Hannibal hesitated a moment, then said, "Augustus Mayerling is a woman."
"What?" It stopped January dead on the banquette.
"Augustus Mayerling is a woman. I don't know what his-her-real name is." Hannibal started walking again, with that kind of loose-jointed scarecrow grace, his dark eyes turned inward on the recollection.
"But it isn't that unusual, you know. There was that woman who served for years as a man in the Russian cavalry recently. Women fought at Trafalgar and Waterloo disguised as men. I've talked to men who knew them. I found out about Augustus-well, I guessed-almost by accident. About two years ago he picked me up outside a saloon in Gallatin Street where I'd been playing for dimes. Of course they robbed me the minute I was out the door, and he took me back to his place, since I was almost unconscious. I was feverish all night, and he cared for me, and I-it was probably the fever-I could tell the difference. I kissed his hand-her hand-we just looked at each other for a minute. I knew."
Of all people, thought January, Hannibal would know.
The fiddler shrugged. "Later we talked about it. I think he was glad to have someone else who knew. I've covered for him now and then, though he seems to have worked out long ago all the little dodges, all the ways of getting around questions, things like keeping shaving tackle in his rooms and staying out of certain situations. But, that wouldn't be possible, for even a day or two, in jail. God knows he's far from the first person to manage it. You're the only one I've told. Don't..."
"No. Of course not." January walked along, feeling a little stunned.
Fighting is either for joy, or for death...
He could still see the Prussian's cold yellow eyes as he said that, bright as they spoke about the passion of his art. And he'd seen Mayerling fight, in the long upper room that was his salle des armes on Exchange Alley: whalebone and steel and terrifyingly fast. He'd heard about the men he had killed.
Suddenly he remembered Madeleine Trepagier as a child, attacking the Beethoven sonatas like a sculptor carving great chunks of marble in quest of the statues hidden within, drunk with the greedy strength of one lusting to unite with the heart of an art.
Hers was music, like his own. Her lover's was steel.
But the passion was the same. Of course they would find it in each other.
"I understand," he said softly. "In a way it could be no one else."
"No," said Hannibal. His dark eyes clouded. "Too many women who have been... injured like that... don't find anyone."
But that was not what January had meant.
They walked in silence, January remembering the occasional couple in Paris-usually prostitutes who came from five or ten or twenty men a day back to the arms of their lady friends. But there had been one pair of middle-aged and smilingly contented daughters of returned aristo emigres who ran a hat shop in the Bois de Boulogne and made fortunes off their bits of flowers and lace.
But none of that, he thought, meant that Augustus Mayerling hadn't been the one to wind that scarf around Angelique's neck.
"I still want to have a look around his rooms," said January after a time. "In any case he'll want to hear what happened tonight."
He cannot pass himself off as a gentleman, Jean Bouille had said of the American Granger, little realizing that the spidery-thin sword master who had taught him was doing exactly that.
Only the mask he wore was his cropped fair hair, thought January, and the scars on his face. But a mask it was, as surely as the elaborate thing of jewels and fur that had hidden Angelique's face on the night of her death. The man's coat and trousers were a costume as surely as that stolen white silk dress had been, more subtle because they used the minds of those who saw as a disguise.
I wear trousers, therefore you see a man.
Your skin is black, therefore I see a slave. Except, of course, that Augustus was one of the few people in this country who saw a musician, and a man. Beside him, Hannibal said again, "Will she forgive me? Will Minou make her understand? I thought it was Minou. She was wearing Minou's dress-I thought it was Minou. I'm so sorry."
January started to say, "It's all right, she was just scared-" and then stopped, and it seemed to him that the blood in his veins turned colder dian the rain.
"Oh, Jesus," he whispered.
Hannibal halted too, looking up at him, baffled. "What-"
"She was wearing Madeleine's jewels," said January softly.
"Who was? Minou..."
"She was wearing Madeleine's jewels, and whoever killed her thought she was Madeleine." January still stood in the middle of the banquette, staring into space, shaken to his bones but knowing, as surely as he knew his name, that he was right.
"They killed the wrong woman."
"Who did? Why would anyone...?"
"The plantation," said January. He made a move back toward Rue Burgundy, then halted, knowing the carriage had moved away from the banquette moments after he and Hannibal had left the house. "Les Saules. It butts up against the Gentilly place-wasn't one of the proposed streetcar routes Granger and Bouille were fighting over out past Bayou Gentilly? If the route goes out there the land will be worth a fortune. If she sells it all to that McGinty fellow for debts..."
"McGinty?" said Hannibal, startled. "McGinty was one of Granger's seconds. The pirate with the red Vandyke, holding the horses."
The two men stared at each other for a moment, pieces falling into place: McGinty's coppery whiskers clashing with the purple satin of his pirate mask, the faubourgs of New Orleans spreading in an Americanized welter of wooden gingerbread and money, Livia's dry voice reading aloud William Granger's slanderous accusations of Jean Bouille in the newspaper, the efforts to discredit Madeleine before Aunt Picard could marry her off.
"Come on!" January turned and strode down Rue Bienville, Hannibal hurrying, gasping, in his wake.
"How did they know she'd be at the ball?"
"Sally. The girl who ran off. The one who had a 'high-toned' boyfriend-a white boyfriend. You or Fat
Mary ever find out anything of where she went?"
The fiddler shook his head. "Not a word of her."
"Ten to one the man she ran off with was McGinty or someone connected with him. He'd been around the plantation on business."
"And tonight..."
"It's got to be someone connected with the Trepagier family. Someone who stands to inherit-and my guess is it's Arnaud's brother. Claud, the one who's been in Texas." He strode along the banquette, heedless of the rain. "Anyone connected with the family would know she'd be at her Aunt Picard's tonight. Anyone could have arranged an ambush."
"Then if the attack this evening wasn't chance..."
"They'll have followed her out of town to try again."
TWENTY-TWO
Hannibal's breathing had hoarsened to a dragging gasp by the time they reached the gallery outside Mayerling's rooms. The rain was heavy now, streaming down from a tar-black sky and glittering in the lamps hung under the galleries. In the amber glow of the candles that the Prussian brought to the open door, January could see no difference, no clue to confirm what he now knew. The epicene ivory beakiness was the same. His only thought was, Even without the scars, that's one homely woman.
"Madame Trepagier is in trouble," said January, as the Prussian stepped out onto the gallery, clothed in vest and shirtsleeves, the short-cropped blond bristle of hair still damp from its earlier wetting in the rain. "Where do you keep your chaise?"
"Rue Douane. Where is she?" He reached back through the door and fetched his coat from its peg. "And how do you-? "