not a single white man has ever asked if we're related. It's as if men of dark skin are all invisible to them—they don't look at our faces.”
“Which Bredon was counting on,” said January quietly, “when he took that big a gang across in the skiff to pick up Molloy's body after the duel. I take it 'Rodus swam across sometime during the night, and stationed himself on the high ground?”
Thu nodded. “He had one of the rifles from the purser's office wrapped in oilskin, and pushed it in front of him on a plank.”
“That's what the final clue was, you know. After Molloy was shot, I came across in the skiff with Bredon and the slave-gang, and I didn't think 'Rodus was among them. If I hadn't been so worried about Hannibal, I'd have thought more about it. When the group of them came back from the trees on the knoll, and there was 'Rodus with the others, I simply thought I'd been mistaken. I don't think a single soul on the boat gave the matter an instant's thought. ‘There goes Cain with a gang of slaves. . . . Here comes Cain with a gang of slaves.' As if that ‘gang of slaves' was one single entity, and not six —or seven—individuals, each with his own face, his own fears, his own heart.”
“If any whites thought like that,” said Rose, looking up from the bed where she had sat in silence, “they couldn't hold slaves, could they?”
“Don't you believe it, Madame.” Thu's mouth twisted as if he'd bitten into something spoiled. “Trust me, I've dealt with white men who went on for
“For many things, I think,” said Rose.
Thu glanced over at January with a lift of one eyebrow. “I wondered if anyone had noticed that 'Rodus was missing that morning until the detail came back from the shore. Bredon kept the men busy about the boat, so no one would comment that he was gone—they would assume he was simply somewhere else.”
“It worked well,” agreed January. “Except that it was one thing too many. Any single one of those circumstances: Bredon making sure that Gleet was with him on the night of the murder; Bredon keeping the slaves busy on the morning of the duel so no one would know quite where 'Rodus was; 'Rodus re-appearing with the gang . . . any of those might have been co-incidence by itself. Taken together, it was clear to me, at least, that Cain— Bredon—was using 'Rodus as his agent. And that, therefore, the relationship between them was not what it seemed. And given the social position of the average slave-dealer,” added January wryly, “just about the only thing worse that one
“Oddly enough,” said Rose, “I never quite accepted Cain as a slave-dealer. And I realize now what troubled me about him. On the first day he came on board at Donaldsonville, he came onto the promenade to look at the women, and he encountered me there. And he stepped back out of my way, to let me pass. The way any gentleman would, for any lady. Any white lady.” Her green eyes were wry behind her spectacles. “And he looked at me, for one instant, politely, as if I were indeed any common lady in the street, and not something to be raped or worked to death with indifference. Mr. Bredon was,” she concluded softly, “an exceptional man.”
Thu nodded, and briefly closed his eyes. “He was that,” he murmured “I only wish—” He stopped himself, and shook his head again. “What was it that Molloy was looking for in Weems's stateroom, when he found the paper?” he asked. “The gold that Weems was supposed to have stolen?”
“Not the gold exactly,” said January. “And that brings me, Mr. Lundy”—he turned to the old pilot—“to a great favor I would like to ask of you.”
The following day, while Rose remained with the still-groggy Hannibal, January and Lundy borrowed Sheriff Lear's shay and drove down the river road to Hitchins' Chute. Davis, Jim, and Thucydides went along as armed and mounted escorts in case Levi Christmas's surviving bravos still lurked in the woods, but they encountered no trouble. As they passed under the mottled shade of willows and sycamores, January would hear, now and then, the far-off drift of voices from some hoe-gang or wood-cutting detail, singing as they worked under an overseer's eye:
Or sometimes it was,
And he'd see Thu turn his head, listening, a look of calculation in his eyes.
As if he flew high above the land in a dream, January saw in his mind the cautious figures slipping from rock to rock, from brush-thicket to brush-thicket, working their way toward whatever point along the river they had heard was a meeting-place. And 'Rodus—and others—were out there somewhere, gathering them in, patiently, like the Good Shepherd going back into the stormy night when he realized one lamb was unaccounted for. . . .
Once Jim turned his head at the sound of the singing, and January thought the old valet caught Thucydides's eye. Knowledge passed between them; Jim shook his head slightly, and smiled.
And Colonel Davis of course, riding importantly ahead with a rifle on his arm, saw nothing.
January slipped his hand into his pocket to touch the rosary of blue beads, the cheap steel crucifix.
As they neared Hitchins' Chute, January, who was driving the shay, said quietly to the pilot, “The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed to me that Weems—and Mrs. Fischer, no doubt the brains of the outfit— ever took the money out of New Orleans at all. Six hundred pounds of gold, and God knows how many cubic feet of banknotes and securities, would be both heavy enough and bulky enough to call attention to itself, even split up among many trunks and crates.
“But gold, even more than banknotes, is anonymous. Once they convinced their pursuers, by their rather ostentatious flight, that the gold had been taken
“Given that wildcat Fischer's nerve,” muttered Lundy, “I wouldn't put it past her to open her own bank in New Orleans.”
January laughed, “She might have, at that. By the places she and Weems were searching on the boat, it
