Rebels of Babylon (8 page)

We passed into a curious street of cottages packed together. In one doorway, a colored lassie stood thoughtlessly in her nightdress, holding a candlestick, as a white fellow kissed her farewell.

Mr. Barnaby noted my dismay. “Begging your pardon, sir, but it ain’t what you’re thinking. It’s true love that, true love! The gentlemen keep their darlings ’ere, them as custom forbids
a lad to marry, thanks to certain indiscretions what ’appened at birth. The situation’s good for one and all, sir. Oh, many’s the marriage been saved by a wife’s blind eye. And vicey-versey.”

I did not comment, but thought, instead and unwillingly, of India.

We pulled up before a well-lit house that seemed to have strayed into that forlorn street. Old it was. Although I was unfamiliar with the architecture, it hinted at a colony’s early days, in the second generation, when a founding family begins to distinguish itself and spends more on appearances than is sensible. Of two stories, the establishment was not great in size, yet wore a telling grandeur of intent. Two curling staircases, one at either end of a high verandah, reached down to the street like arms stretched out in welcome. Upstairs, lamps shone brightly through the shutters. Yet, a second glance warned that the house would not look so fine by the light of day, but wanted paint and a nail or two.

Remarkably agile for his bulk, Mr. Barnaby leapt down from the conveyance. As I followed after, a hand caught me by the arm. I nearly gave its owner a lick of my fist.

Twas a negro, black as a cat and graven with service. He wore an antique livery so faded even the darkness paid it no compliments. Guiding me down, as if he knew me well, he might have been helping a matron in a ballgown.

As soon as my two feet were in the muck, the fellow released my arm, stepping back politely. His eyes evaded mine, just as the servants in India showed us humility. Whether they felt it or not.

We caused more than a creak as we climbed to the porch. Planks begged to be retired. If the proprietor of the house had not been awake, our arrival would have roused him.

We might have been expected all along, the way the double doors flew open to greet us. A pair of negro servants—ancient twins they looked—stood to either side in Regency liveries. They even wore gray wigs tied back, although the mops looked overdue for replacement.

The instant I got a look inside, I stopped myself in wonder.

Never had I seen a man so fat. Not that I wish to speak rudely of any Christian, but a wonder it was that any device for sitting could support him. Or that the floor did not collapse at once. But sit he did, beneath a chandelier, in the center of the room beyond the entry hall. He was so wide the archway barely framed him.

Broad as a young man’s hopes he was, with a jolly face whose plumpness masked his age. He wore old-fashioned breeches and a smoking coat whose fabric might have rigged a Yankee clipper. Chuckling in delight at our appearance, he let his tongue’s tip peek between his teeth. An antique excess of white hair, suited to the fashion of our grandfathers, waved as his body jiggled.

He consumed a good deal of the room he sat in, hardly leaving space for a scatter of chairs and a pair of service tables. The pictures on the walls showed well by candlelight, as portraits and women will.

“Mr. B.!” he cried fervently, “I hardly recognized you, skinny as y’all done got! You’re wastin’ away,
cher.
Folks going to think you’ve taken the consumption. Where you feeding these days?”

Mr. Barnaby bowed with the grace of a dancing master. Our host tilted his head and as much of his body as agreed to follow, peering around the bulk of my companion to gain himself a better look at me.

“Brought us a new visitor, I see.” Mirthful, he shivered like a splendid jelly. “And if I don’t mistake me, it’s that spite-the-devil Yankee I been hearing talk about. The one sent down to ask us about that New York gal who washed up dead on Louis Fortune’s levee.” He favored me with a grin as wide as the New Orleans waterfront. “Major Abel Jones, if I’m not misinformed?”

I was nonplussed. Our authorities had assured me that the fate of Miss Susan Peabody remained a secret from the general public. Nor had my mission been broadcast on the exchange.

“Come right on in here now!” the fellow insisted. “You look like you just found out your daddy was in the circus. Don’t be so
surprised,
cher.
If
I
didn’t know who you were, I’d swear off sugar-coffee for a week.” He canted his head, reducing his laugh to a smile. “Mr. B., just bring that dashing Yankee right on in here and we’ll have ourselves a brandy with our macaroons.”

I declined the brandy, of course. In its place, I was provided with coffee so delicious it partly appeased my alarm at learning that my purpose was common knowledge. Nor did our host restrict himself to brandy. He took his own coffee in a cup the size of a chamberpot.

Sly and wicked, my toothache sneaked into hiding. As if it knew I would indulge myself, after which it might ambush me without mercy.

“Yes, sir, yes,
sir!
” Our host smacked his lips. “Heresy it may be to some, but I myself have been more than content to sacrifice the romance of our glorious cause for a good cup of coffee. Never saw this city so glum, as when your blockade cut down on our coffee supply. No, sir. Our dear General Beauregard hadn’t reckoned on that.”

Tutting over the breadth of mankind’s foibles, he told us, “Young man, now, he likes a little excitement before he settles down. And a war tends to sound like just the thing to those who haven’t been in one. That’s all it’s about, tell the truth. High spirits and stupidity. The rest is just pompous bluster. One cause’ll do as well as another, for a young man, Major Jones. They were all just looking for a scrap. And now they’ve got more of a scrap than they reckoned on. Yes, sir. My family’s seen the French and the Spanish come and go, then come and go again. Then the Americans came courting, and they wouldn’t take no for an answer. But one master’s good as another. Hardly matters, say what people will.”

He laughed. “All this fuss over whether it’s folks up in Washington or over in Richmond who pretend they’re governing us. Or in Paris, for that matter. Doesn’t make a spit of difference, except in the quality of the provisions. No, sir. I measure the success of a government by the quality of the coffee beans on offer.”

The entire room seemed to vibrate along with his jollity. “Tell you a little secret, Major Jones. Tiny picayune of a secret. Folks in this city never were happier than while your General Butler was strutting amongst us last year, favoring us with his follies. Especially our ladies. Oh, I don’t doubt that you’ve heard to the contrary. You’ll hear more. But the fact is that nothing makes a denizen of this lovely city happier, more positively
joy
ous, than having somebody they can hate with an unrestrained passion. No,
cher.
Spoons Butler gave us somebody to blame for the sunshine or the rain in equal parts. He’ll be missed for years to come.”

I began to see that our host’s merriment had inflections, that it changed like the light on a field of rye on a cloudy, windswept day. A bit of shadow crept upon us now.

“But your General Banks,
cher. He
has been a terrible disappointment. Too much of a gentleman. We’re having trouble finding something we can hate about him and make stick. We like our Yankees rude and larcenous, thank you. But my fellow
citoyens
feel as if they ought to almost
like
General Banks. I dread to think what’s to become of us, if he doesn’t hurry up and excite our outrage. It’s been building up inside us, ever since General Butler’s recall. I fear to think of the explosion that’s on the way.”

He gobbled a biscuit of the sort they call a macaroon, a confection of sugar and coconut. Tasty affairs, those served to us were of a quality that would not have disgraced my dear wife’s kitchen. I fear I ate too many, which was rude. And foolish, too. The sweetness would carry a penalty, as the many forms of sweetness often do.

“I have to wonder, Major Jones,” our host resumed, as he licked the crumbs from the landscape surrounding his mouth, “why you didn’t come to call on me before this? Most folks passing through come on by to say hello. You’ve been a guest among us how long now? Week? Two? Almost unfriendly, I’m inclined to judge it. But I suppose you’ve been busy with your Miss Peabody.” As he spoke, one eyebrow had been rising, while
the flesh around the other eye congealed. “Water downriver now. Consider yourself forgiven. But there’s one thing I have to ask you, pardon my forwardness.”

I was just draining my coffee cup and had not time to reply before he continued.

“Why on this here earth of ours did you go chasing Marie Venin halfway down Chartres Street, only to get yourself shut up in an old slave pen? Starting a fire, too. My system of intelligence must be failing me,
cher.
I didn’t know you and Madame Venin were acquainted. Or you and Petit Jean, for that matter.”

During the conversation, Mr. Barnaby had been as silent and respectful as a son, but he alerted when he heard our host speak of my chasing this Mrs. Venin. Twas clear that he knew little of events, for he looked at me as if I had just emerged from Fingal’s Cave.

He even clattered his cup on his saucer, which my Mary Myfanwy has taught me is bad manners.

“The woman with the snake?” I asked.

The old man nodded. “So I hear tell. What on earth set you running after our second-most-accomplished
voudouienne,
Major Jones? And you waving your stick at her?”

“She violated the Ursuline convent,” I told him. “And appeared up to no good.”

My host smiled mildly. “I suppose there might be something in that. Always suspected there was a bit more violating among the good sisters than a fellow’s intended to believe. I take it, then, your action was … spontaneous? That you didn’t know who you were chasing?”

Looked at through another’s eyes, the vigor of my pursuit did seem excessive. But, then, I was a sergeant for some years, in my John Company days, and such always suspect that others are guilty of something.

I shook my head in admission of my ignorance.

“Well, well,
well,
” Mr. Champlain said. “Mr. B. here could tell you that your course of action … may not have been well advised. I do not know, Major Jones, how deeply you are
acquainted with the language of civilization and the arts, but in my family’s native tongue,
‘venin,’
as in Marie Venin, means ‘venom.’ Madame Venin made her reputation through her knowledge of various poisons. Concoctions even more dangerous than those forced down our throats by our doctors of medicine.” He tutted. “It’s said she can stir up a potion to make a man do most anything she wishes.” He looked at me, one eyebrow up, the other eye narrowed again. “Now … what do you think Madame Venin might wish to do to you? After your … escapade?”

I thought of the hours that I had spent unconscious in the power of mine enemies. Time enough there had been to force a concoction down my throat, or to apply some devious lotion to my flesh.

Encouraged, I asked, “So you would say that this woman’s abilities lie in her chemical skills? And not in the power of Satan?”

The old fellow laughed heartily. “At my age,
cher,
I would find it a great inconvenience to believe in Satan, given his reputation for excessive hospitality toward sinners. On the other hand, I’m wary enough of our human vanity not to assume that I know all there is to know. I’m content to sit right here and let the world entertain me. Without feeling compelled to sit in judgment on its morals or its meanings. As for voodoo … I never was drawn to such things myself. But I
do
wonder if somebody with a different temperament than mine … might not be able to make a superstition at least halfway real just by believing in it hard enough.”

He grinned, then cupped a hand around one of his body’s folds. “I’m inclined to wonder just how much of a person is this sullied flesh … and how much is the mind’s talent for believing. I suspect that some of the things folks come to believe grow more real to ’em than anything you’re likely to see on the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse. No, sir, if mankind has any one talent that distinguishes us from the beasts of the field, it’s not our over-advertised sense of morality—which always strikes me
as particular, rather than general—but our ability to believe in things we can’t see. Whether we take God, Satan or our Glorious Southern Cause as an example.”

He refreshed his smile, but did not force it to fullness. “Of course, I’m speaking in hypothetical terms, not as a Christian who already hears uninvited footsteps in his bedchamber. Not, sad to say, those of a pleasant-minded young woman …”

“Do you believe this creature wants to kill me?” I asked bluntly.

He shook his head decisively, without dropping his smile. “Not in the least,
cher.
At least, not in this particular instance. See here, now. From what I hear of the past day’s events, you might have been killed a half-dozen times, then three more for good measure, if anybody really wanted you dead.”

His voice grew almost serious. “If I may presume, Major Jones, I’ll put myself in your place—although I fear I wouldn’t fit in my entirety. If I were you,
cher ami,
I likely would be asking myself just why it is I’m sitting here, gay as can be, drinking sugar-coffee and eating macaroons, as alive as ever I was. Look at things that way, it strikes me that folks wanted to give you a right-good scaring. Nothing more. If they wanted you dead … well, opportunities were not lacking.”

“But then …”

“Why frighten you half to death, then leave you alive to help yourself to another one of Auntie Ottilie’s macaroons? Do help yourself, please. I should be insulted, otherwise. See here, now. You can figure out the answer yourself in another swallow or two. If your reputation is to be believed.”

Twas Mr. Barnaby, not myself, who blurted out the solution. “Dear me,” he said, “they know who Major Jones is and why ’e’s come amongst us! And they ’ave something to ’ide, they does, something ’e’s been sent ’ere to find out. But it’s better for them to ’ave Major Jones in plain view, but made careful of ’is actions, than to ’ave another secret agent sent, or maybe ’alf a dozen, and them not knowing where to look for the next one. You might say ’e’s the devil they already know …”