A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [72]
“I didn’t speak to anyone. Maybe I should have.”
“Don’t see why. You lookin’ for Miss Olympe for some reason?”
January hesitated, conscious of the old wariness about showing things to white men, any white men. Then he nodded and felt in his coat pocket—not the pocket in which he kept his rosary. The gris-gris was still there, wrapped in his handkerchief. He brought it out carefully and unwrapped it behind his hand, lest the waiters see.
“Madame Dreuze asked me at Angelique’s funeral Saturday to prove Madame Trepagier had her servant Judith plant this in Angelique’s mattress. A theory,” he added dryly, “with which I’m sure you’re already familiar.”
Shaw rolled his eyes.
“Not that it matters to you anymore,” added January, looking down as he made a business folding the handkerchief back around the little scrap of parchment and bones, so that the anger wouldn’t show in his eyes. With some effort he kept his voice level. “I don’t believe Madame Trepagier had a thing to do with either the charm or Angelique’s death, but considering the police have decided to drop the investigation, I thought I’d at least see who did want Angelique dead. Do you know if Madame Trepagier managed to keep Madame Dreuze from selling off the two slaves, by the way? Judith and Kessie? They were both Madame Trepagier’s to begin with.”
It was something he knew he’d have to find out, and the thought of walking down to the brokers along Baronne Street turned him suddenly cold.
He hoped the sick dread of it didn’t show in his face, under Shaw’s cool scrutiny, but he was afraid it did.
“Morally they were,” said the policeman slowly. “But a woman’s property is her husband’s to dispose of, pretty much. Neither Arnaud Trepagier nor Angelique Crozat made a will, and he did deed both the cook and the maid to his light o’ love. Yes, Madame Trepagier swore out a writ to sue and get ’em back, but both of ’em was sold at the French Exchange yesterday mornin’. Madame Dreuze took maybe half what they was worth, to get ’em turned around quick.”
January cursed, in Arabic, very quietly. For a time he watched as a gang of blacks passed by under guard toward the levee, chained neck to neck, men and women alike.
Matthew Priest, for impudence … He couldn’t get the guard’s voice out of his head, or the slap of the leather on skin.
Any man in the city could have his slave whipped in the Calabozo’s courtyard by the town hangman for twenty-five cents a stroke.
On the far side of the Place des Armes, he could see the tall wooden platform of the town pillory. A man—colored, but still lighter than him—sat in it, wrists and ankles clamped between the dirty boards, while a gang of river rats spat tobacco and threw horse turds at him, their voices a dim demonic whooping through the noise of the wharves and the hoots of the steamboats. Sixteen years ago, the pillory was still a punishment that could be meted out to whites as well.
A hundred and fifty dollars would get him to Paris. With his current small savings he could probably do it in three months.
That thought helped him. He drew a deep breath and explained, “Not long before I left for Paris I learned that my sister—Olympe, Minou was only four—had entered the house of a woman called Marie Laveau, a voodooienne, and was learning her trade.” He slipped the gris-gris back into his pocket and looked at Shaw again.
“I thought I might still be able to find her at the slave dances, and that she might be able to tell me something about who actually made the charm. A dried bat’s a death charm. Someone who wanted to scare her would have put brick dust, or a cross made of salt, on the back step, where she’d be sure to see it. Hiding a conjag like that where she’d sleep next to it every