Days of the Dead by Barbara Hambly

unfocused momentarily, as if she looked through a window back at the past, into that lamplit store-room. Her speech was clearer than Yannamaria’s—she had more of her teeth, for one thing—but like the older woman’s, her accent was thick, a rough patois that was barely Spanish. “Swollen and gorged with blood. His mouth was open and his tongue poked out like a hanged man’s, but there was no bruise upon his throat. I know that
mariposa
valet of his, Werther, has said that his master was alive when he found him and said,
The
Norte
has poisoned me.
But his flesh was cool, like a man who has been some hours dead.”
    “Did he have bruises on his back?” asked January. “On the backs of his arms and the backs of his legs?”
    “You mean as men do when they lie dead on the floor?” The dark eyes sparkled mordantly into his, like those of a village child reeling off Bible verses to disconcert the patronizing visitor who calls her illiterate. January returned her small, grim smile and nodded.
    One of the younger girls asked, “But why would Werther lie? He loved his master. . . .”
    The woman Cihu made another remark in Nahuatl, accompanied by a gesture that spelled out exactly how dearly she thought Werther had loved Don Fernando. All the women but Yannamaria laughed; the old woman only shook her head and said, “He will be back, Don Fernando. And he will want blood.”
    “
Mesdames!
Enough of this levity!” A man bustled in from the kitchen door, neat and pudgy and clothed—January couldn’t imagine how he managed it in the kitchen’s incandescent heat—in full European morning dress of longtailed coat, trousers, and stock. His mouth was small and pinched beneath a close-clipped gray mustache, and his eyes, even at halfway across the yard, had the expression of one who spends three-quarters of his day snapping
Mesdames! Enough of this levity!
    January got to his feet and crossed to the kitchen door, saying as he did so in his best Parisian French, “I beg you will forgive them, sir. It is I who had some questions to ask of them.” He held out his hand. “I am Benjamin Janvier, of New Orleans—you must be M’sieu Guillenormand, the artist responsible for that truly remarkable feast last night.” The women had gone back to scraping at their
metates,
heads down in dutiful silence. January thought about the amount of corn that had to be ground daily for tortillas—for how many people, counting the servants and vaqueros?—and set himself to distracting the cook from this annoyance. Those women had labor enough.
    “After five days of food at the posting inns and two weeks of shipboard messes, I can only thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart.”
    Guillenormand, who had initially regarded him with a suspicious glare, fluffed like a mating pigeon. “It was nothing, nothing—no more than one owes one’s own sense of what is right.” January half expected him to strut in a little circle and coo.
    “On the contrary, sir,” said January, guessing from the man’s stance, accent, and dress that it would be impossible to lay it on too thick, “even in Paris I doubt I have encountered such a subtle hand with
marchand de vin.
”
    Had he paid Don Prospero’s cook a thousand dollars for it, he couldn’t have gotten a more detailed account of the preparation, serving, and timing of the celebratory feast on young Fernando’s wedding-eve. Pigeon sausage, glacéed ham, filets of young rabbit (“Ah, M’sieu, allow me to conduct you to the hutches—true rabbits from France, not these lean beasts here that are more goat than coney!”), celery
à l’espagnole,
and spicy garlic ratatouille. One of January’s biggest joys in life was to listen to almost anybody talk about whatever brought joy to their hearts, so he was able to say things like “Can you obtain a heat even enough for a good flan from a wood fire such as they have here?” and “Where did you find butter enough to sauté the truffles for the