Sold Down the River

by Barbara Hambly

  Careful to stay beyond the range of the fire, cloaked in the darkness and the mist, he climbed the levee’s shallow breast, to where the river’s curve deposited a huge tangle of snags, grown up with brush during low water. The fog lay thick, and with luck would hide him, though the firelight from above let him pick his way among them, the voices on the levee a comfort.

  Keeping just outside the range of the fires’ smudgy light, he settled himself among the snags.

  He’d have to wash out his clothing, he thought—it was black as any Miltonian devil with soot and burned dirt. That meant a fire, probably on the far side of Catbird Island and sheltered from sight of the river, to keep him warm through the night while it dried. With any luck Shaw would arrive tomorrow, possibly with Hannibal in tow.…

  If Hannibal was capable of travel.

  January’s jaw tightened. In some ways, he admitted, Simon Fourchet had had a point about trusting those who used opium. Still …

  He dug from his trouser pocket the wallet containing the passes Hannibal had written. As he took them out he toyed with ideas of how to slip onto the levee come morning and mix up soot and tree-gum into something resembling ink. It would take a clever line of talk, however, to convince a posse he wasn’t the man they were looking for, if he happened to be cornered. There weren’t a lot of six-foot, three-inch coal-black Negroes wandering free about the countryside. From the island he could keep an eye on the landing, always provided Duffy and his stalwarts didn’t decide that the island was a good place to look for a fugitive.

  In that case …

  A flash of virulent green among the packet of papers caught his attention. January frowned, the color half-familiar, and flipped back among the tight-folded sheets. He’d thought the packet was a little thick.

  Between the two undated passes a crumpled sheet was wedged, whose handwriting didn’t match the fiddler’s graceful Italianate script.

  French handwriting. The sort of script, in fact, that had been beaten into him at the St. Louis Academy for Young Gentlemen on Rue St.-Philippe, and nothing like Hannibal’s very English hand.

  January held the paper up, so that the light from the bonfire showed up the writing more clearly.

  It was only Robert’s first note to his father, explaining that he’d had to pay two dollars and forty cents a cord for wood from the woodlot of M’sieu Gottfreid in Baton Rouge. January remembered the stiff cream-colored stationery; remembered Esteban dropping it as Jeanette came stumbling over the levee, screaming her hatred at the man who’d raped her. Broken fragments of the seal still clung to the paper, not wax, but a cheap gum-and-flour wafer the color of an unripe lime.

  … such a SHOPGIRL method …

  Precisely like the second letter, which January had seen on Esteban’s desk that afternoon.

  The fastidious Robert might conceivably use seals that color if they were all that were available at a place of temporary lodging, but would he carry them in his luggage?

  The first of the line of bonfires was about thirty feet from where January crouched among the deadfalls. Most of the singers were gathered around the second and the third, watching the woman with the red tignon dance. Carefully, January crept closer, prodding among the wet dark hollows for sleeping gators or snakes. In time he came directly beneath the blaze on the levee, the light of it brilliant above him as day.

  The ink on the letter was black and even. He remembered thinking, in Esteban’s office, how unusual that was, for the ink in a public lodging to be so expensive and so free of grit.

  He’s traveling north, thought January, turning the stiff sheet back and forth to the light. Going from woodlot to woodlot, from plantation to plantation, during the roulaison, in quest of wood, at this time of the year the commodity most in demand. He’s staying in whatever inns and lodging-houses he can find. Presumably he’s carrying his own notepaper. Maybe even his own wafers.

  But he wouldn’t carry his own ink, unless he wanted black splotches all over his nice white Parisian ruffled shirts.

  And if he wouldn’t be caught dead with colored wafers on his letters, and is using them only in the emergency of not having anything else, how conceivable is it that two separate establishments would have the same colored wafers? Or ink of the same color and consistency in its standishes?

  At the same moment that he saw in his mind Marie-Noël Fourchet crushing a letter to her breast—a letter written also on cream-colored notepaper, sealed with a green wafer—he thought, He wrote all three of those letters in advance. Wrote them all in the same place, at the same time, and sent them north with someone else to buy the wood.

  You’re in this together, Simon Fourchet had said, dying.

  You’re in this together.

  And January thought, without further conscious train of one idea to the next, Refuge.

  It had been in his mind already, to find a plank or a snag or a floating trunk, and so paddle and drift south with the current to the boathouse at Refuge. False River Jones had spoken of M’sieu Raymond’s pirogues stored there, and if for some reason Shaw did not make an appearance in the morning, a boat would be a useful thing to have.

  Always supposing, thought January, as he poled along close to the shore of the outward side of Catbird Island, there’s a vessel there without a hole in the bottom.

  And if there was, January very much wanted to have a look at the planking of its seat and floor.

  The house Gauthier Daubray had built to separate his spouse from the rest of the family was dark. The boathouse lay a little distance from the weedy remains of the plantation landing, and January slipped off his drifting log and swam to it. Once inside, he removed his shirt—shivering in the cold—and covered the single window before striking a lucifer to locate the boat, then another to have a look at the planking.

  As he had suspected, there were dark smudges and stains in two places on its bottom, about eighteen inches apart and much blurred and blotted with water.

  Precisely the distance, thought January, from a man’s throat to his belly. Slashed open with a cane-knife because Thierry, out hunting for Quashie and Jeanette, encountered someone who shouldn’t have been anywhere in the vicinity last Saturday night.

  The old landing, thought January. Easy to tie the pirogue up there, and walk to the house where Simon Fourchet’s medicine bottles sat unguarded in the birthing-room. And of course Thierry had gone to that landing thinking to intercept the fleeing lovers. Robert Fourchet had slashed him, stuffed the handkerchief in his mouth to stop his cries, cut his throat, and left him sitting up on the batture while he went to the house; his neck and jaw had begun to stiffen by the time he returned.

  The body had been taken up to Catbird Island for precisely the same reason January had run north, to lose himself in the fire of the burning fields.

  To get everyone looking the other way. Upstream, not down.

  You’re in this together.…

  The only question now was, With whom?

  He groped his way through the pitch dark to the window and slipped his clammy shirt back on. The boathouse door was locked: He had to lower himself into the water again, and wade and swim around to the nasty mess of cypress knees and clinging weed that fringed the batture. Something moved in the water and he backed off to circle around and wade in at another point, and this was what saved him.

  For in that moment he heard the quick scrunch of hooves on the oyster-shell road that ran along the top of the levee. Immediately opposite the landing and the boathouse the wheels slowed, and a woman’s voice said, “To the left. There between the trees.”

  And there was no mistaking the soft, gruff tone of Marie-Noël Fourchet.

  The vehicle—by the sound of it the gig rather than the Fourchet carriage—bore no lights. When January cautiously ascended the levee a few minutes later, no glimmer of any lantern showed up among the cane that had been planted before the house, though in the dense blackness he could sense a stirring, a restless thrashing as the groom led the ho
rse along the narrow path. The house itself, small though it was, stood near enough the levee that even in the dense postmidnight darkness its pale shape could be discerned.

  Even as he had seen it, thought January, twelve days ago, when the Belle Dame had passed in the darkness, and he had stood on the boat’s deck, observing each isolated house, each rider on the levee, the stir and movement around the door of each mill, ignorant of what he was going to meet.

  The intervening cane was too high for January to see the gig, but like the house at Mon Triomphe, this one was built high, a pale blur easily seen. The stillness of the foggy night was such that he could hear the faint, distant tap of Marie-Noël Fourchet’s knock on its door.

  Then the bright hot star of candlelight as the door was opened from within. It dimmed and wavered as she passed inside, died as the door shut again, closing her into blackness.

  TWENTY

  Not knowing how many servants Robert might have with him at Refuge, January spent the night in the farthest cabin of the quarters, working out times and dates, events and causes, in his mind. He devoured the ash-pone and yam he had with him, but was still almost sick with hunger when he woke in the chill black of morning. The fire-scorched skin of his face and throat and arms had begun to blister.

  Only his trust in Shaw, and his faith in the parsimony of white men, kept him from risking a jail delivery that would almost certainly result in his own death. Whatever Esteban and Duffy might surmise about the guilt of Mohammed, Jeanette, and the others connected with the ’98 revolt, it was extremely unlikely that Esteban would have potentially salable slaves hanged out of hand. He would hold them for a trial, in order to claim financial reimbursement from the state if the state ordered them executed. By that time, January thought grimly, I’ll have the evidence I need to convict Robert.

  And Kiki, he thought, with a stab of bitter regret, as he slipped out into the overgrown garden-patch behind the cabin in quest of whatever he might find.

  But if justice was his aim, he understood that it would have to be both. The Heavenly Twins, as in his dream. Alike in their hatred, alike in their crime, and in their punishment.

  He had Hannibal’s passes: They might get him by if his clothes weren’t in rags. The surviving copy of his freedom papers was still buried behind the shed in Camille’s garden. With the countryside up in arms at Fourchet’s murder—and with operators like la famille Ney in the vicinity on the prowl for unattached human cattle—he couldn’t risk it.

  Shaw should come today, he thought.

  Then he recalled Hannibal’s extended absence, and his own days of waiting, and his empty stomach clenched with dread.

  And if they don’t?

  If Shaw was sent out of town on some other duty? Or killed in a tavern brawl?

  And a part of him whispered—the part of him that distrusted the white man because he was white, that had reacted to yesterday’s panic, yesterday’s wild flight—Or just forgot? Like the child with the hoop in the Place d’Armes, leaving his little black friend to weep.

  Don’t think this, January told himself. Don’t do this to yourself. Or don’t do it today, anyway. He’ll come.

  They’ll both come.

  It had been six or seven years since the provision grounds had been cultivated. But two cabins over, among the wild tangle of yam-plants and gourds, he found a couple of apple trees, and every garden had a half-dozen ground-nut vines whose coarse-shelled, oily fruit he husked and devoured by the handful. He remembered Rose saying, I don’t think I could pass myself as a slave because I don’t know all those little things, the things you learned as a child.…

  Like how to run from men with dogs and guns, he thought. Like what to eat if you’re on the dodge, and how to get yourself alive through a bad night.

  But with that knowledge, he understood now, came other things. Things terror did to you, and the pent-up rage of the unfree.

  He hadn’t yet found anywhere near as much food as he wanted when he heard the clank and jingle of harness chains. From the direction of the deserted stables torchlight flickered, and in the foggy stillness a hinge creaked. Someone was getting out the gig. Cautiously, burningly aware of the single shot in his rifle, January worked his way along the line of overgrown gardens and corn run to seed, until he was within sight of the rear of the house.

  Jacko came out of the stables pulling the gig, went back, and brought forth the small bay mare January recognized from Fourchet’s stables. A few moments later Robert Fourchet escorted Marie-Noël down the rear steps of the house, the swollen-bellied young woman in her black mourning gown leaning heavily on his arm as if dazed or beaten down with exhaustion. For Jacko’s benefit? Or because the widow was truly overwrought?

  Robert helped her into the gig and sat beside her, leaving Jacko to take the reins. Simon Fourchet’s younger son was neatly barbered and point-device as usual, bright green long-tailed coat pressed, his hat without smutch of dust, black silk cravat in a modish little bow beneath his chin. He carried a cloak folded over his arm, which he partially spread across his young stepmother’s knees. Marie-Noël had drawn her widow’s veil already over her face, and sat without speaking as the gig moved off.

  That leaves Leander at the house. January shivered in the cold. Always supposing the conspirators trust him with this kind of secret. He remained where he was, watching the shuttered windows, the rear gallery, and especially the cistern beside the kitchen, for nearly an hour without seeing further sign of life, before he crept up to investigate.

  In the kitchen January found evidence of many days’ stay. A small sack of rice and another of cornmeal were stowed in the bin-table. A few half-burned candles had been left as well. A great clutter of dishes had been roughly scraped and left in the laundry room, alive with ants and mice. No Leander. January tried to imagine the valet being sent off to Baton Rouge with a pass and instructions to purchase the wood and dispatch Robert’s letters, and couldn’t. Robert Fourchet was pompous, vain, and greatly enamored of his own intelligence and erudition, but he wasn’t foolish, and Leander had never impressed January as being trustworthy.

  Hunting by candlelight behind the kitchen, January found cheese and fruit in a sunken oil jar, and these too he devoured. The vévé still on the wall made him uneasy, but it was better than the laundry room’s stink. He wondered if he dared light a fire, for he could not stop shivering. The fog, at least, would hide the smoke from the chimney. He opened the cabinet door and brought in a few sticks of wood, but there was no kindling in the box.

  Returning to the cabinet and skirmishing around the piled cords in quest of bark and twigs—there was no hatchet either, as he’d earlier observed—he became slowly conscious of the smell of decay.

  No hatchet, but January remembered glimpsing a shovel near the back door. He got it, and saw that the earth that clotted its blade—of course Robert wouldn’t clean it or probably have any concept how to clean it—was fairly fresh, within the last week. January stood thinking about that for a moment, then set his rifle in a corner and began to move the heavy cords of wood aside.

  It didn’t take him long to find the grave beneath them. It hadn’t been dug deep. A few feet only; it was the wood that had kept rats or foxes from trying to dig up the carrion. January guessed at which end would be the head, and guessed wrong, uncovering in a short time a pair of natty shoes and slender ankles clothed in gray trousers that were unmistakably Leander’s.

  Bundled up beside them was a man’s ruffled white shirt liberally stained with oil, and another one splashed with dried blood. An empty bottle labeled Concentration du Calomel Spéciale, Solution d’Hericourt. A careful drawing of the now-familiar vévé of coffin and knives.…

  And a violin case.

  January’s breath stopped in his lungs.

  Hannibal. Hannibal had been here.

  His blistered hands stiff and cold, he tore the little black casket out of the earth. Inside, the battered Stradivarius was wrapped in its customary cocoon of fade
d silk scarves, with a hideout bottle of opium.

  Damn them. Moving almost automatically he cached the instrument in the rough rafters of the shed, and bent to digging again. Damn them to Hell. He worked fast, illogically, as if his friend had been interred alive and he could somehow save him by finding him quickly. While he worked his tired mind probed and twisted at what might have happened, how Hannibal had come to get off the Heroine here, what would have made him stop and investigate Refuge. Under Leander’s body the hard clayey soil was untouched. Still, he cleared up to the valet’s waist in order to satisfy himself that no second body had been crumpled into the grave.

  Nothing. He straightened, sweating, trembling with exhaustion and hunger, guilt and grief, and bewilderment.

  I will see them hanged, he thought. Robert and Marie-Noël. Whoever did this …

  He cast the shovel into the corner and pulled out the two shirts, the drawing, the calomel bottle, concealing them in a dry corner for Shaw. He paused for a moment, turning the bottle over in his hands. The label—one he recognized—was only confirmation of what he’d already guessed. Then he dragged the wood back over the grave, knowing enough had to remain of the valet’s body to serve as evidence but too weary, too fatigued, to replace the soil.

  Shaw will be coming to Mon Triomphe, he thought. Robert will be there, and Marie-Noël. Shaw needs to be warned.

  Bone-tired, hands and face smarting from yesterday’s burns, he flinched from the thought of getting the pirogue out of the boathouse in the dark, of rowing upstream and lying in wait off the island again. January left the woodshed, crossed through the kitchen to get the rest of the bread and cheese, and thought, the rifle.… And stepped out into the yard straight into the midst of Captain Ney and the crew of the Belle Dame.

  Jacinthe Ney and the rotund little Spaniard who was his first mate had their pistols out already, watching the cinder-gray fog that enclosed the yard, and there wasn’t a hope in hell of flight. January flung up his hands as the pieces were leveled on him, widened his eyes in astonishment—which was genuine—and terror-feigned—and cried in what he hoped was a disarmingly frightened voice, “Don’t shoot, Michie! Don’t shoot poor Ben!”