Dead water

January was, in fact, glad to return to the safety of the Silver Moon after a brief excursion down to the landing to signal one of the hacks waiting in the shade of a warehouse. He had no desire to run into the Reverend Christmas on shore. Even if Bobby had kept his mouth shut about January's warning, he had a feeling that Christmas would be merciless at silencing critics. He made his way down the starboard promenade, past the chained line of Cain's slaves: they were talking quietly, gathered as well as they could around 'Rodus. He felt their silence as he walked past.

At the stern end he found Rose. She was talking with Julie, so he couldn't very well catch her up in his arms and kiss her, as he wished to do, or say, You, my nightingale, are a genius. . . .

“Mrs. Fischer returned about half an hour ago with Mr. Weems,” Rose said, turning to meet his smile. “So I suppose poor Sophie's going to be occupied for the rest of the evening. Mrs. Fischer seemed to be in a frightful mood when she called to Sophie, probably because she realized the boat wasn't going to be able to proceed until nearly dark.”

“I never figured why white folks always got their hair on fire to get somewhere quick,” sighed Julie, squinting in the sharp, hot sunlight as Molloy stormed out of the engine-room's rear door and up the stairs to the boiler-deck. “What's it matter if we stays here another few hours? What's so all-fired important in Vicksburg, or Memphis, that it can't wait? The boiler really gonna blow up if they runs the boat too fast?”

She looked scared, and trying to conceal it. She wasn't even, January guessed, as old as Bobby, and the recollection of Bobby stabbed him with guilt again, that he'd left the boy his own choice about escape.

Even if making your own choice was what freedom was about.

“Most accidents on steamboats are because the pilot gets careless,” Rose soothed. “I think whatever else can be said of him, Mr. Molloy is a good pilot, and not likely to take foolish risks.”

“Then how come they think they got to check all the boilers?” asked Julie. “They wouldn't be check 'em if there wasn't somethin' wrong.”

“I can't imagine,” said Rose with a sidelong glance at January. Eli, the cook, on his way back into the galley, overheard and paused long enough to shoot back.

“Hey, Julie, these is white folks we're talkin' about.”

And all three of them laughed.

“Shit,” sighed Julie. “Here she is.” Across the open mud-flat of the landing, Theodora Skippen appeared out of the mouth of a scummy alley. “God, I hope she ain't drunk again.” As Miss Skippen hurried toward the Silver Moon, her white bonnet-plumes nodding with her step, one of the stevedores said something to her that elicited an obscene gesture, quickly released as she realized there might be respectable ladies on the upper-deck promenades who might see her. She was not, January reflected, particularly bright—or else she'd had enough liquor at the Stump to blunt her animal cunning for survival.

Julie rubbed her ear, which, dark as she was, showed fresh bruising as well as the earlier nail-gash cuts, and went up the rear stair to be in Miss Skippen's stateroom when Miss Skippen returned there. Across the confusion of the wharf, January could see the Reverend Christmas leaning in the mouth of the same alleyway, watching the Silver Moon.

An hour later Mr. Lundy returned, with Hannibal in tow.

“Quid non mortalia pectora cogis, auri sacra fames,” sighed Hannibal as he slumped onto the nearest wood-pile next to the galley passway and took a sip of opium. “And now, of course, our precious friends know who we are. At least they know about you and me, Ben. Owl-eyed Athene still wears the hood of invisibility. . . .”

“Which I won't much longer,” retorted Rose, “if I persist in being seen in your company.”

“What, will you join the regiment of women who tell me my friendship does their reputations no good?”

“You don't think La Pecheresse will believe that you were overcome by my charms when we met on the boat?” January drew himself up in mock indignation. “I am cut to the very heart. I wish now I'd stayed a little longer hiding near the Stump, to know whether Miss Skippen escaped from the Reverend Christmas or whether he sent her back here as his spy.”

“You'd only have gotten yourself killed.” Hannibal followed his eyes to where the young lady in question was briefly visible, crossing the landing-stage before being swallowed up in the crowd still milling before the engine- room's bow door. “Christmas doesn't sound like a man whose suspicions take much arousing. I wonder if asking her to my cabin for a few sips of Black Drop would induce in Miss Skippen a confiding mood?”

“It would be likelier to induce a duel with Molloy,” replied January grimly. “He regards the girl as his property. . . .”

“Well, everything she owns apparently is,” remarked Rose uncharitably.

“And I have no desire to spend the next three months in a slave-jail awaiting the arrival of your putative next of kin. Or to see you killed.” January spoke roughly, his anger at the Reverend Christmas, and Ned Gleet, and Miss Skippen breaking through his voice like the black limbs of trees breaking through the river's surface; Hannibal's eyes met his, for a moment reading the affection that underlay the rage.

It was the affection that Hannibal answered a moment later: “Well, I have no desire to see me killed either,” he said, and rose to head for the steps back to the white purlieux of the boat. “And the thing that troubles me now is that, having seen who we are, and failed to have us detained in Natchez: what is La Pecheresse's next attempt going to consist of?”

January's mood was not improved when, later in the day, he saw Ned Gleet return with two slaves gone from his coffle, and two more added, a boy of fifteen or so and a girl so young that January suspected there'd been chicanery about her birth-date. Or maybe the law in Mississippi had never heard of the Louisiana provision that a child not be sold from her parents under the age of ten.

Of course, the law only said “where possible.”

Gleet looked so pleased with himself as he chained them to the wall, rubbing his hands and chuckling, that January had to remind himself who he was and where he was, lest he stride down the promenade and drive the man's teeth through the back of his head with his fist. Even Jubal Cain, walking past, remarked sourly, “You like 'em a little short, don't you, Gleet?”