Barbara Hambly - 04 Sold Down the River

Hannibal gestured grandly back at the arcade, took one step in the direction of Shaw and January standing in the doorway, then collapsed in a laudanum-smelling heap.

Across the Place d'Armes the Belle Dame's whistle brayed. Above the square, the cathedral's clock spoke its ten slow chimes.

"Good luck," said Shaw, without irony, and shook January's hand.

January glanced from the unconscious Hannibal across to Fourchet, bellowing down at his new butler, and his stomach tightened. He shoved the last folded bandanna into his pocket, pulled on his gloves, and went to hoist Hannibal bodily to one shoulder, as if he were a sack of meal.

Bending his knees he picked up the portmanteau-his own, in fact, for whatever luggage the consumptive Hannibal had once possessed had been sold years ago to purchase opium or medicine-and, thus burdened, crossed the square to the gangplank. A number of the gentlemen on the canopied hurricane-deck pointed at January and laughed, assuming not unreasonably that this was his assigned job in life: to carry his master's luggage and, when necessary, his master. But glancing up he saw Fourchet gazing down at him with contempt in his eyes.

It was long past dark when they reached Mon Triomphe, and January would have given much-if not quite everything he possessed-to go back to yesterday afternoon and refuse to undertake the journey. Last night's dream returned to him again and again: the staggering shadow that stank of liquor, the sweat of terror at the sound of the whip. Always before he'd waked from this dream to reassure himself, It can't happen to me now. I'm free.

He'd installed Hannibal in his bunk in the men's cabin, drawn the curtain, and gone out in quest of the galley, praying that when the fiddler came to he'd be in possession of enough of his senses to recall the story they'd concocted the night before.

The Belle Dame, like many of the newer boats on the river, was long and narrow. The galley, situated between the men's cabin and the women's, was barely more than a hall. The saloon up front, which doubled as a dining room, was like the lobby of a modest hotel: worn Turkey carpets on the floor, tables of dark oak, men playing short whist or vingt-et-un. By the murmuring voices, January gathered there were few Americans on board. Thank God for small favors, anyway, he thought. The last thing he needed in his current frame of mind was to have his fellow passengers bidding on him all afternoon.

"Will you need help with him?" Fourchet's new butler was already in the galley, fitting out a tray to take around to one of the vessel's two minuscule staterooms. His neatly gloved hands trembled as he arranged the simple china cup and saucer, the small coffeepot and dish of sugar lumps, the napkin and spoon and the plate of buttered pastries; the flesh around his eyes was swollen with tears. Where had she gone, that tall plump woman in her bright dress, after the boat was poled and pushed from the wharf? How would she get through the remainder of her day? "Thank you, sir, no." January remembered to slur his words and drop the endings, like the field hands did, a mode of speech that had been thrashed out of him by his teachers when he was eight. He had a clear mental picture of the man he was supposed to be, a field hand taken from the quarters and put in charge of the feckless scion of a wealthy family, simply because he was big and loyal and not terribly bright. The kind of slave it would be natural to offer to one's host to help with the harvest, and the kind of man who would accept the change of status without fuss. "Least I knows where his medicine is," he added, and accepted the coffeepot, the cup and saucer, the horn spoon that the Belle Dame's cook gave him, and set them on the tray carelessly, any old how, as he'd seen scullery maids do in the big Paris households where he'd played at balls or taught piano to children.

And like the upper cooks in those Parisian kitchens, the butler Baptiste corrected and tidied the layout, though unlike the French cooks he asked politely, "May I?" and then, "This your regular job, sir?"

January threw a note of helplessness into his voice. "No, sir. Abraham-that's Michie Georges's cook-does trays and such mostly." And let's remember, he told himself grimly, that Michie Georges is Hannibal's imaginary wealthy father-in-law and Abraham's the cook, next time you have to produce names of the household you come from.

"Line up the spoon with the side of the tray like this." The round, neat little hands made their adjustments without impatience or condescension. "Bowl goes down, not up, so everyone can see the monogram if there is one. Cup right in the center, pot here. They like things to look nice." "They blessed well better look nice for Michie Fourchet." The doorway darkened with the tall slim form of Fourchet's valet. The man's livery was foppishly neat, dark cravat tied in a severe little bow and thin black curls pomaded smooth. The valet ran a critical eye over both trays and nodded, just a tiny motion, to himself, as if sorry there was nothing to correct. "Any little thing sets him off forks and knives not aligned, one curtain shut an inch more than the other. Anything. He beat your predecessor unconscious once for having dirty sleeves, when he'd told him himself to dust the ledgers in his office. So keep your buttons polished and your linen spotless." He glanced at January, sizing him up with that dark sardonic eye: his size, his clothing, the way he'd spoken, the way he held himself-awkward and a little shy, as if fully conscious of the superiority of the two house-servants and even the steamboat's slovenly cook. Then he turned back to Baptiste. "You'd better get that up to him." "I will do that, M'sieu Cornwallis." The valet walked away. "Thank you, sir," said January, as Baptiste picked up his tray.

The butler took a deep breath, nodded, and went out to do his first service for his master. The cook, looking through the door after Cornwallis's erect figure, said, "Damn Protestant Kaintuck nigger," and went back to the preparation of lunch.

Carrying his own tray back to the men's cabin-a journey that involved sidestepping crated dry goods, barrels of blankets and calico, boxes of spermaceti candles, decanters packed in straw, a small pile of pigs of lead, and a dozen trunks stacked on the deck January reflected on the fact that the cook, whom the valet obviously scorned for being of almost certainly pure African descent and menial employment, should look down on the valet for his Virginia accent and the religious preferences that accent implied.

During January's childhood, Fourchet had never bothered to convert his slaves. Even the house-servants had only the thinnest veneer of Christianity. St.-Denis Janvier had seen to his religious instruction as well as his education, and January remembered clearly being cautioned about the evils and ignorance of Protestants, a rarity in those days. Since his return he'd been conscious of how many American slaves were coming into New Orleans now from Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas, and of how the French-speaking Catholic slaves-even the ones who followed up Mass by attendance at the voodoo dances in Congo Square-tended to shun them. And vice versa, of course.

Even before he knocked on the door of the men's cabin he heard Hannibal's voice inside. "Of course I'm drunk," the fiddler was saying. "But I'm not stupid, and I assure you I've imbibed enough opium in the course of a misspent life that I've learned to manage quite nicely. Benjamin, amicus meus..." He propped himself a little on the pillows as January entered, and Fourchet stood back a half pace from the bunk. "Tell this gentleman about the time I drove Monsieur Marigny's carriage down Rue Bourbon after having quaffed a good four fingers of the finest Kendal Black Drop."