go there." January hadn't meant the words to come out so harshly. He closed his fist against the urge to strike his friend across the face.
The fiddler's coffee black eyes were weary within the bruised erosion of lines. "No woman goes there," he said quietly. "But a lot of them end up there all the same. As it happens," he went on, as January opened his mouth again to protest, "she didn't, or hasn't yet. Myself, I think she's left the town completely."
January was silent. I am ruined, the note had said. Every penny I own is tied up in this building... And after all he felt for her-after running off to try to clear Cora for her-he hadn't been there when she most needed him. Only came in to view the wreckage, like the horrified survivor of a Euripides play. As he had come in on Ayasha, too late.
"Where?" January meant to speak a sentence. Only a word came out.
"Baton Rouge," guessed Hannibal promptly. "Though that's a little close to New Orleans, if she was planning on opening another school. Maybe Charleston. Maybe New York."
"Where would she get the money?" And Hannibal only shook his head. "There has to be some way to find her."
"And what?" Hannibal asked. Lightning flashed again, white and cold on his thin, lined face, overwhelming the small warmth of the candle.
January had no reply.
"She wouldn't come back, you know. Not to a town where she's been accused of harboring a murderess, or even a runaway slave, for that matter."
Still January said nothing. The thunder rolled over the town, far off and dim, like the breathing of some unknowable monstrosity in the distance.
Hannibal reached beneath his pillow, and brought out a sheet of creamy paper, on which Rose's penmanship lay like Italianate lace. "We have her books," he said logically. "If I know our Athene, it means we'll see her again."
In the breathless smolder of storm-weather, January made his way down the silent streets to the Cabildo the following morning. He found Abishag Shaw laboriously composing the report of the arrest of seven or eight men "of French and American extraction" for a brawl the previous evening that had begun outside the Ripsnorter Saloon on Gravier Street and had ended with a sordid biting, gouging, and hair-pulling match encompassing most of Canal Street. "Duelin', they swears it was." The Kentuckian sighed, shoving a greasy forelock out of his eyes. "With three or four so-called seconds per side takin' swings at each other an' everyone fallin' in and out of the gutters an' cussin' fit to break a parson's heart. We got the lot of 'em in the cells now, every man jack of 'em swearin' cross-eyed as how the others busted the `Code' an' deserved the whalin' they got."
He leaned his bony elbows on the desk, arms extended flat on the plank surface like a resting cat, and blinked up at January with deceptively mild gray eyes. "I take it you come about Mademoiselle Vitrac?"
"Who told you Cora Chouteau took refuge with her?" January was far too angry to pretend he knew nothing of the matter now, and Shaw showed no surprise at the question. The letter January had sent asking for him to question Mrs. Redfern's servants lay between them on his desk. "That Isabel girl," replied Shaw promptly. "Isabel Moine." Any other American would have pronounced it `Moyne' instead of opening the vowel like a Frenchman. "I got to admit, Maestro, considerin' your friendship with the lady, and them inquiries you was makin' at Madame Lalaurie's, I wasn't tetotaciously astonished. And them pearls, and that sack of money, they was right where that girl said they was in the desk."
"Eavesdropping little bitch." Isabel's sulky dark face returned to him, flushed with sleep. The way Rose had brushed a strand of hair from the girl's lips. The affection in Rose's eyes, even for her. Don't you rip up at her...
"Emily Redfern poisoned her husband. Cora found the poison the day before and fled, thinking it was intended for her. Maybe it was. She came to town on the New Brunswick Wednesday afternoon; half a dozen stevedores on the wharf can attest it was there by four, probably earlier than that. If the cook Leonide told you he saw Cora entering the house at twilight-"
"It was Mrs. Redfern that told me," said Shaw mildly, and spat in the direction of the sandbox. The brown expectorant fell short of its target by at least a yard.