Barbara Hambly - 02 Fever Season

"Moreover, such an experiment can only be beneficial to him! I have had nearly miraculous results from the use of scientifically applied force in the realignment of the skeleton and limbs."

"This is a hospital, man," retorted Ker, in excellent French, "not the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition! Iike that thing away! Charity means `out of love,' not `for the sake of finding some poor soul to test your theories on."

"Theories, sir!" Soublet drew himself up, a tall man with a sort of coarse sturdiness to him and skin like a very bad road surface in the jumpy light. "I do not deal in theories! My work is soundly based on observation, facts, and the latest findings of the medical fraternity-"

He stopped, his attention arrested by someone at the door of the ward. Turning, January saw Madame Delphine Lalaurie.

The first thing that anyone ever said of her-the thing that most of Marie Delphine de McCarry Blanque Lalaurie's admirers always mentioned-was that she glowed. With energy, with intelligence, with strength.

There were other beautiful women in the city, possibly others more beautiful by conventional standards, but had she been plain, Delphine Lalaurie would still have drawn all eyes. January had never figured out how some people could do that.

She was a tall woman, imperially straight; and though nearly every Creole woman of her age had surrendered to rich food and embonpoint, she retained the slim figure of a girl. She was clothed in a plain gown of black merino, such as wealthy women wore to nurse in, spotlessly clean even to its hem, as far as he could tell in this light, and unobtrusively on the leading edge of Paris fashion. The linen apron pinned over it, and the linen veil that covered her lustrous dark hair, gave her a nunlike air, as if a queen had taken vows.

Soublet and Ker immediately went to greet her, but before they could reach her she turned, hastening to the bedside of a delirious, bewhiskered young sailor who had begun to struggle and shout. A harassed nurse was trying to calm him, but he flung her back, eyes staring in horror and agony. Madame Lalaurie caught his shoulders, pressed him back to the bed with surprising strength, whispering to him, gentle words, soothing words. After a moment's desperate thrashing the man settled back, gasping, then turned and began to vomit. Madame Lalaurie and the nurse held him, and in the livid lamp glare January saw the expression of Madame's face: a deep intense pity, mingled with something else. An inward look, yearning, longing, ecstasy, as if she knelt in meditation at the Stations of the Cross.

The man collapsed, sobbing, exhausted. Madame and the nurse wrung rags in a basin of grimy water, sponged his fouled and tear-streaked face. `Ko'so'no'm," the man whispered, or something like it, a language January did not know. "Ko'so'no'm."

"It's all right," she breathed, and stroked the crawling hair, "you'll be all right."

Then in a whisper of petticoats she rose, greeted Soublet with a warm smile and turned her back on Ker without a word. But she did not stop to speak with her husband's partner, crossing instead to where January stood.

"M'sieu Janvier?" Her voice was a lovely mezzosoprano. He had heard that she sang like an angel. Like her daughter Pauline, her eyes were large, coffee dark, and brilliant. Like Pauline she seemed to burn with energy; but instead of the girl's restless, dissipated resentment, hers was a focused vigor that seemed to fill the room. "I realize it's an imposition, with as much as you have to do here," she said, "but might we speak?" Without seeming to, she glanced back at Dr. Soublet and Emil Barnard, hovering just out of earshot, and lowered her voice. "It concerns my houseman, Gervase."

There was little space in the Hospital that wasn't chockablock with the dying. January unlatched the long windows that led to the gallery. "Shut those!" roared Soublet. "Do you wish to kill all these people?"

You should talk of killing all those people, thought January dourly. Nevertheless, he closed the shutters behind them quickly as he and Madame stepped into the steamy rankness of the night.

"I'm sorry to have to bring you out here, Madame."

She chuckled softly. "We walk back and forth through the night miasma coming here, M'sieu. If it's the night air that causes the fever at all, a little more can scarcely harm us." She coughed with the smoke of the smudges burning in the courtyard below them and waved her hand. Her gloves were French kid at fifty cents the pair, as immaculate as her apron when she had come in. Having seen the promptness with which she attended the delirious sailor, January couldn't imagine this woman going through a shift at wherever she nursed without getting as fouled as he was-apron, dress, and gloves were now spotted with water and filth. She must have changed the entire outfit before coming here.

"Sometimes I don't think doctors know anything. One can only care for the sick, and pray for their poor disobedient souls." She crossed herself; January did, too. Her one ornament was a gold crucifix on a slender chain around her neck. "I take it the girl Cora came to ask your help?"

"I know no one by that name, Madame." So that sleek bastard Bastien had told her. "It was on another matter that I wished to speak with Gervase. He's a friend of my sister Olympe. And it wasn't important.

I'm sorry that you were troubled."

"M'sieu..." The twinkle in her dark eyes mocked him gently. "The boy's never been in this city in his life before I purchased him. And I happen to know that spiteful harpy Emily Redfern is looking all over the Parish for someone to blame for her husband's death besides her own parsimony in keeping her meat hanging too long in the summer. I gather she's talked her Yankee compatriots in the City Guard into wasting their time and citizens' money in pursuit of some poor child who had no more to do with Otis Redfern's death than you did-and paying off old scores onto her."

Regarding her, January guessed there wasn't a great deal about the personal lives of anyone in New Orleans society that Delphine Lalaurie didn't know. Related to everyone of wealth and breeding, she was in a position to hear everything. Still he said nothing. In the courtyard below them, Emil Barnard emerged from the Hospital, made his way toward the piled bodies near the gate, then stopped and glanced up to see January standing on the gallery. Barnard coughed self-consciously, shoved the empty flour sack he carried into his pocket, and strolled casually away.

January was aware of the woman's eyes on his face. Under the rouge and powder that all Creole women wore, the torchlight showed up lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes, fine lines gouged deep, more than simple weariness could account for. Juxtaposed with that slender figure, those brilliant eyes, they were almost shocking. Was it so hard, then, to carry the burden of a crippled daughter, to deal with whatever illness made Pauline so wasted and thin? Did it tell on one so terribly, to rule the household with such exactness and splendor? To be so perfect oneself, beyond weeping or fear or regret?

"I know that you can't admit to having spoken to the girl." Her voice was soft but brisk, matter-of-fact, and the lines in her face were suddenly only the marks of fatigue again. "Bastien tells me he turned you away. Very properly, of course. One can't have one's people interrupted in their work. That kind of thing upsets the other servants, as I'm sure you know; and any little disruption in the routine spreads like a mildew, until it's nearly impossible to bring everyone back up to their best. But as I'm sure you've also guessed, my Bastien is officious. He wants only the good of the household, but there! What can one do?

I've spoken to him about telling that lout of a Guard that Cora came asking after poor Gervase. He will mind his tongue hereafter."