A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [100]
“I trust that I make myself clear?”
The pasha opened his mouth to speak. The Jack of Diamonds reached out, put a hand on his pink silk arm. To Mayerling, he said, “It was, of course, a woman of the lower classes of whom we spoke, a chaca shopkeeper who betrayed her husband, nothing more.”
“Even so,” said Mayerling softly. “Such talk disturbs me. Perhaps you should study to ape gentlemen a little more closely—whoever you are.”
None of them replied. Mayerling waited for a moment, giving them time to declare themselves gentlemen and offended, then turned his back and vanished into the crowd.
January leaned over, and touched Uncle Bichet on the shoulder. “Who was that?” he asked, the old man looked at him in some surprise.
“Just a couple of the Trepagier boys.”
“No—with them.”
The cellist turned his head to look, but the pasha was even then vanishing through the curtained doorway that led to the Salle d’Orléans, deep in conversation with the purple pirate.
The Trepagier brothers—there were at least four of them, two of whom were married and none of whom were boys at all—were bullying and insulting a much younger man who had dared flirt with a flustered and feathered damsel garbed as a gypsy, evidently secure in the knowledge that he would not dare challenge them, and they were correct.
Uncle Bichet shook his head, and glanced at the program card. “Those lazy folks been standing long enough,” he said, and January turned, unwillingly, back to his music.
Sally, he thought. Whoever the green pasha was, he had to have spoken with the runaway servant girl Sally. Or he recognized Madame Trepagier at the ball Thursday night, either by her movement, stance, and voice—as he himself had done—or because she’d worn that silly Indian costume somewhere before.
And if that were the case, thought January with sudden bitterness, for a man attending a quadroon ball he had a lot of nerve criticizing a woman he recognized there.
The dancing lasted until nearly dawn. Technically Lent began at midnight, but there was no diminution of champagne, tafia, gumbo or pâté, though having made his confession that afternoon January abstained all evening even when the opportunity presented itself. Eventually Xavier Peralta made his appearance, clothed in the red robe and scepter of a king with his cousin the chief of police still at his side. The waltzes and quadrilles grew wilder as the more respectable ladies took their departure, the fights and jostling more frequent. Everyone seemed determined to extract the final drops of pleasure from the Carnival season, to dance the soles off their shoes, to dally on the balconies above the torchlit river of noise surging along Rue Orléans.
Also, as the night wore on, more and more of the wealthier men disappeared for longer and longer periods of time. The Creole belles, though perhaps not of the highest society, stood abandoned along the wall, whispering among themselves and pretending not to care. Most of them, January suspected, would stop at home only long enough to wash off their rouge before attending early services in the cathedral. The American women whose husbands were still in attendance whispered about the half dozen or so whose men had “stepped out for a bit of air.” Most of them appeared and disappeared a number of times, but the Roman soldier stayed gone. The deserted Cleopatra involved herself in an animated discussion with several other ladies but kept an eye on the door, and when the errant Roman at last returned, there was promise of bitter acrimony in her greeting.
They bring it on themselves, January thought, but he knew it wasn’t that easy. Like everything else about New Orleans, it was a bittersweet tangle, and you could not run from it without leaving pieces of your torn-out heart behind.
No wonder everyone tried to dance and be gay, he thought, as he walked toward the livery stable in the tepid mists of predawn. Costumed maskers still reeled along the banquettes of Rue Orléans, and from every tavern music could be heard, brassy