middle of the evening, not midnight. Phlosine Seurat, when she had brought a blancmange for Minou and some?touff?e for January, said there would be a danceable at the St. Clair to which everyone who was anyone in Creole society was going. He wondered what this man had told his mother.
"May I see her?"
January stepped out of the doorway. "She's sleeping," he warned.
Henri paused beside him, gray eyes anxious behind the thick rounds of glass. "That's good, isn't it? I understand that with... with the fever... sleep is healing. Normal sleep, that is."
January nodded. "But it isn't the fever," he said. "It's milk sickness, which is just as serious."
A look of surprise flickered behind the spectacles, followed by relief. "Oh," said Henri, a little foolishly.
"Oh, I was told..." He turned quickly to go on into the room, then hesitated and turned back. "Is there anything I can do? For you, I mean. You must be done up. If you need to rest I can sit with her. Do whatever you tell me to do. It's what I came for."
Even though you thought she had yellow fever, thought January. Even though your mama probably told you to stay at whatever ball she's giving tonight.
The anger he had felt at this man melted, and he smiled. "In that case, yes, I could use a little rest. I thank you, sir."
The shutters were fastened and the muslin curtains drawn, but plague or no plague, January felt he must breathe clean air, or die. Smudges of lemongrass and gun powder burned on the gallery over the water, keeping at bay the mosquitoes which, though fewer than in town, could be found even along the lakeshore. Legs dangling over the water, arms draped on the gallery's cypress rail, January gazed at the constellations of rose and citrine light burning through the trees far along the shoreline. On the heavy air, Haydn and Mozart drifted like the smoke of some far-off battle.
Henri fell asleep shortly before dawn, on the daybed in Minou's room; his infant son died about an hour later, in January's arms. January wrapped the wasted little fragment of flesh and bone in a clean towel, and set it aside in the cabinet at the back of the house, where neither of the baby's parents would see.
Then he went back to sponging Dominique's flushed, burning face and body with cool water, trying to bring her fever down. As he worked he whispered the prayers of the Rosary, not counting decades, but simply repeating them over and over again: Hail, Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
It kept him from thinking. Kept him from wondering if this fate would have overtaken Ayasha, had she borne him the child she had been almost certain she carried the week before her death. Kept him from wondering what point there was in carrying on.
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Not, Keep us from dying, as Olympe would petition the laa to do, with colored candles and the blood of chickens and mice. Pray for us at the hour of our death. Hold our hands in the dark. Get us across that wide water safely.
He looked down at his sister's face, and felt a great weariness inside.
He wanted Rose. Wanted to talk to her, about Minou's child, and death; about a dozen other things. It might be months, it might be years, and it might be never, before he could lie with her, talking in the night as he and Ayasha used to talk of matters that do not enter daytime conversation. But in the meantime-or even if not-he wanted Rose as a friend in this smoky world of injustice and contagion and deceit.
Feet vibrated on the gallery. January rose from Dominique's bedside and dried his hands, thankful there was someone he could send for the undertaker, for it was clear that Minou could not be left. Opening the door, he saw Agnes Pellicot, a fashionably decorated straw bonnet on over her tignon and a porcelain crock of something warm and spicy wrapped in a towel in her hands. Behind her, shy and awkward in sprigged white muslin with a long blue sash, was Marie-Neige.
"Marie-Neige," said January, startled, even before he bowed and took Agnes Pellicot's hand in greeting.
"Madame Pellicot, I... I thought Marie-Neige was in school in town. There hasn't been a problem... ?"
"Problem?" She sniffed, and at his gesture of invitation crossed the threshold in a swish of crinoline. "I