Barbara Hambly - The Shirt on His Back (Benjamin January, Book 10)

The Shirt On His Back

Barbara Hambly

Thisfirst world edition published 2011

inGreat Britain and the USA by

SEVERNHOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9-15High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SMI 1DF.

Tradepaperback edition first published

inGreat Britain and the USA 2011 by

SEVERNHOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

Copyright 2011 by Barbara Hambly.

ForVictoria

Table of Contents

Thethird time that day that Benjamin January walked over to the Bank of Louisianaand found its doors locked, he had to admit the truth.

Itwasn't going to reopen.

Themoney was gone.

Admittedly,there hadn't been much money in the account. Early the previous summer he'dtaken most of it and paid off everything he and Rose still owed on the bigramshackle old house on Rue Esplanade, and thank God, he thought, I had the wits to do that ...

Eventhen, there'd been rumors that the smaller banks, the wildcat banks, theprivate banks all over the twenty-six states were closing. Months before theelection last Fall the President's refusal to re-charter the Bank of the UnitedStates had begun to pull down businesses along with the banks, and at meetingsof the Faubourg Treme Free Colored Militia and Burial Society

orless formal get-togethers with his friends after playing all night for thewhite folks at some Mardi Gras ball - January had frequently asked: what thehell did the Democrats think was going to happen, when they knocked thefoundations out from under the only source of stable credit in the country?

Notthat it was any of January's business, or that of his friends either. Asdescendants of Africans, at one remove or another - though January's motherloftily avoided the subject not one of them could vote. And in New Orleans, byvirtue of its position as Queen of the Mississippi Valley trade, the illusionof prosperity had hung on longer than elsewhere.

Still,standing in the sharp spring sunlight of Rue Royale before the shut doors ofthat gray granite building, January felt the waves of rage pass over him likethe wind-driven crescents of rain on the green face of a bayou in hurricaneseason.

Rageat the outgoing President - a fine warrior when the countryhad needed a warrior and a hopelessly bigoted old blockhead with a planter'scontempt for such things as banks.

Rage at thewhites who saw only the war hero and not the consequences of lettingland-grabbers and shoestring speculators run the country for their own profit.

Rage at the lawsof the land, that wouldn't let him - or anyone whose father or grandparents orgreat-grandparents back to Adam had hailed from Africa - have the slightestvoice in the government of the country in which they'd been born, regardless ofthe fact that he, Benjamin January, was a free man and a property owner...Artisans like his brother-in-law Paul Corbier, merchants like Fortune Gerardwho sat on community boards, his fellow musicians and the surgeon who'd taughthim his trade of medicine, and all those others who made up his life, were freemen too, had been born free men and had fought a British invading force in order to stay that way...

And rage athimself - the deepest anger of all as he turned his steps back along Rue Royaletoward home. For not taking every silver dime out of the bank and putting it ...

Where ?

Ay, there's therub, reflected January grimly. There were thieves aplenty in NewOrleans, and if you were keeping more than a few dollars cached in your atticrafters, or under the floorboards of your bedroom, word of it soon got out. Andif you didn't happen to be rich enough that there were servants around yourhouse at all times, that money was eventually going to turn up gone.

He wasn't theonly man standing in Rue Royale looking at the closed-up doors of the Bank ofLouisiana that spring afternoon. As he turned away, Crowdie Passebon caught hiseye - the well-respected perfumer and the center of the libre community in theold French Town. Like most of January's friends and neighbors, Passebon was thedescendant of those French and Spanish whites who'd had the decency to free thechildren their slave women had borne them. January knew Crowdie had a greatdeal more money than he did in the Bank, but nevertheless the perfumer crossedto him and asked, Are you all right, Ben?'

'I'll be all right.'Many people January knew - including most of his fellow musicians - didn't evenhave the slim resources of a house.

PetroniusBraeden - a German dentist with offices on Rue St Louis - was haranguing a knotof other white men outside the bank doors, cursing the new President: hell, the man has only been in office a week, and see whathe done to the country already? We need Old Hickory back...

Asif it wasn't 'Old Hickory' who'd precipitated the whole mess and left it forhis successor to clean up.

Januarywalked on, shaking his head and wondering what the hell he and his beautifulRose were going to do.

Ithad been a bad winter. Tightening credit and the plunge in the value of banks'paper money meant that fewer white French Creoles - and far fewer Americans -had given large entertainments, even at Christmas and Twelfth Night. January,whose skill on the piano usually guaranteed him work every night of the weekfrom first frost 'til Easter, had found himself many nights at home. The samespiral of rising prices and fewer loans had prompted many of the well-off whitegentlemen who had sent their daughters 'from the shady side of the street' toboard and be educated at the school that Rose operated in the big Spanishhouse, to write Rose letters deeply regretting that Germaine or Sabine or Alicewould not be returning to the school this winter, and we wish you all the best of luck...

Andwe're surely going to need it .

Otherwell-off families - both white and gens de couleurlibre - haddecided that Mama or Aunt Unmarriageable would be perfectly able to take overteaching the children the mysteries of the piano, rather than hiring BenjaminJanuary to do so at fifty cents a lesson. The last of them had broken this newsto January the previous week.

Sinceearly summer, January had been hiding part of what earnings he did make hereand there about the house - in the rafters, under the floorboards... Butsummer was the starving- time for musicians, the time when you lived off theproceeds of last year's Mardi Gras. The little money he'd made from lessons,January had fallen into the habit of spending on groceries, so as not to touchthe slender reserve in the bank.

Inthe God-damned locked-doors Lucifer-strike-you-all- with-lightning Bank ofLouisiana, thank you very much .

Rosewas sitting on the front gallery when he climbed the steps. She'd been quietsince the first time he'd walked to the bank that morning, for the week'sgrocery money. Sunday would be Palm Sunday, and once Easter was done, theplanters who came into town for the winter, and the wealthier Americanbusinessmen, would begin leaving New Orleans. Subscription balls ordinarilycontinued up until April or May, but John Davis, who owned the OrleansBallroom, had told January that this year he was closing down early. With theBank of Louisiana out of business, January guessed that the American OperaHouse - where he was supposed to play next week - would follow suit.

Rosemet his eyes, reading in them what he'd found - yet again that day - on RueRoyale.

Inher quiet, well-bred voice, she said, 'Well, damn,' put her spectacles back onand held up the letter that had been lying in her lap. 'Would you like the goodnews first, or the bad news?'

'I'dlike this first.' January took the letter from her hand, dropped it to therough-made little table at her side, stood her on her feet and kissed her:slender, gawky, with a sprinkle of freckles over the bridge of her nose and thegray-hazel eyes so often found among the free colored. Though she stood as tallas many men, against his six-foot-three bulk she felt delicate, like a saplingbirch. 'You're here sitting on the gallery of our house. No bad news can erasethat; no good news can better it.'