Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

"At your orders, milord." A black man in a long brown cloak was standing back by a sailor at the wheel. "Loose! Loose and haul!"

Then, barefoot sailors Martha hadn't noticed were running here and there untying ropes. The whole boat swung out into the river, dipping, rolling slightly. And so suddenly that she jumped a little, a deep drum went boom boom. Then boom boom again, and the rowers' long oars came out, flashed first dry then wet as they struck the water all together, and the boat started away like a frightened horse. They were surging, hissing over the water, gray birds flying with them, circling the long crimson banner that unfurled, coiled, and weaved in the wind. Martha could hear it snapping, rumpling.

A boy in white pants and white jacket came running to her, knelt down, and held out a blown-glass cup – glass so clear she could see the juice in it perfectly, juice the same blood-red as the boat.

Martha thought of asking the boy why she was going where she was going, then decided not.

She had heard that Kingdom's rowers were whipped – and this was certainly a Queen's boat – but no soldier whipped the red boat's rowers. Still, they worked their oars like farming horses in summer furrows. She could feel the boat's heave… and heave at each stoke they pulled together. The red sail was still furled… the wind blowing cold upriver, into their faces.

It seemed odd to be sailing in a summer-fitted boat through still-wet early-winter water. Martha had imagined one day traveling on a winter-fit's slanting deck as the ship skated hissing over the river's ice on angled long steel runners… lifting, tilting as the wind caught its sails, so it almost flew, banners and wind-ribbons curling and snapping through the air.

But this was still a summer-fit, with rowers. She wondered what work the rowers would be put to, with Lord Winter already striding down to bathe in the river, and freeze it.

The juice – cranberry juice – in the beautiful glass, was sweet and bitter at once. Martha'd never tasted it before, and didn't know if she was supposed to finish it all, or only sip, and leave the rest. She looked up to see if the Bad-lip Lord was watching, and he was.

"It's for you, Ordinary. Drink it."

So she did. The juice grew sweeter with each swallow, and she hoped it was a River-omen of sweeter things to come.

The west bank was too far away to be seen. She'd never seen it, though her father had when he'd worked fishing. But they were staying close enough to the east side of the river that sometimes she could see a piling-dock there, its house or warehouse high above the water, back under the trees. Then, a log house… and a while later, another.

Martha saw little eel-skiffs as they passed. The men crewing them stood, balancing, and bowed as the red boat, the long red banner, went sweeping by. She sat holding the pretty glass in her lap, concerned it might tip over and break if she set it down on the deck. The deck was as clean as a worn washboard.

The lieutenant and his men were standing in the front of the boat. She could see them, see Ralph-sergeant past the great mast, its long, furled red sail. He turned his head, talking with another soldier… saw her looking, and smiled at her. Martha supposed the wind had completed the ruin of her ringlets.

They passed more log houses… then a lord's strong-hold. It rose above the river's bank, three gray stone towers within gray stone walls, all higher than a man could throw a rock – almost high as a crossbow quarrel might reach. Two ladies were standing on a little carved-wood porch, halfway up the middle tower, their hands tucked into fur muffs. Their hair was combed up off their necks and coiled; Martha saw gold combs glinting. They were wearing woolen gowns, paneled – perhaps in linen. One's dress was dyed soft blue and gold, the other's darker. The ladies, standing so high, seemed perfect little dolls, dolls made for children like their own.

Both together, they dipped behind the little porch's carved railing, curtsying as the blood-red boat went by.

Martha imagined their brothers, their husbands, in the hold. Tall, handsome men with clean hands and several-dot tattoos – and their father, scarred, bearded, brave as a bear. All the men very big, but kind, so that nothing more than a mouse in their wardrobe had ever frightened the doll-ladies, or ever could.

Martha waved up to them, but the blood-red boat had passed down the river, and the ladies didn't seem to see.

A while later, after a ferry had sailed past them, borne upstream on the wind – its passengers had stood, crowded, to bow to the Queen's boat – Martha grew restless, and shifted where she sat.

"Need relief?" The Bad-lip Lord hadn't moved from where he stood in all the traveling.

He'd looked down to ask the question, and when Martha didn't answer, made an impatient face. "Do you need to piss, girl?" His breath smoked slightly in the cold.

"…Yes, lord."

The Bad-lip Lord muttered, "Rafting Jesus… " and lifted the forefinger of his right hand. The boy in the white jacket, who had been squatting by the rail, stood and came running.

"Bring this girl and a piss-pot together in the captain's cabin." The Bad-lip Lord looked back at the Brown-cloak Captain. "With your permission, of course."

"Does me honor," the Captain said, and he and the Bad-lip Lord both smiled.

…Relieved – a word that seemed so much nicer than 'pissed-out' – Martha had come to sit on her step again, her sheepskin cloak tucked tight around her against the wind. She watched the river run down with them, sometimes seeming to flow faster than the rowers could labor, though the drum kept beating like a heart, so steady that she forgot it from time to time.

Now, the river – great gray pieces of raft ice drifting by – was crowded with more and more ships and fisher-boats, rowed barges, and poled barges along the shore, so there were masts and long oars and banners and house flags of all colors wherever she looked.

Sometimes, as the wind blew this way or that, Martha could hear men singing on other ships as they passed – Gulf sailors and river-boatmen singing as they rowed or worked their lines. These men didn't interrupt their labor to bow to the Queen's boat, but only paused a moment to cup their right hands to their ears, to show they listened for any command.

The river had become alive with people and boats. Along the shore were more holds, more stone walls and towers, and wide two-storied timber docks on square stone pilings set marching out into the current. Slaves – still naked though Daughter Summer had died – were working on them, stowing and transferring the goods come in, the cargoes going out. Her father had called slaves 'the Ordinaries' bane' and said they took fish and honey from free men's mouths… A band was playing on some pleasure boat, horns and flutes.

There seemed more to see than Jordan-Jesus could have noticed, though he was a river god, with all drops of water for his eyes.

The sun's egg had sunk west to almost touch the water when the Brown-cloak Captain said, "Passing Vicksburg bluff." Martha looked over and could just see a line of green and perhaps a fortress, east, high along the bank.

Soon after, the Captain said, "Island." And Martha saw, downstream, and far, far out into the current, what seemed a great walled town rising from the river, its stone gray and gold in early evening light.

Amazed, she clapped her hands – thought it might be magic – and looked up to see if the Bad-lip Lord was also astonished. She pointed it out to him.

He looked there, nodded, and said, "Island."

It was a place Martha'd heard of all her life, but had never thought to see. She swayed where she sat, then swayed again as the rowers' slow steady beat shifted, and the blood-red boat swung farther from the shore. They were going out and out where the great town grew from white water.