Benjamin January 6 - Wet Grave (13 page)

When the sun went down and the dense, thick heat cooled a little, someone began playing the drums. More fires were built, to light the space between the trees.

There was a time when January had avoided the dancing in Congo Square.

Although not as sheltered as Artois, he'd been rather strictly raised.
Once his mother had been bought, and freed, by St.-Denis Janvier, she'd done her best to eradicate any trace of the heritage of slavery into which she and her two older children had been born. As a child, January had risked a beating if he went to the slave-dances, or even to the market here at the edge of town. His confessor, too, had frowned on it, saying quite rightly that the dancing was wild and inflamed the passions, and adding, with equal truth and considerable insight, that it masked the worship of the old gods, the alien gods who by rights should have been left behind in heathen Africa. The fact that those gods were now given the names of saints didn't fool the old priest, or excuse young Benjamin's attendance at the dances.

And of course his teachers at the St. Louis Academy for Young Gentlemen of Color had argued that association with slaves had an appalling effect on anyone's French.

But returning from sixteen years in France, January had come to see the markets in Congo Square with different eyes. He had been young when he'd left-in his early twenties-and eager to put this land of injustice and grief behind him forever. Only with Ayasha's death had he understood how much of himself was rooted here, in this low green marsh, among these pastel walls. Returning to find his family, he had found his people: the music of the tribes blending, in his heart, with Mozart and Palestrina and Pachelbel in a way that had been impossible during his days of foreign flight.

And as the dancing commenced, the men laughing as they turned the women under their arms, the women flourishing their skirts and tossing their tignoned heads, January saw all this reflected from Artois' wondering blue eyes.

Saw the French boy look into the mirror at the reflection of an African man.

Twilight transformed the sky to a shining topaz. Cicadas roared, and the earth gave back its scents in a deep musk of wetness and sweet-olive. In the wild firelight Marie Laveau the voodooienne appeared, stepping up on a platform of boxes, a tall, handsome woman in a skirt made of red bandannas, her head adorned with a tignon worked into seven points, like flames around her dark, Indianboned face.

Men shouted, and sang her song: Oh, yes, yes, Mamzelle Marie/She know well the Grand Zombi....

And in Laveau's arms the Grand Zombi was lifted up, a seven-foot king snake with a darting tongue and wise copper eyes that seemed, in the firelight, to be more than the eyes of a reptile.

I walk on pins,

I walk on needles,

I walk on gilded splinters. .

People came up to her in the firelight, reached out their hands to her, seeking by contact with her Power to absorb a little of the dark brilliance that seemed to shine from somewhere just beneath her skin. Under the plane-trees, men pranced and leaped and kicked, the bells they wore around their ankles jangling bright as gold. But when Mamzelle Marie danced, she danced as they dance who sing for the dead, only her body moving, sinuous as the snake's. Her eyes were shut, her face at rest, and yet somehow ecstatic under its sheen of sweat: January had seen her at early Mass that morning, praying before the Virgin's altar with that same intense stillness, that same burning peace.

After the dancing, people came up to her. Marketwomen gave her lemonade or pralines, or bits of callas for the snake. Shopgirls or young wives sought advice from her, or asked for gris-gris to bring to them men they sought. An old woman with country-marks on her face blessed January with spears of gladiolus dipped in a bucket of water; there was laughter and the smell of tafia rum from out of the dark under the trees. Runaways from the woods whispered bits of news and information about things seen in the cipriere, and servants came with other tales to tell, of the doings of their masters whose blankitte wives might well visit Marie Laveau in secret and marvel at how much of their doings she already knew.

The voodooienne was the queen of the voodoos, and those Mamzelle Marie didn't rule by friendship and mutual aid, she ruled by secrets and knowledge and fear.

“This is my friend Artois,” said January, and the voodoo queen regarded the youth with those bright, sleepy, dangerous eyes.

“Coco's son.”
She smiled her sidelong smile. “I hear tell you're a pride to any mother's heart that's got a lick of sense. That you're learning the names of all the stars, and all the secrets about how the world is made.”

“I have a good teacher,” said Artois, which warmed January's heart.

“We're here looking for a secret or two,” said January. “You heard about Hesione LeGros being killed, and the Guards not doing a thing to find who did it.”

“I heard.” She tilted her head to one side, and on her shoulder the Grand Zombi regarded January also, and moved his great smooth narrow head back and forth.

“Did she have family?” asked January. “Or any who knew her, back from her days on Grand Terre, who'd have reason to seek her out now?”

Behind them the drums knocked out a contest of rhythms, a back-and-forth rallying, like a conversation: the deep-voiced barrel-drum grumbling, the little double headed tenor tapping quick and impudent, like Compair Lapin running circles around ugly Bouki the Hyena, fooling him cross-eyed and getting away with his coat and his supper and his wife.

“What is it to you?” Mamzelle Marie asked January. “Hesione LeGros was nothing to you.”

“Hesione LeGros was nothing to anyone,” replied January. “None of us are.”

“You think a child of hers, or a sister or a brother, would know who came into her house that night and cut her to pieces?”

“I think they might tell me who might have wanted to,” he answered. “Who tears down a fence that's in ruins already? Who walks out of their way to break open an empty box? The Americans in the Swamp, that go around beating up each other and the Indians and the slaves who can't defend themselves, they don't lie in wait. They don't cover their tracks and hide in the darkness. It takes hate to plan like that. Hate or greed.”

“Or madness.” Mamzelle Marie regarded them with wise, cynical eyes. “The madness that sees one old woman and thinks she's another who did a man wrong-his mother, or his aunt, or someone who hit him when he was young. There's crazy men in this town, and men just this side of crazy, who'll go over the edge when they've had a drink or three.”

It was a possibility January had considered, too. But something about the spatter of wax on the floor by the chair, that spoke of careful planning, something about the length of charred wick-ten minutes' conversation-spoke to him of other things. Hesione had known her killer. Of that he was sure.

The drums changed their rhythm. Couples paired off again to dance. Firelight dyed the sweaty faces, gleamed liquid gold in dark eyes. They were waiting, January realized, for Marie Laveau to climb back on her box and draw them on with the electric flame of her presence.

“I'll ask around,” Mamzelle Marie told him. “I don't go down much to Grand Terre, but there's them that do. Hesione LeGros had three children there, one by Vincente Gambi, another she claimed was Lafitte's; another woman raised them up as hers. Those three are still there, far as I know, and nothing heard against them, but I'll ask. But you steer clear of that Mulm. Keep away from the Nantucket Saloon.”

And when January frowned his puzzlement, she shook her head. “Mulm's like a hunter, looking at tracks in the dirt. He's a bad man, a blackmailer, living by secrets and putting together this little fact and that little fact, to wring money out of people. He's a slave-dealer and a thief, and he's always watching, always looking. Men have hanged themselves from knowing him. You watch your back around him, lest you find yourself in more trouble than you counted on.”

January stepped back, reflecting that Mulm wasn't the only person who lived by putting facts together-how did Mamzelle Marie know he'd been to the Nantucket? She turned to go, then stopped, looking at Artois, who had put out his hand to touch the great king snake's blunt nose. The boy snatched his fingers back guiltily, and Marie smiled at him, and brushed her fingers gently against the side of his face.

“I think you better stay out of this, too,” she told the boy. “There's no good for you-no good for anyone-in askin' after that poor woman's death. You got a good home, and an uncle looks after you, and gives you all you want. What do you seek in ugly places and unpleasant things?”

“You yourself said why, Mamzelle,” Artois replied. “I want to know how the world is made.”

“So do we all, my friend.” She sighed, and gazed scarchingly into his eyes. “So do we all.” Her smile faded into an expression of sadness, as if she looked off a great distance, into space or time. Seeing what? January wondered. The woman who styled herself the Contessa d'Ernani, who had left her son in a school full of strangers rather than admit to African blood in her veins? Hesione herself, lying in the pool of blood beneath a glittering shroud of flies?

Then she was gone, and standing on her platform with the Grand Zombie hanging around her bare shoulders in the firelight as the drums rattled louder and the great brownwinged palmetto-bugs dove rattling into the flambeaux.

He he, Bomba, he he,

Canga bafio ti!

Canga moune de le,

Canga do ki la....

“Could the man who killed Hesione have been ... well ... Lafitte himself?”

Artois spoke hesitantly, glancing up at January as they slipped through the iron gates of the palisade that surrounded the square, and crossed the stinking dark of Rue des Ramparts. “I mean, no one knows what became of Lafitte after he was driven out by the American Navy. And Hesione did claim she used to be his mistress.”

“He could have,” agreed January slowly. The drums rose behind them, an insistent throbbing that moved the bones within the flesh; faster and faster, like the pounding of a lover's heart at the strong caress of a hand. Bells jangled on the ankles of the dancers, and already men and women both were mbuki-mwuki: throwing off their clothes, the better to dance. He himself had lived his early years on a plantation, and thirty-five years ago the thin veneer of Christian conduct had been even thinner than it was among slaves today. He found himself a little worried after Artois' encounter with Mamzelle Marie.

That the boy would incur harm or sin? he asked himself. Surely not.

That he'd be shocked?

And he realized that the way the voodoo queen had looked at the boy had troubled him. The sadness in her eyes.
The regret.

He pushed the thought away. As queen of secrets, Mamzelle Marie might very well have known things about Coquelicot St. Chinian that would make anyone sad for her child. “From everything anyone ever said of Lafitte-those who knew him, I mean-he wouldn't have harmed an old woman.”

“Even if Hesione knew something that would compromise him?” asked Artois. “She could have recognized him, you know. If he'd changed his name and gave up smug gling, after the United States Navy burned him out of Campeche, and has been living in hiding all these years, she could have threatened to expose him.”

“To whom?” countered January. “And why? Half the French Creoles in town would invite Lafitte to supper if he turned up on their doorsteps.... AND ask if he'd happened by any promising bits of goods lately. If Hesione recognized him, and threatened to expose him, he'd be far more likely to buy her off than to murder her, unless there was some enmity between them. And my understanding is there were few women the Boss couldn't charm.”

He recalled the Boss encountering an American hanker and a staff Colonel of the American Army and their wives on the street, one day just before the war while the army was still engaged in trying to find a way through the swamps of the Barataria to end Lafitte's smuggling ventures. The officer especially had looked tired and disgruntled, since every trapper and fisherman in the marshes knew the thousand tiny waterways of the trembling lands and could relay information about troop movements to I,afitte hours before the soaked and exhausted American invaders arrived at whatever tussock or chenier Lafitte was supposed to be occupying that day; if looks could kill, the gutter of Rue Bourbon would have run crimson.

The Americans had glared, and had passed without a word. But January had seen how the smuggler-boss removed his hat and placed it over his heart, to bow to the wives of banker and Colonel: graceful as a dancing-master, or as a man must be who lives by his physical strength and speed. And he'd seen the faces of the two women, and how they'd looked back over their shoulders before hastily averting their forgiving eyes.

He and Artois crossed Rue des Ramparts, made their way down Rue d'Orleans, with the iron lanterns flaring on their crossed chains above the intersections, the moths and palmetto-bugs roaring and clattering around the lights. On both sides of the street, shutters stood open to whatever cooling breath might be available. The candle-light within showed simple rooms, simply furnished, and the shadows of men and women thrown huge against ochre or yellow or persimmon-red walls.

“Lafitte might not have had any choice if he was involved in smuggling something important,” argued Artois, who had clearly been reading The Corsair. “You said people like Mr. Mulm at the Nantucket and Mr. Shotwell at the Blackleg finance gun-running to the rebels in New Grenada. If Hesione had recognized Lafitte, and talked about it to the wrong person, it could have been Mr. Mulm or Mr. Shotwell who went to her place to kill her. You said, because of the tobacco, that the man with the nicked bootheel was probably an American.”

“Except that Shotwell's about five feet five, and we worked out that the man in the nicked boot has to have been six feet,” said January. “Mulm's a few inches short of that. And if Hesione had been talking about recognizing Lafitte, I think the folks at the Nantucket, or one of her neighbors, would have overheard some of it.”