Dead and Buried (21 page)

You can’t even vote in this country
.

He took a deep breath and looked up, in time to see Hannibal stop. ‘Irvin and Frye’s’, said the sign in the window. ‘Prime Hands, Fancies.’ Three men and a boy sat on the bench on one side of the door, three women – one of them great with child – on the other. Their eyes all flickered to Hannibal as he consulted the advertisement in the
Bee
, pulled Thos. Dawes’s card from his waistcoat pocket, and went inside. January felt their eyes on his back as he followed.

‘Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Irvin,’ inquired Hannibal of the man who rose from behind the desk in the stifling front room, ‘or Mr Frye?’

No other customer. Thank God
.

January folded his hands and stood to one side while Hannibal and Mr Irvin (or Mr Frye) discussed the price of slaves, the profits from Hannibal’s putative cotton press in Mobile, Hannibal’s equally putative wife in Mobile and her need for a smart young maid . . .
Yes
, Mrs Dawes preferred them bright, and in fact was looking for a girl who could read.
No
, Mr Dawes couldn’t understand it either, wasting time teaching wenches to read, but Mrs Dawes had been to a Young Ladies Seminary in Washington and had a few notions . . .

Mr Frye (or Mr Irvin) yelled for a young man named Samson – probably a slave himself – to fetch in Estelle, Jewel, and Pierrette. ‘Too old,’ Hannibal said, dismissing at once the only one whose years put her out of the running to be Pierrette. ‘And this one is . . .’

‘Jewel, sir.’

Jewel was sixteen, thin, and fighting with everything that was in her to remain expressionless.

‘Lovely,’ purred Hannibal, in a startling imitation of Uncle Diogenes at his most debased. ‘Lovely. Might I have the opportunity to take a more private viewing?’

‘Of course, of course . . .’

Irvin (or Frye) led Hannibal and the girl to the stairs. In the stairwell, Hannibal asked about the election – was it true Daniel Webster had challenged Mr Van Buren to a fist-fight in the Capitol? Mr Irvin hadn’t heard about this? Dear Lord, it was all over Mobile . . .

January stepped over to the girl left standing by the desk. ‘Pierrette?’

She turned as if he’d fired a gun.

‘My name is Lou. I’ve been asked to bring you a message.’ He spoke French, though Samson – loitering just outside the rear door where a feeble breeze whispered through from the yard – probably couldn’t hear them from where he stood. ‘Michie Tom and I are bound up the river tomorrow; the lady who spoke to me says as how you might want a letter taken.’

The girl’s eyes grew round, and January almost had to look away from the shocked hope that flooded her face. ‘Who . . .?’

‘I don’t know her name. Feller named Ti-Jon put us together.’ He named the slave – known throughout New Orleans to the enslaved – who could usually be counted on to know everybody who needed anything done. ‘But she said you been sold off without your young Miss knowin’ about it.’

Pierrette pressed her hands to her mouth; they were shaking. ‘She didn’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I swear she didn’t know. M’am Deschamps only did it because of what happened in Paris . . .’

January cast a quick glance toward the back door, but Samson had retreated into the yard and was nowhere to be seen. Two steps took both him and the girl to the desk; she had to wipe her palms, suddenly damp with panic sweat, on her skirt before she took up Mr Irvin’s pen and a sheet of paper. January stepped back, not speaking until she had done.

Miss Isobel
– her handwriting staggered with her nervous trembling –
your mother has sold me off, because of what happened in Paris. Please, please help me. I was sold to traders named Irvin and Frye, on Baronne Street. The others here say we will be bound for Nashville on November 1. I think they want $700, but I will do whatever you ask, anything, scrub floors or pick cotton or anything, if you’ll get Granpere Rablé to buy me
.
Pierrette.

‘Mamzelle’ll be with her aunts in St Francisville,’ said the girl, folding the letter swiftly and handing it to January. ‘Ma’m Nienie Deschamps and Ma’m Heloise Grounard. It’s the first house up the River Road from the landing, ’bout a mile from the town. Rosetree, it’s called. There’s an archway of roses out in front.’

She pressed her hands to her mouth again, struggling to gather her thoughts. The ashy pallor of her golden complexion told January that she’d probably neither eaten nor slept since the mother of her ‘young Miss’ had informed her that she was going to be taken to the dealer’s and sold; her eyes had the bruised look of tears beyond what white girls her age had any comprehension of. She wore a pretty frock of blue-and-white print lawn, more expensive than any dealer would give to make his ‘fancy’ look ‘smart’. She must have been taken straight out of the house in what she stood up in.

‘If she’s not there,’ she went on after a moment, ‘can you maybe get someone to take this up to Beaux Herbes plantation, outside Cloutierville, up on the Red River? Or Bayou Lente plantation, on t’other side of Cloutierville, about two miles? She sometimes goes and visits the old man there, M’sieu Rablé – Granpere Rablé, he’s called all over the parish. Please,’ she whispered, with another glance from the back door to the stairwell, from which Hannibal’s laughter, and Mr Irvin’s (or Mr Frye’s), drifted unhurriedly down. ‘Please. I know Granpere Rablé will buy me, if Mamzelle asks him. Mamzelle was his poor wife’s little pet, and old Granpere loves her like she was his own granddaughter.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’ January slid the note into his pocket. The thought of journeying all the way to Nachitoches Parish – six days’ travel on the low summer rivers – in pursuit of Isobel Deschamps appalled him, but he knew that, whatever else happened, its delivery was the price of what Pierrette could tell him. He made his voice indignant rather than urgent, as if the matter didn’t concern him directly, when he said, ‘What happened in Paris, that Mamzelle’s maman would want to sell you off?’

Once the note was handed over, some of the girl’s panic seemed to subside. As if, fighting to stay afloat in horizonless ocean, she’d glimpsed a plank that might be bobbing her way.

She drew a deep breath, tucked a stray curl of light mahogany-red hair back under her tignon, shook her head. ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘That Irish boy she fell in love with, that Vicomte . . . her Tante Cassandre in Paris, she asked about him and looked him up in her books, and she said, “Well, he’s not so rich as some, but he’ll surely do for a husband.” And there was no question, he loved her like St Roche and his dog, and she him. That other Lord, that Lord Blessinghurst, she never had a glance for him, for all his roses and poetry that he sent . . . and, Mamzelle said, he’d copied the poetry out of a book.’

‘Did he, now?’ January murmured. ‘Was he rich?’

‘Lord, yes. He once gave me ten francs and promised me there was more where that came from –’ she grimaced with distaste – ‘if I’d tell her what a good man he was and how desperate in love with her. I gave him his ten francs back,’ she added and wiped her hand on her skirt again as if at the memory. ‘He tried to kiss me, too.’

‘Why did you come back?’ asked January. ‘You didn’t have to . . .’

‘I wish I hadn’t,’ Pierrette whispered. ‘If I’d known . . . But something went wrong ’twixt her and Michie Gerry – Vicomte Foxford,’ she corrected herself quickly. ‘Bad wrong. I don’t know what it was. This was February – Mamzelle and me, we’d got there at the start of December. One evening Mamzelle came home early, before midnight, from a ball she’d been at, claiming she had a headache. But when she got up to her room she broke down crying like her heart would break. Michie Gerry came the next day, and she said how she had a headache. He begged me to take her a note, and she tore it up without reading it – that one, and the others he sent. It scared me how she’d cry. That day she told Tante Cassandre she wanted to go home, she didn’t care how bad the voyage was going to be. I asked Michie Gerry what happened, and he said she’d told him she couldn’t see him anymore, just like that, out of a blue sky. He asked me if she’d said anything to
me
!

‘I been with other young misses,’ she went on, her dark eyes filled with distress, ‘and I’ve never seen anythin’ like this. She quit eating, she didn’t sleep – I know she didn’t sleep because I’d sit up most of the night. She—’ She broke off, twisting her hands. ‘I was afraid for her,’ she said softly. ‘I shouldn’t say this, but one night I went downstairs, and comin’ back up, I found she’d got a razor from Oncl’ Deschamps’s room. She was just sittin’ in the dark, holdin’ it in her hand. I took it away from her, gentle as I could, but she was . . . strange. She got over it, a little, once we’d got on the ship, but . . .’

The girl shook her head again. ‘All she’d say, when I spoke his name, was, “Don’t talk about him. Don’t talk about him again ever.” And after all that—’ Pierrette shook her head again, pressed her hand to her mouth, as if to hide from him the trembling of her lips. ‘After all that, she tells her maman she has to leave
New Orleans
now. She had that look in her eye again, that empty look. It was her maman who said I was to stay here. I didn’t think a thing of it at the time, but now I see—’

The street door opened. A man came in – his boots and coat and the set of his shoulders shouting
cotton planter
, of the kind just starting in the territories – and Irvin’s (or Frye’s) descent clattered in the stairwell. ‘Good day, sir, good day – hot as blazes, ain’t it? What can I do for you this fine morning . . .’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Pierrette whispered to January in French, and she pressed his huge hand between both of hers. ‘God bless you. Get my Mamzelle that note, somehow – I know she’ll get old Granpere Rablé to buy me.’

Questions unasked fought on January’s lips – did she see ‘Blessinghurst’ the day before this ball when she’d told Foxford goodbye? Was there a time when Isobel was alone with him? Did he send her letters? But pity silenced them. He was on the track of a puzzle with a young man’s life at stake, but this girl stood in terror on the brink of a precipice, waiting for the shove that would send her over. It was no time for tales of who might have said what to whom last February in Paris.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ he promised – and meant it.
Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, give me the strength to do what is needed
.

Hannibal came downstairs a few moments later, the girl Jewel in his wake. Pierrette went to her at once, took her hands – January heard her ask, ‘You all right,
cher
?’

The younger girl whispered, ‘It weren’t bad. He didn’t make me undress or nuthin’.’

There were planters, January knew well, who would strip women, squeeze breasts, paw genitals and – if the dealer thought it would clinch the sale – copulate with their prospective property in the name of
seein’ how she’ll breed
. If you didn’t buy the girl it was certainly cheaper than a visit to the Countess.

The slave-dealer was still chatting cheerfully with his new customer when Hannibal moved to the door, tipping his hat as he passed.

‘Not to your taste, sir? You can take Pierrette upstairs—’

‘Another time.’

‘Sure thing, Mr Dawes. And you think about what I said, about that boy of yours . . .’ He nodded to January.

‘I will indeed give the matter thought,’ promised Hannibal, his hand on the doorknob. ‘Until then, as the poet says,
ficossissimus esto
, Mr Frye!’

As they stepped outside, the slaves seated on either side of the door glanced at them, and January had to close his hands into fists, as if doing so would hold in the rage that swept him. If he did not, he thought, he was in danger of forgetting all about Compair Lapin, in danger of losing his temper, as Jesus had in the Temple, and storming from end to end of this street with a whip in his hand . . .

And we all know what happened to Jesus
.

SIXTEEN

I
t would make him late to the Countess’s that night – and his whole bruised body ached to lie down for the remainder of the evening – but January made it his business to visit the Cabildo. Shaw wasn’t there, but the sergeant at the desk – mellowed by a tip that January couldn’t well afford – led him across the back courtyard and up the brick steps to the men’s cell. The
white
men’s cell it was, these days, though January had occupied it himself a few years previously, before the Americans had complained about
their
drunkards and scum being obliged to share quarters with some lesser race. With any luck, within a year the new Parish Prison being built on Rue d’Orleans would be ready to receive visitors; as it was, the stink of the place made him cringe before he was halfway up the steps. At the moment the place was quiet, save for an inebriated voice extolling the necessity for a higher protective tariff and an independent national treasury. ‘Somebody shut that damn Whig up,’ urged a tired voice.

Foxford came to the barred judas in the door. ‘Mr January! Good lord, what happened to you?’