Good Man Friday (15 page)

Three hours later, as the musicians ascended the kitchen stair to take their leave into the foggy blackness, the honor of America manifested itself in the form of Bray, leaning heavily on Congressman Stockard's arm as he staggered down the driveway and into the yard. ‘Trigg!' Bray yelled, and almost veered under the hooves of a departing carriage. ‘Trigg, goddamit, you gotta let my boy Mede into that team of yours!'

‘Luke, for God's sake—' Stockard was laughing.

‘I mean it!' insisted Bray. ‘Mede – where's that boy?'

One of the Ministry servants dodged among the carriages at a trot, Ganymede Tyler at his heels. The young valet's breath puffed softly in the light of the lantern over the kitchen door: ‘I'm here, sir—'

‘You gonna join the Stalwarts.' Bray grabbed the startled Mede by the shoulder and thrust him at Trigg. ‘Best goddam thrower in the District,' he announced. ‘I take him out to help me practice, and he can throw fast, slow, whichever way, an' put that ball wherever he wants. Can't NOBODY hit what my Man Friday throws! Just goes WHOOSH! Right past 'em!'

His extravagant demonstration nearly spun him off his own feet.

‘I heard all that and more, sir,' replied Trigg. ‘But the fact is, sir, you know it's only free men that's on the Stalwarts.'

‘Told you that, Bray.' Stockard shook his curly head, obviously well aware that after a certain point in the evening there was only so much you
could
tell Luke Bray. ‘You know there's no slave nigger ball teams.'

‘How about if I set him free, then?' demanded Bray. ‘That satisfy everybody?'

Ganymede, who had borne the discussion of his prowess and slave status with a kind of embarrassed detachment – more, January suspected, on behalf of his master than himself – now froze as still as an animal startled in the woods, and January heard the hiss of his indrawn breath.

‘Set him free!' stated Bray, still more loudly, and yanked his arm away from his friend's supporting hand. ‘That'll show them cheatin' foreign nancy-boys! They want to play niggers, we'll
give
'em niggers! Show 'em even our
niggers
can beat cheatin' foreign arse-suckin' nancy-boys!'

Mede turned startled eyes on Trigg: wide, shocked, and wild with a hope that he dared not utter.

Trigg shrugged casually. ‘I guess we'll take him if he's free.'

‘Don't be a damn idiot, Luke! That nigger's worth two thousand dollars if he's worth a dime—'

‘And what's the good name of America worth, hunh?' Luke swiveled on his friend, chin thrust belligerently. ‘Two thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars?'

‘Luke, for Chrissake, you already lost seventeen hundred tonight playin' poker—'

‘You think seventeen hundred, or twen'y-seven hundred, means fuck-all to me, compared to the honor of America?' He jabbed Stockard's waistcoat with his forefinger. ‘Hell, I bet fancier niggers'n him in poker games! Mede!' He spun again, shook a finger in his valet's face. ‘I hereby declare you
free
!'

Stockard rolled his eyes, as if this were a child's game rather than a legal issue that would alter a man's life forever.

‘Now you join up with the Stalwarts and you show those suck-arse foreigner bastards that even the NIGGERS in this country can whoop their sorry behinds!'

‘Yes, sir,' Mede whispered. ‘I'll do that, sir.'

‘Now go find the carriage.' Luke Bray shoved him in the direction of the dark confusion of vehicles in the adjacent field. ‘Mrs Bray gonna kill me, keepin' her waitin' when she has a headache …'

‘She
always
got a headache, Luke,' grinned Stockard, and Bray laughed owlishly.

‘And, Mede! Stop an' get yourself a drink to celebrate!'

Mede whispered, ‘Yes, Marse Luke.' The look he threw toward the musicians, still grouped in the dim glow of the oil-lamp that fell through the kitchen door, was that of a sailor overboard gazing at wreckage, hoping he could reach it before the waves drove it off again. And like men on a half-foundered ship, they could only return his gaze, praying he'd make it without the slightest ability to help.

Behind January, a quiet voice spoke behind him in the kitchen door. ‘Might I have a word with you, M'sieu, on the subject of Mr Selwyn Singletary?'

I
t was Sir Henry Fox's secretary, Mr Oldmixton.

He'd heard the man's voice a few minutes before from the direction of the pillared portico of the house, bidding farewell to departing guests and making witty excuses for the fact that the Minister himself had been helped up to bed some hours previously. Even in the dank gloom of the kitchen stair, Oldmixton's exquisitely simple London tailoring was a polite rebuke to the bright waistcoats and gold watch-fobs of the American Congressmen who'd filled the house all evening.

He shook January's hand, said, ‘Madame Viellard suggested that I take the opportunity to speak with you.'

January had glimpsed Chloë Viellard in the ballroom, exquisite in Italian silk, under the aegis of the Adams party. Henri had very properly departed from the boarding house that afternoon with his wife, after the expedition to Gryme's pawnshop, and an hour later his carriage had arrived – with yet another of the livery stable's hired drivers, Esau having gone off to supper – to take Dominique to Mrs Purchase's house in Georgetown.

‘That's very kind of you, sir—'

They stepped out of the doorway and moved to the darkness at the far end of the loggia that stretched across the rear of the house. The Ministry servants – purchased, January guessed, from local planters – continued to move from the back door to the pump in the yard: January guessed they'd be oiling knives and washing punch-cups well into daylight.

‘Madame Viellard suggested that I give you this.' Oldmixton produced three folded sheets of foolscap from the inner pocket of his coat. ‘It's a copy of the report that Glover – my clerk – made up, of his enquiries for Mr Singletary along the Alexandria–Warrenton road.'

January unfolded the yellowish paper and angled it toward the reflected light from the lantern above the door. Mr Glover had made his investigations between the twelfth and seventeenth of November, in that six-week hiatus between the end of Congress's special session and the beginning of its regular meetings in December. Appended to the notes of who he had talked to, where, and when, the clerk had added his own expenses for the journey:
Dinner at the Queen of Prussia, rump steak, fish, eggs, cold fowl, pies, puddings, tea, and coffee – $1.50. Brandy and spirits free. Bed with clean sheets at Cayle's Tavern in Orange, seventy-five cents
. January wondered how much it would have been with dirty sheets.

His glance went to Oldmixton's face again, trying to read anything behind that bland façade. It was the British Ministry that Singletary was going to visit, just before his departure from Washington on the twentieth of October.

‘You'll see he made enquiries not only at the regular post-inns on the route – the Queen of Prussia in Warrenton and the Orange Hotel in Orange.' A rich voice, with something of Poe's theatrical inflection. A man who understood how to manipulate words to target or to conceal.
Keep this for me
, the frightened Singletary had said;
don't breathe a word to anyone
…

‘But because there's no record of Singletary having taken the stage, Glover asked at the smaller inns in Manassas, Warrenton, and Culpeper as well, and of the local sheriffs, as to whether a body had been found.'

Spoke with Lewis, sheriff Prince William County. Body discovered 12 October, Negro man. Spoke with Puser, sheriff Fauquier County; no bodies reported
…

‘Your clerk put a great deal of time and effort into this search.'

‘Mr Glover is a very thorough young man,' agreed Oldmixton. ‘I became extremely fond of Singletary when we worked together in the Home Office. He was a queer old bird but he impressed me as being very lonely. The last few years I was in London I made sure he joined my family for holidays, Christmases, an occasional Sunday … He didn't always come. He was shy of people, and with good reason; he had a devouring curiosity about them and would ask any damn question that came into his mind, everything from how old my aunt was to how ladies went about acquiring underdrawers. It was as if humanity were a different species. I told Glover to leave no stone unturned, and to be frank,' he added with a grin, ‘I suspect Glover thoroughly enjoyed his exploration of the Virginia countryside.'

The sudden elfin expression faded. ‘But I would not like to think that poor old Singletary had come to harm.'

As January slipped the folded sheets into his pocket, his fingers touched the silver pen, the battered card-case, like the skull fragments of the dead. ‘No,' he said. ‘Nor would I.'

‘Is Mede that good a thrower?' asked Phinn Mudwall as the five musicians made their way along the now-silent K Street toward the great, empty circle in the fields. Fog trapped the stinks of stale smoke, ill-tended privies, green weeds and thousands of horses and cows into a soft and heavy murk. Here and there across the empty fields a window glowed like a bleared drunkard's eye, but the men walked with their lanterns shuttered and kept their voices low. It was long past curfew and nobody wanted to risk being shaken down by the constables, always supposing that the constables were sober enough, at that hour, to stumble forth from the barrooms.

And there were worse things than the police afoot in the vaporous dark.

‘God, yes.' Their voices were barely a whisper as they crossed the mouth of an alley, between a row of three brick shops – standing isolated like an abandoned dollhouse – and the Globe and Eagle tavern on the corner of Twenty-Fourth Street, likewise closed for the night. ‘I seen him throw. That boy can make a ball do whatever he wants to; I seen men swing and miss at throws you'd swear were pure candy—'

Trigg halted at the corner and listened. Even in fog and darkness, Irish b'hoys would take advantage of the emptiness of the long, straight streets and whip their teams to full gallop. Not a week went by that some late-walking market-woman or sailor was injured or killed.

‘So Luke Bray's let go of his Good Man Friday for the honor of America,' marveled January, ‘and cost himself two thousand dollars, when he'd scream bloody murder if somebody suggested that he and his friends
truly
honor America by setting them all free.'

‘White man's logic at its finest.' Little Phil Mudwall shook his head. ‘Let's hope—'

January raised his hand at the sound of a team of horses approaching in the fog. The creak of wheels.

The musicians melted back against the corner of the tavern.

Blurred lantern light in the fog, barely visible. But the set of the two lanterns and their height from the ground, the squeak of harness, brought back to January the vision of Fowler's wagon a few nights ago, on the road through the deserted woods. As the black bulk passed them, almost invisible in the blackness, the smell of tobacco was the same.

Dim away to their left, a slurred voice asked, ‘Where are we?'

‘Don't you worry, friend,' soothed a reply. ‘I'll get you home. Not far now.'

A lantern flickered, coming up Twenty-Fourth Street.

Without a word traded among them, the musicians worked their way back along the shuttered wall of the Globe and Eagle to the alleyway, reeking like sin of piss and garbage. The lantern glow drew nearer. The slurred voice said, ‘Marse Luke said … Marse Luke said I was to get myself a drink, come right on back …'

‘That's where we're headed,' replied his companion. ‘Back to Marse Luke.'

‘I'm a free man now.' Pride rang in Mede's voice. ‘Marse Luke set me free.'

‘That was mighty good of him.'

They came opposite the mouth of the alley. January saw that the man with Mede was Davy Quent, but he'd felt in his skin already who it had to be. Silently, he slipped his knife from his boot, stepped from the alley for the instant it took to seize Quent by the arm and put the knife to his throat and then step back: ‘Not one sound,' he breathed.

Quent dropped the lantern and pissed himself with shock.

Freed of Quent's grasp, Mede stood weaving on the muddy verge of the street. Trigg scooped up the lantern, shut the slide, drew Mede into the alley's blackness.

‘What the fuck you doin'?' Quent gasped, and January, behind him now and holding his arm in his massive grip, cut him a little. Old Blair Langston – January could smell his pomade – came up on their right and took whatever weapon Quent had in his right-hand pocket. Quent's voice was squeaky with panic. ‘He just drunk, man, I'm just takin' him home—'

A momentary glint of yellow light. Trigg opened the lantern slide long enough to look at Mede's eyes, then shut it. ‘He ain't drunk. His eyes is pinned—'

January said, ‘Opium.'

Quent twisted in his grip, tried to stomp his foot, his hand shooting down to grab at January's groin. In his panic Quent missed, and with a single quick jerk January cut his throat – he'd known from the beginning he was going to – and shoved the body away at once, before any of the blood could spray on him. The smell of it, and of Quent's bowels releasing, filled the alley.

Trigg blew out the lantern. January groped for the leg of Quent's trousers and cleaned the blade of his knife. This really was jail-worthy behavior, and without a word exchanged among them they left the lantern beside Quent's body and returned to Twenty-Fifth Street at a casual stroll that did not hesitate. They turned back down to I, crossed through a field deep in weeds and smelling of cow dung and took refuge in the blackness behind somebody's stables. Only then Trigg opened his own lantern just enough to examine January's sleeves and coat-front.