Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard (47 page)

In fact, the practice of voodoo varies even today. Some practitioners do it one way, some do it another, not to mention the plethora of tourist voodoo and of fakes and cheats to rip off the unwary and credulous. Even in Haiti, where voodoo is more or less an organized faith, it is a patchwork of personal interpretations of gods, rites, and emphasis.

All of the above-and the fact that nobody attempted anything remotely resembling an organized and unprejudiced study of voodoo until almost a hundred years after my story takes place-make it extremely difficult to present a picture of what voodoo was, or must have been like, in the summer of 1834.

I've done the best I can. I've tried to remain true to what sincere practitioners of voodoo have told me about ceremony and possession, but I am sure there are others who do it very differently. Excellent books exist about the history, and the current practices, both of voodoo as a religion and about African sorcery. There are voodoo shops-or shops catering to Santeria and other West African-based New World religions-in most big cities of the Western Hemisphere, and large segments of the population follow the practices of these faiths.

Likewise, it is difficult to get any kind of straight story about Marie Laveau-and the fact that her daughter was also named Marie Laveau, and also became “Voodoo Queen” of New Orleans (leading to tales of eternal youthfulness) does not make investigation any easier. My goal, as always, has been simply to entertain without doing violence to the truth of former times. One can buy voodoo candles in nearly any supermarket or drugstore in New Orleans, and the priests of the Church of Our Lady of Guadeloupe-formerly the mortuary Chapel of St. Antoine-still regularly find slices of pound cake or bits of money at the feet of a certain statue in the back of the church.

CREOLES

One of the problems about writing a historical novel (or any other kind, for that matter) is that once you've said a thing, there it is in print for better or worse.

It's been pointed out to me by a research specialist in the Jacksonian period that my source for the way the word “Creole” was used in that time and place was incorrect (although the source seemed pretty authoritative at the time). In both A Free Man of Color and Fever Season I've said that in the 1830s “Creole” meant “white descendant of French or Spanish colonists” only; in fact, the word was used in contemporary documents to describe the free colored as well.

All I can do is apologize for my goof and promise to correct it in future Benjamin January novels, and future editions of the existing novels, should I be so fortunate as to have them. Thank you for your forgiveness and forbearance.

BARBARA HAMBLY attended the University of California and spent a year at the University of Bordeaux, France, obtaining a master's degree in medieval history. She has worked as both a teacher and a technical editor, but her first love has always been history. Ms. Hambly lives in Los Angeles with two Pekingese, a cat, and another writer. She has just completed the fourth Benjamin January novel, Sold Down the River.