George Martin - Fevre Dream

“Never mind about that,” Marsh said brusquely. “Joshua, we got to talk.”

York set the bottle down on the tray and turned to face Marsh. “Oh? What of? You sound upset, Abner.”

“I got spare keys to every lock on this boat. Mister Jeffers keeps ’em for me in the safe. When you went into Natchez, I got myself a key and searched your cabin.”

Joshua York scarcely moved, but when he heard Marsh’s words his lips pressed together slightly. Abner Marsh looked him straight in the eye, as a man ought at a time like this, and felt coldness there, and the fury of betrayal. He would almost rather Joshua had screamed at him, or even drawn a weapon, than look at him with such eyes. “Did you find anything of interest?” York asked finally, in a voice gone flat.

Abner Marsh wrenched himself away from Joshua’s gray eyes, and jabbed his stick at the desk. “Your ledgers,” he said. “Full of dead men.”

York said nothing. He glanced briefly at the desk, frowned, and sat himself down in one of his armchairs and poured out a measure of his thick, vile drink. He sipped it, and only then gestured to Marsh. “Sit down,” he commanded. When Marsh was seated across from him, York added one final word: “Why?”

“Why?” Marsh said, a bit angrily. “Maybe cause I’m tired of havin’ myself a partner who don’t tell me nothin’, who don’t trust me.”

“We had a bargain.”

“I know that, Joshua. And I’m sorry, if that matters. Sorry I did it, and a damn sight sorrier I got caught.” He grinned ruefully. “That Katherine saw me leave. She’ll be talkin’ to you. Look, I should have come direct to you, told you what was eatin’ at me. I’m doin’ that now. Maybe it’s too late, but here I am. Joshua, I love this boat of ours much as I ever loved anything, and the day we take the horns off the Eclipse is goin’ to be the grandest day of my life. But I been thinkin’, and I know I got to give up that day, and this steamer, rather than go on like we are. This river is full of scoundrels and sharpers and Bible-thumpers and abolitionists and Republicans and all manner of queer folk, but you’re the queerest of the lot, I swear. The night hours I don’t mind, they don’t fret me none. Books full of dead people, that’s somethin’ else, but it ain’t nobody’s business what a man cares to read. Why, I knew a pilot on the Grand Turk kept books that’d make even Karl Framm turn red with shame. But these stops of yours, these trips off by yourself, it’s those I can’t suffer no more. You’re slowing my steamer, damn you, you’re ruinin’ our name before we even made it. And Joshua, that ain’t all. I seen you the night you come back from New Madrid. You had blood on your hands. Deny it if you will. Cuss me if you want. But I know. You had blood on your hands, damned if you didn’t.”

Joshua York took a long drink, and frowned as he refilled his glass. When he looked at Marsh, the ice had melted in his eyes. He looked thoughtful. “Are you proposing we dissolve our partnership?” he asked.

Marsh felt like a mule had kicked him in the stomach. “If you want, you got that right. I ain’t got the money to buy you out, of course. But you’d have the Fevre Dream, and I could keep my Eli Reynolds and maybe show a profit with her, send you a little as it come in.”

“Is that the way you’d prefer it?”

Marsh glared at him. “Damn you, Joshua, you know it ain’t.”

“Abner,” York said, “I need you. I cannot run the Fevre Dream by myself. I am learning a little of piloting, and I’ve become somewhat more familiar with the river and its ways, but we both know I am no steamboatman. If you left, half of the crew would go with you. Mister Jeffers and Mister Blake and Hairy Mike for certain, and no doubt others. They are loyal to you.”

“I can order ’em to stay on with you,” Marsh offered.

“I would rather you stayed on. If I agree to overlook your trespass, can we continue as before?”

The lump in Abner Marsh’s throat was so thick he thought he would choke on it. He swallowed, and said the hardest thing that he had ever said, in all his born days: “No.”

“I see,” said Joshua.

“I got to trust my partner,” Marsh said. “He’s got to trust me. You talk to me, Joshua, you tell me what all this is about, and you got yourself a partner.”

Joshua York grimaced, and sipped slowly at his drink, considering. “You will not believe me,” he said at last. “It is a more outlandish story than any of Mister Framm’s.”

“Try it out on me. Can’t do no harm.”

“Oh, but it can, Abner, it can.” York’s voice was serious. He put down his glass and went over to the bookcase. “When you searched,” he said, “did you look at my books?”

“Yes,” Marsh admitted.

York pulled out one of the untitled volumes in the leather bindings, returned to his chair, and opened it to a page full of crabbed characters. “Had you been able to read it,” he said, “this book and its companion volumes might have enlightened you.”

“I looked at it. Didn’t make no sense.”

“Of course not,” York said. “Abner, what I am about to tell you will be difficult for you to accept. Whether you accept it or not, however, it must not be repeated outside the confines of this cabin. Is that understood?”

“Yes.”

York’s eyes wondered. “I want no mistake this time, Abner. Is that understood?”

“I said yes, Joshua,” Marsh grumbled, offended.

“Very well,” Joshua said. He put his finger on the page. “This code is a relatively simple cipher, Abner, but to break it you must first realize that the language involved is a primitive dialect of Russian, one that has not been spoken in some hundreds of years. The original papers transcribed in this volume were very, very old. They told the story of some people who lived and died in the area north of the Caspian Sea many centuries ago.” He paused. “Pardon. Not people. Russian is not among my best languages, but I believe the proper word is odoroten.”

“What?” said Marsh.

“That is only one term, of course. Other languages have other names. Kr?uvnik, vedomec, wieszczy. Vilkakis and vrkolak as well, although those two have somewhat different meanings from the others.”

“You’re talkin’ gibberish,” Marsh said, although some of the words Joshua was reciting did kind of ring familiar, and sounded vaguely like the gibble-gabble Smith and Brown were always spouting.

“I won’t give you the African names for them, then,” said Joshua, “or the Asian, or any of the others. Does nosferatu have meaning for you?”

Marsh regarded him blankly.

Joshua York sighed. “How about vampire?”

Abner Marsh knew that one. “What kind of story you tryin’ to tell me?” he said gruffly.

“A vampire story,” said York with a sly smile. “Surely you’ve heard them before. The living dead, immortal, prowlers of the night, creatures without souls, damned to eternal wandering. They sleep in coffins filled with their native earth, shun daylight and the cross, and each night they rise and drink the blood of the living. They are shape-changers as well, able to take the forms of a bat or a wolf. Some, who utilize the wolf form frequently, are called werewolves and thought to be a different species entirely, but that is an error. They are two sides of a single dark coin, Abner. Vampires can also become mist, and their victims become vampires themselves. It is a wonder, multiplying so, that vampires have not displaced living men entirely. Fortunately, they have weaknesses as well as vast power. Though their strength is frightening, they cannot enter a house where they have not been invited, neither as human nor animal nor mist. They wield great animal magnetism, however, the force Mesmer wrote about, and can often compel their victims to ask them in. But a cross will send them fleeing, garlic can bar them, and they cannot cross running water. Though they look much like you and I, they have no souls, and therefore are not reflected in mirrors. Holy water will burn them, silver is anathema to them, daylight can destroy them if dawn catches them away from their coffins. And by severing their heads from their bodies and driving a wooden stake through their hearts, one can rid the world of them permanently.” Joshua sat back and took up his drink, sipped, smiled. “ Those vampires, Abner,” he said. He tapped the book with a long finger. “This is the story of a few of them. They are real. Old, eternal, and real. A sixteenth-century odoroten wrote this book, about those who had gone before him. A vampire.”