Dead water - Barbara Hambly [56]
As at Natchez, it was no difficult matter to follow Weems's cab up the hill. Clay Street was nearly as steep as Natchez's bluff, and the hill, though set a little farther back from the river, was just as high, one of the long line of bluffs that rose like a wall on the east side of the river. Once away from the torchlight and clamor of the red-light district along the landing, Vicksburg, in its darkness and silence, seemed a much more American town than Natchez. Though the town was only twenty years old, it already had showy houses, pillared like Greek temples in the style favored by Americans: cotton-planters whose lands lay across the river on the flat, fertile, and smotheringly hot delta plain.
The Majestic Hotel was of this style, new and freshly-painted, with very young elm-trees planted on either side of its door. The night porter who opened for Weems and Mrs. Fischer had a gimcrack and brightly-painted air to him, too, fresh-faced and busy. From the darkness beneath the oak-trees across the street, January left Hannibal to watch the front door and followed the cab around to the rear yard. There Sophie got down, saw to it that the trunks were put in a locked shed, tipped the porter, and went inside, carrying her own modest bundle of clean apron and fresh petticoat.
There was no gate on the yard. January stepped back out of sight as the cab passed him—the single lantern above the hotel's rear door threw about as much light as a tallow candle—then slipped around back to Adams Street, where Hannibal waited under the oaks of the vacant lot.
“They've taken a room.” The fiddler pointed to a curtained window now glowing with the illumination of lamplight within. “Goodness knows what name they gave. The merchant, to secure his treasure / Conveys it in a borrowed name. . . . Though they may in fact just spend the night playing backgammon, as they cannot, as you pointed out, get back on the boat without drawing attention to themselves until morning. Are the trunks back there?”
“In a padlocked shed.”
“Two massy keys he bore of metals twain / The golden opes, the iron shuts amain. I shall return 'ere the leviathan can swim a league. . . . though I wonder now whether that's in low water or high. For some must watch, while some must sleep / So runs the world away. . . .” He darted across the street and vanished like a wayward elf into the darkness.
The lamp upstairs was still burning when Hannibal re-materialized at his side.
“Stand, and unfold yourself,” whispered his voice from the shadows, and quite properly January gave back the next line from the opening of Hamlet,
“Long live the king. You come most carefully upon your hour.”
“Wretched newfangled patent Yankee locks on the trunks.” Hannibal flexed his long fingers, and shivered, though the night was gluily warm. “But worth the effort. They're full of old books, Bible tracts and collections of sermons . . . perhaps we should reclaim them and make a present of them to Mr. Quince.”
“They'll be heading back to the boat as soon as they think they're unobserved, then,” said January. He glanced up at the moon, trying to gauge how many hours had passed. “Would you do me a favor? Go back to the boat and see what they've done with the engines? See whether they've let the steam down—which will mean the boat's here until noon at least—or just banked the furnaces so they can get up steam in a few minutes. You don't need to rush coming back,” he added, taking a second look, by the reflected glow of the single door-lantern across the street, at his friend's rather drawn face.
“Will ye reach there by moonlight / If your horse be good and your spurs be bright,” said Hannibal, saluting. “I will be bloody, bold, and resolute. You be bloody, bold, and resolute as well, amicus meus, and watch your back. We may be away from the waterfront, but personally, I wouldn't trust myself anywhere in this town—or anywhere around our precious friends up in that hotel-room.”
With that he departed, and January didn't begin