the stench of the fever season. The smell of lies and rumors, hearsay and the assurances that everything is fine.
Through the windows January could see into the second-floor parlor, where he had taught piano.
Delphine Lalaurie was pointing out to a couple of men-Creoles, friends of hers, January thought, by their dress, people who probably never would believe their lovely friend guilty of anything-where to replace a marble-topped table. She went herself to position a gold-veined vase on its top.
In any crowd January was the tallest person present, with one exception, and that exception he saw at the fringe of the mob, near the carriage gate.
"What are you waiting for?" he asked, when he'd made his way over. The lanky Kentuckian regarded him with deceptive mildness in his cold gray eyes. "Judgment Day, belike," Shaw said. And then, when January frowned uncomprehendingly, he added, "What she done weren't a crime, Ben."
"What?"
"Well, misdemeanor mistreatment of her slaves, maybe." Shaw spat in the general direction of the gutter.
"Last time there was a complaint she just got a fine for it."
"l, "said January, his voice icy with rage, "am not her slave."
"Maybe," agreed Shaw placidly. "But she's related to every member of the City Council from Mr. Prieur on down, and to every banker in the city to boot. She holds mortgages on half the property in this city.
And those she don't hold mortgages on need her to invite their daughters to the right parties so they can catch husbands."
For some reason January thought of Roarke's attorney Mr. Loudermilk, buying free drinks among the keelboatmen and riverrats of the wharves, trying to organize a jail delivery. Of whatever threat it had been, that had decided the kidnapped Grille brothers and their sister not to testify against Roarke after all.
There was not so very much difference between Rue Royale and Gallatin Street. Only that Roarke's crimes had been, at least, comprehensible.
"So you're telling me the police are going to sit back and do nothing."
"I'm telling you," said Shaw softly, "that in ten years, this won't have happened." His eyes swept back to the tall house, the lace curtains moving in the windows, the walls like a self-enclosing fortress, only slightly streaked with smoke. "Nice lady like that? They didn't see nuthin'."
"Well, I sure saw somethin', me!" A heavyset countryman pushed close to Shaw. "Me, I been to the Cabildo. What you sayin', she gonna get away with what she done?"
"What you say?" Kentucky Williams jostled up behind the man. "That French cow-whore gonna get away with that?"
She had a voice like an iron gong, and the murmur rose around them, angry, disbelieving. Someone got a brick from the building site where January had blown up his bomb, and lobbed it through the window on the ground floor; someone else shrieked, "Monster! Murderess!" in English that grated like a saw.
Fists began to pound on the gate. Around the corner on Rue Royale others hammered at the door. More bricks were hurled at the house; there was a tinkling smash of glass.
"Now see what you done started?" murmured Shaw mildly and put a surprisingly gentle hand on January's arm to draw him back.
Hannibal asked, "I take it you're not on duty," and Shaw looked down at the fiddler in a kind of surprise.
"I been told off special by Chief Tremouille not to cross the Lalaurie threshold," he said. "So I guess I won't." A couple of Gallatin Street toughs and an Ohio boatman got a cypress beam from the construction and began to smash at the gates with it like a ram. The voice of the mob rose to an angry baying, French and English-"Like the howling of Irish wolves against the moon, " Hannibal murmured.
More bricks were thrown, and a dead rat from the gutter. Men appeared from the levee as if drawn by the noise or by the sudden, whiffed promise of loot.
Shaw checked the pistols at his belt. "I ain't seen the daughters all mornin'. I been watchin'. But I can't stand by if they offer her harm."
"Let them," said January coldly. His brother-in-law had lent him a jacket, too short in the sleeves, sticking to his back from the scabbed welts left by the whip, and had had to put it on him. He still could not move his arms. The mob thrust them back, pushing at the gate, and Shaw snaked his lean body forward, working his way to the front.
He was thus almost knocked to the banquette a moment later when