A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [84]
“I’d rather peddle gumbo in the market than live with Alicia Picard,” his mother had said. He began to understand why Madeleine Trepagier would do almost anything rather than be forced by the loss of Les Saules to live in this woman’s house.
When Aunt Picard came close to the musicians’ bower, January could hear that her conversation centered exclusively on her illnesses and the deaths of various members of her family insofar as they had grieved or inconvenienced her.
Indeed, most of the Creole matrons wore the sober hues suggestive of recent mourning. Madame Trepagier had not been the only one to suffer losses in last summer’s scourge. There could not have been a family in town untouched.
“The chances of the cholera returning?” The voice of Dr. Soublet, one of the better-known physicians of the town, carried through a lull in the music. “My dear Madame Picard, due to the expulsion of the febrile gasses by the burning of gunpowder to combat the yellow fever, all the conditions conducive to the Asiatic cholera have been swept from our city, and in fact, there were far fewer cases than have been popularly supposed.”
Xavier Peralta, as regal in dark evening dress as he had been in the satins of the ancien régime, frowned. “According to the newspapers, over six thousand died.”
“My dear Monsieur Peralta,” exclaimed the physician, “please, please do not consider a word of what those ignoramuses say in the paper! They persist in the delusion that a disease is a single entity, a sort of evil spirit that seizes on a man and that can be chased away with a single magic spell. Disease is dis-ease—a combination of conditions that must be separately treated: by bleeding, to lower the constitution of the patient, while certain ill humours are driven out with heroic quantities of calomel. What are popularly ascribed as cases of Asiatic cholera may very well have had another source entirely. For instance, the symptoms of what are lumped together as cholera morbus are exactly those of arsenical poisoning.”
“I say,” laughed one of the Delaporte boys, “does that mean that six thousand wives poisoned their husbands in New Orleans last summer?”
“Slaves poisoned their masters, more like,” declared a tall, extremely beautiful Creole lady in dark red. She turned burning black eyes upon Peralta’s companion, a tallish trim gentleman in a coat of slightly old-fashioned cut and a stock buckled high about his neck. “You cannot tell me you haven’t seen such, Monsieur Tremouille.”
The commander of the New Orleans City Guard looked uncomfortable. “On rare occasions, of course, Madame Lalaurie,” he said. “But as Dr. Soublet says, a variety of causes can engender the same effect. Frequently if a servant considers himself ill-used—”
“Dieu, servants always consider themselves ill-used,” laughed Madame Lalaurie. “If they are but chided for stealing food, they whine and beg and carry on as if it were their right to rob the very people who feed and clothe them and keep a roof above their heads. Without proper discipline, not only would they be wretchedly unhappy, but society itself would crumble, as we saw in France and more recently in Haiti.”
“Servants need discipline,” agreed a tall man, gorgeously attired as the Jack of Diamonds. “Not only need it, but crave it without knowing it. Even as wives do, on occasion.”
“That is a matter which can easily be carried to extreme, Monsieur Trepagier.” An enormous, ovine-countenanced woman, whom January would have deduced as Henri Viellard’s mother even without Uncle Bichet’s sotto voce identification, turned to face him, a maneuver reminiscent of the Château of Versailles executing a 180-degree rotation with all its gardens in tow. “And an opinion I would show a certain reticence in expressing, were I in quest of a bride.”
“Trepagier?” January glanced over at the cellist. “Not the long-lost brother?”
“Lord, no.” Uncle Bichet shook his head over his music. “Brother Claud took off right after the wedding with one of Dubonnet Père’s housemaids