Barbara Hambly - 03 Graveyard Dust

"It's a long way," pointed out January quietly, "from I have been poisoned and C?lie, to I have been poisoned BY C?lie. If you don't mind my mentioning it, sir." He made a genuine effort to keep the anger from his voice, anger over the fear in his brother-in-law's face, over Madame Gerard's tears. He knew it wasn't the Kentuckian's fault.

"I don't mind you mentionin' the matter, Maestro," said the policeman evenly. "Fact remains the boy is dead, and M'am Jumon did go buy somethin' from your sister." Vilhardouin's hand shut restrainingly on Monsieur Gerard's sleeve. "And the fact remains your sister does so happen to have had a big pot of arsenic on a shelf in her parlor, not to speak of makin' a livin' sellin' strange things to people wrapped up in little bits of black paper. No offense meant, M'am. M'am." He nodded respectfully for good measure in Marie Laveau's direction.

The sergeants had begun whipping the errant slaves in the courtyard outside. Celie flinched at the crack of leather on flesh, hid her face when someone-a woman, by the sound of it-cried out, a strangled sound grimly silenced. Men came through the watch room, in the well-cut clothing and beaver hats of professionals, leading after them other men, or sometimes a woman or two, shabbily dressed in castoffs, usually barefoot, the women with their heads modestly covered in tignons. Twenty-five cents a stroke, January remembered-trying to force deafness and ignorance upon a rage that would otherwise have overwhelmed him-for a master to have his property whipped by the City Guards, if he didn't want to do it himself. The sergeant at the desk paused in talk with the Police Chief, to write out a receipt. In the courtyard beyond them two men in the blue uniforms of Guards emerged from a cell on the second gallery, bearing between them a shutter on which a body lay, covered with a blanket. The Guards hustled furtively along the gallery and down the stairs. As they turned a corner the shutter knocked against the newel post and an arm dropped out, limp, yellow as cheese.

Shaw was still explaining something to Monsieur Gerard-probably why a young man's word for a crime had to be accepted over the assertions of a respectable coffee merchant-as January made his way back to the courtyard doors. He intercepted the Guards and their burden as they reached the foot of the stair. "I beg your pardon, Messieurs, but would you mind telling me what this man died of?"

Knowing he'd be coming to the Cabildo that morning he had been careful to don his most respectable clothing: linen shirt, black wool coat, white gloves, gray trousers, and high-crowned beaver hat, the costume of a professional that he wore on those occasions when he volunteered his services to the Hospital and when he played at a ball. The men looked at him and then at one another. "Stabbed," said one in English at the same moment the other said, "Hung himself, poor bastard," in French. January looked down at the blanket, which was ancient and ragged and moving with lice. There was no sign of blood. The man who spoke English added, "We got to be gettin' on."

He watched them move around under the gallery to the little storeroom at the back of the court; watched them close and latch the door. His heart seemed to have turned to ice inside him. He knew, having seen the color of that arm, why they lied.

Glancing behind him, he saw that the Corbiers, Jumons, and officers of the law had left the watch room. Someone took back the chairs in which Olympe and C?lie Jumon had sat; a lamplighter came in from the arcade with a couple of bottles, beer or ale, which he handed to the sergeant at the desk. In the courtyard, a man who was being triced to the pillory suddenly began to thrash and heave like a landed fish, screaming curses at his master, at the men who bound him, at whatever god had ordered the world to be so constituted that this could be done to him. While everyone in the yard-except the man's master-ran to help, January made his way under the galleries to the storeroom, unlatched the door, and stepped noiselessly inside. Most of the time, January knew from past dealings with Lieutenant Shaw, the room was used as a storage place for records and for the shovels and buckets in use by those who cleaned up the gutters of the Place d'Armes. There was a cot in one corner where Guardsmen who sustained injuries in the line of duty could lie down-a situation not uncommon when a steamboat crew or a gang of keelboat ruffians were in town on a spree.

The form on the cot now was not a Guardsman. From beneath the tattered blanket the hand still projected, dangling to the floor, fingers purpling. Another body lay on the floor. Flies roared in every corner of the low ceiling, gathering already in the fluids that trickled slowly into the cracks of the brick floor.

The judas hole in the door let through just enough light to see. January pulled the blankets first from one man, then the other, and looked down into the bloated faces. An ugly orange flush mottled their skin and black vomit crusted their teeth and beards. One had clearly been a British sailor, with bare feet and a tarred pigtail; the other a trapper from the trackless mountains of northern Mexico, buckskin shirt stiff with sweat and filth. Both men already stank in the early summer heat. There was no question what had caused their deaths. He laid the blankets back over their faces, and silently left the room.

January feared he would be too late to hear any of the proceedings of the arraignment-which in any case he knew would be short-but when he hurried into the Presbyt?re building and through the door of the Recorder's Court, the Clerk was still engaged in an angry convocation with Lieutenant Shaw: "... just a minute ago," Shaw was saying mildly.

"The case has been called..."

"It is an outrage!" Gerard put in, fists clenched furiously. "An outrage! There is no truth..."

"I reckon Mr. Vilhardouin"-Shaw pronounced the French name properly, something that always surprised January about the Kentuckian-"just sorta made a stop at the jakes, and he'll be along... . There he is."

At the same moment a voice behind January said coldly, "I beg Monsieur's pardon..." An American voice added, "Get outa that door, boy."

January stepped quickly aside. Vilhardouin jostled brusquely past him, followed closely by a lithe, powerful man whose lower two shirt buttons strained over the slop of his belly beneath a food-stained yellow waistcoat's inadequate hem. As the two men proceeded up the aisle, the sloppy man paused here and there to nod greetings to this man or that: keelboat rousters in slouch hats and heavy boots, spitting tobacco on the floor; filibusters from the saloons along the levee; a gentleman sitting stiff and disapproving beside a shackled slave. The Clerk of the Court glared ferociously and demanded, "What brings you here, Blodgett?" and the man returned a stubbled and rather oily smile.

"It's an open court, Mr. Hardee." Blodgett's voice was gold and gravel, with a drunkard's slurry drawl. "Surely a man can come sit in an open court if he wants to."

As January slid onto the end of the bench beside Paul and Mamzelle Marie, Hardee knocked his gavel on the desk and said, "Are you C?lie Jumon, nee G?rard, wife of Isaak Jumon of this parish?"

She stood, small and pretty in her filthy dress. "I am."

"I object to these proceedings! " Monsieur Vilhardouin sprang to his feet. "Madame Jumon does not understand English and it is a violation of her rights to-"

"Monsieur Vilhardouin," protested the girl, "I understand-"

"Be silent!" ordered her father.

Vilhurdnuin turned back to the Clerk of the Court. "Madame Jumon does not sufficiently understand English to the degree that she can comprehend the charges brought against her."

Two louse-ridden and bewhiskered denizens of the Swamp and Girod Street applauded; a blowsy uncorseted woman hollered "You stand up for your rights, gal! " and Madame G?rard shrank against her husband in revulsion and terror.