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"Michie Benjamin!" She ran toward him, stopped, staring, as he held up his hand. "What in the name of heaven? Is my sister here?" And, as she started for the rear door of the house, "Don't speak of me if there's anyone here but her."
Becky went inside. January waited under the gallery, hesitant even to go into the kitchen with his scratched feet and muddy clothes. All he could think was, Mama will never let me hear the end of this.
He wondered what his mother would do, if Xavier Peralta had already used his influence to send the police for his, January's, arrest.
He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know.
Minou appeared in the dark of the house, stepped outside, like a blossom of Queen A
"Dear God!" cried Minou, but for a moment there was only worried watchfulness, swift calculation in Olympe's dark eyes. Then, "What happened? That policeman was here this morning, to talk to you, he said."
A riverboat would have brought Peralta back to town in eight hours, maybe nine, thought January. Enough passed on the lower river that he could have signaled one within a few hours of the disappearance being discovered.
"I gave him your letter, Ben. Becky, heat some water now, immediately. You said if you hadn't returned by Sunday, and he said he'd been to Mama's house already. Ben, you didn't-?"
He shook his head. "Can you send someone to the grocery on the upstream lakeside corner of Rue Conti, a couple of blocks above the turning basin? Give the owner two reales and get my boots back. And send Therese over to Mama's house and get me some clothes."
"I'll send one of my boys," said Olympe, in her Hecate voice of silver-veined iron. "We don't know what the police know, or what they think, but that policeman who came, he's no fool." As she spoke she
slipped past the cook and into the kitchen, coming out with a blue-and-white German-made dish of jambalaya and a pone of bread. "You got your papers?"
Again he shook his head. "They're in the desk in my room. Top left drawer." He resolved, as soon as he had the time, to forge five or six more copies. "What did Shaw say?"
"That he wanted to talk to you." Dominique seated herself on another of the bent-willow kitchen chairs, while January gouged into the jambalaya like a gravedig-ger in a fever summer, alternating the rice and shrimp with gulps of coffee only partly warmed. "I asked him if you were in any trouble. He said you could be, and would be if he couldn't find you. Ben, what happened?"
"Peralta's overseer tore up my papers," said January. "Galen Peralta didn't kill Angelique, but his father thinks he did. He said he'd hold me there until the boy's face healed up-Angelique scratched him pretty badly and a jury might take that amiss-then put me on a boat for Europe or New York or wherever I wanted to go. Some of the slaves told me that night the overseer was pla
"Oh, Ben." Her voice was barely a whisper, her hand to her mouth. Fear for me? wondered January. Well, yes -Dominique was a warm-hearted girl, with a ready sympathy, and cared for him with the unthinking happy love she'd shown when she was four and he her great, tall brother twenty years her senior. But was part of the shock he read in her eyes a realization of how little her own freedom meant?
Or didn't she understand that yet?
"What... What do they want you for? You have papers. I mean, you are free, and here in town people know you."
"Peralta may tell the police some story that makes it seem I did the murder, rather than his son." Thin rain had started to fall again, as it had fallen all day, pattering the muddy ground beyond the gallery where they sat. Becky moved silently in the kitchen behind them, grinding fresh coffee and feeding the fire under the big iron boiler.
"He's the guards' captain's cousin, and the guards are under pressure from Etie
By the time January had finished bathing and had shaved five days' bristle of graying beard from his face, Olympe had returned with his boots and a bundle of clothes from their mother's house. Both sisters were waiting for him in Dominique's parlor when he crossed the yard through the thin, driving needles of rain; he wondered why he'd never realized how much alike they looked.
Probably because he'd never seen them together as adults. It occurred to him to wonder what Olympe was doing here at all.
"I need to find a runaway, a girl name of Sally," said January, as he came into the rear parlor where both women sat. "So high, thin, as black as me. Full-blood Congo, they say. She ran off from Les Saules Plantation a week ago Friday, probably with a man." At the moment, he reflected, finding her might be safer than another trip out to Les Saules, at least while the sun was up.
"I think she knows something, and I'm pretty sure she talked to someone about something." He'd examined his hand in the kitchen and had found it still clean. The bandages Becky had pi
"I'll ask around," said Olympe. "She could be anywhere, if she ran off with a man. White man?"
"I don't know. I think so, since he was able to give her expensive gifts."
"A two-dollar dress length still cheaper than buying a girl at the Exchange," remarked Olympe cynically. "I found who paid Doctor John for your hoodoo."
A carriage passed in the street, the wheels squishing thickly in the mire. Dominique turned her head quickly, toward the two tall French doors that opened onto Rue Burgundy-standing open, for the day, though rainy, was warm. Olympe's bronze lips twisted. "Don't worry. We'll be out of here when he comes."
Dominique sniffed. "That isn't going to be until ten at least. I swear, on Sunday afternoons you could wipe out the entire French population of the city with five ca
"Maybe that's why the Americans don't have aunts and in-laws and cousins-thrice-removed to Sunday di
"Darling, you know it's for reasons of domestic economy." Minou flashed back at her the identical smile. "The LeBretons must spend a hundred dollars on those Sunday di
January smiled in spite of himself. "They aren't repulsive," he said. It was like looking back on something that had happened years ago. "And I think one reason the Americans don't have everyone in the world for Sunday di
Dominique made a little noise of disbelief in her throat, and crossed to the secretaire. "From everything I hear, they're going to take that time whether anyone gives it to them or not. Could the person who bought the gris-gris have been at the ball?"