"It isn't like she hasn't had offers," added another of the Trepagier clan resentfully. "Good ones, too-I don't mean trash like McGinty. She thinks she's too good..."
"Too good! That's a laugh!" The stranger threw back his head with a bitter bark. He leaned closer, lowering his voice but not nearly enough. "If the woman's turned you down it's because she's got a lover hidden somewhere. Has had, since she shut Arnaud out of her bed. I've even heard she's put on a mask and come dancing."
"At public balls?"
"Public balls, certainly," said the pasha. He nodded back over his shoulder toward the discreet doorway of the passage to the Salle. "And other places, maybe not so public."
"Sir..."
January hadn't even seen Mayerling move. The young fencing master slipped through the crowd like a bronze fish, a dangerous glitter of blue-and-black jewels like dragon scales, his big, pale hands resting folded on the gems of his belt buckle. Behind the modeled leather of his mask, his hazel eyes were suddenly deadly chill.
"I assume," said Mayerling, "that you are speaking third-hand gossip about someone whom none of you knows. Certainly no gentleman would bandy any woman's name so in a public place."
The Trepagier boys regarded him in alarmed silence. In his five years in New Orleans the Prussian had only fought three duels, but in each he had killed with such scientifically vicious dispatch, and such utter lack of mercy, as to discourage any further challenges. The wolf-pale eyes traveled from their clothing to their faces, clearly recognizing, clearly identifying.
"This is fortunate, since I only duel with gentlemen," Mayerling went on quietly. He turned to regard the pasha in green. "Should I happen to find," he said, as if he could see the face behind the garish satin of the mask, "that a woman's name is being spoken by those whose blood would not dishonor my sword, then of course, as a gentleman, I should have no choice but to avenge that lady's honor and put a halt to that gossip in whatever way seemed best to me."
The yellow gaze swept them like a backhand cut. There was no cruelty in it, only a chill and terrifying strength. January could almost see the line of blood it left.
"I trust that I make myself clear?"
The pasha opened his mouth to speak. The Jack of Diamonds reached out, put a hand on his pink silk
arm. To Mayerling, he said, "It was, of course, a woman of the lower classes of whom we spoke, a chaca shopkeeper who betrayed her husband, nothing more."
"Even so," said Mayerling softly. "Such talk disturbs me. Perhaps you should study to ape gentlemen a little more closely-whoever you are."
None of them replied. Mayerling waited for a moment, giving them time to declare themselves gentlemen and offended, then turned his back and vanished into the crowd.
January leaned over, and touched Uncle Bichet on the shoulder. "Who was that?" he asked, the old man looked at him in some surprise.
"Just a couple of the Trepagier boys."
"No-with them."
The cellist turned his head to look, but the pasha was even then vanishing through the curtained doorway that led to the Salle d'Orleans, deep in conversation with the purple pirate.
The Trepagier brothers-there were at least four of them, two of whom were married and none of whom were boys at all-were bullying and insulting a much younger man who had dared flirt with a flustered and feathered damsel garbed as a gypsy, evidently secure in the knowledge that he would not dare challenge them, and they were correct.
Uncle Bichet shook his head, and glanced at the program card. "Those lazy folks been standing long enough," he said, and January turned, unwillingly, back to his music.
Sally, he thought. Whoever the green pasha was, he had to have spoken with the runaway servant girl Sally. Or he recognized Madame Trepagier at the ball Thursday night, either by her movement, stance, and voice-as he himself had done-or because she'd worn that silly Indian costume somewhere before.
And if that were the case, thought January with sudden bitterness, for a man attending a quadroon ball he had a lot of nerve criticizing a woman he recognized there.
The dancing lasted until nearly dawn. Technically Lent began at midnight, but there was no diminution of champagne, tafia, gumbo or pate, though having made his confession that afternoon January abstained all evening even when the opportunity presented itself. Eventually Xavier Peralta made his appearance, clothed in the red robe and scepter of a king with his cousin the chief of police still at his side. The waltzes and quadrilles grew wilder as the more respectable ladies took their departure, the fights and jostling more frequent. Everyone seemed determined to extract the final drops of pleasure from the Carnival season, to dance the soles off their shoes, to dally on the balconies above the torchlit river of noise surging along Rue Orleans.
Also, as the night wore on, more and more of the wealthier men disappeared for longer and longer periods of time. The Creole belles, though perhaps not of the highest society, stood abandoned along the wall, whispering among themselves and pretending not to care. Most of them, January suspected, would stop at home only long enough to wash off their rouge before attending early services in the cathedral. The American women whose husbands were still in attendance whispered about the half dozen or so whose men had "stepped out for a bit of air." Most of them appeared and disappeared a number of times, but the Roman soldier stayed gone. The deserted Cleopatra involved herself in an animated discussion with several other ladies but kept an eye on the door, and when the errant Roman at last returned, there was promise of bitter acrimony in her greeting.
They bring it on themselves, January thought, but he knew it wasn't that easy. Like everything else about New Orleans, it was a bittersweet tangle, and you could not run from it without leaving pieces of your torn-out heart behind.
No wonder everyone tried to dance and be gay, he thought, as he walked toward the livery stable in the tepid mists of predawn. Costumed maskers still reeled along the banquettes of Rue Orleans, and from every tavern music could be heard, brassy street bands and thumping drums. Under the flicker of the street lamps whooping Kalmucks pursued masked and laughing prostitutes. The air, thick with the smell of the river, was also weighed with wine and whisky and tobacco and cheap perfume.
He collected his rented horse from a sleepy stable-hand and rode down to the levee, where the flatboat captain he'd contracted yesterday waited for him in the white ocean of mist that rose from the river. The river itself was very still, the levees on either side rising like ridges of mountains from the thinning vapors. Behind them in the last starlight the town dozed, exhausted at last.
There was only so much-deception financial and romantic, the monstrosity of slavery, and the waiting horrors of yellow fever-that could be masked behind the bright scrim of music, the taste of coffee and gumbo, the shimmer of the moonlight.
Mardi Gras was done. The greedy consumption of the last good food, the draining of the last of the wine, a final, wild coupling in the darkness before the penitential death of Lent.
He watched the dark shore of the west bank approaching with terror in his heart.
SIXTEEN
Morning found him eight miles from the city, riding west along the levee with the rank trees and undergrowth of the batture at the foot of the slope on his left, the dark brown earth of fields on his right. In places they were rank with winter weeds, but as the sun first gilded, then cleared the writhing stringers of the Gulf clouds, groups of slaves could be seen threading their way along the paths, hoes on their shoulders, bare feet swirling the ground mists. Once a white man called to him in slurry New Orleans French and asked to see his papers, but when January produced them-and a receipt from Desdunes's Livery, to prove he hadn't stolen the horse- the patroller seemed to lose interest and barely gave them a glance.