Rebels of Babylon (29 page)

Now, I have little patience with clairvoyance, which I regard as no more than a parlor trick. I will admit to experiences of mine own which defy clear explanation, but on that count I agree with Mick Tyrone, who insists that the march of knowledge will soon conquer every aspect of our bewilderment. But New Orleans is hardly a place subject to science. The city celebrates each quirk and queerness, and you cannot move forward in the place if you demand to deal only with the rational inhabitants. They are a small minority, at best, like the Jains of India.

Anyway, I did not need Madame La Blanch to peer into my future, but only to help me locate Queen Manuela—who, for all her mystery, seemed a creature of flesh who lived among us.

“The address is in the Quarter, I believe?”

Mr. Barnaby nodded. “Everything what matters hides in the
Vieux Carré
.”

MADAME LA BLANCH looked up from her soiled cards.

“Forgive my
deshabille,
Major Jones,” she said. “I expected you this morning and had given you up en
tirely
when you failed to appear with that promptitude for which you have become so famous among us. Indeed, sir, I had begun to fear the failing of my powers …”

“Afternoon, mum,” I said, near choking on the scent that clouded the room. I might have been in the den of a Hindoo
fakir.
The untidiness made me careful of where I dropped my hat.

I was not much surprised at her knowledge of my identity. Anyone who poses as a clairvoyant must have abundant sources
of information. Likely, some darky from Mr. Champlain’s establishment had warned her that I might come searching for Queen Manuela.

“And Mr. Barnaby! Our Galahad!” She smiled gaily. “Or should I say, ’Our Gawain?’ How
dread
fully long has it been, sir?”

“Pleasure to see you again, Madame La Blanch,” my companion told her. “You ain’t aged a day, I swears, and you looks as smacking ’andsome as you ever did.”

The woman, got up in fraying frills, returned her attention to me. “Mr. B. is
ever
the gentleman. I always say that there is no man from here to Natchez knows how to honor a woman the way an English gentleman does! But really, Mr. B., I see right here in the seven of hearts that you have a most pressing errand! Don’t you worry a bit, now. Your friend is in good hands.”

Saying that, she took my right hand in hers so deftly that my cane clattered off the table’s edge, coming to rest where the furniture met the wall. The woman drew me artfully into a seat cat-corner from hers.

“Lovely, lovely,” Mr. Barnaby added as he took himself back through the door and into the street.

Now, “lovely” seemed to me an exaggeration. The woman before me did not look unmarred by the years, nor born to provide a special delight to the eyes. Yet, there was something about her that pleased, I grant her. You could not have told her age exactly, but the odder thing by half was that she made me recall what Mr. Barnaby had said of his own wife, that those admiring her saw what they themselves expected to see.

Like her age, her race was indeterminate.

I thought her likely a white woman, tawnied by some Spanish blood or simply French-complected. But I remained uncertain. She might have been one of those quadroons of whom so much is rumored, or even a proper negress painted pale by the quirk of an ancestor’s affections. Her hair was black, but smooth in its plaits and cylinder curls, not made of negro felt. I thought her hair must be dyed to assert such an indigo, but could not judge
with confidence. Her eyes were green, but edged with brown, and might have belonged to any race on earth.

Nor were her features written in clear ancestry. Rounded and turned up, her nose might have come of a negress dam, or from an Irish sire. Her forehead was nigh akin to Mr. Shakespeare’s in that old plate a fellow sees, and such brows are not African, I do not think. Yet, her lips were full to an excess. They might have belonged to a princess of the Niger, or to a Welsh lass from the streets of Brecon. She looked pleasant, but not guileless.

Some peculiar force in her femininity did not allow me to draw my hand from her grasp.

“Madam La Blanch, I—”

She raised a finger to her lips, then laid a second hand upon my one, turning it over to expose my palm.

Tracing the highways and lanes of flesh with a fingernail, she smiled, parting rich lips. “You will live a long and happy life, although you will not realize how happy you have been until it is too late. You find discontents where others discover joy. You wish to have faith, but your faith is weaker than you pretend. What you call love of God is fear of the devil. And your devil wears human flesh. Like your own. You were born to doubt, which fits you to your work. But your heart is true and good, better than your temper. With the years, all these things will become easier for you, the fears will soften. You will learn joy, despite yourself. But you have no gift for stillness. Peace will elude you each time you think you have gained it. Few women love you, but those love without stinting. They would die for you. One has.”

She looked at me. Smiling.

“She watches over you still,” the woman continued.

I stood up. Abruptly. Tearing my hand free.

“This is nonsense,” I said. A bit too loudly.

Her smile indulged me. “But of course it is! Mere webs of gossamer. You and I realize that, Major Jones. But I rely upon your honor as a gentleman not to give out my secret.”

“I—”

“Sit down, sir. Please. You need not grant me your hand again. I fear I was forward. We’re not so proper about such things as you Northern folk. Although we do love our social frills and fripperies. Our ceremonials, as they say. But you came to inquire about a certain person’s whereabouts, not to indulge my silliness.”

I sat down. Although my heartbeat had quickened to a throb and I wished to flee.

“What a strong man you are!” she said. “Every report I have had is true, sir! You must be an absolute pillar to your dear wife. And your son and daughter must positively a
dore
you!” She read my face and asked, “But have I erred? You
do
have a little boy and an infant girl, do you not?”

The queer thing was that I could not say. My darling’s letters, so long underway, had contained news of the past. I could not speak for the present.

These people learn infernal tricks, see. Like gypsies. Or gamblers who make their living from cards and dice. They know a hundred ways to read a man, to cheat him and beguile him.

“But I must re
strain
myself,” the woman said. “I promised that we should play no more of my silly, little games. After all, Major Jones, you’re a gentleman of importance, with pressing business. Not some poor little merchant’s wife in search of titillation.”

“I’m given to understand that you might help me contact Queen Manuela,” I told her.

Her eyes scorched me. Fair flaming they were. But only for an instant.

“We do not speak that name,” she said, quietly but sternly.

“But—”

“You must
not
speak that name.”

She allowed our eyes to meet again. Or should I say that her eyes forced mine to show themselves? She had her proper tricks, did Madame La Blanch.

“I am only trying to help,” I said. My tone was almost child-like. “The murders …”

“Are you brave enough?” she asked. Her voice had dropped in pitch, as if her new and unexpected gravity had weighed it down.

Twas not a ladylike question to put to a man.

“Brave enough for what, mum?”

“To help.” There was no change in the light of the room, but her eyes gathered a shadow around themselves. All I could see were the burning spots in their centers. “To do what must be done. To fight the friend who is a foe and recognize the foe who is a friend. To face the coming fire.”

That seemed a mumbo-jumbo. I told her, “It is my duty to do the things that need doing in these matters. As for bravery, mum, others must judge.”

“Are you brave enough to meet
her?
At the time when she calls you, at the place to which she beckons?”

“If you mean Queen—”

She slapped her hand over my lips with so much force it stung me. And my jaw was none too happy to begin with. The lingering ache reminded me of the swelling of my face, the tightened skin, the discoloration that had greeted me in the mirror.

“Never speak that name again. It’s very powerful. Too powerful for you. Even your best spirits could not protect you.”

Of a sudden, my patience quit me. I am a Christian man and had already had too much to do with deviltry and shenanigans. New Orleans was a city of the damned. Or at least of those who did not dread damnation.

“You will excuse me, mum,” I told her. “Excuse the interruption. I have been mistaken in calling.”

I rose, took up my cane and put on my hat. But as I laid my hand on the doorknob, the woman said, “You’ll let Magdalena die? You care nothing about the Fishers of Men? Or who killed your Miss Peabody? You’re as false as the other men who wear blue uniforms?”

“I COULD PLACE you under arrest,” I warned her. And I gave that action more than a passing thought.

Although I am a man of no great intelligence, I am not a fool on the order of Captain Bolt. I had seen with the suddenness of a shot how this woman had come to know so much about me. Doubtless, she had gained access to my letters before they reached my own hands. Those pages contained more than enough detail for her to spin a web of secret knowledge. I intended to give that hotel clerk a talking to.

“If you don’t tell me what you know,” I continued, “I can put you under lock and key. Until you think better of your behavior, mum.”

The woman looked at me with the confidence of a saint on the Day of Judgement.

“Sit down, Major Jones. Please. Sit for a moment and calm yourself. I only wish to help you. Pray understand that.
She
possesses the answers, not me. Madame La Blanch only has the question she reads in your heart. If
she
won’t speak to you … if
she
decides not to trust you … there’s nothing I can do. Even if you send me off to some frightful Northern prison. Which I cannot believe that you, as a gentleman, would even consider.”

She smiled, an aging flirt, and gave me time to weigh my course of action. For the first time, I looked around me properly. As if she had suddenly granted me permission to inspect her narrow parlor and its contents.

Now, I am a good observer, as a rule. Yet, until that moment, I could only have made my report of the woman’s person and her words, adding that she owned a deck of cards and worked in squalor.

What I saw around me was laughable. Shelves rose half the distance to the ceiling, crowded with unmatched bottles, their contents protected by ancient corks or bits of rag in their necks. Gewgaws of the sort a butcher’s wife buys on holiday crowded against reptiles ill preserved, withered and shrunken. A bust of Napoleon with the nose broken off was hung with cheap glass beads and trinket necklaces. The walls were covered with pictures
torn from illustrated weeklies, Niagara Falls, table rappers, a fellow I believe was Garibaldi, and scenes of exotic climes. A hand-colored portrait of Jesus Christ hung beside a lurid sketch of some jungle god. The latter’s frame was draped with wilting flowers. Words had been lettered on the wall, in black paint and in green, their meanings as inscrutable as the spelling was irregular. Hostile to fresh air and light, the whole place wanted sweeping out and scrubbing.

When my eyes returned to the mistress of the clutter, I found her smile unchanged.

“Mr. Barnaby will be waiting for you outside,” she told me. “Please do send him in to me. As you leave. Unless, sir, you have decided to arrest me. In which case, his call would be superfluous.”

“I am not going to arrest you.”

She stood up. As a gentleman, I was forced to mirror her action.

“Then send in Mr. Barnaby. I will give him instructions. On matters that would be meaningless to you.”

Her smile declined, then disappeared entirely.

“THIS IS UNSPEAKABLE!” I TOLD MR. BARNABY.

He looked nonplussed as he sat on my dismayed bed. The fellow was trying to assist me, passing on his instructions from Madame La Blanch. But the proposition rankled. All the more since I knew I must accept it.