sip of rum from another. "That's exactly who we have to work with. And Laurent Lamartine on flute. It may be coincidence, but I doubt it. The moment La Redfern set the date for tonight's entertainment, Delphine Lalaurie moved up her ball..."
"Not again!"
"And this time, Madame managed to bag the best musicians-all the best musicians. She must have ten of them tonight, everybody who wasn't already playing at Caldwell's Theatre. The only reason I'm not there too is because one of Big Annie's girls-did I tell you I'm living in the shed behind Big Annie's these days?-cut up her note and used it for curling-papers before I got it. God knows how many others have gone the same way this month." He coughed and took another sip of the opium tincture. "At least they don't steal my violin."
January stood still, hearing the far-off pressure of the door opening, closing; the muffled voice of the worst musician in Louisiana trying to cadge supper off Madame Redfern's majordomo. For all the good that's likely to do him.
He hurt inside, like a child left out of a party, and knew that his hurt was childish. "Hannibal, what's going on? What is this? I'm better than that. I know I am. Who could get to Madame Lalaurie? Tell her not to hire me? She's above pettiness like that, she does what she pleases and be damned. I taught her daughters..."
He hesitated, the ugliness of that hellish session returning to him. From the beginning again, please...
And the hatred and terror in Pauline Blanque's eyes.
There was a woman who kept her two nieces chained in acellar...
One's always hearing about domestic tyrants... No one dares speak of it... They know it'll do them no good. Was this all because he'd seen her do that to her daughters?
"Damn it, the woman gave me money to help a runaway slave!"
Hannibal gave up looking around for another lamp-the one on the table gave barely more light than a candle-and opened his violin case. "They wouldn't have to tell her not to hire you," he pointed out. "Just tell her that you were an atheist, or a bigamist. Or that you helped Rose kill those three girls so she wouldn't have to feed them."
January felt his skin prickle with rage. "Is that what they're saying?"
"Ben, I don't know what they're saying. I don't move in those circles. Madame Lalaurie-or any of them-doesn't even have to believe you actually did anything. Just that your presence will offend someone who'll be there. They're all connected: the Prieurs, the McCartys, the Forstalls, the Blanques, the d'Aunoys... They've all got daughters to marry off."
The door opened. Philippe deCoudreau entered, laughing and shaking his head, a slim young dandy with skin as fair as H?lier Lapatie's had been and a marvelous and unfounded conceit of himself.
"You know as well as I do they can't take risks about not being invited to the right parties."
"And isn't it just the right party tonight?" deCoudreau laughed, picking up the beer pitcher and sniffing it.
"For a woman paying off her creditors at a shilling on the pound five months ago, Our Hostess sure found some money someplace." He nudged January in the ribs. "Think Madame Redfern found a wealthy widower to set her up? Did you take a look at that buffet she's laying down? Boeuf a la mode and wine jellies-we're in for some of that I don't think."
DeCoudreau laughed again. He had bright blue eyes and the sort of laugh described by popular novelists as "infectious," though January personally considered it in the same category with some of the other infectious complaints available in New Orleans. The thought of trying to play the piano under and around and through the man's aberrant sense of timing all night made his teeth ache. As he descended to the ballroom January thought, I'm doing it, too. Accepting that the Lalaurie party is the only place to be seen tonight. That everything else is second rate. No wonder the McCartys and the Bringiers and the Lafr?nni?re found it so easy to manipulate those around them.
Unfortunately, all the evening's events bore out that judgment. The only Creoles present were the minor, onthe-make skirmishers on the fringes of society and political power. Everyone with money or influence was at the Lalaurie ball. As the evening progressed, these quarreled repeatedly and violently with the American lawyers, brokers, and real-estate speculators present. January recognized at least two of the slave brokers who had been at Madame