Dead water - Barbara Hambly [55]
And January understood, as if he'd known it all along: Herodotus and Thucydides are brothers.
Then the steward stepped through the door and was gone.
Through the following day, as the Silver Moon thrashed through the endless tangle of loops, false bends, chutes, snags, and bayous that surrounded the mouth of the Arkansas River, January watched the men of Cain's coffle, and was almost certain he was right. It wasn't merely the tribal similarity of bone-structure and features. Both young men had the same gestures, the same ways of walking, the same expressions. The way Thu folded his arms and nodded when Mrs. Roberson gave long and elaborate instructions about bringing the Parlor tea-things was mirrored in the angle of 'Rodus's head when two of the boys in Gleet's coffle asked him about whether they'd be unchained if the boat snagged and sank.
Does Cain realize? January wondered, watching in fascination from behind the piled cordwood as the Silver Moon lay behind yet another bar while the leadsman took soundings in the skiff. Thu was passing along the starboard promenade, and stopped to trade a word with the men of Cain's coffle—How can he not see?
But whites, January had found, frequently had trouble distinguishing the features of blacks.
And the man might have no knowledge of ancient Greek historians. It was common, January knew, for masters to name slave children the way they named dogs, for characters in literature or the Bible, or for sets of things: Faith, Hope, and Charity for girls, Marquis and Baron and Duke for boys. There were two boys in Gleet's coffle, brothers fifteen and sixteen years old, named, of all things, Jeremiah and Lamentations, testifying to some white man who knew the names of the books of the Bible but hadn't the slightest idea what they meant.
Would it matter, he wondered, if Cain knew?
“Quarter twain!” called out the leadsman, and Molloy's voice could be heard roaring curses from the pilot-house. “Quarter less twain!” The brown water barely stirred among the black army of snags that lay between the boat and the shore, the drips from the paddle like diamonds in the burning sunlight. “Quarter less twain!”
Jubal Cain came walking down the promenade, glancing sharply around him; Thucydides turned at once and left, passing the white man with neither a glance nor a word.
They tied up at the Vicksburg landing at midnight; Weems and Mrs. Fischer disembarked at once. From the shadows of the boiler-deck promenade, January took note of their luggage as they had it loaded onto a dray: three trunks this time, and two heavy portmanteaux. Sophie stood back, laden down with valises. “Looks like business,” murmured Hannibal, standing beside January in the darkness, and Rose replied softly, “It's supposed to.”
Across the muddy flat of the landing, a gaping space now studded with boxes, bales, and deadfall debris washed up with the river's summer retreat, lanterns burned even at this late hour in the gaggle of barrooms, whorehouses, and gambling-dens that clustered at the foot of Vicksburg's tall hill. Shouts of drunken anger floated on the dark air that hummed with mosquitoes and reeked of thrown-up booze and untended privies. Since the big vigilante crackdown the previous year at Natchez, Vicksburg had, if anything, a worse reputation than the larger port.
“Well, they can't very well board again before daybreak without drawing attention to themselves.” January shrugged his rough jacket straight: the sorry garment he'd gotten from Levi Christmas could pass him as either slave or a laboring freedman. He felt in his pocket again for the pass Hannibal had written him. “If they check into a hotel, I'm guessing the night porter will just store the trunk somewhere until more staff arrives in the morning. It may be another ruse, but we can't afford to assume that it is. There they go.” Turning, he clasped Rose hard in his arms. As he kissed her he seemed to hear a whispering voice hiss in his ear: Marinette-of-the-Dry-Arms will tear your woman from your arms. . . .