Fever Season by Barbara Hambly Page B

jailers down in the courtyard in the morning, and the smack of the whip as slaves were disciplined.
    Stupid
, he thought.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, to have let yourself help her …
    Twenty years old, terrified, running away from a woman who would have killed her …
    Presumably God knew whether he had done well or ill to help her.
    Between fear and guilt he slid again into uneasy dreams, from which he was waked by the sound of footfalls on the gallery stairs.
    Shaw
. Panic grabbed his heart. He could probably make it to the far end of the gallery, drop the twelve feet or so down to the yard, make it through the passway and out to Rue Burgundy before the Lieutenant could follow.…
    And then what? Hide in the swamp for the rest of your days?
    Why don’t you see who it is first before you decide to turn maroon at your time of life?
    He got to his feet, put on his boots and a shirt. The room was still an oven, and another trail of ants had started along the wall, (
What, you boys like red pepper?)
but the light had changed. Long gold slats of it leaked through the jalousies before they were blotted by the shadow of a man.
    “Hey inside?”
    It wasn’t Shaw’s voice.
    January shrugged his shirt straight and went to open the shutters.
    The man who stood there wore the leather breeches of a groom, and a rough corduroy coat.
    “Michie Janvier? Cyrus Viellard here, for Michie Henri Viellard.” The man bobbed a little bow, and took off his hat. “Michie Henri, he say bring you out to Milneburgh, if you please, sir. Your sister, Mamzelle Dominique, took in labor, and she wants you there.”

SIX

    Milneburgh stood some four miles north of the city on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. The elegant hotels, modest boardinghouses, and small wooden cottages sprinkled along the shallow beaches or sheltering in the pines presented a soothing contrast to the shut houses, reeking heat, and terrible silence of the city. The air here was sweet.
    As January and Henri Viellard’s groom rode up the white shell road along the bayou, the sun was just setting, the golden peach of a full moon low in the east. Doorways and windows stood open to the fresh breezes. Lights from a thousand candles made glowing patchwork of the dove-colored gloam. Even the bathhouses of the two main hotels were illuminated, floating topaz reflections gemming the lake at the end of the long piers.
    Impossible, thought January, that this could exist in the same world as the stricken city he had left. He’d passed through a fairy gate somewhere in the twilight swamps along the Bayou St. John and left the earth of plague and loss and stench and grief behind.
    “Henri is an old lady.” Dominique held out her hands to him from her bed as he entered the bedroom of the cottage Henri Viellard had bought for her, three tiny rooms arranged one behind the other in a little stand ofred oak at the water’s very edge. The rear gallery perched on stilts in the lake itself; two chairs of white-painted willowwork were just visible through the open doors, and a cage of finches, fluffing their feathers for the night.
    “There’s absolutely nothing to be worried about,” added Catherine Clisson, friend to both Dominique and January’s mother, still the plaçée of the protector who’d taken her under his wing twenty years ago. “We sent as soon as her water broke, but with first babies these things take time.” As she spoke she brought extra candles from the dresser drawer. Nearly every candlestick and holder in the house stood on its marble top, a bright regiment of porcelain and silver drawn up for battle.
    “Is my mother here?”
    “Livia said she would be shortly, when she’s finished her dinner.”
    Madame Clisson sounded like a woman carefully keeping her personal opinions out of her voice. But her statement didn’t surprise January in the least. Having lavished on Dominique all the care and attention of which she scanted her two older—and darker-hued—children,