Fever Season (39 page)

“Those very pearls,” January said. “Because if you’ve still got them, I’d like to take them out to Milneburgh tomorrow, as bait to get me in to speak to Reverend Dunk.” And he told Shaw about Laurence Jumon’s carriage team of white horses.

“Now that is most interestin’.” The gray cold eyes narrowed as Shaw settled into his battered chair. “Because I been a little curious about this particular Prophet of the Lord. Seems instead of buildin’ this Church out to Milneburgh with the money he made out of resellin’ Mrs. R’s slaves, Reverend Hellfire turned around and
bought
slaves, to the tune of about eighty-five hundred dollars … which if you calculate the amount of Church money he used to buy them slaves from her, exactly half the profit he made, plus five thousand dollars, it all works out to just about that very figure.”

There was a time when January would have been surprised that a Kaintuck could accomplish such mathematics. Now he only said, “Dunk’s fronting for her.”

“Either that, or he’s doin’ a damn good job of makin’ it look that way.” Shaw opened one of the desk’s lower drawers, withdrew a tied packet of papers, then, rising, put a hand on January’s shoulder as if to murmur a confidence, and drew him to the Cabildo’s outer doors. With
their backs to the lamplit room he tilted the papers. Pearls slid into January’s hand.

In front of them, the Place d’Armes was a swaying sea of colors and flambeaux. Masked men and costumed women rioted among the cafés set up along the edges of the square. The music of a half-dozen bands cacophonized in the lamp-sprinkled lapis dark. Every steamboat on the levee was an illuminated palace, and somewhere a couple of clarionets and a bugle hooted out what was apparently supposed to be “Greenland’s Icy Mountains.”

“Well, them slaves he bought with the money are bringin’ in a passel, rented out to Tom Jenkins’s new sawmill,” Shaw went on mildly. “And by all I can see Dunk ain’t gettin’ rich. And then there’s Mrs. R out to Nyades Street in a nice new house with spang new mournin’ dresses and no visible means of support. You be careful when you go out to Milneburgh, now, Maestro.”

“His eyelids flutter. His breath gags in his throat. Sweat, the sweat of death, stands out on his face and brow. Oh, have you ever smelt the sweat of death, the stink of fear as a man approaches the horrible gate from which only one has ever returned? He gasps, fighting for air, for just one more mouthful of the blessed air of mortal life!”

On the bench at the front of the hall—the ballroom of the Washington Hotel, rented for the purpose by ladies of the Church Committee—a woman cried out, and buried her face in her hands. Two girls clung to one another, desperately fighting sobs; another turned her face aside, her breath in staggering hiccups of terror, tears and mucus running down her face. Throughout the room, close-packed, rustling, thick with the scents of verbena and lamp oil and pomade, the undercurrent of sobs and groans
floated, a soft soprano humming like mosquitoes above swamp waters.

Reverend Dunk flung up his hands. “I see them!” he cried, and his brown eyes stretched, gazing into distance, the riveted horror in them the rival of a Kean or a Kemble. His finger stabbed out, trembling, his voice fell to a hoarse whisper that could be heard into the back of the room. “I see them even now. They writhe in the flames, flesh shriveling from their bones. They beg, they plead, they stretch out their hands for the touch, just the tiniest touch, of water.” His fingers curled into a despairing fist. “But there is no water there. Only fire, and more fire …”

A woman in the middle of the room screamed, jerked to her feet as if electrified; stood panting, gasping, head lolling back. One of the several soberly clothed young men who had been moving up and down the two aisles between the chairs went to her, spoke soothing words, led her down the aisle to the front bench.

The better to hear Dunk’s excrutiatingly detailed catalog of the pains of hell?
wondered January, from the back of the room.

His mind went back to the Cathedral that morning, the deep still peace—even on the threshold of Mardi Gras. Sunlight touching the priest’s violet vestments, the sweet mustiness of incense, the gentle murmur of voices.
Esto mihi in Deum protectorem, et in locum refugii.… Be thou unto me a God, a protector, and a place of refuge to save me.…

“I see worms, and rats, and ants, and all the vermin of the Devil’s creation, gnawing on the flesh of those who lie in chains. Oh my brothers and sisters, do you imagine that your flesh will cease to feel when the last breath chokes from your heaving lungs? In the fires of hell,
there
your
flesh will be as sensible, as tender, as shrinking as ever it was upon the earth.…”

One of the young ushers came soft-footed up to January and gestured invitingly toward the last four ranks of the room, where slaves and free colored occupied benches rather than the chairs set for their so-called betters. In the Cathedral, and St. Anthony’s on Rue des Ramparts, no such distinction was made.

January shook his head, smiled polite thanks (“I’ve already had some salvation today, thank you”), and handed the usher another card from Hannibal’s collection. “If Reverend Dunk might spare me a few minutes of his time.…”

“I’ll tell him,” murmured the young man. “You realize, though, sir, that the exertions of the Spirit take a terrible toll upon our brother, and he will need rest.”

“I’ll wait.”

Milneburgh was quiet in the winter season. From the gallery at the hotel’s rear, January looked out over the lake, beaten lead under colorless sky, silent save for an occasional stirring of wind. A servant swept the gallery. The air smelled of coffee and scorched toast.

Periodically January returned to the ballroom, though for the most part he could follow the progress of the meeting by the muffled howls and singing audible even through the hotel’s walls. Dunk himself went on in Boschian detail with his vision of hell for nearly an hour—
The man must have lungs of leather and a bladder to match
—after which, hair and shirt soaked with sweat, the preacher collapsed onto a chair on the podium. His soft-voiced assistants immediately took up the exhortation, one of them urging the congregation to “Come to Jesus; come to dear, sweet, tender Jesus; Jesus will save you; Jesus will rescue you …” while the other moved about the room, leading
half-hysterical women and girls up to the benches in the front. The third time he entered, January saw that several of these front-benchers had fallen, twitching and writhing, to the floor. Dunk had one of them in his arms, whispering passionate comfort, his face so close to hers that the sweat that dripped from his hair fell to her lips; she clung to him, sobbing out a confession that was probably just as well drowned by the howling and the hymns.

Even after the sounds died away, and the scattering of slaves, freedwomen, and free colored came out onto the veranda to revive themselves on coffee and biscuits, it was another three-quarters of an hour until Dunk could extricate himself from his white admirers and gesture January into a small parlor where they would not be disturbed.

“Where had you these?” Offstage, as it were, Dunk’s voice was quiet, but still beautiful, its natural depth and cadence making his words a pleasure. He didn’t appear either startled or put out when January produced the pearls, only frowned with concern.

“A colored girl gave them to me, sir,” answered January. “I promised her I wouldn’t say anything of her, and she’s left town by this time.…” He glanced at the angle of sunlight on the curtains, as if confirming a time, and made a very slight nod to himself. “But she said they belong to Mrs. Redfern, whom I gather is a friend of yours. Do you recognize them?”

Dunk nodded, running the pearls through his fingers: sausagelike, but clean and with a surprisingly delicate touch. “I believe I do, though I saw her wear them only the once, two or three years ago. Would this be the unfortunate girl who made off with them last summer?” The warm sienna eyes grew wary under the long lashes.

Any Frenchman—or any actor—would have changed his shirt and combed his hair after a three-hour performance
of that intensity. Dunk apparently regarded the saturated linen and matted mane as badges of an honorable tussle with Satan. By the admiring gazes of the women who peeped through the panes at them, it was an opinion he did not hold alone.

“I don’t know, sir,” replied January. “I understand you’ve visited the Redfern plantation and might be going there soon? I thought you might …”

“Spanish Bayou has been sold.” Dunk shook his head. “The girl who stole these pearls made off with the money that might have gone to the saving of it, poor wretch.”

“I understand the bulk of the damage was done long before that, sir,” said January quietly. “Though I’ve never had the fever of gambling myself, and so I can’t pass judgment on those who do.…”

“Can’t you?” Under the Assyrian luxury of his beard, Dunk’s mouth hardened. “You have the generosity of one who hasn’t seen a good woman’s life ruined through the vice, my friend.”

January assumed an expression of slightly startled enlightenment, as if the matter had never been presented to him or anyone else with such cogence before, and the Reverend’s jaw came forward, a militant glint sparkling in his eyes.

“You can’t pass judgment, you say. That does you credit as a Christian. But I happen to know that only five days before his death, Otis Redfern was obliged to sell six of his slaves—with no way of redeeming the labor force of the plantation before harvest time, you understand—in order to pay debts incurred by that pernicious vice. Upon taking those slaves to the city, he entered into gambling again, like a dog returning to his vomit, and lost the entire sum he had made by that sale, so that he had to return to his unfortunate wife the following morning and tell her
that the money must immediately be paid over to his new creditors, and that they were ruined.”

His brows plunged to shadow those deep-set eyes, and his voice subtly shifted, the voice of a preacher determined to convince his audience.

“Surely not!” January injected just enough doubt into his voice to bring Dunk up like a ruffling owl.

“I was there myself and heard them, my friend. And if Mrs. Redfern recriminated against him, who could blame her? Redfern was preparing to sell even her dowery land, a parcel too small to be of use to anyone, whose deeds the wretched woman asked me to remove from the house lest they become entangled in the ensuing settlement. Now, what kind of a man would rob his wife to that extent?”

“You shock me, sir!” January looked shocked.

“Gambling is a fearful curse, sir. It deteriorates the character. Until the man spoke to his wife in such a way that I promise you, neither Mr. Granville, who was breakfasting with me, nor I knew where to look.”

Hubert Granville?
thought January, enlightened. Granville was at Spanish Bayou that Wednesday morning? To render over the money from the previous day’s sale of the six slaves, almost certainly. Arriving for breakfast, before Otis Redfern’s return from town. And that being the case …

“And you took the deeds for this dower land away with you that day?”

“I considered it my obligation,” replied Dunk. “The land was not the husband’s to sell, but under the law he would have been able to do so.”

Not if it was tied up in a trust, it wasn’t
, thought January wryly. But Emily seemed to have convinced her hellfire
cicisbeo
otherwise. And almost certainly, the deed to Black Oak had not been the only thing in that envelope.

“I was terribly shocked,” Dunk went on slowly, “to hear of the unhappy man’s death, but I cannot admit to much sorrow at it.” He shook his massive head. “Still, to part from a man at the wharf after breakfast and to hear he has succumbed by midnight … It gives one thought for one’s own mortality.”

He let the pearls trail from one hand to the other, gazing down reflectively at the satiny spheres. “Did this unfortunate girl express contrition for what she did? Or speak about the money she had stolen? That was a sad business.”

January shook his head. His mind raced, time and events fitting together like the cogs of a gear. “I had the impression this was not the girl who took them, sir. She spoke of having received them ‘from a friend,’ though of course that might have been only a story to cover her own guilt. The girl who took them: what did she look like?”

“I never saw her—only heard Mrs. Redfern’s description. A mulatress, she said, with a thin little face and a snub nose. Did the girl who gave you these look so?”

“No, sir. She was bright, quadroon or octoroon, with freckles on her nose.”

“Hmn,” rumbled Dunk, deep in thought. “Hmn. And this girl made no mention of the money her friend had taken?”

“None, sir.”

The Reverend sighed, gave himself a little shake, and made a sketch of a bow. “Thank you very much for bringing me these,” he said. “Mrs. Redfern will be most grateful to have them back. As for the girl, we seem to be obliged, as the Bard says, to ‘leave her to Heaven,’ perhaps the best course in any case.” He produced a clean handkerchief from his pocket, and wrapped the pearls carefully. “Thank you, Mr.…?”

“Dordogne,” said January, bowing in his turn. He’d memorized the name on Hannibal’s card before sending it in. “Marcus Dordogne. Thank you for your time, sir. And you’ve given me much to think about.”
More than you know, in fact
. “I understand you’ll be setting up a regular Church here in Milneburgh?”

“If God is good to me, yes.” Dunk’s voice had returned to normal tones; he extended a meaty hand to shake. “May I hope to see you there, when the dream of it becomes reality?”

“You may well, sir.” January resumed his hat, straightened his black coat, and with a final bow, made his way down the steps of the gallery, past windows where the white ladies of the congregation—and Dunk’s two assistants—were regaling themselves on beef sandwiches and punch.

It was all he could do to keep from jumping up and clicking his heels.

No wonder Emily Redfern had been at such pains to imply that Cora had returned to the plantation Wednesday evening. No wonder the woman had been so eager to ruin Rose Vitrac, and drive her out of town. No wonder she was willing to sacrifice her pearls and a hundred and ninety dollars cash money, to avoid Rose remaining in custody where she might be questioned by others. Granville had brought the money out to Spanish Bayou Wednesday morning; the money had departed with Dunk “after breakfast”—and, therefore, far too early for Cora to have had the slightest thing to do with the administration of the poison—and Otis Redfern had come down sick Wednesday night.