"Where would I find this John Bayou?"
"I wouldn't advise it," said Olympe. "He mean, Doctor John." Her coffee-dark eyes narrowed, like the cat's. "And what was Angelique Crozat to you?"
"A woman they're saying I killed."
"Who's saying?"
"The police. Not saying it right out yet, but they're thinking it louder and louder." And he told her what had happened that night, leaving out only who it was who had given him the message to take to Angelique-"someone who couldn't be at that ball"-and what Shaw had told him later.
"Phrasie Dreuze," said Olympe, as if she'd bitten on a lemon, and her eyes had the look of an angry cat's again. "Yes, her man made it worth her while to keep her mouth shut about him and her daughter. Mamzelle Marie had her cut of that, for showin' Phrasie how to pass off Angelique as a virgin to Trepagier when the time come. But some people knew. Anybody who knew Angelique as a child didn't have far to go to guess. No wonder she didn't have much use for men."
She shook her head. "Phrasie know you were the last person to see her girl alive?"
"I think so. She was there when Clemence Drouet told Shaw about it, but I don't think she's smart enough to put two and two together. Even if she was, I don't think she'd care."
"No. So long as she's got her revenge." She turned her head, to regard the withered bat on the windowsill. "I'll need a dollar, two dollars, to find out from Doctor John."
He took them from his wallet, heavy silver cartwheels, and she placed them on the sill on either side of the bat. The cat jumped up and sniffed the money, but didn't go near the gris-gris. January told himself it was because the thing smelled of snuff and turpentine.
"Anybody ever ask you to witch Angelique?"
Olympe hesitated, but her eyes moved.
"Who?"
She pushed the silver dollars to and fro with a fingertip. "When you talked about goin" to France, brother, you talked about becomin' a doctor. A real doctor, a go-to-school doctor. You do that?"
January nodded.
"You take that oath they make doctors take, about not runnin' your mouth about your patients who come to you with secrets? Secrets that are the seeds of their illness?"
He looked away, unable to meet her eyes. Then he sighed. "Looks like it's my day to be double stupid. Now you got me talkin' gombo," he added, realizing he had slipped, not only into the sorter inflections of
the Africanized speech, but into its abbreviated forms as well.
"You always did set store on bein' a Frenchman," smiled Olympe. "You as bad as Mama, and that sister of ours with her fat custard moneybag, pretendin' I'm no kin of theirs because I'm my father's child." Her mouth quirked, and for a moment the old anger glinted in her eyes.
"I'm sorry." His hand moved toward the money. She regarded him in surprise.
"You change your mind 'bout Doctor John?"
"I thought you just told me you wouldn't tell."
"I won't tell on the person who paid me," she said, as if explaining something to one of her younger children. "Might be some completely different soul went to John Bayou, and that's none of my lookout. I should know in two, three days."
"I'll be back by then." He thought he said the words casually, but there was more than just interest in the way she turned her head. "I'm leaving town for a few days. Riding out tonight, as soon as the dancing's through."
He felt his heart trip quicker as he spoke the words aloud. It was something he didn't want to think about. Since he had returned to Louisiana, he had not been out of New Orleans, had barely left the French town, and then only for certain specific destinations: the Culvers' house, the houses of other private pupils.
In the old French town, the traditions of a free colored caste protected him. His French speech identified him with it, at least to those who knew, and his friends and family guarded him, because should ill befall his mother's son, ill would threaten them all.
Whatever family he might possess in the rest of the state, wherever and whoever they were, they were still picking cotton and cutting cane, without legal names or legal rights. In effect, everything beyond Canal Street was the Swamp.
"Can't that policeman go?" she asked. "Or won't he?"
"I don't know," said January softly. "I think they're keeping him busy, keeping him quiet. And I think..." He hesitated, not exactly sure what to say because he wasn't exactly sure what it was he was going to Chien Mort to seek.
"I think he really wants to find out the truth," he went on slowly. "But he's an American, and he's a white man. If in his heart he really doesn't want the killer to be Galen Peralta, he'll be... too willing to look the other way if Peralta Pere says, 'Look over there.' And you know for a fact he's not going to get a thing out of those slaves."
Olympe nodded.
January swallowed hard, thinking about the world outside the bounds of the city he knew. "I think it's gotta be me."
Through the open doors to the rear parlor he could see a girl of twelve or so, skinny like Olympe but with the red-mahogany cast of the free colored, with a two-year-old boy on her knee, telling him a long tale about Compair Lapin and Michie Dindon while she shelled peas at the table.
He thought, They can walk twelve blocks downstream or six blocks toward the river and they'll be
safe... my nephew, my niece. But he knew that wasn't even true anymore.
"I'll be back," he said. His voice was hoarse.
"Wait." Olympe rose, crossed to the big etagere in the corner. Like the settle - and all the furniture in the room - it was very plain, with a patina of great age, the red cypress gleaming like satin. Its shelves were lined with borders of fancifully cut paper, and held red clay pots and tin canisters that had once contained coffee, sugar, or cocoa, labels garish in several tongues. She took a blue bead from one canister and a couple of tiny bones from another, tied the bones in a piece of red flannel and laced everything together onto a leather thong, muttering to herself and occasionally clapping her hands or snapping her fingers while she worked. Then she put the entire thong into her mouth, crossed herself three times, and knelt before the chromo of the Virgin, her head bowed in prayer.
January recognized some of the ritual, from his childhood at Bellefleur. The priest who'd catechized him later had taught him to trust in the Virgin and take comfort in the mysteries of the rosary. It had been years since he'd even thought of such spells.
"Here." She held out the thong to him. "Tie this round your ankle when you go. Papa Legba and Virgin Mary, they look out for you and bring you back here safe and free. It's not safe out there," she went on, seeing him smile as he put the thong into his pocket. "You had that gris-gris on you for near a week, and there's evil in it, the kind of evil that comes from petty anger and grows big, like a rat stuffin' itself on worms in the dark. Wear it. It's not safe beyond the river. Not for the likes of us. Maybe not ever again."
The sun was leaning over the wide crescent of the river as January walked back along Rue Burgundy toward his mother's house. In the tall town houses and the low-built cottages both, and in every courtyard and turning, he could sense the movement and excitement of preparations for the final night of festivities, the suppressed flurry of fantastic clothing and the freedom of masks.
He'd already made arrangements with Desdunes's Livery for the best horse obtainable. Food, and a little spare clothing, and bait for the horse lay packed in the saddlebag under the bed in his room. It's not safe beyond the river.
The land that he'd been born in, the land that was his home, was enemy land. American land. The land of men like Nahum Shagrue.
His heart beat hard as he walked along the bricks of the banquette. If he could get evidence, find a reason, learn something to tell Shaw about what was out at Bayou Chien Mort, he thought the man would go. And despite all the Americans could do, the testimony of a free man of color was still good in the courts of New Orleans.