Barbara Hambly - Dead water

“Thank you,” said January dryly.

“They played vingt-et-un, all-fours, short whist and ecarte, turn and turn about—Byrne won most of the money but not so much as to be pointed at. Si possis recte, si non, quicumque modo rem. Gleet and Cain left together twice to check on their slaves, and were together the whole of that time. The rest of us played short whist in their absence. Roberson, Lockhart, and Davis left once apiece, to piss over the side—at least that's what they said they were going to do, and they were back quickly enough to have done no more unless they were very speedy murderers indeed. Molloy came in about twelve-thirty for a drink and a hand of whist, then left, presumably, for the perfumed delights of Miss Skippen's bower—that was just before one. Davis played another hand and left just after one, and I left just after that.”

A tremendous flash of lightning illuminated the windows; rain pounded down as if the Silver Moon were passing under a waterfall. In the door of the Saloon Souter rubbed his hands together and reported, “Plenty of water now!” in a pleased voice, and trotted down the hall and outside, presumably to observe the effects of the rise on every sand-bar and point within view.

“What I'm curious about,” went on Hannibal, “is what Weems was searching for in everyone's staterooms. A hundred thousand dollars in gold—not to mention Bank of Pennsylvania notes and all the rest of it—isn't something you tuck in the back of your glove drawer. Even if the trunks that contained it were stolen and hidden somewhere during the upheaval with the luggage, surely a glance through the stateroom window would have sufficed to tell him whether they were in the room or not. None of those bunks is big enough to conceal a hatbox under, let alone a trunk.”

“Which means the specie was taken out of the trunk,” said January. “Was there time for that?”

“Oh, I think so.” The fiddler's eyes narrowed as he mentally reviewed the events of the previous afternoon. “But probably only just. When the boat hung up on Horsehead Bar, there was about an hour of driving and heaving as Molloy tried to bull through, when anyone on board could see that we were going to have to unload and spar over. Afterwards Molloy turned the pilot-house over to poor Souter, and directed the deck-hands to start unloading. But he had plenty of time to come and go from the hold, pretty much unobserved in the confusion. I'm not sure how much gold he could have emptied from trunks, but it could have been transferred to sacks—God knows there are plenty of pillow-cases in the linen-room and flour-sacks in the galley—and stowed to be moved later, or simply transferred to a crate or box with his own labels on it. Molloy's certainly the only one who could have done it unobserved.”

January grunted thoughtfully. “I wonder if Weems knew that.”

At Davis's table, Kyle Outliver—even more verminous and bedraggled-looking than when he'd tried to lift Sophie's skirts a week earlier—was explaining that most of his fellow deck-passengers had been awake playing cards. . . . No, they didn't know what time they'd quit, but it was before the boat had gone over the bar. No, all the boys wasn't together playing all that time. Some of 'em crawled off to sleep behind the crates, or to have a smoke or take a piss or whatever—it wasn't his look-out what they did. Who'd played? Him and Sam Pawk and Cupid and Billy Earthquake most of the time. . . . No, they hadn't heard nuthin', 'cept Johnny Funk's snorin'. . . .

“An' you fartin' ever' time Cupid took money off you,” retorted Johnny Funk, a bear-like man with one ear bitten off.

“Either Weems didn't figure it out,” said Hannibal quietly, “or he had some information that we don't.”

Leaving Hannibal to follow the proceedings as Davis systematically questioned the deck-passengers—who seemed to have mostly gotten drunk and fallen asleep before midnight, as usual—January descended to the lower promenade to look for Rose. He found the niches among the sheltered wood-piles empty—niches considerably enlarged now because of the amount of wood burned at Vicksburg and Horsehead Bar—for all the inhabitants of the stern were bunched along the starboard rail among the male slaves, watching while Mr. Molloy rowed the skiff away toward what looked like a murky, bubbling tributary stream that broke the wall of trees.

“He ain't really gonna try and take this boat through there, is he, 'Rodus?” asked a boy in Gleet's coffle of the tall, slim Fulani who stood at his side.

“'S'a matter, Lam?” joked an older man to whom the boy was chained. “You ain't anxious to get to Memphis?”

“We could probably do it.” 'Rodus narrowed his eyes to watch the skiff maneuver through the sluicing curtains of rain. “See what he got there, that rope with the markers on it? That's a lead-line, to measure how deep the water is back there.”

“That's the thing he didn't use yesterday tryin' to run over that bar,” added Mr. Roberson's white-haired valet Winslow, and everybody laughed.

“What's goin' on up there, Michie Ben?” asked 'Rodus as January moved along the rail to search for Rose among the spectators. “They figure out anythin' yet about that poor buckra that went overside?”

And January heard in the young man's voice the false note of assumed casualness. Well hidden, of course— blankittes were always complaining that slaves were habitual liars, not seeming to make the connection between the necessity to tell whites what they wanted to hear and the fact that whites could flog or sell the speaker if they didn't like what they heard. As a child, January, with his open and innocent face, had been the champion liar on Bellefleur—something that hadn't saved him when old Michie Simon went on a tear with the rawhide.

Now he scanned the faces of the men chained along the wall, and he saw in all of them a wary and desperate interest.

He said quite quietly, “Colonel Davis askin' questions. I think he means to question everybody on board, probably you included.”

“Us?” The boy Lam looked scared, and put a protective arm around the younger brother chained at his side. “Why us?”

“What would a dressed-up buckra like Weems be doin' down here that time of night?” asked 'Rodus in a tone of such complete calm naturalness that January would have bet money they'd seen something, knew something.

And with an almost audible click, like the sound of a key in a lock, he heard Souter's voice again: a nigger gal singin' to her pickaninny . . .

Every night, the voices of the male slaves had risen in song. Desultory, sometimes, or joyful; sometimes the familiar call and response of work songs. He'd heard them himself as he slid into sleep last night. . . .

So why not at midnight, when Souter had gone up to the pilot-house?

Why had the men on the starboard side fallen silent, while the women continued to sing?

But he only shook his head. “They know he was dead when he went in the water,” he replied, and saw the glance go back and forth among the men. “Somebody smashed him over the head.”

The men around were silent. In the to-and-fro of their eyes he could almost hear the words: How'd they know? How much do they know? What's it gonna mean for us?

“He tell 'em?” asked 'Rodus mildly, but before January could answer, Mr. Lundy appeared at the bow end of the promenade and flourished his cane at the cluster of servants and deck-hands watching Molloy in the skiff.

“God damn the lot of you, trim the boat! What do you think you're looking at? Trim the damn boat before we get in more trouble—how do you expect a body to steer with all the weight on one side? Haven't you anything better to do than gape?”