Dead Water (22 page)

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.”

YOU are becoming troubled??? Sir.

“I have inquired of the whereabouts of every person on this boat, and you are one of very few who cannot account for his movements at or about midnight last night. Now, I don't say this to worry you,” the Colonel added, raising a preemptory hand although January had made no attempt to interrupt. “I am much inclined to believe that you were where you say you were, in spite of Mr. Molloy's insinuations to the contrary. The man is a blackguard, a braggart, and a scoundrel . . . but a scoundrel who was in the presence of a witness when Mr. Weems met his end. And of those who have no alibi for the material time, you are the only one who seems to have had a connection with Mr. Weems.”

“I'm the only one whose connection can be proven so far, sir,” replied January slowly. “And you're right in that a man of my race will always be blamed before a man of yours—you know that's the way of the world.”
At least it is in this country
, he wanted to add but didn't. But he saw in Davis's eyes the acknowledgment of his tribute to the planter's worldliness.

Davis said, a little to January's surprise, “I won't desert you. Whomever else the sheriff decides to detain in Mayersville for his investigation, I plan to leave the boat and remain as a witness, to make sure that justice is served.”

“Thank you, sir,” said January, and wondered how much further into his confidence he could take this stiff-necked and arrogant young man, and whether Colonel Davis might be prevailed upon, instead, to remain on the boat as some kind of assistance for Rose. “I've been asking questions, too. . . . Were you aware that Mr. Quince, who also lacks an alibi, comes, like Weems, from Philadelphia?”

Davis looked surprised. “Where heard you that?”

“I understand it was spoken of in the Ladies' Parlor as common knowledge. Since both Weems and Mr. Quince dabbled in Abolitionist circles, it isn't impossible that they knew one another there. I understand also—though this is only hearsay and I'm sure he will deny it—that Mr. Lundy went to considerable trouble to come up-river on this particular boat, and appears to have been less than truthful about his reasons for doing so: the doctor he claims to be going to see in Lexington doesn't exist. And I'm not sure if you know that Mr. Weems was blackmailing Mr. Cain.”

“Blackmailing?” Davis's sparse, jutting eyebrows flicked upward, and the side of his face twitched. “That is a very serious charge to make on hearsay.”

“It isn't hearsay, sir. I heard Weems threaten Cain with exposure of some secret, the night Cain came on board at Donaldsonville.”

Davis was silent, stroking his wispy beard for a time. Then he glanced up at January. “That may be true—I have no way of knowing—but Mr. Cain was with Mr. Gleet the entire night.”

“Doesn't that in itself strike you as a little odd, sir?” asked January diffidently. “Considering that Cain generally avoids Gleet?”

“Everyone avoids Gleet,” agreed Davis. “The man is an excrescence, and I won't permit him on my place, for all he comes around two or three times a year trying to buy slaves or sell them—pah! A human mollusk.” His sharp voice was shrill with distaste. “The worst of a bad class, of whom even the so-called best suffer by comparison to the average hound dog.”

“Do you know why Cain detests Gleet the way he seems to?”

“I can't imagine any gentleman of taste who wouldn't.” Davis frowned, as if realizing that Cain by definition did not fall into that category. “As for Cain, I don't know him or anything about him—he's new on the river. But it's curious that he would have paid Weems money at the threat of exposure, being already, as it were, the most despicable form of life known to man. Unless . . .” A look of momentary enlightenment flickered across the sharp features, then passed into a look of calculation, and the idea he'd scouted—almost certainly, January guessed, the possibility that Cain might himself be part African—was dropped.

It was a concern—and a cause for blackmail—everywhere in the South, where a man ran the risk of ostracism and possible enslavement if proven to bear even the smallest proportion of African blood in his veins: more than one murder had been committed in New Orleans to conceal just such information.

But a more Saxon product than the hawk-nosed Jubal Cain was hard to picture. The supposition was simply absurd.

Which left them where?

Bredon,
Weems had called Cain.

Printed in the
Mayersville Gazette.

What possible social consequences would threaten a man who was already a slave-dealer?

Striding footfalls shook the stairs that led down from the pilot-house. January whipped around as Molloy shoved past him, a pistol in his hand. He nearly ran down the promenade, January pelting at his heels, cursing himself for not finding a way to watch Hannibal's door during his talk with Davis—January and Davis had not quite caught up with the infuriated pilot when he reached Hannibal's door, yanked it open . . .

The lamplight within showed them all Theodora Skippen leaning against Hannibal and grasping his lapels, while Hannibal, backed to the wall, attempted to disengage her grip.

As the door was ripped open, Theodora whirled, mouth and eyes widening to a series of perfectly round O's; Hannibal began, “Sir, it isn't—”

“God damn you, if it isn't what it looks like, what is it, then?” bellowed Molloy, grabbed Hannibal by the front of his coat, hauled him from the room, and showed every sign of heaving him over the rail and into the river had not January and Davis both intervened.

Molloy thrashed against their grip, shouting curses—when Hannibal, with a sad lack of gallantry, dragged Theodora's note from his coat pocket and held it out, the pilot simply crushed it in his fist and hurled it overboard: “You don't think I don't know the bitch can't write? Nor read—she had to get someone to read her this. . . .”

He slashed Hannibal across the face with a sheet of notepaper and, when Hannibal took it, followed up the blow with the back of his hand. “And don't you be pretending you don't know what's there,” snarled Molloy. “Now, sir, it's insulted me you have and done murder on my boat, and this time I will have satisfaction! You name your friends if you've got any!”

Hannibal probably could have gotten out of it with another abject apology—January had seen him wriggle out of worse—but Colonel Davis, face jerking with his tic, stepped forward and snapped, “You, sir, are a boor and a commoner, and I take it as an honor to stand as Mr. Sefton's friend.”

“
Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis tempus eget,
” said Hannibal sadly, and Davis, ignoring him, went on.

“I take it that it shall be pistols at dawn?”

“It shall, and here the boat shall stand until we've had this out once and for all,” shouted Molloy. “And you, surgeon—or surgeon's nigger”—he jabbed a finger at January—“you'd better be ready to take a bullet out of your master's thieving Ulsterman heart.”

Curious, January bent down as Molloy seized Theodora by the wrist and went storming off toward the bow, Theodora gasping, “Oh, how I am undone! He deceived me, drew me into the room with lies. . . .”

The note said:

Beloved,

I have tried to put you from my heart, but I have failed. I can no longer live without your kisses. Please, please, come to my stateroom at ten.

Your own,
Hannibal

January could tell the difference, but the handwriting was an excellent facsimile of Hannibal's own.

SEVENTEEN

So eager was Colonel Davis that
someone
should stand up and take a shot at Kevin Molloy that he was very little use as a second. “The man is a boor and a swine,” he announced decisively at the War Council that took place in Hannibal's stateroom minutes after Molloy's departure with Theodora in tow. “You're a gentleman, Sefton. You should be able to out-shoot him with ease.”

“Ah.” Hannibal took a long, shaky swig of opium-laced sherry. “A fact which entirely slipped my mind in the excitement of the moment . . .”

“Brace up, man! Surely you aren't thinking of backing out?”

“I have the feeling that I backed
in
. . . . As challenged, mine is the choice of weapons, I believe? And conditions?”

The door opened without the smallest vestige of a knock. It was Gleet.

“Molloy asks, what'll you have?”

Davis's sensitive nostrils flared like a spurred thoroughbred's at this display of arrogance from a man he despised. “Pistols at twenty paces!” he snapped before Hannibal could open his mouth to suggest shuttlecocks at a hundred yards. “And you can tell that bog-Irish blackguard that he should consider himself fortunate that gentlemen of blood would consider going out with him at all!” He turned back to Hannibal as Gleet left in an offended huff. “I applaud your chivalry of heart, sir, in trying to help the young lady, but I fear she is scarcely worth a gentleman's assistance.”

“I actually deduced that some time ago,” responded Hannibal, taking another drink only to have Davis remove the flask from his grip. “I didn't write that note.”

“The minx wrote it herself, then,” said Davis serenely. “She's doubtless lying herself to perdition at this moment. . . .”

“
I'm
the one who's going to end up being lied to perdition. . . .”

“Nonsense, man,” said Davis. “Buck up! No rabble can shoot straight. You'll do splendidly.”

“Who do you think did it?” asked Hannibal after Davis strode off, a-bristle with righteousness, to further confer with Gleet and locate pistols. The fiddler's hands were shaking as he uncapped his laudanum-bottle. Then he glanced at it and re-capped it, and thrust it at January. “Don't let me have that again.” He took it back, took one last quick drink, and pressed it into January's hand. “My money's on La Pécheresse. I'll bet she's got a pretty skill at forgery, and she'd welcome the chance to have me laid out on the floor next to her dear departed.”

“You aren't going to go through with it?”

“Do you think I'd get far ashore? You and I go over the side, they'll have posses after us for the murder before you can say
Issaquena County
. . . . And where does that leave Rose? Here on the boat alone? Or announcing her complicity by fleeing with us?”

“Where does that leave Rose—or myself—if you get killed and Davis hands me over to the sheriff at Mayersville . . . if I make it to Mayersville, with jackals like Gleet and Cain aboard? Completely aside from the loss of your friendship . . .”

“I'm sure there are plenty of other drunken wastrels in the world for you to choose from if you really miss my company,” retorted Hannibal bitterly.

“None that play the fiddle as well as you, though.” Rose stepped through the stateroom door and shut it behind her, and, putting her arms around Hannibal's neck from behind, kissed the bare scalp in one of the long fjords of his hairline. “And if you were killed, with whom would I make jokes about the
Dialogues
of Plato? Run for it. Both of you. I can at least stay long enough to see what La Pécheresse does next. . . .”

“I'm not leaving you alone on the same boat with Gleet,” said January at the same moment Hannibal said, “And I will not condemn the pair of you to the sort of poverty I've been living in since I washed up on these shores.”

“All right,” agreed Rose readily. “But please review for me the part about how both of you being dead will help my situation?”

“Either we all run or we all stay,” said Hannibal firmly. “Who knows? I may actually shoot the man. Twenty paces isn't
that
far.”

“As you say.” Rose's voice was grim as she turned the implication around. The light of the single oil-lamp transformed her spectacle lenses into ovals of gold as she folded her arms. “Have you ever handled a pistol?”

“It's been many years,” admitted the fiddler. “And I was never very good at it. The one duel I fought when I was up at Oxford was with a dear friend, and we were both so drunk, it's astonishing we didn't kill our seconds while trying to delope.”

“Sounds promising,” said Rose. “Was the woman you fought over properly appreciative of the occasion?”

“How did you know it was a woman?” asked Hannibal, genuinely surprised, and Rose rolled her eyes.

“This is serious,” said January quietly. “Someone is trying to murder both of us using Molloy's temper—and his marksmanship—as the weapon. Without Hannibal's protection and testimony I stand a very good chance of being hanged once the boat reaches Mayersville. Even with it, it's going to be a closer call than I like.”

“They really have nothing on you except Molloy's testimony,” pointed out Rose reasonably. “And as Hannibal showed, that can easily be explained as a mistake. There's an even chance that the case against you will fall apart in the face of any kind of defense at all, particularly when all the facts come out.”

“Facts like me being a depositor in the bank that Weems robbed?”

“Absolutely,” said Rose. “For all you knew at the time, Weems was your only link with your money. We may even be able to convince the sheriff to hold the
Silver Moon
for a
proper search . . . though I imagine Molloy will put up a fight about it.”

“And the demand by a single woman, and a woman of color to boot, would not carry much weight with the average county sheriff, would it?” asked Hannibal quietly. “Whereas even my death would convince Colonel Davis that I am a man of honor, and hence my cause is worthy of his taking up arms in its—and your—defense.”

“I am not,” said January grimly, “going to stand by and let you get killed in the cause of convincing Colonel Davis of our honor. It's all of us run or none of us—hanged or acquitted, our detention in Mayersville is going to lose us the money. I think it may be time for all of us to go over the side and swim for shore.”

He reached under the narrow bed as he spoke, and pulled out Hannibal's meager valise. Outside, footfalls hastened back and forth along the promenade, and confused voices proclaimed the general uproar on the boat as the tale of seduction, discovery, and challenge spread. January could only imagine the comments flying about the engine-room as Molloy announced that the
Silver Moon
would remain in place until dawn—that the fires had to be drawn again, the steam dumped off.

In the confusion, he supposed, it would be an easy matter to slip over the rail, though he didn't look forward to trying to navigate the woods in the darkness, with or without the added complication of Levi Christmas and Company. At least, he reflected, it would be some time before their disappearance was confirmed, and they could probably make it down to Vicksburg again and take a boat for New Orleans. . . .

Hannibal settled back in his chair and folded his arms, watching January with a stony dark gaze that eventually stilled January in his tracks.

The two friends regarded one another in silence. Then January said, “I won't have you die for the sake of my money.”

“He might not kill me,” said Hannibal.

“Pigs might fly,” added Rose in a tone of helpful sarcasm. “If you do not flee with us now, we shall be obliged to drag you into the river by force, you know.”

“I shall cling to the rail and scream,” replied Hannibal.

Rose started to speak, then closed her mouth with a whisper of released breath. January set the valise down on the bunk. Outside on the promenade, Dorothea Roberson's voice pleaded tearfully, “. . . Surely they cannot delay us further! We have nothing to do with this terrible muddle. . . .”

“You two have saved my life more than once,” said Hannibal into the cicada-ridden quiet that followed. “And I have been able to do nothing—literally nothing—except express my undying gratitude, entertaining as far as it goes but of as little use as anything else I've managed to produce in the course of my misspent life. Our flight—and the concomitant relinquishment of the chase—is almost certainly the intent of this little badger-game, whether it was La Pécheresse who forged those notes or Molloy himself. And I rather resent the automatic assumption,” he added, “that I will turn tail.”

“I'm not going to be like the lady in the ballad,” said January, “who throws her glove into the lion's den simply to see if her suitor loves her enough to fetch it out.
No love, quoth he, but vanity / Sets love a task like that
.”

“He may not kill me,” repeated Hannibal. “Depending on the sheriff's views on dueling, Molloy runs the risk of being taken off the
Silver Moon
himself if he does—
Is
dueling illegal in Mississippi? Or anywhere in the South? All he has to do is miss once—then even if I miss
my
shot, which I almost certainly will, it is up to me, not him, to demand a second round. But I won't let you lose all that you've worked for because I haven't the courage to stand still for one shot which may not even hit me.”

A brisk knock: to Hannibal's
“Ine!”
Davis appeared, followed by Gleet, both of whom stopped on the threshold in surprise to see not only January, but Rose in the stateroom. In the thin line of Davis's lips—and the twitch in his face—January read disapproval. A man's valet is one thing, but the presence of that valet's sweetheart as well bordered on willing fraternization with people of color that ill became the gentleman Hannibal was striving to personate.

“Mr. Byrne was able to provide us with a pair of pistols,” said Davis as Rose departed with a curtsy and a smile. “Do these meet with your approval?” He held out a rosewood case containing a pair of silver-mounted Mantons—from somewhere on the promenade little Neil Tredgold's voice whooped triumphantly, “Bang! You're dead!”

Hannibal's mouth flinched under his mustache, but he said steadily, “They do, thank you.”

“The encounter itself will take place on the bank of the river,” continued Davis. “There is a clearing there about thirty yards in length, just this side of Hitchins' Chute. The ground is level and the surrounding trees are thick enough to prevent the sun from giving especial advantage to one or the other. However, the encounter will take place as soon as it is light enough to see, so direct sunlight itself should be no issue. Ben, will you accompany the shore party as surgeon?”

January inclined his head. Gleet objected, “Mr. Molloy's not gonna want no nigger pokin' around, if Sefton should happen to wing him,” and Davis regarded him with cold blue eyes and demanded, “You have an alternative candidate?”

Gleet didn't, but retired nevertheless to consult his principal on the subject, and Hannibal spent most of the remainder of the night writing out a true account of Weems's theft, Granville's instructions, and the status of January and Rose, both legally and vis-à-vis the Bank of Louisiana, “in case worse comes to worst.” January, descending to the galley in quest of coffee, found, as he had suspected, the rest of the boat in a state of milling excitement, the deck-passengers already staking out positions along the rail of the upper-deck promenade to watch, and laying bets as to the outcome. Even the deck-hands were betting—one of them asked January what Hannibal's experience of dueling had been and he was hard-pressed not to throw the man overboard. As he passed the engine-room door he heard the crew cursing as they dumped steam and probed the glowing amber maws of the furnaces to draw out the fires once again.

“That Molloy, he come down to the engine-room for a couple planks to make hisself a target,” said Eli as he poured out coffee for January from the pot on the iron spider above the flames in the box of sand. “He say he gonna shoot at playin' cards, to put his eye in.” And even as he spoke, from overhead came the bellow of a pistol.

January felt in his coat for Hannibal's flask—not that the fiddler didn't almost certainly have a spare in his luggage somewhere. He only hoped Hannibal's nerves were sufficient to get him through the night without recourse to an anodyne that wouldn't help his aim any the following morning.

“According to Jim,” said Rose when January encountered her on the promenade outside, “a note saying,
You are betrayed—Miss S has gone to Sefton's room
was tucked under the coffee-cup that Thucydides carried up to Molloy in the pilot-house at ten. I haven't located Thu to check this, but I've certainly seen the note, which Jim retrieved from the pilot-house floor. The paper looks like that in the writing-desks of both the Saloon and the Ladies' Parlor, and the ink seems identical to that of the note purporting to be from Hannibal to Theodora. Cissy brought the blotting-paper from the Ladies' Parlor for me just now, and there's nothing on it that matches. . . .”

“Which means only that Mrs. Fischer—or Molloy, or whoever arranged this trap—worked in his or her room.” January set the small tray of coffee-cup and miniature pot down on top of one of the crates that had been left on the deck after the great Investigation that morning: it was labeled Triple-Refined Sugar and destined for Giron's Confectionery in Lexington, Kentucky. “I wonder if Sophie could be prevailed upon to check Mrs. Fischer's waste-basket? How often does Thu empty them? I wonder.”