by Paul Boor
The few guests murmured approval and raised a glass or shrimp in a ragtag toast to the visitor from the North.
“As ye see, Van Horne”—Keiller pointed to the shrimp pile—“we’re putting your ice to good use. And they’re concocting slings with it in the kitchen.” He lifted a sweating crystal pitcher in the air. “Care for one?”
“I believe I’d prefer whiskey, Francis.”
Keiller smiled. “Sara, have ’em bring Mr. Van Horne a touch o’ that one from Dundee, would ye?”
“With a chunk of ice, please,” Nicolas added.
Leaning in close, the professor whispered, “Trust me, Nicolas. No one in this group cares what’s been in your ice.”
The door knocker resounded, and Sara stepped away to attend to a fresh flood of guests. While Keiller turned his attention to the new arrivals, Nicolas studied the costumes surrounding the table. The getups varied widely. Some guests were in ornate robes and gossamer finery; others had simply draped themselves with sashes of purple, gold, and green, or donned strings of gaudy beads. Nicolas felt a bit conspicuous in his best business attire, but no one seemed to care. Indeed, somber whispering among the guests suggested a different mood than Nicolas expected for the raucous festivities before the deprivations of Lent.
Sara introduced the new arrivals, labeling each with a dramatic moniker contrived as a clue to their true identity.
“Professor Sawbones and the lovely Madam Bodacious.”
“The young Doctor Zeitgeist, lecturer extraordinaire.”
These were easy to figure. Medical types.
The table was quickly surrounded. A glass of pale whiskey appeared at Nicolas’s side. He sipped quietly and admired the lovely shrimp. A skilled observer of his fellow man, he was curious to hear what might be on the minds of the island’s academics.
“Just heard about the setback,” one gent said in a low voice, further muffled by his mask. “Pity we lost that one. A horrible way to go.”
Hmm. Must be one of their unfortunate patients, Nicolas thought. What ghastly diseases these men must deal with.
“In broad daylight, too,” another commented. “We’re in a spot now.”
“Yes, no telling where we’ll get them, now that this fellow swung.”
Swung?
“It was the rascal’s own fault,” another added with a shake of his dog-face mask. “They’re all the same. Greedy and ignorant. They get one or two delivered fine, then start digging ’em up before they’re cold in the ground.”
“This fool’s mistake was raiding the colored cemetery.”
“Surely, though, when a body-in-a-bag man swings—”
The lynching!
“—another will come along!” the dog-face laughed.
While the men chortled, Nicolas’s hand shook and a shiver ran down his spine. Blood surged to his face. He gripped his whiskey, tipped it back, and stared into the brilliance of the crystal chandelier to blot out the image that came to him.
Now he understood. GRAVE ROBBER…the banner on the lynched man…In their hurry to vamoose, he and Adam never had a good look.
He needed to calm himself. This was a private party, a time for gaiety, not the look of trepidation, of terror, he surely wore. He motioned to a servant with his empty glass.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Sara’s voice boomed. “The members of the Mistik Krewe of Comus have arrived. First, I’m pleased to announce the Merry Ladybug, escorted this evening by Señor Cucaracha Cubano, the Cuban cockroach.”
A comely, full-figured ladybug covered in red spots entered with her brown-shelled escort. There was a smattering of applause. Four other insects followed. Predictably, Keiller made the greatest fuss over “Aedes aegypti,” the common mosquito, pronounced perfectly by Sara.
The newly arrived academics crowded around the shrimp pile and drew Nicolas into conversation. He was asked to describe the impact of the recent economic panics on his business of ice. A second copious Scotch calmed the shock he’d suffered. More guests arrived.
“The Dark Prince of Dry Goods.”
“Purveyor of the Finest Ladies’ Accoutrements.”
Now the businessmen.
Conversation swelled. French perfume was in the air. Despite their costumes and masks, guests recognized each other from a peculiarity of speech, a toss of the hair, or a distinctive smacking of the lips while downing a sling. Businessman mingled with medical man; the shrimp pile shrank. The room warmed by the time Sara announced the last, and the grandest, of the business guests:
“The Grand Duke of Finance, with his Grand Duchess.”
A short, portly gent escorted a lady nearly a foot taller into the dining room. Both were dressed in hand-painted Japanese silks, with masks of rare feathers—though no feathers could beautify this lanky lady’s face, which was as narrow and angular as an anvil, and looked as hard.
Nicolas sidled next to the Dark Prince of Dry Goods, who was fussing with his mustache under the hooked nose of his Satan’s mask. “Keiller’s invited some prominent merchants, I see,” Nicolas said.
“Mais oui, a few attend a Keiller party,” agreed the Dark Prince, readily recognized as Pierre Bonferri, Nicolas’s go-between in the business of ice and notorious island bon vivant. “I’m shocked to see Major Walker here,” Bonferri continued. “He’s got no cause to celebrate. Word is, he’s ruined. Tried to open an investment bank in this town, and Hutch Sealy destroyed him.”
“Ah, bankers.”
“No one loves a banker, eh, mon ami?”
“Is Sealy here, Pierre?”
“Right there—the Grand Duke of Finance, naturellement. Just arrived with his sourpuss duchess, the tall, gawky one.”
“So that’s the great man.”
“A brilliant moneymaker, old man Sealy. He plucks the stuff out of thin air. Now there’s one gent who belongs at a Keiller party. Sealy funded the college’s construction, endowed its faculty . . . at least at its start.”
Masked servants arrived with trays of steaming crabs, fried fish, and carved pineapples. In the crunch for food, Nicolas crossed to the other side of Bonferri and edged closer to Sealy. Snippets of conversation drifted his way; a fat white tomcat raised his voice over the crowd.
“. . . fetch far too much for their labor, Hutch. Far too high a wage, I tell you. Now, your son Trey’s got the idea . . . that cheap young Northern labor he’s connected to. Why should the price of cotton be driven so high by a bunch of darkie . . . ?”
“So Sealy has a son?” Nicolas asked the prince at his side.
“Ah, yes, mon ami. Trey’s the name. Biggest cotton trader in town. They’ve got it all in that family, eh? But there’s more to that story,” he added, drawing his face close and lifting his mask.
Nicolas leaned in.
“Listen, Van Horne—I’ll share this only in the strictest confidence. It’s a juicy bit, and it’s to be kept between us. Agreed, mon ami?”
“I shall honor your confidence, Pierre.”
“Sealy has a second son. A bastard.”
“So, he keeps another woman. Frightfully common these days.”
“But this liaison’s a rich one, mon ami. Hutch Sealy keeps a colored woman. He has for decades. All the island knows, except his scrawny wife.”
“How complicated.”
“She’s lovely, this ebony piece of Sealy’s. Their mixed-breed son’s near Trey’s age, too. Old Sealy actually favors the half-breed, sent him off to school in the East, but the son prefers the low life. He stays in a Sailortown boardinghouse with the riffraff, mariners and such, and took to working the docks himself.”
“Two brothers at odds, eh?”
“Precisely. Especially since Trey’s one of those who wishes we’d won the Great War and slavery had never ended. Meanwhile, his half brother is a half-breed who leads the cotton jammers. Ha! Ha! . . . You know about our cotton jammers? All coloreds?”
“Yes, I’ve heard.” Nicolas felt a chill despite the steam rising off the trays of c
rabs and fish in front of him.
“The bastard son’s organized the cotton jammers into a force to be respected. Expert labor, well paid, but mostly of slave roots, the jammers. A superstitious lot, these coloreds and Creoles, and Sealy’s bastard son has an unholy grip on ’em . . . Their ‘Voodoo Doctor,’ he’s called.”
The crowd began spilling into the front room.
“Voodoo Doctor,” Nicolas muttered.
“That’s him. It’s his voodoo keeps those ships packed with cotton.” Bonferri’s attention was drawn to a far corner of the room, where the coquettish ladybug was throwing glances in his direction. “You see,” Bonferri said, adjusting his mask, “what the Doctor says is voodoo law on this island.”
“I believe I’ve seen the truth of that this very afternoon, Pierre,” Nicolas said, rattling the ice in his whiskey as Bonferri worked his way across the room.
15
The Musicians
With this disquieting new information preying on his mind, Nicolas sought a quiet corner away from the crunch of the party. Whiskey in hand, he wandered into the hallway. Damn! I’ve seen Sealy’s second son—the Voodoo Doctor. I’ve seen the half-breed who lynches grave robbers, and I displeased him greatly.
He was glad for the whiskey. Perhaps, once he was back in his hotel room, he’d settle his nerves with a dose or two of Chubb’s mix. For now, he forced himself to study these paintings in the hall.
Pointillism, yes, that’s what it was, and finely done . . . but what was that music he heard drifting from upstairs? An exercise, or étude, barely heard over the din of the party. He climbed to the first landing, listening. It was a fiddle, played well, and a second instrument, like nothing he’d ever heard.
At the top of the stairs the newel was lit by a casting of a lady in formal gown, with a hammer raised overhead and a gear tucked under her arm. He stopped to admire this tribute in bronze to modern American industry, which set Nicolas to thinking about a contraption he’d invented—a conveyor to lift the blocks of ice from the edge of the frozen lake to his icehouse. The thought made him wish he were standing on the ice of Upper Spy Lake. It was where he belonged, amid the clatter of the conveyor’s chains and gears, its steam engine filling the air with wood smoke . . . but then, his daughter, Abigail, watched over the ice for him, and they’d be together at another ice harvest soon enough.
The fiddle’s mournful line swelled. From the landing, Nicolas studied the players. The parlour at the front of the house served as their music room. Sheets of music were scattered on a table. A large harp leaned against the settee. An upright piano sat in the corner. In the center of the room a woman on a low stool faced away, toward the south window. She was wrapped in a scarlet kimono. A dark cascade of hair fell like black satin over her shoulders and back. She held a small harp on her lap; her hands flowed gracefully over the ringing strings. With a glimpse of her profile, Nicolas recognized the young woman he’d admired in the laboratory—Keiller’s niece.
Seated on a stool in front of the lovely lady was a stout, somewhat elderly gent, unmasked, clean shaven, and with a bush of white hair that, in its total disarray, formed a spectacular aurora around his jowly red face. The fellow exuded health and vigor as he gave his blackened old fiddle a final flourish. When his eyes fixed on Nicolas, they flashed; he smiled and motioned with his bow. The harp crescendoed; the strings were damped, the piece finished.
“Ja, goot, very good,” the old gent said in a thick Slavic accent. To Nicolas, he said, “Do come in, friend,” and he waved the bow again.
Nicolas caught a faint floral scent in the air as he stepped into the parlour. Keiller’s niece glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes were covered by a mask of peacock feathers. Her lips were painted a deep red, several shades darker than her kimono.
“Sir!” she said, her eyes widening. “I didn’t see you there. But you . . . you’ve forgotten your mask. Don’t you realize it’s Mardi Gras?”
“I don’t know about Mardi Gras, I’m afraid. I’m from New York, you see.”
She chuckled. “That explains it.” Her asymmetric smile had that youthful, roguish crookedness Nicolas remembered from the laboratory. “We’ll forgive you this once,” she went on, “but, oh my! New York? They say your Brooklyn Bridge is the seventh wonder of the world. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. Perhaps you cross it every day?”
The jowly fellow popped up from his stool. “Forgive us for not introducing ourselves.” Holding fiddle and bow in his left hand, he offered Nicolas his right. “I am Rabbi Basil Prangoulis, spiritual guide for our town’s industrious Jewish citizens and—as it turns out—also musician and instructor of the musical arts at the Ursuline Women’s Academy, a Catholic institution, strangely enough. But it’s a small island, you see . . . and this lovely lady—”
“Yes”—Nicolas hesitated—“we met earlier, though not formally.”
“Well, then, may I introduce Dr. Renée Keiller, niece of the renowned Francis Keiller, professor of medical theory and . . . and whatnot. Renée is herself an accomplished scholar, scientist, and a student of music, sir, though a fair-to-middling one.”
“Basil!”
“I make a joke, my friend. Truthfully, the Irish harp is the instrument on which she’s most accomplished.” Basil placed his fiddle in a dilapidated case on the floor. “And your name, sir?”
“Nicolas Van Horne, merchant of ice. But I fear a word of explanation is needed,” he said, turning to Renée. “I’m not from the city of New York, miss. My home is in the mountains in the northern reaches of the state, far from the great metropolis.”
“How delightful. You simply must tell me about it. But first let me find you a mask, Mr. Van Horne. I’ve had quite enough of this simple piece, I believe.”
She shot Prangoulis a dark look, then stood, placed her harp in its case on the table, straightened her girlish kimono, and stepped into the next room. As her dark mane of hair sailed past, Nicolas caught that distinctive floral scent again. It recalled for him his uncle’s orchards in the Hudson Valley, when the powerfully fragrant apple blossoms bloomed in spring.
“Ja, she’s an excellent harpist, Renée,” Prangoulis continued in the niece’s absence, “a doctor of medicine and . . . what is it? Doctor of physiognomy or some such.” He chuckled. “How shh-mart can one girl be, eh?” Turning serious, he lowered his voice and began shaking his head. “Ja, Renée’s quite a young woman. Amazing, for one who’s had such suffering thrown her way by the Almighty.”
Renée swept back into the room holding a cumbersome theatrical mask fashioned of plaster. “I found this,” she laughed, holding out the mask, which was in the likeness of a clown, its lips turned down in a grimace.
“Please, Renée,” Prangoulis protested. “We might excuse Mr. Van Horne this one evening, don’t you think?”
“No, no, I’ll venture it,” Nicolas said, pulling on the bulky mask.
“Bravo!” Renée stood. “Come, then. Let’s join the party, shall we?” The two men followed Renée as she bounded down the staircase.
At the foot of the stairs, her uncle waved to her. “There’s my lassie!”
Renée turned to Nicolas. “Forgive me, but Basil’s music lesson was so trying, I’m afraid I’ve ignored Uncle Francis all evening. I do so want to hear about New York, though, and your lovely mountains. Will you tell me later?”
And she disappeared into the dining room crowd.
16
Uninvited Guests
“She’s charming.”
“Ja,” Prangoulis agreed. “Sharp as a tack. Got a Scot’s brain like her uncle. Lucky thing her feminine side comes from her mother, hah? It’s the Creole French. Fair skin. Dark eyes. Hardy stock. Renée has taken the knocks, too, and poor girl, life and this island sent her plenty. But come, my friend, let’s find where the brandy is hidden.”
Prangoulis and Nicolas pressed through a crunch of masked revelers to the overheated kitchen, where Keiller’s manservant was whacking away at the great bl
ock of Van Horne ice. The man proved to be an expert ice breaker, and Nicolas was grateful for the coolness wafting from the ice. He removed his cumbersome mask. His glass seemed to fill itself. Prangoulis’s face flushed with brandy.
“Say, Rabbi Prangoulis . . . Basil . . . earlier, you mentioned certain hardships thrown Renée’s way. What was your meaning there?”
“Well, Nicolas, as a physician of course her life is pure hell during these yellow fever epidemics. Then, two years ago the poor girl lost her husband and their only child, a baby boy, in less than a month, both to the fever.”
“How tragic. She studies the disease that destroyed her family.”
“They were in Havana for their research when . . .” Basil grew quiet. “Such things make even me, a man of God, question our God’s good intentions. That little boy was everything to her. Now she has only her science.”
Nicolas donned his mask and followed Prangoulis back to the dining room but lost him in the press of revelers. When he next saw Renée, she was sidling around the dining table, pursued by the mustache-twirling Dark Prince of Dry Goods, whose advances she rebuffed with a curt word.
“Enjoying our little ball?” she asked Nicolas, smiling sympathetically. “Please forgive me about the mask—you’re such a sport about it.”
Renée ran her hand into the pile of ice in the center of the table. She plucked out a chunk the size of a lemon and held it to the light. “Tell me about your ice, Mr. Van Horne.”
“It’s the purest ice available, I’m proud to say. Its clarity is unmatched by any in New England. Ice is changing the world, you know.”
“It is quite pretty.”
“The iron in the water gives it its density and healthful qualities.”
“Where do you get it?”
“We harvest on a lake known as Upper Spy.”
“There are mountains of course.”
“Peculiar, rounded mountains. The high peaks of the Adirondacks are further north, well above Old Forge, near the town of Saranac.”
