‘Yes,’ Hackett said somewhat coldly, ‘let’s.’
They turned on to a grand and very lively street called the Vieux Carré, crowded with bars, hotels, cafés and establishments with less obvious identities which it seemed to Luis that Hackett knew rather too well. For all his pompous lecturing, Luis remembered what Hackett had told him of his rakish exploits as a young Waltzer. Hackett certainly had the look to fit in here; he was wearing a broadcloth coat, an embroidered waistcoat, a fine shirt, and a silk neckerchief. Fraser Burdon and Luis, both shabbily dressed by comparison, looked on rather enviously.
Luis was not very surprised when the establishment to which Hackett led them for their overnight lodging, on a slight rise at the heart of this district, turned out to be a bawdy house. It was something like a town house realized in an overwrought classical style – and it was chock full of young women, remarkably beautiful in Luis’s eyes, all elegantly dressed.
‘My word!’ said Burdon, staring around. ‘It’s like a display of exotic birds at Albert’s blessed Exhibition.’
‘But,’ Hackett murmured, ‘bawdy houses are often surprisingly sympathetic to the cause we serve today.’
He brought them into the presence of the madam of the house. Luis never learned her name. She was small, a little plump, her jet black hair streaked with grey and tied back neatly. Her complexion was dark; no doubt she was a product of the great mixing-up of peoples in this port – but aside from that, with her stature and her air of bossiness she reminded Luis uncomfortably of an older version of the Victoria he had glimpsed at Windsor.
She smiled at Hackett. ‘You’re the conductors, sir?’
‘We are. And you have our passengers, with their tickets?’
‘I do indeed. This way.’
Burdon cocked an eyebrow at this exchange. Both he and Luis by now recognized the peculiar jargon of the Underground Rail Road: a rail system that did not exist literally, but whose ‘passengers’ were escaping slaves.
The madam led them through gaudy reception halls. Luis never glimpsed the back rooms where the true and grubby trade of the place was transacted. The madam’s own office was a kind of drawing room, not pretentiously decorated, but with a desk heaped with papers and studded with ink wells, a glass cabinet in one corner with a range of medicines – and, ominously, a rack of guns, from revolvers to hunting rifles, all looking well tended and no doubt loaded.
And a secret panel at the back of the office, opened by a catch worked by one of the madam’s polished fingernails, revealed another room, lit by a single gas lamp, entirely enclosed. The madam allowed the three of them inside, then backed out gracefully, closing the door behind them.
Luis glanced around. After the brilliance of the day the gaslight seemed dim indeed. There were no other doors, no windows, no furniture. But he could guess why they were here. This entirely sealed-up room was a gateway to the widdershins world, a place through which Waltzers could pass without fear of observers.
Hackett grinned at them both. ‘Leave your bags here; you’ll not be needing them where we’re going. I just want to make sure our precious cargo is safe, for we leave tonight, with our friends, on the River Goddess bound upstream for Memphis. All set? If you need a puking pill I’ve got some to spare. Widdershins we go. One, two, three—’
The site of this parallel New Orleans struck Luis as not much different from the regular version – given the absence of all the works of mankind, of course – and he wondered how dissimilar the details were of the braiding of the great river as it poured sluggishly across this flat, marshy landscape. But Luis’s feet were dry, more or less; the slight rise on which the bawdy house stood evidently persisted here, a scrap of ground marginally higher and drier than the rest.
Still, they were all sweating immediately.
And Hackett slapped his neck. ‘Got you, you swine! Further north of here, you know, there are all sorts of exotic beasts to be seen – and to run from. Giant camels, horses the size of big dogs, cave bears, lions: critters from which modern Americans have evidently been spared acquaintance by the veil of extinction. But here, nothing but mosquitoes, and they seem to persist everywhere. Oh, and alligators; don’t go near the water.’ He pointed west. ‘There are our passengers.’
Luis saw what appeared to be an old army field tent, battered, roomy, its heavy canvas held in place with ropes and pitons driven into the soggy ground. A small fire smoked near an open doorflap, and shirts and trousers and greyed underwear were laid out on the spine of the tent, drying out after a washing.