Ran Away (15 page)

January asked gently, ‘Did you?’

Ayasha looked aside. ‘You would not make her go back?’

‘He saved your life,’ repeated January.

‘That’s no reason to send her back to a man she doesn’t want to lie with.’

‘Is he bad to her?’

Ayasha shook her head. Her voice was quiet. ‘He is a good man, she says. Kind, and with great sympathy for her plight. Yet, she said, as his concubine, he has the right to use her body – however gently. But it is not what she wants. And she said that, as a woman in his household, if she said
no
, then where would she be? And he is not of her faith. Both his faith, and hers, and even yours,
Mâlik
, count a woman’s soul as weaker than a man’s, and more likely to be excused by God for faithlessness that she cannot help – yet Shamira dreamed still of being the wife of a man of her own people, with honor and dignity. Is this not a dream that any woman might have?’

They returned to the Rue de l’Aube and slept – January retrieved his music satchel untouched. Had any of their neighbors seen it, there behind St Peter’s feet, they would have recognized it and left it alone.

January assumed that eventually Hüseyin Pasha would track them down. Either Jamilla would tell him where they could be found, or the Turk would ask at the embassy where he might reach the big African who played piano upon so many occasions at the Embassy balls. January had no doubt that Hüseyin Pasha was not a man who ever forgot a face.

Before he did – and indeed, January hoped, before he had to be at the Opera that night – he wanted to know, at least, what he was to say to the man who had saved Ayasha’s life.

So before retiring to bed that morning, he had written a short note in simple French (‘
Yallah
,
Mâlik
, you don’t think anyone ever bothered to teach her to read Arabic? Or Hebrew, for that matter?’), and dispatched it – via the helpful Poucet – to an address in the district of St-Germaine. When he awoke, just after two, it was to find two notes under the door.

One was from Hüseyin Pasha, requesting that January present himself, at his earliest convenience, at his residence on the Rue St-Honoré.

The other, in a strong, elegant hand on good-quality notepaper, said:

ELEVEN

T
he town house of the banker L’Ecolier stood on a small
place
off the Rue des Tuileries, not far from the Luxembourg Palace. An elderly servant showed January and Ayasha upstairs, to a small salon at the rear of the
premier étage
. Two women looked up as the man ushered the visitors in. One was the inevitable thirty-ish female relative so frequently found in well-off households, either unmarriageable or widowed: the latter, in this case, January guessed, for she was clothed in unrelieved black and, to January’s experienced eye, just beginning the fifth month of pregnancy.

The other was the girl he had last seen in the attic of the house of Hüseyin Pasha, the girl whose face he’d barely been allowed to glimpse.

She was still thin from her sickness, and very pale. Her face – unveiled now and framed in neat thick curls the color of café noir – was delicately beautiful, slightly aquiline, and illuminated by enormous brown eyes of singular beauty and intelligence. At the sight of Ayasha their watchfulness faded, and she sprang to her feet. ‘God be praised!’ Her French was thickly accented. ‘You got away!’

The two women clasped hands, Shamira’s face tight with emotion. ‘I feared for you—’

‘I was taken.’

The girl’s eyes widened: guilt, shock, fear. And dread, at what recompense might be asked of her, for honor’s sake.

‘Hüseyin Pasha paid a price for my release. I do not know,’ Ayasha added, as January bowed, ‘if you remember my husband?’

‘I do.’ Color briefly stained Shamira’s ivory cheeks, that he had seen her sweating and vomiting in her sickness. ‘I – thank you, sir  . . .’

January bowed deeply over her hand. ‘Are you well, Mademoiselle L’Ecolier?’

She glanced across at her chaperone, put a hand protectively to her belly, as women with child the world over are wont to do. ‘Yes. Very well.’ Her eyes went to Ayasha again. ‘Hüseyin Pasha send you?’

Ayasha shook her head. ‘We had a note from him this morning, but we have sent him no reply. Still, he gave up the only hold he had over his enemy Sabid – the only protection he had against him – in order to save me from pain, only because I was taken in trying to help you. He does not know we are here, or that we know where you are. Yet I think you owe it to him to speak with him. Will your kinsman M’sieu L’Ecolier stand by you?’

January saw her eyes flicker again to the black-clothed chaperone, who through the whole of this dialog had merely sat tatting an antimacassar. From the lack of expression on her round, impassive face, it was for a moment impossible to tell whether she was being tactful, disapproving, sly, or whether she truly took no interest in this lovely young kinswoman’s exotic affairs. Even when, for a moment, she raised her dark eyes to meet Shamira’s, the look which passed between them was swift and secret. Then the whole of her soul seemed to return to her needle, flickering silver in the window’s pale twilight.

Her face now flushed again with shame, and her dark eyes shining with tears, Shamira replied in a steady voice, ‘M’sieu L’Ecolier know everything of Hüseyin Pasha and myself.’ Her hand stole briefly to touch her belly again. ‘He will stand by me. He say, by laws of France, I not sent back to Hüseyin Pasha, not by King himself.’

‘But the laws of France – and of God,’ said January, and he watched her face as he said it – ‘will give a father some claim on the upbringing of his child, whom he begot lawfully upon a woman of his own household. He was willing to put himself into grave danger, that you and your child might be safe.’

The girl’s fingers darted to her eye to catch a tear before any could see it. ‘Even so.’ She added then, in a small voice, ‘He is good man. Please understand he is good man. He was good to me. Kind. Only I  . . .’ She looked to Ayasha, as if to see in her eyes the words she needed to say, and Ayasha said something in Arabic that January knew in his heart was:
I understand
.

‘I want husband with honor,’ said Shamira after a moment. ‘Hüseyin Pasha was kind to me as a master kind to his slave. Me, I want household, children. I want  . . .  sit in synagogue among wives, see my son’s bar mitzvah, my daughter wed with honor to good man. M’sieu L’Ecolier say he will see this so.’ And turning her eyes again to Ayasha, she added, with a nod at January, ‘I want this what I see you have. Husband. Life.’

And again Ayasha said:
I understand
.

Shamira led her to a small desk between the windows, which looked down on to the little town garden behind the house; took a quill from the holder, paper from the drawer.

‘Please.’ She held them out to Ayasha. ‘Write for me.’

January and Ayasha returned to that house on Sunday, in company with Hüseyin Pasha. This time in that airy parlor, with its stylish furniture of carved mahogany and its discreet bronze and marble statuettes, Shamira sat with her kinsman, the banker Jacob L’Ecolier himself, and his bird-like little wife, as well as the black-clothed chaperone. In her high-waisted dress of gray silk Shamira looked every inch the daughter of a wealthy Jewish household, and January caught the glance that passed between the kindly-faced Madame L’Ecolier and this newest kinswoman to come under her wing: friendship, warmth, and care. When Hüseyin Pasha was shown into the parlor, the banker’s wife squeezed Shamira’s hand:
Don’t be afraid, dearest
 . . . 

Shamira did not get to her feet for her former lord. Only held out her hand, as a well-bred French lady should.

This distinction wasn’t lost on Hüseyin Pasha. His heavy, simian face remained impassive, but January saw the smallest of rueful twinkles in the dark eye. He said something to Shamira in a gentle voice, almost jesting; her chin came up. In careful French, she replied, ‘I am French now, M’sieu.’

In the same language he replied, ‘So I see.’ And sighed.

‘My niece bears you no ill will, M’sieu,’ said L’Ecolier, when his visitors had seated themselves. ‘Please understand that. My kinswoman Rachel bint-Zipporah had no business negotiating with you the contract by which Shamira came into your household. As her kinsman, and head of the family, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for treating her well and with indulgence. But I hope you understand that whatever my niece will have said to you at the time, the match was not made with her free consent.’

‘I understand that there is consent, and there is free consent.’ The Turk folded his coarse, square hands upon his crimson silk knee. ‘Yet what woman ever gives her free consent to a match made for her by her parents? Particularly to a business partner who is forty-four years old and ugly as a horse’s backside, eh? And how many girls are there who take unto themselves lives of poverty and misfortune, because they come hand-in-hand with a handsome face or a voice beautiful in song? Yet I am glad to hear, Shamira –’ he turned to her and inclined his head – ‘that you bear me no ill will. One thing only I ask. That you give me my son, when he is born.’

Shamira took a deep breath, glanced at the black-clothed chaperone, then nodded. In a perfectly steady voice she said, ‘Yes.’

Hüseyin Pasha had clearly come prepared to have to make his case; and, just as clearly, knew enough not to make any reply at all. He only took her hand and gently kissed it.

Shamira went on, halting a little on the words, ‘It is best so,’ and glanced at her kinsman. January saw her fingers tighten on Madame L’Ecolier’s. This was something, he guessed, that they had spoken of already. What young gentleman in the Parisian circles of Jewish bankers, merchants and financiers would wed a young widow – for he already guessed how this lovely girl would be introduced to the family social group – if she came with an infant who was obviously the child of a Turk? Easier to say:
She was wed in the East, but her baby died
 . . . 

Certainly, given Jacob L’Ecolier’s wealth, easy enough to arrange.

It would avoid, too, whatever feeling she might carry against that child, when she bore others to that ‘husband with honor’ that she craved.

And yet
 . . . 

‘My niece will send you word, M’sieu,’ said Madame L’Ecolier, ‘when the child is born.’

‘You have given me treasure beyond my deserving,’ replied the Turk quietly. ‘And I swear to you, Shamira, that your son will never want for education, or guidance, or whatever else lies within my power to give.’

There being nothing more to stay for, the visitors rose. Ayasha and Shamira embraced, tears again glistening in Shamira’s eyes in the cold autumn light from the windows. From the little garden below, January heard the voices of children, and stepping back, he looked down, to see half a dozen boys and girls, in stair-step sizes, all clothed in black. It was unlikely that the tired-looking chaperone would ever be anything but what she was, with that brood in tow. Still, he reflected, it was a mark of L’Ecolier’s kindness, that he would take them in. The girl Shamira would be in good hands.

She rose as the banker opened the parlor door himself, to see his guests away. In a small voice she said, ‘
Kassar Allah hairak
, M’sieu,’ which January knew to mean
thank you
. ‘The blessing of God go with you.’

‘And with you, Shamira. You made me very happy.’

Turning, Hüseyin Pasha passed through the door and down the stair, a great gorgeous bird-of-paradise in his crimson salvars and his crimson turban and his long red-and-blue coat trimmed with fur. And all the little chaperone’s black-clothed children, under the supervision of an older boy who had to be – by his round snub-nosed face – her brother, clustered at the bottom of the stairway to watch him pass, in silence and in awe.

And thus it was that Benjamin January
knew
, to the bottom of his heart, that Hüseyin Pasha would not –
could
not – be the man who had strangled his two concubines and pitched them out the attic window on the night of December tenth, 1837.

December 1837, New Orleans

Within fifteen minutes of his mother leaving the house, January was walking down Rue Esplanade in the direction of the Place des Armes. The day was gray and raw, and the air smelled like burned sugar; it was the end of the
roulaison
, the grinding season. For a hundred miles up the Mississippi, and as many downriver, every plantation worked full stretch, twenty-four hours a day, hauling cane to the cogged iron wheels of the grinding house, hauling wood to feed the hell fires under the boiling kettles. Gritty smoke always in the eyes, aching muscles, the numb exhaustion that makes for terrible accidents if you happened to have a razor-sharp cane-knife in your hand.

The plunge in cotton prices might have triggered the demise of banks and businesses across the United States, but the world could never get enough sugar.

The levee at the bottom of the Place des Armes was the most active that January had seen it in months. A dozen steamboats lay at the wharves, though compared to other years it was nearly deserted. Kaintuck farmers and flatboatmen, newly come downriver with their loads of pumpkins, corn, and hogs, prowled in disconsolate fury from buyer to buyer of the few brokers still in business, and as he crossed toward the Cabildo beside the Cathedral, January could hear voices harsh with anger:
What the hell you mean, two cents a bushel? At two cents a bushel I coulda dumped the whole load into the river an’ saved myself a trip
 . . .