Benjamin January - Sold Down The River Part 23

And there was no mistaking the soft, gruff tone of Marie-Noel Fourchet.

The vehicle-by the sound of it the gig rather than the Fourchet carriage-bore no lights. When January cautiously ascended the levee a few minutes later, no glimmer of any lantern showed up among the cane that had been planted before the house, though in the dense blackness he could sense a stirring, a restless thrashing as the groom led the horse along the narrow path. The house itself, small though it was, stood near enough the levee that even in the dense postmidnight darkness its pale shape could be discerned.

Even as he had seen it, thought January, twelve days ago, when the Belle Dame had pa.s.sed in the darkness, and he had stood on the boat's deck, observing each isolated house, each rider on the levee, the stir and movement around the door of each mill, ignorant of what he was going to meet.

The intervening cane was too high for January to see the gig, but like the house at Mon Triomphe, this one was built high, a pale blur easily seen. The stillness of the foggy night was such that he could hear the faint, distant tap of Marie-Noel Fourchet's knock on its door. Then the bright hot star of candlelight as the door was opened from within. It dimmed and wavered as she pa.s.sed inside, died as the door shut again, closing her into blackness.

?TWENTY.

Not knowing how many servants Robert might have with him at Refuge, January spent the night in the farthest cabin of the quarters, working out times and dates, events and causes, in his mind.

He devoured the ash-pone and yam he had with him, but was still almost sick with hunger when he woke in the chill black of morning. The fire-scorched skin of his face and throat and arms had begun to blister.

Only his trust in Shaw, and his faith in the parsimony of white men, kept him from risking a jail delivery that would almost certainly result in his own death. Whatever Esteban and Duffy might surmise about the guilt of Mohammed, Jeanette, and the others connected with the '98 revolt, it was extremely unlikely that Esteban would have potentially salable slaves hanged out of hand.

He would hold them for a trial, in order to claim financial reimburs.e.m.e.nt from the state if the state ordered them executed. By that time, January thought grimly, I'll have the evidence I need to convict Robert.

And Kiki, he thought, with a stab of bitter regret, as he slipped out into the overgrown garden- patch behind the cabin in quest of whatever he might find.

But if justice was his aim, he understood that it would have to be both. The Heavenly Twins, as in his dream. Alike in their hatred, alike in their crime, and in their punishment.

He had Hannibal's pa.s.ses: They might get him by if his clothes weren't in rags. The surviving copy of his freedom papers was still buried behind the shed in Camille's garden. With the countryside up in arms at Fourchet's murder-and with operators like la famille Ney in the vicinity on the prowl for unattached human cattle-he couldn't risk it.

Shaw should come today, he thought.

Then he recalled Hannibal's extended absence, and his own days of waiting, and his empty stomach clenched with dread.

And if they don't?

If Shaw was sent out of town on some other duty? Or killed in a tavern brawl?

And a part of him whispered-the part of him that distrusted the white man because he was white, that had reacted to yesterday's panic, yesterday's wild flight-Or just forgot? Like the child with the hoop in the Place d'Armes, leaving his little black friend to weep.

Don't think this, January told himself. Don't do this to yourself. Or don't do it today, anyway.

He'll come. They'll both come.

It had been six or seven years since the provision grounds had been cultivated. But two cabins over, among the wild tangle of yam-plants and gourds, he found a couple of apple trees, and every garden had a half-dozen ground-nut vines whose coa.r.s.e-sh.e.l.led, oily fruit he husked and devoured by the handful. He remembered Rose saying, I don't think I could pa.s.s myself as a slave because I don't know all those little things, the things you learned as a child. . . .

Like how to run from men with dogs and guns, he thought. Like what to eat if you're on the dodge, and how to get yourself alive through a bad night.

But with that knowledge, he understood now, came other things. Things terror did to you, and the pent-up rage of the unfree.

He hadn't yet found anywhere near as much food as he wanted when he heard the clank and jingle of harness chains. From the direction of the deserted stables torchlight flickered, and in the foggy stillness a hinge creaked. Someone was getting out the gig. Cautiously, burningly aware of the single shot in his rifle, January worked his way along the line of overgrown gardens and corn run to seed, until he was within sight of the rear of the house. Jacko came out of the stables pulling the gig, went back, and brought forth the small bay mare January. recognized from Fourchet's stables. A few moments later Robert Fourchet escorted Marie-Noel down the rear steps of the house, the swollen-bellied young woman in her black mourning gown leaning heavily on his arm as if dazed or beaten down with exhaustion. For jacko's benefit? Or because the widow was truly overwrought?

Robert helped her into the gig and sat beside her, leaving Jacko to take the reins. Simon Fourchet's younger son was neatly barbered and point-device as usual, bright green long-tailed coat pressed, his hat without s.m.u.tch of dust, black silk cravat in a modish little bow beneath his chin. He carried a cloak folded over his arm, which he partially spread across his young stepmother's knees. Marie-Noel had drawn her widow's veil already over her face, and sat without speaking as the gig moved off.

That leaves Leander at the house. January shivered in the cold. Always supposing the conspirators trust him with this kind of secret. He remained where he was, watching the shuttered windows, the rear gallery, and especially the cistern beside the kitchen, for nearly an hour without seeing further sign of life, before he crept up to investigate.

In the kitchen January found evidence of many days' stay. A small sack of rice and another of cornmeal were stowed in the bin-table. A few half-burned candles had been left as well. A great clutter of dishes had been roughly sc.r.a.ped and left in the laundry room, alive with ants and mice.

No Leander. January tried to imagine the valet being sent off to Baton Rouge with a pa.s.s and instructions to purchase the wood and dispatch Robert's letters, and couldn't. Robert Fourchet was pompous, vain, and greatly enamored of his own intelligence and erudition, but he wasn't foolish, and Leander had never impressed January as being trustworthy.

Hunting by candlelight behind the kitchen, January found cheese and fruit in a sunken oil jar, and these too he devoured. The veve still on the wall made him uneasy, but it was better than the laundry room's stink. He wondered if he dared light a fire, for he could not stop shivering. The fog, at least, would hide the smoke from the chimney. He opened the cabinet door and brought in a few sticks of wood, but there was no kindling in the box.

Returning, to the cabinet and skirmishing around the piled cords in quest of bark and twigs-there was no hatchet either, as he'd earlier observed-he became slowly conscious of the smell of decay.

No hatchet, but January remembered glimpsing a shovel near the back door. He got it, and saw that the earth that clotted its blade-of course Robert wouldn't clean it or probably have any concept how to clean it-was fairly fresh, within the last week. January stood thinking about that for a moment, then set his rifle in a corner and began to move the heavy cords of wood aside.

It didn't take him long to find the grave beneath them. It hadn't been dug deep. A few feet only; it was the wood that had kept rats or foxes from trying to dig up the carrion. January guessed at which end would be the head, and guessed wrong, uncovering in a short time a pair of natty shoes and slender ankles clothed in gray trousers that were unmistakably Leander's.

Bundled up beside them was a man's ruffled white shirt liberally stained with oil, and another one splashed with dried blood. An empty bottle labeled Concentration du Calomel Speciale, Solution d Flericourt. A careful drawing of the now-familiar veve of coffin and knives. . . .

And a violin case.

January's breath stopped in his lungs. Hannibal. Hannibal had been here.

His blistered hands stiff and cold, he tore the little black casket out of the earth. Inside, the battered Stradivarius was wrapped in its customary coc.o.o.n of faded silk scarves, with a hideout bottle of opium.

d.a.m.n them. Moving almost automatically he cached the instrument in the rough rafters of the shed, and bent to digging again. d.a.m.n them to h.e.l.l. He worked fast, illogically, as if his friend had been interred alive and he could somehow save him by finding him quickly. While he worked his tired mind probed and twisted at what might have happened, how Hannibal had come to get off the Heroine here, what would have made him stop and investigate Refuge. Under Leander's body the hard clayey soil was untouched. Still, he cleared up to the valet's waist in order to satisfy himself that no second body had been crumpled into the grave.

Nothing. He straightened, sweating, trembling with exhaustion and hunger, guilt and grief, and bewilderment.

I will see them hanged, he thought. Robert and Marie-Noel. Whoever did this . . .

He cast the shovel into the corner and pulled out the two shirts, the drawing, the calomel bottle, concealing them in a dry corner for Shaw. He paused for a moment, turning the bottle over in his hands. The label-one he recognized-was only confirmation of what he'd already guessed. Then he dragged the wood back over the grave, knowing enough had to remain of the valet's body to serve as evidence but too weary, too fatigued, to replace the soil.

Shaw will be coming to Mon Triomphe, he thought. Robert will be there, and Marie-Noel. Shaw needs to be warned.

Bone-tired, hands and face smarting from yesterday's burns, he flinched from the thought of getting the pirogue out of the boathouse in the dark, of rowing upstream and lying in wait off the island again. January left the woodshed, crossed through the kitchen to get the rest of the bread and cheese, and thought, the rifle. . . . And stepped out into the yard straight into the midst of Captain Ney and the crew of the Belle Dame.

Jacinthe Ney and the rotund little Spaniard who was his first mate had their pistols out already, watching the cinder-gray fog that enclosed the yard, and there wasn't a hope in h.e.l.l of flight.

January flung up his hands as the pieces were leveled on him, widened his eyes in astonishment- which was genuine-and terror-feigned-and cried in what he hoped was a disarmingly frightened voice, "Don't shoot, Michie! Don't shoot poor Ben!"

Which almost certainly saved his life. That and the fact that he'd left the rifle behind. It stopped them pulling the triggers at once, and as two more men ran up, with dark-lanterns and guns leveled, January added, "I'll go back! I wasn't runnin' away! I swear it!"

Ney glanced toward the lightless house. The mate said, "The door was still locked."

"I didn't go near that house!" January protested, as his hands were seized and bound behind him.

Oh, please, G.o.d, don't let them look in the kitchen woodshed. . . . "I was just lookin' around for somethin' to eat." With his soot-stained clothing, blistered face, and the dirt and grime that covered him, he hoped he looked sufficiently like a runaway, but he had to fight to maintain the look of wide-eyed innocence when, in the course of searching him for weapons, they found the packet of pa.s.ses, and Ney pulled Robert's letter from it and held it up to the lantern's narrow beam. "What's this?"

January shook his head. "It's a pa.s.s, sir. Michie Hannibal, he gave me a bunch of pa.s.ses 'fore he left." Ney and the Spaniard exchanged a glance. Behind them, three or four of the steamboat's crew were hurrying back and forth to the levee with wood from the mill's sheds. The boat itself must have been stripped to a skeleton crew, January thought through a sickened haze of dread- stevedores and stewards and handlers of cargo left elsewhere. The only men he saw now were ruffians, grim-eyed men whose interest quite clearly lay in making a dollar wherever and however they could.

"Get him on board," commanded Ney. "Get them both on board."

January was chained in the cargo hold, a good-sized area immediately in front of the engine room. His hands were still bound behind him, his feet joined by a short shackle whose central chain was run through a ring in the wall about three and a half feet above the floor. This was a position favored among dealers and owners of rebellious or uncooperative slaves, for in addition to rendering the captive completely helpless, it was a position of total, almost childlike, humiliation. Only the thought that Shaw would be looking for him-that Shaw would in all probability be able to figure out from tracks and signs at Refuge what had happened-kept him from attempting to break away from them in despair.

Don't be stupid, he told himself, as the men gagged him and left him. Panic had nearly betrayed him once-Don't let it do so again.

They're in a hurry. Ney hates to dump steam. With the engine stopped they're risking a boiler explosion if they stay here a moment longer than absolutely necessary. They have wood from the mill sheds and there's no reason for them to open that kitchen porch.

And don't let Senecan aphorisms seduce you into thinking that the only alternative to slavery is death. You're worth a thousand dollars to these people. And unless they find Leander's grave, the VERY worst that can happen is they'll sell you somewhere along the river. You'll smile and bow and look "likely, " as the Americans say, and at the first opportunity you'll head for New Orleans, where there are people who'll testify you're a free man.

And then you'll come after Ney and his crew with everything you have.

The thought allowed him to lie still, though the hammering of his heart left him short of breath.

To listen and to watch.

On the voyage upriver from town he'd put his head through the cargo-hold door out of simple curiosity, in the same spirit in which he'd investigated the rest of the boat. One had to do something for eight hours besides maintain a running mental compet.i.tion for the most ostentatious American dwelling on the lower river. The hold had been filled with crates, bales, and pa.s.senger luggage then, piled around the two long walls in such a fashion as to completely conceal the heavy wooden beams that ran, like chair-rails, along the middle of the wall. Exposed now, it could be seen that these beams supported iron rings every three feet or so, through one of which his own ankle chains were fastened. More chains hung from each of the other rings, long chains bearing many manacles: large ones to fasten around the neck, smaller ones for the wrists.

Other than that, and a couple of latrine buckets in the corners, the hold was bare.

January counted the chains. There were enough for a hundred and fifty, maybe a hundred and seventy-five souls.

"Stow those in the stateroom." Captain Ney's voice spoke very close to the open cargo-hold door and lantern light splashed through. "Make sure every man gets a pistol and a rifle. We don't want to take chances. And tell the men to step lively. We need to make Triomphe before daylight."

He strode past the door, pistol in hand. Two men followed, bearing a crate whose open lid leaked straw. As they pa.s.sed the door one of the other men came by and took a rifle from it, and hurried on his way. "What about him?" asked a voice, and Ney replied something indistinct. The stateroom, it sounded like, so there was little chance, reflected January wryly, that they referred to him. "I mean, what the h.e.l.l do we do with him? Why'd Fourchet keep him around? Why not just dump him overside?"

"Because, you imbecile c.u.n.t, his family knows he was staying at Triomphe." Anger made the young boatmaster's voice clearer. "So that's where he'll have to be found."

For a moment January didn't understand whom they meant. Then the Spanish mate pa.s.sed the door with another man, carrying Hannibal slung between them like a parcel. January heard the door of the stateroom next to the cargo hold open, the m.u.f.fled creaking as Hannibal was dropped roughly onto the bed there. A man asked, "He be all right?" and the Spaniard replied, "With that much opium in him he'd better be." At the same time Captain Ney pa.s.sed the door again, this time with a man dressed as a fireman or engineer, whose face bore the same long jaw, the same widelipped heavy mouth and pale eyes as his: a cousin or brother, part of the clan. Boots creaked, and above the jarring racket of the engines, which had all the while shuddered the ship's bones, January heard the roaring hiss of a release-valve venting steam.

"Idiots," said Ney, so close to the opposite wall it sounded as if he stood at January's side. "Is it so difficult to put in a pump that will take on water without the engine running? Make sure she fills properly on the way, and when we get running fast, you come in every five minutes. That's the pitch-pine wood over there. When we use it-if we have to use it-keep a weather eye on her."

"Think we'll have to, Jac?"

"I doubt it. But it's as well to be prepared to make a run for it. And as hot as pitch-wood burns, I don't want to end up scattered all over the territories in little shreds."

And from behind the opposite wall, Hannibal abruptly began to declaim Sh.e.l.ley's "The Cloud" in his hoa.r.s.e, fragile voice.

"That's it!" shouted a voice from the deck. Juddering lantern light, and Ney pa.s.sed the door again, striding toward the stair that led to the pilothouse on the hurricane deck above. January resumed breathing. Hannibal was alive. And they hadn't found either the rifle or the open grave.

More men pa.s.sed, bearing the long poles with which the sternwheeler would be thrust from the landing and turned out sufficiently that the paddle could be engaged. The trees of the batture, mere sable cutouts, vanished at once. Mon Triomphe, thought January, wriggling tentatively in his bonds. To rendezvous with Robert-and possibly Marie-Noel. . . .

The chains on the wall jingled with the stomp and jerk of the engine. "River's rising, p.i.s.s on it,"

said the Spanish mate, pausing by the rail outside the door. "Just what we need in the fog."

And turning, he banged shut the hold door, leaving January in darkness.

Robert, thought January, as he had last night. Camille's son.

You're in it together, Simon had cried, dying, though it was clear to January that whether or not Robert had seduced his stepmother into complicity after his arrival, his original partner had not even been aware of him when she'd started her revenge.

But Robert had been aware of her.

And that was all that he'd needed. Even the dates fitted, the deeds that had seemed so senseless- the mule barn fire, the second and third time the harness had been damaged, the marking of the house with those childishly identical veves, the knives damaged-all had taken place after Robert and his family had returned on the seventh. And they were senseless, if you actually were a slave.

But not if you only wanted people to think you were.

Not if your motive wasn't property, but vengeance. The sign of the Heavenly Twins. Double vengeance. A double crime.

You sow the wind in your hatred, but somewhere a whirlwind is listening. Robert had stepped off the ship from France to be met on the dock by his older brother, with the news that the father he already intended to murder had remarried, to a young girl capable of bearing many more sons and daughters with whom the inheritance of Mon Triomphe must be divided. . . .

And that there was slave unrest afoot, to take the blame if one, or some, or all of the other heirs were to die.

It had, after all, happened before.

That Robert had returned from France with the intention of killing his father, January was almost certain. He'd have to ask Shaw-and he would see Shaw again, he reminded himself firmly-to get in touch with authorities in Paris to confirm the ident.i.ty of the aged, opium-soaked prost.i.tute whose apartment Robert had visited, not once but many times. . . . Scarcely the sort of girlfriend the young dandy would choose. Scarcely the neighborhood he'd select to visit, if it weren't to see his mother. A good thing too that she did turn out to have died, the cook Arnaud had said. He went nearly crazy tryin' to find out. . . .

And of course, thought January, in the end he couldn't. And he hadn't let that stop him.

Saw her on the bed, and Michie Robert holding her in his arms. . . .

Had she died then? he wondered. Of drink and opium and the sheer ill-usage a woman endures, when she's forced to wh.o.r.e for her living? Or was Camille Fourchet still alive in that filthy Paris room, waiting for her son's revenge?

All she wanted was to go back to France.

Hericourt's Concentrated Calomel Solution was a proprietary brand, bottled by one of the large apothecaries on the Right Bank. Robert must have bought it shortly before embarking for New Orleans again. Had his father not been ill, there were a dozen other places where it could have been put, once Robert had arranged to be officially out of the area, with little notes from Baton Rouge and points upriver to prove it.

A young man who, when staying at Mon Triomphe as a child, had shared his studies with the brightest scion of the disreputable Ney clan would have no lack of accomplices.

In the darkness of the hold, with the lurch and jerk of the engine rattling his bones and the stealthy scurrying of the inevitable rats along the walls, January thought about Marie-Noel, clutching Robert's clandestine note to her chest. Bidding her come to Refuge, of course. Baiting the hook with words of love.

Did she really think he'd let her unborn child live? Or was she so eager to extricate herself from that violent and abusive old man that she didn't consider what risks involvement with so calculating a murderer might entail?

Kiki had said, "I wouldn't be surprised if those children of hers that died didn't die of something else. . . ." Little knowing how truly she spoke.

Even then Robert had hated his father and his family, for his mother's sake. Even then he had wanted her love--and his father's money-all to himself.

The bone-jarring rhythm of the engine shifted and eased. With a howling hiss of steam the boiler was dumped. January had heard many times that engineers could tell the state of the boiler merely by the sound, scorning those fearful souls who argued for the installation of gauges. The jolt of the pistons and the heavy splash of the wheel ceased; the wheelhouse bell clanged distantly. They'd come opposite the Mon Triomphe wharf, and were being towed in.

He twisted against his bonds. The leather thongs around his wrists were cuttingly tight and double-wrapped between them in a figure-of-eight-feats like "wriggling free of his bonds" and "finding a convenient fragment of broken gla.s.s," performed with such aplomb by the likes of Leatherstocking and Ivanhoe, were clearly the province of mighty-thewed, younger, and gray- eyed men. In any case neither the Deerslayer nor the Knight of the Oak had ever been chained with his feet above his head, a position in which it was difficult to do anything except hope that the beautiful Indian maiden (or Saracen girl) whose eyes he'd met for an unforgettable moment during capture would hurry up and steal down those dungeon stairs. . . .

"And make it quick," snapped Ney, from the stateroom door nearby. "We can't afford to let the engine go off its steam."

Within a very few minutes January heard the scuffling tread of feet on the deck. b.u.mper's voice asked, "Mama, what's goin' on? Michie Esteban wouldn't really sell off everybody on the place. .