The Nubian's Curse, page 2
Footmen paraded in with pea soup, oysters, turtle soup, foie gras. The scents pinched January’s hunger: he had foregone the vol-au-vents in preparation for Mass at dawn. Movement on the other side of old Uncle Veryl, as the vicomtesse leaned forward, trying to catch her charge’s eye. (As well she should, reflected January. The girl seemed intent on engaging as much masculine attention as possible, and Cochon and Philippe were definitely going to collect bet-money on at least a couple of duels …)
Then he frowned, seeing the noblewoman’s beautiful oval face by candlelight …
Is that …?
He shook his head, returned to the old song, gentle as snow falling on Bethlehem:
Entre les deux bras de Marie,
Dort, dort, dort le petit fils,
Mille anges divins, mille séraphins
Volent à l’entour de ce grand Dieu d’amour.
He told himself, It’s only someone who looks like her. Someone else I saw in Paris. As in New Orleans, he’d seen them all: faces of the old pre-Revolutionary aristocracy, of the financiers ennobled by Napoleon, of the chevaliers d’industrie who paid off the Duc d’Orleans – the cousin who’d scrambled on to the throne when the original line of kings had been unceremoniously booted out again.
It must be one of them who looks a little like her. That’s all.
One of the first things January had been taught by old Herr Kovald – when his mother’s protector had arranged for him to have music lessons (‘Why on earth would you waste good money on that?’ his mother had demanded) – had been a sense of occasion. At a ball, people wanted to dance. At the opera, the music would follow the singers’ lead. Playing at a dinner, or a reception, people wanted to talk. They wanted the music to be there, but didn’t really want to listen to it.
So he sank his heart into it, tasted again the layered sweetness of his memories of all those Christmas Eves, all those réveillons. The towers of Notre-Dame silhouetted against stars and snow-light; the haunted, exquisite stillness of the ciprière in fog. What that first Christmas Mass had felt like to a nine-year-old boy, accepted by the family of his friend.
Depuis plus de quatre mille ans,
Nous le promettaient les prophètes
Depuis plus de quatre mille ans,
Nous attendions cet heureux temps.
And what, he wondered, did Hannibal Sefton see, embroidering the old carols with fantasias of gold on his violin? The family he’d left behind in Ireland? His own memories of Paris in the twenties? What did Cochon Gardinier remember, of the rowdy jolliness of growing up in the French town with a sprawling family of libré dressmakers and plasterers and fiddle-players?
The doors between the worlds, he thought, stood open indeed, for the spirits of yuletides past to come and go as they wished.
Footmen brought in geese and grillades, lobsters in cream and spicy meat pies. Red wine, white wine …
‘I don’t see why Papa couldn’t have arranged it for me to have stayed in Washington, when he died. There’s always something wonderful going on there.’ (Giggle) ‘It was just selfish of him to make that awful man in Natchez my guardian …’
‘Breeding? Pah! The only difference between those “Legitimite” d’Aumonts and Polignacs you worship and the imperial titles is that one bunch of them served a lazy king, and the others served their country and the emperor who brought it glory …’
(Should I see if I can still get in on the betting of a duel between Miragouin and Aubin?)
The clock struck three. Footmen returned yet again, to clear away dishes and bring in coffee and sweets. The guests moved their chairs about, or got up with polite excuses (‘I will be back in one little minute, madame, but it has been weeks since I’ve seen my dear Madame Mabillet …’) and mingled, taking each other’s seats or leaning across chair-backs to laugh with old friends. At one end of the table, old Uncle Veryl retreated for a quiet chat with his only real friend at the gathering, an equally ancient English gentleman who was one of January’s few medical patients – no white person in New Orleans (and very few of the free colored) being likely to choose a coal-black surgeon who stood six feet three and looked like a cotton-hand. These two aged gentlemen were joined by old Sidonie Janvier, the mother of the man who had been protector to January’s own mother; she caught January’s eye across the amber glow of the candlelit room, Joyeux Noël in her smile.
Rose, thought January – his beautiful wife – would be holding her own réveillon, with his sisters and their children, telling the littler ones of Père Noël, of shepherds and wise kings and angels singing among the stars … Not that she believed a word of it. She’d have ragout and pralines and callas waiting for him when he got home, on the threshold of winter dawn. And he smiled at the thought of her. Rose the logical deist, his sister Olympe the voodoo queen …
At the pantry door, the butler Visigoth appeared, caught January’s eye, as ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ circled to its gentle close. There would be grillades and grits in the kitchen for the musicians – those who valued a free meal over the soul’s union with God – before dessert and more music rekindled the feast. At réveillon, one did indeed stay ‘waking’ until daylight came again.
‘Five cents says Brinvilliers challenges Gontran Mabillet,’ whispered Hannibal, as the musicians rose from their chairs. And indeed the Viellard lawyer was bending over Miss Emmett’s shoulder, recounting some courtroom enormity that made her giggle. Both Gontran and his mother, a few chairs away, were visibly planning murder. Jacques and Philippe both dug in their pockets as they stepped down from the dais.
‘And five on Miragouin going after Marat Janvier over that remark about Miragouin’s noble kinsman …’
A woman’s voice said, ‘Ben.’
January turned.
It is her.
The Vicomtesse de St-Forgeux hesitated, standing below the musician’s dais. She was, he had seen when she entered the room, in mourning like the heiress in her charge, though unlike Miss Emmett her bombazine gown was in plain, exquisitely cut good taste, and she wore no jewelry (First year of mourning, he guessed). No wonder I had trouble recognizing her. In Paris she had worn yellow gauze, or apple-green, midnight hair piled like storm-cloud over a threaded glory of pearls.
‘It is Benjamin, isn’t it?’ Her voice hadn’t changed. Burnt caramel touched with salt. Nor had the whalebone loveliness of her slender form.
‘Persephone.’ He bowed.
Her smile hadn’t changed either. It could still raise the dead.
‘I should say madame …’
‘For you it’s still Persephone.’ She moved her hand as if she would hold it out for him to kiss, then drew it back quickly, as if remembering that they were in America. In America, even a free black musician did not kiss a white lady’s hand. Particularly not that of a bona fide French aristocrat. ‘What are you—?’ she began, and then shook her head at herself: ‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t expect … But you’re from New Orleans, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’ His smile added, And we’ll forget the dozen times I said that nothing on God’s green earth would ever get me to return here.
In the refulgent light of hundreds of candles, he could see her color a little, under rice-powder and rouge skillfully applied. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized again. ‘But seeing you here is – not to be melodramatic about it – the answer to a prayer. The fact is—’
Miss Emmett’s schoolgirl voice shrilled behind him: ‘Oh, I know I can find some way of coming down here to New Orleans!’ (Giggle) ‘That awful guardian can’t be so cruel that he won’t let me come shopping!’ (Giggle) ‘And I have just nothing to wear once I get out of this awful mourning—’
Persephone Jondrette – Her Ladyship Persephone de St-Forgeux, he corrected himself – turned her head, red lips tightening, and in her eyes he saw the exasperation of weeks on ship-board from Virginia with the girl. He bowed again, letting her know he wouldn’t take offense if she rustled off to corral her charge.
‘Can I meet you somewhere tomorrow morning?’ she asked. ‘I know it’s Christmas Day, and I’m sorry, but we leave for Natchez Saturday morning—’
‘It will be my pleasure and my honor,’ said January, ‘to have you and Miss Emmett visit my family in the morning – I know you’ll have invitations to Christmas dinner. We’re on Rue Esplanade, the big gray house between Rue Burgundy and Rue Dauphine. You can’t miss it. It’s a girls’ school. My wife runs it—’
‘You married again!’ Again, that radiant smile.
‘I did. And she’ll be delighted to make your acquaintance.’
‘I’m so glad! I’d heard – I was in Switzerland by then …’ Raised voices dragged her attention back to Miss Emmett, giggling behind her fan as Gontran Mabillet jostled Scae Viellard aside.
(‘How dare you, sir?’ ‘How dare I? And you with your engagement announced already to …’)
‘I must go,’ she said. ‘That girl … I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you, Benjamin. I will come tomorrow—’
‘And I hope you’ll tell me what you were doing in Switzerland—’
She laughed a little, the sparkle of her eyes telling him that the memory was a good one. She sobered, and went on, ‘The fact is that I’ve been at my wits’ end, and you can be of enormous help to me. You knew Arithmus Wishart, didn’t you? Well, I mean.’
‘Arithmus—’ Dark, strange eyes that wouldn’t meet his or any man’s, under a shaggy black mane worked with beads. Long, thin hands caressing the tiny bronze statue of a lion-faced goddess.
A man lying dead on the naked mattress of a carven bed, face twisted in staring-eyed agony and shock.
Imposuit dea manum – The hand of the goddess lay heavy on him …
‘Did you find him?’ he asked. ‘After all these years?’
‘I think so. It’s why I—’
(‘A man who would so insult the family of his hosts deserves a horsewhip, not a choice of pistols or swords …’ ‘You know nothing of the business and nothing of my affairs, sir …’ ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, there are ladies present …!’)
‘The thing is, I doubt I would recognize the man now, after sixteen years. I only saw him once or twice. And I don’t know … Plague seize that girl!’
(‘I find your implications insulting, sir!’ ‘And I find you officious, sir, to say nothing of unprincipled and selfish—!’ ‘Gentlemen, please!’)
‘Go,’ said January, half-laughing, though he knew that his old friend was in a very real sense responsible for her charge’s reputation and, in a way, for the safety and perhaps the survival of the young men involved. ‘I knew him, yes, and I would know him again. Did he come to America, then?’
‘He’s in Natchez,’ she said.
(‘Oh, somebody help me!’ cried Miss Emmett, fainting …)
‘He’s a slave.’
TWO
‘Was that who it looked like?’ Hannibal Sefton huddled deeper into a threadbare hand-me-down greatcoat as he and January walked downstream on Rue Royale in the thinning mists of Christmas morning. After réveillon, everyone in the old French Town was asleep – except the slaves, of course. Having stayed up from the previous morning preparing the white folks’ feasts, they now washed dishes, dried silverware, and bundled table linen into wicker hampers for the laundrywomen. By the time they were done with that, their owners would be waking up and sleepily demanding coffee.
Every carriageway and courtyard gate breathed scents of steam and wet bricks. Cathedral bells blessed the silent town.
It would be, January guessed, a very small morning Mass.
‘Persephone Jondrette,’ he affirmed. ‘Did you know her?’
‘I saw her dance.’ Hannibal smiled in remembered bliss. ‘And fell in love with her on the spot. Who in Paris didn’t?’ He and January had been in the French capital at roughly the same time, though in those days of the restored Bourbon kings they had moved in very different circles. He coughed again. ‘But what’s she doing here? And how did she get to be the Vicomtesse de St-Forgeux …?’
‘You’ll have the chance to ask her,’ said January. ‘After breakfast.’
‘Oh, be still my heart! Did you meet her at the opera? Every man I ever spoke to would have lain down before her carriage-wheels to win her smile.’
‘Actually,’ January grinned at the recollection, ‘she helped me hunt ghosts in a haunted chateau. She was the mistress of a friend of mine.’
The fiddler’s eyebrows carried a whole line of parallel wrinkles towards his hairline. ‘Fortunate man,’ he said. ‘And, from all I’ve heard, extremely wealthy man …’
‘That’s actually a very long story.’ January’s smile faded, as he recalled that story’s terrible end.
And Arithmus Wishart’s in Natchez …
A slave in Natchez.
They halted where Rue St-Pierre crossed Rue Royale, only a few hardy sparrows cheeping in the bare cathedral garden. A solitary cat materialized from the fog to trot before them down the damp pavement in the direction of the Place d’Armes. Vanished. ‘Please tell Rose I’ll be there within the hour. The early Mass is never very long.’
Though January had abstained from the kitchen feast of gumbo and grits in the Viellard townhouse – not to speak of pilfered vol-au-vents – he grudged nothing of the exhaustion, sleepiness, and mild headache of postponing the breakfast that awaited him, in order to kneel before the altar rail on the day of the Lord’s birth and receive the Host. Monseigneur Blanc, who had preached the midnight sermon to a cathedral packed with fashionable worshipers, could be excused for accepting Madame Viellard’s invitation to the réveillon. January guessed that the bespectacled Père Eugenius, officiating this morning, had spent the night in private meditation, on his knees. The young priest’s voice echoed in the near-empty church as in a cavern, but January came away feeling that he had, in fact, in that stillness, touched the hand of God.
On his way from the building, he lit candles before the image of the Blessed Virgin, and whispered his prayers: for his young friend Artois St-Chinian, of the shadow-side of the Viellard clan; for his first wife, the beautiful Ayasha, dead of the cholera in Paris … Has it really been over seven years? For his sisters, his mother, his beautiful Rose …
For Arithmus Wishart.
So that’s what became of him …
For a girl named Belle.
Remembering that long-ago winter – remembering Ayasha expostulating about ghosts in a dressing gown and boots – he found himself smiling again as he strode along the wet brick banquette, heading towards Rue Esplanade.
The cathedral clock was striking nine when January climbed the steps to the high gallery of the old Spanish house on Rue Esplanade. Ten thousand angel-wings of coffee-scent and gingerbread wrapped him in blessings as he opened the French door into his study. If his mother had neglected to take him to Mass in his childhood, she had at least slapped into him the much more important fact that no self-respecting gentleman ever entered a house through the parlor French doors – the very idea! Only American animals did that!
He’d half-expected his niece Zizi-Marie to have gone to bed and to sleep by this time, leaving Rose and Hannibal to doze over a hand of picquet beside the breakfast dishes while they waited for him. But in fact, the whole household was awake. He heard their chatter as he crossed through his study and into the parlor. Even Gabriel was there, Zizi-Marie’s seventeen-year-old brother, just packing up his white jacket and apron and the tall, starched ‘toque’ expected by his employer in the new restaurant on Rue St-Louis.
‘Joyeux Noël!’ The young man strode to catch January’s hands. ‘And now I’ve got to run, Uncle Ben … Every American in town’s reserved tables – I’m not going to be back before midnight – I’ve left the menu Zizi and I worked out for Twenty-First Night—’
Zizi, sitting between Rose and Hannibal at one end of the table, threw a fragment of praline at her brother at this disrespectful reference to her upcoming wedding day, which was to take place on the fourteenth of January – eight nights after Twelfth Night; since, like every other musician in town, January would be playing for a white folks’ Twelfth Night ball, and Zizi desperately wanted her uncle to be present. Gabriel caught the candy, threw it back, turned to hug Rose and then grabbed his things and dashed out through the study and thence out through the French door and down the gallery steps.
Half a foot taller, January reflected with a smile, than he’d been three years ago, when he and Zizi-Marie had come to live with him and Rose, following the bank crash that had ruined half the families in New Orleans. As Zizi sprang to her feet and came to embrace him, he caught Rose’s eye: ‘Joyeux Noël,’ she said. Her smile was like a kiss.
Happiness, he thought, as she too rose to be encircled by his other arm, didn’t get better than this.
Three-year-old Professor John – as his elder son was called – staggered in Rose’s wake; baby Xander, entangled in his long dress, crawled purposefully behind: Joyeux Noël indeed. The whole of his soul felt like a single prayer of thanks.
January strode to scoop up the Professor, swung him around as if he’d been a puppy and hurled him ceiling-ward. ‘Throw me out the window!’ screamed the toddler. ‘Throw me out the window …’
‘I’m gonna throw you out the window!’ January roared in his best ogre voice, and ran for the windows, holding his son with gentle strength and spinning him in long swoops …
‘Throw me out the window!’
‘Uncle Ben—’ Zizi caught up Xander on to her hip. (‘T’row me window …’ suggested the boy, his dark eyes wide.) ‘Gabriel says he can roast a whole piglet for the wedding breakfast, like they did in olden times, with an apple in its mouth – Can we do that? Mama says—’
