Rebels of Babylon (2 page)

A pair of grimy sailors—ever worthless sorts—leaned at a corner and watched us. As my quarry rushed past, trailed by my Christian self, one of the tars remarked, “Now don’t that just beat all, great God Almighty?”

The negress dashed between converging vehicles, a fancy brougham and a wagon piled with cotton bales. How she did it I cannot say, but the creature confounded the teams and their harnesses, blocking my path with a wall of horseflesh and leather.

Bales began to spill into the thoroughfare.

“Stop … that … woman!” I shouted, although I could not even see her now, with the vehicles barring me like a stockade wall.

I rushed behind the lacquered brougham, which to my wonderment bore a couple whose race looked as suspect as their riding-out garments were elegant. Searching for the broad back of the negress amid the chaos, I slipped on a pile of equine slop and nearly took a pratfall for my trouble.

I fear intemperate words escaped my lips.

Just as I righted myself from my stumble, I glimpsed the woman a pistol shot ahead.

The nature of the street began to change as we charged along, with ever more shops in evidence beneath the curlicued galleries. The crowds on the sidewalks thickened, Frenchy-looking the lot of them, with a sort of dandified shabbiness to the men and a gadabout air to the ladies. If ladies they were. Negroes mingled freely among the fair, along with others of origin indeterminate. Boys whistled and dogs pestered.

The fugitive’s progress transformed the scene. Man and beast flew out of the woman’s way.

A sensible man might have quit the chase, considering the damage already done. But Abel Jones is not a quitting man.

The negress plunged through the multitude. I followed as swiftly as my thankless leg allowed, struggling to hurry along in her wake before it closed up again.

Frenchy protestations let me know that I was far less welcome than the snake. “Creoles” do not care for Union blue, see. And we had neared the ramshackle heart of their quarter, an ancient town around which the city had grown.

Perhaps they would have respected a Punjab cobra, a nice twelve-footer.

Little boys made fun of me as I went. Although most were more intrigued by the disquiet of the horses and the inventive curses of teamsters yanking on reins.

A gussied-up fellow gave me a wicked look, brushing off his dove-gray topper after it paid a visit to the gutter. He jabbed a finger toward me as I passed, complaining about a “shappo” or some such matter.

I saw the woman turn from the pavings and flee beneath an archway. With her serpent back on her shoulder, on the look-out. I hastened along, certain that I had marked her course precisely.

She had fled down a narrow passageway, a corridor of brick walls beneath low vaulting. It stank of convenient usage by the multitude.

I tapped and crabbed my way along, avoiding the clots of waste as best I could. The tunnel was so narrow I could hardly imagine my quarry, who was a woman of some abundance, fitting herself through it. Twas so close overhead even I had to crouch as I went.

The passage opened into a barren rectangle about the size of our parlor back in Pottsville. The new, larger parlor, I mean. In Mr. Evans’s house, which had come down to us.

And I found myself flummoxed.

The negress and her snake could not be seen.

Yet, there wasn’t a single door.

Nor a window. Nor a stairway.

Not a ladder and not a rope.

Not even a cellar chute.

I marked where openings once had been. All were filled up with brick so old it crumbled.

There wasn’t so much as a drain in that little yard.

Now, women do not simply disappear. Not even negresses intimate with snakes. And well I recalled the hidden doors of
the Maharanee’s palace, behind which Jimmy Molloy played peek-a-boo until he nearly fell in a pit of spikes.

I tested the walls for hidden levers or catches, but nothing gave or moved. Next, I rapped along the bricks with the hilt of my new sword-cane, listening for cavities. When that failed to produce any hint of a gap, I tapped at every flagstone in the courtyard.

Twas queer as a barking cow, her simply vanishing.

Look you. I am not often wrong about such matters. And certain I was that the negress had fled down that particular passage. I will admit to suffering a toothache. But that does not affect a fellow’s eyes.

It made me short-tempered, though.

I looked up yet again, in anger and frustration. The height of the yard was two stories at the rear and three on each of the other sides, with the outline of a cistern visible over the lip of a pediment. Had I spotted so much as a piece of string, you might have convinced me, at that point, that the woman had climbed it assisted by her serpent—before making her escape by dancing over the rooftops. But all I could see were parapets of brick, a few trails of smoke, and the gray clouds overhead.

It made no sense, not the woman’s disappearance nor the purpose of a courtyard without so much as a kitchen door or a window. The place was as blank as the deserts of Baloochistan.

Half an hour before, I had possessed no inkling that the negress and her serpent were part of this world. Events had converged with great suddenness. I had applied for an interview with the senior officer of the Ursulines, who I believe is called the “mother superior,” in response to a note slipped under my hotel door. Encouraged I was to visit the convent to ask about a servant who disappeared. Now, the provost marshal had reports in plenty of negroes unaccounted for. Twas almost an epidemic. The judgement of the authorities was that most had simply absconded, for the colored races are most of them unsteady. But the note submitted to me tied the missing servant girl to
Miss Susan Peabody, late of Albany, New York, whose murder had provoked my trip to New Orleans.

I had been admitted, grudgingly, to the little room at the front of the convent that serves as a receiving room for gentleman. The mother superior’s greeting had lacked enthusiasm as decidedly as her English lacked vocabulary. I was sitting there and trying to make out her meaning, prodding my rebellious tooth with my tongue and doing no harm to man nor beast nor Catholic, when I heard a great rumpus behind me.

Those nuns talk French, which I do not. But when I heard that screeching and shrieking rolling through the halls, I knew things were not square in any tongue. It sounded like Mr. Milton’s Pandaemonium. If not worse.

Just as I rose to investigate matters—relying rather more on my cane than I liked—the negress rushed past the open door, a one-woman swarm, trailing an imposing length of snake.

“La femme diabolique! Marie Venin!”
the old nun gasped, lifting both sleeves Heavenward and revealing withered forearms. She shouted that I should “arrety” the intruder.

Well, I did not understand her Frenchy jabber, and the English with which she had greeted me was quits. But plain enough things seemed. The trespasser was a thief, or something worse. So off I went, knocking over a chair and a coat-rack, leaving my greatcoat and cap behind, chasing a black woman wider than she was tall, who was garbed as an African gypsy and wielding a snake.

The commotion inspired thereafter would require an explanation to our authorities.

All my bother had gained me was that courtyard, bleak and featureless, with one way in and out. The snake-charming negress had disappeared like a wraith.

I gave up all hope of solving the riddle immediately. Covered in sweat I was, yet chilled to shivering, and nagged again by toothache. And the courtyard reeked to a puking, forgive my frankness.

Never one to shilly-shally, I turned back to the passageway to leave. And heard metal slam against masonry.

I wheeled about, expecting to see a ghostly door yawn before me. But nothing had changed in the yard.

Twas then I got the old shiver down my spine. The one that warns of danger before it strikes.

I realized what had happened, of course.

Still, I had to look.

At the streetward end of the passageway, someone had shut a solid metal door. I did not need to test it to understand that I had been locked in the courtyard.

I was now the quarry, not the hunter.

I DID NOT know that I had foes in New Orleans, yet in hardly a week of residence I had excited enemies in plenty. As I would learn. It is a town where nothing is as it seems, where smiles devour.

I spent an hour alternately banging on the metal door, bellowing for my release by any passerby, and stamping about in the courtyard, hugging my sodden shirt and tunic against me. It took that long for my enemies to gather, see.

I never even heard them. They dropped the net from a rooftop as I strode about complaining to myself. Its weight made me stagger as its meshes covered me.

Before I could respond in any manner, someone played artfully on the ropes and I found myself on my back, caught like a fish.

Next, I was hanging upside down, unable even to stretch out my arms to shield myself if dropped.

Laughing at the ease of their catch, they began to haul me upward. My well-being failed to concern them. I bounced off the bricks like a ball of India rubber.

Before I could get my bearing, a crew of rough-handed fellows pulled me over the parapet and dropped me onto a flat expanse of roof. Glimpsed through the mesh, my captors were
black and white and every shade in between. But one among them drew my especial attention. He was a giant. With a pattern of scars on his broad, flat, caramel face.

There was no sign of the snake-woman.

“Give ’im the whiff, just give ’im a whiff right quick,” a bearded white fellow cried.

In a moment, I smelled ether.

I wriggled most ferociously. It would have been wisest of them to give me a crack on the head with a club, as they might have done a flounder. But they seemed determined to put me out with fumes.

The mesh held me so tightly I could not defend myself. Still, I twitched about as if having a fit.

I had one hope, see. I needed them to release me from the net. For when they harvested me, they caught my cane, which contained a lovely blade within its shaft. Properly armed and on my feet, I was ready to take on all the rogues in the world.

“Get ’im, Pie! Jes’ conk that there dwarf-man over his haid.”

“Watch he don’t bite, now.”

A son of Africa tried to wrestle me flat. Larger than me by half, he still could not quite fix me. And no one helped him. Look you. At times it is a blessing, being made small. For those of greater stature underestimate you.

“He jes’ ain’t got no give-up in him, Tiny,” my wrestling partner grunted. “He slippy as a cottonmouf.”

Each time the drug-soaked rag approached my face, I forced the netting away from me, twisting and turning.

“Just get him out of that damned fish-trap,” someone said. “You can’t get at his muzzle like that. He got you all foxed. Get that net off him, Pie.”

“Jes’ help me hold him on down,” my assailant demanded. “I can’t do bofe things to once.”

“Laissez! Laissez!”
the giant snapped. “You make yourself a fool.”

Miraculously, they began to loosen the meshes.

When he knows you have come close enough, the cobra does not hesitate to strike. Nor does a veteran soldier, given a chance to survive.

Before they realized themselves how loose the net had become—and while it still veiled my face—I discarded the sheath of my sword-cane and jabbed the nearest fellow in the groin. Not deeply, you understand. I did not want the blade getting stuck when I needed it. And two or three inches of steel will take your enemy from the battle, if the tip is properly placed.

My victim howled to wake the dead. My blade had come as such a surprise that the lot of them stopped their doings and wasted a moment looking from one to the other.

By the time they bore down again I was on my feet and free of the net’s restraint. I slashed the bearded fellow across the face, meaning to splash as much gore as I could. Only the boldest soldier can ignore the copious flow of his own blood. Then I pierced a yellow man’s belly. Low, where it gives the most pain.

I had no wish to kill them, see. Not unless they insisted. But I could not afford to be gentle with my kidnappers.

Twas then I made a mistake. I should have kept on cutting human meat. Instead, I took time to kick over the bottle of ether. I booted it back toward an open hatch in the roof. It struck wood and shattered.

The three brutes who remained untouched by my blade produced a collection of weapons that lowered my hopes. Two of them—the giant called “Tiny” and a bald, brown fellow with a glass jewel in his ear—drew cutlasses they had concealed on their persons. In defiance of the provost marshal’s regulations, I must add. The third produced a billy as long as a bayonet.

They attempted to encircle me. Employing needless profanity all the while.

I had to avoid the three men already down, in case one might regain sufficient possession of himself to trip me up or take a knife to my legs. Nor did I wish to entangle a foot in that net.

Jimmy Molloy would have laughed to see me jigging about that roof.

I backed toward the parapet over which they had hauled me in. It promised a three-story fall.

The fellow with the glass earring charged me first. Bullies they were, not trained to fight as partners. This lad was the sort who swings a blade wildly, pressing the attack with all his vigor, but with little strategy, expecting simply to overwhelm his opponent. We clashed our steel but twice before I hopped aside, bad leg or no. As he stumbled past, I swept my blade across the small of his back.

He tripped and fell forward. Smashing his jaw on the parapet.

Bad though his situation looked at the moment, he seemed the sort to get back up for another go. I would have liked to give him a proper sticking, but his comrades did not mean to spare me the time.

I lunged for the fellow with the club, forcing him backward with the tip of my blade, then wheeled about on my good leg. Just in time to parry the giant’s cutlass.

He had real might in those arms, that big mulatto did. The force of his blow near astonished me. Glad I was that my blade did not simply snap in two, thin as it was and so light compared to the cutlass.