Part 12 (1/2)

”I did lose that key!” protested Harry, with a nervous glance at January.

”Oh, like Harry ever loses anything!” joshed Syphax.

”And what do you think?” said Zuzu. ”Just a little while later it turns out the liquor in that box was all poisoned, and a man there, a friend of ours”-and her face grew suddenly sad-”died of it.”

January was very thoughtful as he and Harry walked the five miles back through the cipriere to Mon Triomphe.

Mon Triomphe Ascension Parish 19 Novembre 1834 My beloved, I am well. Monsieur Simon Fourchet, whose man I now am, is a stern man with a reputation for harshness, though I have myself seen him act with kindness and generosity towards those in need.

His young wife is gentle and just, and I am treated well, and am making friends among the other servants here. Please do not feel concerned for me.

Every day and every night I think of you, I pray for you, and hope that somehow we can be united again, even for a short while. I miss you more than I can say and hope that you are well and are happy.

Living in the country is strange and very different from town but I am learning how to go on here. Most unsettling is the absence of Ma.s.s, though every night Madame Fourchet leads the house-servants in prayers, which is a great comfort to me. Many of the field hands do not seem to be Christian at all.

There is great trouble here because one of the field hands, or maybe more, has been burning and breaking things mysteriously at night, and all here are in a state of fear. I pray that all matters will work out well.

Take care of yourself and tell Aurette and Leon that their papa loves them. And know too that I love you.

Your husband, Baptiste.

”Can you get that to her?” Hannibal was handing the stiff sheet of cream-colored paper back to the butler as January came up to the garconniere door. In the morning's brittle sunlight the fiddler looked greatly restored by four days of bed rest, though he was still in his nights.h.i.+rt and the green silk dressing gown he'd borrowed from Robert, his long hair tied back in a neat queue.

”I think so, sir.” The butler glanced at the doorway to make sure who was standing there, and lowered his voice anyway. ”One of the field hands let me know there was a-a chance he could get a letter to a trader, who'd take it to town.” He folded the page and tucked it into the pocket of his dark livery. ”Thank you, sir. If there's anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

”Poor old duffer,” remarked Hannibal, when the butler had gone. ”I wrote as he asked me, but I didn't have the heart to tell him that if his master sold him off he'd almost certainly have sold off his wife as well. I wonder what he traded to Harry to get him to take the letter to False River Jones?” He returned to the bed, where a tray lay in a glint of silver and china in the bars of brightness from the door. ”Help yourself,” he said. ”The lovely Kiki has clearly made it her mission in life to fatten me up.” And indeed, there were enough m.u.f.fins, grits, b.u.t.ter, eggs, ham, and coffee on the tray to breakfast half the Achaean host before the walls of Troy.

”At a guess,” said January, sitting on the floor by the bed and taking the fullest possible advantage of the offer, ”he lent him the keys to the new cellaret-at any rate that's what Harry had the blacksmith at Voussaire copy for him last night. And apparently that wasn't the first time.”

Hannibal whistled through his teeth. ”So much for the notion that the field hands couldn't have had access to the liquor.”

”I always knew there was the possibility,” said January. ”Harry isn't doing a thing that hasn't been done before, and by smarter men than he. But unless there's something else going on-something I haven't heard about between Harry and Fourchet--I doubt Harry would have done it. Harry's whole position depends on things remaining in status quo . . . for everyone except Harry. He might poison Fourchet if he felt threatened, but burning the barn and the mill, damaging the knives, calling all kinds of attention to the activities of the slaves-this has him terrified, and rightly so. I'm more interested, myself, in the fact that this False River Jones seems to be back in the area, if Harry's bargained to take a letter to him.”

He fell silent as footfalls creaked along the gallery-the maid Henna's, by their light quick decisiveness-and faded as they turned the corner and pa.s.sed into the dining room. The sharp, cold wind that had sprung up last night whispered and rustled in the oak trees and made a constant roaring in the cane just downstream of the house, a warning of cold to come. After changing the bandanna on the oak from yellow to blue, he'd slipped up to the garconniere in the dead of last night and slid a note under Hannibal's door, asking that he be sent for that morning.

”If you'd like to sleep for a few hours on the floor I think I can contrive to keep Robert out of here,” offered Hannibal, pouring him out a cup of coffee. ”Keep your voice down, by the way- Leander sometimes listens on the gallery.”

”Thank you. I might take you up on that later.” January cradled the porcelain in his huge hands, grateful for the warmth of it, for the rich scent, for the stillness and rest. After four days his back and arms had quit aching every single minute and he could sleep through even the nibbling of the bedbugs in the unaired corn-shuck pallet, but the pain had settled into his wrists and hands. His fingers were stiff and raw with blisters-it would take weeks, he reflected bitterly, before he'd be able to play the piano again-and his bones hurt for sleep. In the few moments over the past four days when he wasn't sound asleep or wis.h.i.+ng he could be, he missed Rose desperately, and, though he felt childish for doing so, missed his piano nearly as much. Missed the G.o.dlike logic of Bach, and Vivaldi's wry grace. Missed the peace they brought to his mind and his heart.

Missed-he realized now--the person he was when he played, and the calm thoughtfulness of living without fear.

”And was the company of this charming nursemaid worth carrying twenty-five pounds of pig meat five miles on foot in the middle of the night?”

”Oh, yes,” said January slowly. ”Though I'd be very surprised if Zuzu turned out to be the hoodoo. What was even more valuable was Harry's gossip on the way down to Voussaire and back: where people were on the nights of the two fires; why Reuben chose Trinette to replace Kiki when Kiki was given to Gilles; any number of things about the Fourchet family that are none of my business . . .”

”And you're about to learn another,” remarked Hannibal. ”Are you aware that Esteban's a boy- lover?” January paused in the demolition of a fifth m.u.f.fin, startled, then nodded, as pieces fell into place in his mind. The awkward man's unmarried state, still at the age of forty-plus living in the garconniere. The sour flex of Simon Fourchet's mouth when he'd ordered his eldest son not to waste time in town, and Esteban's stifled reply. The smooth pomaded prettiness of the valet Agamemnon. ”It doesn't surprise me. Who told you?”

”The long-eared and loquacious Leander,” replied Hannibal. ”And a few days' observation of the man and his valet together. There was a row last night when Madame Helene happened to mention to her father-in-law that when Esteban was in New Orleans to purchase the new grinder- and to meet the homecoming Robert and his family-Esteban visited a gentleman of the town named Claude Molineaux, according to Leander a dear friend of long standing. Fourchet had ordered Esteban some time ago to sever the relations.h.i.+p, which I gather dated back to the era when the family lived on Bellefleur. As usual when those whose lives he's planned refuse to go along with the program, Fourchet was furious. The word will was apparently uttered, and that deadly phrase, Continue the family.”

He coughed, his educated French and small, delicate hands a reminder, like a reproach, of the family duties Hannibal himself had long abandoned, whatever they had been.

”So tell me what it was you learned from the lovely Mamzelle Zuzu.”

”Not much,” said January. ”But while I was there one of her children misbehaved in a way that set me thinking, and when I came back here, instead of going to sleep like a sensible person I took a torch and searched through the trash piles on the downstream side of the mill, near the windows of the roundhouse where the mules walk. And I found this.”

He held up a billet of maiden cane, a pale brown segmented stalk about thirty inches long. Putting it to his lips he blew at Hannibal's face, and the fiddler blinked at the stream of air.

”It's large for a child's,” remarked Hannibal, immediately grasping the thing about it that January had first noted. He held out his thin hand. ”I manufactured similar implements of destruction back at our place in County Mayo, of course. The favored missiles were dried peas from the kitchen, but our gamekeeper's son used squirrel-shot and could down a bird at thirty feet. He cut them long, too. This one's like a Kentucky rifle.”

”Well, Aunt Zuzu's son Tom used thorns-darts. Like these.” From his pocket January produced the ragwrapped sc.r.a.ps and fragments he'd collected from the floor of the kitchen at Refuge, and picked forth the two long splinters of cane. They were of a size to fit neatly into the cane blowpipe. Blowing with all his force, he drove one of them into the opposite wall so deeply that Hannibal had to work it loose.

”Arma virumque cano,” murmured the fiddler, coming back to the bed with the missile.

”And by the arms you may know the man,” said January somberly. ”Or at least take a good guess at him.”

”I'm surprised you found this at all.” Hannibal perched on the bed, turning the blowpipe over in his hands. ”It looks exactly like the rest of the cane-trash to me.”

”Except that it's maiden cane, not sugar cane,” said January. ”It grows in the fields but n.o.body harvests it-hence the name. Sometimes it gets into the bundles, if it's growing too close with the sugar, but in that case the ends would have been cut on the diagonal, where a man cuts down with a knife, or upwards to top the bundle. You see both ends of this were severed straight across, it's shorter than cane so it wouldn't have been topped at all. Aunt Zuzu said her son had spooked Michie Voussaire's carriage team with a dart.”

”Hmm.” Hannibal dropped a little bolus of m.u.f.fin crumbs into the reed and puffed it at the bureau mirror; his damaged lungs barely generated the force to clear the long barrel, and afterward he coughed. ”And considering the mule harness had been tampered with-and believe me, if I had to work all day with red pepper and turpentine rubbing my a.r.s.e I'd be ready to bolt-”

He twirled the stalk idly. ”Could a white man remain unseen long enough to watch for when the rollers stuck?”

”If he wore rough clothes and a hat, maybe. If no one saw him close. There are some field hands who're fairly light-skinned, but not many. It's just possible, but only just. The cane stands within a few yards of the downstream wall of the mill, and with a spygla.s.s you could probably watch through the door to see when the rollers jammed. By the same token, the mule barn stands just beyond the mill. You can reach it in moments from the cane, going around the backside of the mill between it and the quarters. It wouldn't be difficult on a foggy evening, when everyone's in the cipriere or the fields.”

”And the mule barn is where all the damage to the harness occurred. Shall I keep this?”

”If you would. And if you would,” added January, as the fiddler rose and went to secrete the pipe- and January's little bundle of leaf fragments and darts-in the rear fastnesses of the armoire, ”do you think you could contrive to send me with a message to a fict.i.tious relative in New River? I'd like to stop by the Daubray kitchen and ascertain first, whether Hippolyte Daubray actually did pursue False River Jones five miles down the river on the night the mill caught fire, and second, if Harry, or any other of Fourchet's servants, has any kind of close connection with the Daubrays.”

”Consider it done.” Hannibal settled himself at the desk, trimmed up a quill, and began to write in the looping, beautiful Italianate hand so different from a Frenchman's upright and rather pinched script. ”Inceptis gravibus plerumque et magna professis/ Purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter/ Adsuitur pannus. . . . Curse,” he added, fis.h.i.+ng around in the drawer. ”No wafers for our Robert. Such a SHOPGIRL embellishment for a work of literature.” He mimed the dandy's finicking horror at the idea of those newfangled, brightly hued lozenges of flour and gum, and started to rise to get a spill from the embers of the fire.

”I think it might be best,” said January, bending down to touch a fragment of kindling to the flame and carrying it back to the desk, s.h.i.+elded in his hand, ”if you were to feel well enough to go back to town for a day. Or so ill you felt in need of a trusted family doctor.”

He lit the candle on the desk and watched as Hannibal melted the sealing wax, touching drops neatly to the inside of the folded sheet, then pressing it down and adding several more drops on the edge and the in-turned ends. Wind whistling through the French doors on both sides of the room made the flame lean and flicker. ”It shouldn't be too difficult to learn about M'sieu Claude, and about whether Fourchet expressed his disapproval of his son's choice of friends in his will.”

”I'll speak to Fourchet about putting out a flag on the landing in the morning.” Hannibal blew gently on the wax to harden it, and superscribed the letter to J. Capulet, verond Plantation, New River, Ascension Parish. ”Will you stay for a nap, or is M'sieu Ajax likely to flog you for being late back to your office?”

January stepped to the French doors on the downstream side of the room that looked across the gallery toward Thierry's house and the cane beyond. The sun stood high above the oaks. ”Since your note didn't specify how long you needed me for, I think I can push it another hour or so.” It was a seven-foot drop to the ground from the gallery on that side; he crossed the room to the door looking into the piazza, mentally gauging whether Kiki would be preoccupied with getting the rice cart loaded up and preparing the noon dinner for the big house. ”I'll be back . . . d.a.m.n,” he added, as Cornwallis appeared from the dining room and strode out onto the gallery.

”Well, you're the one who's always going on about how he's practically a member of the family,”

Fourchet's valet was saying to Agamemnon. ”Surely you'd be able to keep track of a small thing like that.” The smaller man, in his neat black suit and dandified cravat, was nearly spitting with rage. ”There is a difference,” he said, ”between keeping a master's things in good order, which some people in this household don't seem to be able to do, and knowing every receiver of stolen goods along the river. . . .”

”For G.o.d's sake, can't you quarrel someplace else?” January muttered. ”If anyone asks,” he added, over his shoulder to Hannibal, ”come up with a really pressing reason why you're sending me over to Catbird Island for half an hour or so.”

”Catbird Island?” Hannibal looked baffled. ”There's nothing over there. Why would any man send his valet to an empty hunk of mud like that?”