woman clutched a small child to her side. Another, a girl with the fair-skinned quadroon beauty prized by so many white men, stared at the slave-dealer with naked hatred in her eyes.
“They got more and more land goin' for cotton up there, and they'll pay damn near anythin' for hands to work it. You can't go wrong with St. Louis, or my name ain't Ned Gleet!”
January turned away, sick with the sickness of helplessness, rage, and disgust, and looked around for Rose. He glimpsed her between the brick arches of the market buildings that stretched along the levee downstream of the Place des Armes, nearly out of sight in the shadows. She was dressed like the market-women who were just beginning to make their appearance, with their baskets of roses and oranges: a short red skirt and a petticoat of blue-and-orange calico, a white blouse and a short red corduroy jacket, a gay bandanna hiding her hair. With her spectacles she looked like an intellectual gypsy. With a glance back at Hannibal, who was still chatting with the clerk, January crossed to her, and as he drew close he saw Hubert Granville half-concealed behind the pillar, looking out into the square.
“That's Weems.” Granville pointed, and January turned to see a small, dapper gentleman in a full-skirted coat of rust-colored wool and a very unfortunate silk waistcoat of purple and mustard. The bank manager was arguing about something with the pot-bellied owner. The slender steward intervened, consulting his notebook, pointing up at the staterooms that ranged both sides of the upper, or boiler, deck. “Here's the sample of his handwriting you asked for,” Granville told January.
January pocketed the folded note the banker offered him, to compare against the labels of every trunk and box in the hold, if and when he could manage to sneak down there. That this would be difficult, he guessed—that sleek, efficient young steward might prove to be either venal or careless or both, but somehow January doubted it. Nor would he know until he was on board how many ways there were into the cargo-hold, and whose work-stations overlooked them. Through hard experience he had learned that trying to plan ahead without information led only to madness, especially in a situation with so many tiny variables.
He could only take his ticket, get on board, and see what the situation was.
“As I suspected,” sighed Rose, “they don't have cabins for colored. I expect I'll have some company on the deck.” She nodded as a Junoesque matron in severe dark bombazine ascended the gangplank, a diminutive maid in tow, and behind them a train of trunks that would have embarrassed Marie Antoinette. “Unless of course she's the sort who likes to have her maid sleep on the floor beside her bed.”
January gritted his teeth at the thought of Rose sleeping on the deck with the servants. “I'll come down and join you whenever I can.”
“Bring food,” said Rose unsentimentally, and raised her face to kiss him. “Oh, good Heavens,” she added, cutting in over Granville's embarrassed apologies and effusive thanks, “Hannibal's found a girl-friend already. . . .”
January rolled his eyes, snatched up his and Hannibal's luggage, and strode to intercept his friend, who had indeed entered into what appeared to be a flirtation with a dainty blonde in a fantasia of silk rosebuds and lace. The young lady flung up her hands and trilled with silvery laughter: “Oh, Mr. Sefton, you will turn my poor little head!”
“My dearest Miss Skippen, how could Paris hold himself back from complimenting Helen?” Hannibal offered his hand to help her around the two massive crates that were just being off-loaded from a dray. She leaned on his arm, blond curls brushing the shoulder of his coat. “How could Petrarch remain silent when Laura passed him by?
“You get your hands away from her, pig of an Orangeman!” bellowed a voice just as January reached them. A man came storming down the gangplank of the
The bespectacled owner of the boat had already leaped down from the deck and was hurrying to break up what looked like a serious affray, but the pilot turned on his heel, seized the blond girl by the arm, and shoved her away in the direction of the boat, followed by three porters hauling trunks, hatboxes, and valises, with a sullen slave-girl bringing up the rear.
“Well,” said January, coming up beside the still-shaken Hannibal, “getting the pilot of the boat set against you: that'll help things.”
“And as sterling an example of bog-Irish manhood as ever graced my homeland by his departure.” Hannibal picked up his violin-case, which had been dropped when Molloy had shoved him. “I understand pilots are the true rulers of the steamboats—I hope this isn't going to get me dropped overboard some night.” He waited until Molloy had hustled Miss Skippen up the stairway that led from the wide bow-deck up to the boiler-deck above before venturing up the gangway himself, January at his heels.
Because the deck-hands were lowering the last of the cargo—including Miss Skippen's trunks—into the hold, a small crowd had gathered on the apron of the boat at the bow, waiting to pass and go up the stairs. The slave- dealer Ned Gleet was just chaining his four female slaves to rings set in the wall of what was called the promenade, the narrow outside corridor that ran down both sides of the 'tween-decks housing from bow to stern. The men were chained starboard, the women along the port, and one of the young planters who was traveling up-river had stopped to watch. Gleet caught his eye and winked: “She's a beauty, ain't she?” And he tweaked the chin of the girl he was chaining, the beautiful girl January had noticed before, who had stared at Gleet with such loathing. “She's yours for a thousand dollars.”
The young man flushed in the paling torchlight and looked hastily aside. But he didn't move off. Gleet's sly smile widened.
“Worth every dime of it,” he coaxed. “Sixteen years old . . .” His big hand tugged off her tignon, releasing a soft cloud of dark-brown hair over her shoulders. “Come up closer and have a look. She's a prime one.” And he dragged her head back around when she would have turned her face away, her expression wooden but for the tears of shame in her eyes. “Now, you tell me if you've ever seen one half so sweet, for a thousand or fifteen hundred.”
The young planter stammered, “I— She's very lovely, of course, sir, but . . .”
“But you got your daddy's money, and can't spend it?” Gleet nodded understandingly, his sharp blue glance taking in the sweat that stood out on the youth's forehead. “But that's the great thing about a gal like this, you see. You don't like her, you can sell her again, and not a penny the worse. Here—feel of her if you don't believe me.”
