"They'll be on Claud's body," said January. Together, he and Shaw walked to the sprawled mess that had been Claud Trepagier.
"Nahurn Shagrue," remarked Shaw and spat into the glittering grass. "As I do live and breathe. I wondered where he came by that money he was gamblin' yesterday. Mighty pretty shootin'," he added. "What was it, a long rifle?"
January hesitated, then said, "It looks that way." He bent to empty the man's pockets. There was a black iron key there on a ring-simple, a pattern he recognized of old. Looking at it in his bandaged palm brought back the wave of anger he had felt in Peralta's sugar house, the rage that had carried him across the river, that had burned in him when he'd come, barefoot and in rags, to his sister's yard.
He closed his eyes and turned away, unable, for the moment, to keep his eyes either on the key or on the white man kneeling on the other side of the American's body.
He wanted to throw the thing away, drop it in the bayou, after freeing the prisoners in the sugar mill, but he knew the feeling was ridiculous.
They'd only forge more.
Shaw took it from his hand. "I'll tell oflf Boechter to go let 'em out."
January nodded. For a time he couldn't speak; didn't know what he could say. Only that he did not want to go near the mill house, see those black faces packed in the darkness, hear the chink and rattle of chains.
In silence he walked back toward the group by the willows, Shaw pacing quietly at his side.
Before they reached them-Madeleine speaking softly to her coachman as two of the constables lifted the old man between them-Shaw extended a bony hand to touch January's sleeve. He stopped, and they looked back at the bodies on the grass.
"Nice shooting, in this light from over in the trees." Shaw considered January for a moment, the ragged osna-burg shirt hanging open over his chest and his trousers, boots, flesh smudged thick with the damp earth of the fields and the wet grass and leaves from beneath the trees around the house. "My men tell me they found another of these fellers with his neck broke six or ten rods yonder from the house. You happen to see how either of them events happened? As a free man of color, of course your testimony'll be wanted before the coroner's court."
"Oh, eh bien!" said Dominique hotly. "And what if my brother had killed them? Those American salauds try to murder us, and because Benjamin has black skin he would not be allowed to-"
"He's allowed to testify," Shaw cut her off, and fixed her with his mild gray eye. The constables moved away, bearing Albert toward the overseer's empty cottage. "Courts do frown on it, Miss Janvier, should a colored man kill a white."
"Bah! And I suppose defending oneself and one's loved ones becomes more acceptable the lighter a man's skin is?"
The deep-set gaze moved back to January again. "Well," said Shaw gently, "I guess in some parts it do."
"I shot him," said Augustus, Hannibal, and Madeleine, almost in chorus. Then they looked at each other in some embarrassment, while Shaw contemplated their almost completely unmuddied boots and seemed to consider at length the fact that Hannibal at this point was not even capable of sitting up.
"I shot Trepagier," said Augustus again. "Or maybe it was one of his own men. I forget." His white shirt hung open at the throat and soot and blood striped his gaudy waistcoat, the yellow firelight in his eyes gave him the feral look of something out of a play by Euripides.
"One of his own men, looks like," remarked Shaw, and scratched his jaw. "Seein' as how he were shot from behind. Ain't likely we'd catch 'em all. And that feller in the field, looks like he just fell and broke his neck. You better get them boots of your'n clean, Maestro," he added to January. "Seems to me like..."
A small man in the blue uniform of the city guards appeared from the shadows of the trees. "Carriage comin', sir. We cotched two, the boys is out lookin' still."
From the rough shell drive came the crunching rattle of wheels, and a very stylish landau appeared from the darkness, the flames of the burning house burnishing the sleek sides of its team to coppery red. The coachman drew rein at the sight of the fire. The door flew open and an enormously fat, fair, bespectacled man scrambled down, his round moon face stricken with horror at the sight.
"Henri!" Dominique sprang to her feet from Hannibal's side, flew toward him with arms outstretched. Her hair lay around her shoulders like Egyptian darkness, blood and powder smoke matted the fragile muslin of her dress, and her face was scratched and bruised.
The fat man cried, "Minou!" in a desperate voice, and they fell into one another's arms, her slender hands not quite meeting around his broad back while his chubby, white, unworked sausage fingers clutched in handfuls at the sable hair. "Oh, Henri," she whispered, and fainted in his arms.
Madeleine, pistol still in hand, put her fists on her hips and glanced up at January. "Well, I've seen that better done."
Augustus nudged her with his elbow. "Don't spoil it for him."
Lt. Shaw came back to them, watching over his shoulder as Henri tenderly bore his beloved in a welter of muddy and grass-stained white petticoats to the carriage. "It does appear," he said, "that you're right, Madame Trepagier, about that bein' your brother-in-law. I will say Monsieur Tremouille, not to speak of Monsieur Crozat, is gonna be glad to have the whole thing solved so convenient. But I'm purely sorry about your house."
"It doesn't matter," said Madeleine quietly. "I was never happy there, and I would have sold it within a few weeks in any case."
TWENTY-FOUR
At the end of March, Madeleine Trepagier sold the plantation of Les Saules to an American developer for $103,000 and four parcels of the subdivided land, to be disposed of later at her discretion. The first house of the new subdivision-a very large and very Grecian mansion for a Philadelphia banker and his family-began construction before Ascension Day. The main street, paralleling the route of the Gentilly and Pontchartrain Streetcar Lines, was called Madeleine Street. Jean Bouille also included in the development plans side streets called Alexandrine and Philippe, after the two children who had died. There was no Arnaud Street.
The Trepagier family-both its Pontchartrain and New Orleans branches-was outraged. Livia, getting
her information through the Rampart Street or octoroon side of the clan, said it was because they were getting none of the resulting money, an opinion with which January could find no fault, though Charles-Louis Trepagier fulminated to Aunt Alicia Picard in terms of letting family land be lived upon by sales americaines. Madeleine sold a number of the field hands to neighbors and members of the family, but kept about twelve, whose services she hired out to the lumber mills upriver at a handsome profit. Louis, Claire, Albert, and Ursula she retained for her own household, purchasing a tall town house of shrimp-colored stucco on Rue Conti and investing the remainder in warehouse property at the foot of Rue La-Fayette. One of the first things she did, while still living with her Aunt Picard, was to contact Maspero's Exchange and learn the name of the Cane River cotton planter who had purchased Judith and buy her back. It was, of course, never mentioned by anyone that she had been in Dominique Janvier's house, nor Dominique in hers. When the two women passed on the street, they did not speak.
"Funny," said Shaw, leaning against the brick pillar of the market arcade, next to the table where he'd located January with his coffee and beignet. "She wins her own freedom from that family of her'n, and the kindest, the most humane thing she can think to do is go to all that trouble to find that gal Judith and buy her back as a slave." He shook his head.