shook back the long coil of her hair, and said, "You didn't come. And now you're chasing some other girl. You didn't come because you were lying with Rose." Then she threw up all her intestines, and the child she carried inside her, and died again, her hand reaching for the pitcher of water.
January tried to say, "I'm sorry," but only the serpents of hell crawled from his mouth.
Ants covered him in a gnawing wave, eating his flesh to the bones.
Distantly, Hannibal played the violin, a jig that had been popular in Paris two summers ago, before the cholera came.
If he could only get to his Rosary, thought January, he'd be safe, he'd be all right. The Virgin Mary would get him out of this.
Delphine Lalaurie would be returning. From his vantage point above the courtyard he could see her, gathering up her heavy skirts to climb the stairs. Her husband Nicolas was with her this time, a sheaf of notes tucked under one arm and one of his experimental postural correction devices in his hands.
Virgin Mary, get me out of this.
Heat consumed January, smoke rising through the floor to suffocate his lungs. The building was on fire, plunging down like an avalanche to Hell.
The building was on fire. He woke and knew it.
There was a little light, coming in through the cracks in the barred shutters that led out onto the gallery, enough to let him know that it was day. Smoke was pouring up through the cracks in the floor.
The woman on the floor, skeletal with prolonged starvation, began to writhe in her shackles, her breath coming in little puffs of pain. One of the men on the beds-there were two beds in the room, he now saw, the manacles dangling from the ceiling pulley between them-stirred and groaned, then lay still again. The man wore an iron collar around his neck, and some kind of iron contraption on one or maybe both of his legs. January's own shoulders were lost in a maze of pain. Agony shot up through his leg muscles, his back, from every welted, bloody inch of his skin.
In the smoke that filtered up through the room the flies were humming wildly around the ceiling, their drone a frantic bass note to Cora's voice-it had to be Cora's making inarticulate shrill grunts beyond the thin wall. January tried to move and was instantly sorry, his head throbbing, so dizzy he nearly fainted again.
But he had to get out. He had to get out. They'd all burn...
Somewhere he heard shouting, a yammer of voices below. "Sir, I'll thank you to mind your own business," came the yapping tenor of Nicolas Lalaurie's voice, and a deeper voice, harsh but familiar-Judge Canonge's?-replied.
"It's a grave allegation and I think it needs to be looked into."
"Do you call me a liar? I'll have my friends call on you in the morning, sir."
"You have your friends do whatever you want, sir, but I'm going to have a look upstairs."
"This man would say or do anything to discredit me and my wife, sir. For years he's spread rumors..."
"You can't tell me that child didn't fall off the roof, two months after you moved into this place!" That was Montreuil's voice. Behind it there was a clashing, a distant thump of feet. January squirmed, gasping in an ocean of heat. If he cried out-maybe if he cried out they'd hear him...
"Judge!" called someone else. "Here, sir! Here's where it started!"
Inarticulate sounds, a woman's voice; then, louder, "I couldn't bear more, sir. I couldn't bear more. After last night..."
"She's been beaten, sir. Severely, it looks like."
"And you're going to punish me," demanded Dr. Lalaurie furiously, "because this slut tried to avenge herself after correction-well deserved, I might add-by firing my house?"
"They're in the attic," persisted Montreuil's voice.
"They're in the attic, sir, chained up and tortured. Sometimes at night I hear them scream!"
Shut up, thought January dully. Shut up, you whining little toad! They're never going to believe you!
"The woman is a fiend incarnate, I tell you! A devil! A female Nero! She..."
January recalled the little man's bulging eyes, his rank breath and nervous hands, and his heart sank. A fanatic with a grudge, and a well-known grudge. And, if Dominique's casual remarks were anything to go by, Madame Lalaurie had evidently taken pains to discredit him by gossip as well. Whispers of opium addiction and Montreuil's half-crazy hatred were Madame's best defense: that, and the people who would never admit that their sons