"Barbara Hambly - Benjamin January 3 - Graveyard Dust" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

end of this."
Equally impossible, of course, that the Colonel would consent to write out permission for any of
his servants to escort the boy home.
"He's no trouble," Aeneas assured January. "I'll tell him he has to wait. He's already asked if he
can help with the tarts and the negus."
That certainly sounded like Gabriel. But as he maneuvered his arms back to where the edge of the
piano would take the weight of them and struck up the country dance "Mutual Promises," January
felt his heart chill with dread. Something had happened.
He felt sick inside.
Let me introduce you to Monsieur le Cholera, he had said to the drums that had mocked him for
the hard-won security of his freedom, for the complex beauties of the music that was his life.
January could still remember the first time he'd met St.-Denis Janvier, the sugar broker who had
purchased his mother, himself, and his sister Olympe. Could still see in his mind the man's close-
fitting coat of bottle-green satin and the fancy-knit patterns of his stockings, the eight gold fobs
and seals that hung on his watch chain. Could still feel the rush of relief that went through him
when that paunchy little man had told him, I have purchased your beautiful mother in order to set
her free, and you, too, and your sister. Relief unspeakable.
I'll be safe now.
No more nightmares about his mother going away, as others on the plantation had gone so
abruptly away. No more fear that someone would one day say to him, You are going to go live
someplace else now-someplace where he knew no one.
All his life, it seemed to him, he had wanted a home, wanted a place where he knew he was safe.
He'd been eight. It had taken him a little time to learn to be a free man, to learn the ins and outs of
a different station, what was and was not permitted. To learn to speak proper French and not say
tote for "carry," or aw when he meant "bien stir. " But throughout the boyhood spent in the
gar├зonni├иre behind the house on Rue Burgundy that St.-Denis Janvier gave his new mistress,
throughout the years of schooling in one of the small private academies that catered to the
children of white men and their colored pla├з├йes, January had never lost that sense of being, in his
heart of hearts, on firm footing. At least the worst wasn't going to happen. At least he wasn't
going to be taken away from those he loved.
From "Mutual Promises" they whirled into "A Trip to Paris." The ladies laughed and skipped in
their bellshaped skirts, their enormous lace-draped sleeves that stood out ten inches from their
arms; gentlemen flirted decorously as they held out white-gloved hands to white-gloved hands.
Mr. Greenaway of the pomaded curls hovered protectively around the wealthy Widow Redfern,
fetching her crepes and tarts and lemonade and presumably soothing her not-very-evident grief
while she talked business with Granville the banker. Granville himself showed surprising
lightness of step in dancing with his drab little pear-shaped wife and with every pretty maid and
matron on the American side of the room. From the sideline, Mrs. Pritchard watched with
resigned envy.
The American ladies all seemed plainer than their French counterparts, duller, an effect January
knew wasn't entirely owing to having less sense of dress. No American lady would be seen in
public, even at a ball, in the rice powder and rouge that no Creole lady would be seen without. It
seemed to him, too, that they laughed less.
He supposed if he were a woman married to an American he wouldn't laugh much, either.
St.-Denis Janvier had sent him to study with an Austrian music master, a martinet who had
introduced to him the complex and disciplined joys of technique. Music had always been the safe
place to which his soul had gone as a child: joining in the work-hollers, picking out harmonies,
inventing songs about big storms or his aunt Jemma's red beans or the time Danro from the next
plantation had fallen in love with Henriette up at the big house. All of this, Herr Kovald had said,
was what savages did, who knew no better. Kovald had played for him that first time the Canon