Rebels of Babylon (13 page)

“Mr. Barnaby,” I said, or tried to say, for my mouth remained recalcitrant, “before we go on I need to replace my cane.”

“But you didn’t want none back there, sir. Not that the quality offered was quite, quite. Although that one with the silver ’ead of a duck—”

“That is not it, Mr. Barnaby. I did not wish to speak before the tailors. But I have learned the advantages of a sword-cane. I thought you might know of a shop where such might be found.”

“I did think you was being particular mindful,” he admitted. “Now I understands it, sir.” He thought for a moment. “We’ll ’ave to walk into the Quarter. But I knows just the place.” He glanced at my bothered leg. “But would you kindly step out a bit? If you can, sir? We mustn’t keep Mrs. Aubrey waiting too long… .”

We hastened across the boulevard and followed Royal Street. The complexions and the characters grew darker—I do not mean they were negroes, only Frenchies—and passersby showed more suspicion of strangers. Even without my uniform, I did not feel much welcome. But many a man tipped his hat to Mr. Barnaby, who seemed to enjoy a fine report in the city.

“I ’as to warn you, Major Jones … don’t try to drive a bargain with
Monsieur
Beyle. He don’t even sell to a fellow ’e don’t take to, ’e’s that particular. If you likes ’is wares, just pay ’is price and let ’im know you’re grateful.”

Easy for an Englishman to say. A Welshman is born with a sense of his pounds and pennies.

“I’ll tell you this, I will,” Mr. Barnaby continued, lifting his hat and bowing to a withered lady in a worn-out carriage. “You’ll find ’is goods better than anything sold by those riff-raff Yankees on Poydras Street. Begging your pardon.”

“Mr. Barnaby,” I said, or tried to say, “won’t your friends judge you harshly? If they see you associating with a Union man?”

He brushed the thought from the lapel of his coat, as if it were a crumb. “Not at all, sir, not at all! ’Aven’t the least cause for worry, we doesn’t. Business is business, that’s ’ow they sees things in New Orleans, sir. They’ll calculate as I’m making a tidy profit through our association. And where profit starts, the convictions of the best sorts doesn’t mind resting. The creole adores a proper return on investments, almost as much as ’e loves ’is neighbor’s secrets. Which is almost as much again as ’e loves ’is own. Oh, the lack of funds restricts their pleasures awful, sir. And a creole’s pleasures count more to ’im than most anything in the world. They won’t assume I
likes
you, Major Jones. Only that your acquaintance is a benefit.”

“That … does not sound high-minded.”

“Right you are, sir! And the world’s a better place for it, begging your pardon. Call it ’ypocrisy if you likes, down ’ere we calls it manners.” He nodded approvingly into his double chin. “A beautiful girl tears friends asunder, that’s what Barnaby B. Barnaby always says. Just as ’is father and grandfather said before ’im. But a profit shared makes friends where none was expected. Why, if you—”

He stopped so abruptly he almost tripped up a delivery boy. With a swiftness that would not have disgraced a practitioner of Thuggee, my companion presented me with a fancy handkerchief, handsomely worked but frayed.

“You’re bleeding at the mouth again,” he told me. “And you doesn’t want to spoil your lovely new garments.”

MR. BARNABY STOPPED AT a narrow lane. Twas worrisomely like the one down which I had been lured the day before. By Marie Venin.

He began to grant me precedence, then thought better of it and squeezed into the passageway ahead of me.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, as he led me between brick walls. A faded sign read:

H. BEYLE
LUXURIES AND CURIOSITIES

We passed through a courtyard strewn with broken effects and cast-off furnishings. Beyond a litter of potted plants that would not wake with April, a windowfront bore the same advertisement as the sign at the alley’s mouth.

“Be so kind as to remember, sir,” Mr. Barnaby begged. “You musn’t even think of bargaining, don’t even think of it! You either wants what
Monsieur
Beyle ’as to offer, or you doesn’t. And none’s the worse thereafter.”

Stepping into the shop itself, twas hard to imagine why I would wish to buy anything. No bigger than a proper Pottsville parlor, the room was cluttered wall to wall and floor to ceiling with gilt furniture, gilt frames and gilt-limned pots and vases. Gilt shone in every variety, from mottled orange and gold rubbed smooth to decayed yellows struggling to hide an underlying blackness, reminiscent of a harlot’s hair. If you will excuse the comparison. Angles, curves and planes, the legs of chairs and tables and fancy cabinets gleamed and glittered, noisy to the eye. Such merchandise could only appeal to libertines or Catholics.

An oil lamp sputtered on a desk beyond the gaudy tumult, protesting weakly against the gloom of the day. But the shop made its own false sunlight, despite an impressive accumulation of dust. I found the place repulsive, yet compelling, like a morally unkempt beauty in repose.

Behind the desk that bore the lamp an ancient fellow watched us make our way. He did not rise an inch until we closed on him. And when he rose his height hardly increased.

Lean as famine, the proprietor’s figure assumed the shape of a question mark, curved from mid-spine to the bottom of his skull. His face, sharp as a chevron, hunted upward from his body’s ruin, hardly rising enough for his eyes to find us. Yet, framed by white hair falling to his collar, those eyes held steady as the finest marksman’s. Blue they were, and impenetrable.

“But
Monsieur
Barnaby! Welcome!” he rasped in tainted English.

“
Monsieur
Beyle, your servant, sir, your servant! How many months and years, how many years … but may I present Major Abel Jones? Of the Federal persuasion? Pardon ’im if ’e don’t do a great deal of speaking, but ’e’s been through a terrible slaughter with Dr. Fielding.”

The proprietor turned uncanny eyes on me. Examining my person the way a Jew looks at a gemstone, revealing nothing of his swift assessment.

“A mirror for your wife, perhaps?” His voice had been scraped by time and beaten low. “A genuine Louis XV bedframe,
Monsieur le Major?
Perhaps the cloth-of-gold bedcover made expressly for the niece of the great Pompadour? A set of chairs that belonged to no less a man than the Bishop of Autun?”

“Major Jones is after something different,” Mr. Barnaby corrected him. “’E’s not at all the usual sort of Yankee and ain’t involved in selling cotton or contraband. ’E’s looking for a sword-cane,
Monsieur
Beyle. To replace one what ’e lost in a to-do.” My companion paused, then added, “The major’s to be trusted, sir. As certain as I’m Barnaby B. Barnaby.”

The old man nodded, shifting his humped back. His entire form turned round at once, as if it lacked an adequate number of joints. Trailing a scent of personal untidiness, he made the slightest gesture with his fingers, bidding us follow.

“The front room’s only for Yankees,” Mr. Barnaby explained, “or for them what ’asn’t got the sense to know what they wants exactly, but who ’opes to make a great display back ’ome.”

Watching the old fellow scuttle along, I thought, unreasonably, of my darling wife. Who is beautiful, and whose spine has but the faintest hint of a curve.

Behind an innocent-looking door that might have led to a broom closet, a darkened hall awaited. I had the queerest sense of traveling underground, of penetrating deep into a cave. Although we were but a room away from the courtyard, the temperature seemed to fall with every step.

The old fellow struck a lucifer match. I could not see the lamp he lit with his person interposed, but the flame rose to reveal not gilt but gold. And silver. Educated by the loot of India, my eye told me twas solid goods, not plate. Extravagant as Babylon, fancy services glittered on shelves and counters, their stillness nursing stories of fallen families, of wastrel sons and ill-judged matrimonials.

“Voilà,”
the old fellow declared, summoning me from bedazzlement. “In the corner. The finest selection for
Monsieur le Major?”

Two cylinders wide as the muzzles of old Seekh guns offered up a fine selection of sticks. I had not seen such a grand display in the second-best shop in all of Philadelphia.

Yet, I was disappointed soon enough. His wares included more than a dozen sword-canes. Each was handsome and several had been worked to the level of jewelry. But when I drew the blades, not one had proper balance or trustworthy steel. That is the thing, see. Soldiering teaches you quickly that not all weapons are equally made. It is not enough to be armed. A fellow must be well armed to survive. The pretty canes he offered me were meant to make a gentleman feel secure as he strolled the streets. But they had not been forged for a fight.

Studying my frustration, the shopkeeper said, “Ah,
Monsieur le Major …
I see you are a fighting man.” His eyes shifted to the scar on my swollen cheek, left by a blade in Scotland. “You wish a weapon that fights as well as you do. A partner, let us say.”

The way the fellow looked at me would have given a statue the shivers. I am not certain any other man has ever looked into my face so intently. Unless it was our regimental colonel, after India broke my will.

I tried to think of a gentle way to tell him his wares were inadequate. With my jaw rebelling. “It is only … these are …”

“They are only for the decoration,” he said helpfully. “For the display, the pomp. The vanity. Of course! But you do not care about the display, I think?”

“A good blade,” I told him, struggling to be understood. “I need one with a fighting blade.”

He held up his forefinger, telling me to be patient a trifle longer. And he shuffled over to a battered chest, an item as poorly suited to the room as I felt myself to be. After unlocking its highest drawer, the old man fell into a stillness. As if unwilling to open it, after all. He took on a most peculiar air of intimacy, almost of sorrow.

Gesturing for me to approach, he seemed to have forgotten Mr. Barnaby.

“I would call this … a private collection,” the proprietor said, beckoning me closer still. “Or perhaps I should say, ‘only for the finest of connoisseurs, for the
gentilhomme
with the unusual need …’”

He opened the drawer slowly, half an inch at a time, as if he feared its contents lived and longed to escape their prison.

It would not be the least exaggeration to say that I was stunned. Three sword-canes slept upon a bed of velvet. Each was beautiful—if we may claim beauty for such implements—yet each was as different one from the other as the three Graces themselves. Those girls the Greeks went on about, I mean, the ones who scampered about in their linens, pretending they were goddesses.

But beauty was not the thing of it. Not at all. I was no young Paris torn between choices. My selection had been made for me, as soon as the drawer opened. I did not even need to try the weapon.

Truth be told, the other two canes were more finely worked than the one that held my eye. One was sleeker, another weightier. A man impartial might not have favored my choice. But there was no doubt in my mind.

So enchanted I was that my discomfort fled, as if warned off by the power of the blade. I gasped when I saw it.

The thing of it was this: Before me lay the perfect twin of the weapon given to me by the Earl of Thretford, a man who meant me good and ill at once. I left that blade in the bowels of a leprous witch. Fire had consumed it, along with the horrid shack in which I slew her.

But that is another tale.

“How much for that one?” My voice was impatient, which makes for unsound business.

“But you must try it,
monsieur!
” the old fellow said. “You must feel it, give it the test!”

I fit my palm to the sword-cane’s hilt. Even before I unleashed the blade, the familiar weight made me ask again, “How much?”

The old man said, “But I have never fixed the price of that one, you see. Only the rarest connoisseur would have an interest. Only the most remarkable man …”

I did not like the sound of that at all. Of course, I had been too eager, which was foolish. Now he wished to raise the price as high as he possibly could.

I was about to tell the old fellow that I wished to know his price and no more dithering, when he laid the tips of his fingers upon my forearm.

The skin on the back of his hand was so thin you seemed to see not only bones but marrow.

“You must try the blade … to understand …”

“I
have
tried it,” I told him. “I had one exactly like it, see. I lost it in a fuss.”

His fingers slipped around my wrist, gripping me with all his remaining strength.

“You must be mistaken,” he said. His eyes cut into me.

“No. I am certain of it. Look you. I do not pretend to know many things, but I know my weapons. It is not only the look, but the feel of the thing. Three months ago, I possessed a blade identical to this one.”

“But that is not possible!” he declared. He seemed uncertain whether to be angry with me or astonished. And his voice held the slightest undertone of fear. “That is … it is so unlikely I must think it impossible. There were only five … only five were made so. Two are in royal collections, a third is said to have found its way to Persia … I say, ‘found its way,’
monsieur,
because the blades choose who may carry them for a time. But do you know the story … the terrible story? I think you do not …”

Now, I had not imagined the Earl of Thretford’s gift as anything special, beyond its obvious handsomeness. And as a fellow sensible of his purse, I had reason to be wary of any proprietor who spoke of royal collections and Persian wonders.

The old man inched closer, until I seemed to catch a whiff of mortality. “But you say that one is lost? One of the blades has been lost?”

“Destroyed,” I said, struggling to pronounce my words correctly. “It was a nasty business.”

Seen close, the skin on his face was so thin I seemed to see thoughts at work. I laid the weapon back down on its bed. Reluctantly. I did not wish him to think me quite so anxious as I had let myself appear.