Dead water

and brought back: she has no concept of where Canada is, or even Ohio, nor which states forbid slavery and which permit it. She wasn't even terribly clear which direction north was, only that slaves running away follow the river. She'd been born and raised within five miles of New Orleans: she knows only upstream and down, toward the river or toward the swamp. Not unlike,” she added with sudden asperity, “some of the damsels whose mothers bring them to my school. We're stopped.”

The paddle hung still. Gleet came down the stern stair, cursing, his whip in one hand and a rifle in the other. Without a glance at them he went through the passway to the starboard promenade where the men were chained. A few moments later deck-hands appeared, unfastening the long boat-poles from the sides of the 'tween- decks.

Mr. Lundy, reflected January, had evidently been right about the chute. “How late in the evening was the last time you saw her?”

“Then,” said Rose. “Just before, and during dinner. Cissy came down, too, with the leftover tea-leaves from the children's tea; she got Eli to give us some hot water for a second run. All three of the girls went up together when the waiters came down the stairs from clearing away supper. That meant Mesdames Fischer and Roberson, and Miss Skippen, would be coming out soon, and might need someone to re-pin their hair before they spent the evening listening to music and dancing in the Saloon.”

There was a dry note in Rose's voice that made January flinch, though he knew she wasn't angry at him. And he felt again the slow, hot fury, that Mrs. Fischer's scheme should oblige Rose—a woman born in freedom, the daughter of a planter on Grand Isle—to sleep on the bare deck, live on the scraps of white folks' meals, and relieve herself over the side in full view of any stranger passing on the river road or sailing downstream in a flatboat.

No, he thought. No, we are not free. Having money will help—having a house will help. But it will not make us free.

She went on. “By then it was foggy and pitch black. Julie usually sleeps with me, and Sophie, when Mrs. Fischer is entertaining Weems—Julie generally comes down at eleven, after getting Miss Skippen ready for bed, but if either of those so-called ladies comes back from the dancing early, she wants her maid waiting right there when she comes in. I heard the leadsmen start calling out as we were coming up on the bar, and Mr. Molloy cursing them from the pilot-house. Just after we crossed over the bar Sophie came down with a blanket, and lay down beside me. I asked, Is Julie all right? And she said, I don't know. I'll tell you in the morning. I heard her crying a little before she went to sleep.”

“And in the morning, of course, the first thing anyone saw was Weems's body. So I take it you haven't had a chance to talk to her?”

Rose shook her head. “Jim saw the body first, and called out, Dear God, it's a man caught up there! Sophie was the one who recognized him, and screamed. Simon—he's the head engineer—was sleeping on deck and ran at once into the engine-room to have the engines stopped, and Sophie clutched on to the wood-pile, sobbing. She got herself in hand quickly, though, and said, Madame! Oh my poor Madame! and went running up the steps. That's the last I saw of her.”

“Julie had better be moving fast,” January said. “If the patrols catch her, they'll take her straight to Mayersville. She may, of course, have actually killed Weems—if he caught her going over the rail, for instance, and tried to stop her, though I can't imagine why he would have or what he'd have been doing down on the lower deck at that hour.”

“I can't either,” agreed Rose. “And I'll still take oath she got off the boat as we were going over the bar. The starboard promenade would be the logical place for her to go into the water unobserved. Her escape may be all they're hiding, you know.”

“It may,” agreed January. “I can understand Gleet's gang being terrified, but it's harder to believe Cain's gang would be that scared over the accusation of not reporting a runaway.”

“If I know Mrs. Fischer, I'll have the perfect opportunity to question Sophie, but at such appalling cost to myself that I hesitate—”

“Benjamin.”

January turned, to see Colonel Davis coming down the stern steps. The young planter wore a look of rather grim puzzlement, and the glint in his pale eyes told January instantly that there was trouble.

“Would you mind coming back with me to the Saloon? There are a few questions I need to ask you about where you were last night.”

The Saloon was hot and dim, and nearly empty, now that the rain had stopped and there was activity on shore worth staring at. As he followed Davis up the steps, January saw the deck-hands, and both coffles of male slaves, spreading out along the soaked muddy banks of the chute, shoving with their poles at the sides of the boat in an attempt to back her out before the water sank too far. In the engine-room they'd be drawing the fires out of the furnaces yet again.

Why no one had ever thought to disconnect the water-pumps from the engines and arrange for them to operate independently, January couldn't imagine. He'd suggested it to Rose, and she'd said, “My guess is the owners won't pay for a second engine. You have no idea how cheaply steamboats are built.”

Which, to January, sounded exactly like the sort of logic the blankittes lived by.

Whatever the reason, Mr. Molloy was pacing the Saloon like a caged tiger, a whiskey-glass in hand and face crimson with anger and impatience. “Where was he?” he demanded as Davis and January came out of the hallway into the Saloon. “Down with his yellow bitch? Any money she'll tell you he was with her last night.”

January opened his mouth to say, My wife isn't in the habit of lying, then closed it again, and made himself look at the floor.

There was something about, she'll tell you he was with her last night that brought the hair up on his nape.

As opposed to where?

He glanced across at Hannibal, still sitting at the card-table, and he saw the fiddler was both angry and scared.

Davis said, “Earlier today you told me you were in your master's stateroom all last night, sleeping, except that you woke once when you heard someone trying to force the door. Is that the truth?”