so dense that it was impossible to enter. The outbuildings hadn’t weathered so well as the planter’s house. There was a privy and a pigeon tower, and beyond the garden a frame structure that might once have been guest quarters or an overseer’s cabin. The roof was off it now.
A hundred yards or more from the main house, screened from it by trees and with a wide dirt road running through, there stood two rows of slave cabins. These were wooden shacks with pitched roofs and overhanging porches, raised from the ground on brick pilings. Their unpainted woodwork had turned silver with age.
Something moved behind her, and she looked back. The dog had followed her out. He was keeping his distance but he seemed to be looking for a signal, some indication of welcome that would allow him to approach. But Euday was right. Stray animals carried all kinds of diseases. The dog would have to look elsewhere for the human company it craved.
“Shoo,” she said. “Go.”
But it didn’t obey.
Following the dirt road back to the mansion, she passed the slaves’ cemetery. At least, she guessed it was. It was a clearing in a ring of trees with recognizable grave mounds, set out in rows just like the slave houses and with stones to mark them. That was all they had: stones to mark them. Some had been roughly shaped, but none bore any inscription.
It was here that Euday caught up with her. He said, “You notice the graves all face to the east?”
She hadn’t, but they did. She said, “What’s the reason for that?”
“So their spirits could fly home to Africa.”
They started to walk back. The dog was keeping pace at its usual distance. It flinched a little when Euday tried to scare it away, but didn’t take him any more seriously than it had Louise.
Louise said, “You weren’t born in Africa. So where will
“Wherever my kinfolk happen to be,” Euday said. “Same as yours.”
“Mine are gone,” she said.
“Most of mine, too,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter. It’s all about those you love and the ones who love you. Dead or alive. That’s your country to me.”
Their driver was still waiting out front. He’d fed and watered his horse and was stowing the feed bag in a locker between the wheels of the carriage. If she came to settle this far out of the city, she’d need to invest in some transport of her own. And whatever the skills it might take to maintain a trap and look after a horse, the Silent Man and his wife would have to acquire them.
She said to Euday, “Well, what do you think? Would it be practical to open the house up again?”
“Take a lot of time and money to put it back the way it was.”
“I’m not talking about putting it back the way it was. Just opening it up to live in as it is.”
Euday looked toward the house, and reluctantly committed himself to an opinion. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see why not. First thing you want to do is have your people clear the dead birds out of your drinking water. Unless you want to catch the yellow fever and join those folks back there.” This was said with a nod in the direction of the cemetery.
He went in and secured the broken window, and then he closed up the house. As they descended the steps to the driveway, he promised to list his observations and send a note of them along to her hotel. These would include such repairs as were needed, and costs and taxes that would have to be taken into consideration.
He also suggested that she might have the deeds amended to show title in her name. Did she have some way of proving transfer?
“I have this,” she said, and took out a letter.
They’d reached the carriage now. Standing alongside it, he opened up the letter and read it aloud.
“To whom it may concern. Please extend every courtesy to Miss Mary D’Alroy during her time of residence. She is a personal friend of the Patenotre family, formerly of Iberville, Louisiana.”
He refolded it and handed it back.
“Would that be enough to satisfy a lawyer?” she said.
“I expect so,” he said. “If you pick the right one.”
FORTY-FOUR
There was no looking glass in the room, but there was a mirror out on the landing. At this hour of the day there was barely enough light in the stairwell to see by, so Sayers took the mirror from the wall and brought it in. He had a
The mirror wasn’t a true mirror, but a framed piece of window glass painted black on one side. Sayers turned himself back and forth, looking critically at the fit of his tails.
In the glass, he looked like Pepper’s ghost. But he supposed he’d pass. This was the suit in which he’d fled Richmond after his night in jail, having no opportunity to change until he was safely out of town. Another of his many betrayals of trust; the suit should have gone back to the Bijou after use. Stoker had spoken up for him in court, but in his pursuit of Louise he’d let down many who could have spoken against.
He hadn’t imagined that he’d need it again. But tonight was the night of the governor’s ball.
For once, Louise had been easy to locate. Almost absurdly so. The New Orleans Transfer Company met all trains and steamships coming into the city, and would check and deliver baggage to private residences and hotels at twenty-five cents apiece. Sayers had gone to their offices, taking the part of an Englishman who’d traveled out to join his sister. She was supposed to have found them a place to stay, but he’d received no message. A little footwork to draw out the name she was using without revealing his own ignorance of it, and there she was—Mary D’Alroy at the St. Charles Hotel.
Mary D’Alroy? After Richmond, she’d have been safer with a change of identity. But she could not have known that Jules Patenotre had been found.
His first impulse was to run over to the St. Charles and make himself known. But the impulse was mixed with a tremendous and unexpected fear of the moment.
And it would not do. Haste could prove fatal—literally so, if the Silent Man should be there. So instead he found himself a spot across from the hotel to wait for a sight of her.
Time passed. They had not met in so long. What exquisite irony, if she were to walk straight by him with neither knowing the other! It could happen. In his heart and in his memory, she was forever the Desdemona of the photograph that he carried.
Then he saw her. Returning from somewhere. It lasted no more than a few moments; she came into view on the sidewalk and then, with a swish of her long skirts, she was entering the hotel and gone. As Sayers had predicted, the Silent Man was right behind her, the pistol in his waistband pushing his coat out of shape.
The brevity of the sighting was of no consequence. If it had been a second or an hour, his sense of shock could have been no more or less profound.
She was little changed. Not so thin, but only as might be expected in a grown woman rather than a girl. It took him a moment to match the two, one overlaying and replacing the other; and by the time the hotel doors had swung closed behind her, Sayers’ mental picture was revised and complete.
He felt shaken. He’d been wise not to attempt to confront her. He’d have been hopeless.
But now, with that moment out of the way, he could begin to prepare.
That evening, still new in town, he went looking for a game. He was broke, apart from an emergency five- dollar bill that he’d kept in his shoe for so long that he’d almost forgotten it. Gambling was no longer allowed or licensed in New Orleans, but it still went on. Secretly in the part of the city around Canal Street, and openly at Bucktown and along the Carrollton levee.
Sayers had learned his play from circus folk. By midnight he had nearly sixty dollars, a promissory note that he knew he’d never collect on, and a ticket for the governor’s ball that one card player had thrown in when his cash had run out.
