Part 3 (1/2)

”I'm a surgeon, actually,” said January. ”I trained at the Hotel Dieu in Paris. After that I practiced there for three years.”

”Even better.” The Prussian's fair hair was cropped like a soldier's; it made his head seem small and birdlike above the flare of his Elizabethan ruff. Like Hannibal, he spoke with barely an accent, though January guessed it came from good teaching rather than length of time spent in the United States.

”Bone and blood is a constant. I would prefer a man who understands them, rather than one who spent six years at university learning to argue about whether purges raise or lower the humors of the human const.i.tution and how much mercury and red pepper will clarify a man's hypothetical bile. That imbecile Bouille's challenged Granger to a duel,” he added, evidently not considering a Paris-trained surgeon's current position at the piano of a New Orleans ballroom a subject of either surprise or comment. ”Children, both of them.”

The lines at the corners of his eyes marked Mayerling as older than he looked, but he was still probably younger than either his student or the man that student had challenged. January didn't say anything, but the lines deepened just slightly, ironically amused. ”Well-paying children,” admitted Mayerling, to January's unspoken remark. ”Nevertheless. Bouille's wife is the sister to two of the physicians in town-physicians who actually studied medicine somewhere other than in their uncles' back offices, you understand-and the third has money invested in Monsieur Granger's prospective LaFayette and Pontchartrain railway company. The others who have been recommended to me seem overfond of bleeding.... I trust that your remedy for a bullet in the lung does not involve a cupping gla.s.s? It is to my professional interest, you understand, to know things like this.”

Considering how nearly every young Creole gentleman bristled and circled and named his friends at the most trivial of slights, it wasn't surprising that Mayerling, Verret, Crocquere, and the other fencing teachers would be on intimate terms with every medical man for fifty miles.

January shuddered. He knew several who would resort to just that, accompanied by ma.s.sive purges and a heavy dose of calomel-salts of mercury-for good measure.

”You think they'll accept a physician of color?”

The sword master appeared genuinely surprised. ”It is of no concern to me what they accept. Jean Bouille is my student. The American shall accept your ministrations or die of his wounds. Which, it is of little interest to me. May I count upon you, sir?”

January inclined his head, hiding his amus.e.m.e.nt at the extent of the Prussian's imperial arrogance. ”You may, sir.”

Mayerling produced his card, which January pocketed, and accepted one of January's in return. Mayerling's said simply, Augustus Mayerling. Sword Master. Augustus Mayerling. Sword Master. January's was inscribed, January's was inscribed, Benjamin Janvier. Lessons in Piano, Clavichord, Harp, and Guitar. Benjamin Janvier. Lessons in Piano, Clavichord, Harp, and Guitar. Underneath the lines were repeated in French. Underneath the lines were repeated in French.

”I can't find her anywhere,” wailed Marie-Rose at twenty minutes until midnight, coming up while Minou was flirting with Hannibal across the palmettos that screened the dais on both sides. Henri had returned to the respectable purlieus of the establishment with promises to be back in time for the tableaux; even the senior M. Peralta, pillar of rect.i.tude that he was and a.s.siduous in his attentions to Euphrasie Dreuze, had been back and forth several times.

By the way the old man was watching the lobby outside the ballroom, January guessed he had no idea where his son was. The boy was only seventeen. If he'd sent him home or banished him to the Theatre he wouldn't be watching like that.

And Euphrasie Dreuze, quite clearly aghast at the possibility that her daughter might have whistled at least some percentage of the Peralta fortune down the wind, was like a pheasant in a cage, flitting in and out from ballroom to lobby in a fluffy scurry of satin and jewels. January dimly recalled his mother telling him that Etienne Crozat, owner of the Banque Independent and stockholder in half a dozen others, had paid Euphrasie Dreuze off handsomely upon his marriage. Her concern might, of course, stem entirely from care for her daughter's welfare, but the woman's reputed fondness for the faro tables and deep ba.s.set were probably the actual cause of the increasingly frenzied look in her eye.

When the Roman, Jenkins, returned from negotiations downstairs, he, too, loitered around the lobby with an air of searching for someone, but at the moment January couldn't see him.

”It's just like her,” sighed Minou, as Marie-Anne, Marie-Rose, and one of the Ladies of the Harim-shedding an occasional peac.o.c.k eye in her wake-scampered off after the next waltz to make another canva.s.s of the courtyard. ”I asked Romulus to check the gambling rooms, but even Angelique wouldn't have gone down there. Maybe vanis.h.i.+ng like this is part of her plan.”

”No woman wears a getup like that and disappears before the tableaux vivants, tableaux vivants,” Hannibal pointed out. He turned away to cough, pressing a hand briefly to his side to still it, and the candlelight glistened on the film of sweat that rimmed the long fjords of his retreating hairline.

”No,” retorted Minou. ”But if she's not back in another few minutes Agnes is going to have to fix her daughters' hair, and everybody knows Agnes is just dreadful at that sort of thing. And now we can't find Clemence either. If Henri comes back and so much as speaks to another woman, have a waiter slip some mysterious potion to him to render him unconscious, would you, p't.i.t?”

”You'll need a sledge to get him home.”

”I'm sure Monsieur Froissart will oblige. Why does everything have to go wrong at these affairs?” She fluttered away again, sleeves billowing like white and gold sails.

”I don't know why she'd take an hour and a half at it,” said Hannibal, plucking at the strings again, and turning a key. ”Any of the girls down in the Swamp-the Glutton or Railspike or Fat Mary-can have you begging for mercy inside five minutes. Seven, if you're dead to start with.” He coughed again.

”Maybe that's the reason they're working the Swamp instead of having some banker buy them a house on Rue des Ursulines?”

”Surely you jest, sir.” The fiddler grinned, and drained the last of his second bottle of champagne. ”Though I'd trade a week's worth of opium to see what the Glutton would wear to one of these b.a.l.l.s.”

”What I'd trade for,” remarked January, beginning to sort through his music and his notes for which tableau would be first, ”is to know where they could could have gone for an hour and a half. The building's filled. If Peralta Pere and Phrasie Dreuze are that puzzled, it's got to mean they've asked in the courtyard and the gambling rooms whether anyone saw the two of them leave.” He reached up and took the empty bottle from Hannibal's unsteady grasp. have gone for an hour and a half. The building's filled. If Peralta Pere and Phrasie Dreuze are that puzzled, it's got to mean they've asked in the courtyard and the gambling rooms whether anyone saw the two of them leave.” He reached up and took the empty bottle from Hannibal's unsteady grasp.

”Easy,” said Hannibal. ”They could have gone through the pa.s.sageway to the Theatre. Those boxes above the stage are curtained. Angelique's white enough to pa.s.s. It's not easy to tup a woman in a gown like that-twelve petticoats at the least, not to speak of the wings-in a box, but it can be done, if you don't mind leg cramps.”

”Peralta would know that,” pointed out January.

”And there's lot o' compet.i.tion for them boxes,” added Uncle b.i.+.c.het, who had been following the entire intrigue with interest.

Minou strode over to them from the direction of the lobby doors, Agnes Pellicot at her heels, like a pair of infuriated daffodils. January saw both of them look automatically in the direction of Euphrasie Dreuze, seated in the triple bank of spindly gilt chaperones' chairs with two of her cronies, fanning herself with what looked like an acre of ostrich plumes and watching the archways into the lobby with a wild and distracted eye.

”I have done what I can,” announced Agnes, her protuberant brown eyes flas.h.i.+ng grimly. ”Wh.o.r.e and b.i.t.c.h she might be, but she can can fix hair. How such a woman could have been so...” She gave up with a gesture. ”This is the big chance for Marie-Anne and Marie-Rose to be seen, to be admired at their best. If that conceited light-skirt doesn't turn up...” fix hair. How such a woman could have been so...” She gave up with a gesture. ”This is the big chance for Marie-Anne and Marie-Rose to be seen, to be admired at their best. If that conceited light-skirt doesn't turn up...”

”I'll move her tableau to last.” January s.h.i.+fted the Rossini aria he'd arranged as Angelique's music in behind the Mozart dances that would usher in the Harim.

”Don't you dare!” cried a masked woman in a red-and-gold has.h.i.+sh dream of a Sultana costume. Her fantasia of dyed ostrich plumes tossed like storm clouds as she shook her head and shed a faint snowfall of shreds. ”We're on last. It serves her right if she misses her place.”

”Rach.e.l.le, of course if she shows up after you go on, we'll put her on last,” said Minou coaxingly. ”Think how unfair it would be to punish Emilie and Clemence and the two Maries. And where is is Clemence?” Clemence?”

”I think she left when Galen did,” put in Marie-Rose. ”Iphegenie's aunt saw someone wearing that gray-green dress in the courtyard.”

”Tell you what,” said January, as the Sultana Rach.e.l.le's bronze mouth puckered dangerously. ”We'll do that mazurka as an extra, to give everybody a little more time. Minou, you checked back on the parlor lately? She's got to go back there one time or another if she's going to fix those wings of hers. It's the only place where she'd have room to work.”

”Hussy,” whispered Agnes Pellicot, her face like a hurricane sky. ”Bandeuse! Coming to the ball like this, two months or less after Arnaud Trepagier is in his tomb, to see what else she can catch! If she'd had any decency she would have left the tableau, turned her position in it over to someone else! She can't be needing money. After all he gave her, the jewels he lavished on her, slaves, a house fit for royalty, horses and a carriage, even! You saw those pearls and emeralds she had about her neck! He'd ride in from his plantation every night to be with her, even took her to the opera...fie!” Coming to the ball like this, two months or less after Arnaud Trepagier is in his tomb, to see what else she can catch! If she'd had any decency she would have left the tableau, turned her position in it over to someone else! She can't be needing money. After all he gave her, the jewels he lavished on her, slaves, a house fit for royalty, horses and a carriage, even! You saw those pearls and emeralds she had about her neck! He'd ride in from his plantation every night to be with her, even took her to the opera...fie!”

She stormed out into the lobby again in wrath.

”Dare one infer,” murmured Hannibal, turning over a page of the mazurka, ”that Mama had some plans for Peralta Fils and the fair Marie-Rose?”

”Sounds like it,” agreed January philosophically. ”Shall we?”

The brisk dance was entering its third variation when Minou reappeared in the hall, her face ashy in the dark frame of her hair. January, glancing up from the piano, saw the flutter of her sleeves with the shaky wave of her hands, the way the jeweled pomander chain at her waist vibrated with the trembling of her knees. With a quick gesture he signaled Hannibal to carry the figure as a solo-hoping his colleague wasn't going to engage in any adventures with the tempo, as he sometimes did at this stage of an evening-and leaned from the piano's seat.

”What is it?”

”I...” Minou swallowed hard. ”You'd better come.”

”What happened?” He hadn't known his sister long, but he knew that under the empty-headed frivolity lay considerable strength of mind. It was the first time he'd ever seen her unnerved.

”In the parlor,” she said. ”Ben, I think she's dead.”

FOUR.

From the time he was fourteen years old, January had wanted to study medicine.

St.-Denis Janvier had sent him to one of the very fine schools available to the children of the colored bourgeoisie-where he had been looked upon askance, as he had in his music lessons, for his gangly size and African blackness far more than for his mother's placage-which boasted a science master who had trained in Montpellier before returning to his native New Orleans to teach.

Monsieur Gomez had been a believer in empiricism rather than in theory and had trained him as a surgeon rather than a physician. For this direction January was infinitely and forever grateful, despite his mother's sneer and frown: ”A surgeon surgeon, p't.i.t? A puller of teeth, when you could have an office and a practice of wealthy men?”

But his reading of the medical journals, the endless quibblings about bodily humors and the merits of heroic medicine-his experience with the men who prescribed bleeding for every ill and didn't consider a patient sufficiently treated until he'd been dosed with salts of mercury until his gums bled-convinced him early on that he could never have adopted a livelihood based so firmly on ignorance, half truths, and arrogant lies.

Instead he had dissected rabbits and possums netted in the bayous and cattle from the slaughterhouses; had roved at will through Monsieur Gomez's meager library and had followed the man on his rounds at the Charity Hospital, learning to set bones, birth babies, and repair fistulas regardless of which bodily humor was in ascendance at the time. He had been more than a student to Gomez, as Madeleine Dubonnet had been more than a student to him; rather, he had been, as she had been, a secret partner in a mystery, a junior co-devotee of the same intricate gnosis.

He had fought alongside Gomez in Jackson's army when the British invaded and afterward had tended the wounded with him. When yellow fever had swept the city for the first time in the summer before his departure for France, he'd worked at his mentor's side in the plague hospitals.