A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [55]
“Come to watch the show?” January asked, as he, Mayerling, and Bouille got into the chaise. He stowed his medical bag under his feet—the usual collection of cupping glasses, calomel, opium, and red pepper. At least, he thought, this would be a straightforward matter of wounds, bleeding, possibly broken bones. The four revelers piled into the barouche and dragged Hannibal in after them, all plying him in turn with their flasks, to be rewarded with an impassioned recitation of Byron’s “Destruction of Sennacherib,” as the vehicles pulled forward.
“They have come to witness justice being done against a perjured and impotent Kaintuck swine,” declared Bouille, with comparative mildness and restraint, for him. “For me, I am glad of their presence. I would not put it past that infamous yellow hound to appear with a gang of like-minded bravos and ambush us, for he knows well he cannot prevail honestly in a man’s combat.”
Mayerling only raised his colorless brows.
Crowded close against him—the single seat of the two-wheeled chaise barely accommodated three people at the best of times, and only the Prussian’s slightness made it possible for a man of January’s size to fit—January said softly, “Young Peralta’s taking it hard, isn’t he? Mademoiselle Crozat’s death.”
The strange eyes cut to him, then away.
“It takes a lot to make a Creole absent himself from backing a friend’s honor.”
“The boy is a fool to mourn,” said Mayerling, his voice cold. “The woman was evil, a poisonous succubus with a cashbox for a heart. Whoever he marries will have cause to thank the person who wielded that scarf.”
January glanced in surprise at the ivory profile. “I didn’t know you knew her.” He remembered the way the Roman had lurked and lingered in the ballroom, the way masculine conversation stopped when she appeared, like a glittering idol of diamonds, in the ballroom doorway, the way all men had clustered around her.
Except, now that he thought back on it, Mayerling.
“Everyone in this city knows everyone,” replied the sword master. “Trepagier was one of my students. Did you not know?” He returned his attention to the road.
The duel itself went as such things customarily did. The two carriages followed the Esplanade to the leaden, cypress-hung waters of Bayou St. John, and as dawn slowly bleached, the mists reached a patch of open ground on the Allard plantation, near the bayou’s banks, overshadowed with oaks the girth of a horse’s body.
Granger, too, had decided against the possibility of being carried dead back to his family in the white baggy costume of Pierrot, and had worn evening dress instead. His second, however, still sported the gleaming pasteboard armor of the Roman legions, while the purple pirate with his unfortunate copper-colored beard held the heads of their phaeton’s team. Both Granger and Bouille, January noticed, wore dark coats whose buttons were noticeably small and inconspicuous.
Mayerling produced the pistols, a pair of his own Mantons that Jenkins and the blue-and-yellow Ivanhoe examined minutely. While the fencing master loaded the pistols, the seconds made a last effort—albeit a fairly perfunctory one—to talk their principals out of battle: January heard Granger state loudly, “Were I not given the opportunity to sponge away this impudent crapaud’s bilious spewings in blood I would be forced to reenact the final scenes of Macbeth upon his verminous person.” A remark clearly intended for Bouille