Barbara Hambly - Dead water

“Then you don't think Cain was staying close to you last night because he was worried about his own gang attacking him?”

“Attack him how?” demanded the dealer sharply. “They's chained to the wall, just long enough so's they can piss over the side. If any of 'em was so stupid as to take a swing at him, like tryin' to get the key away from him, all he'd have to do was sing out and get half a dozen deck-hands from the engine-room.” He shrugged, anger in his movement. January wondered if Gleet guessed Hannibal's real meaning. Not, Was Cain afraid of being thrown overboard by his own gang on so black a night, but, Was it physically possible for them to have thrown Weems over the side?

The last thing either Gleet or Cain would welcome, he reflected, was an accusation against any member of either of their gangs . . . which would automatically lose them over a thousand dollars, if the sheriff in Mayersville decided that that was what had happened. Far better to push off the blame onto someone else's slave.

“Though now you speak of it,” Gleet went on thoughtfully, “he might have been twitchy about somethin' at that. Cain, I mean. When I started around to see the bucks after we fed up the wenches, he did scamper some to catch me up, and most times he don't have the time of day to give me.”

“Does it sound to you,” asked January after Gleet had gone into the galley for the pail of rice and beans that would be dished out to the men of his coffle, “as if Cain was the one who expected to be attacked last night, and not Weems?”

“You could look at it that way,” agreed Rose, settling her box again beside the smudge. “Provided you can come up with some way Weems—or anyone on the boat for that matter—could have taken on Cain and done any damage. The night was pitch black and foggy, but it would need a blind man to mistake Weems for Cain.”

“Cain go armed with a pistol in his boot and a knife in his belt,” provided Cissy, washing her hands with a bandanna dampened in the rain-barrel after her hasty meal. “Even when he go in to dinner, he got a knuckle-duster in his pocket, Mr. Tredgold says.”

They fell silent as Gleet came out of the galley, and walked down the promenade checking his property for the night. On the other side of the boat, the women's voices rose in a gentle crooning, a lullaby over the stillness of the water and the muffled grunts and curses from the boiler-room.

The women weren't worried. The men were.

Because they'd seen Julie slip over the side there last night?

Or because they'd seen something else?

“One more thing,” he asked Cissy. “You spend most of the day in the Ladies' Parlor looking after those br—those charming Tredgold children. You must hear every piece of gossip on the boat.”

She grinned. “Don't I just.”

“What can you tell me about Jack Quince? Other than that he's out to reform the world.”

Cissy laughed indulgently as at a child. “Lord, the way he preaches . . . and don't those ladies in the Parlor eat it up, though? One day it's how nobody should eat meat 'cause it pollutes the blood—let him grow up gettin' nuthin' but pulses an' corn, an' see how pure his blood gets!—an' another it's about how many circles an' levels Heaven has, like he been there. Last night he sat in the corner of the Saloon tellin' the ladies about how nobody was dancin' right—since the reels an' waltzes Mr. Sefton was playin' weren't how the Ancient Greeks would have done it—an' just this evenin', when I left the children up in the Parlor to come down here for dinner, he was on about how all the troubles in the United States just now date from movin' the capital to Washington City instead of leavin' it in Philadelphia, where it belongs.”

“From Philadelphia, is he?” asked January.

“Lord, yes. You ever hear a man say ‘ah' for ‘o' like that who wasn't? He clerks for a firm that brokers sugar, cotton, an' tobacco in Cincinnati, makes two-three trips a year on the river, which is how he knows Mr. Tredgold—Mrs. Tredgold can't get enough of him. Myself, pretty as he is, I'd think a lot more of him if he did somethin' about slavery besides just goin' around sayin' how bad it is. I already know that.”

An innocuous and well-known personage, then, thought January, following the nurse as she climbed the stairs in a rustle of petticoats to resume her position at the bedside of her wretched little charges. The door of the Saloon stood open, throwing light out into the humid darkness. Someone—Thu, probably—went into the Ladies' Parlor and lit a single oil-lamp there, anticipating that even had Hannibal not been in disgrace with the rest of the passengers, there would be no after-supper dancing.

Rifle on his arm, Mr. Roberson walked along the upper promenade, peering at the matte-black cut-out of the shore. Looking up at the hurricane deck above, January glimpsed a black shape that had to be Lockhart, silhouetted against the stars.

Quince came from Philadelphia.

Co-incidence?

January shook his head. A lot of people presumably came from Philadelphia, and because that city was one of the business centers of the United States, it wasn't odd that they'd find their way to New Orleans.

Still . . .

Molloy's voice bawled an order, on the bow-deck by the sound of it. He was on watch till midnight, and probably longer, since the Silver Moon would be getting under way again at about that time. Just as well, thought January. The last thing they needed was for Molloy to glimpse Miss Skippen making her way along to Hannibal's room.

I have important news to impart.

A trick? An excuse to get into Hannibal's room so she could throw herself into his all-too-susceptible arms?

Some variation of the badger game?

Voices floated down after him as he descended again to the galley. The ladies emerged from the Saloon, chatting softly as one and then another disappeared into the ladies' toilet: “Dearest, would you like a little company in your stateroom?” trumpeted Mrs. Tredgold in a voice that she probably thought was gentle and confidential. “I can come sit with you—I have some of the finest China green tea, much better than the horrid stuff they use in the galley—I've told Tredgold and told him. . . .”

January leaned against the corner of the passway and took Rose's hand.

Hannibal tactfully faded into the darkness.

“Don't I know you from somewhere, sir?” asked Rose diffidently, and January settled down on the box at her side.

“My face is familiar,” sighed January, “but I can't quite place my name.”

“It looks like it should be Joe, or Jim, or maybe Pete. . . .”

And the two of them dissolved into giggles.

An hour or so later, January took his place on the wide bow apron of the upper deck. The lamp in the Ladies' Parlor had been put out, but a few still burned in the Saloon, where Quince and Lundy played cribbage. January caught the names of William Lloyd Garrison, and Henry Clay, and of the Colonization Society. He glanced down the promenade toward Hannibal's stateroom, wondering if Miss Skippen would approach from the bow end or the stern, and whether, if she passed him here on the bow, he could remain unobtrusive by simply standing away from the lanterns. At six feet three he was not the most unobtrusive of men. . . .

“Benjamin.”

Colonel Davis emerged from the door of the Saloon. January inclined his head respectfully, and after a moment's hesitation, the young planter came to his side.

“Benjamin, I regret to say I have been making inquiries pursuant to your case—” The corner of January's mouth twisted a little at the way it had become his case, and not Hannibal's—

“—and I must say I am becoming extremely troubled.”