"I've ridden past Les Saules," he remarked, to keep her on track.

"It's been going downhill for years." Livia dismissed it with a wave of her hand. "Cheap Creole cane. It won't produce more than eight hundred pounds an acre, if the cold doesn't kill it. And three mortgages, and lucky to get them. Arnaud Trepagier was a fine gentleman but not much of a planter, and they say the woman's a pinchpenny and works her slaves hard, not that slaves won't whine like sick puppies if you make them step out any faster than a tortoise on a cold day. God knows what the woman's going to do now, with all the debts he left. I'd be surprised if she could get ten dollars an acre for that land. That worthless brother of Trepagier's left town years ago, when he sold his own plantation, also to an American"-there was that inflection again-"and got cheated out of his eyeteeth on railroad stock. And I'd sooner peddle gumbo in the market than go live with Alicia Picard-that's Dubonnet's sister-and her mealy-mouthed son."

January almost asked his mother if she wanted to go back over the battlefield and slit the throats of anyone she'd only wounded in the first fusillade, but stopped himself. Behind them, a voice called out, "Madame Le-vesque! Madame Livia!" and January turned, hearing running footsteps. The woman Judith was hurrying down Rue Burgundy toward them, her hand pressed to her side to ease a stitch. She'd put on her head scarf again, and against the soft yellows and rusts and greens of the houses the dull red of her calico dress seemed like a smear of dark blood.

"Madame Livia, it isn't true!" panted Judith, when she had come up with January and his mother. "It isn't true! I never went to a voodoo woman or made any gris-gris against Mamzelle Angelique!"

Livia looked down her nose at the younger woman, in spite of the fact that Judith was some five inches taller than her. "And did you run away?"

The slave woman was, January guessed, exactly of his mother's extraction-half-and-half mulatto-but he could see in his mother's eyes, hear in the tone of her voice, the exact configuration of the white French when they spoke to their slaves. The look, the tone, that said, I am colored. She is black.

Maybe she didn 't remember the cane fields.

And Judith said, "M'am, it was only for a night. It really was only for a night." As if Livia Levesque had been white, she didn't look her in the face. "She'd whipped me, with a stick of cane... I really would have come back. Madame Madeleine, she told me I had to... I never would have gone to a voodoo."

"Did Monsieur Trepagier take you away from Madame Madeleine and give you to Angelique?" asked January.

Judith nodded. "Her daddy bought me for her. Years ago, when first they got married. I'd waited on her, fixed her hair, sewed her clothes... She was always good to me. And it made me mad, when Michie Arnaud give that Angelique her jewelry and her dresses and her horse, that little red mare she always rode. She tried not to show she cared, same as she tried not to show it when he'd taken a cane to her."

She shook her head, her eyes dark with anger and grief. "There'd be nights when she'd hold on to me and cry until nearly morning, with her back all bleeding or her face marked, then get up and go on about sewing his shirts and doing the accounts and writing to the brokers, until I'd have to go out back and cry myself, for pity. Later when he gave me to that Angelique, sometimes I'd run away and go back, just to see her. I did when Mamzelle Alexandrine died-her daughter-long of the fever. She was my friend, Madame Livia. But I'd never have hurt Angelique. I go to confession, and I know that's a sin. Please believe me. You have to believe. And as for her saying Madame Madeleine put me up to a thing like that... I never would have! She never would have!"

Livia sniffed.

Gently, January asked, "Would the cook? She was Madame Madeleine's servant too, wasn't she?"

"Kessie?" Judith hesitated a long time. "I-I don't think so, sir," she answered at last. "I know she left a man and three kids at Les Saules, but I know, too, she's got another man here in town. And she didn't... didn't hate Angelique. Not like I did. For one thing," she added with a wry twist to her lips, "if anything happened to Angelique, Kessie wouldn't be able to steal from the kitchen, like she was doing. She might have put graveyard dust someplace in the bedroom, but she wouldn't have done that kind of a ouanga, a death sign."

She looked from Livia's cool face to January's, anxious and frightened, her hazel eyes wide. "I go to church, and I pray to God. I don't go to the voodoo dances, Sundays. You have to believe me. Please believe me."

January was silent. He wondered if his mother was right, if Euphrasie Dreuze would sell off her daughter's two slaves quickly, for whatever she could get, to avoid Madeleine Trepagier's bringing suit to get them back. He wondered if Judith knew, or guessed, what would happen to her.

But Livia only cocked her sunshade a little further over her shoulder and asked, "And why are you so fired up all of a sudden that I have to believe you?"

"She'll tell that policeman that I had something to do with Angelique's death," whispered Judith. "She'll tell him Madame Madeleine and I did it."

"Policeman?"

"That tall American one, as tall as you, Michie Janvier. He's at the house now. He's askin' questions about you."

"About me!"

Madame Madeleine Trepagier

Les Saules

Orleans Parish

Friday afternoon

15 Fev. 1833

Madame Trepagier-

My attempt to deliver your note to Madame Dreuze met with no success. She has conceived the opinion that at your instigation, the slave woman Judith obtained a death talisman from a voodoo and placed it in Angelique Crozat's house, and that this was what drew Mile. Crozat's murderer to her She has expressed this opinion not only to five of her-Catherine Clisson, Odile Gignac, Agnes Pellicot, Clemence Drouet, and Livia Levesque, all free women of color of this city-but I believe to the police as well. Though I doubt that the police will take any action based on what is quite clearly a hysterical accusation, that she made this accusation told me it would do no good for me to plead your cause.

It appears that Madame Dreuze is in the process of gathering together all jewelry in her late daughter's house preparatory to selling it as quickly as possible. Moreover, I have reason to suspect that she intends to sell both slave women-Judith and the cook Kessie-as soon as she can, to forestall any claim you may make upon them. I strongly suggest that you get in touch with Lt. Abishag Shaw of the New Orleans police and take whatever steps you can to prevent Madame Dreuze's liquidation of her daughter's valuables until it can be ascertained which of these items are, in fact, yours by right.

Please believe that I remain your humble servant,

Benj. January, f.m.c.

It was, January reflected, rubbing a hand over his eyes, the best he could do. Dappled shade passed over the sleeve of his brown second-best coat like a coquette's trailing scarf, and on the bench beside him, two young laundresses with heaped willow baskets on their laps compared notes about their respective lovers amid gales of giggles. By the sound of it, the Irish and German girls in the front of the omnibus-maids-of-all-work or shop assistants, grisettes they'd have been called in Paris-were doing the same. A carriage passed them, the fast trot of its two copper-colored hackneys easily outpacing the steady clop of the omnibus's hairy-footed nag.

It was perhaps intelligence that would have been more kindly conveyed by a friend in person rather than by note, but even had he gone back to Desdunes's Livery and rented another horse to ride out again to Les Saules the moment Judith had told him about Lt. Shaw's visit to the Crozat household, January doubted he could have returned to town before two. And two o'clock, murder and wrongdoing aside, was the hour at which, three times a week, the daughters of Franklin Culver had their music lesson, at fifty cents per daughter per hour, or a grand total of four dollars and fifty cents each Friday. If he thought