Dead water - Barbara Hambly [82]
January glanced down at Rose, and met her eyes, which had followed his gaze. She raised her eyebrows: “Is that my imagination?” she asked, and January shook his head. “Do you think Cain knows?”
“He'd have to be a fool not to notice how alike they look,” answered January. “And whatever else he is, Jubal Cain isn't a fool. Any other white man, it's even odds whether they'd see it or not—their color's so different, and it always shocks me how little blankittes notice. But it might explain why, on a dark and foggy night, Cain made sure he wasn't alone when he came down to see that his slaves were fed.”
“Could a slave kill a white man walking by?” asked Rose as they retreated through the passway to the port-side promenade. The rain had stopped entirely; the paddle was moving slowly as the banks closed in around the Silver Moon, overhanging boughs of oak and tupelo scraping hard on the sides. As January had feared, closed in by the trees the damp heat was ghastly, and away from the main channel of the river the air swarmed with mosquitoes and gnats. “Those chains aren't very long—they have to turn around and lean out to the extent of their arms to relieve their bowels over the river. And that iron must be extremely heavy.”
Rose, January realized, had never worn chains.
“You'd be surprised what you can do,” he said softly, “if you're really frightened, or really angry.”
“But would any of them have been that frightened of—or angry at—Weems? He was a thief, and a blackmailer, but not, as far as I've ever heard, a man of violence. I can't imagine anyone wasting his time trying to blackmail a slave. Not one who has no useful information about a current master, like these. Weems was an Abolitionist, too, at least a milk-and-water one. Why would any of the slaves have attacked him?”
January shook his head. “But they saw something. And two things happened last night: Weems's murder, and Julie's escape.”
“Julie.” Rose's mouth hardened into a thin line of anger.
“Did you see her go?”
“No,” From the bow January could hear the leadsman's shouts: “Half one! Half one! Quarter less twain . . .” And hoped that Levi Christmas and his boys had passed them in the night and were at present somewhere on the other side of Hitchins' Point. Looking up, he saw the planter Lockhart at the stern rail of the boiler-deck, rifle in the crook of his arm, silhouetted against the hot summer sky.
“It was dark as Egypt, as they say—you know how fog seems to drink up light, and there wasn't any too much from the deck lantern to begin with. Sophie and Julie came down to share supper with me, after they got their respective mistresses ready for dinner—Julie was just shaking over the prospect of being sold to Gleet.”
She ducked as a willow-branch swept over the deck, spattering her with leftover rain. Behind them the paddle slowed, water slithering from its bucket-boards, and the monotonous voice of the leadsman chanted, “Quarter one . . . quarter one . . .”
The thick trees seemed to absorb the sound.
“Mark one.”
“I don't think she's stopped crying since we left Vicksburg,” Rose went on. “And that nasty little hussy Skippen boxed her ears for it. Julie spoke of running away, but was terrified—naturally—of being beaten if she were caught 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.