02 Fever Season

Thirteen

The Redfern house at Spanish Bayou was fairly new, built in the American style probably not more than a decade before. Square, brick, it had a pillared porch and galleries front and back instead of all around, as was the French or Spanish way. It was painted blue instead of whitewashed or stuccoed, the shutters of the windows painted yellow, an astonishing piece of ostentation, considering the price of coloring agents in paint. Instead of all the rooms opening onto the gallery they opened inward, into a central hall.

They'll never believe I'm not here to rob the place, January thought, as he flipped loose the catch of a ground-floor window.

His mother would disown him.

Inside there was the same elaboration, the same display, that he recognized from the Lalaurie house, though without Madame Lalaurie's exquisite taste. Where Madame Lalaurie's parlor might boast a marble-topped bureau touched up with gilt handles and hinges, here were tables of black marble crusted with ormolu, jewelers' work rather than cabinetmakers', and a bad jeweler at that. Thick-stuffed brocade furniture in the German style instead of the spare, cool French; four sets of china laden with curlicues and scrollwork instead of the single, elegant Limoges.

It was the house of a woman frantic to have the best. And it would all be sold.

No wonder Emily Redfern was angry enough to do murder.

Twilight, Shaw had said. Presumably just before the windows-American casements, far less easy to trip from the outside-were closed up for the night. If Cora had come here Tuesday it would have been simpler: into the study, take the pearls and the money, then out the same way. And there was the chance that if another servant saw her, they wouldn't realize yet that she'd run away.

If it had been Wednesday-how soon before the arrival of the boat at the Spanish Bayou wharf? How fast could a slim young girl run, when she heard the hoot of the boat whistle?-it would be more difficult by far, if she'd slipped from the study, down the central hall to the warming-pantry where she'd have had access to supper. If it had been earlier yet, before supper was finished cooking, it became more complicated.

She'd have had to cross the open yard to the kitchen, where the cook would certainly have seen her.

Would she have risked that, twenty-four hours after she'd gone missing, with no possibility of a shrug and a lie? Oh, I was just off in the woods for a little, I wasn't going to run away. Sir.

It grated on January's nerves to go upstairs. Should anyone come in, he'd be cut off from escape, but he knew he had no choice. The Redferns had slept in separate rooms: his plainly furnished, the pieces new but not extravagant, hers a fantasia of ruffles, lace, silk, carving, and gilt. It was hers that he searched.

She'd put the red-and-gold candy tin up inside the fireplace, in a sort of ledge on the inside of the mantel.

It was the fourth place January checked.

Foolish, he thought, opening the tin. At least she'd had the sense to dump out the rest of the monkshood, leaving only fragments and powder in the seams of the tin itself. But then, the slaves' children probably checked the rubbish heap regularly for broken china and bits of scraps, if she was supposed to be so sick from the poisoning that she couldn't leave her bed she'd hardly have been able to throw it down the outhouse.

He wrapped the tin carefully in two handkerchiefs, so am not to confuse whatever marks might still be on it, and stowed it in his grip.

In the warming-pantry at the back of the house he searched drawers until he found what he guessed would be there: Emily Redfern's menu for the week of the fifteenth. Of course Bernard Marigny's stuck-up yellow fussbudget cook would do things the French way. He'd consult his mistress over a written menu, which would be amended in her hand.

And there it was. On the eighteenth of September the fare had consisted of turtle soup, sauteed shrimp and mushrooms, grilled tournedos of beef, roasted guinea hen, rice and gravy, fresh green beans, with jam crepes and berry cobbler for dessert. Breakfast, he was interested to note, had originally been omelettes and creamed gizzards with waffles and jam, but had been augmented-apparently at the last minute-with apple tarts, ham, and crepes.

Company for breakfast? Michie Otis returning in a foul mood after being threatened by Roarke and his bravos in full view of Monsieur Davis's gambling hall?

It was still early morning, barely eight by the sun. The Lancaster would not be coming down the reach above Twelve-Mile Point until three at the earliest. Cora Chouteau had spoken of Black Oak, as lying next to Spanish Bayou. Coming along the top of the levee last night he had seen that on the upriver side of the Redfern property there was only cultivated land. Downstream, however, lay a long tangle of woodlot and swamp, through which the bayou meandered in a couple of lazy curves.

January drew another pail of well water and ate some of the bread and cheese he'd packed and added to this apples from the small orchard behind the house, or what passed in Louisiana for apples anyway. It was a walk of about two miles, on the narrow paths between the canes, to the silent woods of black oak and ash, the suffocating green gloom of the slip of property that had been Madame Redfern's own.

The house here was much older than her husband's, and smaller, an old Creole dwelling from a time when Black Oak had been a proper, if minor, plantation. Like Mademoiselle Vitrac's school, the building was three rooms raised above three low storage chambers, with a couple of cabinets tacked onto the back for good measure. The kitchen and the quarters beyond had long ago crumbled to nothing, swallowed up in thickets of hackberry and elder when the fields had been bought up by the bigger planters on either side. Stripped of its whitewash by the weather, the house itself bore signs within of leakage, storm damage, and vermin.

January found the candle cupboard in the side of the fireplace where Cora had discovered the tin of poison. The small, square hollow had a lock, but had been opened, and was empty. In another room a pile of old leaves and branches was spread with a couple of blankets. Here Cora and Gervase had shared the only privacy, the only happiness, permitted those whose bodies and lives and service belong to other people.

He looked through the rest of the house, opening cupboards, looking in fireplaces, not sure what he was seeking or what he thought he might find. People had been in and out, that much was clear from the way the dirt on the floor was scuffed up, but who they might have been he could not tell. He went out on the gallery, where Cora said she Irad seen Mamzelle Marie waiting in the twilight. But beyond ascertaining that the path back to Spanish Bayou did emerge from the oleander bushes at a point where someone on the porch could easily see someone approaching the old house unawares, he found nothing.

There was a well between the house and where the Icitchen had been, and the water in it was still good.

He drank, and washed himself, and changed back into his white shirt, bettermost trousers, sober waistcoat, and black coat and hat; and so attired, made his way the three-quarters of a mile or so through a frog-peeping hush of red oak, hickory, palmetto, and vine to the levee once again, and so upstream to the plantation called Skylark Hill.

From the top of the levee he saw that there was, in fact, an old landing sheltered behind a tree-grown bar at Black Oak, as well as the one at Spanish Bayou. Easy to come there, to walk up to the house, to wait ... or simply to leave a small red-and-gold candy tin, and walk down to the landing again. And later, easy for a small, stout woman to walk down from the Big House-for instance, on the day when her husband had gone into town to advertise for his runaway mistress-to collect the tin. Particularly when the hours stretched out into a familiar absence that meant the gambling tables yet again.

If that was in fact what had happened.

January was very interested to see what the actual death certificate-and the parish magistrate-cum-coroner -would have to say.

He settled his official-looking beaver hat more firmly on his head, and turned his steps inland once again at the tidy, oyster-shell road that bore the sign SKYLARK HILL.

"Mr. Bailey, sir?" The butler at Skylark Hill spoke the English of one raised among the Americans. There were more and more in Louisiana who spoke no French at all.

He handed January his card back and made his bow, but not as much of a bow as if the caller had been white. "Mr. Bailey's gone to Milneburgh, Sir. He should be back on Monday, if you'd care to come then."

January thanked the man, but something of his thoughts must have showed in his eyes, for the butler added, "If you wish to go on back to the kitchen, I'm sure Polly can get you something to eat, to set you on your way."

It was slaves' fare, but not bad for all that: black-eyed peas with a little ham, rice and ginger-water, for the day was hot. After a little thought January changed clothes again in the back room of the Skylark Hill kitchens-the old Creole-style house had been pulled down and replaced by a moderate American dwelling, but the original Marmillon kitchen survived-and set off walking, first along the top of the levee as far as Carrollton, then inland till he reached Bayou Metairie, and so along the shell road through the dense green shade of the swamps toward the lake.

Where the McCarty lands ran into those of the Allard and Judge Martin plantations, the bayou joined the greater Bayou St. John. January crossed at Judge Martin's stone bridge there and continued along the Bayou Road. He felt a little safer, this close to New Orleans, but never ceased to listen before him and behind. Each time he heard the crunch of hooves approaching from either direction he quickly left the oyster-shell pathway and waited in the woods until whoever was passing him had vanished from sight.

Stopping to rest frequently, for the day's heat was savage, he reached Milneburgh shortly after three in the afternoon. The first place he sought was Catherine Clisson's little house, on London Avenue near the lake. As he expected, he found his mother on the porch with her cronies, fanning herself with a painted silk fan and systematically destroying every reputation they could lay tongue to. While still some distance away, hidden by the scattering of pines, he heard Agnes Pellicot's voice: "... heartless as a cat. And positively helping herself to the funds..."

"Well, you could tell that just to look at her." The sweet, throbbing tones belonged to Euphrasie Dreuze, who fancied herself the victim of the world. "If you ask me, Agnes, you really were too trusting to let your daughter-"

"Is that you, Ben?" Catherine Clisson rose from her chair and shaded her eyes, slim and straight and lovely as the night in her gown of simple white lawn. "Nothing's happened, has it? To Olympe? Or the children?"

"Not that I've heard," January replied. "I've been out of town since yesterday afternoon. I'm looking for a man named Bailey, a white man, magistrate of St. Charles Parish. He's supposed to be in town."

The women looked at one another, frowning and shaking their heads. Even January's mother was stumped, but she raised her nose loftily and said, "What would you want with some white magistrate, Ben? An American, too, he sounds like. They all are, these days." She had a way of pronouncing the word American that implied a world of lice and tobacco stains.

"Binta!" Madame Clisson rose, and called back into the house. When her maid appeared-considerably lighter-skinned than she, January noted-she asked, "Have you heard of a magistrate from St. Charles Parish in town? A M'sieu Bailey?"

As January had observed before, everybody always knew everything. Half an hour later he was being ushered by a hotel servant onto the rear veranda of the Hotel Pont chartrain, where Mr. Bailey rose politely from a wicker chair and held out his hand.

"Mr. Rillieux?" he said-Rillieux being the name on the business card January had sent in, one of several from Hannibal's extensive collection. "You asked to see me?"

"I did indeed, sir." He'd changed at Madame Clisson's back into the black coat, white shirt, and highcrowned hat again. "Please forgive the imposition, Mr. Bailey, but I'm a physician, doing research on the pathologies of various types of poisons, particularly those in use among the Negro slaves." What the original Monsieur Rillieux did for a living he had no idea, since the cards Hannibal collected were generally those bearing only a name. He used his best English, silently thanking the schoolmasters who'd drubbed it into him. It worked far better than any business card could have. "I understand that you've recently had a case of poisoning in your own parish."

"Ah!" Bailey's face darkened with genuine sorrow. The magistrate was a much younger man than January had expected, the breadth and strength of his shoulders according oddly with a build that was in fact rather slight. "A very sad case, that; quite tragic. Personal friends of mine..."

"I'm terribly sorry, sir. If you'd rather not speak of it..."

"No, no." Bailey shook his head, black hair shiny with pomade. "No, it's one of the griefs of my office to attend at the deaths of people I know. From the description it was quite clearly a case of some sort of vegetable poison. Monkshood was my guess, from the dryness and paralysis of the vocal cords-"

" `From the description?' " asked January, "You weren't there?"

"No, as it happens. I had gone to town the previous day on business, and stayed to oversee the delivery of a team of my carriage-horses. Due to a mixup I didn't re ceive word of the death until the day of the funeral. I suppose I should count myself fortunate, since I dined there the evening before my departure, but I can't convince myself I was in any danger. The attack-the intent of her attack-was all too clear." His neat fingers smoothed the slip of mustache. "From Mrs. Redfern's descriptions of her own symptoms, and the accounts of the servants, it was almost certainly aconite, or wolfsbane: monkshood is the common name for it in this country."

January nodded and sat patiently through a catalog of symptoms with which he was already familiar: burning and tingling of the tongue and face, vomiting, difficulty in drawing breath, a sensation of bitter cold. Monsieur Montalban, back in Paris, had displayed them all. Bailey, thank God, seemed a reliable witness, relating what he had heard with a minimum of speculation, aware of the significance of details.

"The first symptoms appeared, according to Mrs. Redfern, shortly after dinner on Wednesday evening.

The servants said the master complained of a burning in his mouth first, and within a quarter hour the mistress did as well. Either she had eaten more of the untainted food than he, or the alcohol remaining in his system-I understand he had been in town all the previous night-accelerated the effects of the poison, as well as rendering them more severe. He died later that same night; and though poor Mrs. Redfern was extremely ill throughout the night and the following day, she survived."

His lips pursed, and he shook his head. "It was a sad business, Mr. Rillieux, a sad business indeed, for he left her deeply in debt."

And with the Reverend Micajah Dunk buying her slaves and her cattle at the lowest possible prices, January thought dryly, as he thanked the magistrate and descended the gallery steps once more, it was unlikely that she'd get out of debt any time soon.

"And the girl herself?" he asked. "I understand one of the servants said he saw her about the house?"

Bailey looked surprised. "I'd heard nothing about that," he said.

The day was hot. The city would be wretched, thought January, taking off his hat as he walked back toward Madame Clisson's house along the level, sandy beach. The breeze from the lake flowed over his face, exquisite in his sweat-damp, close-cropped hair. The temptation was overwhelming to leave the dying in Charity Hospital to their own devices-let the dead bury their own dead-and remain here tonight.

Clisson, at least, would give him space to sleep above the kitchen of the little cottage on London Street.

He walked as far as the long wharf of the Washington Hotel's bathhouse, nearly a thousand feet out in the warm shallow waters of the lake, then ascended the gentle slope to the grounds of the hotel itself.

He wondered what Emily Redfern would have to say about the time and circumstances of her husband's death to an enquirer about poisons in use by those of African descent, but when he sent up his card-or more properly the card of one Hilaire Brun-a servant informed him that Mrs. Redfern had gone into town. "She got this letter, see," the boy said, when January handed him a half-reale. "She sent for that Reverend Dunk that's staying here, and they both went off for town in his gig, 'cause she don't have no carriage no more."

"Did you see who the letter was from?" January held out another half-reale.

The boy nodded, though he seemed a little puzzled at the obviousness of the question. "It was from a lettercarrier, sir."

January wondered whether it was worth his while to try again in the morning.

When he reached Madame Clisson's cottage, only his mother and Euphrasie Dreuze still occupied the porch. Madame Dreuze was saying, "... wouldn't be at all surprised if she was feathering her own nest all along! I'm sure she didn't feed those poor girls enough to-"

They broke off as January came up to the porch. "Your sister's sick," said the Widow Levesque bluntly, snapping shut the crimson silk fan. "The baby, too. I told that maid of Dominique's when she came over here I'd send you on to have a look, but in heat like this I don't see what the good of it is."

January felt the cold clutch of terror in his heart. Not Minou...

"I'll be there," he said.

That night he wrote to Hannibal Sefton, care of his mother's house, that he would be delayed in Milneburgh for as many as three or four days. He asked Hannibal, if at all possible, to check the barracoons of Dutuillet or Hewlett's or the St. Charles Exchange. to see if any of the former house servants of Emily Redfern still remained in the city.

Of Abishag Shaw, he asked the same, adding in his note that though the local magistrate of St. Charles Parish had signed the death certificate of Otis Redfern, no investigation of the death had been performed and only the widow's word existed as to her husband's symptoms or her own.

And in between mixing saline draughts for Dominique, and sponging Charles-Henri's tiny, brittle frame with vinegar-water and cream of tartar, he would sometimes unwrap the red-and-gold candy tin from his grip, and wonder where, and when, he ought to confess to Lieutenant Shaw that he had spoken to Cora Chouteau and was an accessory after the fact to the murder that she had not done.

What use to find Cora, if she would only be returned to be hanged?

Yet he could not leave her where she was wherever that was.

Head aching, he would return to Dominique's feverish murmurings, and the patient, endless, agonizing work of dripping saline draught thinned with a little milk into Charles-Henri's tiny mouth.

On the second night he understood that he was going to lose the child.

It happens, he thought, while the pain of the realization sank through him slowly, like a stone dropped in a bog's peaty waters. His mother had lost her first two babies by St. Denis Janvier-not that his mother had cared more than a cat cares about one drowned kitten more or less. Not many weeks ago Catherine Clisson had spoken to him of a child she'd lost, a boy of four, and he knew Olympe had had at least one still-birth. New Orleans was an unhealthy place at best, and it was dangerous to birth a child in the time of plague.

Still, he thought, looking from the white wicker cradle across at the white-draped bed where his sister lay, it was a grief he would have spared her. Life held grief enough.

Coming out of the bedroom he found Henri Viellard, dressed for a party in a coat of prune-colored superfine and a vest the hue of new lettuces, sitting on the cypress-wood divan. The fat man stood up quickly January had not been completely aware before this of how tall he was, easily six feet. "Will she be all right?" he asked.

"I don't know." It was the middle of the evening, not midnight. Phlosine Seurat, when she had brought a blancmange for Minou and some?touff?e for January, said there would be a danceable at the St. Clair to which everyone who was anyone in Creole society was going. He wondered what this man had told his mother.

"May I see her?"

January stepped out of the doorway. "She's sleeping," he warned.

Henri paused beside him, gray eyes anxious behind the thick rounds of glass. "That's good, isn't it? I understand that with... with the fever... sleep is healing. Normal sleep, that is."

January nodded. "But it isn't the fever," he said. "It's milk sickness, which is just as serious."

A look of surprise flickered behind the spectacles, followed by relief. "Oh," said Henri, a little foolishly.

"Oh, I was told..." He turned quickly to go on into the room, then hesitated and turned back. "Is there anything I can do? For you, I mean. You must be done up. If you need to rest I can sit with her. Do whatever you tell me to do. It's what I came for."

Even though you thought she had yellow fever, thought January. Even though your mama probably told you to stay at whatever ball she's giving tonight.

The anger he had felt at this man melted, and he smiled. "In that case, yes, I could use a little rest. I thank you, sir."

The shutters were fastened and the muslin curtains drawn, but plague or no plague, January felt he must breathe clean air, or die. Smudges of lemongrass and gun powder burned on the gallery over the water, keeping at bay the mosquitoes which, though fewer than in town, could be found even along the lakeshore. Legs dangling over the water, arms draped on the gallery's cypress rail, January gazed at the constellations of rose and citrine light burning through the trees far along the shoreline. On the heavy air, Haydn and Mozart drifted like the smoke of some far-off battle.

Henri fell asleep shortly before dawn, on the daybed in Minou's room; his infant son died about an hour later, in January's arms. January wrapped the wasted little fragment of flesh and bone in a clean towel, and set it aside in the cabinet at the back of the house, where neither of the baby's parents would see.

Then he went back to sponging Dominique's flushed, burning face and body with cool water, trying to bring her fever down. As he worked he whispered the prayers of the Rosary, not counting decades, but simply repeating them over and over again: Hail, Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.

It kept him from thinking. Kept him from wondering if this fate would have overtaken Ayasha, had she borne him the child she had been almost certain she carried the week before her death. Kept him from wondering what point there was in carrying on.

Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Not, Keep us from dying, as Olympe would petition the laa to do, with colored candles and the blood of chickens and mice. Pray for us at the hour of our death. Hold our hands in the dark. Get us across that wide water safely.

He looked down at his sister's face, and felt a great weariness inside.

He wanted Rose. Wanted to talk to her, about Minou's child, and death; about a dozen other things. It might be months, it might be years, and it might be never, before he could lie with her, talking in the night as he and Ayasha used to talk of matters that do not enter daytime conversation. But in the meantime-or even if not-he wanted Rose as a friend in this smoky world of injustice and contagion and deceit.

Feet vibrated on the gallery. January rose from Dominique's bedside and dried his hands, thankful there was someone he could send for the undertaker, for it was clear that Minou could not be left. Opening the door, he saw Agnes Pellicot, a fashionably decorated straw bonnet on over her tignon and a porcelain crock of something warm and spicy wrapped in a towel in her hands. Behind her, shy and awkward in sprigged white muslin with a long blue sash, was Marie-Neige.

"Marie-Neige," said January, startled, even before he bowed and took Agnes Pellicot's hand in greeting.

"Madame Pellicot, I... I thought Marie-Neige was in school in town. There hasn't been a problem... ?"

"Problem?" She sniffed, and at his gesture of invitation crossed the threshold in a swish of crinoline. "I don't know how much you know about that stuck-up hussy Vitrac, but I never trusted her from the very start. And the thought that I'd leave my poor little one at some school in town at this time, like some other women I could mention..."

"What happened?" He took the crock of jambalaya without being aware of it, stood stupid in the middle of the room with it in his hands.

"What happened? The lazy slut let three of those poor little girls die-three of them! What their mothers can have been thinking of to leave them there with her..." Like you did all summer?

"Mama... "

"Hush, darling, about things you know nothing of." Madame Pellicot turned back to January, bristling with indignation. "Well, I should have known, but of course she was sly, and I wanted my dearest Marie-Neige to have all the very best. But I never felt comfortable with it. I always felt uneasy. I-"

"What happened?"

"Really, Ben, you don't need to take that tone. And set that jambalaya down. It's hot and you're like to drop it." She unpinned her hat from her tignon, straightened the neck-ruffle of her dress. "I took Marie-Neige out of that dreadful place yesterday. The woman was a complete fraud, I knew it from the first."

"Mama... "

"Hush, darling, you know that I'm right. And don't pick at your glove buttons; those gloves cost seventy-five cents. And I was right," she added, pausing on her way to the bedchamber. "Not enough that she was harboring a runaway - "

"That's a lie! Where did you hear that?" Cold congealed in him, like steel shot behind his breastbone.

"A lie, is it?" Pellicot planted her hands on her ample hips. "A lot you know of it, out here, M'sieu! The police came and got her yesterday, and a good thing it was that I'd been warned to take my dearest Marie-Neige out in onr. And the things they found out about her, once they turned that school of hers inside out. Stealing her investment money, shorting the girls on food... No wonder the poor things couldn't survive the fever! I only wonder my poor little darling didn't starve, although really, dear," she lifted an admonitory finger to her poor little darling, "Now that you're back with your mama you'll have to do something about your weight. Gentlemen are not attracted to young ladies whose waists are above eighteen inches, and a round face is never kissed, you know..."

"That's a lie," said January softly. "It isn't true. Rose - Mademoiselle Vitrac-she does the best she can with what she has, but she would never steal money."

Pellicot's eyes narrowed. "And how well do you know Mademoiselle Vitrac, pray? Marie-Neige," she added sharply, as the girl began to speak again, "maybe it's best that you run along to the cottage, if you can't learn to be seen and not heard. And don't let me find you've eaten so much as a morsel until I get there! Really, you've simply turned into a little piglet since you were at that school.

"It will take me months to undo the damage that vache has done," she continued, as Marie-Neige obediently stepped through the front door and retreated down the shell path toward New York Street.

"And I refuse to argue the matter with you, Ben." She took off her lace mitts. Her hands, though fine, were large and competent looking, with nails polished like jewelers' work. She disposed of her reticule, picked up Henri Viellard's dark plush coat and settled it over the back of a chair, and passed into the bedroom as she spoke, checking the water in the pitcher and moving Henri's spectacles to a safer place as she went. She paused for a moment, looking down at the empty wicker cradle, and her eyes met January's over it. He saw in them the shine of tears. Then she turned away again and stood beside Dominique's bed, folding back her pink voile sleeves.

"Be so good as to go down to Decker's store for ice, would you, Ben? There's some come in on the boat from town, at twenty-five cents a pound. Take some money out of that cochon's purse for it." She nodded down at the sleeping Henri. "Left word for his mother at the ball last night he had a migraine, I've heard, and she's fit to be tied this morning, for, of course, she wasn't fooled a moment-he slipped away when she was in the cloakroom."

She shook her head, and leaning down, touched Minou's cheeks with the backs of her fingers. "And speak to Mr. Bailey at the Pontchartrain-the magistrate, you know," she added. "Poor Minou. We'll pull her through." And then, as though ashamed of being caught in sympathy, she went on briskly, "Run along now. And if you see your mother, tell her I'm here."

It was another thirty-six hours before January could leave Milneburgh. During that time, unable to leave Minou's side, he was forced to listen to Agnes Pellicot discuss the shutting-down of Rose Vitrac's school with his mother, with Catherine Clisson, and with any of Dominique's friends who came to offer help and support. By the time his sister's fever broke, shortly after noon on Tuesday, January could be in no doubt that Rose Vitrac's school had been searched by the police, though rumors varied as to whether Rose herself had been arrested. But everyone who had heard anything of the matter seemed to agree that Mademoiselle Vitrac had harbored a runaway slave, and that three girls in the school had died, just as if, thought January furiously, people weren't dying in every street and building of the town.

As darkness was falling he boarded the steam-train for town, jostling along in the rear carriage listening to the whine of mosquitoes in the dimness of the swamps.

The raised Spanish house on Rue St. Claude was closed like a fist, lightless on the moonless street. The stenches of burning hooves, of sickness, of privies clotted the damp air like glue. The bell on the cathedral was chiming nine. Somewhere a man called, "Bring out your dead." January walked on, regardless of the curfew, down Rue St. Philippe and along Rue Chartres, past mute dark houses with the planks propped up beside their doors, past pharmacies whose windows glowed with plague-red jars and bottles, his shadow monstrous on the walls.

"What you doin' out this time o' night, boy?" demanded the sergeant at the desk, looking up as January came through the Cabildo's great double doors.

Before leaving Minou's he had changed again into his black coat, his waistcoat and beaver hat, knowing he'd need to be perceived as a free man of color despite the blackness of his skin, which said "slave."

Now he took his papers from his pocket and said in his most Parisian French, "My name is January, sir.

I'm one of the surgeons working at Charity." And I'm not your goddamned boy. "I've been in Milneburgh with a sick woman and child. I've just returned to learn that three of my patients at Mademoiselle Vitrac's school on Rue St. Claude have died, and I'm trying to learn something of the matter. I understand that I might find Mademoiselle Vitrac here?"

Not in the Cabildo, he prayed, sickened at the image of Rose in those filthy cells that flanked the gallery, among the madwomen and prostitutes. Not here. He had spent a night once in the oven-hot, verminous cells: he would not have wished such a thing on his worst foe.

But he kept his voice impersonal, his demeanor respectful of the two or three blue-clothed Guards who lounged on the stone benches of the corner office. The sergeant at the desk-a square-faced, square-handed American-shuffled around in his papers. Outside in the Place d'Armes, voices lifted in angry shouts:

"You're a fool, and can't dance!"

"Consarn if I don't make daylight shine through your gizzard quicker'n lightnin' can run around a potato patch!"

"Is Lieutenant Shaw available, sir? He'll vouch for me. Please tell him Benjamin January is asking after him, if you would, please."

"Benjamin January?" The sergeant raised his head again. He looked sweaty and worn, piggy eyes sunk in bruises of sleeplessness and jaw scrummed with two days' growth of beard. "Got a note here for you.

Mademoiselle Vitrac was released yesterday morning. I don't know the right of it, but charges against her were dropped."

"What was she charged with?"

But the man only shook his head, and held out to him a folded sheet of paper between stubby fingers.

"She left this. Seemed to think you'd come here lookin' for her. Looks like she was right."

His eyes followed January suspiciously as January carried the paper to one of the oil lamps that burned in brackets around the walls: They did little to illumine the murk, but holding the paper close, January was able to read.

The letter was written in Latin.

Of course, thought January, fingering the much-thumbed edges of the page. They'd try to read it. No wonder the sergeant was suspicious. He wondered if someone like Monsieur Tremouille, the Chief of Police, had succeeded.

Monsieur janvier If you receive this you will have heard something of what has befallen. The police came yesterday, and found hidden in the building a string of pearls and a quantity of money that they claim links me to a runaway slave, whom they likewise claim was a girl I knew in my youth.

Why didn't you get rid of the pearls? thought January furiously. I told you to throw them in the river! At least she'd taken into account the possibility that they'd show the note to someone who had been to a proper school.

The day before their arrival, Antoinette, Victorine, and Genevi?ve all succumbed, at last, to the fever. I sent word to you, but you had already left for Milneburgh, and later events prevented me from writing you there. Occupied as I was with them I could not give my full mind to matters when Madame Pellicot and Madame Moine came to remove their daughters from the school, though I understand that rumors have begun that I speculated with the school's money. These rumors are untrue, and I am at a loss to understand how or why they began.

The fact remains that I am ruined. I understand people are even blaming me for the deaths of my poor girls. I know it will be impossible for me to open the school again, even should I find pupils. At the moment I have no idea where I will or can go, or what I can do.

I may have little experience with the ways of the world, but I do know that calumny is a contagion far more to be dreaded than our friend Bronze john, and even your slight association with me in caring for the girls might be held against you by the malicious. Therefore I ask your indulgence. I know that I owe you the money we agreed upon for the girls' care...

[What money? A moment later he realized that the sentence was for the benefit of those who might read the letter, and wonder why else he would wish to seek her out.] ... but please, for your own sake, do not attempt to locate me. I will send the money to you in good time. I do not forget all the kindnesses you have done.

Thank you for the help you gave me with the girls. Without your timely assistance, matters would be far worse than they were. I am sorry that I cannot thank you in person, but you must see, as I do, that it is better we never meet again.

The letter was signed, not in Latin, but in Greek: more difficult for January to read, but impossible, he thought, for others to spy out.

He recognized it as a quote from Euripides. (Greek script unavailable) It took him a few moments to translate:

Nothing can come between true friends. Rose