Dead water

recalled the place from his childhood, a Spanish house of the kind usually seen on the smaller plantations, two rows of five rooms each with galleries front and behind, built high off the ground to avoid the Mississippi floods. It was angled on its lot so that it wouldn't face directly into the dilapidated old city wall that had still stood at that time— the “Rampart” of Rue des Ramparts—but would instead catch the river breezes.

As a result, the courtyard behind it was an awkward, narrow triangle. A poor man couldn't afford to keep up a house of that size, and a rich one would purchase a regular town-house on one of the more fashionable streets of the French town, Rue Royale or Rue Bourbon, not back here, where these days mostly artisans and free colored placees lived. But when, as the result of a singular chain of circumstances, January and Rose had unearthed a small pirate-cache of gold coins in the bayou country, they had bought this place to establish Rose's long-held dream of a school for young girls of color.

Coming around the corner of Rue des Ramparts, seeing the crooked angle of the slate roof, the amber glow of the dining-room window in the sticky cobalt velvet of the evening, January felt his heart lift.

His place. His home.

Rose.

The fear of Queen Regine's silently dogging tread melted in familiar joy. Sometimes he felt he could just stretch out his arms the way he did in dreams and lift off from the dirty brick banquette, and fly to Rose and to that crooked old Spanish house as lightly as a bird. Germaine's mother would have come and gotten her already, he thought as he climbed the tall front steps. He entered the French door of the bedroom—like a civilized person, his mother would have said: only American animals came straight into the parlor, like burglars, like thieves. If Cosette's mother was paying a voodoo to make her sick, he'd have to . . .

Rose was waiting for him in the parlor.

With her was a white man he recognized as Hubert Granville, President of the Bank of Louisiana.

The bank where their money was.

Before a word was spoken—before Rose even could draw breath—January saw her face in the candle-light, and Granville's, and felt as if he'd ducked around a corner to escape a knife in the back, only to take a spear through the heart.

It didn't even hurt.

Yet.

Just the cold of shock.

“What's happened?” His voice sounded astonishingly normal in his own ears.

Your house will be ripped from over your head. . . .

He had not the slightest doubt as to what Granville was going to say.

And he thought: I'm going to kill my mother.

Granville was an old crony of his mother's. It was on her urging—as well as because January himself had known the banker for three years—that he'd put the money left after the initial payment on the house into the Bank of Louisiana.

He took a deep breath while Granville tried to find a way to say Your money is gone. For months January had been reading about bank failures in the newspapers, the messy aftermath of President Jackson's fiscal policies. All over New Orleans, merchants consulted Bank Note Reporters before any major purchase, to learn how much the notes of any particular bank were being discounted that month, and Bank Note Detectors, in a vain effort to learn if the notes they were being offered were counterfeit. There was no way of telling when any of the state-chartered—or frankly private—banks would collapse, leaving depositors with handfuls of worthless paper.

All this went through January's mind in the seconds between his question and the banker's reply.

“I'm empowered to offer you three hundred dollars.”

“Considering we have over four thousand in your bank,” said January, remembering to add—because he was addressing a white man—“. . . sir. Or we did.”

“I have strong reasons to believe that the bank's specie and note reserves were cleaned out by a man named Oliver Weems.” Granville's small hazel eyes were sunk in pouches of fat, their watchful expression like an intelligent pig's. “Weems was—is still, officially—the manager of the bank. He came to us with the highest recommendations. . . .”

“I expect Iago had them, too,” said January in a level voice. “Sir. And the reason you're not going to the City Guards is . . . ?”

“Good God, man!” The banker's square, heavy face puckered with alarm. “All that would do is bring the bank crashing down around our ears! Weems didn't take the silver reserves—about thirty thousand dollars. We can keep going for a few weeks on those, since it's the slow season of the year. But if the police get word of it, that word will spread like fire in a hayloft. If you—or anyone—demand their money in full, our doors will close and no one will get anything.”

You bastard. January felt the heat of rage sweep through him. You robbing, irresponsible bastard. . . .

The school was nowhere near self-supporting, and might not be for years. The gold they'd held out from paying for the house in full had been to support them until it could take hold. At this time of the year there wasn't even work as a musician, since anyone with the money to hire musicians for a party was using that money to rent quarters someplace other than New Orleans. His dozen or so piano students had left town, too, with their various parents. The money he'd saved from the winter's lessons, and the winter's work at subscription balls and Mardi Gras parties and the opera, had all been banked with Granville as well.

Because Granville was white and January black, January held his silence, and the scorching wave passed through him and away, leaving its throbbing glow behind. But looking down at the white man's face, he saw, behind the calculation in the piggy eyes, the wariness of a man who has to get himself through a painful and humiliating situation.

And, thought January, Granville was here, at ten o'clock on a Sunday evening. From what January knew of the