Dead water - Barbara Hambly [9]
And among the noise and confusion, quiet lines of men and women would be loaded, the chains that linked them together clinking softly in the juddering glare. Slaves bound north for the markets in the new cotton lands of Missouri and Mississippi.
Even through the wooden shutters that closed most of the French doors of the big house, it seemed to January that he could hear the far-off sounds of the levee, the shouting of the gang-bosses, the clank of steamboat bells.
He had been to Europe, to London and Paris, but he had not been farther than St. John's Parish, thirty miles up-river from the city. Even that had scared him.
In New Orleans, he was known. If anything happened to destroy the “freedom papers” that he was required by law to show anyone who asked, there were prominent shopkeepers, merchants, even a lawyer or two who could point to him and say, That is Benjamin January, the piano teacher. He's a free man, and not a slave.
Once out of town, on the river, that would not be the case.
“And you want me to find the trunks with the money in them, and bring them back?” he asked at last. “Without letting anyone know what happened?”
“Yes,” said Granville. “I'll have a notarized letter of introduction to you by midnight, authorizing you to act as my agent in this matter and requesting the captain of the Silver Moon—and whatever law enforcement officials you need—to assist you. But I promise you, if you play that trump-card without having the money right under your hand, all you'll do is lose everything, destroy the bank, and ruin every depositor we have.”
“Ourselves included.” The incomparable smell of coffee filled the quiet gloom as Rose returned with a tray. The coffee would have been warming in the pantry, awaiting his return from Congo Square—it seemed like another lifetime. Rose made excellent coffee, though she was an otherwise execrable cook. It crossed January's mind that without the assistance of the hired freedwoman Abigail and Abigail's daughter, Rose would be quickly swallowed up by the drudgery of cleaning, cooking, and endless sewing that occupied the time of most women who kept house.
Until, of course, the house itself was foreclosed.
His hand shook a little as he took the coffee cup she offered. One bite told him that the sweet biscuits that accompanied it had been made by Abigail, not Rose.
“How much money are we talking about?” Rose seated herself again. “And in what form? How many trunks are we looking for?”
“Three or four at least,” said Granville, turning a little to speak to her. “Maybe as many as ten.” Having set up four of his former free colored mistresses in business, reflected January, at least Granville didn't suffer from the common white man's delusion that women of color—or women in general—were slightly incompetent. “He stole nearly four million dollars, of which about a hundred thousand was in gold.”
Rose's eyebrows shot up. “That's a lot of gold.”
“About six hundred pounds of it,” Granville replied. “The rest is in notes and drafts on other banks—including the Bank of Pennsylvania, which as you know received a great deal of the Federal gold—and the Bank of England. There are also sight-drafts on a number of the plantations hereabouts against next winter's crop. Any single trunk containing the gold would be too heavy to lift, so it has to be spread out among several, padded up with the paper.”
“You say Weems came to you with the highest recommendations,” said January. “From whom? What do you know about the man? Where is he from?”
“Philadelphia,” said Granville like a New Yorker: Philadelphier, a trick of speech that made January wonder whether there was a still-more-brotherly town of Philadelphiest somewhere