Matthew had no idea of the time. The sky was still inky black, the moon still high. Huge willow trees met overhead and their branches hung over the river. The noise of men had quietened in the aftermath of violence. The chirrups and croaks and chitters of the swamp’s thousand-and-one creatures held sway. Matthew had the sense of a monstrous presence out there amid the wilderness, beyond the range of his torch. It was not one monster but many, waiting tensed in the dark to spring forth. It was the swamp itself, he thought. It was the alligators, the sinkholes, the quicksand, the snakes, and…what else?
It was Griffin Royce and Joel Gunn, somewhere far ahead, searching for the three runaways in order to silence the truth. It was men like Briggs, and Baltazar Stamper, Caleb Bovie and Seth Lott, hungry for money and ready—perhaps eager—to kill for it. It was a whole mob of desperate men from Jubilee, drunk on liquor and the thought of bringing back a pair of slave’s ears for a sum that might lift them up from the impoverished dust.
Matthew realized he had one hand upholding the torch and the other hand on the grip of his cutlass. The insects swarmed around his face, darting and biting. He knew that in spite of his best intentions he had nearly lost his balance and gone into the river with Jackson. So…it was true that a musket ball had saved his life this night, even though a murder—two of them, in fact—had been committed in front of his eyes. He wished for the comfort of his little dairyhouse, and with it the familiar town of New York with all its traffic and horse figs and complications and…yes…even the cold winds that swept his way from Berry Grigsby.
A disturbing thought came to him, though he had no use for tales of witches and curses.
I will not leave this river the same.
Well…who would? Already the deaths had begun. But Matthew had this feeling deep in his soul, and he could not shake it.
I will not leave this river the same.
He had a feeling of intense dread that surpassed even his experiences with Professor Fell. It lasted only briefly, but it was enough to give him a chill shiver on this steamy, sullen night. He gripped the cutlass harder. Little good that might do, but it was something.
And now onward…onward…following the quietened flotilla of torch-and-lamplit vessels, following the grim blood-hungry men with pistols and muskets and blades, following the twisting course of the Solstice River into the witch-cursed country, and Matthew Corbett with damp brains and blood upon his face, and carrying deep within himself a primal fear for the sanctity and survival of his soul.
Ten
"I have to clean myself,” said Matthew when the smell of the dried gore on his face became stronger and the swarm of insects more maddening. Still, he resisted putting his hand over the side or even cupping water in his half-crushed tricorn, for his torchlight revealed here and there the slowly-gliding shapes of the alligators yet seeking another bite of the human breed. “Will you guide us to shore for a minute?” he asked Magnus, who after a pause to deliberate this request nodded and aimed their boat toward the northern bank. As soon as he’d asked the favor, Matthew recalled Granny Pegg saying Keep your boat in the middle of the river. But surely a minute’s pause on the shore for him to wash his face in shallow water would not bring a curse down upon his head, he thought, and anyway it had to be done. There were lights of boats both ahead of them and behind; Matthew figured he and Magnus were probably somewhere near the center of the floating carnival, and so far there’d been no shouts of anyone finding an abandoned boat, no gunshots, and no answer when Magnus called for Griffin Royce and Joel Gunn.
The rowboat’s prow slid onto mud amid a tangled thicket. The water here was only a few inches deep, and the torch showed no red-eyed reptile waiting in the high weeds. Matthew leaned over the bow…
“Careful,” Magnus cautioned. And explained to Matthew’s jittery start: “Don’t fall in.”
“Thank you,” Matthew answered, as he wet his face and wiped the bloody matter off his cheeks, forehead and chin with his shirt. He made out what appeared to be the meager light of candles through the woods ahead. Light through windows? he wondered. Ah, yes…the town of Rotbottom, according to Granny Pegg the last stand of civilization on the River of Souls. The thrum of frogs was like a constant drumbeat, the noise of crickets and night-insects a rising and falling cacophony. It seemed that a hundred nasty little humming and buzzing flying things were circling his head and trying to drink the liquid from his eyeballs. He waved them away with his torch and kept scrubbing his face in an attempt to get every bit of human debris off himself. He had had time to think, between the attack of the alligators and his request to head for shore, that it was certainly not a sure thing that the trio of runaways could be found—or could be saved from being killed by any of the other men. In fact, it was a high chance that they could not be saved, if they were indeed found, and all of this would be for naught. Still…what would he be, if he did not try?
“Have to pick up our pace,” Magnus said. “Try to get to the front of the pack. Way back here, we can’t do anything.”
“I know,” Matthew replied.
“How we gonna stop those skins bein’ murdered?” Magnus asked, as if in the past few minutes this question had suddenly dawned on him. “How are we gonna prove Royce killed Sarah? Seems like all you’ve got is some clay under Sarah’s fingernails, and Granny Pegg’s story. That won’t send a man swingin’. Anyhow, Gunn’ll stand up for him. Hell, they’ll kill those slaves and cut their ears off before we ever see ’em…then what’re you gonna prove?”
“That…I don’t know,” Matthew admitted. “The first thing we have to do—if we can—is to stop any murdering of Abram and the others. Royce and Gunn want to silence them, but they don’t trust the river or the swamp to do it for them. So if we can find the slaves first, so much the better.” And good luck with that effort, he thought. He swung the torch again at the multitude of swarming insects. “Damn these things!” he fumed. “They’re everywhere!”
Magnus scratched his own cheek where a biter had landed and left a swelling. “Before he settled in Jubilee,” said Magnus, “Baltazar Stamper made his livin’ trackin’ down runaway slaves. He and Bovie both. If anybody can find ’em, it’s those two. And that preacher’s half-crazy and hot on the trigger. I wouldn’t turn my back on any of those three.”
“It seems we have excellent company on this jaunt.” Matthew had finished cleaning his face to his satisfaction, and now he waved the torch again to ward off the hungry congregation. He started to slide back into the boat.
“Mud,” someone said.
The voice made Matthew freeze, though it was spoken so softly it might nearly have been only the sultry breeze searching through the rushes. It had been a feminine voice with a low, smoky quality. Matthew knew someone was standing there amid the underbrush, but his torchlight could not find her among the shadows of shadows.
“What?” he asked, as if proposing his question to the swamp itself.
“Mud,” came the repeated reply, and then she moved forward from the wildness of vines and thorns and lifted her own punched-tin lantern. The torchlight fell upon her. “Mud keeps them away,” she said. She came toward him without being invited, and she looked into his eyes as if trying to spy the essence of his soul. He felt himself being probed in every hidden place, which caused him to want to draw back and away from the young woman…but he did not. Then, also without being asked, she leaned down, scooped up a handful of dark river mud, and held it out for his approval. He smelled in it the strong odor of the swamp, a heady and earthy aroma that might have been repellent for its many layers of decay and rebirth, and yet Matthew caught within it a strangely medicinal whiff as well, as pungent as camphor. He wondered how many thousands of dead trees and riverweeds and passage of years were in that handful of mud. It was if the young woman was offering him a salve formed from the River of Souls itself.