he’d insensibly been expecting everyday garb of equal flamboyance. In fact, Incantobelli wore a plain coat of drab gray wool, and his silver hair was brushed back under a dilapidated beaver hat. He slouched along almost shyly, with none of the swashbuckling verve he’d displayed as Puss in Boots. January could conclude only that there was something about a costume that released the artist in the man.

  Like those engravings one saw of Shakespeare, he thought: balding, demure, and howlingly middle-class.

  January excused himself to Mamzelle Marie and re-entered the Cathedral, taking his place in that portion of the side aisle reserved for the free colored, but where he could watch the castrato during the ensuing Mass. Though the nave was far more crowded now than it had been, he was still close enough to confirm his earlier impressions of lithe slimness and medium height. The swarthy face, without a mask, was puckish with a thousand lines and dominated by a nose like the beak of a Roman warship; two dandyish waistcoats of cream and charcoal-gray revealed a glimpse of theatricality under the nondescript coat.

  After the Mass, January followed him out, to where he paused to buy a bunch of violets from a girl on the step, and called out, “Signor Incantobelli!”

  The singer turned, took one look at him, gasped in horror, and bolted into the crowds of the Place d’Armes.

  It was the last thing January had expected. “Signor, wait . . . !”

  Incantobelli veered to head for the line of fruit-stands set up under the sycamore trees along the square’s edge, where the crowd was thickest. January, moving to cut him off, edged and dodged through the market-women, idlers, well-dressed ladies on their way to the Fashion Show Mass. Incantobelli darted up to a gentleman just emerging from Bernadette Metoyer’s chocolate-shop, caught the man’s shoulders with the light strength of a waltzer on the dance-floor, shouted “Thief! He has stolen your watch, sir!” and thrust him into January’s arms.

  Too startled—and too close—to dodge, January found himself tangled in the gentleman’s arms and legs, being elbowed and belabored with a mahogany cane: “Ah, will you, you wretch!” When he struggled to free himself, the man seized him, and three others—two merchant types and a steamboat pilot in a blue coat— hung on to him like staghounds as Incantobelli darted away into the crowd.

  “Damned thieves are all over this city!”

  “Had my wallet lifted the other day . . . !”

  “Right in front of the goddamn Calaboose . . . !”

  “Sir!” January knew better than to lift a finger in his own defense, merely ducked his head into his raised arms and stood still. At least, he thought, he wasn’t in the Swamp, so it was unlikely he’d be knocked down and kicked. “Sir, I didn’t take your watch! I didn’t take your watch, sir!” he kept repeating. “It was an accident, sir!”

  “Don’t you lie to me, boy!”

  “Thievin’ nigger . . .”

  “Put him in the stocks. . . .”

  It wasn’t until they dragged him into the Cabildo and thrust him before the sergeant at the desk that January was able to say, “Sir, look in your pocket, sir. Your watch is still there, sir,” and be heard.

  The man brought out his watch—flashy Dutch-gold that probably cost a quarter of what January’s had—and reddened. “Got you before you brought it off!” he trumpeted, his white sidewhiskers fairly bristling with fury.

  January didn’t dare roll his eyes. “Sir, you’re very lucky you were the one he picked to shove,” he replied, wondering if DeMezières—the desk sergeant—would recognize him as a friend of Shaw’s, or whether he was going to spend the night comparing notes about La Muette de Portici with John Davis. “It’s an old game, sir. One man starts a fight that way between two completely innocent strangers, and during the scuffle his accomplices go around and pick the pockets of everyone who stops to watch.”

  He glanced around him. Of course Shaw was absent, on a Sunday.

  “You know damn-all about it,” growled the white-whiskered man.

  “I should,” said January in his best English, and manufactured a rueful grin. “I got taken that way about six months ago, stopping to watch an affray just like it on the levee. It cost me a silk handkerchief and a week’s pay.”

  And if the three rescuers start to laugh at him for being taken in, he thought, I’m doomed.

  But one of them—a ginger-haired man in coarse tweed—only remarked, “Deuced clever,” and the steamboat pilot spit in a contemplative fashion on the floor.

  “You were right to react the way you did,” added January, not mentioning that if the white-whiskered gentleman had gone after another white man with his cane on so little provocation, he’d have ended up taking an unexpected bath in the nearest municipal gutter. “And very quick, too.” He wondered the next moment if that was a little too fulsome, but the man only made a harrumphing noise, like a dog brought to heel and consenting to be patted.

  But of course he and his three rescuers and newfound friends had to recount the whole affair to Sergeant DeMezières from beginning to end, and minutely examine January’s papers. When the Sergeant identified January as a well-known and respectable musician—“as honest as the day is long”—the third man, a stringy Westerner of the kind January had seen picking through the New Exchange for bargains, demanded, “And how do we know that?”—not of DeMezières, but of the other three. “Goddamn Frenchmen stand behind their friends no matter what they do.”

  The Sergeant stiffened. “You’re talking of the law in this city, my friend. . . .”

  “I’m no friend of no Frenchman and I’m talkin’ about the dam’ police, not the law.” The Westerner’s pale eyes blazed. “And I know dam’ well you’d let a man pick pockets right here in this here dam’ room if he give you a cut, because that’s what the banks in this damn Frenchified town do. . . .”

  Altogether, it was some hours before January emerged from the Cabildo, nursing the half-dozen fresh bruises from the white-whiskered gentleman’s cane and wondering what the hell had caused that expression of utter, panicky terror he’d glimpsed in Incantobelli’s eyes.

  NINETEEN

  “I had no idea you were so formidable, Benjamin.” Hannibal worked the yellow chunk of rosin along his bow-string, touching it now and then with a finger to judge the texture. “I see I need to give myself greater credit for daring to be in your company.”

  “A daring that Incantobelli clearly doesn’t share,” replied January. “Since I cannot imagine an operatic soprano of forty years’ standing being seized with such shyness, I can only guess he was afraid of who might see him talking to me.”

  Hannibal ran a sinister trill of descending minor notes on his violin, to test the bow, and glanced at January under raised brows. “The gentleman who tried to strangle Marguerite? One can scarcely blame him. When it comes to protecting themselves the people who shoved Davis into the arms of the police the way Incantobelli shoved your friend with the white whiskers into yours yesterday don’t seem to know what scruples are. If Incantobelli hadn’t been wearing that—er—unmistakable garb in a public place the night of Marsan’s murder, they’d have found someone who saw him masked and cloaked and wearing a small-sword at the City Hotel, instead of Davis. Remind me to purchase a crimson coat with gold braid on the sleeves or some
thing equally memorable. . . . Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy. . . .”

  “Rich, not gaudy,” agreed January, and he bit into the juicy sweetness of an apple taken from his music-satchel.

  Deeper in the bowels of the cavern, Tiberio muttered in Sicilian, “More flame, he says. Let us have the show.” He adjusted the red glass filters that would color and magnify the eerie, flickering gas-jet’s light. “They will do Barber of Seville and have Figaro make his entrance through a trap-door in a blaze of fire. . . .”

  “Did you see Davis?” Hannibal asked.

  “I was lucky I didn’t spend the night with him.” January pitched the apple-core into the nearest sandbox. “I spoke with LeMoyne and offered to cancel my pupils this morning to testify at the arraignment as to the state of Davis’s health, but LeMoyne said it wasn’t necessary. They got Ker from the hospital,” he added, trying not to let the annoyance he felt carry into his voice. It was childish— and, his confessor would have said, prideful: Dr. Ker had been asked because he was the head of Charity Hospital, not because he was white and January was black. Moreover, January knew it.

  He shook his head at himself. Hannibal had been right when he’d said there was a miasma in this land of slavery, like the red light of illusion, that tainted all things.

  “LeMoyne says Davis is holding up—he’s been running a faro-bank in his cell since Friday. . . .”

  “Sounds like him.” Hannibal poked with his bow at one of the theater cats who’d leapt up to investigate the uneaten dish of jambalaya he’d bought from one of the street vendors for lunch. All around them, chorus-boys and musicians were filtering in, joking and calling to one another; Caldwell rapped at the door of Belaggio’s office, then rapped again. It occurred to January that he’d seen little of the impresario in the three days since Marsan’s murder. He’d kept to his office as much as he could during rehearsals Friday and Saturday, arriving late and departing early.