George Martin - Fevre Dream

You know the rest, I think, or can guess it. Let me say one other thing, however. In New Albany, when you showed our steamer to me, I did not feign my satisfaction. The Fevre Dream is beautiful, Abner, and that was as it should be. For the first time, a thing of beauty is come into the world because of us. It is a new beginning. The name frightened me a bit-fever has been another word for the red thirst among my people. But Simon pointed out that such a name would likely intrigue any of our race who might hear it.

There is my story, almost all of it. The truth, which you insisted on. You have been honest with me, in your way, and I believe you when you say you are not superstitious. If my dreams are to come true, there must come a time when day and night clasp hands across the twilight of fear that lies between us. There must come a time for risk. Let it be now, with you. My dream and yours, our steamer, the future of my people and your own, vampires and cattle-I give them all over to your judgment, Abner. What will it be? Trust or fear? Blood or good wine? Friends or enemies?

Aboard the Steamer Fevre Dream, New Orleans, August 1857

In the heavy silence that followed Joshua’s story, Abner Marsh could hear his own steady breathing and the thump of his heart laboring in his chest. Joshua had been talking for hours, it seemed, but in the black stillness of the cabin there was no way to be sure. Outside it might be getting light. Toby would be cooking breakfast, the cabin passengers would be taking their morning strolls along the promenade on the boiler deck, the levee would be bustling with activity. But inside Joshua York’s cabin, night went on and on, forever.

The words of that damned poem came back to him, and Abner Marsh heard himself say, “Morn came and went-and came, and brought no day.”

“Darkness,” said Joshua, softly.

“And you’ve lived in it your whole damn life,” Marsh said. “No morning, not ever. God, Joshua, how d’you stand it?”

York made no reply.

“It ain’t sensible,” Marsh said. “It’s the goddamndest story I ever sat still for. But damned if I don’t believe you.”

“I’d hoped you would,” said York. “And now, Abner?”

That was the hard part, Abner Marsh thought. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “All them people you say you killed, and still I kind of feel sorry for you. Don’t know if I ought to. Maybe I ought to try to kill you, maybe that’s the only damn Christian thing to do. Maybe I ought to try to help you.” He snorted, annoyed at the dilemma. “I guess what I ought to do is hear you out a little more, and wait before I make up my mind. Cause you left somethin’ out, Joshua. That you did.”

“Yes?” York prompted.

“New Madrid,” said Abner Marsh firmly.

“The blood on my hands,” Joshua said. “What can I tell you, Abner? I took a life in New Madrid. But it was not as you might suspect.”

“Tell me how it was, then. Go on.”

“Simon told me many things of the history of our people; our secrets, our customs, our ways. One thing he said I found greatly disturbing, Abner. This world that your people have built is a daylight world, not easy for us to live in. Sometimes, to make it easier, one of us will turn to one of you. We can use the power that dwells within our eyes and our voice. We can use our strength, our vitality, the promise of life unending. We can use the very legends your people have erected around us, for our own purposes. With lies and fear and promises, we can fashion for ourselves a human thrall. Such a creature can be very useful. He can protect us by day, go where we cannot go, move among men without suspicion.

“In New Madrid there had been a killing. At the very woodyard where we stopped. From what I read in the newspapers, I had great hopes of finding one of my own race. Instead I found-call him what you will. A slave, a pet, an associate. A thrall. He was an old, old man. A mulatto, bald and wrinkled and hideous, with a milk-glass eye and a face terribly scarred by some ancient fire. He was not pleasing to look at, and inside-inside he was foul. Corrupt. When I came upon him, he leapt up, brandishing an axe. And then he looked at my eyes. He recognized me, Abner. He knew what I was at once. And he fell to his knees, crying and blubbering, worshipping me, groveling as a dog to a man, begging me to fulfill the promise. ‘The promise,’ he kept saying, ‘the promise, the promise.’

“Finally I bid him stop, and he did. At once. Cringing away in fear. He had been taught to heed a bloodmaster’s words, you see. I asked him to tell me the story of his life, hoping he might lead me to my own people.

“His story was grim as my own. He was born a free man of color in a place called the Swamp, which I gather is a notorious district of New Orleans. He lived as a pimp, a cutpurse, finally a cutthroat, preying on the flatboatmen who came down to the city. He’d killed two men before he was ten. Later he served under Vincent Gambi, the bloodiest of the pirates of Barataria. He was overseer to the slaves Gambi stole from Spanish slavers and resold in New Orleans. He was a voodoo man as well. And he had served us.

“He told me of his bloodmaster, the man who took him in thrall, who laughed at his voodoo and promised to teach him greater, darker magic. Serve me, the bloodmaster had promised, and I will make you one of us. Your scars will heal, your eye will see again, you will drink blood and live forever, never aging. So the mulatto had served. For almost thirty years he did everything he was bid. He lived for the promise. He killed for the promise, was taught to eat warm flesh, to drink blood.

“Until finally his master saw a better opportunity. The mulatto, old and sickly now, became a hindrance. His usefulness passed, so he was discarded. It might have been merciful to kill him, but instead he was sent away, upriver, to fend for himself. A thrall does not go against his bloodmaster, even if he knows the promise made him to be a lie. So the old mulatto had wandered on foot, living by robbery and murder, moving up the river slowly. Sometimes he earned honest money as a slave catcher or laborer, but mostly he kept to himself in the woods, a recluse who lived by night. When he dared, he ate the flesh and drank the blood of his victims, still believing it would help restore his youth and health. He had been living around New Madrid for a year, he told me. He used to chop some wood for the woodyard man, who was too old and feeble to do it himself. He knew how seldom anyone visited that woodyard. So… well, you know the rest.

“Abner, your people can learn much from mine. But not the things that he had learned. Not that. I felt pity for him. He was old and hideous and without hope. Yet I was angry as well, as angry as I had been in Buda-Pest with the rich woman who liked to wash in blood. In the legends of your race, my people have been made the very essence of evil. The vampire has no soul, no nobility, no hope of redemption, it is said. I will not accept that, Abner. I have killed countless times, have done many terrible things, but I am not evil. I did not choose to be the way I was. Without choice, there can be no good nor evil. My people have never had that choice. The red thirst has ruled us, condemned us, robbed us of all we might have been. But your people, Abner-they have no such compulsion. That thing I encountered in the forest beyond New Madrid, he had never felt the red thirst, he could have been anything, done anything. Instead he had chosen to become what he was. Oh, to be sure, one of my own race shares the guilt-the man who lied to him, promised him things that could never be. Yet I can understand the reason for that, much as I might loathe it. An ally among your people can make all the difference. All of us know fear, Abner, my race and yours alike.