Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard (27 page)

And this, apparently, was all anyone in America remembered about the chain of events that had opened the way for Napoleon Bonaparte's dictatorship and twenty five years of the bloodiest and most violent endemic warfare Europe had ever known. In Paris, January had talked to the survivors of those days-his landlady among them-and knew that the various garbled and politicized accounts in circulation in the New World were very far from the truth. He knew, too, that every party involved in the chaos of old-style Revolutionaries versus moderates versus Jacobins versus Bonaparte versus Louis XVIII versus the House of Orleans-the dead King's self-serving cousins who had subsequently grabbed the throne-had at one time or another taken refuge in New Orleans, that pocket-sized version of la France d'outre-mer.

So only a woman who had been paying attention to nothing for the past thirty-five years but the size of her bank balance and the social status of those who greeted her on the street would have even considered issuing sevcral hundred invitations to a “private party” in celebration of Bastille Day.

Benjamin January duly presented himself at the back door of the Redfern summer mansion on Rome Square in Milneburgh as the sun was setting on the fourteenth, in company with nearly every other first-rate musician in town: Mrs. Redfern did nothing that she did not overdo. The marble-topped buffet tables in the dining room groaned with joints and saddles of ham and beef on expensive platters of pink-and-gold Meissen, remoulades of mushrooms, peach flan and wine ices, crepes, vol-au-vents, artichoke hearts, and pates a fItalienne. Red, white, and blue bunting transformed the ballroom into something that more closely resembled a rally for the recent election. Cornucopias of flowers vied with the scents of floor wax, tobacco, and the stink of the gas lamps overhead.

“I'll be very curious,” remarked Hannibal, sipping the watered lemonade that was the only refreshment permitted the musicians in their penitential sweatbox of a parlor off the main ballroom, “to see who actually shows up for this affair.” He produced a flask of Black Drop from his pocket and doctored first his lemonade and then himself. It was the first time in two days, January knew, that he'd been on his feet.

“Not a Frenchman in the city, I'll wager.” Cochon Gardinier picked a wafer-thin slice of bread from the platter on the table and examined it with pained indignation, as if he had been offered a fragment of napkin on which to sustain himself.

“Thy son asked thee for bread, and thou gavest him a stone,” provided Hannibal helpfully. “I've seen larger visiting cards, myself.”

“And tastier ones.”

“Well, you're both wrong about the Frenchmen, anyway.” Jacques Bichet slipped in from an exploratory ramble and a chat with La Redfern's servants. “The guests are starting to arrive, and you know who the first one was through the door? Mathurin Jumon.”

“Mathurin jumon?”The others stared at him.

“But his mother was one of the Queen's ladies in waiting,” January said. “Her family's fortune was destroyed by the Revolution.”

“His mother's not with him, is she?” asked Uncle Bichet, looking up from tuning his violoncello. “It's only once in a month of Sundays he's out without her some where around, but I've seen her make him cross over the street so as not to talk to a Bonapartiste. Hell, she won't give but two fingers to the most virtuous Orleaniste on earth.”

“So what's he doing here?”

“He isn't wearing a mask, by any chance?” inquired Hannibal facetiously. “I mean, every Bonapartiste and Revolutionary in town is going to see him, not to speak of the Americans.”

“Interesting,” remarked January thoughtfully, “that he took the trouble to be the first to arrive.” He walked out into the narrow hall, and opened the little door into the ballroom just a crack. Past a screen of potted ferns, Mrs. Redfern stood in the columned triple arch of the main doorway to the vestibule, and in the absence of any other guest-it was a good twenty minutes short of the nine on the invitations-was chatting with Jumon. January had seen an almost exact replica of her dress last month in Dominique's latest edition of Le Petit Courier des Dames. The winglike projections over the enormous gauze sleeves were the very newest mode. She must have had it made up, in lace-trimmed sable bombazine, in the past three weeks.

“Yes,” murmured Hannibal. “He's one of the prizes, as far as she's concerned. He must want very much to impress her, and coming this early is the only way he can get credit on her books for being here without meeting anyone who'll peach to Mama.”

The two men regarded one another for a moment, baffled. “Madame Redfern? I knew about Vilhardouin courting her, but . . .”

“He wasn't interested in her as of the Pritchard party,” pointed out January. “And why would he need to hang out for a rich widow? His mother's expenses aside, he's a wealthy man. There he goes.”

With almost preternatural timing, Jumon wandered from the ballroom as Madame Redfern turned to greet the next guests in the doorway: Hubert Granville and his wife, followed almost at once by the lovestruck Orell Greenaway, who immediately took charge of Mrs. Redfern's fan, presented his dance card to her for inscription (“To sit them out with you, Madame, and bear you company.”) and empurpled the surrounding air with compliments. It was unlikely that she noticed Jumon was no longer in the room.

“Business?” speculated Hannibal, as they returned to the parlor to collect their music. “La Redfern is one of the wealthiest women in the city these days.”

“He sold at least one of his brother's slaves at the beginning of the month, maybe more. With the price of slaves these days he can't possibly be hard up.”

Nearly a dozen new guests were in the ballroom when the musicians took their places and began to play, light airs from last season's operas, ballads and etudes, a soft fill behind the chatter of voices in the big, overly decorated room. Mathurin Jumon did not reappear. There was talk among the men of business and the election, of the Bank and of tight money and slow times, while the women discussed the cut of gowns and how to keep servants from stealing and, worse, spying; and as before, as always in New Orleans, the ballroom split along a distinct linguistic frontier.

Familiar after nineteen months with the politics of French New Orleans, January easily identified the Creoles who turned up as either the old-time radicals like Hilaire Morel, the owner of the Cafe Venise, or Bonapartistes like the Widow Langostine and Judge Laverge, who immediately got into arguments with the radicals over whose fault it was that the Revolution failed and those execrable Orleaniste swine ended up on the throne. The only Orleaniste in sight was Clement Vilhardouin. The lawyer complimented Madame Redfern on her efforts to reconcile the Creole community and unobtrusively found reasons to sit closer to her than Orell Greenaway did.

“You know Michie Jumon, that was the first one here tonight?” January asked Madame Redfern's housemaid, in the kitchen during the brief break after the fifth dance. The housemaid, whose name was Claire, nodded. January had a chatting acquaintance with her from meetings both here and at the market, and liked the woman.

“Big man with the pearl in his neckerchief?” Claire's hands moved quickly as she spoke, arranging on an enormous tray ring after ring of peach tartelettes. A Protestant from Virginia, she'd been slow to make connections among the largely Catholic slaves in town, and though she was less lonely now than she had been, she still counted January as one of her first friends. “He's sitting in the library. Gaspar just took him coffee there, not five minutes ago.”

Obviously a man who didn't intend to let Jeanne Françoise Langostine-one of the worst gossips in the Creole community-carry tales back to Madame Cordelia.

“Could you do me a favor, Miss Claire?” said January quietly. “Now and then and only if you have the time, could you check on what he's doing there and who he sees? My sister's housemaid heard this Michie Jumon was going to sell off her cousin. It's got her nearly crazy thinking it would be to some broker or dealer. Don't put yourself out-I understand you're gonna be run off your legs tonight-but if you've got a moment and can find out without causing yourself trouble, I'd appreciate it.”

Claire smiled warmly. “I'll do what I can, Mr. January.”

“Thank you, Miss Claire. It's all any of us can do.” He returned to the ballroom, trying vainly to work the ache out of his shoulders and arms, and swung into a light valse brillante, perhaps the only thing that kept the banker Linus Rowling from calling out the stoutly Jacksonian slave dealer Jim Pratt-the two men were already visibly squaring off with their friends, who at the first bars of the music were hauled from the field of combat by their wives and fiancees, leaving the principals feeling rather silly. At the same time, however, the attorney Vilhardouin stepped between Mr. Greenaway and Madame Redfern, upon whom Greenaway was advancing with hand outstretched for the third time that evening. Over the music-and through his own concentration on timing and lilt January couldn't hear what was said, but he could guess from Vilhardouin's gestures that it concerned scoundrels and fortune-hunters who showed up early to force their attentions on a woman in mourning. Granville and the Reverend Dunk separated the two men, but Hannibal said in an undervoice, “Twenty-five cents says Vilhardouin calls Greenaway out before supper.”

“And this twenty-five cents is going to come from which wealthy aunt's legacy?” inquired January, and the fiddler laughed.

“A jitney, then.”

“Done.”

“It does my heart good to see the French community extending the hand of friendship to the Americans,” intoned Reverend Dunk, clapping Vilhardouin on the back. “It truly goes to prove, does it not, that we are all brothers in liberty?”

Vilhardouin, whose family vineyards in Bordeaux had been wiped out by Napoleon's wars, cast an eye at Madame Redfern and managed the sour rictus of a smile.

By the time Claire Brunet managed to relay a message to January, the news was old. January watched the men as they came and went, and none was gone for a longer period of time than was required to relieve themselves, or else they departed in groups and came back smelling of cigars. But Orell Greenaway came close to causing a jealous scene when Madame Redfern vanished for close to half an hour; only Vilhardouin's return in company with Colonel Pritchard during that period kept him from sallying forth to trap the supposed lovers: “Don't be an ass, man,” growled Granville. “She probably just tore her petticoat. My wife does that all the time.”

But Madame Redfern came back, not in company with a woman friend and flounce repairer, but with her business manager, an anthropomorphized weasel named Fraikes, rubbing his hands and looking pleased with himself. “Six seventy-five is a good price, Madame, a very good price indeed.”

“I didn't hear who they was talkin' of selling, Mr. January,” said Claire, coming to the door of the wretched little musicians' parlor during the next period of rest.

“But Mr. Fraikes, he paid over money to Mr. Jumon right away, in cash, hard money, that I guess Mrs. Redfern's about the only person in town who has it these days. But Gaspar tells me they talked about selling `him' and sending `him' over in the morning, so it couldn't have been your cousin, could it?”

“No,” said January, infusing voice and expression with all the gratitude he could counterfeit. “No, it isn't. Thank you, Miss Claire. Thank you so much.”

“It isn't as if the money were all tied up in a family plantation still,” mused Hannibal, after she'd gone. By common consent the other musicians had arranged the room's three chairs in a line for the fiddler to lie down on, and Jacques had fetched a wet cloth from the kitchen to lay over his eyes. Hannibal had grown paler throughout the evening, fighting the racking cough; the first thing he'd done when out of the ballroom was cough until he could barely stand.

He took a swig of opium, made as if to take another and then changed his mind, and replaced the bottle. “When they sold up the land I imagine both Laurence and Mathurin got a share of cash, to invest in town property, which is what Laurence left to Isaak. Granted, most of the slaves probably still belong to Cordelia, but Jumon can't need money so desperately that he curries favor with a social climber like La Redfern for the sake of six hundred and seventy-five dollars. Can he?”

“I don't know,” said January, and slipped back into his coat and gloves. “Once more into the breach, dear friends-It's certainly something,” he added, helping Hannibal to his feet, “that I plan to find out.”

“Jumon is selling up, all right.” Augustus Mayerling extended a long-fingered hand out sideways to the length of his arm, rather like a very well dressed scarecrow in a vest of gold Florentine silk, the sleeves of his white linen shirt rolled halfway up forearms of sinew and rope. “And turn . . . touch my hand. Touch my hand. Smooth, smooth. . . . No, without moving your hips touch my-so!”

January straightened his body again, sweating and panting but triumphant. Three weeks ago he had barely been able to lift the weighted beam to his shoulders; a few weeks before that, unable to raise so much as a filled cup. Now, although the movement left him aching, he could swing and maneuver the seven-foot rod at most of the targets the fencing master set him.

Early sunlight just clearing the roofs of Maspero's Exchange and the Destrehan town house slanted through the long windows of the Salle d'Armes, thrown open to catch whatever cool remained of the dawn. Even at this hour the air smelled of burnt gunpowder and sewage; a woman down in Exchange Alley sang drearily of the virtues of soap. Farther off, a steamboat whistle hooted. Another day. The last before Olympe's trial began.

“Madame Redfern, as you heard, bought not only Mathurin Jumon's personal valet Claude, but a matched carriage-team of white horses, very expensive, for cash money I am told.” Mayerling extended his other hand, cold pale sherry-colored eyes watching with scientific exactness the play of January's bare shoulder muscles as he turned to touch the target now here, now there. “The matter was discussed last night at the Cafe Venise. Hilaire Morel, you understand, gossips like a schoolgirl and says that Americans know nothing of true Revolution-and Athanase de Soto, a pupil of mine, said that Monday afternoon he met Jumon in Milneburgh before the Redfern fete and purchased ten head of Jumon's cattle, apparently for something less than they were worth.”