Rebels of Babylon (21 page)

“Who are the ‘pirates’? Did they kill François? Or Susan?”

“François speaks of pirates when he is frightened. Before he sends me to you in the hotel. He says that the pirates are going to kill him. But at other times he speaks of the voodoo that will be his death.”

Mr. Barnaby, who had been translating with a wonderful lack of grammar, interjected, “Begging your pardon, Major Jones, but it don’t sound right to me. Per’aps the fellow was raving. There ain’t been pirates downriver in forty years. They’re all gone with Lafitte, the times ’as changed. All we ’as nowadays is wharf rats and common robbers.”

I decided to let the pirate business be. For the present. I had another question for the lass.

“You said that François sent you to my room. Did he arrange for the special room with the passageway?”

“The negroes in the hotel do this for him. The ones you do not see, who do the low work. They have more power than the
blancos
know. It is not a problem. François is much loved. He brings me to the hotel in the darkness so I can enter the secret way. By one of the secret ways that the white men have forgotten, there are so many. That is how I come to you. But you sleep, I do not wake you. Then these men make the hammering on the door and you are leaving me.”

“How did Mr. Pelletier expect you to communicate? You cannot speak English.”

She looked distraught. “He lies to me. François. Poor François. He tells me you speak Spanish better than the King of Spain.”

“Well, I do not speak Spanish,” I scribbled.

“Verdad,”
she said.

I LET HER chatter nonsense with Mr. Barnaby for a bit. We all required a pause. Weary I was, and half sick. I could hardly tie the bits of her tale together.

According to her version of events, François Pelletier, now deceased, and Susan Peabody, likewise deceased, had been thick as thieves with the Widow Aubrey, arranging to transport negroes back to Africa. Miss Peabody paid someone a visit and returned an angry woman. Then she hid the lass in the Ursuline convent. Shortly thereafter, Miss Peabody’s corpse washed up on a levee, with her garments embarrassed. After something more than a month, this Pelletier, who had used Magdalena for shameful purposes without the grace of wedlock, and who was himself enamored of Miss Peabody, suddenly appeared at the convent to spirit the lass away. Not long thereafter, I paid my call on the Mother Superior to discuss a “missing girl.” And Marie Venin come racing past, frustrated that the girl was gone and unhappy with her reception.

A thought provoked me. Had Marie Venin, the voodoo witch, really gone to the convent to find the girl? Or to lure me to follow her? Certainly, much had been staged for my reception.

Yet, Mr. Champlain had pointed out the obvious. Had mine enemies wished to kill me, they had enjoyed opportunities in plenty. I had been kidnapped, then spared. Why? Because, as Mr. Champlain and Mr. Barnaby both supposed, they wanted to put a scare into me to slow my investigation?

Or was there more to the fuss?

Why did François Pelletier, afraid for his own life, send as his envoy a lass who could not speak any language I understood?

Who of the whole bloody lot was telling the truth? If anyone?

Could Mrs. Aubrey have believed that I would not learn that conditions of amity had prevailed between her and Susan Peabody? And François Pelletier? Was she merely defending her reputation, or was there something more?

Was the girl treacherous? All those who could confirm her tale were dead. Was she enmeshed in the schemes of Marie Venin? Or even in the schemes of Mrs. Aubrey? Why had that dying man muttered, “Fishers of men?” Who were the “disappeared ones?” Mere negroes?

I roused myself and turned to Mr. Barnaby. Chattering with the lass, he looked happy as the baker’s boy on Christmas. Rarely had I seen a man so changed.

I believed that I had spotted an obvious thing. Something far simpler might lie behind these deaths than voodoo and “fishers of men” and pirates. Something as timeless as mankind. Simple greed.

I wrote: “You spoke of a large amount of money Miss Peabody received. Was it paid out to anyone?”

“I cannot say,” Magdalena told me. “Perhaps some is paid to
Señora
Aubrey for the ships. Not all, I do not think.” She shrugged.

“Might it have been stolen?”

She shook her head decisively.

“Oh, no. This is not possible. The money has been given to your soldiers. For the protection, until it is needed.”

I WANTED TO SLEEP. INSTEAD, I PACKED MYSELF AND Mr. Barnaby into a cab, fleeing Captain Bolt’s offer to accompany us and leaving the lass locked safely in my room. Time pressed and I promised to see to her own accommodations upon my return. Twas all more complicated than I liked. The world should learn to behave itself.

Magdalena did not wish to stay behind, in my room or any other. But I tutted her.

I wished to speak with the provost marshal, and with General Banks. About Miss Peabody’s money. But that had to wait until morning.

Meanwhile, I could speak with Mr. Champlain. My questions of the night before had been parried as much as answered. The fellow was a lovely host, but he played hide-and-go-seek with facts. As Mr. Barnaby put it, he did not lie but did not tell you all. Convinced I was that he knew more than he had troubled to tell me.

As we crossed into the Quarter, I noted only white men on the streets. The negroes were in hiding. From the Grand Zombi or certain “fishers of men.” Or perhaps from the rancor of paler flesh unhappy with defeat.

Unable to scrawl my questions in the darkness of the cab, I struggled to speak clearly. I did not wish to bleed more.

“Is the girl lying?” I asked. At my second attempt, Mr. Barnaby understood me.

“Oh, no, sir! Not at all, I doesn’t think. At least not ’ow the local ladies do. She ain’t been ’ere near long enough and ain’t yet been persuaded to dissemble. Ain’t she a wonder, though?”

“A wonder” hardly seemed an apt description.

“Why,” I asked, enunciating painfully, “did Pelletier send her to me?” It made no sense at all, given that the lass did not speak English. Or even French. He had not even given her a letter of explanation.

Mr. Barnaby tutted. “Clear as day, sir, clear as day! It’s a wonder you doesn’t see it, clever as you almost always seems. The fellow was in love with ’er, that’s all. Smitten ’e was, as smitten as the lad what peeked at the chambermaid. ’e didn’t care about ’imself so much as ’e did about ’er. ’E sent ’er to your room in ’opes of saving ’er.”

That was absurd. François Pelletier, by evidence and report, had cut a splendid figure. The girl was a mouse.

“How,” I battled my reluctant jaw, “could the fellow be smitten with
her,
man? He cried out for Susan Peabody!”

I touched the corners of my mouth to feel if blood had risen.

My skepticism astonished Mr. Barnaby. “Begging your pardon, Major Jones, but I fear you lacks an eye for feminine beauty. Oh, I doesn’t say the bloke weren’t set upon Miss Peabody in the beginning. Forbidden fruit, as they say, and who knows what all was in the petunias? But angels win upon the plains of ’Eaven, and she’s an angel if I ever seen one.” He rolled his generous person toward me, striving for intimacy. “Ain’t she a marvel, though, that Magdalena? Fair as Dolly Dobbins in the May-time! And clever as they come, and terrible learned. I ain’t seen such a prize since … since …”

And then the grand fellow went silent.

I was astonished. For truth be told, the creature was no beauty, but plain as Indus mud. Of course, not every woman can rival my Mary. But the lass was a negress, in any case. Mr. Barnaby was white as boiled cod.

Now, you will say: “Oh, hypocrite, Abel Jones! We know about your tawny love in India.” But I will tell you: That was
India, see. Where such things happen. This was in America, even if the locale was New Orleans. What might be done by dark and hid away would not find much acceptance in the daylight.

I worried about Mr. Barnaby. Broken-hearted fellows are prone to errors of the heart. I wished him well and did not want him ruined.

We halted in front of Mr. Champlain’s manse, a structure neither big nor small, but laden with generations of inheritance, not all of it fortunate. I moved to leave the cab, but Mr. Barnaby held me back with a hand upon my shoulder.

“I ’as to say a word or two, forgive me, sir. But you’ll want to be cautious about yourself from now on. Oh, I doesn’t mean with
Pére
Champlain, who wouldn’t hurt a fly what wasn’t stinging ’im. But generally speaking, like.”

I wished to assure him that I am ever careful. But it was not worth the pain of further speech.

“It’s just that business what keeps coming up,” he continued, unwilling to release me. “
Le bouc sans cornes.
‘The goat without ’orns,’ sir. What they done to that poor Mr. Pelletier is exactly what they mean to do to you, if you missteps.”

“Skin me alive?” I asked in my crippled voice.

“It ain’t even done with a knife,” he added. “The Grand Zombi ’imself does it with ’is teeth. Mostly, they only skins a black cat for their ceremonies. But when they gets perturbed, they skins a man.”

MR. CHAMPLAIN DID NOT stand on ceremony. In fact, he did not stand at all, but sat behind an enormous plate of victuals. The repast lay braced in front of his mighty belly with the help of an apparatus resembling a scaffold. He wore a bib like a mammoth babe and laughed like a child to see us.

“Welcome, welcome, all!” he cried, waving a half-et sausage in one paw and a great spoon in the other. He looked as jolly as John Bull over a beefsteak, although his line was French as soiled linens. “Mr. B., you’re just in time! Sit right down there,
sit right down. Have yourself a nice feed up, keep me company,
cher.
Constantine, get my skinny friend there some breakfast, something that’ll put some meat back on those bones. And fetch up that paste Mama Delarue mixed up for
Monsieur le Major
.”

Restraining himself from biting into a sausage that longed for his mouth, he smiled at me, teeth florid with his meal.

“Honored, sir, to have the privilege of another visit after so short an interval. Honored! Thought you’d come on over tonight, I allowed myself that presumption. You and that poor fellow there who’s starving himself straight to death, Lord knows why. Sure, now. Been expecting you, to tell the truth. That is, we hoped our hospitality would lead you back to our humble door. Terrible swelling you have there. Must hurt worse than a man’s irrigation system a few weeks after a visit to Madame Pettibon’s. But don’t you worry, just set yourself down. Sit down, sir. I took the liberty of ordering up a salve, having heard something of your tribulations with the dental profession.”

He glanced about himself in exasperation, then called out loudly, but amiably, “Constantine! Bring another fix-up of those
saucissons,
bring ’em right on up here now! I’m getting skinny as a young girl with consumption. Major Jones, I assure you, from personal experience, that not half an hour from now you’ll be a different man. Then we’ll get some hominy mash poured down you, so you don’t starve to death and embarrass our fair city. But sit down,
cher!
Be at home!”

I sat, drawing out my pencil and my dwindling supply of paper. I wrote: “This salve? Is it voodoo?”

I rose again to lay the note beside the grand fellow’s plate, which was disorderly.

Mr. Champlain cackled so uproariously that a bit of half-chewed sausage struck my brow. “Voodoo? Mama Delarue? She’d be unhappy to hear it, most unhappy. See her over at St. Louis’s every morning, on her knees without a cushion. That is, I’d see her if I ever got an urge to get up again and stroll over to the cathedral. Which I judge unlikely. But that’s no never-mind.
Mama Delarue’s a better Christian than the
abbesse
herself. Just knows how to mix up a salve or toddy for when the apothecaries run out of patience trying to kill a man. Can’t say where she learned it. Never ask about a lady’s past or the ingredients of a sausage.”

He held up a glistening specimen of the latter and devoured it with hardly a pause in his speech. “Relied on her myself. Many’s the time. Why, if I had to stop enjoying my
petit déjeuner
just because of a little toothache, I’d shrivel up and die in twenty-four hours. Man has to keep up his health with a proper diet.”