“The least you could do is teach people who'll pay you decently,” the Widow Levesque went on as Rose refreshed her coffee-cup and offered her a plate of pralines. “Nobody's going to pay more than fifty dollars a year to educate a colored girl . . . these are stale, by the way. Did you get them from that Vignee woman on Rue Royale? I thought so. . . . Hire a white teacher and make it into a boys' school; they pay the best. You could even get that worthless fiddler to teach Greek, if you can keep him sober. I don't expect
“Dearest,” sighed Rose as January returned from seeing Granville and his mother out the door, “it breaks my heart to have to tell you this, but you're so good to me, you really ought to be warned about it: one of these days I am going to murder your mother.”
“Let me know when you're getting ready to do it so I can dig a grave for her under the house.” January slumped back into the chair and poured himself the remains of the coffee. “You shouldn't have to do everything around the school.” He added in a voice of mock horror, “Why, this coffee's
“The plate the pralines was on is going to be in pieces over your head, sir.” Rose settled herself comfortably on his thigh, and took the cup from his hand to take a sip herself. “I think the part I liked best was when she went around the room pinching out the candles,” she added thoughtfully, and January laughed—his mother was always lecturing them about the cost of candles, though she also expressed scorn that they burned tallow rather than beeswax. Only a single branch of them had been left burning on the table after the Widow Levesque's parting lecture on economy. It made mellow pools of light on the worn oak, leaving the corners of the dining-room and the simply-furnished cavern of the parlor in darkness.
It was after ten, and the street outside was quiet. The shutters were closed against the mosquitoes that hummed in the darkness.
But with the signing of the draft that Granville would deliver to DeLaHaye the following morning, the house was theirs.
“Mr. Granville is right, you know,” Rose added quietly. “It is going to be hard to make ends meet for a time. I'd hoped you wouldn't have to keep on with music lessons. That you'd have time to write music of your own . . .”
January shook his head. “I can teach them around the classes here,” he said. “And playing balls and the opera is really only from Christmas to Mardi Gras. And I do my best writing late at night anyway. We'll manage. . . . Now, who's that?” He looked up at the sound of knocking on the door.
It wasn't Hannibal's usual brisk long-short-short-long rap, more like the knock of a walking-stick.
January lit a candle on one of the extinguished sticks and carried it to the door.
It was Jubal Cain.
Judas Bredon.
For a moment all January could do was stand staring at him in shock. He was far too well-dressed to be a ghost, and as far as January had ever heard, ghosts walked around with their wounds still gaping and, when possible, dripping spectral blood. Bredon's left arm was in a sling, and there was a half-healed cut on his right temple as he removed his hat. The yellow glint of his eyes in the candlelight was unmistakable.
He said, “Mr. January?”
January stepped back. “Mr. Cain,” he said. And then, recollecting himself, “Mr. Bredon. Please come in. It's an honor to have you in our home, sir.”
Bredon smiled. It changed his whole face. “You've been talking to Thu,” he said. “I'm the one who's honored, Mr. January—considering the amount of money they pay for the recovery of runaway slaves.”
January nodded with mock consideration: “And thirty pieces of silver times twenty-five is how much?”
“Enough to set a man up in business,” replied Bredon. When he stepped across the threshold, January could see that he walked haltingly, limping on a stick. “Or to buy him property for his family. However you slice it, I'm in your debt.”
“Did they make it to the North all right?” asked Rose, rising from the table. “Will you have coffee, by the way, sir? It's no trouble.”
“It may bring you more trouble than you know, M'am—but yes, to answer your question, 'Rodus managed to locate every one of those two gangs, mine and Gleet's, along with those two girls, Julie and Sophie. And they picked up another runaway, too, a boy named Bobby who'd been following the river from Natchez. He said he knew you. . . .”
January grinned, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, delighted that Bobby had made it that far. “He does,” he said. “He does indeed.”
“Gleet's keeping a lookout along the river,” said Bredon, “so they're moving inland through Tennessee and Kentucky. It'll be a slow trek for such a large group, and they'll have to split up to cross the Ohio in ones and twos. But I think they'll make it.” He nodded consideringly, and repeated, as if to himself, “I think they'll make it.”
January brought him a chair. Bredon hesitated, then shook his head. “Not just yet. You did us all a great service, for which, as I said, I—and all of us—are in your debt. And though I realize it's the worst kind of bad manners to impose on a man who has helped you, I'm going to.”
“Anyone on the
And Bredon smiled back, relaxing as he understood the acceptance behind her jest.
“Will you help us?” he asked as simply as a starving man asks for bread. “Oh, not tonight,” he added as January's eyes widened in alarm. “Nor this week, or this month. But we need help. There's a lot of runners crossing along the borders, where the slave states lie alongside the free. Slaves in Kentucky and Tennessee, or in Virginia and Maryland—it isn't so far for them to travel, and there are enough people from New England and Pennsylvania and New York who've moved down into those states and who don't like what they see there, who're willing to let runaways sleep in their cellars, or who will put out food. In Kentucky and Missouri things aren't the same as they are deeper south. I know a lot of slaves, instead of trying to get north, will come to New Orleans and make their
