Benjamin January 4 - Sold Down The River (43 page)

“Oh, my lord, was that M'am Camille?” gasped Vanille. “That nasty old whore he went to see?”

“I think so, yes.”

In the darkness Marthe's sobbing sounded very loud, and Henna cried out, to no one in particular, “Is that all you can think of?”

“They took the horses,” said Musenda, his voice shaking with hurt, for the carriage team and the riding horses were like his children. “Just led them away like cattle. That Jac Ney, he has no care for a good horse, he'll sell them for what he can get, to Americans. . . .”

“Then you're saying it was Mr. Robert who poisoned his father?” Cornwallis looked down at January, his long arms folded over his black-coated chest. “Out of revenge?”

“Yes. Knowing that there was already unrest on Mon Triomphe. Everyone in the parish can testify about the voodoo marks, the destruction, maybe a rebellion brewing. When the house is found burned, and the family dead-all except Michie Robert, who as everyone knows was away in Baton Rouge-and every slave on the place missing, what do you think Sheriff Duffy's going to say? Thank you!” January added, pulling his newly freed arms around from behind him and rubbing the deep welts on his wrists.

“That's why he's selling us?” asked Ajax, squatting beside January. He moved his hand, to reach out to where Hope and Eve stood, but could not stretch his arm so far. “Just to make us all sort of disappear so he can say it was a slave revolt?”

“But what are we going to do?” pleaded Marthe, twisting her hands. “What about the children? About poor Madame?
Poor Michie Hannibal? We have to do something!”

“Like what?” demanded Jeanette roughly.

“If Ney sells you off far enough,” said January, “who's going to hear?
Who's going to come around and ask?”

They looked at one another. Held one another close: husbands and wives, mothers and children. A man's footsteps creaked past the door. Eve flinched, as if at the memory of a man's hand on her neck.

“You know a lot about it,” remarked Cornwallis. January nodded, wishing it were possible to stand and confront the man's sardonic eyes, rather than remain, perforce, on the floor with his feet chained in the air. He'd never liked the valet. “That's why we were there,” he said. “Michie Hannibal and me.” And his voice stuck over the name. “Tell me one more thing, Mamzelle Pennydip. Was Robert on Mon Triomphe, the summer those two babies died?”

“Robert was there, yes,” mumbled the old woman promptly. “He'd been left in school in town but he came up on the boat, summers. He spent most of his time there runnin' with Jac Ney, no matter what his daddy said of them Neys bein' no good.”

There was silence, as men and women mutely pieced together the evil details of the whirlwind they'd seen only from the outside.

“And did you ever find who else was causing the trouble before Michie Robert came home?” Cornwallis tilted his head, managing to look superior in spite of the chains on his wrists and neck. “Who caused the fire in the mill? And poor old Reuben to die?”

“I think a lot of people wanted revenge,” January replied. “But that's not the problem now. The problem is: Michie Robert is too smart to think he's going to get away with this, if any of us survives.”

In the shocked hush that followed, the clatter and jerk of the engines was horribly loud.

“Is there any water in here? Any food?”

But the cargo hold was bare, save for the two latrine buckets--chained into the corners where they stood-and the wall-rings and chains themselves.

Gosport volunteered, “I saw barrels of water and what looked like food-pots of beans and rice and that-when we come past the galley doors. You think he'd put poison in that?”

“I wouldn't put it past him.” But as the words came out of January's mouth he didn't believe them. Poisoning one man was one thing. Poisoning a hundred and fifty-or, if Robert planned to deal with the crew as well, nearly two hundred-was chancy, uncertain, and would probably take more time and certainly more poison than Fourchet had at his disposal. Robert would need to be sure, if he were doing anything at all. It would be better to

“Fuck damn!” said a voice on the other side of the wall. Metal clanged harshly in the engine room. “Roger? Roger . . . Let Jac know we've got a problem with the pump, and with the steam cutoff to the boilers.”

Quick-striding feet.
The recollection of the sound of steam venting in the engine room not long ago, of rattling pipes . . .

Robert's voice on the other side of the wall.
January turned absolutely cold inside.

At the same moment the footfalls, coming from the engine room door and heading for the steps, checked, scuffled, and there was a thump, as if someone had kicked the wall near the door. Then the slap of the bolt shooting back, and the door opened to frame Abishag Shaw's gawky figure against the light-soaked fog of morning.

The American had a rifle slung over his back and another in his right hand. In his left was a skinning-knife, and his left arm was hooked around the chest of a dying deckhand whose cut throat spouted blood, which dribbled down his forearm. Those nearest the door-Ajax, Juno, Agamemnon, and Nathan-all sprang back as the red liquid splashed their clothes, and Nathan cried out, “What the-?”

“Shut up!” hissed both January and Cornwallis at once, as Shaw dumped the body onto the floor, set his rifle against the wall beside the door, knelt to reach into his victim's pockets. . . .

Eve screamed.

Another deckhand appeared in the doorway, leveled a pistol at the back of Shaw's head, and fired.

The hammer clacked noisily and harmlessly in a misfire and Shaw came up off the floor like a mountain-cat, catching the man's shoulder in one blood-slick hand and striking upward under the chin with an elbow like a corncob, full force. The deckhand's feet lifted off the planking with the impact of the blow and January knew the man was dead before he landed.

“Search him,” ordered Shaw, turning as shouts rang out overhead. The door at the other end of the hold flew open and two rifles were thrust in. One misfired; the other, aimed over the first shooter's shoulder, tore a hole in the panels of the wall to the right of Shaw's head. Shaw brought up both his rifles like pistols, firing each one-handed January was amazed he didn't break his wrists. He flung one to January and a powder-flask with it, pulling out his pistol as a man appeared in the doorway behind him; there was a deafening report from somewhere outside and the man fell. A moment later Quashie swung through the door, one of Harry's rifles in his hands.

Harry was already loading Shaw's other rifle, as January, propped awkwardly on his elbows, measured out powder, ball, wadding . . .

“Engine room!” yelled January. “Robert disabled the pump to the boiler!”

Shaw said, “God bless it,” and tried to duck out the door, only to be driven back by a shot from outside. Meanwhile the hold was pandemonium, men and women flattening to the floor, to the walls, clutching children to them or pressing them to the boards beneath them, defending them with their bodies.

“Does that mean the boat can't go, if there's no steam?” Baptiste crouched against the wall as Quashie ripped one of the dead slavers' pistols from the man's belt, fired as the opposite door started to open again, the ball tearing a hole in the wood. Two shots from outside cracked through the wall over January's head; he heard one of the balls clang against something metal.

“It means the boilers will blow.” January held out the loaded rifle to Shaw by the barrel, tugged one of the corpses closer to him, and relieved it of two enormous scalping-knives. “Ajax, Random, start cutting at the beam over the bolts. Engine room's on the other side of that wall,” he added, as Gosport relieved another corpse of its blade. “Score the wood and maybe we can ram or kick through. . . .” He dodged and twisted as another shot from outside holed the wall again. Ancilla screamed, the splinters driven by the ball piercing her leg like darts. “They fired Mon Triomphe. . . .”

“Been there.”
Shaw had shoved one of his corpses into the doorway to prevent the men outside from simply slamming it and shooting the bolt, something that had been done on the other side of the room, though Quashie, grim-faced and filthy, remained there to guard against a sortie. “They's all all right. Ney!” he yelled. “Ney, God damn it!” and returned fire against two shots and a clicking fusillade of misfires, as if three-quarters of the rifles and pistols in possession of Ney's men had been bewitched. “Damn you, cut your engines! Draw your fires! Your pump's out!”

“Lying American whoreson!”
And then, as an aside, “Son of a whore, what is with these rifles?”

“Your pump's out and your goddam engine's going to blow-”

Another shot; two men tried to rush the door, Shaw waiting until they were almost inside to return fire. Gosport, who'd managed to hack and saw all the way through the beam that held the chain, sprang forward, looping the chain around the neck of one attacker as the man's pistol-inevitably-misfired, and the whole dozen or so men and women attached to that chain dragged the man down, ripping the weapons from his hands, his belt, his boots . . .

“Here's keys!” yelled Nathan in triumph. At the same time, January heard dim pounding on the engine room door, voices calling:

“Theo? Theo! Open up in there! Theo!”

One of the shots through the wall, thought January, feeling very calm about the whole business. The man must have bolted himself in when the commotion started.

Nathan, hands trembling, was trying key after key in the manacle locks, while men threw open the opposite door again and Quashie fired with every piece he possessed-quite a number, now. Harry, who'd been reloading for him, had tossed aside at least four pistols, and when Kadar grabbed for one said, “Won't work. Flint's busted.”

“Get 'em out of here,” said January quietly, rolling gratefully to his feet as Nathan found the key to his ankle chains and let him, finally, scramble right side up. “Just get 'em out, over the rail. Risking a bullet's better than getting blown up.”

“I suspect you're right, Maestro.” Shaw fired again at another sortie. “River's rising and full of trash, floaters and logs and branches. Since we're bound upstream we're close to shore, too.”

Outside men were shouting, arguing, and Jac Ney's voice rose above the rest: “I'll shoot the man who goes over-side!” There was a crashing, a thudding, from the door, and, January fancied, over the clank and lug and rattle of the engine another sound, the strangled desperate keening of steam escaping from too small a vent, trapped too long and too tightly. . . .

“Now it may so be,” Shaw added placidly, blasting away as the far door jerked open yet again, “that I might get myself blowed up or knocked out or washed down the river a ways, and not be able to get all these folks back to the people that owns 'em. I'm leavin' that up to you, Maestro.” His gray eyes met January's, completely without expression. “If so be any survives.”

“I doubt anyone will,” said January, warning him.

Shaw nodded. “Well, we can only do our best. Was it Seneca that said Death is Freedom for a slave?” He pulled a packet of waxed silk from his shirt, and shoved it into the front of January's-his freedom papers, January guessed. “You watch out for that wheel, when you go over-side.”

Shaw and January slammed the door open, firing in both directions, clearing a path. Return fire was sporadic-January could see only about a dozen men still on deck, Ney and his father among them. Dark heads bobbed already in the quicksilver current of the river, clutching at the snags and branches that the rise was bringing down. The boat itself was farther from the shore than January had reckoned, swinging with the current already but plowing hard. Even as the first of the newly freed men and women plunged from the hold, threw themselves across the narrow space of deck to the rail and over, he felt the boat lurch and hitch, felt the rhythm of the engine jar, jolting as the wheel picked up a snag. The huge tree-trunk caught, jamming the already overburdened machinery. . . .

Men's voices yelling the dead engineer's name outside the locked engine room door.

Jacinthe Ney screaming at the Spanish mate as the man plunged over the rail, firing his pistol at his head and getting nothing but a broken spark from its damaged flint.

Hope flinging herself over the rail with her infant tied to her back with her shawl, Bumper and Nero following, holding hands tightly.

Jeanette and Quashie side by side, both firing rifles and pistols and everything else they could lay hands on to keep the white attackers at bay, Quashie like a filthy animal, bearded and bushy from five days' hiding, five days' watching. Five days, waiting his chance.

Disappearing Willie, amazingly, sat a dozen yards off in the pirogue that had brought Shaw and Quashie, already fishing children and the weak from the flood.
His eyes met January's and he grinned, as if this were a game.

The Belle Dame lurched, swung with the current, even its own crew springing over-side like rats now, dark and sleek and wet in the water. Jac Ney fired at them, and hurled the useless pistols at their heads when they misfired, cursing like Satan in Hell.

January strode from the door of the empty cargo hold and swung up on the rail. He had a flashing glimpse of Ney's wild eyes, the dark muzzle of a pistol brought to bear, flame bursting and a ball skimming his shoulder like a hornet's hot kiss-

-And then the entire world went up in a bellowing roar of earsplitting fire. The concussion drove him down into the river's heart, drowning him, hammering his ears, the impact whirling him away. He felt the heat of it, struggled blindly upward, eternities without breath.

Sickened eons later, his head broke water. Burning hunks of wood, slobbering bubbles, floating shutters and benches and doors strewed the surface. He grabbed the door, for the current was strong, turned a little in the water and saw the hulk of the Belle Dame riding the stream like a floating bonfire. Heat pounded his face. Weak with shock and hunger and sheer fatigue, for a long time all he could do was cling to his isolate planet of flotsam, the sole life in a universe of wet gray.

In time the river sent him a plank, and he used this to paddle slowly to shore.