A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [87]
Measles or chicken pox? thought January, as he turned his steps along Rue Chartres toward Canal Street and the American faubourg of St. Mary beyond. Or something someone heard or saw, that he or she was not supposed to see?
He remembered again the blood under Angelique’s nails.
Tomorrow was Ash Wednesday. Lent or no Lent, there were always small sociabilities on Ash Wednesday from which one could not absent oneself without comment. If he made arrangements this afternoon with Desdunes at the livery, he could leave tonight, after the Mardi Gras ball at the Théâtre d’Orléans was over, riding by moonlight for Bayou Chien Mort.
With luck Xavier Peralta would not leave New Orleans until Thursday.
By then, he thought, he would see what he would see.
The Swamp lay at the upper end of Girod Street, just lakeside of the genteel American houses and wide streets of the faubourg of St. Mary. It was, quite literally, a swamp, for much of the land beyond Canal Street was undrained, and in fact many of the drains from the more respectable purlieus of American business farther down the road, though aimed at the turning basin of the canal not far away, petered out here. The unpaved streets lacked even the brick or packed-earth banquettes of the old city, and the buildings that fronted them—grog shops, gambling dens, brothels, and establishments that seemed to encompass all three—were crude, unpainted, and squalid beyond description. Most seemed to have been knocked together from lumber discarded by the sawmills or salvaged from dismantled flatboats. It was here, among these repellent shacks and transient men, that the yellow fever struck hardest, here that the cholera had claimed dozens a day. The air reeked of woodsmoke and sewage.
Mindful of Hannibal’s philosophy of proper timing, January had paused at the market long enough to consume some gingerbread and coffee, hoping to be ahead of most of the Swamp’s usual excitement. He hadn’t reckoned on the stamina of Americans, however, and the effects, even here in the American sector, of the celebratory spirit of Mardi Gras. Most of the grog shops were open, barkeeps dispensing Injun whisky from barrels to long-haired flatboat men across planks laid on barrels, white men grouped around makeshift tables playing cards, and small groups of black men visible in alleyways, on their knees in the mud and weeds, shooting dice. In several cottages the long jalousies already stood open, revealing seedy rooms barely wider than the beds they contained, the women sitting on the doorsills with their petticoats up to their knees, smoking cigars or eating oranges, calling out to the men as they passed.
“Hey, Sambo,” yelled a mulatto woman, “you that big all over?” She gave him a broken-toothed smile and hiked her skirt up farther.
January grinned and raised his cap to her—he was wearing his roughest clothes and the sloppy cloth cap of a laborer—and shook his head. He started to move on but a bearded flatboat man was suddenly in front of him, piggy eyes glittering with a half-drunken hangover and tobacco crusted in his beard.
“You leave them hoors alone, boy.” He stepped close, crowding him; January stepped back. As usual, the Kentuckian wasn’t by himself. They always seemed to travel in twos and threes, and his friends emerged from the nearest barroom door, like sullen dogs looking for something to do.
January was startled into replying, “I was,” which was a mistake, he realized a moment later. It hadn’t been accompanied by a grin and bow.
The man smelled like a privy; the hair of his chest, hanging through