Barbara Hambly - 03 Graveyard Dust

Jumon's voice retreated from January's mind, distancing itself, like the disconnected images of lamplight and blackness. "... began to rain as I made my way toward my uncle's house... feared more than anything that that poor woman would be lured or forced into something which would cut her off utterly from the help of decent people... Innocent child..." Innocent indeed.

"The symptoms struck me halfway there. I guessed at once what they were, from the metallic taste in my mouth, and from all I had heard of the voodoos. Had not Zoe been in the shop itself, sweeping up for my grandmother's new tenants, I doubt anyone within the courtyard would have heard me, for I did not have the strength to turn the gate key. I'm afraid I don't remember much, Your Honor, but I know that twice or three times she went out into the carriageway and listened, fearing that Grandmother would have heard something."

January listened with only a fragment of his mind to Jumon's account of Antoine's visit, reeling drunk on opium; of Zoe's growing panic and terror about what Grandmere Jumon would do if she found her son's slave had admitted a man sick with the cholera to her home; of the bout of pneumonia that had kept Isaak bedfast and delirious for weeks after the Webers found him. "As soon as I was a little recovered I sent a message to Dr. Yellowjack," Isaak was saying. "He replied that I must come to him at once, without notifying my wife or anyone else of my whereabouts. There must have been some evil going on at Yellowjack's house of which I was ignorant, for on my arrival I was overpowered-he had a gun, but he could have done it barehanded, as weak as I was-and imprisoned in the attic, with this young man here." He nodded to Gabriel with a smile.

"That old man was snake-bit pretty bad," put in LaBranche. "That was smart work on January's part..." He looked around for January, spotted him in the gloom by the wall, and nodded in his direction. "The sawbones here says January, and Mamzelle-er-M'am Laveau-sure enough saved his life. Yellowjack's one tough old nigger and that's for sure. His lawyer, he says. He wants to see his lawyer."

"I still don't understand what part the man played in the villainy." Young Jumon rubbed one thin hand over his face. "Unless-no harm came to poor Madame Coughlin, surely? Or to Mademoiselle Abigail?"

January said, "As far as I know, they're well." Canonge glanced over at him, as if he heard something in the quickness of that reply, but held his peace. "He gave you food at the voodoo dance, then."

Isaak nodded. "He was one of half a dozen, really, sir. I gather there's always food at the dances.

Mostly coarse fare, like congris and rice, or pralines, or sugar in the cane. Everyone seemed to be-"

"Isaak!"

Celie broke from between the Guards who had escorted her in, and threw herself into her husband's arms. "Isaak! Oh, God, oh, God!..."

The Guards released Olympe at the same time. She caught her son in her arms, holding him in tight ferocious silence, head bent over his. She breathed in, once, like the tearing loose of the foundations of her soul.

"Celie!" cried Isaak desperately, and clutched his wife close.

"I'm all right." Gabriel's voice was muffled by the circle of his mother's arms. "I wasn't scared. I knew Uncle Ben would come get me."

January shut his eyes, and couldn't help himself. He laughed.

At Olympe's house, later that night, he ate grits and syrup-the only things he wanted or could stomach-and slept for an hour or two on a truckle bed they rolled out for him in the children's room. But while dark still lay on the city he rose and made his way to the turning basin in quest of Natchez Jim. The bargees said Jim had gone downriver for wood, so January walked out along the Bayou Road, five miles through the insect-drumming scorch of the morning to Spanish Fort. There he inquired around the wharves for a skiff bound for Mandeville, and hired himself to help load and unload crates of champagne in trade for passage across the lake. His back and arms still hurt, and he knew he'd be stiff that night, but it was good beyond words to be able to do the work. The power of the voodoos-of Mamzelle Marie, and John Bayou, and all the great ones of New Orleans-lay in secrets. January had seen how the nets of their intelligence lay like spiderweb over the town; had seen the look in Vachel Corcet's eyes, when the lawyer had offered his unwilling services to Olympe. To a greater or lesser extent, everyone played with secrets: his mother, Dominique, Madeleine Mayerling, his mother's gossiping friends... Traded them like counters in a game of loo.

Shaw would be returning to town within a day or so. Dr. Yellowjack would be questioned before that, and would almost certainly tell where Lucinda Coughlin could be found. And if I'm wrong about who was whose cat's paw in this, thought January grimly, I'm sure Olympe will see to it that my tombstone reads, What an Idiot. But once a secret was out, there was never any calling it back.

So he helped load crates in the blazing heat and sat in the stern while the boat's owner set and plied the sails across the flat steely waters. January had brought bread and honey and cheese from Olympe's house, but the boatman shared sausage and rice with him, and they talked of this and that-the boatman's white father had given him the craft, and set him up in the business, rather than pay for an education he would have been hard put to find a use for. January wasn't so sure that this wasn't a better course. In all of his life he'd made more money as a musician than as a surgeon. Yet he felt a kind of tired anger, insofar as he was capable just then of feeling anything, that this should be so.

In Mandeville they unloaded, and on the boatman's advice January sought out a grocery in town run by a woman of color. She let him bathe and change clothes in her shed. The long twilight was just beginning when he made his way, clothed in black coat and top hat and the respectability of the free colored, to the Jumon house.

An old house, perched like so many Creole houses on six-foot piers of brick and built in the shape of a U to trap the breezes from the lake. Gardens surrounded it, box hedges and topiary snipped neat as masonry walls. French doors and brises stood open to show the honeyed candlelight within. January went around to the back and sent in his card with a boy who was scrubbing vegetables in the loggia by the kitchen. In time the graying butler who had admitted him to the town house came down the back steps.

"Monsieur Jumon is out for the evening, M'sieu." The butler inclined his head politely, but despite his calm he had a nervous look to him. As anyone would, thought January, whose master was selling up. "I doubt he will return before eleven."

"I'll wait, if it's all right," he replied. "I think he'll want to speak with me."

The butler brought paper and pen to the enclosed rear gallery, and a branch of candles, for the garden trees blocked out much of the fading evening light. January wrote, Monsieur Jumon Please excuse this intrusion, and my rudeness in calling on you at such an hour, but the matter is one of gravest importance. Dr. Yellowjack has been arrested. I will await your convenience.

Benjamin Janvier The butler brought him lemonade and, a little later, congris with bits of ham neatly arranged around it, which led January to deduce that whoever else had been sold off, Zeus still reigned in the kitchen. It was obvious to him that the household had been reduced. The same woman who stood at the table just outside the laundry room pressing napkins later fetched water from the cistern for the cook to soak red beans, and when the sun went down, January could see that there were only the two of them in the kitchen, which was lit from within by candles and the glow of the hearth.

A viper in her bosom, an adder, a beast who was always selfish... Just how much had Mathurin Jumon told his mother, of why he had to sell those few servants who were his and not those of the family? Always cruel to her, always delighted in hurting her...