the stench of the smoke in the air, that anybody would be chasing a runaway slave?
He filled the horn cup from the coopered cistern in the corner of the yard and held it out to her. Cora drank thirstily, and he sat on the other end of the bench, laying coat, hat, and satchel down beside him.
Aside from her dress, which was not a countrywoman's dress, her hands and face were clean. She'd been in town a little time.
"Do you know Madame Lalaurie?" he asked her, when she set the cup aside. "Or know of her?"
The girl shook her head. "That is, I know she's a rich lady, if she's got a big house like that, and bought slaves." She looked down at the toes of her shoes, black and red, to match the dress, with frivolous white lacings. "She bought a houseman, only a week or so ago, name of Gervase, from my master-that used to be my master, before he freed me," she added hastily. "Michie..." She hesitated, fishing around for corroborative detail again. If her name were LaFayette her master's would probably be, too, so she said, "Michie Napoleon LaFayette: But Michie LaFayette, he set me free, and I come to town looking for Gervase. We were married, me and Gervase. Really married, Michie Janvier, by a priest and everything."
Her dark eyes were childishly earnest, looking into his, but he saw in the flinch of her mouth, heard in the inflection of her voice, that she lied. Not that it was his business. There were a lot of men who didn't want their people to marry, or even to become Christians. But it wasn't any of his affair, though as a Christian he hoped this girl had at least been baptized. He asked, "So why didn't you try to see Gervase yourself?"
"I did!" She spread out her child-small hands, with the roughened skin of washing-up on the fingers and backs. "I tried. I went to the house on Rue Royale, and they always keep the big gate there shut. That coachman of Madame's there, he wouldn't let me in. I asked him." There was anger in the set of the little mouth. "He just smiled at me nasty and said Gervase was busy and Madame wouldn't have her people taking time off from their work to chat with girls in the street. I told him I was his sister," she added naively, and sighed.
January forebore to mention how many "sisters" and "cousins" and "brothers" came loitering around to speak to servants in the twilight. Only the slackest of mistresses would permit such dalliance, and Madame Delphine Lalaurie was known for the silent efficiency of her servants. "So you want me to talk to Gervase?"
Cora nodded. "If you would, M'sieu. After the second time that coachman-that Bastien-turn me away, I watched the house, and I saw you go in. The cripple-man selling water across the street, he say you was the music teacher for Madame Lalaurie's two girls. He say you also work at the Charity Hospital during the fever season, so when I... I couldn't wait for you to come out of the house, I look for you at the Hospital."
Where there was too much of a crowd for you to want to come up to me, thought January, studying that wary, triangular face. It didn't surprise him that the water seller would know everything about him. In New Orleans, the vendors who sold everything from strawberries to fire irons through the narrow streets knew everything about everyone.
But that, too, was none of his business. This girl's lover had been sold, and she had run away to see him again. For all his mother's talk about the unruliness of blacks (not that his mother was so much as a half-shade paler than Cora LaFayette) he could not blame her for it. "What would you like me to tell Gervase?"
Her smile transformed her like spring dawn, not just her face but her tense little body as well. Joy became her. Then she swallowed, again, thinking hard and contemplating once more the toes of her red-and-black shoes. "Could you ask him if there's a way we can see each other? If there's a way he can get out? Just for an evening, I mean, M'sieu. They keep that gate closed tight all the time. I'll meet you here," she went on quickly. "If that's all right with you, Michie Janvier. Tomorrow night?"
"Wednesday," said January. "Wednesday afternoon. I teach the