04 Sold Down the River

BAPTISTE GRASSE

Hope glowed in the older man's eyes. "It's from my wife," he said softly. "Harry gave me this just now. She must have wrote me, same as I wrote her."

"False River Jones is here?"

Baptiste shrugged. "He must be."

Kiki started to speak, then turned and walked quickly away to the hearth, where she sat mending the fire. It occurred to January suddenly that the cook might know of the trader's whereabouts.

She had, after all, her own wares to vend.

It was not lost on him, either, that salts of mercury was a town poison, something not obtainable by merely boiling up leaves or bark. It could be bought quickly, and quickly passed from hand to hand.

As January unfolded the sheet he saw again the woman's bright-colored dress, and the way she'd run through the crowd on the levee with her skirts gathered up in her hands.

"Beloved," he read. The spiky French handwriting was clear and the spelling good. Since it was forbidden by law to teach slaves to read or write, it was clear that Baptiste's wife had sought someone to write for her, as her husband had petitioned Hannibal.

I pray God daily you are well and in a good place, and the people around you are kind. Monsieur Pierre is gone to France now with poor Madame, and I am with Monsieur Norbert on the Rue des Bons Enfants. He and his wife are good people. They wanted me to marry their coachman Emil but because I am married already they say I don't have to. Leon and Aurette are still with me and send their Papa all their love. I pray I will soon see you again. All my love, Odette."

"He's lucky." Kiki came back over to the table after Baptiste left with the letter folded close in the pocket next to his heart. Her hand flinched as she gathered up the used cup and saucer, set them aside.

"That his wife was sold to people who didn't take her children from her?" asked January. "Or make her marry one of their own slaves just to have everything convenient?"

"He's lucky to hear from them at all. So many don't. So many just... wonder."

"Do you know where he might be?" asked January. "The trader?"

Kiki hesitated, dark eyes shadowed in the firelight. Then she shook her head. "I have no use for him," she said.

Another howl of pain split the night, the desperate cry of a man pushed to the limit of what flesh will bear. January startled. But only Kiki's eyes moved, sliding sideways, gauging the sound as she would have gauged, by the brisk bubbling of water in the kettle, how long to leave eggs on the boil.

And as she turned away, January thought he saw her smile.

Shortly before dawn on Wednesday, the twenty-sixth of November, Simon Fourchet died. His young widow sent Jacko the groom with a note to Baton Rouge, with orders to locate Robert Fourchet; she dispatched another message to the Waller farm in New River where Sheriff Duffy was supposed to be staying with various members of his posse, giving an account of the new catastrophe.

In the predawn darkness, after the screaming at long last ceased, January climbed the little bluff above the new landing and took down the yellow bandanna from the branch of Michie Demosthenes the Oak.

He did not replace it.

It was time, he thought, to ask for help.