Barbara Hambly - Days of the Dead (Benjamin January, Book 7)

Also by Barbara Hambly

A Free Man of Color

Fever Season

Graveyard Dust

Sold Down the River

Die Upon a Kiss

Wet Grave

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BARBARA HAMBLY attended the University of California and spent a year at the University of Bordeaux, France, obtaining a masters degree in medieval history. She has worked as both a teacher and a technical editor, but her first love has always been history. Barbara Hambly is the author of A Free Man of Color, Fever Season, Graveyard Dust, Wet Grave, Sold Down the River, and Die Upon a Kiss. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is at work on a novel about Mary Todd Lincoln, The Emancipators Wife.

ONE

Hacienda Mictln
Outside the City of Mexico
September 16, 1835

Amicus Meus,

Enclosed with this missive youll find a draft for what I hope is sufficient money to pay your passage here by the speediest available transport. My host at the moment is being so good as to hold the minions of Justice at bay, which is quite generous of him given that I am widely supposed to have murdered his only son. Were Don Prospero de Castelln even marginally sane, I would probably already have been executedthe evidence is fairly damning. By remarks the Don has made, however, I have the uncomfortable conviction that after the first of Novemberthe second at the latesthe will fall in with the popular view, not that I killed the fellow, but that I deserve to be punished for the deed. In company with most of the rest of the household, he believes that young Fernando will re-visit the house, along with various other deceased relatives, at that time, the only difference between his belief and that of his daughters and their families being that he thinks he will be able to ask the murdered man outrightand receive an answer in no uncertain termsabout what ought best to be done with yours truly.

The local constabulary is also in fairly steady attendance. If ever I have earned your regard or affection, please come and engage in a few sleuth-hound tactics. I am at a complete loss to imagine how anyone but myself could have made quietus for young Fernandowho certainly deserved what he gotand if you do not prove otherwise, I shall soon be forced to begin suspecting myself. Please come. I am in fairly desperate straits, though, as I said, I believe I shall be safe enough until the Days of the Dead.

Your friend,
Hannibal Sefton

Postscriptum: I dont know whether they still garrote heretics like myself here, or hygienically shoot them as they do in the countryside. You understand that I dont really like to ask.

Benjamin January folded up his friends letter after its perhaps seventy-fifth reading in the three weeks since its arrival on the morning of his wedding, settled back against the jolting seat of the Vera Cruz diligencia, and wonderedagainif he was going to make it to Mexico City alive, and if he did whether Hannibal would still be alive when he got there.

At every inn en route, the innkeepers had whispered darkly about bandits in the mountains, prompting the passengers of the diligencia to ride with rifles cradled in their arms and pistols at their belts: their fellow-passenger Mr. Dillard of Tennessee seemed to take January going armed as a personal affront. But then, Mr. Dillard had not ceased glaring at January since the coach had pulled out of the baking, vulture-haunted streets of Vera Cruz. Youre not gonna let nigras ride inside, are you? Dillard had demanded of the driver.

He paid for his ticket like everybody else, the driver had retorted in a nasal Yankee twang. Something hes permitted to do in this country, which has had the courage to strike down the foul abomination of slavery... unlike some nations which purport to be free.

Damn Whig abolitionist, had snarled Dillard.

Godless fleshmongering Democrat, the driver had replied.

It had not been an auspicious beginning to a journey that rapidly got worse. In addition to the threat of banditswhich had not, in four days of travel, so far manifested itselfthere was the more clearly present threat of the inns themselves, ancient, filthy structures of adobe-brick, primitive beyond belief and inhabited by nests of scorpions and centipedes as well as the more usual fauna of chickens, pigs, and village dogs. There was the foodmostly greasy tamales, inadequately cooked beans, and the national staple of tortillas, unleavened corncakes cooked on an open grill. Born in the slave-quarters of a cane plantation upriver from New Orleans, January had eaten worse, but not recently.

Most deadly of all, there was the Yankee coachmans driving, as he lashed his team of four skittery little mustangs at crazy speed over the high yellow passes of the Sierra Madre Orientale, causing the diligencia to sway and jolt and causing January to wonder if he shouldnt have damned his friend Hannibal to whatever penalty the government of New SpainPardon me, he corrected himself, MEXICOthought fit to dole out, and stayed at home to enjoy the wonderful state of having actually, finally, against all odds, married Rose Vitrac.

A particularly savage rut hurled the coach nearly sideways and precipitated his new bride nearly into his lap. Covered with yellow dust, sweating in the crystalline heat of these parched gray peaks, her soft snuff-colored curls skinned back tight into unflattering braids for travel... it took everything in him not to seize her in his arms and cover her with kisses.

That would really give Mr. Dillard something to complain about, he thought. And it would shock the other passengerstwo German merchants, their doddering Swiss valet, and a young priestspeechless. Instead, he remarked, At least, at this rate, well get there soon, and learn what actually happened. He gestured with Hannibals letter and tucked it back into his pocket.

Rose removed her spectacles, sought vainly for some portion of her clothing not thick with dust in order to clean the dusty lenses, then sighed and resignedly replaced them on her nose. You dont think Hannibal actually did it, do you?

This was a question theyd asked each other for three weeks now, when not occupied with the logistics of honeymoon copulation in a stateroom bunk barely the size of a particularly stingy coffin. (The Belle Marquise, out of New Orleans to Vera Cruz, transported pineapples, tobacco, and the insect life that invariably accompanied them, and the floor was not an option.) Mostly they wondered if their friendof average height and skeletally thin from the ravages of consumptioncould have physically accomplished murder.

And the answer, of course, was yes. Even were young Fernando as tall as January and, like January, built upon what English novelists liked to call Herculean lines, there was always poison, there were firearms, there was the possibility of a stiletto in the back in a darkened room. January and Rose had whiled away many hours evolving such hypothetical scenarios (What if Fernando habitually wore a steel breastplate to bed? One can mix sulfate of mercury with candle-wax and make a poisoned candle that when burned will kill the person in the room....) as they strolled the decks of the