Ran Away (37 page)

A man was silhouetted against the daylight, slamming the hatch above him. January fired the pistol at a range of about five feet, and the man jerked back, those around him leaping clear. January burst up out of the hatch, dodged sideways from the inevitable shot and stooped to tear the dying sailor’s knife from his belt.
And a lot of good that’s going to do
 . . . 

Hüseyin Pasha sprang up the companionway and fired –
one of the men at the cell must have had pistols
– at almost point-blank range into the sailors and guards clustered near the aft hatch. A musket ball tore a chunk from the hatch molding inches from January’s chest, and past the milling confusion he glimpsed Sabid, standing on a coil of rope near the mast, reaching for another musket from a man behind him.

‘This way!’ January flung himself at a guard where the crowd was thinnest. He slashed with his knife, heard another pistol close beside him, then Hüseyin was at his side, swinging the empty pistol like a club. Someone grabbed January’s arm, and January turned, punched his assailant with the whole of his force, plunged for the rail. ‘
Jump
!’

He was in the air and headed for the water before he realized that he had no idea whether Rose had been able to locate Natchez Jim or not.

Another shot, and he struck the Mississippi like an arrow.

And thank God the current here’s too strong for gators
 . . . 

He came up, gasping. Musket and pistol balls hit the water around him; men lined the
Najm’s
rail. Sabid’s green coat was not among them.

Hüseyin was swimming strongly toward him, brown stubbled head like a bobbing coconut on the dun-colored waters, fighting the current that swept them both toward the sea.

More shots behind them. January turned and saw the low black hull of the
Black Goose
skimming toward them like a somber Valkyrie, with Rose’s spectacles flashing among the men clustered at the bow.

Crimson banners flickering against the smoke of the burning cane-fields, the
Najm
swung over out of the wind. The massive current of the river carried her downstream, past the landing at Chalmette and away toward the sea.

TWENTY-SEVEN

E
ven with all sails set to the smart wind that blew from the Gulf, it took the
Black Goose
the rest of the short winter day to fight the current back to New Orleans. Wrapped in rather grubby blankets in a corner of the deck, Hüseyin Pasha listened in silence to Bannon’s account of Karida’s reconversion to the religion of her childhood, and of what the Reverend Promise had considered the appropriate destination for money belonging to unbelievers.

‘I should like to think that he meant that gold to go toward the building of his church,’ said the young preacher quietly. ‘That he was merely misguided – culpably, criminally so – rather than simply  . . .  greedy.’ He turned his face away as he said it, looked out across the sugar fields, where the trash of harvest smouldered – leaves, cane tops, weeds – that the ash might nourish next year’s crop. When the
roulaison
was done, the bagasse – the crushed waste of the cane scraped from the grinding wheels – would be raked into huge mounds and fired as well, so that from the levee the whole of the land had the appearance of the sixth circle of Dante’s Hell: Dis, the city of the damned.

‘It didn’t take much for the Reverend Promise to convince Karida to extract the gold from your chest, little by little, over a period of weeks,’ January said, to cover the younger man’s bitter silence. ‘She’d gather whatever she could from Valentine’s yard, while Noura met with Oliver Breche. Maybe Noura had already started this, before she met Breche  . . .’

‘I would not put it past her.’ Hüseyin sighed. ‘I knew it of her, of course – that she was a minx and a schemer. But, she had a vision greater than I realized.’

‘One she could not have accomplished,’ pointed out Rose, ‘in Constantinople.’

‘And perhaps not in America,’ added January. ‘I suspect that if Promise hadn’t killed her for the gold, Breche’s father might well have taken it from her. She planned well: hiding the bricks and shells and clay in a corner of the stable, under the hay, then moving them up a little at a time at night, when your Lady slept under the spell of Breche’s opium.’

‘For that,’ said the Turk softly, ‘I owe him a reckoning. Will she be well? So many ladies of my country fall under that spell. You are a physician, my friend—’

‘Would that I could speak words of reassurance to you, my friend,’ said January. ‘It takes  . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I do not know what it takes. My friend Hannibal the fiddler has not touched it for over a year now, but what his fate will be if his illness reawakens, I don’t know.’

‘Nor can any man.’ The Turk folded those heavy, brutal hands. ‘So we must assume that our ignorance also is the will of Allah. And having robbed me – they put the gold in their own room, did they not, until the night of their escape? – these clever girls had only to fix the night of their leave-taking with this Christian
imam
, whose followers –’ he glanced at the silent Bannon – ‘it seems were as deceived as they.’

‘We won’t know until his house is searched.’ January had resumed his boots, waistcoat, and jacket, but still shivered, for the wind that streamed up from the Gulf was sharp as a knife blade. ‘But yes, I think so. And after he had killed them, and hid their bodies in his house, it was likewise easy for him to arrange that the Sunday meeting of the Protestant slaves should take place in the livery carriage-house, so that he could drive a wagon with the girls’ bodies in it into the yard unnoticed in confusion and darkness. And, of course, Jerry would be at the service. Promise could get Pavot’s key from Sillery and pass through the house with ease. We may never know if the girls told him that their master was meeting with someone Sunday night. But Promise must have learned that you would be wanting your gold and would find that it was gone before he could make arrangements to get it out of Louisiana.’

‘My poor Noura.’ Hüseyin sat silent for a time, staring across the yellow-brown water at the smouldering lines of fire in the darkening afternoon. The steam-packet
Montezuma
, gaining behind them for the past hour, sloshed past in great clouds of smoke and churning of paddles, small figures on the deck pointing at the brightly-painted Creole houses beyond the levee, the keelboats working their way up the banks.

Even as he himself had looked, January remembered, leaning on the rail of the
Duchess Ivrogne
, when he had returned at the end of that cholera summer of 1833. Gazing at the land he had remembered for the sixteen years he’d been in France.

Curious, he thought. For four years now he had recalled as if it were yesterday the day of Ayasha’s death. But only recently had those other memories of Paris stirred to life.

He wondered if Hüseyin Pasha – ten years older than himself – dreamed with similar clarity of the house on the Rue St-Honoré, and of Shamira’s face.

‘And depending on how much Noura told him,’ said Rose softly, ‘or Karida – who sounds like she had a confiding nature – he might even have guessed that Oliver Breche would still be watching the house on Sunday night, desperate for news of Noura, so would be a witness to the supposed murder of the girls.’

‘All the world who knows exactly how an Infidel Turk will behave toward his concubines.’ There was no anger in Hüseyin Pasha’s voice, nor even, January thought, bitterness. Just a deep sadness, that men should be as they are.

It was dark when the
Black Goose
put in at the wharf below the Place des Armes. Hannibal was waiting for them at the Cabildo, and he remained with January and Hüseyin Pasha at Shaw’s desk under the glowering eye of the desk sergeant, while Rose walked over to Auntie Zozo’s coffee stand in the market for a jug of coffee and a dozen slightly stale callas done up in a newspaper, the only thing any of them had had since breakfast. When Rose returned, Shaw was with her, consuming one of the fried rice-balls with sugar all over his fingers.

‘The gold was there, all right,’ he said, and he wiped his hands on the skirts of his jacket, lest it be said that he ate at the same desk as blacks. ‘Close on to a hundred pounds of it, done up in a couple of carpet bags with these.’ From a drawer of his desk he withdrew three necklaces, gold vermeil set with rubies, and two pair of elaborate earrings. ‘There was a couple silk veils there as well,’ he added more quietly. ‘Mrs Hüseyin’s already identified ’em as the girls’.’

‘And will the courts believe this tale,’ asked Hüseyin quietly, ‘with only black men as witnesses?’ His dark glance passed from January to Bannon, and then to Shaw.

‘Oh, they ain’t gonna be allowed even to testify.’ The policeman dug in his pockets for a twisted quid of tobacco, bit off a chunk of it with strong, brown-stained teeth. ‘But the judge for sure will listen to me. An’ we have an affidavit from Mr John Smith – of the newly-formin’ Merchants an’ Citizens Bank of Louisiana – as to how he was with you in your study the night in question, before havin’ to suddenly an’ unavoidably leave town for Philadelphia. The affidavit was swore to by six or seven prominent citizens, many of whom was stockholders in the old Bank of Louisiana, attestin’ that yes indeedy Mr Smith was their representative  . . .  It’s amazin’ what recoverin’ that gold did for peoples’ memories. An’ the Right Reverend Micajah Dunk,’ he added, ‘has hinted to me that he knows dark an’ terrible things about the Right Reverend Doctor Emmanuel Promise – whose real name in Boston was Lemuel Smart – that he might be moved to come forward an’ testify to in open court.’

‘I think there’s a commandment about that,’ warned Hannibal.

‘T’ain’t my business who’s bearin’ false witness against his neighbor,’ returned Shaw. ‘An’ speakin’ of bearin’ false witness, Maestro, Mr Tremmel, upon hearin’ that the Reverend Promise has been locked up in the chokey, recollected that he didn’t see his attacker so very clearly after all t’other night an’ has dropped all charges.’

‘My mother will be crushed,’ said January. He offered the last callas to Bannon, who shook his head, as if he barely saw what was passing in the watch room around him. ‘She has a bet going with her dressmaker that I’ll come to a bad end.’ He handed the confection to Rose, who – knowing how dearly he loved the deep-fried balls of rice and flour – meticulously divided it with him.

Together they crossed the watch room and emerged into the wild, windy dark of the Place des Armes. The chimes on the cathedral clock spoke eight, and through the great doors golden candlelight shone as men and women moved about the confessionals. Mass tomorrow  . . .  January remembered the sailor he’d struck down in the hold of the
Najm
, not knowing if he’d killed him or not. He would have to confess, and be absolved, before partaking of the Host.

Bannon gazed into the church – into the light – with pain and bitter loss in his eyes.

‘What will you do?’ asked January. ‘Are there others in New Orleans willing to sponsor your ministry to the slaves?’

‘Promise was the only one,’ the younger man replied. ‘When I think of the money we raised for him  . . .  money most of them couldn’t spare. The white gentlemen on the Church boards would rather keep slaves where they can see them: in the gallery, or the benches at the back. The white ladies who give money would rather think their
people
, as they call them, are listening to a white man’s teaching, about a white man’s God.
Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward  . . .  For what glory is it if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God
 . . .’

‘Your Bible actually
says
that?’ Hüseyin looked appalled.

‘First Peter,’ assented January.

‘The founder of the Catholic Church,’ said Bannon, without irony. ‘I think I shall go into the countryside,’ he went on, ‘and preach God’s word without a church. Preach it on the plantations, and in the woods. Some of the men I met on the boat this afternoon spoke of preachers who do that. Men of color. Men who don’t really think that the greatest gift God can give a
darky
is to make him white when he gets to Heaven.’

‘You ask Natchez Jim to send someone with you.’ January put a hand on the preacher’s slim shoulder. ‘Until you know your way around, you don’t go alone.’

‘I won’t.’

‘And take these.’ Hannibal dug in his pocket and handed him the little bundle of picklocks. ‘You’ll need them.’

When Bannon had gone on his way, and the four friends turned their steps toward the Rue Esplanade and supper, January asked, ‘Will Sabid return?’ He glanced at Hüseyin Pasha in the dull yellow of a street lamp’s swaying glow. ‘Or will the knowledge that forgery of diplomatic credentials can be proved upon him keep him away?’

‘I fired at him in the thick of the fray on the ship,’ said Hüseyin, ‘and saw him fall. Whether he is dead or living I know not, and I fear I shall not learn until the least convenient time. Yet I think it shall behove me to take this moment of his weakness and see if anywhere in the wide world can hide me from him. My son I shall take with me, for only so can I protect him. If my Lady wife choose not to accompany me, Janvier, may I leave it in your hands to arrange for her return to Constantinople? Or to Paris, or whithersoever she chooses to go?’

‘I will see her safe dispatched,’ promised January. ‘Yet I think, my friend, that she will go with you.’

‘So I hope.’ The Turk sighed and hunched his powerful shoulders against the cold wind. ‘It has been too many years that I have taken her presence for granted, as one takes the air in one’s lungs. Yet I think,’ he went on as the lighted gallery of January’s house took shape in the blackness before them, ‘that I shall have done with concubines. I have not been so fortunate in them, as I have been in my wife.’