Dead and Buried (39 page)

Across the way stood the FTFCMBS tomb, where Rameses Ramilles slept in his appointed narrow bed. Liselle herself, her skirt tucked up to her knees, was on a ladder, polishing the brass flower-holders before some other musician’s little resting place.

‘I don’t know how Liselle does it.’ Liselle’s mother shook her head. ‘She simply does not have my sensitivity . . .’

Down another aisle, among all those close-set brick houses of mortality, January glimpsed Beauvais Quennell, quietly painting whitewash on to a modest new bench of bricks, before which his mother – in mourning almost as profound as Madame Glasson’s – knelt in prayer.

Like it or not, Martin Quennell had come back to the French Town at last.

On Thursday, January’s leg was well enough to allow him to limp upstairs to the courtroom on the second floor of the old Presbytery building, and sit in the gallery – blacks not being permitted to testify – to watch Germanicus Stuart, Viscount Foxford, acquitted of the crime of murdering Patrick Derryhick. Judge Canonge – hook-nosed, grim-faced, and renowned through French Louisiana for his probity – admitted the evidence of Celestine Deschamps that her daughter Isobel, and her daughter’s maid, had been with His Lordship from eleven on the night of the sixth until almost two thirty in the morning.

January glanced across at Pierrette, seated a little apart from the other Deschamps house servants; at a guess, the judge had spoken to her in his office and had accepted her testimony. The state prosecutor did not inquire whether this meeting had taken place in the Deschamps parlor or in a doorway across the street, or whether Madame Deschamps had been awake at that hour. She was white, and that was what mattered.

Lieutenant Abishag Shaw of the New Orleans City Guard testified to the fact that evidence existed consistent with the murder having been done by Caius Droudge, the dead man’s traveling companion, who had poisoned himself in the Hotel Iberville on the night of the thirty-first . . . large quantities of arsenic, antimony, and powdered oleander having been found in the false bottom of his strongbox.

‘My God, I can’t believe it!’ gasped Foxford an hour later, breaking away from the congratulatory crowd outside the courtroom door to grasp January’s hand. He still looked ill, and shaky on his feet, and had visibly lost at least twenty pounds. His handsome face had been stripped of the beauty of being fortune’s favorite, but his eyes were radiant. An adult man’s, and not a god’s. ‘Madame –’ he bowed slightly toward Celestine Deschamps, who was deep in conversation with the British consul – ‘tells me she’s written Isobel . . . that Isobel will be here by the tenth . . .’

‘Got to marry her out of hand, m’boy,’ beamed Uncle Diogenes, clapping a hand on his nephew’s broad shoulder. ‘Have a dreadful journey home if you let it go till the end of the month. I’ll barely be able to swallow the wedding cake myself before rushing off to catch my ship.’

‘You’ll be returning to India, then, sir?’ inquired January politely, and the elderly diplomat nodded.

‘Lord, yes. Gets into your blood, the East – though, mind you,’ he added, with a glance across the hall at the slim young gentleman with oiled lovelocks who stood next to ‘Jones’, his stone-faced valet, ‘I would not have missed the journey for worlds. Not for worlds. Gerry, dear boy, I wanted to ask you if you might possibly advance me a little on my next quarter’s stipend, to ship some of the books I’ve bought . . .’

‘I can’t thank you enough, sir.’ Foxford pressed January’s hand again. ‘You’ll come to the wedding, surely? You and Mr Sefton – and, of course, your lovely wife.’

Pierrette came up then, in the company of a girl of fifteen or so, dark-haired and rather shy in fanciful billows of ribbon and ruffles, who had to be the younger sister, Marie-Amalie. Her sea-blue eyes, and the shape of her cheekbones, were an echo of Cadmus Rablé.

‘Going to be a bang-up affair,’ approved Uncle Diogenes, wicked dark eyes sparkling in pouches of fat. ‘Terrible shame about Derryhick, of course – and what a shocking affair that was, old Droudge popping off that way! – but, I must say, I’m glad Elodie’s money came back to the family in the end. Derryhick did the right thing there. Gerry’s taking him back home for burial, you know . . . as I suppose I’ll go home one day, what’s left of me, in a box . . .
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis
 . . . But damme, boy, you’re going to have to get a new rig if you’re to be wed before you’ve fattened up a trifle. Like a damned scarecrow. That poor girl won’t know you.’

‘I think, M’sieu,’ smiled Marie-Amalie, ‘that Isobel would know His Lordship anywhere.’ Foxford smiled too, and he brushed self-consciously at the fine-cut English coat that lay so baggy on his frame – in a way, January realized, that reminded him strongly of Hannibal.

The wedding was on the twelfth of November, with Louis Verron’s father giving the bride away, and Uncle Diogenes – accompanied by ‘Jones’ and his slender young new friend – sailed for India on the fourteenth. On the sixteenth, after the first rehearsal for
The Elixir of Love
, January went down to the now-teeming levee to see off the Viscount, the new Viscountess, her sister, the Viscount’s valet Mr Reeve, and Pierrette. Looking at that radiant young woman, standing by the rail, he wondered if Isobel, Lady Foxford, would dream of Louisiana. When the strong Mississippi current carried the
York and Lancaster
downriver, toward Balize and the sea, he turned his steps inland and made his way, through streets bustling with commerce and vice, back toward the Swamp.

Enquiries discreetly pursued at the back doors of various establishments – the Broadhorn, the Rough ‘n’ Ready, the Blackleg, the Turkey Buzzard – eventually brought him to Kate the Gouger’s bathhouse, where Kate greeted January with, ‘Thank God somebody finally come for him.’

January carried Hannibal back to the Broadhorn over his shoulder and put him to bed.

When he came back the following morning, Hannibal – greenish, haggard, unshaven and comprehensively sick – greeted him with, ‘Are they gone?’

‘You mean Gerry and Isobel?’

Hannibal nodded. His hand trembled a little as he reached for the black bottle on the floor next to his bed – by the smell of it, his favored concoction of opium and sherry – but he closed his fist on itself and let it be.

‘They’re gone.’ January set down Hannibal’s boots – which he’d collected from Kate’s on the way – and an earthenware jug of Auntie Zozo’s coffee, the steam of it drifting in the attic’s freezing dimness. ‘Gerry asked after you – asked if you would come to the wedding.’

Hannibal breathed out a short bitter laugh. ‘Wouldn’t
that
be a sight to behold? Enough to send the poor girl dashing back to Natchitoches—’

January said, ‘She wouldn’t have to know.’

Hannibal started to reply, then didn’t. Sat for a time on the crumpled and sheetless mattress, meeting January’s gaze.

In time, he sighed and asked, ‘When did you guess?’

‘I think when you wouldn’t go to Natchitoches with me,’ said January. He found a couple of cups that were more or less clean, filled and handed one to his friend. ‘But it didn’t surprise me. I didn’t know for certain until Droudge tried to poison you – something he had no reason to do, if you were just one of Patrick’s old friends. The boy doesn’t look like you at all.’

‘No, thank God.’ Hannibal sipped from his cup, then held his hand over it to warm in the steam. ‘He takes after Philippa’s family – the lot of them must be descended from angels . . . God knows they act as if they’ve got pedigrees back to Eden. I couldn’t—’ He fell silent again. Then, ‘I’m glad Patrick looked after him.’ He passed his hand across his face, as if to wipe away the mold of years, and took another gingerly sip. ‘He said he would.’

‘Did he arrange to identify your “body”?’

The fiddler nodded. ‘As you’ve probably deduced, I wasn’t nearly as drunk as I seemed to be when I pitched off the Pont Neuf that night. Patrick went down earlier in the day and made sure there was a boat nearby. The current’s very strong there where it goes under the bridge.’

January said, ‘I know.’ That was where he’d thrown the trunk containing his wife’s clothing – his first wife, the beautiful Ayasha – after her death of the cholera. In dreams he often stood by that rail, looking down at the moonlit water sweeping past.

‘I wanted to leave her a note,’ said Hannibal. ‘To tell her I was sorry – to let her know how much I loved her. But, as she’d told me, my actions weren’t the acts of love. Nor, I suppose, would they have been, even if I’d known any way in God’s green world to stop. I knew before long she’d start hating me, and I didn’t – I couldn’t stand the thought of it. I don’t suppose Gerry spoke to you – mentioned to you – if she had remarried?’

‘It doesn’t sound as if she has,’ said January. ‘That must have been a hideous shock for Droudge, to have you turn up on his doorstep like that.’

‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Hannibal softly. ‘Because it meant, you see, that neither Gerry nor Uncle Diogenes had any legal control of the Foxford estate at all. That it was legally mine – still is, as a matter of fact. A terrifying thought.’

January bowed elaborately to him, and Hannibal hit him with the pillow.

‘I told him I’d just returned to New Orleans from Mexico, so he didn’t think I had the slightest interest in whether the Deschamps family was ruined or not. His one thought was to get me out of the way before I showed myself to Uncle Diogenes and demanded an accounting of where all that money’s been bleeding away to. Cousin Stubbs was right, by the way – he always did skim, and he had ways of making money out of the tenants that my father never knew about. I think the fact that Droudge used a knife during a quarrel was only happenstance. That arsenic was in his strongbox for a reason.’

January nodded, understanding. ‘And, as you pointed out to Shaw, all the evidence concerning motive was thousands of miles away.’

‘More than that, there was no one – except Patrick, probably – who would even think to look for it. And me, of course.’ The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘Will Philippa like Miss Isobel, do you think? Will she make a good mistress for Foxford Priory?’

‘She was raised on a plantation,’ said January, ‘so she’ll know what’s entailed in running a property that size. And I should imagine that with Droudge gone – and control of the property legally in Foxford’s hands – things will be easier there.’

‘Not to speak of all Aunt Elodie’s shekels. I always knew Philippa would be a better custodian of Foxford Priory than an opium-swilling fiddle player; I’m glad Gerry seems to have inherited that. Sometimes—’ He broke off again and sat for a time gazing through the open doorway, out over the flat green monotony of the Swamp and the glitter of standing water, toward the low roofs of the town.

‘He had a great deal more feeling than most people guessed,’ he had said of himself, about the Foxford acres: the green and misty Irish meadows that he would never see again. In Paris, though January had sworn when he left Louisiana in 1817 that he never would come back, he had often dreamed of New Orleans, and the dreams had never been of white men with ropes, or of Presidential Elections in which he was allowed no say.

White egrets in gray river mist. The burnt-sugar smell of December fog. African drumbeats and the roar of cicadas, and men and women dancing in Congo Square.

Friends gathered together, in his mother’s pink house on Rue Burgundy, with the French doors thrown open to the street in cooling twilight.

Like poor Martin Quennell, he’d been willing to walk away from it all, in order to live as a free man.

And fate had led him back.

January put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Get dressed,’ he said. ‘Wash your hair. There’s a rehearsal for the opera tonight, and Davis is saving a place for you. Anyway, it’s time you met the young ladies you’ll be tutoring in history and Greek this winter. Will you stay to dinner? Rose has been asking after you.’

Hannibal sighed and got to his feet, pale in his ragged nightshirt like a corpse climbing forth from a dishonored grave. ‘
Facilis descensus Averno
,’ he said, unconsciously providing the rest of the passage of Virgil that Uncle Diogenes had spoken, to reflect upon the path into Hell – and out of it again. ‘
Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, hoc opus
 . . .’

‘
Hoc opus
,’ agreed January. ‘
To return to the light and air
, that is indeed the work. And after the rehearsal, if Rose’s young ladies can spare us, we’ll go to a grocery I know somewhere upriver of Canal Street. There’s music there I think you need to hear.’

AUTHOR’S NOTE

It is not the purpose of this novel to explore the origins and ramifications – political, social, and psychological – of race-based chattel slavery in the United States, nor the entangled and tragic system of prejudice and laws that made up the ‘one-drop rule’. Suffice it to say that as late as 1985, a Louisiana woman was denied a passport application because she had checked ‘white’ on the form – having been raised to believe herself of 100% Caucasian extraction – when her birth certificate listed one of her parents as ‘black’, which in Louisiana at that time could mean having as little as 1/64th African ancestry. Blue-eyed blondes with characteristically African features are a commonplace in many areas of Louisiana and elsewhere in the South, and given the severe social limitations placed on blacks up through most of the Twentieth Century, it is hardly surprising that many light-complected African Americans chose to leave their communities, go North or West, and ‘pass’ if they could.