Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online Page A

plump lady whose dove-gray silk tignon matched her dress.
    “Fortune,” she cried, wringing her mitted hands, as the well-dressed gentleman seized Shaw's attacker and pulled him away. “Fortune, no!”
    “Really, Monsieur Gérard, you must be more careful of how you step! You might have injured this gentleman, falling into him as you did....”
    “Gentleman?” The heavyset man twisted against the firm grip, face flushed dusky with rage. Though the peacemaker had spoken English-stressing the word falling as if that would alter what everyone in the room had just seen-Monsieur Gérard shouted in French, “These-these Americans dare to traduce my daughter and you say-”
    “Of course it was an accident, sir.” Still speaking English, the pacifier turned an apologetic smile upon Shaw, who was methodically straightening his coat. Not, thought January, that any amount of straightening would improve the appearance of that wretched garment. “Certainly Monsieur Gérard is most aware of the difference in your stations and also of the penalties attached to a man of color striking a white man such as yourself. Please accept my client's apologies, Captain. I am Clément Delachaise Vilhardouin, representing Monsieur Gérard and his daughter in this regrettable affair. I pray your indulgence for my client, who speaks no English.”
    The woman-clearly Madame Gérard-had caught up with the group now, and was holding her husband's other arm, sobbing “Fortune, Fortune, what could I do? They came at night, you would not return from Baton Rouge till the morning, they had a warrant for her arrest....”
    Gérard himself was silent, chest heaving and dark eyes smoldering. From the open doorway a woman's voice could be heard, shrieking crazily, “He's trying to kill me! My husband-my father-they killed all my children, smothered them one by one! Please, please, someone believe me! . . .”
    A chorus from the other cells snarled out, like the cacophony of Hell. “I'll smother you if you don't shut up!”
    “Stuff her mouth, somebody!”
    “Can't a body get a drink in this stinkin' bug hole?”
    Beside him, January saw Olympe's jaw harden, her only change in expression. When he himself had been locked in the Cabildo, the shouting of the mad, sharing the cells with the thieves and murderers and common drunks, had added an edge of horror to the crawling fetor of the nights.
    Vilhardouin, himself a highly dandified specimen of Shaw's own race-though probably neither of them would willingly admit such a thing-went on in quiet French, “You must understand, Monsieur Gérard, that this man was only doing his duty in apprehending your daughter. It is the Magistrate of the Court who wrote out the warrant for her arrest, at the complaint of a citizen.”
    “What citizen?” Fortune Gerard was trembling, tears of fury glistening as he raised his head. “Show me that citizen! I swear that I will-”
    “The citizen what swore out that complaint,” interrupted Shaw, and squirted a long stream of tobacco juice in the direction of the sandbox again, a target he couldn't possibly have achieved, “is the mother of the deceased, a M'am Geneviève Jumon; the woman this lady claims your daughter paid her to put a hex on.” Perhaps, as January's mother had repeatedly asserted, tomcats spoke better French than Lieutenant Shaw, but January noticed that for an upriver backwoodsman he didn't do at all badly with a conditional subjunctive.
    Gérard's face seemed to shrink on itself with venom. Had he not been a respectable man of color, well bred and conscious of his position in New Orleans society, he would have spit. As it was he replied, his voice like twisted wire, “My daughter would never have sought the company or assistance of a voodoo Negress poisoner”-his gaze traveled over Olympe in distaste-“for that purpose, or for any other, and I will personally sue the man who says differently. And as for the assertion that my daughter poisoned, or