Prisoner of Desire (45 page)

“He likes matters just as they stand, with his social and private lives neatly separated, with me in one and his quadroon in the other.”

“You know about her?”

“I am not a fool.”

“Perhaps not, but you are wrong about Gaspard, also.” A qualm assailed Anya for what she was about to do. To meddle in other people’s lives was never wise.

“Am I?”

“He would ask you to be his wife if he thought you would accept. His quadroon is no more than a screen to protect your good name. He loves you.”

What Anya expected Madame Rosa to say or do, she could not have said. To blush and stammer was not in the older woman’s character, any more than violent rage and fulsome threats would be. Still she had somehow anticipated something more than she received.

“Does he? Does he indeed?” Madame Rosa said. With that she turned away, unfurling her fan to wave it languidly before her face as she listened to the chatter of her daughter and her friend.

Anya was left to her own thoughts. Ravel and Gaspard, members of the clandestine Committee of Vigilance. Could it be true, or had it been only a tale concocted to pacify Madame Rosa? Would the present administration, with its stranglehold on the city, be so bothered by the activities of a small group of men such as she had seen at the house of the quadroon that the police would be sent to break it up?

Vigilance. The word implied watchfulness, unceasing care. No doubt the motives of some of the committee were of the highest, and yet, it might be nothing more than an excuse to wrest the law from the public appointed officials and administer it themselves. What, in such a case, was to prevent them from bending it to suit their own purposes? Could they be trusted not to use it to enforce their personal prejudices, to pursue their personal vendettas, to accomplish their personal gain?

It could not be denied, however, that it was time something was done. There was such chaos in the government that those elected to administer it were using it to do precisely all those things she feared the Vigilance Committee might do, except on a larger scale. The officials were for the most part Americans, men who had come to make their fortunes in the richest seaport in the world, men who had used the rough-and-tumble tactics of Northern politics to push aside the Creoles who ran for public office as a duty, not a career; to take over the slow-moving, laissez-faire system of hotheaded arguments followed by genial agreements over coffee and wine and to whip it into something more nearly resembling a bull-and-bear fight, noisy, bloody, and without finesse. And of late they had taken to hamstringing the bull to be certain the call went in favor of the bear.

But if Ravel was indeed a member of this secret committee, how did that explain the men who had tried to kill him? Or her? Was there any connection between the thugs at Beau Refuge and those who had held up the carriage in which she had been riding on the night they had seen Charlotte Cushman as Queen Katherine? Could that possibly have been an attempt on her life, just as the attack of the Arabs had been later?

No. She must not give way to such uncontrolled fantasies. Robbery had been the sole purpose of that first attack. It had come because they had strayed into the back streets while avoiding the jam of carriages near the theater. There was no need to look for deeper explanations; it had been merest happenstance.

Her attention was distracted by the appearance of a man on the wide theater stage below. For some time there had been discreet bumps and scraping sounds behind the velvet curtains that closed it off. Now all was quiet.

As the audience noticed the tall man in evening clothes on the stage, the sound of voices and whispering, the rustling noise made by a large, anxious gathering died away to a few quiet coughs.

The man lifted a gold flutelike whistle to his lips and blew a long and melodious note. At the top of his voice he cried, “When you next hear that sound, it will be the signal for the midnight repast. Now it heralds the opening of the Second Annual Tableaux Ball of the Mistick Krewe of Comus. As captain of the Krewe I bid you welcome and wish you joy of the Mardi Gras season. Let the revels begin! Behold, the gods and goddesses in their appointed places!”

With one arm outflung, the captain backed away from the center of the stage. The curtain swished opened. Drawn-out cries of pleasure sounded everywhere as a scene of glorious light, brilliant color, and beauty appeared before them. In this first tableau, entitled
Minerva’s Victory,
perhaps a quarter of the deities seen that day were presented in reverse order of the parade, all with their mythological background scenery and other symbols of their divinity around them. Gilded and burnished, heaped with flowers and surrounded by fearsome and beautiful beasts, they stood in poses of grandeur or hauteur. Above each one was the beautiful painted transparency lighted from behind that identified him.

So it went as the tableaux, one after the other —
Flight of Time, Bacchanalian Revel, Comus Krewe
and
Procession
— till the total of four, were unveiled. It was like seeing life-sized works of art, each magnificently staged for the maximum effect to be gained by color and proportion and the mix of the good and the evil, the sublime and ludicrous.

What prodigies of effort had been expended, what sums of money had been squandered to present this illusion. There were those who shook their heads and muttered under their breaths, “What a waste, what a waste.” But there were others who watched with bright, glowing eyes and full hearts, accepting the joy of the moment and the sheer wonder of the creative flight, celebrating the glory of being alive and a part of the magic.

Slowly the voices of the audience rose again.

“See, there is a bat, such a monster he is!”

“Look at the swans!”

“Poor Atlas, carrying such a heavy weight.”

“Pegasus does look just as if he could fly!”

“How did they do it? How did they do it?”

Ravel was in the next to last tableau. Anya sat and watched him in his costume of the goat-god Pan that should have been ridiculous but was not, and a smile that she could not seem to banish played around her mouth. What a fine god of love he made, as handsome as such a god should be, and yet unsettling in his darkness as love itself was unsettling. The pose he had assumed was perfect, both beseeching and threatening, tender and lascivious. He moved not a muscle; still the fluttering lantern light of his transparency shone gold on the vine leaves twined in his blue-black hair, and polished to the sheen of brass the planes of his chest, glinting among the fine dark whorls of hair that grew there.

He did not see her, could not look anywhere but straight ahead as he held his stance, and she was grateful. Why did she have to love him? Why did the mere sight of him make her burn with the kind of yearning she had hardly dreamed of less than two weeks ago? She felt drawn to him, as if to be apart were wrong, as if she had never been quite free of him for seven long years. It was almost as if they were caught, both of them, in something beyond their control, perhaps one of those old myths of love and hate, jealousy and destruction, played out for the amusement of a vain god, and from which the only escape was death.

At last the curtains closed. The music, softly playing all this time, swelled. Next would come the march of the maskers. Excitement suddenly crackled like lightning around the room. The ladies, both young and old, in the tiers of boxes straightened, patting their hair and smoothing their flounces. Some of them would be chosen as partners for the costumed members of the Krewe in their parade around the room. Afterward they would break from the march to dance. There were rules, however. No gentleman in evening wear could descend to the floor; no gentleman in costume could ascend to the boxes. The way that ladies were chosen was by having their names called out by the captain so that they might descend to meet the man hidden behind his mask who had chosen them.

The grand march led by Comus began, the maskers making a circuit of the floor to provide one last full look at their grandeur. There was a brief pause; then the first lady’s name was called.

There were shy smiles of embarrassment, cries of delight, and squeals of triumph as one by one the ladies took their places. Some were wives, some daughters and nieces, some, since the Krewe was young, were mothers. Most were sweethearts, each giving the man who met her at the edge of the parquet a close, questioning look, as if to be certain he was who she expected. It was entertaining to watch them, and to laugh at the confusion as the club members assigned to the task of finding the ladies called by the captain scurried here and there, repeating the call again and again, until they were red in the face and wore identical looks of harassment to the point of near apoplexy. It was difficult not to smile at the expressions of anxiety of pique or assumed indifference on the faces of the ladies as they waited to see if they would be chosen or left to sit alone and deserted when the music began.

“Miss Hamilton! Miss Anya Hamilton!”

The call started some distance away and came closer. Anya went still. Ravel. She had not expected it, not after the way they had parted. The call came again. She sat paralyzed. What could he be thinking of, to link her name with his so publicly after all the gossip? There was little hope that people would not recognize him. Compared to the others, he had scarcely any costume or mask on at all.

Madame Rosa nudged her. “What are you waiting for? Go on.”

“How can I?”

“It’s carnival time. How can you not?”

How indeed? Anya rose to her feet and made her way down from the box. Ravel waited at the edge of the floor. As she saw him, her heart started to pound. Her fingers trembled slightly as she placed them on his wrist that he offered correctly, formally, to her.

He inclined his head, his gaze warm as it moved over her, noting the faint flush across her cheekbones and the way the teal of her gown reflected in her eyes; the proud tilt of her head and the soft hollow between her breasts revealed by her décolletage. He had not been sure she would come down; it wouldn’t have surprised him if he had been left standing there without a partner when the march began. He felt as if he had won a victory, though he was not sure over what. Now if he could only manage to prevent himself from mauling her here under the fascinated gaze of the old ladies in the boxes, and, incidentally, dance in some fashion in these damned boots made like cloven hooves, he might count Lady Luck on his side once more. Turning, he led her out to where the line of march was forming.

“I suppose you know,” Anya said in low tones, “that you have just confirmed all the worst suspicions of everyone who has heard of our peculiar escapade.”

“I thought I figured as the gallant rescuer of your family-home? What could be more natural than that, having seen you in delicious dishabille battling the flames, I am now enamored?”

“Dishabille? I was fully clothed and you know it!”

“I do, but all the busybodies with the busy imaginations weren’t privileged to see you as I was, and it’s their duty to think the worst. Besides, it was only by the most fortunate stroke of timing that you—”

“Never mind! If you can’t be brought to see that this is doing neither of us any good, then you can’t. I won’t waste my breath on you.”

“Good. You can tell me instead if you have discovered the error of your thinking. And you had better stop glaring at me, or you will give the busybodies even more indecent ideas.”

She gave him a smile of molasses sweetness. “I realized very soon what you meant, but I have yet to make up my mind which is worse, to have received a duty proposal or one that sprang only from your overheated male needs.”

The march began. With the couple following them treading on their heels and the one before them lagging behind, it was a moment before he could answer. When he did, there was resignation in his tone.

“I should have known that you would put the worst possible construction on anything I said.”

“In this case it was already there! But you need not trouble to repeat the offer. You will no longer find an ally in Madame Rosa. I know why she did not refuse to allow your suit last time, why she spoke for you. Such blackmail, as clever as you may think it, won’t work a second time.”

“Now who,” he asked, his voice deadly in its softness, “said there would be a second time?”

“Oh, won’t there be? Then I am very much obliged to you!” Her eyes were as dark and cold as the ocean’s depths.

“You have not, I trust, allowed Murray to learn Madame Rosa’s part in the arrangement that led to our clash?”

“Certainly not!”

“Good. I somehow doubt that he would be properly understanding. It would be the very thing to bring him after me, breathing righteous fire and determined to take up where we left off.”

“I wish that I had permitted him to meet you! I doubt that you would be so smug now.” No one was able to make her quite so angry as this man. No one.

“No, indeed,” he said with the greatest goodwill. “With any luck at all, I might even be dead.”

The march was over. The orchestra plunged immediately into a waltz and the marchers broke up, turning to each other and moving close to glide away on the music. Ravel gave her no chance to refuse the dance. He clamped his left hand at the slender turn of Anya’s waist and clasped her left hand in his right. They swung into the waltz, moving, swaying, turning together, their bodies perfectly attuned.