Ran Away (20 page)

Quiet enough that, as January stepped through the door, the first thing he heard was a young man’s voice raised in anger. ‘That’s ridiculous! The man murdered them! How can you argue that, having perpetrated so shocking a slaughter upon their innocent bodies, he now has the right to reclaim even their poor sweet flesh for his own foul purposes?’

‘M’sieu,’ sighed Sergeant Boechter, behind his tall desk, ‘those two young women were, in effect, members of M’sieu Hüseyin’s family. I believe that his wife wishes to bury them, not cut them up and serve them to Hüseyin for his dinner.’

‘Listen to yourself!’ The young man before the desk flung up his arms. ‘You pronounce this obscenity, and you don’t even understand what you are saying!’

Beside January, Shaw stopped, his sparse, pale eyebrows drawing down over his gargoyle nose. ‘Well, fancy that,’ he said.

‘How can you give them back to their murderer?’ cried the young man – smallish and plump, with fine light-brown hair already thinning back from his narrow forehead. ‘When I am offering those poor lost souls the resting place in my own family’s tomb?’

January’s eyes met Shaw’s, and his eyebrows raised. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

Shaw nodded. ‘That’s Oliver Breche.’

FIFTEEN

‘
W
ell, now.’ Shaw ambled up behind the young man. ‘That is mighty neighborly of you, Mr Breche.’

Breche’s mouth pursed like a rosebud trying to make a fist. ‘It is only Christian—’

‘But she warn’t a Christian,’ pointed out the Kentuckian. ‘Did you know her?’

‘Well, I – I saw her, of course.’ He was one of the worst liars January had ever seen. The weak blue eyes flinched away from Shaw’s pale gaze, and those soft nail-bitten hands fumbled with each other and then took guilty refuge in his pockets. ‘I prescribed for the Lady Jamilla, and naturally when I came into the house I would see her – I would see them both. Like indigo ghosts on the shadowed loggia—’

His features contracted at the memory of that first glimpse of forbidden beauty. ‘Her eyes met mine above their veils, filled with despair and loneliness; speaking eyes that said a thousand things. Later I would see her at her window, gazing hungrily into the world of the living from which pagan enslavement shut her out. How could any man who
is
a man not pity her? How could any man deny her the single scrap of freedom, that she might at least lie in the tomb of a free woman, rather than be given back to those who had bought her body and her beauty  . . .’

‘That gallery’s near forty feet long,’ remarked Shaw, and he scratched under his hat. ‘Kind of a far piece, to see despair an’ loneliness in somethin’ as little as an eye.’

Breche’s lip curled. ‘I dare say
you
couldn’t recognize them at the distance of a yard. A rich man’s sins always find forgiveness—’

‘If you mean, money has ways of purchasing transgression, sir,’ put in January, with careful diffidence, ‘you are quite right. And curiously enough, I have every reason to believe that the coachman Nehemiah was paid at regular intervals to unscrew the hasp from the service door of the stables—’

Shaw snapped his fingers, like a stage bumpkin suddenly enlightened. ‘You know, January, now you speak of it, I
did
wonder who was bribin’ the man. I thought that jacket he had on looked awful new an’ swell.’

‘Let’s go back and ask him.’ January had wondered if Shaw had observed the newness – and the bespoke fit – of the coachman’s dark-red coat.

Sergeant Boechter had lighted the gas jets behind his desk just in time to illuminate the flush that crept over Breche’s face. ‘And what if I did join her?’ Breche demanded sulkily. ‘What if I did contrive it, that hearts destined for one another could meet? Though we were born on different continents, of different faiths and speaking different languages—’

‘Your father know of it?’ inquired Shaw.

Breche’s round little chin came up. ‘We would have told him.’

‘I’m sure he woulda been thrilled.’

Since one of the few opinions January had heard old Philippe Breche deliver – he avoided the shop, having reason to suspect that the old man adulterated his camphor with turpentine – had been that ‘goddamned Protestant Jews’ should be turned over to the Inquisition, he suspected that the apothecary would not have welcomed a Muslim daughter-in-law, be the circumstances of her rescue never so romantic.

Breche snarled, ‘Much you know about it, American!’ and January, as the lover drew in breath for further observations, asked gently:

‘Did she plan to run away to you?’

‘She did.’ Breche shot a resentful glare at Shaw. ‘Friday night. I waited for her, nearly all night in the shop.’

‘She could get out of Hüseyin Pasha’s house, then?’

The apothecary emitted an angry titter, like a boastful child. ‘Of course! Cupid is a mighty deity, when true hearts love! I’d pay off Nehemiah to let her out that side door that goes into the stable. And Sillery – Mr Valentine’s nigger, from the livery –would unlock the gate to the yard for us, so that we could go in and  . . .  and have a private place to speak.’ He glared at the other men, defying them to read anything but honorable friendship in such trysts.

Given the minimal French of which Noura was capable, January guessed their meetings had little to do with speech, or honorable behavior either. But he knew better than to interrupt this flow of information by saying so.

‘Because of the lamp above the intersection, we didn’t dare even cross the street to the shop, for fear of being seen from the house. It’s just a step, from that service door into Valentine’s yard. She told me there was another way she’d go out on Friday, because she would be carrying her things.’

January’s glance crossed Shaw’s.

‘You got no idea what way?’ asked the Kentuckian, and Breche shook his head.

‘And I take it,’ said January, and he found it an effort to keep the anger out of his voice as he asked, ‘that you’d made sure that the Lady Jamilla’s medicine would keep her from discovering that the girl was slipping out at night?’

The apothecary giggled again. ‘Child’s play! All I had to do was slip a little opium into her medicine, then gradually raise the dose. I know it couldn’t have been she who discovered the escape. No –’ the smugness at drugging an unsuspecting woman vanished in an agony of anxiety again – ‘it must have been
he
, who surprised my beautiful Noura as she fled. All day Saturday I watched their windows, but they were shuttered fast. Imagine my agony! Not knowing, fearing, picturing every horror that I know the Infidels do to women who escape from their harems!’

January longed to ask him where he had the information about what the Infidels did, though he suspected the source was novels of romance. His sister Dominique had a dozen.

‘All Saturday night I watched, my bleeding soul crucified with fear. Then Sunday night, when the rain ceased, as I stood at the window, bending the whole of my heart and my gaze upon that dark house, the glow of a lantern sprang up! The attic window was thrown open, and framed in it I saw the Turk, with Noura’s body in his arms! His face was twisted into an expression of jealous rage, more like a beast’s than a man’s! I cried out in horror as he flung her down, and the next instant he reappeared with the other girl, like a dead butterfly in her veils! As I watched in terror he shrieked a curse upon her and hurled her down as well!’

‘An’ you saw all that,’ marveled Shaw, ‘at a hundred an’ seventy-seven feet, an’ two storeys up from the balcony where you was standin’. An’ heard his curse at that distance in open air.’

‘I did!’ Breche stamped his foot. ‘He learned of her flight and killed her – killed them both! – in jealous rage—’

‘I ain’t sayin’ he didn’t,’ replied Shaw soothingly. ‘An’ if’fn he
did
catch them girls absquatulatin’ in the middle of the night –
with
his wife’s jewelry – he’d have the best of good reasons to be sore-assed about it. All I’m sayin’ is, that rich as he is, he’s gonna bring in a fancy lawyer who’s gonna tear your story apart, so you need to be good an’ clear.
Did you see his face
?’

‘I did.’ Breche’s soft fists clenched. ‘As clearly as I see yours. I know it was he. Who else would wish to kill her – she who was so innocent and beautiful? And why? Only vile jealousy that she would have found love beyond his loathsome clutch!’

‘An’ she never spoke to you of any reason, any other thing that was goin’ on?’

The apothecary shook his head, as if he did not even understand the question. As if there could be nothing else, but what concerned him. ‘It is a cruel world,’ he said after a moment. ‘We were twin souls, Lieutenant Shaw, hearts born for one another, brought together by a miracle. You must grant me what I seek: permission at least to lay my beautiful Noura in the tomb where I myself will one day lie! Where my bleeding heart already lies, waiting for her!’

‘You pusillanimous sons a’ Belial!’ bellowed a voice as three City Guards dragged through the Cabildo doors a powerfully-built Kentuckian whose breath and clothing January could smell across the room. ‘How dare you lay your pussified French hands on a true-born Salt River Roarer!
Wee-hah
! You come on an’ take me if’fn you can! I killed more men than the smallpox—’

‘By breathin’ on ’em,’ muttered Shaw, and he strode toward the melee that ensued just within the doors.

Breche’s grief disappeared in an expression of disgust, and he moved toward the doors as well, keeping his distance from the affray.

January followed. ‘One more question, sir, if you will? When you would meet with the Lady Noura, did her friend ever come with her? The Lady Karida?’

Breche made an impatient gesture at what he clearly regarded as a side issue to his bleeding heart. ‘I think so. Sometimes.’

‘Do you have any idea what she did, while you and the Lady Noura spoke together –’ he congratulated himself on sounding like he actually believed these encounters had been platonic – ‘in the stable yard?’

‘She kept watch.’ Breche’s self-evident tone led January to suspect that this was another piece of fable gleaned from romances. ‘Kept guard on the door, lest we be discovered.’

Which would make more sense, January reflected, in a country where girls weren’t perfectly free to come and go once they stepped outside  . . .  And in circumstances where they didn’t have the coachman Nehemiah on hand to act as lookout.

They both stepped quickly back as the True-Born Salt River Roarer hurled one of his captors sprawling past them, yanking – as the man went flying – the cutlass from the constable’s belt. The other Guards leaped clear of the now-armed prisoner, and Shaw – timing his swing precisely – stepped in around the slash of the blade and caught the keelboatman a punch on the jaw that lifted the man’s feet from the floor. January guessed the prisoner was unconscious before he hit the flagstones. He certainly put up no kind of fight as Shaw relieved him of his weapon.

When January turned back to speak to Breche, he saw the man had moved away toward the Cabildo doors, where he had been intercepted by the fat, protective form of Burton Blodgett.

Shaw saw this also, swore as only a Kaintuck could, and made a move to intercept them. But one of the Guards yelled, ‘Get him in the cells before he comes around!’ and Shaw glanced back. And in that moment, Blodgett put a plump arm over Breche’s shoulders.

‘My dear Mr Breche, you must forgive my eavesdropping, but the tale you told wrings my heart! Depend upon it, the
True American
will not rest until this terrible wrong has been righted  . . .’

Together, the two men stepped out into the rainy dusk.

Since the portions of the Cabildo which had been piped for gas lighting over the past few years did not include the makeshift morgue beneath the stairs, January arranged with Shaw – when the Kentuckian returned from bestowing the True-Born Salt River Roarer in the cell allotted to white men – to come back early in the morning and examine the bodies of the dead girls.

Six o’clock was striking from the Cathedral as he crossed the Place des Armes. The rain had ceased, but masses of clouds stirred above the bare branches of the pride of India trees on the levee, and the wind smelled of more rain to come. When January reached his house, it was to find Rose in the workroom over the kitchen – which in more prosperous times had served as a classroom – engaged in a long and complicated experiment involving sulfur, soda, and arsenic, and his niece Zizi-Marie in the kitchen itself, looking after Baby John. Gabriel, January’s fourteen-year-old nephew, was making dinner, something he could do with considerably better results than either Rose or Zizi-Marie.

Hard times being what they were, January had contracted with his sister Olympe – whose upholsterer husband hadn’t worked since March – to take her two older children into his household, relieving Rose of a good deal of household drudgery and Olympe of the necessity of feeding two extra mouths.

Hard times being what they were, January’s acquisition of five hundred dollars in hard silver – wages for risking his life over the summer – meant that, with most banks in the city either closed or issuing nothing but paper, it was better to have a few more people in the house at all times, other than Rose and the baby. In that fall of 1837, New Orleans had suddenly become filled with men who were very interested in who had money in their houses, and January was well aware how swiftly word got around. The owners of every grocery knew who paid their bills and who was living on rice, beans, and credit; every man who sold hay, or coal, or candles had a slave or two who had nothing better to do than keep his or her ear to the ground. Gangs that had previously only worked the docks – stealing cargoes or trunks or a hog or two – now found themselves obliged to extend their field of toil to houses as well.
Hell, they got SOME silver in their house, an’ I got none
 . . . 

In addition to Gabriel and Zizi-Marie – on cold evenings like this the kitchen was by far the most comfortable place in the house – January found a young man named Willie, who was currently acting as a sort of sous-chef for Gabriel, cleaning bones, feet, and feelers from the pint or so of mixed fish and shellfish that lay on a couple of sheets of newspaper on the table. ‘Dinner be ready in ten minutes, Mr J,’ said Willie, in English, which was all he spoke. ‘I set the table, just like a fancy butler, an’ I go fetch Miss Rose the minute you say.’