"Ben?" came Dominique's voice from the carriage. "Ben, what theory? And what does it have to do with Madeleine? She wasn't even there that night, in spite of what that horrid Charles-Louis Trepagier has been saying all over town."
"I'll explain at the house," called January from the chaise. He tossed the long rifle, which Augustus caught with an expert hand. "Put out the carriage lamps. Can you see well enough without them to walk at the horse's head?"
"I think so. It's not far from here."
"Put out the carriage lamps?" protested Albert. "Now why on earth..."
"Just stay on the box, if you would," ordered Augustus, flipping open the glass to blow out the candles within. "And keep silence. There may be men waiting along the road. They'll hear us coming, even over the rain, but at least we can keep from making targets of ourselves. Here." He walked around to the door again, and passed one of the pistols through it.
"I didn't know you could shoot a pistol." January heard Minou's voice, a sweet thread, as the black ghost that was all he could see of Mayerling drifted back to the coach horse's head, took the bridle, and began to walk forward, boots crunching on the crushed shells of the roadbed.
"My uncle Gustave taught me. He said..." Her voice lowered, drowned in the clatter of rain on the chaise roof, and January settled into the slow, cautious business of following the carriage in almost total darkness among the trees. Evidently any constraint Madame Trepagier felt about being in a carriage with a courtesan had been dealt with between the two women already.
Knowing the rain would hide any sound of ambush, he strained all his senses, trying to listen to the forest of oak and sycamore on either side, trying to hear something besides the patter of falling water and the soggy crunch of the wheels in oak leaves, shells, and mud. In time the darkness before them seemed to grow lighter, and the rain fell more heavily on his face. They came out from the trees, turned the corner, with the water of Bayou Gentilly on their left, and to their right, a dim white shape showed behind the oak trunks, like a smudge of chalk on black velvet.
Lights burned in the upstairs parlor of Les Saules, a welcoming glow of saffron through the murk. A lamp had been kindled likewise in the stairway that led from the paved loggia beneath the rear gallery. Augustus, visibly relieved, walked around from the horse's head to the carriage door, while Albert, on the box, raised his voice. "You, Louis! Get your lazy bones out here with an umbrella for Madame Madeleine!"
There was no light in the kitchen.
January was already standing to shout a warning when he saw the second giveaway-the muddy tracks caked thick on the flagstones of the lower gallery, the stairs leading up. He shouted, "No! They're in the house!" and Mayerling froze, his hand on the carriage door, startled face a blur in the shadows as he
turned toward the chaise where January was already gathering the reins. "Drive for it, Albert, they're-"
From the upper gallery of the house a rifle cracked. Mayerling flung himself down as the ball hit the side of the coach with a leathery thump; a second shot boomed hollowly, and the carriage horse reared, screaming, then fell in the traces. January grabbed the shotgun and sprang out on the far side of the chaise, dodged and sprinted toward the house, and reached it in time to catch the first of the rivermen as he bounded like a tiger down the stair with a knife in his hand.
January fired into his chest with the shotgun from a distance of four feet or so. The man went slamming back against the steps, blood spouting from his chest, mouth, and nose; someone on the stair above said "Fuck me!" and there was a clomping of unwilling feet, then the flat, splintering shot of another rifle as Mayerling fired into the lighted openwork of the stair.
A dozen things seemed to happen then, Mayerling's horse rearing, then foundering in the shafts, which January had expected, amid the flat snaps of more rifles. Mayerling, Albert, and the two women raced in erratic zigzags across the two or three yards of open lawn to the shelter of the house gallery; a hoarse, boyish voice gasped, "Give it," in January's ear and Hannibal pulled the shotgun from his hand to load. January wondered obliquely where Hannibal had learned that in a close-quarters fight the loader had better identify himself before touching a man who was likely to turn around and knock him flying in mistake for another assailant.
Sobbing, Madeleine clawed open her black mourning reticule and pulled out keys, opened the shutters of the dining room door. Footsteps thundered and bumbled on the gallery overhead but Mayerling fired his pistol at the man who tried to come down to fetch the casualty lying in the stairwell, and the muddy boots retreated upward again. The wounded man screamed, "Get me out'n here! Get me out'n here!" The smell of blood was like burned metal. It dripped in sheets down his shirt, down his chest.
At the same moment January heard a groan behind him, and by the banked ember glow of the dining room fireplace within saw Dominique supporting the coachman Albert, his blood mixing with rainwater to dye the whole side of her pale dress. The elderly servant was gasping, his hand clutching at his side, eyes tight shut with agony and face already ashen with shock.
"Ben, what on earth-?" sobbed Minou.
"Not now. Can you load?" He ducked through the door, stripped away the old man's coat as he spoke. Madeleine jerked the doors shut behind them, barred them as January ripped the white shirt, wadded it into a pressure bandage-he looked swiftly around for something to tie it with and without a word Augustus pulled Dominique's tignon from her head, releasing a torrent of black curls around her shoulders. The bullet had gone clean through, shattering the lowest rib. Albert cried out with pain at the pressure but seemed to have no trouble breathing.
"No! I-"
"Don't they teach you girls anything besides Italian and cross-stitch?" demanded Hannibal, pulling her away to where Madeleine stood in the shelter of the study door and the light fell through from the lantern in the stairwell outside. "Ball-just enough powder to cover the ball -first the powder, then the ball-wad-in she goes- ram, and I mean hard-pinch in the pan." He handed the pistol to Madeleine, took Augustus's rifle, repeated the procedure, his teeth clenched against a sudden spasm of coughing. "There. Now you know something Henri doesn't know."
"You shut up about Henri." It was her flirt voice. She was over the first shock.
"With me." Madeleine strode across the darkness of the dining room, pausing only long enough to shove
the table out of the way, then opened the French doors diat looked toward the bayou and parted the heavy shutters a crack. She said, "Bleu, "a ladylike little oath, and fired the pistol. A man's voice bellowed, "Shit-eatin" nigger!" and there was the sound of something falling, and the confusion of footsteps on the front gallery as well. Dominique rammed home the next charge before the smoke had completely cleared and returned the pistol to her, and Madeleine called across to Augustus, "Thank God you brought the good pistols, dear."
"I think that's the one that throws to the right."
"My leg's broke! Shit-fuck, my leg's broke!" howled a voice outside.
January tied the final knot in the pressure dressing, strode across the dining room to the door of the small study beyond.
There was one window, set high in the wall and shuttered fast. He listened a moment to the ceiling above his head, then ducked through the door again. "Madame! Is there a gallery on that side of the house?" He tried to remember, but he'd only ridden up to it from the back.
"No."
"Out this way, fast. With any luck they won't see us."
"There's an oak a hundred yards straight out," said Madeleine. She snapped off a final shot, slammed the shutter, and bolted it again. "I know the fields in that direction. They don't."
"Night fights for he who knows the land." Mayerling was bending already, lifting the coachman as gently as he could to lean on his shoulder. "Can you make it, Albert? Hannibal?"