Fever Season (16 page)

Or was it only the relief of release from being forever in control, forever perfect?

She murmured something else, leaning close to the beard-stubbled face. From a safe distance the priest murmured,
“Remember not, O Lord, the sins of this man’s youth and of his ignorance, but according to Thy great mercy, be mindful of him …”

Be mindful of us all
, thought January, his hand slipping into his pocket to the rosary that never left him.
Be mindful of us all
.

The young man sobbed weakly, and Madame Lalaurie gathered him to her, his head on her breast. It was there that he died.

She held him still for a long time, her head bowed over his. Her face was a marble angel’s in the frame of her nunlike veil, her skirts and sleeves spotted with filth and slime. January saw in his mind Emily Redfern in her black widow’s cap and veil, arguing about musicians with Madame Viellard in the refulgent gaslight of the Washington Hotel. He remembered, too, the plump, self-satisfied Reverend Dunk among his adoring Committee ladies. The priest at this bedside didn’t look any too happy as he whispered the final prayers, January murmuring the responses in his heart. But at least the man was there.

When he had spoken the final blessing, the priest touched Madame Lalaurie on the arm. Like one waking
from a trance, the woman laid the dead man back on the shabby straw. An Ursuline Sister approached, offering a bowl of water and a clean apron to cover her simple black dress, but Madame Lalaurie shook her head, said something too softly for January to hear. She rose and started to turn away. The Sister touched her sleeve again, pointed to January. Madame Lalaurie blinked, her eyes coming back into focus.

“M’sieu Janvier.” She looked down at her dress. “Please excuse me.” She seemed unruffled and unembarrassed, a woman whom no disarray or dishevelment could touch, not even a dress spattered with the vomitus of death. “I shall join you in the courtyard in a few moments.” And she moved unhurriedly away through one of the doors leading toward the convent itself.

In fact, it was closer to twenty minutes before the courtyard door opened and the tall, slender figure emerged, attended by one of the nuns. From a bench under the hospital’s gallery at the side of the cobbled yard, January saw her, stood, and bowed. She had not only completely changed her dress—though the new dress was also black, with touches of blue on bodice and sleeves—but had had someone comb out and redress her hair. In place of her veil she wore a bonnet, conservative by the day’s standards but recognizably in the height of fashion, and gloves of black kid. As she came closer, he saw that she had also taken the time to apply fresh rouge. She looked, in fact, as she always looked: flawless.

She must have brought the fresh gown, the cosmetics, the bonnet with her when she came to nurse. Of course, the nuns would trample one another to give her a place to change.

“M’sieu Janvier, I hope you will excuse a woman’s vanity. Sister Jocelyn, would you have my other things sent
around at your convenience? Thank you. Do you mind walking as we speak, M’sieu? I should have been home hours ago. That poor man.…” She looked back over her shoulder at the long, low gray bulk of the hospital, then gave her head a small shake. “I trust that your little girl reached her place of lodging in safety?”

“In fact she did not,” said January, and those brilliant black eyes widened with surprise. “That’s what I came to ask you, Madame. Whether she in fact met with Gervase.”

“She did.” She stepped through the gate before him, which he held open for her, and they walked together up the Rue des Ursulines. “Poor Gervase was quite distraught afterward. He said she spoke of ‘taking the first boat up the river,’ but naturally I assumed she would first go to her lodgings, wherever they were. Was this not the case?”

January shook his head. “No, Madame. The friend with whom Cora was staying said that she did not return that night. Moreover, as she left the money you gave her at the friend’s lodgings, I don’t see that she could have taken any boat anywhere.”

January handed her across the gutters of the Rue Condé, like new-polished tin in the harsh sunlight. This near to the river the city had less of the dead aspect that made the rear portions of the French town so chilling, though Gallatin Street, with its unsavory taverns and brothels catering to the trash of the river and the wharves, was perhaps a little close for comfort. Under the haze of steamboat smoke an occasional market-woman walked the banquettes, a wicker tray of berries or peppers on her hip. The nasal voices of a gang of upriver keelboatmen, jostling along on the other side of the street on their way to Gallatin, rang shockingly against the shut and silent fronts of the houses; a dark-clothed Creole gentleman coming in the other direction hastily crossed to avoid an encounter.

“No,” murmured Madame. “No, that’s true. Unless she had money from some other source on her person, or someone else she could go to.” She withdrew a fan from her reticule, and waved it gently as they walked.

“I understand from the newspaper that she stole quite a substantial sum from her master, and her mistress’s pearl necklace—not that I’m inclined to believe a word that Redfern woman says, M’sieu. And the newspapers will print anything. I would not be in the least surprised to hear that Emily Redfern was the one who poisoned her husband, and faked the symptoms herself for the benefit of the coroner. It’s quite easy to do with a little belladonna in one’s eyes and a weak elder-leaf tisane—or sticking a broomstraw down one’s throat in an emergency. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it was she who made off with that five thousand dollars and pushed the blame onto that poor girl.”

“Did Emily Redfern hate her husband that much?”

“M’sieu Janvier,” said Madame Lalaurie, with a slight tightening of her beautiful mouth, “it was less a matter of
hating
M’sieu Redfern—whom I believe she liked tolerably well—than of
loving
his money. And of resenting every sou he expended on purposes other than her aggrandizement in the eyes of her admirers. Or it may be that he uncovered something about the relationship between her and that backwoods Antichrist, Dunk.”

She shrugged, and clipped her fan shut, putting the matter from her as if disgusted with herself even for the thoughts.

“Was M’sieu Redfern so much of a gambler, Madame?”

“No more so than other men, I believe. That’s another thing the Puritan daughters of Boston don’t understand: that a person can gamble, even for quite large sums,
without being possessed of a devil. But Emily Redfern has always believed that whoever causes her annoyance must be an emissary of Satan. Like that poor girl.”

January said nothing for a time, but the red-and-gold candy tin rose to his mind.

“Did Gervase say anything about where she might have gone?” he asked.

“Only that she said she was ‘getting on a boat’ that night. He is … quite desolate. He’s a simple soul at heart, you know. I think he thought that, having run away from the Redferns, the girl was going to remain in the city and meet with him on a regular basis.” She frowned, dark brows pulling together over the brilliant eyes. “I sent him into the country, upriver to my cousin’s plantation. In a few weeks I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

They turned along Rue Royale, passing an open lot and then a small, graceful town house plastered with rust-colored stucco, before reaching the pale green fortress on the corner.

“I never saw her very closely, you understand, M’sieu.” Madame Lalaurie paused before the gorgeously carved front door. “Only as a shadow, passing along Rue de l’Hôpital in the darkness.” She nodded up along the street, in the direction of the swamps. “But she seemed so … alone. A little colored girl, going out to brave the world. I hope no ill befell her.”

The door opened at her back. “Madame, Madame,” chided Bastien in his soft voice, “you should have sent for me.”

She laughed. “What, to spare myself a walk of two streets? You should have been a nursemaid, my Bastien.” Smiling, she held out her gloved hand to January. “Good luck with your search, M’sieu.”

He bowed over her fingers. “Thank you, Madame.”

The door closed. January looked up along Rue de l’Hôpital, in the direction of her nod. She’d been watching in a window, then: natural enough, if she had worries about Gervase fleeing with his lover. And Cora had gone back in the direction of town—in the direction of Mademoiselle Vitrac’s school, where Madame Redfern’s necklace and nearly two hundred dollars were cached.

And had never reached her goal.

“M’sieu!”

He turned his head. In the doorway of the little rust-colored town house stood the Creole gentleman in the dark coat, the one who had crossed the street to avoid an encounter with the Americans.

The man beckoned him, and January walked to where he stood.

“I beg your pardon,” the gentleman said in a low voice. “I could not but overhear what passed between you and Madame. You have a friend, a young woman of color, who went to Madame’s house by night?” He was stooped and thin, pointed of nose and graying of hair, rather like a harassed ferret.

“Not a friend,” said January carefully. He and Madame had not spoken loudly, and the amount of information gleaned seemed rather a lot for a chance hearing. “A friend of a friend. Did you happen to see her? This would have been Friday night.”

“I saw nothing,” said the little man. “But the things that I hear …” He laid a crooked finger alongside his nose. “My name is Montreuil, Alphonse Montreuil. I live here, I and my good wife.” He gestured to the town house behind him. He looked down-at-heels, though the main branch of the Montreuil family were fairly well-off.

“Like all sensible people I had my windows shuttered tight Friday night, in the hopes of evading this terrible
pestilence.” Montreuil crossed himself, and January did the same.

Then the man leaned close, his voice dropping conspiratorially. His teeth were bad and his breath like a day-old midden. “All the same, Monsieur, the things that I hear.… This young friend of yours. She went into that house. Are you certain she came out again?”

January stepped back, startled. “What?”

“Are you sure she emerged from the house of that woman?” Montreuil’s dark eyes flickered back to the formidable walls of pale green stucco, the neat galleries and tightly closed black shutters. “I have heard terrible things, Monsieur, terrible things. In the dead of the night, when I am unable to sleep—and I have never slept well, even as a child, never. Groans and cries come from the attic of that house; the sound of whips, and the clanking of chains. That woman—I’ve heard she keeps her slaves chained, and tortures them nightly! No one will admit to it,” he went on. “The woman is too powerful, her precious family too prominent—No, no, she can do no wrong, everyone says! But me … I know.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said January, nodding gravely at the fierce little man and his feverish fancies. “Many thanks, Monsieur.”

He backed away and returned to the corner of Rue de l’Hôpital, looking up it in the direction in which Madame Lalaurie had said Cora had gone. It was only a matter of five streets to the school, and at that hour of the night it was unlikely she would encounter any of the City Guard. Not with everyone in that less-than-valorous organization terrified of the fever that rode the night air.

Had Cora encountered someone else? Seen someone who caused her to turn her steps and flee to the river, to seek Olympe’s friend Natchez Jim and the first boat out?

And abandon two hundred dollars?
The pearl necklace might very well have been left, considered too dangerous, but for two hundred dollars one could probably purchase faked papers attesting one’s freedom. He suspected Hannibal had eked out a living from time to time by producing them.

Or had she only encountered Bronze John, waiting in the darkness as he always waited?

Thoughtfully, January began to retrace the girl’s probable route from the big green house on the corner of Rue Royale, to Rue St. Claude, looking for what he might find.

At any other time, it would have been ridiculous to suppose that an event that took place late Friday night could have left signs still readable on Monday afternoon. The sheer volume of foot traffic along the banquettes—market-women, flatboatmen from the nearby levee, children rolling hoops, ladies out for a stroll, sellers of everything from pralines to shoe pattens—precluded so much as a dropped cigar stub from remaining in the same place or state for more than ten minutes, much less the marks of some unspecified conflict, meeting, or event.

At any other time.

But as he walked along Rue de l’Hôpital to Rue St. Claude on the upriver side of the street, then back on the downriver side; as he repeated the process on Rue des Ursulines, up and back, then Rue St. Philippe, January saw only one market-woman in a tignon, hastening head-down in the direction of the river, and, on Rue St. Philippe, a drunken, bewhiskered American, staggering along the banquette, pounding on the shutters of the houses he passed and shouting, “ ’Sa matter with this town? Can’t a man find a hoor fr’is natural needs?”