"Barbara Hambly - Benjamin January 6 - Wet Grave" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

whores from Port-au-Prince. January let his hands float from song to song, alternating popular
overtures and opera-tunes with the quadrilles and cotillions that he'd play when hired by the
wealthy for balls. Though he was studying medicine with a surgeon named Gomez, he had
always loved music, and St.-Denis Janvier had paid for him to be taught by one of the best
instructors in town. That instructor, an emigre Austrian named Kovald, was only lately dead.
January played the antiquated airs of Pachelbel and Purcell that the grim old musician had loved,
sadness in his heart that his teacher had not lived to return to Vienna. Had not lived to see
Napoleon defeated and cast out, as he must, January believed, one day be.
With the after-dinner cognac came the cigars, the ribald laughter, the sly jests. In short order there
would be trouble. For twenty-two years France had been torn by vio lence, Europe subjected to
bloodletting and fire. There were men in the room whose fathers had been beheaded in the name
of the French Republic, whose family fortunes were destroyed by the Revolution and by the
Emperor who had climbed to power in the wake of chaos. Any minute now, he thought, someone
was going to say regicide or Corsican upstart-or accuse someone of having the manners of an
American.... January knew the signs.
"Now that Bolivar's in in the south, the whole Spanish empire's going to crumble," prophesied
Joffrey Duquille. He was a big, robust, saturnine planter, with the obligatory reputation as a
womanizer and a duelist. "A man can get letters of marque in Cartagena, and go after anything
flying the Spanish flag......
"Lafitte should have known better than to go after an American ship, slaver or no slaver. . . ."
The air condensed to a golden roux of wine and food and pomade; the candles in the wall-sconces
burned low, and the crystal-hung chandeliers dripped wax onto the tablecloths. The great dining-
room seemed stuffy and close. A servant opened the long windows that looked down onto Rue
Chartres and January slid into "Childgrove," a country-dance tune that could be endlessly
embroidered. His mother, at Blanque's table with St.-Denis Janvier; flipped open her sandalwood
fan and looked down her nose as Cut-Nose Chighizolas mistress took the scarfaced privateer's
pipe from his mouth and blew a cloud of smoke herself. Chighizola gestured extravagantly, and
shouted to Hesione LeGros how he'd lost his nose escaping from an Algerian dungeon....
Talk pattered on all sides, like summer rain.
"Shut up, you fool, he'd never have done something that damn-fool stupid! Sink an American
ship? He knows what side the bread's buttered on. . . ."
"It's all Spanish prizes of war, after all..."
". : . a giant black, six, seven feet tall and as wide as a door, coming down upon me with a battle-
ax..."
". . . pegged the interest at ten percent, plus an additional two percent the first two years......
The voices were getting louder. The Italian captain, Gambi, announced into a momentary hush,
"Privateer this and privateer that, bah! Like there was any disgrace in be ing a pirate! Pirate is
what I am and I don't care who knows it! Nobody tells me who I'll sink and who I'll spare!"
"I hear there's a new cargo come in down at Big Temple...." St. Geme's voice determinedly
overrode Gambi's.
"Hardly pays to go down there anymore," remarked de McCarty with a laugh, "now that Lafitte's
got a shop on Royal Street as well,"
"Still, you get the best; going down there, or to Grand Terre. Used to be you'd have to deal with
this smuggler or that smuggler, and run all over town trying to get the best deal. I will say for
Lafitte, he organized them all under one leader. .....
"Like the American Washington?"
"A toast." Blanque got to his feet, wineglass lifted so that the topaz liquid caught the molten
hundredfold amber of the candlelight. January ruffled a little fanfare borrowed from Rossini, then
stilled his hands on the keys. Just as well, he thought. The piano was going out of tune anyway.
These little square ones did that in the damp of New Orleans. "To our guest of honor."