Barbara Hambly - Dead and Buried (Benjamin January, Book 9)

A FREE MAN OF COLOR

FEVER SEASON

GRAVEYARD DUST

SOLD DOWN THE RIVER

DIE UPON A KISS

WET GRAVE

DAYS OF THE DEAD

DEAD WATER

DEAD AND BURIED*

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This first world edition published 2010

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

915 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright 2010 by Barbara Hambly.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hambly, Barbara.

Dead and Buried. (A Benjamin January novel)

1. January, Benjamin (Fictitious character)Fiction.

2. Free African AmericansFiction. 3. Private

investigatorsLouisianaNew OrleansFiction.

4. NobilityGreat BritainFiction. 5. New Orleans

(La.)Social conditions19th centuryFiction.

6. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

813.54-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-040-1 (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6867-1 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-225-3 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

ONE

T he rule was, you played them into the cemetery with sadness, but you left grief at the side of the grave.

Youd remember them brother or son, or just a man whose flute could follow a chaine anglaise... But the pain would go into the tomb with the coffin, dead and buried. When the funeral procession emerged from the gates of the St Louis Cemetery and crossed Rue des Ramparts to make its way back to the dead mans home, the music would be the strut of joy and pride, a gesture of happy defiance waved under Deaths pinched nose.

You might have snatched our friend from out of our midst, but all you got was dirt and bones. Gods got his soul, and we have the memory of his laugh.

Benjamin January had not been an intimate friend of Rameses Ramilles, but he had known the man, literally, all of Ramilless life. Ramesess mother lived next door to the house that St-Denis Janvier had bought for Benjamins mother when he had purchased her a beautiful mulatto house-slave of twenty-five from a sugar-planter with whom he did business. One of Januarys earliest memories in that pink-washed cottage had been his mother going to help Nannette Ramilles with the birth of her first child. Shed taken along Januarys younger sister Olympe to help out, though the girl was only six, and when he himself had visited remembering to go in by way of the back yard, and thence through the French door into Albert Ramilless bedroom, as his mother said was proper for gens du couleur libre now they lived in New Orleans he hadnt been allowed to hold the squirmy bundle that was his familys newest neighbor. Youll just drop him, Olympe had said smugly, and Benjamin, delivering her the sharp kick in the shin that would have been perfectly acceptable a few months before when they were both just members of the hogmeat gang on Bellefleur Plantation, had been sent home with a slap.

Now, thirty-four years later, that tiny baby was dead.

The summer of 1836 had been a hard one. Though it was now the seventh of October, heat still lay heavy over New Orleans, and as the hearse with its four black horses drew up outside the gates of the old cemetery, the stench of the tombs made Ramesess wife Liselle gag. Yesterdays rains they sailed in from the Gulf every afternoon with clockwork regularity had left puddles among the whitewashed brick tombs, and where this mornings shortening shadows lay, mosquitoes whined like ash whirled up in smoke.

Its all very well for Msieu Quennell to provide gloves and rings and armbands, murmured Hannibal Sefton, as Ramesess professional colleagues held their instruments aside to let the pall-bearers pass. Not to speak of plumes on the coffin as well as on the horses, which Im sure is a great comfort to poor Liselle...

To her mother, it is. Januarys voice was dry as he adjusted the tuning of his Spanish guitar. He had never liked Ramesess mother-in-law.

Maybe someone could suggest something extra for the musicians Medico della Pesta masks, perhaps? Those long-nosed Venetian things? One can stuff an astonishing amount of vinegar-soaked cotton in the probosci

Would you really want to see what Liselles mother would come up with, trying to out-do Ramesess mother in that department?

Hannibal shuddered. A palpable hit, amicus meus, he conceded. The competition for Most Lugubrious Veil is already pretty frightening. He nodded in the direction of Nannette Ramilles and her lifetime rival Denise Glasson, each swathed in enough black tulle to suffocate an army. Two bits says Madame Glasson faints first.

And take her eyes off her son? January nodded back toward the hearse, where Felix Glasson was loudly objecting to the insistence of Beauvais Quennell, the undertaker, that he bear the center of the coffin rather than one of its forward corners. Never.

M bes frien, damn you! the five-foot-two Glasson was crying, in an agony of inebriated grief. Bes frien in th world! You jus want to hide me put me where nobody can see me!

Would that we might. January glanced in the direction of Madame Glasson, who chose that moment to burst into ostentatious sobs on the shoulder of her latest husband.

Beauvais Quennell, who prided himself on the elegance of his funerals, looked about to do the same from sheer vexation. All the other pall-bearers were six-foot tall.

January played a gentle riff, huge hands that could span an octave on the piano fashioning the guitars softer voice into a wordless commentary of regret. Hannibals violin joined its music to the guitars, and they moved into the cemetery, the rest of the musicians taking up the sadness of Vivaldis concerto for the lute. The music was hardly perfect, but perfection was not the object at a funeral unless, of course, you were Beauvais Quennell. Rather, that every man who had played with Rameses at countless Carnival balls, opera performances, subscription dances and private entertainments black and white on fiddle, cornet, clarionette and guitar should play one more time, their music bidding farewell to the light notes of his flute.

The Free Colored Militia and Burial Society of the Faubourg Trem the back of town where the gens du couleurlibres lived gathered to see off its own.

As they paced along the cemetery wall toward the rear section where the tombs of the free colored were relegated, January glanced back along the line of mourners. They filed among the close-crowded tombs like a sable river: the Faubourg Trem Free Colored Militia and Burial Society was one of the largest of the free colored burial societies in New Orleans. Its balls and parties were among the best attended by the towns