A Free Man Of Color Part 17

He came through trees and found himself facing water he'd never seen before, jewel green with duckweed and scaled over with the expanding rings of water drops in the rain. Cypress like old gray G.o.ds in rags crowded along its edge, pale against the bright green of the pines behind them. In the water itself their k.n.o.bby knees rose up like wading children sent ahead to scout the shallows. A turtle blinked at him from a log.

Thank G.o.d the alligators are still sleeping this time of year, he thought, turning back on his own tracks, casting around for the blaze he'd left-he thought he'd left-hereabouts. The water in front of him might be the bayou along which Ti Margaux had his broken-down house, or might be a tributary of it, or might lead somewhere else altogether. The rain came harder, rustling in the leaves of the live oaks, the needles of the pines. By the water the air was cool, but in the trees again, even the rain didn't seem to affect the damp heat, only keep him from hearing the sounds of pursuit. He stumbled in a tangle of wild azalea, and very suddenly, found himself face-to-face with a young black man in the coa.r.s.e trousers of a field hand, a club in his hand.

"Here he is!" shouted the man. "Here he-"

January covered the distance between them in two long strides, wrested the club from the hunter-who was too surprised at being attacked, instead of fled, to use it-and cracked him a hard blow across the side of the head. The young man went sprawling, stunned, and January sprinted in the direction he thought he'd been going immediately before the encounter. The rain pelted harder around him, blurring the green-on-green-on-green of water and vegetation into a confusing monochrome.

He turned toward the thicker growth along the water, but voices were calling out from the high ground, so he knew he couldn't go to earth. Instead he veered for the high ground himself, where the water ash and cypress and palmetto gave place to loblolly pine that killed most undergrowth with its needles. His long legs pumped, his body settling into its stride. He was tall, but he hadn't run in years, and his boots were heavy on his feet. Too many years, he thought, as his breath burned suddenly in his lungs. Those boys back there would be young, and fit.

He skidded, wove, plunged back toward the water again. Something gray caught his eye, and he saw that it was the old house of the deceased Ti Margaux, impossibly on the other side of the water. He had no idea how he'd gotten himself turned around, but the place was unmistakable. For a moment he considered lying low and letting them run past, but they'd see the house as well, know he'd head there. The snakes would be sleeping in winter, like the gators-Please G.o.d, let the snakes be still sleeping! Then he pulled off his coat and plunged into the bayou. Then he pulled off his coat and plunged into the bayou.

It wasn't wide-twelve or fifteen feet-nor particularly deep. He only had to strike out and swim for a stroke or two, holding the coat and his papers aloft, then his boots were slushing thickly in unspeakable mud and a tangle of alligator weed that dragged at him like steel nets. Underwater leaves slit at his thighs and sides as he dragged himself ash.o.r.e, stumbled up the slope, dragged open the door of the old barn and caught up the bridle, remembering to work evenly and without haste as he coaxed the bit into the horse's mouth, buckled chin strap and band. He flung himself, dripping, onto the horse's back without benefit of saddle and kicked the animal forward out the barn door at a gallop.

Outside there was only a tangle of cypress and red oak, buckler fern and b.u.t.terweed and creeper slowing the horse's stride. January ducked, keeping his head down under the low-hanging branches, wet moss trailing over his back as he tried to find the narrow trace that had led him here.

Then men were on him, springing out of the jungles of verdure, black, half-naked, armed with clubs and yelling with the hunt. January drove his heels into his mount's sides but hands were already dragging at the bridle, at his legs, pulling the panicking horse down and dragging him off. He swung with his club and felt it connect, but blows rained on his shoulders, stunning him. He felt his own makeshift weapon ripped from his hands, then he was pinned, still struggling, to the ground.

A white man's voice said, "Let him up."

They did, still holding his arms, crowding close around him, the rain not quite washing the rank smell of his own sweat or theirs or the swamp from him.

Three white men stood on the slightly higher ground before him. Evidently none had tried to ride through the swamp, following, like the blacks, on foot. One was a square-built, fair-haired man of thirty or so with a bristling mustache and whiskers, a blacksnake whip hanging coiled at his belt-Uhrquahr the overseer. The second, still in the tweed coat and hunting breeches he'd worn to walk to the cornfield that morning, the rain dripping from the broad brim of his palmetto hat, was Galen Peralta.

The third, white hair bare to the rain and eyes cold and hard as blue gla.s.s, was Xavier Peralta.

Peralta turned to one of the field hands holding January's arms. "Is this the man who came to the cabins last night and asked about Michie Galen?"

"Yes sir, it is."

He turned back at January. He, too, looked exhausted, as if the nights that had pa.s.sed in obligatory family revelry had been harrowed by sleeplessness. It wasn't yet noon, which meant he'd taken the earliest boat he could that morning.

"You told my son that you'd been sent by Madame Dreuze with a keepsake-a gesture I find not in the slightest like the woman, for all her protests of sentimentality-and you told my servants that you were a runaway bound for Grand Isle. I think that you were lying both times. Tell the truth to me now. Who are you?"

"My name is Benjamin January," said January. "I'm a free man of color." He reached into his pocket-the field hands never releasing their hold on his arms-and produced the papers.

Uhrquahr took them and tore them up without looking at them. "You a slave now," he said, and smiled.

"Bring him," said Peralta and turned away.

EIGHTEEN.

The sugar mill was one of the few buildings on the Peralta place constructed of brick. There was a chamber to one side where the wood was stored against the voracious fires of the winter harvests, but with winter barely over the wood room was nearly empty, the brick floor swept clean. The backbreaking work of filling it would be a constant through the coming year, like hoeing up the fast-sprouting weeds before they smothered the cane or keeping the ditches clear.

On the opposite side of the mill, past the silent dark shapes of the rollers and the long line of the empty boiling vats, cones of sugar cured in another chamber on their wooden racks, leaching out the last of the mola.s.ses under stretched squares of gauze to keep the roaches away. The thick, raw-sweet smell of it filled the gloom.

"Spancel him to the upright." Peralta's voice echoed coldly in the high rafters, beneath the thrumming of the rain. His horse, and Uhrquahr's, had been waiting at the edge of the trees, the ankle chains in their saddlebags. "Just by the ankle will do," he added, as the overseer made a move to shove January back against one of the squared cypress pillars that supported the dome of the mill chamber itself. "I'll call you if there's trouble."

They had to pull off January's boots to lock the chain. It chafed the flesh of his foot and drove deep into the skin the blue bead of Olympe's charm.

From beneath his coattails Peralta took two pistols, one of which he handed to Uhrquahr. For all his soaked clothing, dripping into a puddle around his feet, the old planter radiated a kind of quiet anger, a deadliness more to be feared than the overseer's blind, raw exercise of power.

"Mr. Uhrquahr, will you stand outside the door of the wood room? Should I raise a cry you are to come in, but not before. I doubt this will take long. Have Hephastion send the men back into the fields as soon as the rain clears."

The overseer touched the brim of his soaked slouch hat and departed, the sound of the rain momentarily louder as he opened the door from the wood room outside. As he stepped out into the light Uhrquahr glanced sullenly over his shoulder, disappointed and angry.

January leaned his back against the pillar, his hands at his sides, watching Peralta in silence. The old man stood at a distance, the white hair making wet strings on his collar, his blue eyes cold as gla.s.s. There was something in the way he stood that told January he was waiting for him to speak, to hear what the first rush of words would be, explanations and excuses, perhaps pleas. So he kept his silence, as if both men were abiding until the turn of some unknown tide. The sound of the rain was very loud.

It was Peralta who finally broke the silence. "I did not know the police hired free blacks as agents."

January almost protested that he was sang mele, not black, then realized how ridiculous that would sound. Maybe Olympe was right about him being whiter than their mother inside.

"The police didn't send me," he said, and shook his head a little as a thread of water trickled from his close-cropped hair down into his eye. His voice was soft in the near dark. "Didn't you ask Monsieur Tremouille not to send anyone? Not to investigate at all? I'm the man they'll hang in the place of your son."

Peralta looked away. In the shadows it was impossible to see his expression, or whether his fair, pinkish skin colored up, but the tension that hardened his shoulders and back was unmistakable, his silence like the sc.r.a.pe of a cotton-press wheel screwed too tight.

Shoot me and walk out, thought January, too angry at this man now to care what he did. He'd seen a lot of death, and at this range, a bullet was going to be less painful and quicker than the rope and the drop. Shoot me and walk out or say something. Shoot me and walk out or say something. He would not volunteer another word. He would not volunteer another word.

"You were...one of the musicians. The pianist."

"That's right," said January. "And your son can tell you that I was in the room talking to Mademoiselle Crozat when he came in, and that when I walked out she was still alive."

There was no sound but Peralta's breathing and January's own.

"He's the only witness to that fact," January went on. "But you probably already know that."

"No." The old man moved his shoulders, shifted his weight from one hip to the other, breaking the hard watchfulness. "No, I didn't. I did not discuss the matter at any great length with the police. My son..." He fell silent a very long time. "My son said nothing about you."

"And did your friend Captain Tremouille tell you that I was the only witness to the fact that your son came into the room when he did? After everyone saw him storm off down the stairs following his quarrel with Angelique?" January kept his eyes on the white man's left shoulder, knowing the rage in them showed even so but almost too angry to care.

"I don't have to listen to this." Peralta turned away.

"No, you don't," said January. "Because you've got a gun and I'm chained up. You don't have to listen to anything."

It stopped him. January guessed Peralta wouldn't have stopped if he'd said, Because you're white and I'm black. Because you're white and I'm black. Might very well have struck him, in fact. In a sense, it amounted to the same thing, though of course a white man wouldn't see it that way. But as he'd known in the ballroom on the night of Bouille's challenge to William Granger, Peralta considered himself a gentleman, a man of old-fashioned honor. He was a man who prided himself on knowing the rules, on not being like the Americans. Might very well have struck him, in fact. In a sense, it amounted to the same thing, though of course a white man wouldn't see it that way. But as he'd known in the ballroom on the night of Bouille's challenge to William Granger, Peralta considered himself a gentleman, a man of old-fashioned honor. He was a man who prided himself on knowing the rules, on not being like the Americans.

"I told my friends where I was coming," said January. He made a subconscious move to fold his arms, and stopped himself from taking a stance too threatening, too challenging, too "uppity." His very size, he knew, was threat enough, and he was treading an extremely narrow road here. "If I'm not back, they'll take what I've written to the police. Not that it'll do me a flyspeck of good if you've decided a rich man can kill a poor one who's in his way, but I respect the truth and want it told."

Peralta turned slowly back. The implication of a lie touched him to the quick. He opened his mouth, within the rain-beaded circle of white mustache, but couldn't refute the words. Still, as a man of honor, a Creole gentleman of the old traditions, he couldn't let the words go unanswered. And gentlemen told the truth.

"He's my son," he said at last. "And I'm not going to kill you."

The cold clutch of panic tightened around January's heart, knowing what that probably meant. But he said steadily, "My friends will still come looking."

Who? he thought bitterly. he thought bitterly. Livia? Dominique? Livia? Dominique?

"Unless you plan to sell me out of the state."

"No," said Peralta simply. He drew a deep breath, and met January's gaze again. "I know it's...hard. But I don't see what else I can do. Uhrquahr!"

The door opened fast. Uhrquahr came in with his gun trained; January reckoned Peralta was lucky his man hadn't stepped in shooting and killed them both before his eyes adjusted to the shadows.

"Put him in the jail," said Peralta quietly. "We'll be keeping him here for a few days."

Mambo Susu, the oldest woman on Bellefleur when January was growing up, had always said that it was bad luck to build a house out of brick and stone, things that had no spirit. It had made sense at the time, since all the slave cabins were made of wood and the inhabitants of the big house seemed to be as crazy and alien as living in a house without spirit would make them.

Later, watching the hard rains and hurricane winds from the windows of his mother's house on Rue Burgundy, January had remembered those dripping nights and the steady, hacking coughs most of the hands developed in time and revised his opinion.

In any case the slave jail on Chien Mort was built out of brick.

The bars of the single high window were wood rather than expensive iron, but the knowledge did January little good, as he was shackled to the rear wall with a short chain around his right wrist. It could have been worse, he reflected. Chronic runaways were frequently chained lying on their backs, b.u.t.t to the wall with their feet manacled to rings set in about four feet off the floor. The floor was brick. The whole room smelled of mildew and very old p.i.s.s.

Examining the bolts that held the chain to the wall, January reflected on the difference in sound between Bayou Chien Mort and Les Saules. Bayou Chien Mort, small and somnolent and out-of-the-way as it was, at least sounded alive: The voices of small children rang shrilly from the direction of the cabins, and from far off came the faint, steady suggestion of the chop of mattocks and hoes, of voices singing.

"They chased, they hunted him with dogs, They fired a rifle at him.

They dragged him from the cypress swamp, His arms they tied behind his back, They tied his hands in front of him..."

It was a forbidden song, a secret song, about the rebel slave leader Saint-Malo. Uhrquahr must not be near. January shivered and scratched with a fingernail at the mortar around the screws.

As he'd suspected, it wasn't mortar proper but hardened clay, poorly adapted for its job. He gathered the chain in his hand, wrapped the slack around his arm above the elbow, and twisted his whole body, watching for the telltale give in the bolts.

A little, he thought. A little. A little.

He canva.s.sed his pockets.

They'd taken his knife and spoon, the only metal he'd had on him, all his money, and his silver watch. The only thing they'd left him was his rosary.

Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, he prayed, give me an idea. Show me some way. give me an idea. Show me some way. He folded the beads back up again, put them away. He moved his feet, still bare since they hadn't given him back his boots, and his anklebone brushed the blue bead on its thong, a rosary to the old G.o.ds. He folded the beads back up again, put them away. He moved his feet, still bare since they hadn't given him back his boots, and his anklebone brushed the blue bead on its thong, a rosary to the old G.o.ds.

Papa Legba who guards all the doors, he thought, I could do with some help from you, too. I could do with some help from you, too.

He took the rosary beads out of his pocket again, and turned them over in his hand. The beads winked at him, bright blue, like the bead on his ankle. Cheap gla.s.s.

With a cheap steel crucifix.

Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, he prayed, forgive me for this, but I've got to get out of here. forgive me for this, but I've got to get out of here.

He began to sc.r.a.pe, cautiously, at the mortar around the bolts with the inch or so of steel at the bottom of the cross.

He heard the bolt lock on the door rattle and had a moment of horrified panic when he realized there was a little heap of powdered clay and broken fragments of mortar on the floor under the bolt. Falling to his knees, he swept it with his hands along the join of wall and floor and just barely stood up again in time to shield the ragged gouge in the clay with his body. His right hand he shoved in his pocket, rosary and all; six hours of steady work had left palm and fingers a raw ma.s.s of blisters and blood.

The sun had gone over to the other side of the building. The room was in shadow, until the light fell in like a fog of glare from the open door.

It took him a moment to realize who was standing there.

It was Galen Peralta.

"Puh-puh-Papa..." he began, and stopped. "P-Papa s-s-says you're the one who's taken the b-blame for...for what happened."

January said nothing.

"And thuh-that y-you c-came here tuh-tuh..." He could barely get the words out, his face contorted with frustration, with the fire of his inarticulate temper. "To see my face. To tuh-tell the police. That's why you came."

"You expect me to just sit there and let them hang me in your place?"

"But I duh-duh-duh..." He stepped through the door, shaking his head with desperation, fists clenching as if he would strike himself or anything near him in his need. "I duh-didn't do it!" He dragged in his breath hard, forcing a kind of steadiness. "I really, really d-didn't hurt her! I was d-drunk...I got duh-drunker...B-but I remember enough of the night to know I d-didn't hurt her! I wanted-I wanted-she laughed at m-me and I wuh-wanted to kill her, w-wanted to break her neck..."

"Perhaps your young Galen," Mme. Lalaurie had said, Mme. Lalaurie had said, "took the matter to an extreme, when not so long ago he took a stick to an Irishwoman who was insolent to him...." "took the matter to an extreme, when not so long ago he took a stick to an Irishwoman who was insolent to him...." But unlike the Trepagier boys, it was Galen's cross rather than his crown. But unlike the Trepagier boys, it was Galen's cross rather than his crown.

"I left," he whispered. "I had t-to leave. Even Puh-Papa doesn't believe me."

He sounded desolate. In other circ.u.mstances, watching his struggle even to make himself understood on the simplest possible level, January knew he'd have felt pity for him. But at the moment he had little to spare.

"Whether I believe you or not isn't going to matter one bit when I'm chopping cotton in Georgia."

"N-no," said Galen quickly. "P-Papa's not going to do that! He's a hard m-man-st-st-stern..." He flinched a little at some thought. "Buh-but he'd n-never...He'd never be unjust like that. You're a free man."

January glanced around him at the jail's brick walls and said nothing.

"He's just g-going to keep you here until...until the m-marks on my f-face heal up. He said it's...it's hard to kn-know the right thing to do. Buh-but he's going to give you some m-money and see that you get on a ship, to Europe or England or M-Mexico or wherever you want, just so long as it's not N-New Orleans."

Exactly as he'd shipped all the house servants out to the farthest of his plantations, regardless of their families, relationships, lives.

"Just so long as I never see my home or my friends or my family again," said January softly. "For something you know-and your father knows-I didn't do."

A little defiantly, Galen said, "It's buh-buh-better than hanging! He's doing the best he c-can for you, when Uhrquahr..." He hesitated.

"When Uhrquahr wants to sell me," finished January for him. He deliberately made his shoulders relax and slump a little, and bowed his head, mostly so Galen wouldn't see his eyes. "I understand. Thank you...and thank him." You vain little cowardly popinjay. You vain little cowardly popinjay. It was cleaner than his humiliation in the Swamp, though it came to exactly the same thing. It was cleaner than his humiliation in the Swamp, though it came to exactly the same thing.

But it relaxed the boy and brought him a step back into the room.

"It isn't as if...as if...It isn't as if I'd d-done it," argued Galen. He rubbed at the lines of scab on his face. "B-but no one will b-believe me. If my own father doesn't buh-believe..."

"She scratched you in the room there?"

Galen nodded, wretched. A lock of fair hair fell down over his forehead. "She said to m-me...She said..."

She said the things women with a cruel streak generally say to the men who love them.

"I cuh-cuh-...I c-can't say this."

The boy was consumed with guilt. January made his voice gentle, as if he were back in the night clinic of the Hotel Dieu.

"Were you lovers?"