Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man Of Color (42 page)

“It doesn't matter,” said Madeleine quietly. “I was never happy there, and I would have sold it within a few weeks in any case.”

At the end of March, Madeleine Trepagier sold the plantation of Les Saules to an American developer for $103,000 and four parcels of the subdivided land, to be disposed of later at her discretion. The first house of the new subdivision—a very large and very Grecian mansion for a Philadelphia banker and his family—began construction before Ascension Day. The main street, paralleling the route of the Gentilly and Pontchartrain Streetcar Lines, was called Madeleine Street. Jean Bouille also included in the development plans side streets called Alexandrine and Philippe, after the two children who had died. There was no Arnaud Street.

The Trepagier family—both its Pontchartrain and New Orleans branches—was outraged. Livia, getting her information through the Rampart Street or octoroon side of the clan, said it was because they were getting none of the resulting money, an opinion with which January could find no fault, though Charles-Louis Trepagier fulminated to Aunt Alicia Picard in terms of letting family land be lived upon by sales americaines. Madeleine sold a number of the field hands to neighbors and members of the family, but kept about twelve, whose services she hired out to the lumber mills upriver at a handsome profit. Louis, Claire, Albert, and Ursula she retained for her own household, purchasing a tall town house of shrimp-colored stucco on Rue Conti and investing the remainder in warehouse property at the foot of Rue La-Fayette. One of the first things she did, while still living with her Aunt Picard, was to contact Maspero's Exchange and learn the name of the Cane River cotton planter who had purchased Judith and buy her back. It was, of course, never mentioned by anyone that she had been in Dominique Janvier's house, nor Dominique in hers. When the two women passed on the street, they did not speak.

“Funny,” said Shaw, leaning against the brick pillar of the market arcade, next to the table where he'd located January with his coffee and beignet. “She wins her own freedom from that family of her'n, and the kindest, the most humane thing she can think to do is go to all that trouble to find that gal Judith and buy her back as a slave.” He shook his head.

“She's a Creole lady.” There was ironic bitterness in January's voice. “It's the custom of the country. Expecting her to see any connection is like thinking my mother's going to stop acting like my mother. Or that you're going to sit down at this table with me. Sir.”

A slow smile spread across the Kaintuck's unshaven face, the gray eyes twinkling with amusement. “I suppose you're right about that.” He stepped away from the brick arcade for a moment and spat in the general direction of the gutter. January hoped for the sake of peace in the town that the man's aim was better with firearms.

“We found the boardin' house on the Esplanade where Claud Trepagier stayed for the week before he showed up at the Trepagier town house claimin' to have just stepped off a steamboat. Everythin' was there: that necklace and letters from McGinty dating back about three weeks after Arnaud's death.”

“I suppose it took about three weeks for McGinty to realize that he couldn't pressure or badger Madame Trepagier into marrying him.”

“That'd be my guess, though of course McGinty wouldn't say so. He did say there was some hurry-up about it, on account of them cousins of her'n offerin' marriage theirselves. The woman who runs the boardin' house says she remembers Claud goin' out that Thursday night in that green Turk costume, and she remembers McGinty comin' by to see him a couple times. The girl who works in the kitchen found this, stuffed in the garbage-bin one day that week. She don't recollect what day.”

From his pocket he produced a long scarf or sash of orange-and-green silk, tasseled at the ends and dabbed and blotted with blood.

“The sash he was wearing at the Mardi Gras ball itself was purple,” said January slowly. “I remember thinking it didn't match. It was a later replacement— probably part of McGinty's pirate costume.”

“It don't prove anythin', of course—that blood coulda come from a dog or a chicken or wherever—but it gave Mister Crozat somethin' to show that mother of the murdered girl—and Lord, didn't she carry on! Not that I blame her. It was her only daughter, her flesh and blood.”

January turned his coffee cup in his hands, remembering the way Angelique's brothers had turned their faces from their mother at the funeral. Remembering what Hannibal had said, and his mother.

Shaw went on after a thoughtful moment, “But she carried on a damn sight worse when Captain Tremouille broke the news to her that necklace was goin' back to Madame Trepagier, because it hadn't even been rightfully Trepagier's to give away in the first place. Now that was grief.”

A woman with a basket on her head walked by along the Rue du Levee, singing about gingerbread. January could see she wore a thong about her ankle, with a blue bead and a couple of brass bells. Under boot and sock he still wore the one Olympe had made him. Whether it had gotten him safe out of Bayou Chien Mort he wasn't sure, but he certainly hadn't been beaten up since.

“I don't know why I didn't see it earlier,” he said slowly, as the Kentuckian folded the sash and restored it to the seemingly depthless pocket of his frayed green coat. “I knew it was Madame Trepagier's dress Angelique was wearing—she'd told me so—and my sister mentioned that she and Angelique also wore the same size dresses. Both women were dark-haired. Both had the same coloring.”

“Well,” said Shaw, “leavin' out the poor taste of the thing, it ain't that uncommon. You see lots of men who'll marry a woman looks just like their dead wives, or the men who'll always ask for a blonde or a tall girl or whatever in a parlor house. Trepagier prob'ly never gave it a thought, that barrin' the faces, his mistress looked pretty much exactly like his wife.”

“Only one was colored,” said January. “And if her mother hadn't resorted to blackmail, her death might never have been looked into at all.” He glanced sidelong up at the tall man standing beside the table. “Did you ever find anything of the girl Sally?”

“On the subject of colored girls whose deaths don't get looked into, you mean?”

“Yes,” said January. “That's what I mean.”

The policeman rubbed his unshaven chin and cracked his knuckles with a noise audible several feet away. “I got a couple of the men the city hires to clean the gutters—not bein' able to spare any constables, you understand—and dragged around the bayous some. We found a woman's body about the right height in Bayou Gentilly two days ago, that looked like it'd been there since right around Mardi Gras, but what with the water and the crawfish there wasn't much face left on her. And I did check with Maspero's and over by Carmen and Ricardo and the other big dealers, and nobody answerin' McGinty's description had sold a black girl that age.” He stepped away from the vicinity of the tables and spat into the gutter again. “I got word out to the dealers upriver, but myself, I think that was her. Mrs. Trepagier's cook Claire said as how Sally's fella was redheaded, but of course we can't use her testimony in a court of law.”

January said ironically, “Of course not.”

The cathedral bell called out across the Place des Armes; Rue du Lev6e was filling up. The last mists of the morning were burning off and the day was already turning hot. Most of the planters had left the city right after Easter, which had fallen early that year. Already the dark striped cane was head high in the fields, and Bella had put up the mosquito bars in Livia's house and the gar-conniere.

A gray-suited form jostling along the banquette paused for a fraction of a second, and looking up, January met the blue eyes of Xavier Peralta. The planter paused for a moment, midstride, then turned his face away and kept walking.

“ 'Why, thank you, I'm just fine too,' ” murmured Shaw. “ 'What? No, it weren't no trouble to clear your son of murder, long as I was clearin' my ownself anyway, glad to do it, sir.' ”

January covered his mouth with his hand, but could not smother his laughter. He finally managed to say, “ 'Sugar mill? What sugar mill?' ” He didn't know why he laughed. It was that, he supposed, or hate the man— and all planters—and all whites—forever.

But his laughter was bitter. Maybe he would hate them anyway. He didn't know.

“Well, if you ever decide you do want to go back to Europe and be a doctor,” said Shaw at length, “I suppose you could go to him and ask for passage. I don't think he'd thank you for it, though.”

At the foot of the Place des Armes along the levee, queer in the livid, soot-dyed glare of the sun, boats were loading with cotton, wines, pineapples, silk, coffles of slaves, and Russian cigarettes. Bound upriver, or out for New York or Philadelphia, for Le Havre or Liverpool. The Boreas, the Aspasia, the Essex, and the Walter Scott. Bound for anywhere but New Orleans.

January thought about it as he walked home.

Two evenings later there was a knock at the door of Livia Levesque's cottage on Rue Burgundy, at the time when the oil lamps above the street were being lit.

Spring heat had settled on the city, and the air was thick with smudges of tobacco and lemon grass, burned to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Livia had spoken over dinner of renting lodgings out on the lake, as the Culvers were already doing and the parents of several others among January's pupils. The French doors were open to the street and to the yard behind the house, so that the rooms all breathed with the smell of that afternoon's light rain and the whiff of crawfish gumbo and red beans. January's shrunken class had taken their leave. In the weeks between Mardi Gras and Easter he'd acquired several new students, who would, he knew, be back in the fall, and one of them at least—a tiny boy named Narcisse Brez6—showed promise of real genius. After the students departed January remained in the parlor, playing the pieces that pleased him, Bach and Haydn and von Weber, letting the music roll from the instrument as dusk gathered in the little cottage and slowly, unwillingly, the day's heat withdrew. In time Hannibal appeared, waxen and shabby as usual—without saying a word about it, Livia had begun including him at her dinner table now that entertainments in the town were growing thin. He unpacked his violin and slipped into accompaniment, the riddle like a golden fish in the dark strong waters of the piano's greater voice: jigs and reels and sentimental ballads, and snatches of melody from the Montmartre cafes that had been popular in Paris two years ago. Dominique came in, and then Livia, simply sitting and listening as the evening deepened and the crickets began to cry.

Livia had just risen to kindle the lamp when the knock came. A hooded woman on the doorstep said, “I heard the piano and knew you had to be home.” The gold light flared and broadened. It was Madeleine Trepagier, discreetly veiled and dressed in a gown of dull-rose dimity beneath her cloak, with Augustus—slim and dapper and inconspicuously dressed, at least inconspicuously for Augustus—at her side.

For the first time since he had left for Paris sixteen years ago, January saw her face in repose, without fear or wariness in the clear brown eyes.

“I came to thank you,” she said, “for all the help that you gave me, and for all that you did.”

January shook his head. “I'd like to say it was my pleasure to aid you,” he said, “but it wasn't. And I was doing it to save my own neck.”

Madeleine smiled. “Maybe,” she said. “But it was my doing that you were put in that position in the first place. And I have your honor to thank that my name never came into it with the police. Your honor, and your belief in me. Thank you.”

She hesitated, looking down at her hands, still standing on the banquette outside the door. Then she raised her eyes to his again. “And I wanted to let you know,” she said, “that Augustus and I are going to be married. By Protestant ceremony,” she added, holding his eyes as his mouth fell open in protest, “up the river in Natchez. But the announcement will appear in the newspapers this week.”

Although he was almost completely certain that no such ceremony would actually take place—Sapphic love being one thing but deliberate profanation of a sacrament quite another—January was still shocked speechless. He looked from her to Augustus, but before he could gather his thoughts Hannibal said, from the parlor behind him, “Good. I'm glad. And since my colleague is too overcome with delight for you both to speak, I hereby volunteer the pair of us to play at your homecoming reception.”

“But . . .” Upon later reflection January wasn't sure what it was about the idea that took him aback— perhaps only the way he had been raised. But Dominique sprang to her feet and rustled in a silvery froufrou of petticoats to his side, to grasp both Madeleine's hands and—after a quick glance up and down the street to make sure they were unobserved—bend from the doorway to kiss her cheeks.

“Darling,” she said, and straightened up. “Now Ben,” she added firmly, “don't get all Creole and high horse. Madame Trepagier married once to please her family, and look what came of it. Even if he's a fencing teacher and hasn't a sou, I think she's entitled to be with the one she loves.”

January looked at them in the gold square of the lamplight, the beaky-nosed, scar-faced sword master and the brown-eyed girl whose teacher he had been. Augustus raised one straight, pale brow.

“If we do not marry, people will begin to talk.”

“Ben's just being stuffy,” snapped Livia from behind him. “Of course a widow can marry whom she pleases. Really, Ben, I'm surprised at you.”

January sighed and bowed his head, fighting a rueful grin. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, Madame—you are entitled to be with whom you love. And I will be most honored to play at your reception.” He hesitated, looking down into her face. More softly, he said, “It might be, you know, that you'd be happier in Paris than here.”

“It might,” said Madame Trepagier, more softly still. “And one day it may come to that. But with all its faults —with my family and the Americans coming in and . . . and all else—New Orleans is my home.”

She lowered the veil to cover her face once more. Their dark forms moved off down the banquette. In the Place des Armes a cannon fired, signaling the curfew for all slaves to be indoors—all men of color, if they had not good proof of their business abroad. The hoot of a steamboat whistle answered it, bound upstream to the American towns that swarmed with the riffraff of Kaintucks and rivermen, or downstream to the coastwise trade with the slave states to the east. In either direction, and not very far off, lay the lands where it mattered even less than here that a man was legally free, if he showed the smallest trace of African descent; where a man could lose all his rights and his liberty—and that of his children—in the time it took a white man to tear up a piece of paper.