Dead water

“By the shape of the banks,” replied the valet promptly. “Pilot sights on big trees, or houses on the banks, and knows the river—like knowin' there's a bar just above Houmas plantation, where the current sets around the point. Like walkin' around a chair in your massa's parlor in the dark. I been up and down this stretch of river, between Colonel Davis's place at Brierwood and New Orleans, a dozen times now with him, and even I'm startin' to recognize where there's a bar last time we passed.”

“I'll keep an eye on the passway here, between the galley and the engine-room,” said Rose when January returned to her, bringing wash-water and the gossip. “Thank goodness it's wide—I can see all the way through without being obvious about it.” She nibbled on a pear and some cheese, and a little of the bread she'd brought, and scanned the promenade as he spoke, as those deck-hands who'd worked through the night dossed among the wood and others rose and washed, and got their rations from Eli at the galley door.

“I'll come down and spell you when I can.” Though Rose had reported last night that she'd seen no sign of Queen Regine, whenever January had dropped off into sleep she was there, stealing up softly just behind the piles of wood that flanked them, or floating in the dark air just above the moonlit water, watching them with flaming eyes. In another dream he was haled before a drumhead court of planters, where Queen Regine accused him of being a free man: he was thrown into the river and had to swim to shore, with the dark snags underwater clawing at his legs, and Ned Gleet waiting on the bank with his chains.

They put in at Donaldsonville as the sky was turning bright, and stayed at the landing there until mid-morning while Mr. Tredgold inquired about the town for a passenger who was supposed to be waiting and wasn't. Molloy cursed mightily at the delay, because it meant drawing the fires out of his engines so that the boilers wouldn't run dry—the water-pumps operated only when the wheel was turning—but Ned Gleet took advantage of the occasion to ensconce himself on the gallery of the biggest of the waterfront taverns, alert for anyone who possessed a slave and who might be talked into selling.

At five in the morning there wasn't much hope of this, and from the upper deck promenade—where he kept a discreet eye on passengers and luggage leaving the boat—January could see the dealer getting himself into a fouler and fouler mood. When Molloy went into the selfsame tavern (“Even I don't start drinking at five in the morning!” exclaimed Hannibal self-righteously when January told him about this several hours later) Gleet shouted something at him about staying longer: Molloy didn't even break stride, just turned and back-handed the slave-dealer off the porch, threw the chair after him, and was stopped from following him down into the street and continuing the fight only by Mr. Tredgold and the young junior pilot Mr. Souter.

“There's no man tells Kevin Molloy what he's to do and not to do!”

Gleet's discouragement and chagrin were completed by the arrival of another slave-dealer with a coffle of some fifteen men and women, and by the fact that this dealer, a man named Cain with the coldest yellow eyes January had ever seen, refused to sell any of his stock. “I can get a better price for 'em in Louisville,” Cain said in his quiet voice, and crossed the gangplank to see to chaining them along the lower promenade beside Gleet's.

All this January saw from the bow end of the boiler-deck, where he idled most of the morning, trying not to look like he was keeping watch. He didn't actually think Weems would try to desert the boat here—it was far too close to New Orleans—but it was just possible he would off-load one or more of his (or Mrs. Fischer's) trunks of money there, to be left in storage and picked up later. From this position January was able to observe the comings and goings of most of the passengers that morning: to witness the departure of the young planter Mr. Purlie with the slave-girl in tow he'd bought from Ned Gleet; to note how artfully Molloy's fair Miss Skippen, a vision in lavender ruffles, dropped her handkerchief just as Colonel Davis turned the corner of the upper promenade deck—and to hear the word she muttered to herself when Davis simply walked past and let it lie; to overhear a fragment of what appeared to be a vicious argument between Mrs. Fischer and Mr. Weems.

“—but what do you want me to do, Diana?”

“I want you to get yourself out of a situation you were too stupid to avoid, is what I want you to do.” As they passed, January pretended to be absorbed in the spectacle of Molloy, down on the bow-deck, striking a porter with the back of his hand and sending the poor man sprawling into the coils of rope; January slipped his eye sidelong to glimpse the pair as they passed him, and saw that they were still pretending to be strangers, walking well apart and speaking in tones of quiet conversation, until you heard the words.

“But I tell you one thing, you're not touching a dime of . . .”

They passed out of hearing, and Melissa and Neil Tredgold came racing around the corner of the 'tween-decks, shrieking like banshees, followed by their nursemaid Cissy's shouts: “You children get back here!” On the deck below, Mr. Purlie's trunks were unloaded, and a merchant came down to take consignment for several bales of the rough osnaberg “nigger-cloth” and a crated plow. Deck passengers milled about, mostly rough waterfront types or the crews of flatboats making their way north again, with occasional families of Irish or Germans too poor to pay for cabins. Andy, the planter Lockhart's valet, passed January with a tray of coffee in his hands and asked, “Mr. Sefton not an early riser, I take it?”

“Not as of ten minutes ago,” replied January good-humoredly. “I expect he'll be stirrin' soon.”

“I thought he'd have more wits than to play cards with that Byrne feller in the Saloon.” The valet shook his head. “When Mr. Lockhart come down the river last week, that Mr. Byrne was on the same boat, all friendly as can be—stayed at the same hotel as Mr. Lockhart, too. 'Course, Mr. Lockhart don't see a thing funny in Mr. Byrne seekin' him out, but if a man's that friendly for no reason, I always wonder if there's somethin' behind it.”

He passed on, and January glanced down at the bow-deck again, wondering if he could relax his guard long enough to make sure Hannibal didn't arouse comment by making his own way down to the galley for coffee. The big bow hatch was open down to the hold, but the deck-hands were stowing the pulley-ropes of the crane on the jackstaff; no other trunks lay on the deck.

Deserting his post seemed safe enough. January passed down the starboard promenade side and rapped gently on Hannibal's door, receiving no answer, not much to his surprise. From there he descended the stair to the lower promenade, looking around him for Rose. A moment later he saw her come through the narrow space between a wood-pile and the starboard rails, encountering, as she did so, Cain the slave-dealer. They stopped, facing one another, for only an instant. Then Cain stepped back and aside to let her pass, and proceeded around her into the promenade where the female slaves were chained. Rose looked back over her shoulder at him, as if something in the meeting troubled her, then turned her head and saw January.

Relief swept her face and she quickened her step toward him, dodging two deck-hands piling still more wood near the galley door and stepping past the two maidservants Sophie and Julie, who were snatching a hasty cup of coffee between fixing their mistresses' hair and tidying up their mistresses' cabins and wardrobes. “My God, I'm glad I caught you,” breathed Rose. “Queen Regine is on the boat. I've found where she's hiding.”

“Sophie got me a sample of Mrs. Fischer's handwriting,” whispered Rose as she and January walked, as swiftly and unobtrusively as possible, past the chained coffles of slaves along the starboard promenade. “The doorway from the galley passway to the hold is padlocked, but there's a door at the bow as well. . . .”