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“Lord hates a man as can’t laugh.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“I thought they’s river pirates,” Cal said. “What’s with the horses?”

He stood with Sarah and Thalanes in the Place d’Armes, a broad cobbled square in the center of the Quarter, staring up at an enormous bronze statue. They had been deposited by the melodious Germans at the Mississippi docks at midday, hearing the deep ringing of church bells even as they walked up the long wharf, and had made their way here; Thalanes was familiar with the city, and the distance between the Mississippi River and the Place d’Armes was short.

The two beastkind had held back at the gate to the Place d’Armes.

“We will await you outside,” Picaw had sung.

Cal had never been to a city as large as Louisiana’s metropolis—there were lucrative cattle markets much closer to Calhoun Mountain. He found New Orleans fascinating, with its iron balconies, its hanging greenery, its boardwalks, and its motley population. He’d only heard three or four snatches of English spoken since they’d arrived, and they’d been wading constantly through a bubbling sea of humanity.

Sarah had seemed not to be paying attention to any of it, as if her mind were elsewhere. She would periodically take the improvised patch off her face and gaze upriver, and doing so always left her looking troubled and tired.

Cal was not enthusiastic about the idea that they were being stalked by dead men—Sarah had told him of her vision—but he stayed calm. He kept his eyes open, and the Elector’s gun loaded with a silver ball.

The Place d’Armes roiled with people. Tarock readers with thumb-worn wooden folding tables, a turban-wearing hedge witch clutching a chicken under one arm and offering curses and love charms at cut rates, jugglers with batons and glass balls, a sword-swallower with a two-edged serpentine appetizer halfway down his gullet, and a ragged, shuffling band comprised of banjo, horn, lute, and three battered copper pots competed against two gesticulating friars and a university man publicly declaiming his thesis on the inevitable cycles of history, all to the jeers, catcalls and hoorahs of a shifting Babel. Cal even caught a glimpse of beastkind, a couple of shuffling anteater-headed things dragging their long snouts close to the ground.

The statue around which all this sweating, exerting, exhorting humanity swarmed was colossal. Rising from a square marble platform, it depicted two mustachioed men on horseback, each armed with a long pistol. One horse reared as its rider sighted and fired into the distance, west and upriver; the other plunged forward at a right angle toward Decatur Street and the Mississippi, its rider spurring its flanks and waving his gun in the air.

“I’m not surprised that in Appalachee they’re known as pirates,” Thalanes said. “But of course the people here are happy that Andrew Jackson’s ambitions were thwarted by Jean and Pierre Lafitte. Louisiana thinks of the Lafitte brothers as respectable militiamen and heroes. I believe Pierre owns a blacksmith shop, and Jean is still, as they say, on the account.”

“You mean he’s a pirate,” Sarah interpreted.

“But a respectable one,” Cal added.

“Well,” Thalanes said, “as I hear it, he mostly steals from the Spanish.”

“The Calhouns and plenty of other Appalachee folk are perfectly content that the Lafittes stopped Andy Jackson from crowning himself king of the Mississippi,” Sarah pointed out. “We’re mostly opposed to people declaring themselves kings.”

“I imagine that’s true,” Thalanes conceded. “Mostly.”

“Lord hates a man as gets too big for his britches,” Cal said.

“Would you like to see him?” Thalanes asked. “You could look at the fit of his britches yourself.”

“You mean Jackson?” Sarah frowned. “Isn’t he dead?”

“Ain’t they somethin’ famous about their pistols, though?” Cal tried to remember. “Weren’t they magic, or some such?”

“They were blessed.” Sarah knew everything.

“They were consecrated by the bishop before the battle,” Thalanes told them. “After the battle, the Lafittes laid the pistols on the altar in gratitude for their victory. I think they may still be in the cathedral.”

They walked on, past two stump speakers, hollering at each other from three feet apart on separate barrels. The two men were a study in contrasts, one short, plump, blond, and handsome, and the other dark, long in the leg, gangly, and scowling. They yelled to be heard over the crowd, but Cal found their words surprisingly droll.

“But Your Honor speaks very harshly of Wisdom,” the tall one shouted, “even, some might say, to the point of defaming Her. Was She not the serpent that Moses raised on a pole in the desert, that healed the children of Israel?”

Cal heard a few scattered hand-claps in the crowd.

“No, sir,” the short man rejoined, “I have not heard that She was. I have always understood, however, that there was a serpent in the garden, and that our first parents—or should I say rather, my first parents—took great harm therefrom.”

There were loud guffaws in response, and a low hissing boo when the man said ‘my first parents.’

“Damn right!” yelled a dirty man in a slouch hat, leaning on a long rifle.

The gangly fellow grinned. “Oh, that is an old chestnut.” He somehow managed to shout and sound mild at the same time. “Even Paul knew to warn the Corinthians that Old Scratch may appear as an angel of light.”

More subdued laughter. They were past the debaters and moving on, and Cal heard just one last retort from the smaller man.

“I might be more persuaded,” he bellowed, “if the serpent’s children didn’t insist on filling the Ohio with their thousand Babel towers, cluttering up the place like some blighted plain of Shinar!”

Then the two men were gone and the St. Louis Cathedral stared down at Cal, its three slate steeples frowning in disapproval. The tall, thin windows of the cathedral, rounded at the tops, its stacked columns and its plain, workaday clock face gave it the appearance of the palace of a stern king in some fairyland.

The cathedral was flanked by two stone mansions. They looked identical to Cal, or nearly so, each showering two rows of stone arches upon the Place d’Armes, mounted underneath a sloping mansard roof and a-glitter with glass windows.

“It jest ain’t right that a bishop’d live in such a fancy place,” he grumbled. “The buildings on this square reek of money.”

“The bishop shares your discomfort,” the monk told him, surveying the cathedral and its companions. “That’s why he only occupies a few rooms of his palace, and lets the Polites and the Gutenbergians have the rest. This way.” He ambled toward the mansion on the right.

“What’s in the other one?” Cal gestured left and loped easily into the monk’s wake.

“Polites…that’s St. Reginald Pole, isn’t it? Aren’t they alchemists, or something?” Sarah asked.

“The Polites promote Christian study of gramarye,” Thalanes answered, “in all its permissible specialties.”

“What’s a permissible specialty?” she asked. “Healing the sick, multiplying loaves and fishes, casting out devils, that sort of thing?”

“They’s a difference between magic and miracles,” Cal muttered.

“Views differ,” Thalanes said, “even among the Polites. But a Polite who started dabbling in necromancy or demonology, for instance, would quickly find himself expelled and probably excommunicated. Some alchemy is problematic. Summoning and binding angels or other powers of Heaven—what is sometimes called theurgy.”

“And the other one?” Cal repeated. “Who’s so fancy as he gets a buildin’ jest as big and shiny as the Polites?”

“Government,” Thalanes said. “The other palace holds the offices and meeting chambers of the City Council. The chevalier gives them impressive chambers instead of meaningful power.”

“Lucky for the Polites the bishop didn’t shack ’em up with a gang of Mattheans,” Cal quipped.

“You won’t find any followers of St. Matthew Hopkins in New Orleans.” Thalanes said. “I’d be surprised to see a Witchfinder anywhere south of Philadelphia, really.”

Cal grunted. Waste of a good joke. Lord hates a man as can’t laugh, and didn’t Abraham laugh when Sarah was with child? Come to think of it, maybe it was Sarah who laughed.

“Maybe that’s too bad,” Thalanes continued. “Maybe a few Mattheans would be just what we need.”

“What?” Sarah snapped. “You anxious to git yourself tried for witchcraft?”

“Matthew Hopkins persecuted spellcasters of all sorts,” the monk explained with a queer little smile. “Including Oliver Cromwell. Before Cromwell was ever the Necromancer, when he was just the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England and beginning to hunt down and kill England’s Firstborn, Hopkins opposed him and tried to prosecute him for sorcery. He failed, of course, and Cromwell had him executed on Tyburn Tree, but not before Hopkins had a lot of Cromwell’s minions hanged. He was demented and wicked, but he was the first rebel against an even more demented and wicked man.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Sarah suggested.

“No,” Thalanes said. “They’re both my enemies. But I wouldn’t mind seeing them fight each other. Here we are.” He looked up and pointed.

A row of tall poles held suspended a series of iron cages, each exactly the size of a man. All held scraps of cloth, leather and bone, and a few held entire skeletons. Inside the cage Thalanes indicated was a corpse, face rotted beyond recognition and collapsing in decay. Bone showed through the split, leathery skin of the corpse’s face, and the hands were gone, fallen off if they hadn’t been cut off in the first place. It wore a blue military uniform, with tarnished brass buttons running down the chest in parallel rows, and the hair on its head was a thick white mane.

“What in Jerusalem’s that?” Cal felt a little uneasy at the sight.

“That,” Thalanes said, “is Mr. Andrew Jackson.”

“King Andy,” Sarah said softly. What was she thinking?

Thalanes walked on, and Sarah and Cal followed.

They approached the palace, and Cal looked at a clutch of men and women simmering under the arches, knitted together in brow-furrowing conversation. “I seen a few Wanderin’ Johnnies come through Nashville, and they ain’t never dressed in red. I guess mostly they jest carried books.”

“The adherents of the Humble Order of St. Reginald Pole wear red,” Thalanes said. “They have no other icon. The Gutenbergians have no official icon at all, though sometimes they use the image of an open book.”

“How many of them are there?” Cal asked. “That’s a big buildin’.”

“I suspect that most of the building is library, laboratory, and lecture hall,” Thalanes said. “The Polites are a small order.”

“They jest ain’t that many hexers,” Cal agreed.

As he neared the Polites’ building the monk turned, guiding them around it and down the narrow street running along its left side, separating the palace from the cathedral. He marched up to a small, unmarked door in the palace’s wall and rapped on the wood.

“Remember me again what we’re a-doin’ here?” Cal felt ill at ease standing on the doorstep of a bishop, no matter how humble or pious the man might be. In fact, the reputation for humility and piety made it worse—Calvin preferred his bishops arrogant, worldly, and far away. It fit his preconceptions better. Calvin had put his question to Sarah, but he shot a sidelong look at Thalanes.

“It was my decision, Cal,” Sarah said, and Thalanes bowed his head.

There was an awkward pause and Cal regretted that he’d said anything. He tried to break the silence. “I don’t know for fancy houses, but ain’t this a servants’ entrance?”

“Yes,” the monk agreed with a small smile. “I rather think that’s the point.”

The door opened to reveal a slight, stooped man, with a deeply-lined brown face framed between the stiff white collar of his black priest’s shirt and the tightly-curled growth of white heather above his forehead.

“Thalanes!” The stooped man immediately embraced the monk. The little old man looked so benign that Calvin immediately felt embarrassed. He noticed that Thalanes was pulling his old trick of standing very close to a body, closer than Calvin would have been comfortable with, but the bishop didn’t object.

Priests just had no sense of personal space. 

“Your Grace,” Thalanes said, disentangling himself from the hug and smiling. “May I present my traveling companions? These are Sarah and Calvin Carpenter.” Sarah curtseyed. Calvin made to bow, but the old man seized his arm in a tight grip and shook his hand.

“The Carpenters. Like the Holy Family.” The bishop took Sarah’s face in his hands and kissed her cheeks. “But in my house, you must call me Chinwe, because if you call me Your Grace or Father, my old friend Thalanes will insist on doing the same, and I could never bear such treatment.” He stepped back from the door and ushered them in. “You must forgive me if my English is rusty. We are accustomed to speaking French in this town.”

The apartment they entered was small and crammed full of books. Books marched in double file on the wooden floor along the baseboards of the hallway, books tottered on high shelves nailed haphazardly onto all the walls, tall piles of books swayed on top of every piece of furniture. Just when he’d almost felt himself warming to the bishop, the old man had to go and ruin it.

“That there’s a lot of books,” he complained.

“They are my great treasure,” the priest said, “which makes me a very poor Christian, for does not the Lord exhort us to lay up our treasures in Heaven? And yet mine are stacked upon the carpet, where the moth does indeed corrupt. Please,” he smiled, “lay your burdens down here.”

They dropped their gear and arms in a small room opening from the hallway.

“I am glad you are here, old friend.” The bishop ushered them all into a small kitchen where a cast-iron stove squatted on slates in the corner and the smell of spiced chicken and rice punched Calvin in the stomach. The walls were egg-yolk yellow, clean but bare, other than a simple wooden cross on one wall. “It is a wonderful surprise to see you. I have an unpleasant task ahead of me, and I need my resolve strengthened. Also, you are just in time to share our food. No fried basilisk or broiled sea serpent, but there is enough for everyone!”

A younger man with the same smile rose from a seat beside the stove. He, too, wore priestly black with the white collar. “I’ll set three more places, Father,” he said, and quickly plated up food for the new arrivals.

“You must ignore the way this one addresses me.” The bishop leaned in close to Cal conspiratorially. “His name is Chigozie, and he really is my son. Ha!”

They sat on mismatched stools around the small table. The five of them crowded the room to capacity; Cal ate with his elbows pinned to his sides and he ran a constant risk of bumping a shelf of crockery behind him.

“Where’s your other son, Chinwe?” Thalanes asked. “Is Ofodile not pursuing the family profession?”

“My brother has chosen a different occupation.” Chigozie didn’t look up.

“You may find him in the Vieux Carré if you are here long,” the bishop added. “We do not see him often; he is a man of business, and has much on his hands. But if you see him, you must call him Etienne—he goes by his second name now.”

“Etienne does indeed have much on his hands.” Again Chigozie kept his gaze focused on his plate.

The rice was heavy with peppers and onions and Calvin had never eaten anything with so much flavor. He wolfed it down and tried to listen.

“I’ve long owed you a friendly visit, Chinwe,” Thalanes said, “and, sadly, this isn’t it. I come to you in need and in strange circumstances, with evil at my heels. But if I can be of any assistance to you in your pastoral travails, please tell me how to do so.”

The bishop chuckled. “My old friend, you cannot poke beehives with a stick and then complain when the bees come after you.”

Thalanes smiled ruefully. “There may be someone in this world who can teach me the art of leaving beehives alone, but it isn’t you, Chinwe. I fear, though, that you won’t be pleased to see the bees I’ve stirred up.”

“No?” the bishop asked. “Then let me tell you first about my bee.”

“Only one? A solitary bee hardly seems worth the attention of a beekeeper of your prowess.”

“One is enough if it is the right bee. Only one bee troubles me, but he is a very large bee, with many drones. He is a great, fat bee who feeds…from a golden lily.”

Some information had passed from the bishop to the monk, but Cal had missed it. Thalanes’s head snapped up from his rice and his eyebrows shot to the top of his forehead.

“Why does this bee trouble you, Chinwe?” Thalanes continued after a moment.

The bishop set down his fork and knife. “I have received a confession of one of the bee’s drones,” he went on. “A written confession, which in itself is strange. The content of the confession is troubling, too; it tells me the bee of the golden lily is a thief. For many years, he has been stealing honey from another beehive. A very important beehive, rich with honey and peopled by bees with mighty stings. And now, I fear, it is my duty to confront the great, fat bee, and remind him of the walls where his own hive ends.”

Thalanes knotted his fingers together and raised his eyebrows. “How may I help you, Chinwe?”

“Your presence alone fortifies my will, and in the end it is not such a very large thing. Just a simple conversation between a beekeeper and a bee. Ha!” The bishop picked up his utensils again and resumed eating. “Tell me about your bees, and what an old bee-man like me can do to help.”

“I have two needs, Chinwe,” Thalanes said. “The first is this: I am looking for a man.”

“Can you not use your gramarye to find this person?” Chigozie asked. “My father speaks often of your skill at magic.”

Thalanes shook his head. “I haven’t seen this man for years, I don’t know where he is, and I have nothing of his to use in a scrying. Gramarye in this case would be scarcely more useful than simply walking about and using my eyes, and it would be much more tiring.”

“If your vision is insufficient,” the bishop asked, his dark eyes glittering in his lined face, “what about hers?”

Cal rocked back on his chair. Sarah and Thalanes both had surprised looks on their faces.

“She has a great gift, it’s true,” the monk said slowly, “but I believe it’s beyond her to find this man.”

“How did you know?” Sarah asked the bishop. “Are you a wizard, too?”

The little old man bowed his head. “I have no gift of gramarye. I am just a parish priest who sometimes dreams, when times are troubled. Recently, I have dreamed of a one-eyed queen who can see the entire Mississippi. I think I am not the only one to dream of her.”

“Perhaps you’ve also dreamed of the man I’m looking for?” Thalanes wondered.

“I doubt it. Tell me who he is, old friend. Perhaps he is a parishioner. Perhaps I can take you directly to him.”

Thalanes nodded. “I’m looking for a man I knew as Captain Sir William Johnston Lee. He was a soldier, an officer, a gentleman, a great servant to Empress Hannah and her husband. He distinguished himself in the Spanish War, in Texia, and at the Siege of Mobile. He has been in New Orleans, I believe, for a long time.”

The bishop shook his head. “I think I would remember such a person.”

“I believe Captain Lee has fallen on hard times. He may not be recognizable as the man he once was. And I think he may be using the name Bad Bill.”

“Bad Bill? Bad Bill?” Chigozie’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Do you know this man?” the bishop asked his son.

Chigozie shook his head. “I do not know him, but I have heard of him. He is…he is not the sort of man my father is likely to know.”

“What sort of man is he?” Cal felt uneasy.

“He is the sort of man my brother would associate with,” Chigozie said, after some hesitation. “You should speak with Etienne. He has…he does much business in the Vieux Carré.”

“Thank you,” Thalanes said.

The bishop shrugged. “What else, old friend?”

The monk hesitated. “As I seek my former comrade, Captain Lee,” he finally said, his voice heavy, “so I in turn am sought, by a former enemy.”

The bishop looked worried. “Who is this enemy?”

Thalanes sighed. “I fear there may be a very old enemy, indeed, behind the curtain. Our footsteps are dogged by dead men, my friend. By Black Tom Fairfax and the Sorcerer Robert Hooke.”

Chigozie dropped his fork and it clattered on the table. “Did I hear you say the Lazars are following you? Thomas Fairfax, the Scourge of the Low Countries? And Hooke, Isaac Newton’s Shadow? Were they not destroyed, more than a century ago?”

“You heard me correctly,” the monk agreed. “Black Tom and the Sorcerer were not destroyed by John Churchill’s Glorious Revolution, only driven out of England. And two days ago, I saw Hooke and Fairfax both in a vision. They were coming this way.”

“Can you not mislead them, or hide your tracks, with your craft?” the bishop asked.

“I’ve done what I can,” Thalanes said. “Still they come. Either they have some other way of knowing where we are, or Robert Hooke is simply a more powerful wizard than I am. Both possibilities are grim. Both are likely.”

“I saw them this morning,” Sarah said softly.

“In New Orleans?” the bishop asked her.

She shook her head. “Not yet. But soon. Maybe as soon as tomorrow.”

There was a terrible silence. Cal was suddenly very aware of the lightness of his belt and the fact that his weapons were all in the other room.

When the bishop spoke again, his words surprised Cal. “I have seen my own death. God has shown it to me, and the face of the man who will kill me. I didn’t know the face, but I saw that he wore a hat and fired a gun. He had the eyes of a doomed man, so doomed I felt compassion for him. Perhaps it was a Lazar.”

The room felt very, very small.

“I’m sorry, my friend.” Thalanes’s voice was strained. “I knew evil was at my heels, but I didn’t understand how great an evil it was.”

“God’s will.” The bishop ruminated for a few moments. “I do not think I have any weapons I can give you.”

“What about the Lafitte pistols?” Calvin asked.

The bishop smiled. “Well,” he said, “they are there behind the altar, but I do not think they will help you. They are very ordinary pistols, and are not regularly maintained. Do you need pistols?” He stood, and rummaged in a drawer under the kitchen counter.

“I ain’t much of a shot with a handgun, anyways.” Cal shrugged. “I jest heard they’s special.”

The bishop turned back to face the table with a small purse in his hand. “They are special pistols. But they are not magical. Take this; at least I can help you purchase supplies.” He handed the purse to Calvin. “I assume you are the one handling the silver in this group?”

“Yessir, I reckon I am.” Cal took the money.

“Thank you,” Thalanes murmured.

“Excuse me,” Chigozie said. He stood up from the table and walked out.

“So how do we find Etienne?” Cal asked—it seemed like the practical question that needed answering.

“Chigozie will help you,” the bishop told him. “Chigozie!” he called.

The younger priest came back into the kitchen, holding a small knife in a leather sheath. “Yes,” he agreed. “I will take you to Etienne’s…office. I have some duties in the cathedral this afternoon, though, and in any case, Etienne works late. May I take you tonight? Perhaps you would care to rest here for a few hours in the meantime.”

“We have other errands in New Orleans,” Thalanes demurred. “Maybe we can come find you here again this evening, and you could take us to find Ofodile…Etienne?”

“Of course, as you wish.” Chigozie held up the little knife, and Cal saw that its sheath was elaborately tooled, and that its hilt was wrapped in leather. “I wish I had a better weapon to offer than this,” he said, and he pulled it from its sheath. “It is a letter opener—the Bishop of Miami sent it to me as a gift upon my ordination—but if it were sharpened to a finer edge, I believe it would be meaningful as a weapon.”

Cal was about to protest that he hadn’t held a knife so tiny since he got out of short pants, but then his eye caught the dull gleam of the blade and he realized why Father Chigozie was offering them his letter opener.

The knife was made of silver.

“Thank you.” He accepted the weapon.

* * *

The Heron King clubbed William Penn in the head. For the first time in many days, Obadiah laughed.

“But, sir,” cried the Penn puppet in a shrill, nasal voice, “I shall have this land whether thou wilt or no. My Germans, my Englishmen, and my Lenni Lenape desire a land where they may live in peace.” He wore a Pennslander’s hat, round-crowned, wide-brimmed, and black, and curly white hair fell to his shoulders. He was dressed all in blue, with conspicuous gold thread.

Thump, thump. More blows on Penn’s head.

“I am king here, Brother Onas,” the Heron King boomed back, “undying and unchallenged, and I regard thee not!” The Heron King puppet was a long-necked bird with a three-pointed brass crown on its head. Its puppet body consisted mostly of long legs ending in more or less birdlike claws, but it also had a pair of hands that held its club. “Fie upon thee for a knave and a trespasser!”

Obadiah watched the puppets have at each other upon their tiny wooden stage and laughed harder than the show deserved. The puppets were marionettes, innocent and childlike in all their exaggerated movements, they weren’t responsible for their actions. For puppets, there was indeed a higher world, and it was only two feet over their heads, pulling their strings. And no matter how much puppets pummeled each other with their little clubs, none of them was ever hurt.

The puppet show was the first thing that Obadiah had been able to find really engaging since the night he had failed to kidnap Sarah.

“An thou resist, thou spindle-shanked humbug, I shall be compelled to use main force, and shall take the land of peace from thee!”

William Penn produced a club and began thumping the Heron King back.

“Imbecile!” The Heron King dropped his club and fled off the stage.

“Booby!” Penn did a little high-kneed dance of victory, to the cheers and applause of the crowd. Obadiah patted his hands together, too.

Unexpectedly, the Heron King rushed back on stage, this time holding a much bigger club. “Varlet!” he roared, and set upon Penn with animal ferocity. He knocked away Penn’s club and pounded him to the ground, shrieking and whistling.

Penn raised a supplicating arm and waved it at the audience. “Help! Help! Oh Lord, is there no help for the widow’s son?”

Obadiah laughed harder.

Was this what the world was like for the gods? A cramped wooden stage, a cheap curtain, and millions upon millions of puppets on strings?

Maybe it was finally time, Obadiah thought, to get to know his father’s faith as other Christians knew it. In his mind’s eye a scene unfolded that had never taken place in real life—Obadiah and Father Angleton sitting at a campfire, leafing through Obadiah’s Bible together and discussing weighty matters of life, death, eternity, and love.

“Obadiah!” Father Angleton barked.

Obadiah jerked about and realized that he had come to a dead stop in the middle of the street to stare at the puppets. New Orleans sizzled with energy and behind him his string of mules drifted on its line, but he had been completely absorbed in the marionettes.

He had fallen behind. The Blues were gone, and Father Angleton was hissing at him in anger and frustration because he had had to come back to find his hired man.

“Obadiah!” the Right Reverend Father snapped again.

“Aye,” he said dully. “Sorry, Father. I…”

He had been distracted even before he had seen the puppets, thinking about Sarah, wondering when he would see her. He had forgotten he was leading the baggage train of the Philadelphia Blues, and it had been easy to let himself become entranced by the show.

“I was finkink, Father,” he said, “mayhap you an’ I could read some Bible together in the mornink. Discuss a wee bit of feology.”

“What?” Angleton’s eyes were incredulous and indignant.

“I asked the price of a pot, to replace the one what lost its ’andle,” Obadiah lied, changing the subject. “I fell behind.”

“I don’t have time for this, Obadiah.” Angleton rode away.

Obadiah held his tongue and followed his master.

With similar reluctance, the mules followed him in turn.

New Orleans was nearly as large as Philadelphia and London, though less sprawling than either of those. It looked more like a Spanish or a French city than an English one, with its continental buildings and its exotic plants. There was greenery everywhere Obadiah looked, in myriad ferns, jasmine, wisteria, and lilies that crawled up the walls, hung from balconies and clotted the street corners. Outside the city walls, the countryside was a jungle of cypress, magnolia, walnut, hickory, and those eerie oak trees dripping with moss, like green-haired crones stretching out over the pike and muttering in the breeze of the horrible fates that awaited outsiders in Louisiana. New Orleans sounded French or Castilian too, in its hubbub.

Obadiah missed Sarah.

The pike had ended at a ferry, by means of which they had crossed the narrow mouth of the Pontchartrain Sea. On the far side of the Pontchartrain they had rejoined the squad of Blues that had split off to ride the Natchez Trace; they had made their discreet report to Captain Berkeley and Father Angleton, and then the entire company had ridden into and across New Orleans. Obadiah was impressed by Angleton’s confidence and knowledge of the city, even as he felt increasingly estranged from the Right Reverend Father.

But then, he felt increasingly estranged from himself.

They were passing out of the lively zone called the Quarter now, across a fantastically wide boulevard full of buying and selling humanity. They rode toward more genteel parts of the city on its western side, full of larger houses, iron-fenced homes with carefully manicured grass growing around them, and many edifices that looked like commercial or government buildings, still within the great stone walls that kept out pirates, Texians, and beastkind.

By force of being even more cantankerous than they were, Obadiah hauled the mules forward, brutal in his determination not to be left behind again.

Father Angleton set a brisk pace; soon they turned right around a solid brick building so large it occupied its own block, its doors guarded by men in blue and gold fleur-de-lis livery and marked with the legend City of New Orleans, and ran into the tail of the Philadelphia Blues. A receding column of horses’ rumps was the view of the Blues to which Obadiah had become accustomed, and as a matter of habit he slowed, but this time he followed the Right Reverend Father, mule string and all, to the front of the line. The Blues paid him with looks of complete indifference as he passed. But for the first time in two weeks, Obadiah was at the front of the company, and he felt wanted, or at least visible.

Captain Berkeley raised his hand to stop the column. They had reached the chevalier’s palace.

The palace brooded in its gray stone between a tall iron fence and acres of green grass, the colonnaded portico surrounding it masked by groves of magnolia and sparkling fountains. Above the portico, further rows of columns sprang skyward, supporting tiers of balconies that piled jumbled up to the heavens, like a great stone wedding cake.

Obadiah imagined himself getting married with such a cake. A Christian wedding filled his head, rather than the sacrificial wedding feast of the followers of Herne and Wayland that he and Peg had once planned. He imagined himself, to his own surprise, as a squire, wearing a long-tailed coat with brass buttons and a shiny black hat, shaved and greeting all the county notables, walking cane inscribing elegant circles in the air or tucked insouciantly under his arm. Peg, walking a carpet of flowers with the traditional wedding horseshoe in hand. Sarah, rather. Signing the register. Gifting the parson. Vows outside the chapel door. Cutting the cake and serving it, but not the top, not the christening cake, that would be saved for the baptism of their first child. He looked up at the chevalier’s palace and tried to imagine which part of it would be the christening cake. He hoped their children got her looks.

Except for the eye.

They trotted across the street to a two-story gatehouse, wide enough for two carriages to pass through abreast. Its portcullis was up and a dozen men stood guard, again in the blue and gold, bearing the fleur-de-lis, armed with pikes and pistols.

Father Angleton reached under his tabard—he had changed into the formal hammer-and-nail suit this morning, in anticipation of reaching New Orleans—and produced a card, which he handed to the commander of the gate guard.

“I am Father Ezekiel Angleton,” he said, “Chaplain to the Imperial House Light Dragoons. This is Captain Sir Daniel Berkeley, Captain of the Dragoons. We have come to pay our respects to the Chevalier of New Orleans.”

The commander simply nodded and sent the card inside with one of his men. At Berkeley’s gesture, the Blues brought up their line into a more compact formation and stayed mounted. Obadiah pulled the mule string in close and shushed the beasts. They all stood in silence, inspecting each other.

The man sent inside returned, and he came accompanied. The second person was not in a soldier’s uniform, but wore a crisp coat, neck cloth and cravat, and had a thick gold chain on his chest. He was tall and bony, with a severe face that looked both French and Indian of some sort. He made a rolling motion with one hand and the portcullis was promptly drawn up.

“Father Angleton,” he said, bowing slightly to the Right Reverend Father. “The chevalier is pleased to receive your visit. He regrets he cannot receive you personally yet, but he is engaged in business matters. I am René du Plessis, Seneschal of the Palais du Chevalier.” This man was a servant like Obadiah, but a servant with standing, a man who could treat his master’s guests almost as equals.

“Many thanks to the chevalier, I am sure,” Captain Berkeley replied. “Mr. du Plessis, might you indicate to me some inn or hostel where I could quarter my men?”

“Certainly, Captain,” the seneschal replied. “You may install them in the City Building, which you see there behind you, across the street. The Gendarme Station in the building has extra bunks. They will need to circle around the building to get in; the entrance to the station is on the Perdido Street side.”

Obadiah experienced a tortured moment of indecision as Father Angleton and Captain Berkeley turned with the seneschal and entered the chevalier’s Palace, while the rest of the Blues peeled away and headed back the way they had come. He wanted to follow the Right Reverend Father, but Angleton didn’t look back, and as he receded across the wide courtyard, past a pair of waiting coaches and lines of footmen and guards, the lead rope of the mule string grew heavier and heavier in Obadiah’s hand. Finally, the rope grew so heavy that it pulled him back, and he turned away from the master who had turned away from him, drifted listlessly back across the street and followed the Blues to their quarters.

* * *

Bill woke to a pair of shoes in his view again. He counted them; two shoes; so the feet did not belong to Bayard. And they were buckled; Jacob Hop. He rolled over and looked up into the smiling, blond-framed face.

“Just when I thought I had lost hope,” he quipped, but didn’t bother sitting up. He felt drained, as if the act of forging a letter to the chevalier had consumed the last of his vitality, and now he could only lie spent. He saw chinks of light in the walls and frowned—he was used to seeing the Dutchman, at least in his talking persona, at night. “Is evening upon us, Jake?”

“Yes, another night is almost here,” Hop said.

Another night. And another, and another, and another. Bayard had not again whipped Bill, but neither had he again brought Bill liquor. Bill felt weak and tired.

“I hope you’ve brought me a pistol this time,” he said. “Or the keys.”

Hop handed Bill a bottle: rum. “The whisky is all gone.”

“It’s all the same, suh,” Bill lied, and took a slug of the rum. If he’d wanted a sailor’s drink, he’d have worn rope shoes and a ribbon in his hat. He didn’t know any sailors’ toasts.

“There are no guns on the ship,” Hop told Bill. “And the keys are locked up. What would you do with a pistol?”

“Shoot myself.” Silly Dutchman. If he had a pistol, he would kill Bayard Prideux, the next time he dared to show his face. “Keys seem like a surpassingly strange thing to keep locked up, don’t they?”

“You can’t shoot yourself now, Bill.” A mischievous smile crept across Hop’s face. “This is all just about to get interesting.”


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Framed