Rebels of Babylon (42 page)

I do not wish to moon about the matter, but I felt that the portrait, for all the sitter’s dash, foresaw some tragedy. As if the
painter had realized more than young Champlain in his gilded hour of glory. Of course, artistic people, although generally unsuitable, seem to have a knack for that sort of thing.

What mattered was the question of identity, of course. For all the deformity of flesh that had accrued to Mr. Champlain over the years, you did not doubt that you saw the very same fellow.

Prince Hal had become Falstaff.

Mrs. Aubrey reemerged from her bedchamber attired in black and markedly subdued. Still, a docile viper remains a viper.

I offered her the portrait. She took it, calmly, in a hand wrapped in a handkerchief. A crust of blood formed at the edge of the cloth.

“Now we must have a talk,” I told her, “the two of us.”

She did not speak, but started down the stairs.

I had the sergeant gather the soldiers and drive them from the house. They clanked with booty, much enriched, though still greedy for more. They grumbled, but went out.

A private as Irish as hunger lugged a ham, into which he had already gnawed a cavity.

In the parlor, I set two chairs to rights, then placed a lantern on the floor between us. As Mrs. Aubrey took her place, the light from below gave her a devilish look. But her aspect no longer menaced. Instead, it seemed the stuff of clumsy comedy. She was a devil fit for Punch and Judy.

“You have no proof,” she said coolly. “You can’t prove anything. But you know that, of course. That’s why you indulged in this … this performance.”

“No, mum, there is true. I have no proof. At least none that will do for a court of law.”

“Still, I underestimated you, Major Jones. The error disappoints me. It was as foolish as it was ungracious.”

I glanced at the ruin around us. Convinced their luck could grow no worse, the soldiers had smashed a great mirror, as well as tearing paintings with their bayonets. The ships that had cruised her walls would sail no more. There were so many bits
strewn on the floor it looked like the Apocalypse in Staffordshire.

“Well, we are quits,” I lied. “Woman or no, I would hang you if the law allowed me to do it. But I have taught you a lesson, there is that much, and you will not engage in such trade again. We will be watching, mind.” I gestured toward the wreckage. “And you will have this evening to remember me by.”

“It must be a great annoyance,” she said, become the cat to my mouse again. “That you can prove nothing.”

“It will not annoy me long. I have done enough, see.”

“How did you know? Did
he
tell you?”

“No, mum. He did not tell me. Although enough was said to help me onward.”

She shook her head. Somberly. Unpainted, her cheeks looked hollowed by the tomb.

“I didn’t know he hated me so much,” she sighed. “Even now.”

“Whatever did you do to him?” I asked carefully. “It is curious I am.”

“I broke his heart,” she said matter-of-factly. As if she spoke of spilling a cup of tea. She appeared to meet my eyes, but her thoughts had flown. “He was an absurdly romantic young man, you understand. Completely impractical.” She smiled with half her mouth. “He wanted me to run away with him. To South America. He was going to join some revolution or other and carve us a kingdom from the Spanish empire. That was forty years ago. No. Longer.”

She tilted her skull to the side. “Frankly, he was an ass. If an endearing one. Comical, really. He was a strong young man who imitated the weakness fashionable in Europe some years before. But his … energies … were very much of this earth.” Her smile grew, though not nicely. “He affected to like the most execrable poetry. All fairies and airiness, love beyond the grave. I found it common of him.”

Her voice warmed half a degree. “He had a blue coat and buff pantaloons made for himself, in imitation of some fool in a German novel. He was hardly
à la mode.
Such gestures belonged
to a previous generation even then. But he was always in love with the past, you see. At least with the past as he imagined it. The trait is not unusual among the people of this city.” Her rasp hinted a sigh. “He did cut rather a figure, I grant him that. The country girls were mad for him.”

She looked away, into the relentless past. “But he was mad for me. That was his tragedy. If so elevated a word suits his situation. He loved
me.
But his family had fallen terribly low. I could not take his offer of marriage seriously, no matter how avidly—and repeatedly—he pressed it. I was a few years the elder and had some sense of the world. I wanted a future, Major Jones, not merely a past. You’ve seen his house? His ‘mansion’? He hasn’t made a repair in forty years. And his family did nothing for twenty years before that. It just rots away. Emblematic, I should say. He’s turned himself into a creature of ridicule, a grotesque masquerading as a
Vieux Carré
eccentric.”

The skirts of her dress shifted all of their own, as if an invisible weight had become insufferable. She rearranged them with a practiced hand. “But I didn’t know he still hated me so deeply. I should have thought him given more to revery. With his bent for the romantic, for the maudlin.”

“And so you married Captain Aubrey?”

“
Admiral
Aubrey. But no. That was later, you see. When I had grown even more realistic. I first married Eugene Charboneaux, a promising man who had read sufficient law to understand its weaknesses. He might have done great things, Major Jones. Really, he was a perfectly suitable companion. Family, some wealth, charm … and good sense. He died of smallpox while in Cartagena, pursuing a claim. You see, Major Jones, in death and business we always have looked southward. Never to the north.”

“And Admiral Aubrey?”

She waved her wounded hand. A loose end of handkerchief fluttered. “Great wealth and great age combine wonderfully in a man. His person wasn’t intolerable.”

Yes, wealth. “Why do it, then?” I asked her. “Why risk so much, when you already own such wealth? Why sell human beings back into slavery. God forgive you.”

“I shall take my chances with God. Whom I have always suspected of inattention. As for your ‘human beings’ … really, Major Jones! If cant were a capital offense, you would hang long before I might. Can you truly believe that negroes are our equal? That they are fully developed in their faculties? In their intelligence? In their feelings?” She looked askance at the follies of the world. “Of course not. You don’t believe it for an instant. You’re merely conforming to a transitory fashion.”

She rolled her eyes in a most unladylike manner. “As for their ‘abilities’ … they imitate us like monkeys, like clever apes. Pretending to feel affection. Or pain. Really, Major Jones, I’ve had dogs who felt more profoundly. Slavery is a blessing for them. It frees them of the need to fend for themselves. Which they could never do in a civilized country”

Raising an eyebrow as if raising a teacup, she continued, “As for your Miss Peabody’s ludicrous notion—advanced to her by a nigger—of sending them back to Africa, why, they’d be eaten by their fellows in a fortnight. If any blame attaches to us, it’s only that we’ve unfitted them for their native realm and spoiled them. Yet, they’ll never be more than servants to our race. Of course, the servant’s lot must be greatly preferred over the squalor of the jungle, the life among beasts.” Her aged face judged mankind. “I think them quite fortunate, all in all.”

She smiled. “As for any risk attached to my ventures … I haven’t come off so badly. Do you think? I had already determined to replace my furnishings, from Paris, now that commerce between nations has been restored to us. You’ve simply quickened my resolve.”

“You lost a ship. Today. The
Anne Bullen.
Burned on the river. You lost that much, at least. Even if the lives aboard meant nothing to you.”

Her smile was as cruel as a three-sided bayonet. “No such vessel has ever been on my lists.”

“But
why
? Why do it? When you’re already so wealthy?”

“My dear Major Jones! A man accustomed to wealth himself would never ask such a question. Wealth is the only joy that never palls.”

“Well,” I said, in sourness only half-feigned, “you have your wealth, mum. But if you try such a business in the future, you may not fare so well. Our authorities will keep an eye on you, from now on. Your every venture will be scrutinized. Twice over.”

“I should be disappointed, were it otherwise.”

I left her that way. Smug, and convinced that she had triumphed over me. That the only price she had to pay was a few broken chairs and torn draperies, some moments of shame and the loss of the household silver.

The proof, if any more were needed, that I was not fit for the work assigned me was that I understood what was to come. And I did nothing to stop it. She did not reckon how much her world had changed, that all her wealth could no longer protect her. The ranks of her world had broken, and all that remained was a series of rearguard actions against the future. I do not mean that the rich could no longer dominate, but that they had to do so by new rules. She did not see it. But I did.

Mrs. Aubrey thought only of the law, and not of justice. Like that first husband of whom she had spoken, who knew enough of the law to spy out its weaknesses. But there were parties in her city who would not rest until they had found justice. And war will cover much, as her own doings should have warned her.

Were I the man I long professed to be, I would have stopped it. I always thought that I cherished the law. And yet I walked away, convinced that the law would be broken and that justice would take its course.

Now you will say: “Who are we to determine what is just?” I know the argument. I even believe it. And yet I walked away from Mrs. Aubrey’s door that night, rejoining the merry soldiers in their wagon.

I had seen the ham, but had not spied the bottle.

They thought me a splendid fellow, for an officer. I did not reprimand them in the least, nor did I question the sacks they bore or the bulges in their pockets. That, too, was wrong of me. For an army is but a mob when it loses its discipline. I broke that rule, too, for that one night.

The news followed me back to Washington and beyond. Mrs. Aubrey was dead within two months. The negroes had been far too wise to kill her in her bed or in her own parlor. She was found with her throat slit wide and deep, in the ladies’ retiring salon of one of the grandest houses in the city.

But I have more to tell you of New Orleans.

THE EXTERIOR OF MR. CHAMPLAIN’S MANSE WAS illumined as if for a ball. The torches would have done equally well to fend off the miasma of a fever year. Queer it is how joy and grief ask similar tributes of us.

I told the cab man to wait. Thankfully, he was not Irish and truculent.

The servant named Horatio announced me and Constantine guided me in. Mr. Champlain sat on his throne as usual, in the center of the room, at the eye of his world. His flesh no longer spoke of lordly appetites, but of ruin. Youth, health, vigor, all had been vanquished. I had thought him a glutton, of course, and had been wrong. What he had done to his person down the decades must have taken a discipline no less than that of the anchorite in the desert, the saint gone awry.

He grinned, as he did always. “Major Jones! Been expecting you! Come right in,
cher,
come on in. Take a seat. My, my, that salve does work wonders! You look fit for a nibble, keep an old man company. Sit down, sit down!”

I sat.

“Simon-Peter?” he called to yet another liveried fellow. “Where are those
beignets?
Bring another cup for the major’s coffee.”

I almost told him that I wished no refreshment. But it would have been a lie. Besides, I had come to suspect that I placed too much importance on easy sacrifices, such as declining a mug of
coffee, instead of facing weightier concerns. And rudeness is the least useful form of selfishness.

“Yes, Major Jones, I
have
been expecting you. Tonight, tomorrow night … knew you’d stop by to pay your respects. And I am honored,
cher,
profoundly honored, that you feel at home enough to come on over all by yourself. Not that Mr. Barnaby isn’t welcome, acourse—you’re feeding him better, I hope?”