A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [131]
Her smile under the shadow of the umbrella was bright and wry. Then she turned away, crossing a plank to the street and holding her blue skirts high out of the mud as she splashed across, to return to her home, her husband, and her daughters and sons.
Augustus Mayerling occupied two rooms on the top floor, high above a courtyard full of banana plants and plane trees and a shop that dealt in coffees and teas. The rain had eased again to thin flutters, glistening in daffodil patches beneath the streetlights. As he climbed the wooden steps from gallery to gallery, January was surrounded by the rising smells of foliage and cooking from the courtyard beneath him. The high walls of the house muffled the noises of the street, the distant hoot of the steamboat whistles, and the cries of a few final oyster vendors giving up for the day.
While he and Olympe had been walking down Rue Burgundy they’d heard the cannon by the Cabildo, closing down curfew for the night. The rain had damped the dancing in Congo Square some hours before. If he were stopped by the guards he’d have to present his papers, to prove himself free. The thought made him uneasy. The city seemed very silent without the jostling voices of maskers in the streets, the thump and wail of brass bands in the taverns, the riot of parades.
And indeed, thought January wryly, within a week the Creoles would be hiring him to play at discreet little balls again no matter what the church said about surrendering one’s pleasures to God in that time of penitence—provided of course he wasn’t in jail or on a boat. Life went on, and one could not content oneself with backgammon and gossip forever.
Certainly no gambling hall in the city had closed down. But that, as any Creole would say with that expressive Creole shrug, was but the custom of the country.
The topmost gallery was dark, illuminated only by the thin cracks of light from the French doors of Mayerling’s rooms.
January had just reached the top of the stairs when the doors were opened. Mayerling looked right and left, warily, the gold light glinting on close-cropped flaxen hair and a white shirt open at the throat. Clearly not seeing that anyone else stood there in the dark, he beckoned back in the room behind him.
A woman stepped out, clothed in widow’s black.
January felt his heart freeze inside him. The light strength of her movement, the way her shoulders squared when she turned, was—as it had been not many nights ago—unmistakable.
“The back stairs are safer,” said Mayerling’s husky, boyish voice. “The slaves won’t be back for a little time yet.” Reaching back into the apartment, the Prussian brought out a cloak, which he settled around his shoulders. Putting a hand to the woman’s back, he made to guide her into the dark curve of the building where the back stairs ran down to the gallery above the kitchen.
The woman stopped, turned, put back her veils, and raised her face to his. Dim as it was, the honey warmth of the candles within fell on her, showing January clearly the strong oval lines of the chin, the enormous, mahogany red eyes of Madeleine Trepagier.
TWENTY-ONE
Madeleine Trepagier and Augustus Mayerling.
I was a fool not to guess.
Concealed behind the corner of a carriageway halfway down the street, January watched the sword master help his mistress into a hired fiacre. The banquette was otherwise empty; Sunday, Lent, and Creole dinner parties completing what the rain had begun.
It wasn’t only Trepagier’s mistress who’d met Peralta through Mayerling’s school. Mayerling himself had met his pupil’s beautiful wife.
Whoever he marries will have cause to thank the person who wielded that scarf.
I should have no choice but to avenge that lady’s honor.… Why hadn’t he seen it then, less than two minutes after Mayerling had attributed all dueling to boredom, ignorance, and vice?
Perhaps because of the disgusted horror in Madeleine’s eyes when she’d said, Not a man