A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [141]
Augustus bowed, sweeping off his hat in the rain. “A complete false alarm, I hope. I’ll explain when we reach the house, but Monsieur Janvier has a theory—and I think he’s right—about the Crozat woman’s murder. And if he’s right, the attack on you this evening was no accident, and you may need escort back to Les Saules.”
“Ben?” came Dominique’s voice from the carriage. “Ben, what theory? And what does it have to do with Madeleine? She wasn’t even there that night, in spite of what that horrid Charles-Louis Trepagier has been saying all over town.”
“I’ll explain at the house,” called January from the chaise. He tossed the long rifle, which Augustus caught with an expert hand. “Put out the carriage lamps. Can you see well enough without them to walk at the horse’s head?”
“I think so. It’s not far from here.”
“Put out the carriage lamps?” protested Albert. “Now why on earth …”
“Just stay on the box, if you would,” ordered Augustus, flipping open the glass to blow out the candles within. “And keep silence. There may be men waiting along the road. They’ll hear us coming, even over the rain, but at least we can keep from making targets of ourselves. Here.” He walked around to the door again, and passed one of the pistols through it.
“I didn’t know you could shoot a pistol.” January heard Minou’s voice, a sweet thread, as the black ghost that was all he could see of Mayerling drifted back to the coach horse’s head, took the bridle, and began to walk forward, boots crunching on the crushed shells of the roadbed.
“My uncle Gustave taught me. He said …” Her voice lowered, drowned in the clatter of rain on the chaise roof, and January settled into the slow, cautious business of following the carriage in almost total darkness among the trees. Evidently any constraint Madame Trepagier felt about being in a carriage with a courtesan had been dealt with between the two women already.
Knowing the rain would hide any sound of ambush, he strained all his senses, trying to listen to the forest of oak and sycamore on either side, trying to hear something besides the patter of falling water and the soggy crunch of the wheels in oak leaves, shells, and mud. In time the darkness before them seemed to grow lighter, and the rain fell more heavily on his face. They came out from the trees, turned the corner, with the water of Bayou Gentilly on their left, and to their right, a dim white shape showed behind the oak trunks, like a smudge of chalk on black velvet.
Lights burned in the upstairs parlor of Les Saules, a welcoming glow of saffron through the murk. A lamp had been kindled likewise in the stairway that led from the paved loggia beneath the rear gallery. Augustus, visibly relieved, walked around from the horse’s head to the carriage door, while Albert, on the box, raised his voice. “You, Louis! Get your lazy bones out here with an umbrella for Madame Madeleine!”
There was no light in the kitchen.
January was already standing to shout a warning when he saw the second giveaway—the muddy tracks caked thick on the flagstones of the lower gallery, the stairs leading up. He shouted, “No! They’re in the house!” and Mayerling froze, his hand on the carriage door, startled face a blur in the shadows as he turned toward the chaise where January was already gathering the reins. “Drive for it, Albert, they’re—”
From the upper gallery of the house a rifle cracked. Mayerling flung himself down as the ball hit the side of the coach with a leathery thump; a second shot boomed hollowly, and the carriage horse reared, screaming, then fell in the traces. January grabbed the shotgun and sprang out on the far side of the chaise, dodged and sprinted toward the house, and reached it in time to catch the first of the rivermen as he bounded like a tiger down the stair with a knife in his hand.
January fired into his chest with the shotgun from a distance of four feet or so. The man went slamming back against the steps, blood spouting from his chest, mouth, and nose; someone on the