Mrs. Kincannon came forward. She stood between Magnus and Matthew and looked down into her daughter’s pallid face. The tears welled up afresh. “She had so much life,” the woman said softly. She gently touched the girl’s cheek. “Our only child. Dear God…this about Abram, Mars and Tobey…and Royce and Gunn…I can hardly believe it. I can’t ask Donovant for help. What should I do?”
“You can fetch me a musket or a pistol, a powderhorn, some balls and fixin’s,” said Magnus. “A pouch of beef jerky and a torch would be appreciated. Then direct me to the wharf and a rowboat. I’ll do the rest.”
The woman looked into Matthew’s eyes. “Will you go with him? Please…as a representative of the law? I can pay you whatever amount you like.”
Matthew realized he was being asked to solve a problem, in his official capacity. It was not a task he relished, for he thought the runaways would be caught and killed before dawn, but it was a task he had been trained for and was expected to perform by both Madam Herrald and Hudson Greathouse. Also his own sense of justice demanded it. “I would ask twenty pounds,” he answered. “To be divided between myself and Mr. Muldoon. Is that suitable?” He was asking Magnus, who grunted an assent. “Then,” he told Mrs. Kincannon, “I would like to carry a sword, if you can honor that.” He figured he needed a sharp edge, out where they were going. “And also…very importantly…don’t move the body from where it is. All right?”
“All right. I’ll get what both of you ask. Pegg, will you take them to the boathouse? I’ll meet you there directly.” She paused for only a moment longer to once more regard the face of her daughter, and then with a strengthless sigh she turned away and left the chapel.
“Come with me, gen’l’men,” Granny Pegg instructed. “I’se old, but I can still walk fast. You two goin’ up the River of Souls…there are things you ought to know about that country. Come on, then, and I’ll tell you like I told my blood how best to keep y’selves alive.”
Two
I Am Not Daniel
Nine
The moon had risen. It was a lunatic’s laugh short of being full, and it shone ghostly white upon the unquiet waters of the River of Souls.
In their boat, Matthew sat at the bow and held the torch aloft as Magnus manned the oars. They had left the wharf at the Green Sea Plantation a half-hour ago, and now followed the river’s sinuous curves between the swampy wilderness on either side. They followed also what appeared to Matthew to be a floating carnival. Ahead of them were a dozen rowboats and canoes and more than a dozen other torches and lanterns lighting up the river. The boats held two, three, or four men, and some looked to Matthew’s eye to be about to tip their passengers into the drink.
And strong drink there seemed to be, as well, for from this throng occasionally arose rude shouts and field hollers and bawdy songs born from the jugs that passed along. Looking back, Matthew saw a score of other torch-lit boats following. In the sodden, steamy air there was a cruelly festive mood and perhaps a mood of desperation too, for Matthew reasoned that many of the men on this hunt were hungry to get their hands on as much Kincannon money as a dead slave would buy them. The boats wandered from one side of the river to the other, the torches seeking an empty boat that Abram, Mars and Tobey would have abandoned to start cross-country, but yet no such boat or signs of a craft being dragged out could be ascertained. So the carnival wound on with the river, and under the lunatic’s moon the brash singing of foolish men drifted out upon the thick green swamp. Swords caught firelight and threw it like a flurry of red sparks. A gunshot far ahead caused the merriment to go grim and silent, until the shouting passed back Nothin’ there, gents, nothin’ there, ol’ Foxworth is seein’ hain’ts in the dark.
“All right?” Matthew asked Muldoon, who labored steadily upon the oars and had not spoken since leaving the wharf.
Magnus gave a low grunt, which served as his yes. Then, to Matthew’s surprise, the black-bearded mountain paused in his rowing and shouted toward the boats ahead, “Royce and Gunn! You within my voice?”
In another moment someone called back, “Not up here!” Matthew heard a distant fiddle start scratching out a lively tune, one of the occupants of the boats having brought his cat-wailer. Magnus began rowing again. They were catching up to a group of three boats that seemed to be travelling together, the twelve men in them throwing jugs back and forth, laughing at rough jokes about the ‘skins’ and acting in general as if this were the grandest adventure to ever lift them off their porch chairs. There was a little too much waving about of muskets and pistols for Matthew’s taste. He thought the item of the Kincannons’ tragedy was much forgotten already, and this was turning into a night of rum-fuelled sport.
There came a commotion ahead, some of the men hollering and pointing at the water. One of them hit at something with an oar, and another slashed downward with his sword. The water thrashed and churned, and then Matthew saw the dark mass of an alligator pass by their boat, having survived the oar and blade. It began to submerge itself and with a haughty flick of its thick tail the creature left the world of men for its own domain.
Matthew thought of a warning Granny Pegg had given them before they’d left the wharf: If you fall into the water, get out quick. He understood why, for now torchlight revealed the red glare of alligator eyes watching the procession of boats, and the scaly black bodies of the reptiles gliding back and forth between the vessels as if taunting the passengers. Singing quietened and jocularity ceased, in the presence of these river monsters.
Magnus rowed on, undaunted. He kept a steady pace, his eyes fixed ahead, past Matthew and the torch. He was, as Matthew had been today, a man with a purpose, and Matthew thought that part of Muldoon’s quest was an effort to cleanse his soul of three killings under the sight of God.
“You want to watch the river,” Granny Pegg had said, as they waited at the wharf for Mrs. Kincannon to bring what they’d asked. “It’s wicked. It’ll steal from you in a short minute, if you don’t watch it.”
“It’s a river,” Matthew had answered. “No more and no less.”
“Oh, no, suh.” The old woman’s thin smile was nearly ghastly. “It’s been cursed, as all the swamp and woods around it has been cursed, once you get up past Rotbottom.”
“Rotbottom? What is that?” Matthew asked.
“The last town you’ll find. Hardly a town, not even so big as Jubilee. They live off the swamp. Take their ’gator hides into Charles Town to sell ’em. I’se seen their boats passin’ by, time to time.”
“You told Dr. Stevenson about the witch’s son being drowned, and the supposed curse,” Matthew reminded her. “I can appreciate such tales for a midnight’s telling, but there are no such things as witches and curses.”
“I’ve heard some of this,” Magnus said, as he leaned against a piling. The water lapped at the pier and frogs croaked by the dozen in the wet swampgrass. “Don’t believe none of it.”
“I didn’t conjure it,” Granny Pegg replied. “Heard it from an Indian woman elder than me, used to be the cook in the big house. She passed on last year. She come from Rotbottom, been married to a man up there a’fore a ’gator got him by the legs and dragged him down. She knew the tale, right well.”
“It’s nonsense,” said Matthew, watching a pair of torchlit canoes being rowed upriver from the direction of Jubilee. He was, as he knew Magnus to be, in a hurry to get started but there was no going anywhere without weapons.