Livia had just risen to kindle the lamp when the knock came. A hooded woman on the doorstep said, "I heard the piano and knew you had to be home." The gold light flared and broadened. It was Madeleine Trepagier, discreetly veiled and dressed in a gown of dull-rose dimity beneath her cloak, with Augustus-slim and dapper and inconspicuously dressed, at least inconspicuously for Augustus-at her side.
For the first time since he had left for Paris sixteen years ago, January saw her face in repose, without fear or wariness in the clear brown eyes.
"I came to thank you," she said, "for all the help that you gave me, and for all that you did."
January shook his head. "I'd like to say it was my pleasure to aid you," he said, "but it wasn't. And I was doing it to save my own neck."
Madeleine smiled. "Maybe," she said. "But it was my doing that you were put in that position in the first place. And I have your honor to thank that my name never came into it with the police. Your honor, and your belief in me. Thank you."
She hesitated, looking down at her hands, still standing on the banquette outside the door. Then she
raised her eyes to his again. "And I wanted to let you know," she said, "that Augustus and I are going to be married. By Protestant ceremony," she added, holding his eyes as his mouth fell open in protest, "up the river in Natchez. But the announcement will appear in the newspapers this week."
Although he was almost completely certain that no such ceremony would actually take place-Sapphic love being one thing but deliberate profanation of a sacrament quite another-January was still shocked speechless. He looked from her to Augustus, but before he could gather his thoughts Hannibal said, from the parlor behind him, "Good. I'm glad. And since my colleague is too overcome with delight for you both to speak, I hereby volunteer the pair of us to play at your homecoming reception."
"But..." Upon later reflection January wasn't sure what it was about the idea that took him aback- perhaps only the way he had been raised. But Dominique sprang to her feet and rustled in a silvery froufrou of petticoats to his side, to grasp both Madeleine's hands and-after a quick glance up and down the street to make sure they were unobserved-bend from the doorway to kiss her cheeks.
"Darling," she said, and straightened up. "Now Ben," she added firmly, "don't get all Creole and high horse. Madame Trepagier married once to please her family, and look what came of it. Even if he's a fencing teacher and hasn't a sou, I think she's entitled to be with the one she loves."
January looked at them in the gold square of the lamplight, the beaky-nosed, scar-faced sword master and the brown-eyed girl whose teacher he had been. Augustus raised one straight, pale brow.
"If we do not marry, people will begin to talk."
"Ben's just being stuffy," snapped Livia from behind him. "Of course a widow can marry whom she pleases. Really, Ben, I'm surprised at you."
January sighed and bowed his head, fighting a rueful grin. "Yes," he said. "Yes, Madame-you are entitled to be with whom you love. And I will be most honored to play at your reception." He hesitated, looking down into her face. More softly, he said, "It might be, you know, that you'd be happier in Paris than here."
"It might," said Madame Trepagier, more softly still. "And one day it may come to that. But with all its faults -with my family and the Americans coming in and... and all else-New Orleans is my home."
She lowered the veil to cover her face once more. Their dark forms moved off down the banquette. In the Place des Armes a cannon fired, signaling the curfew for all slaves to be indoors-all men of color, if they had not good proof of their business abroad. The hoot of a steamboat whistle answered it, bound upstream to the American towns that swarmed with the riffraff of Kaintucks and rivermen, or downstream to the coastwise trade with the slave states to the east. In either direction, and not very far off, lay the lands where it mattered even less than here that a man was legally free, if he showed the smallest trace of African descent; where a man could lose all his rights and his liberty-and that of his children-in the time it took a white man to tear up a piece of paper.
January turned back to the lighted parlor. Livia had gone into the rear of the house. Dominique had resumed her seat and picked up her sewing again, an intricately smocked and embroidered christening gown for the child that now made a soft round of her belly under her loose-fitting short gown. Her face was beautiful in the glow of the lamps; she was one of those women whose beauty increased with pregnancy.
Having in the past several weeks made better acquaintance with his Corbier nieces and nephews, January found himself looking forward to having another.
And that, he thought, was home.
Not Africa, nor Paris, but here, this place where he'd grown up. Sitting at the piano again he let his hands wander, sketching a tune he'd heard in the fields of Bayou Chien Mort, an echo of older tunes, and Hannibal's violin trailed and threaded around it like a skein of gold.
Dominique looked up, smiled, and said, "That's pretty, Ben. What is it?"
He only shook his head. In his mother's household, he thought, it wouldn't be considered at all respectable.
Then from the other room he heard Livia's deep smoky voice half-hum, half-whisper half-remembered words she had put behind her and tried to eradicate from the lives of her daughters and her son.
"An-a-quf, an'o'bia, Bia 'tail-la, Qut-re-qut, Nal-le oua, Au-Monde, Au-tap-o-tt, Aupe-to-ti, Au-que'-re'-que', Bo.
"Misery led this black to the woods, Tell my master I died in the woods."
But if he spoke to her, he thought, she would deny it, of course.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All my thanks and humble gratitude go to Octavia Butler for her time and consideration in reading the original of this manuscript and for her invaluable comments; to George Alec Effinger for his support and advice about local New Orleans customs; and to Leslie Johnston and the rest of the research staff at the Historic New Orleans Collection for all their help.
A native of southern California, Barbara Hambly attended the University of California and spent a year at the University of Bordeaux, France, obtaining a master's degree in medieval history in 1975- She has worked as both a teacher and as a technical editor, and holds a black belt in Shotokan karate. A Free Man of Color is the first of a series of novels about Benjamin January and New Orleans in the 1830s. She has just completed the second Benjamin January novel, Fever Season, and is currently researching the third, Graveyard Dust.
Ms. Hambly lives half-time in New Orleans and half-time in Los Angeles with two Pekinese, a cat, and another writer.