Fever Season (29 page)
“Mama …”
“Hush, darling, you know that I’m right. And don’t pick at your glove buttons; those gloves cost seventy-five cents. And I
was
right,” she added, pausing on her way to the bedchamber. “Not enough that she was harboring a runaway—”
“That’s a lie! Where did you hear that?” Cold congealed in him, like steel shot behind his breastbone.
“A lie, is it?” Pellicot planted her hands on her ample hips. “A lot you know of it, out here, M’sieu! The police
carne and got her yesterday, and a good thing it was that I’d been warned to take my dearest Marie-Neige out in time.
And
the things they found out about her, once they turned that school of hers inside out. Stealing her investors’ money, shorting the girls on food.… No wonder the poor things couldn’t survive the fever! I only wonder my poor little darling didn’t starve, although really, dear,” she lifted an admonitory finger to her poor little darling, “now that you’re back with your mama you’ll have to do something about your weight. Gentlemen are not attracted to young ladies whose waists are above eighteen inches, and a round face is never kissed, you know.…”
“That’s a lie,” said January softly. “It isn’t true. Rose—Mademoiselle Vitrac—she does the best she can with what she has, but she would never steal money.”
Pellicot’s eyes narrowed. “And how well do
you
know Mademoiselle Vitrac, pray? Marie-Neige,” she added sharply, as the girl began to speak again, “maybe it’s best that you run along to the cottage, if you can’t learn to be seen and not heard. And don’t let me find you’ve eaten so much as a morsel until I get there! Really, you’ve simply turned into a little piglet since you were at that school.
“It will take me months to undo the damage that
vache
has done,” she continued, as Marie-Neige obediently stepped through the front door and retreated down the shell path toward New York Street. “And I refuse to argue the matter with you, Ben.” She took off her lace mitts. Her hands, though fine, were large and competent looking, with nails polished like jewelers’ work. She disposed of her reticule, picked up Henri Viellard’s dark plush coat and settled it over the back of a chair, and passed into the bedroom as she spoke, checking the water in the pitcher and moving Henri’s spectacles to a safer place as she went.
She paused for a moment, looking down at the empty
wicker cradle, and her eyes met January’s over it. He saw in them the shine of tears. Then she turned away again and stood beside Dominique’s bed, folding back her pink voile sleeves.
“Be so good as to go down to Decker’s store for ice, would you, Ben? There’s some come in on the boat from town, at twenty-five cents a pound. Take some money out of that
cochon’s
purse for it.” She nodded down at the sleeping Henri. “Left word for his mother at the ball last night he had a migraine, I’ve heard, and she’s fit to be tied this morning, for, of course, she wasn’t fooled a moment—he slipped away when she was in the cloakroom.”
She shook her head, and leaning down, touched Minou’s cheeks with the backs of her fingers. “And speak to Mr. Bailey at the Pontchartrain—the magistrate, you know,” she added. “Poor Minou. We’ll pull her through.” And then, as though ashamed of being caught in sympathy, she went on briskly, “Run along now. And if you see your mother, tell her I’m here.”
It was another thirty-six hours before January could leave Milneburgh. During that time, unable to leave Minou’s side, he was forced to listen to Agnes Pellicot discuss the shutting-down of Rose Vitrac’s school with his mother, with Catherine Clisson, and with any of Dominique’s friends who came to offer help and support. By the time his sister’s fever broke, shortly after noon on Tuesday, January could be in no doubt that Rose Vitrac’s school had been searched by the police, though rumors varied as to whether Rose herself had been arrested. But everyone who had heard anything of the matter seemed to agree that Mademoiselle Vitrac had harbored a runaway slave, and that three girls in the school had died, just as if, thought January furiously, people weren’t dying in every street and building of the town.
As darkness was falling he boarded the steam-train for town, jostling along in the rear carriage listening to the whine of mosquitoes in the dimness of the swamps.
The raised Spanish house on Rue St. Claude was closed like a fist, lightless on the moonless street. The stenches of burning hooves, of sickness, of privies clotted the damp air like glue. The bell on the cathedral was chiming nine. Somewhere a man called, “Bring out your dead.” January walked on, regardless of the curfew, down Rue St. Philippe and along Rue Chartres, past mute dark houses with the planks propped up beside their doors, past pharmacies whose windows glowed with plague-red jars and bottles, his shadow monstrous on the walls.
“What you doin’ out this time o’ night, boy?” demanded the sergeant at the desk, looking up as January came through the Cabildo’s great double doors.
Before leaving Minou’s he had changed again into his black coat, his waistcoat and beaver hat, knowing he’d need to be perceived as a free man of color despite the blackness of his skin, which said “slave.” Now he took his papers from his pocket and said in his most Parisian French, “My name is January, sir. I’m one of the surgeons working at Charity.”
And I’m not your goddamned boy
. “I’ve been in Milneburgh with a sick woman and child. I’ve just returned to learn that three of my patients at Mademoiselle Vitrac’s school on Rue St. Claude have died, and I’m trying to learn something of the matter. I understand that I might find Mademoiselle Vitrac here?”
Not in the Cabildo
, he prayed, sickened at the image of Rose in those filthy cells that flanked the gallery, among the madwomen and prostitutes.
Not here
. He had spent a night once in the oven-hot, verminous cells: he would not have wished such a thing on his worst foe.
But he kept his voice impersonal, his demeanor respectful
of the two or three blue-clothed Guards who lounged on the stone benches of the corner office. The sergeant at the desk—a square-faced, square-handed American—shuffled around in his papers. Outside in the Place d’Armes, voices lifted in angry shouts:
“You’re a fool, and can’t dance!”
“Consarn if I don’t make daylight shine through your gizzard quicker’n lightnin’ can run around a potato patch!”
“Is Lieutenant Shaw available, sir? He’ll vouch for me. Please tell him Benjamin January is asking after him, if you would, please.”
“Benjamin January?” The sergeant raised his head again. He looked sweaty and worn, piggy eyes sunk in bruises of sleeplessness and jaw scrummed with two days’ growth of beard. “Got a note here for you. Mademoiselle Vitrac was released yesterday morning. I don’t know the right of it, but charges against her were dropped.”
“What was she charged with?”
But the man only shook his head, and held out to him a folded sheet of paper between stubby fingers. “She left this. Seemed to think you’d come here lookin’ for her. Looks like she was right.”
His eyes followed January suspiciously as January carried the paper to one of the oil lamps that burned in brackets around the walls. They did little to illumine the murk, but holding the paper close, January was able to read.
The letter was written in Latin.
Of course
, thought January, fingering the much-thumbed edges of the page.
They’d try to read it
. No wonder the sergeant was suspicious. He wondered if someone like Monsieur Tremouille the Chief of Police, had succeeded.
Monsieur Janvier—
If you receive this you will have heard something of what has befallen. The police came yesterday, and found hidden in the building a string of pearls and a quantity of money that they claim links me to a runaway slave, whom they likewise claim was a girl I knew in my youth
.
[
Why didn’t you get rid of the pearls?
thought January furiously.
I told you to throw them in the river!
At least she’d taken into account the possibility that they’d show the note to someone who had been to a proper school.]
The day before their arrival, Antoinette, Victorine, and Geneviève all succumbed, at last, to the fever. I sent word to you, but you had already left for Milneburgh, and later events prevented me from writing you there. Occupied as I was with them I could not give my full mind to matters when Madame Pellicot and Madame Moine came to remove their daughters from the school, though I understand that rumors have begun that I speculated with the school’s money. These rumors are untrue, and I am at a loss to understand how or why they began
.
The fact remains that I am ruined. I understand people are even blaming me for the deaths of my poor girls. I know it will be impossible for me to open the school again, even should I find pupils. At the moment I have no idea where I will or can go, or what I can do
.
I may have little experience with the ways of the world, but I do know that calumny is a contagion far more to be dreaded than our friend Bronze John, and even your slight association with me in caring
for the girls might be held against you by the malicious. Therefore I ask your indulgence. I know that I owe you the money we agreed upon for the girls’ care …
[
What money?
A moment later he realized that the sentence was for the benefit of those who might read the letter, and wonder why else he would wish to seek her out.]
… but please, for your own sake, do not attempt to locate me. I will send the money to you in good time. I do not forget all the kindnesses you have done
.
Thank you for the help you gave me with the girls. Without your timely assistance, matters would be far worse than they were. I am sorry that I cannot thank you in person, but you must see, as I do, that it is better we never meet again
.
The letter was signed, not in Latin, but in Greek: more difficult for January to read, but impossible, he thought, for others to spy out.
He recognized it as a quote from Euripides.
It took him a few moments to translate:
Nothing can come between true friends
.
Rose
“Obviously, someone talked.”
Hannibal folded up his copy of
Emma
and leaned over to trim the tallow lights that transformed his little tent of mosquito-bar into a glowing amber box. Returning to his mother’s house, with the dense, hot smell of storms brewing over the Gulf, January saw the thread of light beneath the door of Bella’s room; even on those nights when he was sober and not working, Hannibal seldom slept before three.
“My guess is Isabel Moine, who never wanted to be at that school and hated learning of any sort. I know she’d written her parents two or three times asking for them to come and get her, and they wouldn’t—Victorine told me this, one night when she couldn’t get to sleep.”
His brow pinched with compassion at the memory of the three girls. “They took a turn for the worse—well, Antoinette was losing ground all the way along—and they went quickly, in spite of everything Rose and I could do. Rose took it hard.”
“Do you know where she is?”
Hannibal shook his head. “I went down there Sunday afternoon, and they said they’d released her, in spite of the evidence being pretty damning. Shaw wasn’t there, and
nobody would tell me anything. I don’t know what happened to change everybody’s mind.”
He reached down to the pottery jug beside the bed and offered some to January, who was sitting on the end of the bed. It was ginger-beer, lukewarm but not unpleasant. Far off to the north above the lake thunder growled. Flares of sheet lightning outlined the shutters of the room’s single French window.
“How long was she in the Calabozo?” Part of him didn’t want to hear.
“Just the one night. Shaw did what he could for her—not that there’s much one
can
do for someone in the circumstances.”
January shut his eyes at the memory of the crawling mattresses, the stinking heat. At the thought of the fever, should it break out in those tiny, filthy cells.