Matthew was close to saying he would help, but his task demanded that he stay with the larger group. Ellis turned away, and as he did Quinn said, “Mister? Don’t go.”
The man hesitated. “What?”
“Don’t go,” she repeated. “It’s not safe.”
“Oh, she’s talkin’ about that thing,” Stamper said. “The Soul Cryer.” He spoke it with the sarcasm of a twisted lip. “Everybody who believes in that, believes in every ghost story told about this damn country. You believe in that, Ellis?”
Ellis paused a little too long, but then he said, “No, course not.”
“Beggin’ your pardon,” said Quinn, “but either of you men even been this far up the river? I know those who have. I know what they say they’ve seen, and I know they’re not liars. So…Mr. Ellis…I wouldn’t go out there alone. It’s not safe.”
“Let’s move!” Royce demanded. “Oh, hell with it! Gunn, come on!” He forged ahead into the brush and Gunn followed. Stamper and Bovie strode forward, and the other men also continued on, only Matthew noted they seemed not so quick to spread out as they’d been before.
Ellis looked from the girl to Matthew and Magnus. “Either of you gimme some help?”
“We’ve got to move on, too,” Magnus answered. “Sorry.”
Ellis nodded. He stood for a moment as if at the crossroads of decision, watching the torches of the men move away through the trees and then staring off into the dark woods that had taken his friend. Finally, he leaned his axe against his shoulder and walked off into the thicket, and he called, “John Doyle! Gimme a holler!”
Magnus, Matthew and Quinn left him. In another few minutes they caught up with the rest of the group, who’d run into another barrier of thorns. It was slow and painful going, and suddenly Matthew found himself side-by-side with Royce as they picked their way through.
Royce glanced at him with what might have been a sneer. “Shouldn’t be out here, Corbett. Should’ve gone back to Charles Town. That wound you’ve got might cost your arm.”
“I’ll have it tended to when I get back,” Matthew replied. And he had to add: “I’m sure Dr. Stevenson can put a compress on it.”
There was no visible reaction from Royce. His voice was silky. “You know him?”
“I do.” Matthew winced as thorns plucked at his shirt and bit his sides. Quinn was right behind him, and he was doing his best to cleave a path for her but it was impossible for her not to be bitten as well. “I saw him in Charles Town yesterday morning. He mentioned…ouch!…having come to the Green Sea to put a compress on a patient’s forearm. I’m guessing that was you?”
“It was. Horse nipped me. Whipped her good, too, taught her a lesson she won’t forget.”
“You must have a way with females,” Matthew said.
Royce stopped in the midst of the sharp-edged thorns, which boiled up black and green all around. He turned toward Matthew, his smile cold. “Gunn tells me you were where you didn’t belong, askin’ questions. Y’know, you’re still where you don’t belong. In pretty damn bad shape, too.” He pushed at Matthew’s wounded shoulder with a thick forefinger, which caused Matthew to flinch and draw back. “Just what’re you doin’ out here, anyway? Why is this your business?”
“I want to see justice done.”
“So do I. And I intend that it be done.”
“I’d like to see the slaves captured and returned alive,” said Matthew. “Is that your aim as well?”
“It is. Abram should hang for his crime. The others too, for helpin’ him run.” Royce began picking his way forward again, and Matthew followed.
“The problem is,” Matthew said, “that very few of these men you’ve enticed with the promise of Kincannon gold share that view. They’d rather kill the slaves out here and take the ears back. Does that not bother you?”
“What bothers me are fool questions.” Royce’s voice had become tight, his entire body like a charge about to explode. He grasped the thorns with bloody fingers and shoved them aside. Above the dangerous earth the dangerous sky flashed and muttered. “I needed men to help me. Sure wasn’t gonna come out here, just me and Gunn. Never find ’em that way.”
Matthew was silent for awhile, as they worked their way through. He heard Magnus give a curse, a distance off to his right, as a sharp edge or two pricked the mountainous man. “You do know,” Matthew continued on, “that Sarah was teaching Abram to read in that barn, over many nights? I’m supposing Gunn told you?”
“Don’t matter,” was the quick response. “I don’t know why that damn buck killed the girl, but he did and he’s got to hang for it.”
Matthew was formulating his next question—What happened to your compress, Mr. Royce?—when a shout came from the left.
“Hey! Hey! Over here! Quick!”
They made their painful way in that direction and found six other men already there, including Stamper, Bovie and Gunn. The old bearded man who was armed to the teeth was showing something that had gotten caught by the thorns. A small piece of gray cloth, Matthew saw it was. Most likely torn from a shirt.
“They’ve been through here!” the old man said excitedly. “Look how them thorns are broken! They been right through this way…prob’ly not too long past!”
“Steady, Foxworth,” Stamper said. “Mind your heart.” He pulled the bit of cloth free and smelled it. “Fresh skin stink. Maybe an hour old. Gunn, give me your torch.” He took it from the Green Sea captain and angled it toward the ground. The earth was hard here, but it was evident the underbrush had been crushed by bodies passing through. “On their trail,” Stamper said. He knelt to examine the brush more closely. “Hm,” he grunted. “One of ’em’s draggin’. Slowin’ ’em down.” He stood up but did not return the torch to Gunn. “That’s good for us. I’ll take the lead from here on. Bovie, get a torch and move on out to the left maybe forty feet. Royce, you do the same on the right. Everybody else, spread out as you please. Not far behind ’em now. Move quiet. Keep your guns and swords ready, we may come up on ’em anytime.”
Matthew could keep silent no longer. “Mr. Stamper, I want you to know that I’ve been empowered by Mrs. Kincannon to make sure the runaways are returned unharmed. It’s important to her—and to me—that these men aren’t killed out here. Do you understand that?”
Stamper fixed Matthew with a narrow-eyed stare. Bovie gave a short, sharp laugh and even Seth Lott, standing nearby, grinned as if this were the ravings of a pure lunatic.
“Ain’t men,” said Gunn. “Told you. They’re animals.”
“I ain’t takin’ nobody back!” Foxworth said, coming up beside Matthew. “Takin’ ears, is all. The swamp can keep the bodies!”
“Killed that girl,” said Morgan, “they all deserve to die.”
“Hold on, hold on!” Royce had gotten a torch from another man, and now he added its glaring light to the scene. “Matthew, we all want to do the right thing. We know Abram killed Sarah. Gunn caught him with the knife, standin’ over the body just after he’d stabbed her. Now…Mr. Kincannon has been laid low by this, and Mrs. Kincannon is near out of her mind. We want to take the skins back for a proper hangin’…but an awful lot can happen before we get ’em there. That’s just how it is.”
“I want ’em taken back alive too.” Magnus had taken a position at Matthew’s side, with Quinn behind him. “Mrs. Kincannon’s got some questions she needs to ask Abram.”
Matthew wished Magnus had not said this, but the cat had jumped from its bag. “She wants to know why Abram killed Sarah,” Matthew clarified. “She can’t rest until she knows.”
Royce stared forcefully into Matthew’s eyes. “Well…maybe we can find out for her, if it comes to that. But you rest easy, sir. We know these animals and you don’t. We know what they would do to us, if they could. So…we’ll do our best to obey the lady’s biddin’, but the reality of it is…we’re out here in these thorns, and she’s there in that big house. A long way off. And sometimes even the rich folks in the big
house can’t always get what they want.” He dismissed Matthew with a shrug of his shoulders. “You leadin’ the way, Stamper? Let’s get movin’, then.”
They pushed on through the thorns, following the crushed track of the runaways. Several of the men gave Matthew and Magnus jeering looks as they passed, as if daring them to step between a musket, a sword, and a slave.
“We ought to go back,” Quinn said, clutching at Matthew’s good arm. “Let them go on, find those slaves and do whatever they’re gonna do. You can’t stop ’em.”
Matthew thought that by now he couldn’t find his way back, even if he wanted to. “I have to try,” he told her quietly, though what he truly desired was a bed of moss and another two hours of sleep. His vision kept blurring in and out and his legs felt near collapse. But he had to keep going, and that was that. The Great One would be proud of him…or else be telling him to get the hell out of this situation because he was an addle-pated fool.
He followed the others, and Quinn followed her Daniel, and Magnus snorted flying insects from his nostrils and also pressed onward.
Fifteen
Not ten minutes after passing through the last of the thorns, Matthew heard the crack of a gunshot.
It was over on the left, in the storm-darkened woods. “Who fired that?” Stamper hollered in the echo of the shot. Beside him stood Royce and Gunn, both with their torches and secrets.
“Seth Lott!” came the shouted answer, from maybe sixty feet away. The voice was raw and tremulous, had lost its smooth Christian sheen. “Come over here, quick!”
“You get a skin?”
“Just come over here! Now, for the love of God!” A note of panic flared.
“Got his codpiece on too tight,” Stamper muttered, and then he headed in the direction of Lott’s voice. Royce and Gunn followed, and behind them Matthew, Magnus and Quinn. Other men emerged from the woods to see if Lott had earned his ten pounds. But when the group reached Lott, where the smell of gunpowder was thick in the air and wisps of blue smoke still roiled, the black-garbed and sweating preacher was standing with Caleb Bovie, who shone a torch upon something lying in the green underbrush.
“What is that?” Stamper asked.
It was a body, Matthew saw. The boots were muddy and the soles nearly worn through.
“Who is it?” Royce stepped forward for a closer look with his own torch, and then when he got it he immediately stopped in his tracks, his mouth hanging half-open.
“It’s Fitzy,” Bovie rasped. Matthew recalled the thin young man who’d obediently sliced a piece of snakemeat for Stamper. Except now the lower part of his face had been ripped away, and most of his throat. The eyes were open in a frozen stare above the mass of bloodied flesh. Quinn saw what Matthew had seen, and pulled back. “Christ Jesus…somethin’ tore him up!” Bovie looked at Lott and then to Stamper. “He was between me and Seth! I didn’t hear nothin’, ’til that shot went off!”
“He was walking ahead of me and to the side. Maybe twenty feet away.” Lott’s voice was shaking. “Had his pistol in his hand, but…it happened so quick.”
“What happened?” Stamper demanded. “What’d you see?”
“I don’t know. Just…something was all of a sudden there, where the dark is. I couldn’t make it out, but it jumped on Fitzy. I heard…” The preacher had to pause a moment, with a trembling hand to his mouth. “I heard the bones break. It shook him…hard…like a ragdoll. I shot at it…all that smoke, and it was gone. Fitzy…he gave a shudder and a…a strangling noise…and that was all.”
“Well what in hell was it?” Royce asked. “A panther?”
Lott’s eyes were watery and dazed, and he struggled to speak. “Maybe. I don’t know. It was big. And…it did not move right, to be a panther.”
“What does that mean?” Stamper’s voice was harsh. “How did it move?”
“I…can’t say. Like…a jerking motion. Unnatural.” Lott stared at Quinn before he returned his attention to Stamper. “It was…brown and black. Streaked…blotched. Its head…also unnatural. And…Stamper, whatever it was…Soul Cryer or—”
“Stop that!” Stamper said. “Hear me? Stop it! There’s no such beast!”
“Whatever it was,” the preacher went on, “it came at Fitzy on two legs…like a man.”
“You don’t know that for sure!” Royce’s face had reddened, and he was nearly shouting it. “You didn’t see enough to know that! Now stop your ghost stories, preacherman! A panther got Fitzgerald, is what I say! That’s all!”
“Ain’t that enough as it is?” asked Morgan, with a quick, flinching glance at the body. “I told you me, Whetters and Carr heard somethin’ stalkin’ us! I say we were lucky to get past that damn Indian village with our heads…but a panther out here…and maybe somethin’ that’s more than a panther?” He shook his head, as distant thunder rumbled from a sky that seemed to Matthew to be as dark as a coal mine. “More than I want to handle, no matter the money.”
“Then don’t handle it!” Royce shot back. “Get on your way! Course, a man alone tryin’ to get back to his boat…that’s a long walk, Morgan! But go on, we don’t need you!”
Morgan looked to another man, standing beside Bovie. “Carr, you with me?” His gaze moved. “Whetters? Halleck, how about you? Not enough liquor in the world’s worth your life.”
The men Morgan had spoken to shifted in their tracks, their faces downcast.
“I shall go with you, Morgan,” Lott suddenly said, his face glistening with sweat beneath the black tricorn. He managed another look at the body. “Yes. I’ll go.”
“Me, too,” said a second citizen of Jubilee, who Matthew thought was the man named Whetters.
“I’m for it,” said a third man—Carr, most likely—and the muddied Coleman, who carried a torch, announced, “Ain’t worth dyin’ for thirty pounds of gold. I’ll go, too.”
“Then get!” Royce snarled. “All you fools…and you’re the biggest fool, preacherman! Yes, you go lead this flock of cowards home, and good riddance to you!” He swung his fevered gaze upon Matthew, Magnus and the girl. “Aren’t you goin’ with ’em? Now’s your chance!”
“I’ll stay,” said Magnus. He regarded Matthew with his iron-gray eyes. “You ought to head on back. Both of you. I’ll do what I can.”
“Come on, Matthew.” Quinn gripped his hand. “Come on, let’s leave this place.”
Matthew was torn. He was ready to head back, yes…but to leave was to let Royce and Gunn win this particular duel. He knew why Royce wanted him gone. Could Magnus with a rusted pistol stop the execution? Could he, himself, armed with only a short-bladed sword? One of the men—the bull-necked one with the blind left eye—was gathering up Fitzy’s pistol and ammunition pouch, though he already carried a musket.
Matthew couldn’t leave. Not even with the wound in his shoulder, his head still dazed and his spirit weary. It was against his nature to give up, to retreat to safety while danger threatened a friend…and he did consider Magnus Muldoon a friend. He couldn’t leave without seeing this task through, however it might end. “I can’t,” he told Quinn. “You go, but I can’t.”
“I won’t,” she told him resolutely, and her hand tightened on his. “Not leavin’ you. Not lettin’ you leave me. Not this time, no.”
“To Hell with fools and cowards!” Royce shouted at the other men as they started off, now eight in number. “You’d best watch your backs, that Soul Cryer’ll be on you before you know it! Preacherman, I thought you trusted so much in God!”
Seth Lott turned from his path. “I do, Mr. Royce,” he replied, trying to maintain his dignity in retreat, “but I trust Him also to tell me when it’s time to go home. Let the slaves go, they’ll likely die out here if they’re not already dead. Let God deliver the justice, in His own way.”
“Fuck that,” Royce answered, and spat on the ground between them.
“Blessings on you,” said the preacherman, and then he and the other seven men moved away into the thicket, with t
he torch-bearer in the lead.
“Let ’em go,” said Stamper quietly, his face grim under the raven’s feather hat. “Maybe whatever that thing is, it’ll follow them instead of us. A panther, it’s got to be. But…still…I don’t like it.”
“You thinkin’ about goin’ back, too?” Royce asked, his face flaming up again. “You, of all people? Runnin’ from a ghost?”
“Mr. Royce,” Matthew spoke up, “a ghost may have the power to frighten, but it doesn’t have the power to tear a man’s lower jaw and throat out, plus most likely have broken his neck before he fell. Would you want to look at that corpse again?”
Before Royce could respond, the one-eyed man who’d retrieved the pistol and ammunition bag asked, “We puttin’ Fitzy under?”
“With what, Barrows? Our hands?” Stamper asked. “No. Sooner we move on, the better. Likely that thing’ll come back to eat the body…and a full-bellied panther won’t bother us. But we’d best stay together, much as we can. We string out too far…well, let’s just don’t do that.”
Nine remained, including the girl from Rotbottom. There was Matthew, Magnus, Stamper, the aged and trigger-happy Foxworth, the one-eyed Barrows, Bovie, Royce and Gunn. They started off again with Stamper and Bovie in the lead under Stamper’s torch, followed a few feet to the left side by Barrows, behind him Foxworth, then on the right side Royce and Gunn, Matthew and Quinn and Magnus. Lightning shot across the sky and the dark clouds roiled, but the wind was hot and dry.
Matthew found himself pushing through the woods beside Gunn, separated a short distance from Royce. He said in a guarded voice, “Granny Pegg tells a fascinating story.”
Gunn gave no response. He stared straight ahead as he labored forward, his torch moving back and forth to penetrate the shadows, though he only succeeded in moving them around.
“About what goes on at the Green Sea,” Matthew continued quietly. “About you and Royce, in particular.”
The River of Souls Page 17
