A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [130]
“Better than bein’ a corpse for the same reason.” She shifted the cat off her lap and fetched an oiled-silk umbrella from behind the door. “I’ll find somebody who can get a letter to this Shaw, set up a meetin’.” She went to the French doors, looked out at the street, where the oil lamps suspended high on the walls cast flashing coins of light in the dark water of the gutters. “Darn few on the streets now, so you should be safe enough.”
January put on the jacket she’d brought him, kissed Minou, and stepped down from the French doors, helping his sister—who needed it no more than a gazelle—down to the brick banquette, and from there across the plank to the street. Only a few spits of rain flecked them now, but the darkening sky was heavily pregnant with more.
“I’ll still want to find this Sally girl and speak to Clemence Drouet if I can.”
“You really think that poor spaniel of a girl was clever enough to know if she killed Angelique in public that way, people’d go lookin’ in all directions but at her?” Olympe shook her head. “Unless she was clever all these years—deep clever—I’d say if she killed her friend in anger over her walkin’ off with Jenkins, she’d just have sat down beside the body and howled.”
“Maybe,” agreed January, knowing Olympe was probably right.
“I’ve told you what I know about it,” his sister went on, “and so I’ll ask you this, Ben: Be careful what you do with that knowledge. I think Clemence went off cryin’ into the night, same as that boy Galen did. But Clemence is a colored gal, where Galen’s white. And she did pay for that gris-gris. If the law’s out lookin’ for someone to hang, like you say, all you’ll have to do is speak her name and she’ll be a dead woman, for no more crime than hating a woman she wasn’t strong enough to leave.”
January was silent, knowing again that Olympe spoke true and wondering wearily how he had happened to have the responsibility not only for Madeleine Trepagier’s freedom yoked to his shoulders, but for the life of a girl he’d barely met. For some reason he remembered that Apollo was not only the god of music and of healing but of justice as well.
Monsieur Gomez had taught him, Make your diagnosis first, then decide on treatment when you know the facts.
Augustus first, he thought. Then we’ll see what else we need to know.
“I didn’t know you knew Minou,” he remarked, as they drew near the corner of the Rue Douane.
“Not well. I’ve kept track of her, of course, but Thursday was the first time I ever went through her door.” The dark eyebrows pulled down, troubled by some unaccustomed thoughts. “I didn’t think I’d like her, to tell the truth, though she was sweet as a little girl. I was surprised.”
“Why Thursday?”
“I went looking for you when I learned who paid for that gris-gris, and told off them boys to give you a poundin’.” She frowned again. Her front teeth were just prominent enough to give her face a sharpness, a feral quality, like her watchful dark eyes. He wondered if she knew Lucius Lacrîme. “And then, I was worried about you. The hairball I keep told me you were in trouble, or hurt.” She glanced down at his bandaged hand.
January cast back in his mind and told himself that it was coincidence that his capture by Peralta, the interview in the sugar mill, and the long torture of escape had taken place on Thursday.
“I was there today because she asked me to come back, asked my help,” Olympe went on. “She’s with child, you know.”
Something that wasn’t quite anger—but was close to it—wrenched him hard. But he only said, “I didn’t think Henri had enough red blood in him to make a child.”
Olympia Snakebones glanced sidelong up at him, under the umbrella’s shadow. “He’s good to her,” she said. “And he’ll be good to the child. They mostly are, as long as those children do what they’re told to do, be what they’re told to be, and don’t go askin’ too many questions about why things are the way they are.”
January was silent a moment, stopping at the corner of Rue Bienville, a few blocks above the tall house where Augustus