Benjamin January 4 - Sold Down The River (32 page)

“I want to see,” piped up little Jean-Luc, who ran forward and would have tried to climb on the steps and look through the window had Esteban not caught him.

“Ben,” added the planter's son, after Jean-Luc had been dragged howling away back to the house by Baptiste. “You share a cabin with Quashie, don't you?” January nodded, knowing what was coming next. “Did he come in last night?”

“No, sir.”

Esteban sighed, as if he'd expected this. “That's all, then. Get yourselves some breakfast and get to work.” And there was nothing to do but go.

Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, God had said. Simon Fourchet, and most of the other planters along the river, would have hurried to explain that God of course didn't understand about la roulaison back then and would certainly have made an exception to the Third Commandment if He'd known. There were some-chiefly Americans-who argued that the slaves shouldn't be permitted to work at all on Sundays, but should be required to attend Christian worship instead. These generally retreated from that position when it was pointed out to them how much it would cost them to feed their workers entirely from their own stores, or alternatively, how many hours a day would be taken from plantation work each weekday to enable the slaves to cultivate their provision grounds. The slaves themselves were not asked their opinion on the subject.

Mostly, you found God where you could. A number of the house-servants were Catholics, although some of their beliefs would have startled the Pope. Everyone in the quarters had probably at least been baptized, but when they called on God they did so by His African names. After forty years in America, Mohammed still rose before anyone else on the plantation, to kneel and pray toward the Mecca that he would never visit: There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet. Sometimes, coming and going at night, January saw him outside the smithy, kneeling on that faded little rug, when everyone but the mill crew was in bed. His hand found the rosary in his pocket and he whispered the words as he circled through the cane-rows toward the house: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Lead us not into temptation and please O God deliver us from evil. . . .

And as always, the words brought him peace. Cornwallis intercepted him on the gallery. “Michie Fourchet just had his medicine,” he said, to January's request. “He's resting now.” The dregs of bromide-and-water, not only in the glass on the tray the valet held but in the empty bottle beside it, amply attested as to Fourchet's reaction to the news of yet another catastrophe to the plantation that was his life.

“I won't take but a moment of his time.”

The American valet's tobacco-colored eyes traveled up and down January's tall frame, taking in the field dust thick on his tattered clothing, the sweat that crusted and blackened both the shirts he wore, the vagabond raggedness of the second pair of cutoff trousers worn over the first. The filth that, despite a careful wash in the trough, still streaked his face, his hands, his hair.

The short, straight nose wrinkled. “He asked me specifically to let no one disturb him.”

My ass thought January, who couldn't imagine Fourchet making such a request. Sick or well, the old man was convinced that no one could run the plantation as well as he.

There was no getting around the valet's natural bloody-mindedness. “Might I speak to Madame Fourchet, then?” January asked, and Cornwallis's lips lengthened.

“Madame is lying down. I'm sure field hands aren't even supposed to be near the house, particularly not disturbing M'sieu or Madame at a time like this.”

“No, Michie Cornwallis, sir,” said January, bowing his head and guessing that an attempt to use the return of Michie Robert's note would just get it taken from his hand. “Of course not, sir. Would you ask Michie Fourchet, as soon as he's able to talk to someone, if I could speak to him something about Quashie?”

“What?” The valet tried to look impassive but his eyes glinted avidly.

“It's kind of a long story,” said January. “And you're right, sir, I ought to be gettin' back.” And he trotted down the gallery stairs, telling himself that free or not, he could be prosecuted for robbing Simon Fourchet of a valuable slave if he wrung Cornwallis's skinny neck.

He walked back between the laundry and the kitchen and watched the gallery until Cornwallis disappeared into Madame Fourchet's sewing parlor behind the pantry. Then he slipped around the corner of the kitchen.

Kiki should have been in the midst of laying out the lunch dishes for Baptiste to carry across to the big house on his tray, but she wasn't. She sat at the table, small hands clasped before her mouth, staring at the tureens on their shelf across the room. She jerked her head around as January's shadow darkened the doorway and got hastily to her feet; he said, “Is it true Madame's asleep, or lying down after last night, up with Michie Fourchet?”

She nodded, and drew a heavy breath. “Baptiste was just over. He told me she was out the minute her head touched the pillow.” Her voice was steady, but she wore the haggard look she'd had since the night of the abortion. “He had a bad night, Michie Fourchet, getting angry all over again at the Daubrays. She gave him medicine so often she near used up those two little bottles Doctor Laurette left, and he wouldn't let her leave.”

“Can you get her keys?” asked January bluntly. “I need to get into Thierry's house and have a look at the body before too much more time passes-I take it Sheriff Duffy hasn't arrived yet?”

“I'd be surprised if he came today,” replied the cook. “His brother owns a small place on Bayou VaL'Enfer and they'll be harvesting. Lot of good it'll do him anyway. You know Michie Fourchet won't have an American in the house.”

“All the more reason I need to get into the cottage.”

“Wait here.” Kiki stepped to the door, looked out at the rear of the big house, glanced both ways, and then hastened across with the air of one doing her duty. If challenged, January imagined she'd claim to be looking for Baptiste, but the only person who came out onto the gallery when she climbed its steps and bustled along to Madame Fourchet's room was Ariadne, to whom Kiki merely snapped, “You better not let M'am Fourchet see you wearing those beads,” as she walked past. Ariadne hurried away, presumably to remove the offending beads-which January had last seen gracing a peg in Harry's cabin.

Beyond the stables, the steady rustle of activity around the mill had ceased. Far off, January heard the whistle of a steamboat, and wondered if that was the boat that would bring the belated Hannibal back from town. Ti-Jeanne the laundress started across the yard toward the kitchen and January tried to think up a good reason why he'd be there, but halfway there the stooped, elderly woman was intercepted by a voice calling out, “Here I am, honey,” and Minta appeared from the candle-room in company with old Pennydip. The three women disappeared back through Pennydip's door.

“Got it.”
Kiki was breathing hard as she sprang up the kitchen steps. She stopped, pressing a hand to her abdomen, and January rebuked himself for sending her. “What d'you need to see his body for?”

“I won't know,” said January, “till I've seen it. Maybe I won't know then.”

They took the long way around to Thierry's cottage, skirting behind the laundry and the candle-room and the carpenter's shop, behind the mule barn and the landward end of the mill and thence through the cane. As they pushed heavily through the suffocating rows January asked, “Which way were you going to go? North or south?” and Kiki stiffened, startled, and glanced up at him with fleet fear in her eyes.

“That was your pillowcase I saw stashed with the food in the basket you gave Jeanette. What made you decide to go with them? Was it because of Gilles's death?”

She stammered, “I-no. Gilles . . .” Her face was ashy in the pale sun that fell so straight down through the tall rows, her eyes stricken.

January said gently, “Or was it just that you were scared of what would happen if Fourchet were to die? What would happen to everybody on the place, if the hoodoo isn't caught?”

She turned her face away, catching hold of a nearby stalk of cane for support, and January stopped and put a big gentle hand under her plump elbow. Her breath came in a tearing sigh. “I just wanted to get out of here,” she said. “Yes, part of it's because . . . on the night of the fire, seeing Michie Fourchet took sick like that, I thought, Anything could happen. They could blame anyone.” She shook her head. “They'll do what they want, decide what they want to believe. And part of it . . .”

She hesitated, as if unwilling to speak of what made no objective sense. “When those children burned, it did something to me, Ben. I don't know what. What you said about-about whoever this is, not caring . . .” She fell silent.

January said, “Nobody cares. Not Fourchet, not the hoodoo. Nobody.”

“No.” Her voice was barely to be heard, though the day was still. “That's why I want to go. A lot of evil comes when no one cares.”

They came out of the cane and crossed the rough stretch of deep grass and scythed weeds unhurriedly, and went around to the front door. Kiki automatically started to head for the back, and January had to catch her arm and point-everyone at the mill would be grouped outside eating their lunch. The cook let out a little self-conscious chuckle, and shook her head at herself as they mounted the steps, and unlocked the door.

“Did you know Thierry'd found the boat?” January asked.

In Thierry's bedroom, the body was beginning to smell a little. January thanked God it was winter. Flies hummed around the corpse, and three separate trails of ants stretched from the wall and up the legs of the bed, but it was nothing like it would have been in July.

“I heard about it yesterday.” Kiki sighed. “Thierry, well, I knew what he'd do to Jeanette. She told me Quashie hadn't had the first thing to do with that fire but that Thierry'd already made up his mind to put the blame on him for it. If they stayed here, she knew he'd die. And that's when I thought, They could make up their mind like that about anyone. And nothing anybody could say would change it.”

She shrugged. “I saw him leave here yesterday afternoon. When I didn't see her come out I came over and found her still tied to the bed.” Blood marked the four corners of the sheets on which Thierry lay, where a woman's hands and ankles would have been locked to the bed frame with the spancels that now hung on a peg on the wall. “She told me then about the boat.” In addition to Thierry's big driving whip that he used in the field, there was a whalebone quirt in the corner. It was the type horse-trainers used to school recalcitrant mounts.

“That's right,” said January softly. Greenflies rose in a cloud when he pulled back the sheet, and he winced. There were a lot of ants. Kiki made a faint gagging noise, but said nothing. “So why would he have gone to Catbird Island? He knew he'd scuppered the boat. He knew she knew the boat was useless. So when he saw Jeanette was gone, why did he go there?”

He crossed himself, and pulled the handkerchief from Thierry's pocket, where he'd seen Esteban thrust it after taking it from the corpse's mouth. The blood was still a little tacky, but it had mostly dried now. He had to strike it several times against the bed frame to clear the ants off it enough to unfold it for a better look.

“Why would Quashie and Jeanette have gone there? They'd escape as soon as it started raining, yes, to cover their tracks, but Catbird Island was the last place they'd want to go. What do you make of this?”

He held the handkerchief out to her. Kiki took it without undue squeamishness and turned it in her hands. “It's good linen,” she said. “No initials, but then a lot of men don't have them embroidered-I know Michie Fourchet didn't for years, til he married M'am Marie-Noel and she started doing it for him again. Michie Esteban fussed and fussed at Vanille and Doucette and Nancy and came near to swearing he'd have them whipped if they didn't embroider as nice as he liked his done, and finally started sending them to some woman in town to do. I think Michie Robert had his embroidered in Paris, or maybe M'am Helene did it on the ship coming home. I don't remember seeing this kind in the laundry, though.”

“Which doesn't mean anything,” remarked January, engaged in turning out Thierry's pockets. “Even if it had Esteban's initials on it, or Robert's or Andrew Jackson's for that matter, all it might mean is that Agamemnon or Harry or Ti-Jeanne took one from the laundry to sell to False River Jones.”

The overseer's pockets contained, in addition to his keys, which January appropriated, a dozen pistol-balls, a powder-flask, and some wads, but no pistols. There were also two or three Mexican dollars-common currency up and down the river-a tangle of string, the stub of a tallow candle, lucifers in a tin box, a folding penknife, another box containing a fire-steel, flint, and tow. A larger and more serviceable blade was sheathed at his belt.

When January tipped Thierry's body up it came all of a piece, like a clumsy plank. Thierry must have died around midnight, then. The back of his coat was as wet as the front, which only meant that he'd been alive when the rain had begun. No dirt or clay clung to it. With some difficulty January tried to strip and wrangle the coat down the dead man's back and arms, cursing Esteban for preventing him from making this examination when Thierry's muscles were soft enough to maneuver. In the end he pulled the coat up from the bottom, and the waistcoat and shirt after it, examining the skin of the dead man's back.

“What are you looking for?” Kiki spoke from the doorway, where she was keeping a weather eye on the yard.

“I was looking for bruises,” said January thoughtfully. “But what I expected to find-and didn't-is lividity: blood pooled in the back once the heart stopped pumping. Get me a towel or a rag from the other room and douse it in the water bucket, if you would, please. I hate this part.” He took a deep breath, and pulled down Thierry's trousers, revealing the nasty mess of caked waste that his body had voided on death.

“Whoa, lord!” The cook put a wet shirt into his hand and fanned the air before her face. “When it comes time for me to die I think I'll drown or something.”