Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Barbara Hambly
table, and the squiggling fragments of reflected glare from the streetlamps hanging over the intersection of Rue Douane and Rue Burgundy, showed up dimly the shelves that filled the parlor's inner wall, planks and packing boxes neatly arranged, lined with intricately cut paper and aromatic leaves.
Bottles glinted, painted and decorated, between dark fat-bellied pots of cheap terra-cotta bought from Chickasaw and Choctaw on the Cathedral steps. Gimcrack gilding winked on small bright-colored tins such as candies and tea that were shipped in from England, and beads caught the light, woven in strings around calabashes stoppered with wax. A dish of beads, and another of animal bones; a third of brown glistening lump sugar set before a crooked stick in a sealed bottle. Strings of dried guinea peppers. Swags of lace. Clusters of feathers, tied with thread, hung from the shelves above, and clumps of drying herbs or bundles of hair. Strange-shaped sticks and roots; candles red, black, white, and green. The skin of a ground puppy that had been dried in the sun. Squares of red flannel. A ball of string. A snakeskin nailed to the wall, with a slip of paper rolled up in its mouth. A name written on that paper. Silver coins, and a few cigars. Salt, brick dust, graveyard dust.
Three spaces gapped in the confusion, like teeth knocked out in a fight.
“It's got to been some other voodoo,” said Gabriel reasonably. “He poisoned this oku and made the Guards think Mama did it. That's all.”
“Has to have been,” corrected his father, with an uneasy glance at the woman, perhaps worried that his son had so casually spoken the word voodoo in the presence of Mamzelle Marie. “And we don't know that.”
But the Voodoo Queen said only, “Olympe is a good woman.” Marie Laveau's voice was deep, rich as fine coffee, and her French without the slurred patois of slaves and the poor. She was a woman who had only to sit in a room to be the focus of attention. Like a fire she seemed to radiate both heat and light. “Whatever she might do, she would not do a thing that she saw to be evil.”
January noticed that Marie Laveau did not say, That's impossible. Nor did Paul Corbier.
“They must have been watching the house, waiting for her to come home,” Corbier went on after a moment. “She hadn't even taken off her coat when two men came across the street, white men. She saw them and tried to run out the back door, but your friend Lieutenant Shaw”-he glanced at January apologetically-“was in the yard already, waiting for her.”
“She bit him,” said Gabriel. That certainly sounded like Olympe. “I hope it turns poison and he dies.”
“What did they say?” January tried to put from him the memory of the two times he himself had been in the Cabildo, but he saw the fear of that prison in his brother in-law's helpless eyes. “Who do, they say she killed? A white man?”
Olympe's big gray cat, Mistigris, flowed into the parlor from the street and jumped into Mamzelle Marie's lap. Iujke silence January heard Gabriel's older sister Zizi-Marie in the rear bedroom, whispering to the younger children tales of Compair Lapin and Bouki the Hyena. One of them began to cry, instantly hushed by the older girl's voice.
“They claim she killed a young man named Isaak Jumon,” said Mamzelle Marie, her long hand stroking the gray cat's head. There was no emotion in her voice, as if the woman of whom she spoke were not someone she would rise from her bed at two in the morning to help. “He was the son of Laurence Jumon, that died this summer past of the fever. His mother was Geneviève, that was Jumon's slave and then his plagee. Geneviève has a house on Rue des Ramparts these days, and a hat shop there. Does well, I am told.”
She scratched Mistigris's chin, and the big tom, evidently forgetting his usual custom of biting anyone who touched him, closed ecstatic eyes.
“Isaak was nineteen.” Lightning flashed in the tarblack sky, then a
Bottles glinted, painted and decorated, between dark fat-bellied pots of cheap terra-cotta bought from Chickasaw and Choctaw on the Cathedral steps. Gimcrack gilding winked on small bright-colored tins such as candies and tea that were shipped in from England, and beads caught the light, woven in strings around calabashes stoppered with wax. A dish of beads, and another of animal bones; a third of brown glistening lump sugar set before a crooked stick in a sealed bottle. Strings of dried guinea peppers. Swags of lace. Clusters of feathers, tied with thread, hung from the shelves above, and clumps of drying herbs or bundles of hair. Strange-shaped sticks and roots; candles red, black, white, and green. The skin of a ground puppy that had been dried in the sun. Squares of red flannel. A ball of string. A snakeskin nailed to the wall, with a slip of paper rolled up in its mouth. A name written on that paper. Silver coins, and a few cigars. Salt, brick dust, graveyard dust.
Three spaces gapped in the confusion, like teeth knocked out in a fight.
“It's got to been some other voodoo,” said Gabriel reasonably. “He poisoned this oku and made the Guards think Mama did it. That's all.”
“Has to have been,” corrected his father, with an uneasy glance at the woman, perhaps worried that his son had so casually spoken the word voodoo in the presence of Mamzelle Marie. “And we don't know that.”
But the Voodoo Queen said only, “Olympe is a good woman.” Marie Laveau's voice was deep, rich as fine coffee, and her French without the slurred patois of slaves and the poor. She was a woman who had only to sit in a room to be the focus of attention. Like a fire she seemed to radiate both heat and light. “Whatever she might do, she would not do a thing that she saw to be evil.”
January noticed that Marie Laveau did not say, That's impossible. Nor did Paul Corbier.
“They must have been watching the house, waiting for her to come home,” Corbier went on after a moment. “She hadn't even taken off her coat when two men came across the street, white men. She saw them and tried to run out the back door, but your friend Lieutenant Shaw”-he glanced at January apologetically-“was in the yard already, waiting for her.”
“She bit him,” said Gabriel. That certainly sounded like Olympe. “I hope it turns poison and he dies.”
“What did they say?” January tried to put from him the memory of the two times he himself had been in the Cabildo, but he saw the fear of that prison in his brother in-law's helpless eyes. “Who do, they say she killed? A white man?”
Olympe's big gray cat, Mistigris, flowed into the parlor from the street and jumped into Mamzelle Marie's lap. Iujke silence January heard Gabriel's older sister Zizi-Marie in the rear bedroom, whispering to the younger children tales of Compair Lapin and Bouki the Hyena. One of them began to cry, instantly hushed by the older girl's voice.
“They claim she killed a young man named Isaak Jumon,” said Mamzelle Marie, her long hand stroking the gray cat's head. There was no emotion in her voice, as if the woman of whom she spoke were not someone she would rise from her bed at two in the morning to help. “He was the son of Laurence Jumon, that died this summer past of the fever. His mother was Geneviève, that was Jumon's slave and then his plagee. Geneviève has a house on Rue des Ramparts these days, and a hat shop there. Does well, I am told.”
She scratched Mistigris's chin, and the big tom, evidently forgetting his usual custom of biting anyone who touched him, closed ecstatic eyes.
“Isaak was nineteen.” Lightning flashed in the tarblack sky, then a