"Barbara Hambly - Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man of Color" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

anything for her, anyway. Well, I understand a girl has to live, and I don't blame her for entertaining
Monsieur Peralta's proposals, but . . ."

"What's wrong with Peralta?" January realized he'd run aground on another of those half-submerged
sandbars of gossip that dotted New Orleans society—Creole, colored, and slave—like the snags and
bars of the river. One day, he knew, he'd be able to negotiate them as he used to, unthinkingly—as his
mother or Dominique did —identifying Byzantine gardens of implication from the single dropped rose
petal of a name. But that would take time.

As other things would take time. In any case he couldn't recall any scandal connected with that dignified
old planter.

"Nothing," said Dominique, surprised. "It's just that Arnaud Trepagier has only been dead for two
months. Arnaud Trepagier," she went on, as January stared at her in blank dismay, his mind leaping to the
fear that she had somehow recognized Madeleine, "was Angelique's protector. And I think—"

"Filthy son of a whore!"

All heads turned at the words, ringingly declaimed. There was, January reflected, something extremely
actor-like in the way the dapper little gentleman in trunk hose and doublet had paused in the archway that
led through to the more respectable precincts next door, holding the curtains apart with arms widespread
and raised above the level of his shoulders, as if unconsciously taking up as much of the opening as was
possible for a man of his stature.

The next second all heads swiveled toward the object of this epithet, and there seemed to be no doubt in
anyone's mind who that was. Even January spotted him immediately, by the way some people stepped
back from, and others closed in behind, the tall and unmistakably American Pierrot who'd been spitting
tobacco in the courtyard earlier in the evening.

For an American, he spoke very good French. "Better a whore's son than a pimp, sir."

Waiters and friends were closing in from all directions as the enraged Trunk Hose strode into the
ballroom, raising on high what appeared to be the folded-up sheets of a newspaper as if to smite his
victim with them. A pirate in purple satin and a gaudily clothed pseudo-Turk in pistachio-green
pantaloons and a turban like a pumpkin seized Trunk Hose by the arms. Trunk Hose struggled like a
demon, neither ceasing to shout epithets nor repeating himself as they and the sword master Mayerling
hustled him back through the curtain to the Theatre d'Orleans again. The American Pierrot only watched,
dispassionately stroking his thin brown mustache beneath the rim of his mask. A Roman soldier, rather
like a bonbon in gilt papier-mach6 armor, emerged from the passageway, flattening to the side of the arch
to permit the ambulatory Laocoon to pass, then crossed to Pierrot in a swirl of crimson cloak. Pierrot
made a gesture that said, It's what I expected.

Hannibal tightened a peg and touched an experimental whisper from the fiddle strings. "I'll put a dollar on
a challenge by midnight."

"You think that Granger's gonna hang around wait for it?" demanded Uncle Bichet promptly. Whose
uncle Uncle had originally been no one knew—everyone called him that now. He was nearly as tall as
January and thin as a cane stalk, claimed to be ninety, and had old tribal scarring all over forehead,
cheekbones, and lips. "I say by the time Bouille shakes free of his family over in the other hall Granger's
out of here. And where you gonna get a dollar anyway, buckra?"