George Martin - Fevre Dream

Marsh went through the cabin one final time, to make sure he had overlooked nothing, and finally determined to leave, not much wiser than he had come. He inserted the key in the lock, turned it carefully, snuffed the lamp, stepped outside, and relocked the door behind him. It had gotten a trifle cooler outside. Marsh realized that he was drenched in sweat. He slipped the key back into his coat pocket and turned to go.

And stopped.

A few yards away, the ghastly old woman Katherine was standing and staring at him, cold malevolence in her eyes. Marsh decided to brazen it out. He tipped his cap. “Good evening, ma’am,” he said to her.

Katherine smiled slowly, a creeping rictus of a smile that twisted her vulpine face into a mask of terrible glee. “Good evening, Captain,” she said. Her teeth, Marsh noted, were yellow, and very long.

New Orleans, August 1857

After Adrienne and Alain had departed on the steamer Cotton Queen, bound for Baton Rouge and Bayou Sara, Damon Julian decided to take a stroll along the levee to a French coffee stall he knew. Sour Billy Tipton walked uneasily beside him, casting suspicious glances at everyone they passed. The rest of Julian’s party followed; Kurt and Cynthia walked together, while Armand brought up the rear, furtive and ill-at-ease, already touched by the thirst. Michelle was back at the house.

The rest were gone, dispersed, sent up or down the river on one steamer or another by Julian’s command, searching for money, safety, a new place to gather. Damon Julian had finally stirred.

The moonlight was soft and bright as butter upon the river. The stars were out. Along the levee, dozens of steamers crowded in next to the sailing ships with their high, proud masts and furled canvas sails. Niggers moved cotton and sugar and flour from one sort of boat to the other. The air was humid and fragrant, the streets crowded.

They found a table that gave them a good view of the bustle, and ordered cafe au lait and the fried sugar pastries the stall was famous for. Sour Billy bit into one and got sugar powder all over his vest and sleeves. He cussed loudly.

Damon Julian laughed, his laughter as sweet as the moonlight. “Ah, Billy. How amusing you are.”

Sour Billy hated being laughed at worse than he hated anything, but he looked up at Julian’s dark eyes and forced a grin. “Yes, sir,” he said with a rueful shake of his head.

Julian ate his own pastry neatly, so no sugar whitened the rich dark gray of his suit, or the sheen of his scarlet tie. When he was done, he sipped at his cafe au lait while his gaze swept over the levee and wandered among the passersby on the street. “There,” he said shortly, “the woman beneath the cypress.” The others looked. “Is she not striking?”

She was a Creole lady, escorted by two dangerous-looking gentlemen. Damon Julian stared at her like a love-struck youth, his pale face unlined and serene, his hair a mass of fine dark curls, his eyes large and melancholy. But even across the table, Sour Billy could feel the heat in those eyes, and he was afraid.

“She is exquisite,” Cynthia said.

“She has Valerie’s hair,” Armand added.

Kurt smiled. “Will you take her, Damon?”

The woman and her companions were going away from them, walking in front of an ornate wrought-iron fence. Damon Julian watched them thoughtfully. “No,” he said at last, turning back to the table and sipping his cafe au lait. “The night is too young, the streets are too crowded, and I am weary. Let us sit.”

Armand looked downcast and anxious. Julian smiled at him briefly, then leaned forward and laid a hand on Armand’s sleeve. “We will drink before the dawn comes,” he said. “You have my word.”

“I know a place,” Sour Billy added conspiratorially, “a real fancy house, with a bar, red velvet chairs, good drinks. The girls are all beautiful, you’ll see. You can get one all night for a twenty-dollar gold piece. In the morning, well, well.” He chuckled. “But we’ll be gone when they find what they find, and it’s cheaper than buyin’ fancy girls. Yes, sir.”

Damon Julian’s black eyes were amused. “Billy makes me niggardly,” he said to the others, “but whatever would we do without him?” He looked about again, bored. “I should come into the city more often. When one is sated, one loses sight of all the other pleasures.” He sighed. “Can you feel it? The air is rank with it, Billy!”

“What?” said Sour Billy.

“Life, Billy.” Julian’s smile mocked him, but Billy made himself smile back. “Life and love and lust, rich food and rich wine, rich dreams and hope, Billy. All of it here around us. Possibilities.” His eyes glittered. “Why should I pursue that beauty who went by us, when there are so many others, so many possibilities? Can you answer?”

“I-Mister Julian, I don’t-”

“No, Billy, you don’t, do you?” Julian laughed. “My whims are life and death to these cattle, Billy. If you are ever to be one of us, you must understand that. I am pleasure, Billy. I am power. And the essence of what I am, of pleasure and power, lies in possibility. My own possibilities are vast, and have no limit, as our years have no limit. But I am the limit to these cattle, I am the end of all their hopes, of all their possibilities. Do you begin to understand? To slake the red thirst, that is nothing, any old darkie on his deathbed will do for that. Yet how much finer to drink of the young, the rich, the beautiful, those whose lives stretch out ahead of them, whose days and nights glitter and shine with promise! Blood is but blood, any animal can sip at it, any of them.” He gestured languidly, at the steamboatmen on the levee, the niggers toting their hogsheads, and all the richly dressed folk of the Vieux Carre. “It is not the blood that ennobles, that makes one a master. It is the life, Billy. Drink of their lives and yours becomes longer. Eat of their flesh and yours grows stronger. Feast on beauty and wax more beautiful.”

Sour Billy Tipton listened eagerly; he had seldom seen Julian in so expansive a mood. Sitting in the darkness of the library, Julian tended to be brusque and frightening. Beyond it, out in the world again, he glittered, reminding Sour Billy of the way he had been when he first arrived with Charles Garoux at the plantation where Billy was overseer. He said as much.

Julian nodded. “Yes,” he said, “the plantation is safe, but in safety and satiety is danger.” His teeth were white when he smiled. “Charles Garoux,” he mused. “Ah, the possibilities of that youth! He was beautiful in his way, strong, healthy. A firebrand, beloved by all the ladies, admired by other men. Even the darkies loved Master Charles. He would have had a grand life! His nature was so open as well, it was easy to befriend him, to win his undying trust by saving him from poor Kurt here.” Julian interrupted himself with a laugh. “Then, once I had been welcomed into his house, easier still to come to him every night, and drain him, little by little, so he seemed to sicken and die. Once he woke when I was in his room, and thought I had come to comfort him. I leaned over his bed, and he reached up and clasped me to him, and I drank. Ah, the sweetness of Charles, all the strength and beauty of him!”

“The old man was damn upset when he up and died,” Sour Billy put in. Personally, he’d been delighted. Charles Garoux had always been telling his father that Billy was too hard on the niggers, and trying to get him dismissed. As if you could get any work from a nigger by being soft.

“Yes, Garoux was distraught,” said Julian. “How fortunate that I was there to comfort him in his grief. His son’s best friend. How often he told me, afterward, that I had become like a fourth son to him as we mourned.”