Dead Water (6 page)

“He has suffering written all over him,” thundered young Quince, stepping between Gleet and January without so much as a glance at January, all his attention on Gleet. “Suffering, and the crying injustices of the system!”

“Get him out of here,” sighed Gleet, “'fore I swat him like a fly.”

And as the former pilot Lundy, moving with painful and shaky step, urged the fulminating young Abolitionist toward the door, Gleet looked around at the other men in the Saloon. “What's the matter, Weems?” he demanded. “You an Abolitionist, too? A man's got a right to make a living. You can't tell me a boy like that”—he waved in January's direction—“would have the slightest idea what to do with freedom if he had it.”

“Good Heavens, no!” spoke up the stout Northerner in the nasal English of Massachusetts. “Until such time as the government is able to re-settle the Negroes in Africa, where they are best suited to live, it would be an act of cruelty to turn them loose—not to speak of the effect it would have on honest white workingmen in the East.” He belched, and bit with great satisfaction into the oyster sandwich in his other hand. Butter glistened as it ran down his chin.

“Gleet spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get me sufficiently foxed to agree to sell.” Hannibal sank unsteadily onto the bunk of his stateroom a few hours later and closed his eyes. “Thank God there was a spittoon under the table. It broke my heart to dump that much good whiskey—I must have poured off a pint of it, besides all I drank—but enough is enough. I beg you, if you love me, get me a cup of coffee . . .
quietly
.”

“Yes, sir.” January threw his humblest accents into his voice as he rose from the chair in the stateroom, where he'd taken refuge. He'd dozed a little, and listened to the voices of the cabin passengers and their servants as they passed on the promenade, in between perusal of the assorted vegetarian, Abolitionist, temperance, Thompsonian, women's suffrage, and Swedenborgian tracts that someone—presumably Mr. Quince—had thrust under the stateroom door. “Shall I bring you some supper with that, sir? Pickled pork and cabbage, maybe, with some good fortifying gravy . . . ?”

The pillow smacked against the doorframe as January ducked outside.

The coffee seemed to revive Hannibal, however, and he listened with interest to January's account of Queen Régine. “If Her Majesty's on board, she'll be restricted to the main deck,” pointed out the fiddler. “And of that, pretty much, to the stern, if not by the deck-hands themselves, by that squad of Kentucky ruffians that's taking deck-passage on the bow-deck. If she wants to expose you as a fraud—does she even speak English?—she may have a hard time finding anyone to believe her. As for getting in to see the purser's records, that may prove impossible to do unseen. The office door is right on the path of the wood-crews, and the steps down to the hold are right beside it. By all accounts the steward Thucydides is as incorruptible as they come. . . .”

“I was afraid of that.”

“But all is not lost, nor even mislaid. I've had a word with Byrne, the genial stone-faced gentleman you saw playing whist with Messrs. Davis, Roberson, and that Massachusetts oyster-fiend Dodd.”

“Byrne knows you?” asked January, alarmed.

“He knows me, but he'll keep his mouth shut, the same way I'll keep my mouth shut about him being a professional cardsharp and not a dry-goods importer, as he's told all those respectable and well-heeled gentlemen he is.” Hannibal drained his coffee-cup and leaned back on the bunk, still looking rather greenish around the edges. “He certainly has no idea you are anyone but who I say you are—a slave I managed to buy with some windfall cash. If he had any suspicion, he'd consider it not his business anyway—he's a remarkably single-minded man about anything that doesn't concern cards. But Byrne and I have worked together before. Now that Weems has accepted me as a reliable partner—it went to my heart to let him win at cribbage—I should be able to draw him into a game of whist tonight. Between the two of us, Byrne and I should be able to strip him of whatever cash he has in hand for the journey. If Weems wants more, he'll have to get it from his trunk in the hold.”

“Will he play?” January recalled Granville's words on the subject, but Hannibal only raised his eyebrows.

“My dear Benjamin, the man spent two hours this afternoon practically hugging himself for taking thirty dollars off me at cribbage.” He closed his eyes and settled back on his bunk again. “Even splitting the take with Byrne, I think we both deserve more than what Granville's paying us. And as I said last night, there are specific instructions in the Bible about oxen, muzzles, and corn.”

Luncheon on the
Silver Moon
was laid out for the gentlemen as a buffet in the Main Saloon—cold meats, cheeses, bread, and fruit—and served to the ladies in their own small dining-room at the bow. The sexes joined for dinner, however, at trestle tables set up in the Main Saloon and presided over by the owner Mr. Tredgold and his stout, raucous-voiced wife. Afterwards, under Thu's efficient supervision, waiters and porters cleared the tables away, and as the steward had urged, Hannibal played his violin for the company and January a guitar, and there was dancing and parlor-games.

Needless to say, neither the immigrant families who were dossing down on the bow-deck nor the wild Kentucky rivermen who shared the space with them were invited to join in the revels. Mrs. Tredgold insisted on singing and required her two children, eight-year-old Melissa and six-year-old Neil, also to sing duets (“Now, aren't they the
most
adorable children you've
ever
seen?”) Mrs. Roberson and her younger daughter, sixteen-year-old Dorothea, read a scene from
Much Ado About Nothing,
which the extremely elegant Mrs. Fischer declared compared favorably to the version she had seen at Covent Garden in London.

“And if you'll believe that,” murmured Hannibal, eyeing the majestic brunette, “might I interest you in some stock I have in a diamond-mine in the Nebraska Territory?”

It was Mrs. Fischer, January noticed, who took it on herself to draw pretty Dorothea Roberson away from Molloy's fair-haired inamorata Miss Skippen, and to whisper something to Mrs. Roberson and Mrs. Tredgold that apparently sealed that sprightly young lady's fate. By the time the ladies retreated to their own parlor again at ten—accompanied by Mr. Quince, who proceeded to lecture them on the Grecian System of Round Dancing and the evils of alcohol—there was a decided space between Miss Skippen and all the rest.

After their departure, the men settled down to cards again. Davis, Molloy, Gleet, and a bachelor planter named Lockhart made up one table of whist and—January never quite saw how this was maneuvered—Hannibal and Byrne formed up a set against the Massachusetts mill-owner Dodd and Weems.

They were still at it two hours later when January put up his borrowed guitar, finished the coffee Thu had quietly brought him, and nodded good-night to the impassive steward. Weems was winning, and played his cards with an air of cocky excitement and new-found delight. January saw the glance of almost sleepy amusement that passed between Hannibal and the gambler Byrne, and could have pitied Weems if the man hadn't effectively ruined him and Rose. It was fascinating to see them set him up, playing as much on his greed and vanity as on his inexperience: “Lord, you're hot tonight,” murmured Hannibal approvingly, and Byrne shook his head, adding, “Look like it's not going to be my evening.”

January was reminded of those farm-wives who made pets of their rabbits so the little creatures wouldn't run away when it came time to knock their heads off for the pot.

Dodd, of course, simply chomped and slurped his way through the “little after-dinner snack” he'd ordered of pickled eggs and crullers, seeming barely to notice how much he lost.

The night was close and hot when January emerged onto the upper deck promenade. The hard silvery light of the quarter-moon sparked on the paddle where it threshed at the water, and from above him he heard Molloy's voice calling jovial insults at his assistant pilot, a gangling and talkative young man named Souter. From the other side of the boat as he descended the steps to the lower promenade, he heard the slave men singing:
“I'm goin' away to New Orleans. . . .”

And like the sweet breath of evening wind, the voices of the chained women rose in the response,
“Good-by, my love, good-by. . . .”

Closer, below him in the well of darkness, a woman's voice gasped, “Let go!”

“S'matter, honey, you too fond of them Frenchies to want a
real
man?” The voice was drunken, the accent from up-river somewhere, Kentucky or Tennessee.

Another voice giggled, “Can't tell us a pretty yeller gal like you, you ruther have one a' them black bucks over there, 'stead of Kyle an' me.”

“No—”

“You hear somethin', Kyle?”

“Not me. 'Fraid she must be speakin' Frenchy. . . .”

January had already started down the stair—wondering what the hell he could say to an unknown number of intoxicated white boatmen that wouldn't get him beaten up—when he heard Rose's voice: “Allow me to translate for you gentlemen.”

She spoke in the carrying steely tone of a schoolmistress, and as he sprang down from the stairs he saw the little group by the thin reflected glow of the engine-room door. There were three of them, shaggy-haired, dirty, and bearded, in faded shirts and Conestoga boots, hemming in the fairy-like little maidservant he'd seen following Mrs. Fischer on board. One of the boatmen had pulled off her headscarf, her thick hair hanging in a dark coil to her waist. She was pressed against the piled wood, arms folded tight over her breasts while the men tried to pull her hands away.

Rose stood in front of them, spectacles flashing.

“Git on outa here, bitch.”

Rose didn't move. Only looked at the men with calm disdain.

“Git on outa here,” said another. “'Fore we take a switch to you, too—or some other rod you won't like so well.”

Rose stood her ground. From the darkness behind her emerged Miss Skippen's tall, lush-breasted young maid, and the stout nursemaid who'd chased the Tredgold children around the deck, and a little white-haired woman whom January recognized as the mother of Eli the cook . . . all standing with their arms folded, simply watching the men with jeering eyes. Behind them in the dark the deck-hands began to emerge from the engine-room door, not offering any word or deed that could be termed as insolence, or punished as rebellion. Just simply staring.

That ring of watching eyes, January reflected, would be enough to make any man's drink-induced interest in rape stand down.

Mrs. Fischer's maid twisted free of the men's grips and ran to join the little group of women.

“Goddam bitches!” yelled the taller of the boatmen. “I got me a mind to buy the goddam lot of you, fuck the lot of you till you begs me for mercy!”

But the women merely turned away from them and faded into the darkness.

“Bitches!” yelled the tall man.
“Hoors!”
And his shorter companion, who had a yellow beard like a louse-ranch, took his arm and tugged him toward the piled wood that separated them from the chained slave women. “C'mon, Sam, somebody gonna be down here
in a minute. . . .”

As the three men vanished through the gap between wood and rails, January heard one of them snarl, “What
you
lookin' at, bitch?” The words were followed by the meaty thud of a kick, a woman's stifled gasp, and the jingle of chains.

“Are you all right, honey?” Rose asked the maid in French as January came to join the women near the stern rail. They were little more than shapes in the dense shadows of the 'tween-decks, save for the flash of Rose's spectacles. Beyond them, moonlight flickered terrifyingly on the shapes of snags and towheads, bobbing in the water nearer shore.

“Thank you, yes, I'm fine. Thank you so much, Madame. . . .”

“Vitrac.” Rose used the name under which she'd bought her ticket. “Rose Vitrac.”

“I am Sophie Vannure.” The girl's voice shook with sobs she couldn't control. January wondered whether the little maid had been so well-treated all her life that this was her first experience with molestation, or whether some earlier wound had been opened. In either case, he saw Rose put her arm around the girl, supporting her lest she fall.

“These yours, honey?” The stout Tredgold nursemaid Cissy came over from the wood-piles, carrying a couple of big shawls that had been dropped there. Sophie held out her arms.

“Thank you, yes. My mistress . . .”

“She turn you out to sleep down here?”

“I know why
my
missus turn
me
out,” sniffed Miss Skippen's maid in the rough cane-patch French of one who'd probably cost a good deal less than the refined little Sophie. “With no more than ‘Julie, I'll want coffee in the morning.' Don't tell me m'am high-and-mighty Fischer got a gentleman friend comin' to visit her, like my Miss Theodora does?”

Sophie Vannure pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders, still shaking with fear and humiliation. When she spoke, her voice dripped resentment and betrayal. “What other reason would
Madame
have, to tell me to go sleep outside on the deck like an animal?”

“Could be worse.” Julie's tone quirked with a bitter knowledge. “She could keep you in there to make up a three.”

Sophie's laugh was a spiteful sob. “Not with Mr. Weems,” she said. “Madame, she's not about to let anyone think she so much as knows what a man
is,
but she wouldn't share him—or anything else—with any other.”

“You mean Mr. Weems, the little man in the check trousers that looks like a weasel?” Julie hooted with laughter. “He don't look like he got the red blood in him to kiss the parlormaid!”

“He does not,” retorted Sophie, clearly steadied by the sympathy of new-found allies. “At the least he has never kissed me, though he looks, out of the corners of his eyes. He's too scared of Madame. He bought her house in New Orleans, and pays all her bills; yet it's
she
who says, ‘We will come here, we will go there.' Mr. Weems, he follows, like a little dog.”