As he got close he saw that her clothing was plain but very well cut. The dark red cotton gown, high waisted and with narrow sleeves made down to the wrists, was the kind a young girl of good family might wear. By the fit of the bust, it hadn't been made for her. The headcloth mandated by law for all black or colored women was- dark red too, but tied as a servant, or a country-bred slave, would tie it. His younger sister Dominique had tried to initiate him into the intricacies of the proper tying of tignons into fanciful, seductive, or outrageous styles in defiance of the law, but without much success. January knew a confection when he saw one, though, and this wasn't a confection. It was a headcloth, the mark of a slave's humility.

"Why did you follow me?"

"Are you M'sieu Benjamin Janvier?" The girl spoke the sloppy Creole French of the plantations, more than half African. Any town mother would have whaled the life out of a girl who used vo for vous, at least any mother who'd have been able to afford that dress.

"That's me." He kept his voice as unalarming as possible. At his size, he was aware that he was alarming enough. "And I have the honor of addressing...?"

She straightened her shoulders in her red dress, a little slip of a thing, with a round defiant chin and a trace of hardness in her eyes that may have been fear. Pretty, January thought. He could have picked her up in one hand.

"I'm Cora..." She hesitated, fishing, then went on with just a touch of defiance, "... LaFayette. Cora LaFayette. I needed to speak with you, Michie Janvier. Are you a music teacher?"

"I am that," he sighed.

After ten years he still didn't know whether to feel amused or angry about having to work as a musician.

There were free men of color who made a living-and a good living-as physicians and surgeons in New Orleans, but they were without exception light of skin. Quadroon or octoroon, they were for the most part offspring of white men and the women for whom they bought these pastel houses along this street.