03 Graveyard Dust bj-3 Read online

  03 Graveyard Dust

  ( Benjamin January - 3 )

  Barbara Hambly

  Graveyard Dust

  Barbara Hambly

  For Mary Ann

  Special thanks to those, in New Orleans and elsewhere, who have helped me with this book: to Paul Nevski of Le Monde Creole; to the Staff of the Historic New Orleans Collection; to Tim Trahan of Animal Arts in New Orleans; to Priestess Miriam of the Voodoo Spirit Temple; to Greg Osborn of the New Orleans Public Library; to Adrian and Victoria; to Kate Miciak; to Diana Paxson; and always, to George.

  TERMINOLOGY OF VOODOO Since voodoo terms were originally transliterated from various West African languages through creolized French, spelling is a matter of guesswork. I have in most cases used the modern Haitian spellings and names as found in Metraux's Voodoo in Haiti, the starting point of much of my research.

  The shape and structure of voodoo in Louisiana in the 1830s is something that can only be guessed at. Refugees fleeing the uprisings in Sainte Domingue (the island now divided into Haiti and Santo Domingo) brought extensive voodoo beliefs with them to a land that already had its own variants of these same practices, and much depended on the religion's interaction with its immediate surroundings. In Haiti, after the black revolution, voodoo became an accepted religion; in Louisiana its evolution was marked by external pressures from the prevailing Christianity and culture. In addition, the voodoo loa tends to proliferate: There are dozens of variations of the spirit Ezili (or Erzuli), of Ogu (Ogou)-Ogu Feray, Ogu Badagri, Ogu Osanyl, and Sen (or San) Jak, Maje and others-of Baron (or Bawon) Samedi or Cemetery, also known as Baron La Croix. I have simplified as much as I can without doing violence to what I understand to be the basic tenets of the religion.

  Some loa:

  Ogzc (or Ogou)-warrior spirit of justice, often depicted as a soldier; frequently identified with Saint James the Greater Shango-blacksmith spirit, also warrior; a spirit of iron and fire Ezili (or Erzuli)-spirit of womanhood, in various incarnations a mother and an Aphrodite flirt Baron Samedi (or Baron Cemetery)-lord of the dead, often depicted as an obscene trickster, lord ofthe Gu?d?

  Gu?d?-family of dark and dangerous spirits, spirits of power and death Papa Legba (or Limba)-ruler of the crossroads, of doorways and bridges, and of transition states; he is the first loa petitioned in Haitian ritual, that he may open the doors for the other loa to pass through Damballah-Wedo-the sacred serpent, spirit of the rainbow and of water; called also the ZombiDamballah Bosou-bull spirit of potency and strength The loa may possess worshipers of either their own identified gender, or the opposite, and may possess them to various degrees. Some "horses," as the possessed are called, do not remember things said and done during their possession; the woman I talked to who had been possessed by Ogu said she was perfectly aware of herself, but observing: craving cigars, for instance (which Ogu loves, though the woman possessed was a nonsmoker), and rum.

  Other voodoo terms: v?v?s-complex designs drawn on the ground to focus or summon the loa hougan-voodoo priest or "king" in old New Orleans terminology mambo-voodoo priestess or "queen" gris gris-an amulet or charm tricken bag-amulet made of several ingredients sewn together in a bag, usually a gris-gris of ill luck or malice wanga (or ouanga)-spell wangateur or root-doctor-magician, sorcerer congris-mixture of black-eyed peas and rice, a favored food of the loa

  ONE

  African drums in darkness sullen as tar.

  Rossini's "Di tanti palpiti" unspooling like golden ribbon from the ballroom's open windows. Church bells and thunder.

  Benjamin January flexed his aching shoulders and thought, Rain coming. Leaning on the corner of Colonel Pritchard's ostentatious house, he could smell the sharp scent in the hot weight of the night, hear the shift in the feverish tempo of the crickets and the frogs. The dim orange glow of an oil lamp fell through the servants' door beside him, tipping the weeds beyond the edge of the yard with fire.

  Then the air changed, a cool flash of silkiness on his cheek, and he smelled blood. The drums knocked and tripped, dancing rhythms. Fairly close to the house, he thought. This far above Canal Street the lots in the American suburb of St. Mary were large, and few had been built on yet. Ten feet from kitchen, yard, and carriage house grew the native oaks and cypresses of the Louisiana swamps, as they had grown for time beyond reckoning. January picked out the voices of the drums, as on summer nights like this one in his childhood he'd used to tell frog from frog. That light knocking would be a hand drum no bigger than a vase, played with fast-tripping fingertips. The heavy fast thudding was the bamboula, the log drum-a big one, by the sound. The hourglass-shaped tenor spoke around them, patted sharply on both sides.

  One of the men on the plantation where January had been born had had one of those. He'd kept it hidden in a black oak, back in the cipridre, the swamp beyond the cane fields. Forty years ago, when the Spanish had ruled the land, for a slave to own a drum was a whipping offense. "Not meaning to presume, sir." Aeneas, Colonel Pritchard's cook, stepped from the kitchen's gold-lit arch and crossed the small yard to where January stood at the foot of the back gallery stairs. "But I'd be getting back up to the ballroom were I you." A stout man of about January's own forty-one years, the cook executed a diffident little half bow as he spoke. It was a tribute to January's status as a free man, though the cook was far lighter of skin. "Colonel Pritchard's been known to dock a man's pay, be he gone for more than a minute or two. I seen him do it with a fiddle player, only the other week."

  January sighed, not surprised. The kitchen's doors and windows stood wide to the sweltering night, and the nervous glances thrown by the cook, the majordomo, and the white-jacketed waiter toward the house every time one of them cracked a joke or consumed a tartlet that should have gone on the yellow-flowered German china told its own story.

  "Thank you." January drew his gloves from his coat pocket and put them on again, white kid and thirty cents a pair, and even that movement caused bolts of red-hot lightning to shoot through his shoulder blades, muscles, and spine. He'd been a surgeon for six years at the Hotel-Dieu in Paris and knew exactly how heavy a human arm was, but it seemed to him that he'd never quite appreciated that weight as he did now, after an hour and a half of playing quick-fire waltzes and polkas on the piano with an injury that hadn't healed.

  A shift of the night air brought the smell of smoke again, the knocking of the drums, and the hot brief stink of blood. His eyes met the cook's. The cook looked away. Not my business, thought January, and mounted the stairs. He guessed what was going on. The air in the ballroom seemed waxy and thick as ambergris: one could have cut it in slices with a wire. Pomade and wool, spilled wine and the gas lamps over head, and-because at least two-thirds of the guests were Americans-the acrid sweet sourness of spit tobacco. January edged through the servants' door and, behind the screen of potted palmettos and wilting vines that sheltered the musicians, sought to resume his seat at the piano as inconspicuously as it was possible for a man six feet, three inches tall; built like a bull; and black as a raw captive new-dragged down the gangplank of a slave ship from the Guinea coast, and never mind the neat black coat, the linen shirt and white gloves, the spotless cravat.

  Hannibal Sefton, who'd been distracting the guests from the fact that there hadn't been a dance for nearly ten minutes, glanced at him inquiringly and segued from "Di tanti" into a Schubert lied; January nodded his thanks. The fiddler was sheet white in the gaslight and perspiration ran down the shivering muscles of his clenched jaw, but the music flowed gracefully, like angels dancing. January didn't know how he did it. Since an injury in April, January had been unable to play at any of the parties that made up his livelihood in America-he should not, he knew, be playing now; but finances were desper
ate, and it would be a long summer. He, at least, he thought, had the comfort of knowing that he would heal.

  Voices around them, rough and nasal in the harsh English tongue January hated: "Oh, hell, it's just a matter of time before the Texians have enough of Santa Anna. Just t'other day I heard there's been talk of them breakin' from Mexico..."

  "Paid seven hundred and thirty dollars for her at the downtown Exchange, and turns out not only was she not a cook, but she has scrofula into the bargain! "

  Colonel Pritchard was an American, and a fair percentage of New Orleans's American business community had turned out to sample Aeneas's cold sugared ham and cream tarts. But here and there in the corners of the room could be heard the softer purr of Creole French. "Any imbecile can tell you the currency must be made stable, but why this imbecile Jackson believes he can do so by handing the country's money to a parcel of criminals..." And, ominously, "My bank, sir, was one of those to receive the redistributed monies from the Bank of the United States "

  "You all right?" Uncle Bichet leaned around his violoncello to whisper, and January nodded. A lie. He felt as if knives were being run into his back with every flourish of the piano keys. In the pause that followed the lie, while January, Hannibal, Uncle Bichet, and nephew Jacques changed their music to the "Lancers Quadrille," the drums could be clearly heard, knocking and tapping not so very far from the house.

  You forget us? they asked, and behind them thunder grumbled over the lake. You play Michie Mozart's little tunes, and forget all about us out here drumming in the cipri?re?

  All those years in Paris, Michie Couleur Libre in your black wool coat, you forget about us?

  About how it felt to know everything could be taken away? Father-mother-sisters all gone?

  Nobody to know or care if you cried? You forget what it was, to be a slave?

  If you think a man has to be a slave to lose everything he loves at a whim, January said to the drums, pray let me introduce you to Monsieur le Cholira and to her who in her life was my wife.

  And with a flirt and a leap, the music sprang forward, like a team of bright-hooved horses, swirling the drums' dark beat away. Walls of shining gold, protecting within them the still center that the world's caprices could not touch.

  In the strange white gaslight, alien and angular and so different from the candle glow in which most of the French Creoles still lived, January picked out half a dozen women present in the magpie prettiness of second mourning, calling cards left by Monsieur le Cholera and his local cousin Bronze John, as the yellow fever was called. Technically, Suzanne Marcillac Pritchard's birthday ball was a private party, not a public occasion, suitable even for widows in first mourning to attend-not that there weren't boxes at the Theatre d'Orl?ans closed in with latticework so that the recently bereaved could respectably enjoy the opera.

  And in any case, it would take more than the death of their immediate relatives to keep the ladies of New Orleans's prominent French and Spanish families from a party. Marion Desdunes-that very young widow gazing wistfully at the dancers-had lost a brother to the cholera last summer and a husband the summer before. Delicate, white-haired Madame Jumon, talking beside the buffet to Mrs. Pritchard, had only last summer lost her middleaged son.

  Always entertained by the vagaries of human conduct, January distracted himself from the pain in his arms and back by picking out exactly where in the ballroom the frontier between American and French ran, an invisible Rubicon curving from the second of the Corinthian pilasters on the north wall, to a point just south of the enormous, carven double doors opening to the upstairs hall. French territory centered around Mrs. Pritchard, plump and plain and sweet faced, and the brilliantly animated Madame Jumon, though now and then a Creole gentleman would pass that invisible line to discuss business with the Colonel's friends: bankers, sugar brokers, importers, and landlords, the planters having long since departed New Orleans for their acres. Every so often one of the younger Americans would solicit the favor of a dance with one of Mrs. Pritchard's younger Marcillac or Jumon cousins and to do them justice, January had to admit that for Americans they were as well behaved as they probably knew how to be. For the most part, the damsel would be rescued by a brother or a cousin or a younger uncle twice-removed who would reply politely that Mademoiselle was desolate, but the dance was already promised to him. When MadamMjumon's surviving son, a craggily saturnine gentleman of forty-five, showed signs of leading Pritchard's middle-aged maiden sister out onto the floor, Madame quickly excused herself from conversation and intercepted the erring gallant; January was hard put to hide a smile. "Don't see what they got to be stuck-up about," grumbled a short, badly pomaded gentleman with a paste ruby the size of an orange pip in his stickpin. "I don't care if their granddaddies were the King of Goddam France, they're citizens of the United States now, just like we are. I got a good mind to go back and take that gal's brother to account..."

  "Mr. Greenaway, please!" Emily Redfern, a stout little widow-who a moment ago had been bargaining like a Levantine trader with the burly Hubert Granville of the Bank of Louisiana-laid a simpering black-mitted hand on the pomaded gentleman's arm. "That was Desiree Lafrenniere! Of course her family..." The Widow Redfern, January knew, had been trying for years to get on the good side of the old Creole families. Little did she know how impossible that task was. Mr. Greenaway's pale blue eyes moved from the widow's square-jawed, cold-eyed countenance to her exceedingly expensive pearls. He smiled ingratiatingly. "Well, if it wouldn't intrude on your grief too much, M'am, perhaps you would favor me by sitting this one out with me..." "I'll lay you it'll be Greenaway and Jonchere, before midnight," said Hannibal Sefton, when an hour and a half later he and January slipped down the back stairs for a breath of air. "Greenaway's been drinking like a fish and he always starts up on the Bank of the United States when he does that. Jonchere's called out the last two men who supported Jackson..."

  "I'll put my money on the Colonel himself," said January, and gingerly moved his shoulder again. There had to be some position in which he didn't hurt.

  "Call out one of his own guests?" Hannibal took his laudanum bottle from his pocket and took a swig; then offered it hospitably to January, who waved it away. He'd seen, and heard, Hannibal play like the harps of Heaven when he was so lubricated as to be barely coherent, but for himself music was a matter for the mind as well as for the soul. And the thought of being that defenseless terrified him. Being barely able to lift his own arms was fearful enough.

  "A Frenchman? I think he'll call out either Bringier or Madame Jumon's son..." For close to a year now January and Hannibal had entertained themselves at every engagement they played by laying wagers on who would challenge whom to an affair of honor before the evening was through. It was fortunate they played for pennies-or picayunes, at this low ebb of the season-for January could have won or lost a fortune at the game.

  "Mathurin? With the Jumon money I'd think Pritchard would thank him for showing interest in that poor sister of his."

  A sharp rustle sounded in the trees to the side of the house. January held up his hand, listening. The drums were silent.

  Aeneas and the original waiter had been joined by a third man, young and barely five feet tall, hastily buttoning a white linen jacket and rinsing something off his hands with water dipped from the rain barrel. With him was a young woman in the first stages of pregnancy, retying the headscarf that all women of color, slave or free, were by law required to wear. They turned immediately to lay out the slices of beef and ham, the tarts and cakes and petits fours, on the yellow-flowered plates. "I'll be back," said January softly. He slipped down the gallery steps and around the corner of the house into the trees.

  Given the trouble his curiosity had caused him in the past, January reflected that he should know better. In any case, he had a good idea of what he would find in the darkness where the trees got thick. Though by this time, he told himself, if she'd been there-been part of it-she'd be gone. And what good would it do me to know
? He didn't want to admit it, but the brought back memories.

  Mats of leaves and pale shaggy curtains of moss quickly obscured the bright cool rectangles of the windows. Light glinted on puddles of standing water, and the ground gave squishily underfoot. Twenty feet from the house, January scented blood again and the heavy grit of drums had quenched smoke still hanging in the air. He listened, but all was still. Even so, he felt their eyes. Not those who'd risked a whipping to sneak out and follow the sound of the drums. Not those who'd sung the keening, eerie, driving rhythms of those songs in a half-forgotten tongue. The eyes he felt on his back were the eyes of those they'd come to see, to touch; to sing to and to give themselves to, flesh and hearts and souls. January knew them well.

  Papa Legba, guardian of all gates and doors, warden of the crossroad. Beautiful Ezili, in all her many forms. Zombi-Damballah, the Serpent King. Ogu of the sword and the fire January quickly pushed the thought of that burning-eyed warrior from his mind. And the Baron Samedi, the Baron Cemetery, boneyard god grinning white through the darkness..

  A hundred feet from the house, trees had been felled. Here new construction would begin with the first frost of autumn. Embers still glowed where a pit had been dug, quenched now with dirt.

  From his pocket January took a box of lucifers, and scratched one on the paper. It showed him the rucked earth where the veves had been drawn, the dark spatters of spilt rum and the darker dribblings of blood. Near the pit a headless black chicken lay, feet still twitching, ringed by fragmented silver Spanish bits. Two plates also lay on the ground, each likewise surrounded by silver. One was heaped with rice and chickpeas. The other held a cigar and a glass of rum.

  Those whose aid had been sought were known for liking tobacco, rum, and blood.

  January lit another match and stepped closer, careful where he put his feet. The plates were white German porcelain, painted with yellow flowers. Around them, inside the ring of silver, dark against the paler dust of the ground, a line had been drawn in sprinkled earth.