A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [146]
January hesitated, then said, “It looks that way.” He bent to empty the man’s pockets. There was a black iron key there on a ring—simple, a pattern he recognized of old. Looking at it in his bandaged palm brought back the wave of anger he had felt in Peralta’s sugar house, the rage that had carried him across the river, that had burned in him when he’d come, barefoot and in rags, to his sister’s yard.
He closed his eyes and turned away, unable, for the moment, to keep his eyes either on the key or on the white man kneeling on the other side of the American’s body.
He wanted to throw the thing away, drop it in the bayou, after freeing the prisoners in the sugar mill, but he knew the feeling was ridiculous.
They’d only forge more.
Shaw took it from his hand. “I’ll tell off Boechter to go let ’em out.”
January nodded. For a time he couldn’t speak; didn’t know what he could say. Only that he did not want to go near the mill house, see those black faces packed in the darkness, hear the chink and rattle of chains.
In silence he walked back toward the group by the willows, Shaw pacing quietly at his side.
Before they reached them—Madeleine speaking softly to her coachman as two of the constables lifted the old man between them—Shaw extended a bony hand to touch January’s sleeve. He stopped, and they looked back at the bodies on the grass.
“Nice shooting, in this light from over in the trees.” Shaw considered January for a moment, the ragged osnaburg shirt hanging open over his chest and his trousers, boots, flesh smudged thick with the damp earth of the fields and the wet grass and leaves from beneath the trees around the house. “My men tell me they found another of these fellers with his neck broke six or ten rods yonder from the house. You happen to see how either of them events happened? As a free man of color, of course your testimony’ll be wanted before the coroner’s court.”
“Oh, eh bien!” said Dominique hotly. “And what if my brother had killed them? Those American salauds try to murder us, and because Benjamin has black skin he would not be allowed to—”
“He’s allowed to testify,” Shaw cut her off, and fixed her with his mild gray eye. The constables moved away, bearing Albert toward the overseer’s empty cottage. “Courts do frown on it, Miss Janvier, should a colored man kill a white.”
“Bah! And I suppose defending oneself and one’s loved ones becomes more acceptable the lighter a man’s skin is?”
The deep-set gaze moved back to January again. “Well,” said Shaw gently, “I guess in some parts it do.”
“I shot him,” said Augustus, Hannibal, and Madeleine, almost in chorus. Then they looked at each other in some embarrassment, while Shaw contemplated their almost completely unmuddied boots and seemed to consider at length the fact that Hannibal at this point was not even capable of sitting up.
“I shot Trepagier,” said Augustus again. “Or maybe it was one of his own men. I forget.” His white shirt hung open at the throat and soot and blood striped his gaudy waistcoat, the yellow firelight in his eyes gave him the feral look of something out of a play by Euripides.
“One of his own men, looks like,” remarked Shaw, and scratched his jaw. “Seein’ as how he were shot from behind. Ain’t likely we’d catch ’em all. And that feller in the field, looks like he just fell and broke his neck. You better get them boots of your’n clean, Maestro,” he added to January. “Seems to me like …”
A small man in the blue uniform of the city guards appeared from the shadows of the trees. “Carriage comin’, sir. We cotched two, the boys is out lookin’ still.”
From the rough shell drive came the crunching rattle of wheels, and a very stylish landau appeared from the darkness, the flames of the burning house burnishing the sleek sides of its team to coppery red. The coachman drew rein at the sight of the fire. The door flew open and an enormously fat, fair, bespectacled man scrambled down, his round moon face stricken with horror at the sight.
“Henri!” Dominique sprang to her feet from Hannibal’s side, flew toward him with arms outstretched.