Barbara Hambly - Dead water

The padlock clunked against the wood of the door as the bolt was secured again behind him.

A man got to his feet in the corner, held out his hand. “I'm Bobby,” he said in the just-broken voice of a youth.

“Ben,” January introduced himself.

Outside came the heavy crack of a whip, and a man's stifled sob of pain. Bobby flinched, too. In the fragments of daylight that seeped through the brick-holes up under the eaves, his face was downy with the first beard of adolescence. “They charges fifty cents a stroke,” provided Bobby, trying to sound casual about it. “They whipped a woman this mornin' an' all the men over in the jail back of the courthouse crowded up to the window to watch. You a house-nigger?” He was looking with respectful shyness at January's clean linen and well-cut jacket.

“Manservant,” replied January.

“You run away?”

January shook his head, and pressed his eye to the Judas in the door. “That damn deputy Rees arrested both me and my master, on a lie.”

“Somebody paid him.” Bobby flinched again at the next whip-crack, the next gasping scream. “That Rees'd arrest his own mama, somebody pay him. Least that's what Cuth said.” The young man's eyes moved to indicate the man outside at the whipping-post. “He from town here, belong to Marse Simms the blacksmith. Marse Simms say he was stealin', but it's really Young Marse that's takin' iron an' nails an' that an' sellin' 'em, Cuth says. I coulda told him ain't no good to say so.”

He shivered a little at the sound of a more desperate cry. “I runned away,” he added softly.

Silence outside, then a man's truculent voice: “All right, then, Cuth. You gonna be a good darky now?”

Whatever Cuth said, it was too muffled to hear, but a moment later there was the clank of chain against wood, the crunch of boots on gravel. The soft thunk of the closing station-house door.

Flies, wasps, and bees roared in circles in the blue-brown shadows of the slave-jail's rafters. Far off in the silence January heard a cannon fire, announcing another steamboat coming into the landing.

A few hours, Rose had guessed. Long enough for Mr. Roberson and his family to have luncheon with some friend in Natchez-Over, for Colonel Davis to pay a social call, for half the crew to get robbed and stripped in Natchez-Under. . . .

Had Weems's promise to return at two been based on information La Pécheresse had gleaned from Ladies' Parlor gossip? Was two when the Silver Moon would be steaming away upstream, to leave Hannibal and January stranded in the Natchez jail until Sheriff Gridley finally let them out for lack of evidence?

I'll leave you reports at General Delivery, left till called for, in Vicksburg, Mayersville, and Greenville, and I'll wait for you at the best free colored boardinghouse in Memphis, Rose had said as calmly as if she'd been making arrangements to meet him at his mother's house after Mass. I'm not sure I'll be able to pursue them beyond Memphis alone . . . .

And if she wasn't in Memphis when he got there? Dear God, how would he ever find her, with the whole length of the river to search? With scoundrels like Gleet and Cain on the boat, eyeing every man and woman of color with cold calculation, resenting the freedom that took seven to fourteen hundred dollars out of his, Gleet's, pocket . . . ?

Despite the oven-like heat of the brick jail, January felt cold through to his marrow.

Blessed Virgin, he prayed, sliding his hand into his jacket pocket to touch the blue glass beads of his rosary, take care of her. Watch over her.

In his mind he pictured the serene face of the Mother of God as he'd seen it on the statues in the cathedrals here and in Paris . . . as he sometimes saw it in his dreams. That star-crowned woman in the sky-blue veil, smiling as she watched over the world.

Get me the hell out of here. . . .

The key rattled in the padlock. January and the boy Bobby turned, startled—January noting that whoever had crossed the graveled yard must have done so with conscious silence. A young man who looked like a slave janitor stood in the doorway with a pitcher of water: “I brung this for you,” he informed them unnecessarily, and set it down. He closed the door, and January heard his bare feet on the gravel this time, but very soft, and very swift, before silence closed in again.

January bent to pick up the pitcher, then stopped. “I don't think that man bolted the door.”

“You shittin' me,” said Bobby.

January pushed the door.

It opened.

The trunks will still be at the hotel.

I can at least warn Rose.

This is a trap, isn't it?

January caught Bobby's arm as the young man started to rush past him into the sunlit yard. People did do stupid things, of course. Careless oversights that would get them a whipping from Deputy Rees and Tom.

But his every nerve and muscle prickled with watchfulness as he and Bobby slipped through the door, hastened across the yard and out the narrow gate to Commerce Street. . . .

“This way, boys!” A tall man in a shabby black coat was waiting for them at the corner of the alley. Rusty braids hung Indian-fashion down to his shoulders, and a faded black patch covered one eye; the other was blue and sharp under a curling fringe of brow. As he caught each of them by the sleeve, to draw them through a side-door into the shed behind an apothecary shop, January saw he wore a clerical collar.

“Thank God you had the sense to run,” whispered the preacher. “There's men so cowed by fear they won't even take the blessing of freedom when the prison door swings wide!”

“Who are you?” asked Bobby in the same tone the Patriarch Abraham must have addressed the angels who came calling at his tent.

“Reverend Levi Christmas.” The man shook Bobby's hand, then January's. “Of the Underground Railway.”

Even in New Orleans, January had heard of what was beginning to be called the Underground Railway. In the copies of the Liberator that Mr. Quince had slid beneath the stateroom door he had read a good deal more. It was a loose organization of Abolitionists, Quakers, and some free blacks who worked together to smuggle runaway slaves to freedom in Canada. They passed the fugitives from one household to another, hiding them in barns and false attics and under the raised bottoms of specially-made boats and wagon-boxes, guiding them by night, sometimes hiding them for weeks at a time until chance offered an opportunity for them to slip across the river to Ohio.

Senators like John Calhoun of South Carolina stormed about the responsibility of the United States Government to protect slave-holders' property, and Democratic newspapers denounced the organizers of the Railway as fomenters of slave insurrection and heirs to Nat Turner's bloody schemes. But no politician really dared to go near, or think about—or talk about—the whispers that were rising everywhere in the nation.

“Here.” From a sack in the shed's corner Christmas pulled a couple of slouch hats and two ragged jackets. “Put these on, and follow me. We can keep you hid down Under-The-Hill till the time comes to pass you along.”

Bobby snatched the garments eagerly, but January drew a deep breath and stepped back. “You're going to think me insane, sir,” he said. “And poor-spirited, too. But I cannot forsake my master, who was arrested with me on a false charge. He's not a well man,” he added, seeing Bobby's stunned astonishment at this repudiation of every field-hand's dream. “He needs me.”

An easier explanation, he reflected, than the truth.

The Reverend's single blue eye widened in surprise, then narrowed again. “You think your loyalty is going to remain in his mind the next time he needs a thousand dollars and has nothing to sell but you?” he asked. “You think his family are going to remember your loyalty when he dies, and leaves you to a nephew or a cousin, like an outworn hat? God will look after your master, as He looks after us all, son.”