HER NAME WAS Henriette La Jaune, but the Americans called her “Yellow Henry” because of the fever. As a girl she had fled Saint-Domingue with her father—or at least the light-skinned man who claimed to have been her father. Her own skin was dark, and so the rumors abounded. Had he simply stolen her when he left the island, with the intention of raising her to be his mistress? Others said no … that she really had come from a union, the most romantic of the gossipers believing her to be the child of an obeah woman from Jamaica.
By the time Henriette approached full womanhood—around 1819—the Yellow Fever epidemic had all but married her to that color. That year, the fever raged unmercifully through the city, leaving no handkerchief untouched, no water jug unspoiled. Its stench flowed from the gutters of St. Ann down to the Spanish Mercado, and indeed the Spanish, who still lived in New Orleans in great numbers, saw it as a curse upon the French—that is until the fever demonstrated that it loved no one more or less, and embraced anyone whom it could find, regardless of country or belief.
But there was Henriette—the tavern keeper’s daughter—who had walked boldly amongst the fever’s victims, and who had never shown signs of the disease herself. Word of her “condition” quickly spread throughout the region. Some of the Catholics said that she must have been “blessed”—that the Lord had placed a miracle in the center of the city’s plague. But others leaned toward darker explanations: “There’s no holy water protecting that girl,” some said. “It’s all blood and chicken feathers. And God only knows what else.”
The father succumbed, and the tavern became hers. And the sad truth was that he was one of the very few she could not save—or wouldn’t. For in addition to her immunity, she had become famous for her “cures.” In certain circles people had knowledge of the private room at the back of the tavern, where, as it was said, young Henriette had saved victims of the plague. For her Spanish customers she recommended a preparation of juice made from fresh oysters; for the French, a hot drink, immediately followed by a cold one.
Some understood this and some didn’t—that Henriette had her “own ways”—but in the end it made no difference. She had saved hundreds of lives. When the plague finally did recede, having taken thousands of helpless souls with it, no one could say exactly how Henriette had done what she had done. The Voodoo women from Saint-Domingue denied that Henriette was one of them—“a conjure woman … peut-être,” they said, though even that seemed to be giving her too much. Only one thing remained unambiguous in people’s minds: Yellow Henry could control the fever.
And so they sought her out—the wealthy and the impoverished, the free and the not free, the people of every color and religion. For nearly twenty years, the fever’s death tolls remained low, until the next epidemic began devouring lives again. But by that time the tavern was empty, its windows blackened with neglect. The people came, but no one was there. Henriette had disappeared.
“Well, not disappeared exactly,” Archibald said. “Left is more like it. She just up and left.”
All of this history Joseph knew well, for there was not a person—black or white—who had lived through the pre-war plagues and who had not heard of Henriette La Jaune. When the epidemic of ’47 struck New Orleans and Henriette was nowhere to be found, those whose faith she had confirmed over the years simply gave in to their fates. Joseph had witnessed the despair firsthand … mothers trying to concoct useless potions of their own, before tossing it all aside and exclaiming, “C’est sans espoir, sans Henriette!”
But as had always been the case with Henriette, there were rumors. She was living in a shuttered house, two blocks away from the tavern, and only maintained contact with a servant boy who did her errands.
Or—
She had purchased a steamboat, and was living in one of its cabins, aided by a crew that was terrified of her.
Or, for the more fanciful—
She had developed a serum that could turn her into a raven, and was living amongst the birds, whom she found kinder than human beings.
But none of these rumors were true, as Archibald knew, for he had been guiding people to Henriette since the beginning.
“They can talk all they want,” he told Joseph and Moody. “She thinks it’s funny. But she likes it this way—only people who find her is ones she wants to find her. And that’s plenty. She ain’t no hermit, like everyone say.”
He had agreed to take them there the next morning—or at least set them on the right course, since nowadays Archibald would only travel so far into the swamps. He would send them into the bayous—deep into the area north of Bellevoix, where the shifting shores of Lake Pontchartrain showed little compassion for the land.
IT WAS MORNING, and the pirogue glided swiftly through the tranquil waters. A soft line of ripples moved away from the bow as Archibald pushed the boat forward.
“Straight ahead, we going into Bayou Bienvenue,” Archibald said. “Beyond that, Bayou Sauvage. We not going in quite that far though—best to stay out of that place.”
Archibald told them that they would find Yellow Henry somewhere in the watery labyrinth between the two swamps.
“Thing is,” he said. “She lives on an island. And that island kind of moves, depending on how she feels.”
Even Joseph, who had spent time cutting timber in the swamps, had never seen land quite like this … if one could even call it land, this lacework of water and well-soaked ground that curled and curved upon itself as if someone had gouged it with a knife. Though the land here had been reduced to a fraying string of broken cobwebs, the trees and mounds of soil expressed little animosity. In the stillness one could only feel that battles had been won and lost—that the lingering silence was merely the resignation of two indecisive foes.
The water parted for the boat, but rarely for anything else—an alligator perhaps, a water moccasin, a frog. In this place, the serenity was not gentle. Even in the brightness of morning, a heavy gloom hung upon the trees, and the arms of the giant cypress, dripping with delicate curtains of moss, reached out wide to shut out the light.
At many points, several feet from the swollen bases of the trees, crooked objects—the “knees” of the cypress—jutted out and broke the water’s surface. These pointed heads—sentinels ready to rise up and block the way—followed the intruders as they passed. This place was enveloping them. It was a voracious kind of place. An egret extended its neck, while some other bird screamed in the distance.
Time stopped in this wilderness, for the sun had abandoned them, and the swamp had become so impenetrable that Moody and Joseph had lost all track of their progress. At last, in what might have been hours after their departure, a vision of something unusual interrupted the somber regularity of the swamp. Ahead of them appeared a shack built on stilts above the water. Aside the shack … a sagging dock, and a wooden beam strung with stretched muskrat hides.
Archibald slowly moved the boat toward the dock.
“Now, this—” he began, but stopped short, as a man emerged from the shack and tossed a thick line of rope toward the boat.
Archibald and the man considered each other—they were neither enemies, nor friends. They were brothers on that continuum of relationships that had held people together before the war.
Then the man examined Joseph before setting his eyes firmly upon Moody.
“A la traiteuse?” the man said.
Archibald nodded gravely.
“To the healer,” Joseph whispered. “Archibald will go no farther.”
As if to confirm this understanding, the man on the dock extended his hand. Moody gripped it, and allowed the boatman to hoist him up. Joseph grasped Moody’s arm, and followed his partner onto the dock. The man on the dock said nothing.
“This fella here gonna take you the rest of the way,” Archibald said.
The water swirled noiselessly as Archibald backed up the boat. In a moment he was gone—Moody and Joseph’s only link back to the land.
THE SLANTING LINES of light that cut in through the trees made the darkness seem that much heavier. A glint of dew on a leaf … a flash reflecting off the wet bark … these were the random sparks that lit Joseph and Moody’s way. Without a word, Henriette’s boatman had taken them deeper into the swamp—into a place that moaned with shadows, where even the dead would have been afraid.
There were no banks at all now, as the water had completely triumphed here, its marks from earlier conquests ringing the fat bellies of the cypress. Sometimes a waxier curtain of green cascaded down from a lower limb, offering another kind of light in the form of a single orange flower. Where the flowers bloomed in small clusters, their petals raged like wildfires. A few blossoms fell upon the water now and then—they never sank, but floated idly in place.
The boat passed a fallen cypress, caught and hanging amongst its brethren. The stillness was everywhere around them now, and here others played freely, without judgment.
Moody had the premonition that he might never return from this journey, for something seemed to be killing him, even as a violent force drove him on. What was it? It was something different from the exhaustion he had feigned for the clients—something much stronger than the “pull” of a random spirit. He thought of her, and pressed his hand against his coat pocket. The outline of the negative scored a rectangle around his heart.
The pirogue moved on. No words were exchanged. And frogs croaked deep ballads of welcome.
Finally, after a numberless series of twists and turns, a clearing opened up amongst the trees. At the far end of the clearing was what looked like an island, but as the boatman brought them closer, the island transformed into something else …
A boat—a giant houseboat—had been well-disguised as a land mass, its roof covered with twigs and vines, its deck strewn with dirt and branches. There were windows, and a door, and from within dull lights flickered. The size of the boat was staggering, like a monster sleeping in the water.
Then she appeared in the doorway, an old woman with cat-like eyes. She placed her hands on her hips and waited. There was nothing that could have moved her.
Joseph saw the signs right away—the baubles dangling from her neck, the little sacks strung from her waist, and the hundreds of leather bracelets that concealed her wrists and forearms. He did not know what so many bracelets meant, but everything signified something with these women.
The boatman tied the pirogue to a wooden post, and the old woman stepped back inside.
“Allez—” the boatman said, motioning his hand toward the door. “Elle vous attend.”
They were the first words he had spoken to them—and the last.
The deck of the houseboat was surprisingly stable, and the boat did not rock when Moody and Joseph stepped onto it. How it was anchored, and how it might have moved, remained a matter of mystery.
“Edward,” Joseph said, “I’m … frightened.”
The two men stepped into the spacious cabin, which was dim but lit with oil lamps. That was one of the things that struck Joseph immediately—the oil lamps, in a place where fuel must have been hard to come by.
The other surprise was that the old woman was not alone, for inside the cabin there were three other men. They sat at a bar that flanked one side of the boat, and stopped their conversation when the travelers came in.
“Bienvenue,” the old woman said.
She was behind the bar now, filling two tumblers with ale.
Joseph and Moody approached the bar, and stationed themselves at one end of it. Henriette came down to them and glanced from one to the other, until her eyes finally fixed upon Joseph.
“Il est malade,” she said.
Joseph nodded.
“Très malade,” she added.
The old woman’s face contained an irrepressible ferocity. Time had not weakened her in the least.
“He understands,” Joseph said. “He is here to—”
But Henriette raised her hand.
“Drink,” she said to Moody.
And then again:
“Drink!”
Moody picked up the tumbler, took one sip, then another. Henriette continued watching him until, with some reluctance, he had finished.
“You are sick, “ Henriette said. “And you have been sick for a long time.”
The spirit photographer did not protest this.
“Comment vous appelez-vous?”
“Edward Moody,” Joseph said. “And I am Joseph Winter.”
“Moody,” Henriette said, “Moody …”
Her face was stern and unpredictable. She might have frowned—or laughed.
“There is something you guard that has made you sick,” she said. “The pain of it has made you sick, and you are dying.”
Moody bowed his head, for this was not entirely a revelation.
“You have been trying to thread the needle,” Henriette said, “but your life has been more hole than thread.”
Moody’s hand moved over his heart.
“I am sorry for you,” she said.
The spirit photographer tapped his chest—more out of reflex than with purpose. She was here with him—Isabelle was here with him now. The walls were weeping with the memory of her.
Moody reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the precious negative.
“You must look at this,” Moody said. “And you must tell me what you see.”
Then he removed the glass from its case, and held it toward Henriette. The negative’s contrast against the bar made the glass a sheet of black.
Henriette reached for the glass, but Moody held it firm. There was no letting go of it. He would not let her go …
“Monsieur Moody—” Henriette said.
As he locked eyes with the woman, the photographer realized that his grip on the negative confirmed something he’d long denied … that there was only one thing he had wanted since his return from the war, and the beginning of his illustrious career. It wasn’t wealth or fame, or the notoriety that had accompanied his “greatness.” It wasn’t even the validation he had sought from the doubtful men of science. No, no—those things had moved him along, but nothing had ever satisfied him. He wanted her back. He wanted Isabelle back. And his wanting had made everything else irrelevant.
Then, it was as if the thread had snapped. Henriette’s pull had been so gentle.
She held the negative now, up to the lampshade. Her hands framed the glass, and she squinted at what she saw.
Moody turned toward Joseph—there were tears in Joseph’s eyes. But Henriette was unmoved. Her own eyes were cold—and fierce.
“Who are you, Monsieur Moody?” she said. “Who are you? And where have you come from?”
Then her face changed, and she looked down at the negative. It was sorrow—real sorrow—that compelled her to return it to Moody.
“I see now,” Henriette said. “The waiting—I see. You are sick with waiting. Sick with questions. And yet, there is more that you must wait for.”
Now Moody’s eyes were the ones that brimmed with tears. But these tears were not the conventional tears of sadness. Rather, they were the tears that had built up through the ages. The tears of everything he had had—and known.
“Where is she?” Moody whispered.
And then again:
“Where is she?”
A laugh came from Henriette, from somewhere deep within her belly.
“You are in agony,” she said. “But there is more agony for you. You must be cleansed of your guilt before you can see her again. This is no easy lock to pick—photographer.”
“I can’t wait any longer,” Moody said. “I will do whatever you say.”
Henriette laughed again—but the room could barely hear it.
“Your agony is … spécial,” Henriette said. “It is the agony of waiting—l’agonie du néant.”
Only Joseph understood this last bit—it was the agony of “nothingness.” Henriette was a friend—a restorer of souls—and yet her words sounded more like a curse.
“Heal him,” Joseph said. “Take pity on him. Heal him.”
“Don’t you mean you?” Henriette said. “Don’t think I’m fool enough not to see.”
Joseph moved his mouth. His discomfort was immense.
“I lost her too,” he said.
But Henriette took no notice. All along, she had been exhibiting a strange kind of favoritism toward Moody.
“You two go over there now,” Henriette said. “I have customers, and there is plenty of time.”
There was no hesitancy in her voice. Her every word was definitive.
“Later,” she said. “We can begin.”