that Friday night. If that formidable Creole lady had been listening to the conversation in the courtyard and had heard Cora urge Gervase to run away-if Gervase had agreed-a quiet word to Bastien would have served to close the carriage gates.
Madame would know that Cora couldn't protest that she belonged to a third party. And Madame would have had no difficulty whatsoever in finding a buyer for the girl within days. If she kept her slaves chained-and January knew of townsfolk who did-the girl might well have had no opportunity to either effect an escape or get a message out before the brokers took her away.
The Lalauries were rich, of course, and didn't need the money. But for a woman who would punish not only her betrayer but all who had assisted her, money was not the object. Cora had accepted her help, then tried to take one of her own slaves-her property-from her. Madame had championed Rose to the bankers, and Rose had repaid that help by harboring Cora. It would not have taken much for Madame to learn that from Cora herself.
If that were indeed what had taken place. He shook his head-he was getting as bad as Monsieur Montreuil. There had to be some way to find out...
Motion caught his eye. Someone had stepped quickly out of one of the passways between the cottages and as quickly stepped back. He thought that whoever it was, had a club.
D?j? vu clutched him for a panic moment: Roarke. No. Brinvilliers.
He canvassed in his mind the other houses on Rue Burgundy, then walked back two or three cottages and crossed the street, and knocked on the door of a modest pink dwelling. "It's Ben January," he called to the muffled query from inside.
It was good, he thought, to have neighbors.
"Ben!" Crowdie Passebon was a perfumer, a rotund and jolly man with a carefully tended mustache and black pomaded ringlets that glistened in the dim candlelight within. His wife had been given the cottage years ago, when her white protector had paid her off. January could see her over Crowdie's shoulder, presiding over the table in the rear parlor, playing cards with an assortment of brothers, sisters, and in-laws. Once a woman mended her ways and married respectably, all but the most repressive were willing to forgive.
"Come in, come in! You're out late-nothing amiss with your mother, I hope?"
"Not with my mother, no," said January. "It's just that there's a crowd of toughs lying in wait for me, by her house. I think they're connected with this stupidity Barnard and Louis Brinvilliers have been putting in the papers."
"T'cha!" The perfumer drew him inside. "People don't care what they print, nor what they believe, either.
Dirty Americans." He looked around the neat, sparsely furnished front parlor, and picked up a log of firewood as big around as January's biceps. Most of the male relatives at the table were putting on their coats and selecting makeshift armament, too.
"Be careful!" warned Helaine Passebon. "You can be-"
"We can always say we didn't see who they were in the dark, my love, can't we? With those kidnappers operating last summer, surely we can be excused for taking precautions when we go strolling? Let's go."
There was, of course, no one in the passageway when January and an escort of eight or ten Passebons, Lamothes, and Savarys reached his mother's cottage. He thanked them all, and invited them in for coffee.
"Now I feel like a fool."
"Better a fool with a whole head than a hero with a broken one," replied Passebon cheerily, and kissed Livia's hand-she had been sewing in her dressing-gown and was not pleased at the sudden intrusion.
The following morning January went to the passway by the cottage and found the tracks of seven or eight men in boots, and the marks where they had leaned canes, clubs, and sword-sticks on the ground.
Rose Vitrac returned to New Orleans a few days after Easter.
January had written her whenever he could find a boat bound for the Barataria, sending her books, and news of the town. No real post existed, so he had not heard from her for nearly ten days, when he got a note telling him that she'd procured lodging in a cheap room on Victory Street, near the wharves. Not the best neighborhood in the city, but certainly just down the street from some of them, and at least none of the riverfront gangs was headquartered there. He and Hannibal borrowed a wheelbarrow from Odile Gignac's