can say little and imply much, if you get my meaning.”
“Don’t sell Butler short.”
“Compared to the murdering English, old Spoons is harmless as a tomcat.”
Peregrine offered his hand. “This means a lot to me. I won’t forget it.”
“It’s a pleasure to be of service, sir.”
“And one more thing.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t follow me again. That’s a direct order.”
Peregrine walked up the middle of the street, keeping pace with a mule and its drunken rider. The man slumped forward in the saddle, periodically wobbling violently from side to side yet managing to stay seated on his mount. A door across the street opened and a man in shirtsleeves came out and stumbled off toward Jackson Square.
Air, exercise, and the conversation with O’Rourke had cleared Peregrine’s mind, and he found himself thinking hard about the differences between appearances and reality.
Two drunks came into the street to fight, but Peregrine hardly noticed the commotion. By the time he got to them, the brawl was over. The winner disappeared and the loser sat on the stone curb leaning forward on his knees, blood dripping from his nose and mouth into the gutter. The seam was ripped out of the shoulder of his jacket, cottonlike padding extruding from the wound.
Peregrine abruptly stopped and looked hard at the man, at the blood on his face, clothing, and even the street, crimson in the light of the streetlamp.
More often than not, appearance
was
reality, Peregrine thought. He did not have to dip his fingertips into the blood to know that what he saw was real. If he were to insist on submitting his perceptions to a formal series of tests and proofs—hardly practical—he would likely be forced to conclude that
nothing
was certain, and that all of experience was, like O’Rourke’s conception of God, a matter of faith.
Peregrine knew what he had seen the previous night, Butler’s report be damned. The opium he’d taken might have distorted his perceptions to some degree, but he had been conscious and aware.
He resumed his way up the street, his pace unhurried, walking now as one walks when one has no clear destination in mind.
Peregrine had no rational explanation for what he had seen. A beautiful young woman with teeth like a viper’s, who drank the blood of the living, leaving corpses in her wake—such a creature did not fit into the scientific modern world of 1863. And yet Peregrine could not deny the evidence of his own senses. Which was the more logi-cal: to believe something he had seen but could not explain; or to deny the possibility of what he had witnessed and knew to be true, but could not rationalize?
Peregrine wished he had asked to see General Butler’s report about the opium den incident. Did the investigating officer
really
believe the victims had been strangled? Or did the report detail strange wounds in the dead that defied a simple explanation?
It was easy for Peregrine to imagine Butler either ignoring the report or falsifying its conclusions. Butler was not a man who appreciated uncertainty, especially when it might jeopardize his ambitions. Attributing the deaths to a Chinaman, and hanging him quickly to bring the matter to neat conclusion, would satisfy his taste for brisk administrative efficiency. On the other hand, fears about a monster preying on the French Quarter would threaten the sense Butler had cultivated that the conquered city was squarely under his thumb. Mysterious murders and rumors about supernatural beings might well lead to the sort of public hysteria that would call Butler’s authority into question. Were their roles reversed, Peregrine might have been tempted to cover up the facts in the interest of expediency and maintaining control over the hostile populace.
But Peregrine had to know.
Either he was losing his mind, or there
were
wounds in the neck of Evangeline McAllister and the others.
There was one way to submit the matter to proof.
He turned right at the next
“Don’t sell Butler short.”
“Compared to the murdering English, old Spoons is harmless as a tomcat.”
Peregrine offered his hand. “This means a lot to me. I won’t forget it.”
“It’s a pleasure to be of service, sir.”
“And one more thing.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t follow me again. That’s a direct order.”
Peregrine walked up the middle of the street, keeping pace with a mule and its drunken rider. The man slumped forward in the saddle, periodically wobbling violently from side to side yet managing to stay seated on his mount. A door across the street opened and a man in shirtsleeves came out and stumbled off toward Jackson Square.
Air, exercise, and the conversation with O’Rourke had cleared Peregrine’s mind, and he found himself thinking hard about the differences between appearances and reality.
Two drunks came into the street to fight, but Peregrine hardly noticed the commotion. By the time he got to them, the brawl was over. The winner disappeared and the loser sat on the stone curb leaning forward on his knees, blood dripping from his nose and mouth into the gutter. The seam was ripped out of the shoulder of his jacket, cottonlike padding extruding from the wound.
Peregrine abruptly stopped and looked hard at the man, at the blood on his face, clothing, and even the street, crimson in the light of the streetlamp.
More often than not, appearance
was
reality, Peregrine thought. He did not have to dip his fingertips into the blood to know that what he saw was real. If he were to insist on submitting his perceptions to a formal series of tests and proofs—hardly practical—he would likely be forced to conclude that
nothing
was certain, and that all of experience was, like O’Rourke’s conception of God, a matter of faith.
Peregrine knew what he had seen the previous night, Butler’s report be damned. The opium he’d taken might have distorted his perceptions to some degree, but he had been conscious and aware.
He resumed his way up the street, his pace unhurried, walking now as one walks when one has no clear destination in mind.
Peregrine had no rational explanation for what he had seen. A beautiful young woman with teeth like a viper’s, who drank the blood of the living, leaving corpses in her wake—such a creature did not fit into the scientific modern world of 1863. And yet Peregrine could not deny the evidence of his own senses. Which was the more logi-cal: to believe something he had seen but could not explain; or to deny the possibility of what he had witnessed and knew to be true, but could not rationalize?
Peregrine wished he had asked to see General Butler’s report about the opium den incident. Did the investigating officer
really
believe the victims had been strangled? Or did the report detail strange wounds in the dead that defied a simple explanation?
It was easy for Peregrine to imagine Butler either ignoring the report or falsifying its conclusions. Butler was not a man who appreciated uncertainty, especially when it might jeopardize his ambitions. Attributing the deaths to a Chinaman, and hanging him quickly to bring the matter to neat conclusion, would satisfy his taste for brisk administrative efficiency. On the other hand, fears about a monster preying on the French Quarter would threaten the sense Butler had cultivated that the conquered city was squarely under his thumb. Mysterious murders and rumors about supernatural beings might well lead to the sort of public hysteria that would call Butler’s authority into question. Were their roles reversed, Peregrine might have been tempted to cover up the facts in the interest of expediency and maintaining control over the hostile populace.
But Peregrine had to know.
Either he was losing his mind, or there
were
wounds in the neck of Evangeline McAllister and the others.
There was one way to submit the matter to proof.
He turned right at the next
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