Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [87]
Meanwhile, she hurried up the boardwalk after Berry, Whit following cumbered with the button boxes, then across the mucky street to a building with a swinging sign announcing it as The Silver Mussel, painted with a picture of a shell with little feet, buggy eyes, and unlikely smiling teeth. If those creatures at all resembled their portrait, Fawn didn’t think she wanted one anywhere near her mouth, cooked or not. But the smell, as they entered the door, was nothing at all like the stench from the mussel fishery down on the riverbank, being mainly a heady steam of garlic and onion intertwined with the sweet tang of fresh beer. Whit inhaled and smiled.
Inside was a big room with sawdust on the floor and a long counter along one side. Scullions and serving boys were clearing tables in a leisurely fashion that suggested the lunch rush was over. Fawn’s eye followed Berry’s as it swept the room and caught up on a man who could well be their quarry, sitting alone at a table at the far end. A big fellow about my age, the fortyish merchant had said, running to fat, curly brown hair, very nice-trimmed beard. Dresses like a riverman, right enough, but all his gear was the best. Berry nodded, as if in confirmation, and wove amongst the tables toward him.
He looked up from the mussel shell he was exploring and smiled vaguely at the two young women, but swallowed what he was chewing in quick surprise when Berry stopped by his side and said, “Mister Cutter? From Tripoint?”
“Cap Cutter, and aye,” he replied. “What can I do for you, miss…and miss?” An afterthought of a nod also acknowledged Whit.
Berry stuck out her work-roughened hand. “I’m Boss Berry Clearcreek, of the Fetch. This here’s my sweep-man, Whit Bluefield, and my friend and cook Missus Fawn Bluefield.”
Cutter’s eyebrows rose a little at her claim, but lowered again as he shook her hand and she returned his boatman’s grip. He nodded to Fawn and Whit. “Married?” And corrected himself even before the Bluefield grimaces with, “Oh, brother and sister, aye.”
“I hear you been asking about missing boats,” said Berry.
His general friendliness gave way to something more urgent. “Did you all come from downriver?”
“No—the Fetch is a flat—but we’re heading that way. See, last fall my papa and brother took a flat down from Clearcreek and never came back. No word. It was like they just vanished. So I’m on the lookout for them, or news of them.”
“The boats we’re missing disappeared in this spring’s rise, much later, but here, sit…” He half-rose, gesturing at the other three chairs around the square plank table. An uncleared plate opposite him, piled high with empty shells, indicated that a companion had left—perhaps another informant? Cutter sank back, frowning a little, as they settled themselves.
“Boats?” asked Fawn curiously. “More than one?”
He nodded. “I started out as a keeler out of Tripoint, till I married and the tads started coming along, and my missus wanted me more settled. So I took up a goods-shed there and started sending cargoes instead of hauling them. First cargoes, then a boat, then two boats, then four. My luck was fair in general, and I’ve mostly found steady men for my bosses. They were good boats, too, solid work out of Beaver Creek. Not like those homemade tubs the hills boys cobble together, with green or rotten timbers and bad caulking—I lost a cargo on one of those flats, once, learned my lesson. It went down on a sunny day in nineteen feet of clear water, stove in, I swear, when it struck nothing harder than the head of a yellow-bellied catfish.”
Having seen a channel cat, Fawn was not so sure this represented defects in the boat, but she held her peace.
“Sound boats, sound crews,” Cutter went on, “but two out of four didn’t come back this summer. And when I got to asking around, turned out they weren’t the only ones. There’s nine boats or flattie crews out of the Tripoint area didn’t come back when they should of. You might expect to lose one or two a season, but nine? And even sunk boats come