Dead water - Barbara Hambly [27]
“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.”
“Well, think of that,” murmured Rose as she and January settled into the dark niche among the wood-piles, where they could watch the passway to the engine-room, and the purser's door. “A respectable lady like that, and a thief underneath.”
“What about a respectable schoolmistress like yourself,” replied January softly, his arm sliding around Rose's waist, “who is a wanton underneath?”
“I fear,” said Rose loftily, “that you have me mistaken for someone else—perhaps my wicked twin sister Elena.” And they laughed at the old joke—the twin sister was completely fictitious—and settled themselves to watch the comings and goings of the wood crew, for the chance to slip into either the office or the hold.
But Hannibal had been right in his observation that there was never a time when the passageway was completely empty. While the Silver Moon churned its heavy way upstream through the darkness, and Rose and January watched and slept in turns, they never saw either a sign of Queen Régine or of a moment when it would have been feasible to enter the office or the hold.
FIVE
In the pre-dawn dark of the following morning, talk around the water-barrel beside the galley door was all about how old Fussy-Pants Weems had had seven hundred and seventy-five dollars taken off him last night at whist, and serve him right. “Lord, I thought he's gonna shrivel up into a pile of dust when Byrne brought out that trump card, an' we'd have to sweep him off the floor in the mornin'!”
“They had three hundred dollars extra on the rubber—you think a man that won't tip the porter who brings up his luggage would know better than that!”
Fog lay on the river, but the sky overhead was hot and clear. A thousand birds cried their territories in the green wall of willows that grew along the batture, audible even over the splashing of the paddle. “How the devil can the pilot steer if he can't even see the surface of the water?” January asked Jim, who sat on a coil of rope at the far end of the starboard promenade, shaving by lantern-light and a hand-mirror he'd drawn from his pocket.
“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 Régine, 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 Régine accused him of being a free man: he was thrown into