When Jason reached the sidewalk, he broke into a trot, Matthieu chasing after him.
“Jason, slow down. What is the hurry?”
“I can’t explain right now. You have to trust me.”
“We have all night.”
“Two hours, maybe. Where do you think Patenaude is?”
“I am sure he is in the Quarter, along with every young Frenchman.”
“Lafitte’s, maybe?”
“I would not be surprised,” Matthieu said.
“Then we’ll take a chance that he is.”
Gaston was asleep when Jason entered the phaeton, Matthieu right behind him. Jason didn’t bother waiting for the old man to unhitch the horse, doing it himself.
“Where to, Suh?” he asked as the two young men piled into the carriage.
“Lafitte’s, and hurry.”
The sound of hooves clattering against cobblestones echoed through the Quarter as Gaston hurried to Lafitte’s. As Matthieu had predicted, the streets were filled with young men, roaming from bar to bar. Gaston almost ran over one of them when he wandered aimlessly into the street.
“There is a place to hitch a horse, Monsieur Jason,” Gaston said.
“Let me out in front then drive around the block and wait at the back gate. Don’t bother hitching the horse. I won’t be long.”
When Matthieu started to step from the carriage, Jason raised a palm.
“Stay with Gaston.”
“I am coming with you.”
“No, you’re not. If Patenaude is in there, your appearance will spoil my surprise, and we’ll never get him to Madam Laveau’s.”
“And how do you intend to accomplish that particular task on your own?”
“I won’t be alone. The Musketeers are here someplace. I’ll find them. They’ll help me.”
Hooves clattered as Jason pushed through the crowded barroom. Fiddle and accordion music poured from the open door leading to the courtyard. When Alain spotted him in the mass of revelers, he abandoned the bar wench he was with, wading through the crowd to join him.
“Did you return to enjoy the fun?”
“Just business,” Jason said. “Is Zacherie Patenaude around someplace?”
“With his entourage,” Alain said, pointing.
“Where are Jean and Raynard?”
“I do not know. Can I get you a drink?”
“Though I need one badly, there’s something we have to do first.”
“Like what?”
“Kidnap Patenaude and take him out the backdoor of the courtyard.”
“You must already be drunk.”
“Can you round up Jean and Raynard? Perhaps between us, we can devise a plan. And Alain, please hurry. We haven’t much time.”
Alain had barely disappeared when Lucy appeared through the throng, honing in on Jason like a heat-seeking missile.
“Monsieur, you’re back. I thought you had left for the night. Did you return for me?”
Jason shook his head as she put her arms around his neck. “You are beautiful, Miss Lucy. As much as I’d like to change my fate, I’m afraid you are not in my future.”
“You hurt my feelings, but you are wrong about that,” she said, putting her hand between his legs and squeezing.
“Baby, you’re getting me horny, and I can’t afford to let that happen.”
“And why not?”
“You’re going to think this is just a line, but I’ve traveled here from a different time and space. I have little more than an hour to return, or be trapped here for eternity.”
“You are a liar, Monsieur,” she said. “You have no money to bed me and are making excuses. No matter. I like you. It is late and I will take you to my bed without charge.”
Jason grabbed her, pulled her close, and then kissed her full on the mouth.
“There’s nothing I would like better than savor the salty taste of your breasts, or caress the delicate curve of your gorgeous back for the night, but I’m not lying when I tell you our next kiss must truly be our very last.”
Lucy’s smile disappeared as she stared into his eyes. “Men lie to me every night. Something in my heart tells me your words are true.”
“Then listen to your heart.”
Alain, Jean, and Raynard appeared as Jason squeezed Lucy’s hand.
“You have a problem?” Raynard said.
“An understatement. I’m in a great deal of trouble and need your help.”
“We are here for you,” Alain said.
“Can you start a fight?”
“A duel?” Jean said.
“An old-fashioned knock down, drag out, fisticuff's brawl. Something that will divert everyone’s attention for ten minutes, or so.”
Jean grinned and poked Alain. “Sounds like fun. For what reason do you need this diversion.”
“To give me cover when I kidnap Monsieur Patenaude.”
The three glanced at each other, all with amused expressions
“Alone?”
“I require the assistance of Miss Lucy, if she will help me.”
“What is it that you want me to do?”
“Entice Monsieur Patenaude to join you by the back gate of the courtyard. Once the fight starts, I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Patenaude is a dangerous man,” Raynard said.
“So am I. Wait until Lucy and I are ready. When I give you the high sign, start a brawl.”
The Musketeers watched as Jason and Lucy melded into the crowded courtyard in search of Zacherie Patenaude. T noise level had reached a crescendo, accordion and fiddle music barely audible over the bar’s cacophony.
“There he is,” Jason finally said. “You think you can get him to the back entrance?”
“I will have him melting like warm butter on a hot summer’s day.”
“That, I know is true. I think you melted my socks.”
Lucy quickly made contact with Patenaude. After letting her whisper something in his ear, he followed her to a palm tree growing near the courtyard’s rear gate. Jason followed them, little worried that Patenaude would turn and recognize him.
Seeing Raynard through the crowd, he shook his head and mouthed the words, “Not yet.”
Lucy’s dark eyes flashed in flickering lantern light as Jason approached Zacherie Patenaude from behind. He turned abruptly when Jason tapped his shoulder.
“You!” he said.
“You dropped something,” Jason said, pointing at the flagstone floor.
When Patenaude glanced at the ground, Jason popped him with a quick uppercut to the chin, grabbing him as his knees buckled.
“The old Paris sucker punch,” he said. “Works every time.
Seeing Raynard through the crowd, he raised his fist, pumping it. Within seconds, a fight started in the courtyard amid grunts, shouts, and multilingual cursing. Jason dragged the unconscious Patenaude toward the heavy wooden door at the courtyard’s rear entrance.
“It is locked, Monsieur,” Lucy said, rattling the doorknob.
“Shit!” Jason said. “Wouldn’t you know it? Matthieu, can you hear me?”
“We are here, Jason,” Matthieu called from the other side of the wall.
“I have Patenaude but the door’s locked.”
An eight-foot stucco wall encircled the courtyard, Matthieu’s upper torso appearing from the other side. The ongoing skirmish in the courtyard had only intensified, a man bouncing against Jason as he supported the unconscious body of Zacherie Patenaude.
“If you boost him up to me, I will drag him over the wall,” Matthieu said.
With Lucy’s help, Jason lifted Patenaude high enough such that Matthieu could grasp beneath his arms. After a concerted effort, Patenaude disappeared over the wall, Jason and Lucy trying to stay out of the melee behind them.
“Come with me,” he said. “You’ll get hurt if you stay here.”
“I will be fine, Monsieur, and there will be many men in need of loving care when the fight ends.”
“Then adieu,” he said.
“Will you ever return?”
“Only in my dreams,” he said. “But I will never forget you.”
Lucy wrapped her arms around him. “Nor I you, Monsieur. If this is our last kiss, then let us make it a good one.”
Their kiss continued until Jason shouted at them. “What are you waiting for?”
When a fallen fighter fell against it, Jason used it to catapult himself to the top of the barrier. Before dropping to the other side, he waved to Lucy. Matthieu, Gaston, and the unconscious Patenaude were waiting for him on the stoop.
“Do you have some rope, Gaston? Monsieur Patenaude will not be happy when he comes to.”
“Yassuh!” Gaston said, immediately returning from the carriage with rope and a large tow sack.
After stuffing a rag in Patenaude’s mouth, and then pulling the sack over his head, Gaston tied him securely.
“Quickly, let’s get him into the carriage.”
They were soon racing across brick and cobblestone, Gaston avoiding groups of young men prowling the French Quarter. He didn’t slow until they reached Marie Laveau’s.
Warmth exuded from the pot-bellied stove in Madam Laveau’s cottage as Jason, Matthieu, and Gaston dragged Zacherie Patenaude into her hoodoo room. Gaston lowered his head when she spoke to him.
“Back for more love potion, Gaston?”
Gaston averted her gaze and didn’t answer. Marie apparently didn’t expect one.
“What now?” Jason asked.
“Remove the ropes and put him in a chair. We have no time to waste.”
Zacherie Patenaude, moaning as he rubbed his head, was soon sitting across from Marie Laveau. She quickly produced a polished wooden box marked with intricate carvings. As candlelight flickered in Patenaude’s dull eyes, she wound it with a brass key, and then open its ornate lid. The old music box soon began playing a delicate melody. Marie bent across the table, slipping a necklace with a polished stone around the man’s neck.
When the song began filling the room, Matthieu, Jason, and Gaston grabbed their ears. Patenaude’s eyes popped open and he stared at the hoodoo woman.
“Breathe in,” she said. “Breathe out. Close your eyes and become one with the tones. Focus only on the melody.”
Patenaude’s eyes rolled back in his head as the music box’s metallic pegs picked out a timeless theme. In pain from the noise, Jason, Matthieu, and Gaston were forced to leave the room and wait on the other side of Madam Marie’s magic door.
The music was earsplitting and Marie’s own eyes rolled to the back of her head as she tried to muffle the sound with her hands. Patenaude’s head was spinning as they entered another state of consciousness. Transported in time and reality, Marie held Zacherie’s hand, both enraptured as they floated through the roof, into the night sky above the flickering gas lights of old New Orleans.
“Am I dead?” Patenaude asked.
“You are very much alive.”
“Then I must be dreaming.”
“This is no dream. Observe carefully because your actions will impact the rest of your life, and beyond.”
They were soon observing a funeral procession—horses pulling a wagon piled high with corpses. The one on top stared at them with cold dead eyes.
“Blessed Mother Mary!” Patenaude said. “Is that my body?”
“You die of yellow fever, like so many others. They are transporting the bodies to the funeral pyre.”
“They burn my body? Do I receive absolution?”
“You received no absolution because of the curse you placed.”
“What difference could that make?”
“You delved into black magic and conspired with the devil. No priest will ever absolve you.”
“It is Matthieu Courtmanche that is cursed.”
“When you incurred the ire of Doctor John, he added a postscript to the curse. He tricked you into cursing yourself and now the two of you are united forever. Unless...”
“I did nothing to Doctor John.”
“Oh, but you did. Elise is his daughter.”
“I am not to blame for what happened to her.”
“Doctor John thinks you are. Now, it is you that suffers because Courtmanche has mostly avoided the curse.”
“How is that possible?”
“He is a Traveler and you are not. You are doomed to wander forever in the realm of ghosts and spirits.”
“I do not believe you,” he said.
“You soon will.”
Flickering gaslights from the city below suddenly went black. When there was light again, Marie and Zacherie Patenaude were inside a building, floating weightlessly near the ceiling. There were no lights, illumination provided only by an ephemeral glow that danced from wall to wall.
“Where are we?”
“Charity Hospital,” Marie said. “It is where you die.”
Below them, hundreds of sick and dying people lay almost shoulder to shoulder, draping the floor in a writhing carpet of agony.
“What has caused such a scene?”
“Yellow Jack,” she said. “The plague.”
“Where are the doctors and nurses? Who is tending those wretches?”
“Others that are also sick. No one else will come near. Not even their own families.”
Marie and Patenaude weren’t the only entities floating above the sickened mass of humanity. Headless wraiths and disembodied specters had joined them. Patenaude recoiled when a wispy spirit passed through them.
“This is not real!”
“Not yet,” Marie said, “But it will soon be your eternity unless you invalidate the curse.”
“But Doctor John said a curse laid with twenty gold coins can never be reversed.”
“Doctor John is a powerful hoodoo man. He is wrong. You alone have the power.”
“Tell me how.”
“You must make an apology to Matthieu Courtmanche, and then you must atone to everyone in the city you have wronged. Moreover, you must do so this very night before the clocks toll midnight.”
###
When the music inside Madam Marie’s voodoo room ceased, Jason, Matthieu, and Gaston opened the door a crack. Patenaude and Marie were rubbing their heads, trying to refocus their eyes. Marie’s snake crawled from behind the altar, slithering toward the table.
“Madam Marie,” Jason asked. “Are you okay?”
“Trancing is never easy though there was no other way. Zacherie, do you have something to say to Monsieur Courtmanche?”
Patenaude’s legs wobbled when he attempted to stand. Using the table to regain his balance, he faced Matthieu. Jason waited, holding his breath.
“My apologies for everything, Courtmanche. I was angry when you ruined my plaçage agreement, and then bested me in a duel. I am also sorry about what happened to your father. That, I cannot change, but I will see to it you have your plantation, and your birthright restored.” Patenaude turned to Madam Marie. “What now?”
“Midnight Mass at St. Louis Cathedral. The witching hour draws near and we must hurry.”
###
A crowd milled around outside the magnificent cathedral as Gaston slowed the carriage. Opening the door, he waited for the exit of Zacherie Patenaude and Marie Laveau. Madam Marie handed a small bottle to Jason.
“It is almost midnight. The curse will soon be lifted and you must return to the time and place from where you came. Adieu.”
Jason kissed the voodoo woman’s hand before she had stepped from the carriage.
“Thank you, Madam Marie. You are everything I expected, and much more.”
Marie Laveau smiled and nodded as she and Patenaude made their way into the entrance of St. Louis Cathedral.
“I must return to your own world,” Jason said. “And you must remain here, though the person you become in the future must return with me.” Jason gave Matthieu the potion. “Good luck in restoring your affairs. I wish there were some way to know if you succeed.”
“Is the Courtmanche Plantation still present in the future?”
“Very much so,” Jason said. “And just as regal as ever.”
Matthieu shook Jason’s hand and then hugged him. “You were like a brother to me and I will miss you. I will leave you a message in my mother’s wall safe.”
“I look forward to reading it, now drink this,” Jason said, handing him a vial from inside his gris gris bag.
Matthieu’s eyes closed briefly after draining the vial. When they opened again, he shook his head to clear the cobwebs.
“Jason, where are we?”
“About to be stuck in the past forever, unless we get a move on. Gaston, take us to Bourbon Street, and hurry as if our lives depend upon it.”
Gaston started away from the square, moving slowly as he navigated through the crowd mobbing the streets of the French Quarter. Seeing they were making no progress, Jason vaulted from the carriage.
“We have to run, Wyatt. We’ll never make it in this traffic jam. Happy New Year, Gaston!” he said with a wave. “Take care, old man.”
“God bless, Suh!” the old man called after them.
Wyatt followed Jason out of the carriage, dodging bodies as he chased him down the street. When they encountered a wagon blocking their path, Jason leaped onto the back, bounding across to the other side. Wyatt wasn’t far behind. Cathedral bells from St. Louis Cathedral began sounding.
“There’s an alleyway and we have about ten more seconds to run through it.”
Sprinting for their lives, Jason and Wyatt bowled over a young man standing in their path, the church bell pealing for the tenth time.
“We’re not going to make it,” Wyatt said.
The twelfth clang of the bell sounded as the two men dived for the entrance to the alleyway.
###
Jason and Wyatt emerged from the darkness onto a frenetic Bourbon Street crowded with shoulder-to-shoulder revelers. Fireworks exploded, arching fiery pathways through the sky. Music issued from open doors, along with the combined dissonance of thousands of celebrants cheering the beginning of the New Year. None of them seemed to notice, or to care that the two men alongside them were entirely naked.
“Oh hell! Now what?”
Wyatt raised his hand in a high five. “You did it, buddy. You got me in and out in one piece. I owe you a big one.”
“Wyatt, Jason,” someone called through the crowd.
It was Lilly and Mama Mulate, yelling at them through the mob of people. When Jason and Wyatt reached them, they wrapped them in bathrobes. Mama handed Jason a Hurricane in a tall box with a straw, and faux Hurricane for Wyatt.
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Mama said. “Did you lift the curse?”
“Was there ever any doubt?” he said, giving her a thumbs up, and then lifting her off the pavement, spinning her around until they were both dizzy.