The River of Souls

by Robert McCammon

  Gunn gave a brief, harsh laugh but offered nothing else.

  “I understand there was another captain at the Green Sea before you got there. His name was Jameson, I believe. Burned up in his house one night, it seems. How long have you and Royce known each other?”

  Gunn’s face was impassive. His lip might have curled, but that was all.

  “Granny Pegg thinks you and Royce have worked together before,” said Matthew. “At another plantation? More than one? Where did you two happen to meet?”

  “Shut your hole, boy,” came the muttered response. “Move away from me.”

  “I’m just asking,” Matthew went on, as they worked through the green foliage. Vines trailed down from the branches and here and there fallen trees lay rotting like the bones of giants. “Seems you and Royce understand each other. What I mean to say is, he tells you what to do and you do it. A man could get in some serious trouble that way.”

  “I’m gonna give you three seconds to move,” Gunn hissed through gritted teeth. “Then I’m gonna knock your goddamned head off.”

  “I’m not sure my friend Magnus would like that. But…very well, I’ll move away. Give you room to breathe, sir. Room to think, too.”

  “Think about what, Corbett? Granny Pegg’s made-up tales? Sure, she’d make up any kind of damn story to save her blood!”

  “Possibly,” Matthew agreed. “But think on this. I examined Sarah’s body, with Mrs. Kincannon’s permission. I found something interesting, Joel. It has to do with your good friend over there.”

  “Empty talk. That wound of yours is gettin’ to your brain.”

  “I know about Molly Ann, too.” Matthew ventured, still quietly. “He’s probably told you? Bragged, I’m guessing.”

  Gunn gave Matthew a look that would’ve turned Medusa to stone, and then he veered away and crossed the distance between himself and Royce. Matthew watched as Gunn said something to his compatriot. Royce tilted his head toward the speaker, but gave no expression of concern. Gunn kept speaking for a few more seconds, and then Royce nodded but spared not even a glance at Matthew.

  Was it possible to turn those two against each other? Matthew wondered. Gunn might be the weaker of them, and obviously the questions had rattled him. So…maybe Gunn’s trigger could be pulled?

  They continued on, as the sky above remained as dark as a witch’s dream. As another hour passed and Stamper led them along a trail only he and Bovie could make out, Matthew felt his strength leaving him. He began to stagger, and as much as he fought it that quicker was his strength depleted. At last he took a step and the earth denied him balance, and as he fell he heard Quinn cry out behind him. He twisted his body so that he did not hit on his wounded shoulder, but even so the breath was knocked from him and he lay gasping amid the weeds and brush. Quinn knelt beside him to put a comforting hand to his forehead, and Magnus knelt down on the other side.

  “I’m all right,” Matthew said when he could get his breath back. His vision was blurred, but he saw that the others had stopped too. “I can stand up, I’ll be all right.” But he couldn’t stand, he couldn’t get his legs under him, and he realized that without rest he could not go on.

  “Leave him,” Royce said to Stamper. “Let’s keep movin’, the skins can’t be much further ahead.”

  “Let’s go!” Gunn urged. “Wastin’ time standin’ here!”

  With Magnus’ help Matthew managed to sit upright, though his shoulders sagged and even the stubble on his face felt heavy. “Joel,” he said. “Granny Pegg told me…Magnus and myself…everything.”

  “What’re you goin’ on about?” It was Royce who’d asked the question.

  “She told Mrs. Kincannon, too,” Matthew continued, with an effort. “There in the chapel. Joel…Mrs. Kincannon is waiting for some answers. It has to do…with what I found on Sarah’s body.”

  “You found a half-dozen knife strikes, is what you found!” Royce said. “What else was there?”

  “I’ll let Mrs. Kincannon ask that question, when we get back.” Matthew directed his blurred gaze to Stamper. “You may be hunting an innocent man. I don’t think Abram did the killing. That’s why they have to be brought back alive. Anything else would not be justice, but murder.”

  “I’ll stand for what Matthew says,” Magnus added. “More questions to be answered.”

  “Sarah’s killer is yet unproven,” Matthew said. “But…that will be remedied, when we get back to the Green Sea.”

  “Abram killed Sarah!” Royce almost spat it. “It’s proven! Damn buck must’ve gone crazy! You think somethin’ like that’s never happened on any other plantation?”

  Matthew smiled faintly. “Ah! Did it happen on another plantation where you and Joel worked?”

  “Hold on, now!” Stamper frowned. “Boy, you’re sayin’ it was somebody else killed the girl? But Joel saw that buck with the bloody knife, standin’ over the body!” He looked to Gunn. “Ain’t that right?”

  “A good question,” Matthew said when Gunn’s reply didn’t come. “Did you see him with the knife, or not?”

  “He did!” Royce spoke up. “If he says he did, he did…and he’s already said it!”

  “I’d like to hear it from Gunn again,” said Magnus. “Go ahead, everybody’s listenin’.”

  Gunn’s mouth opened and then closed. He stared at the ground as if the stones and weeds might guide him in his speech. Matthew knew what he must be thinking: he could swing for helping conceal a murder, if he was found out…and he had no way of knowing what Matthew had discovered on Sarah’s body, or what Mrs. Kincannon’s questions were. Gunn was a man in a very precarious position, and he knew Griffin Royce had put him there.

  Still, Gunn did not—could not—speak.

  “Hey!” Bovie suddenly said, and he sniffed the air. “I’m smellin’ smoke!”

  Indeed, a breath of dry wind brought the odor to all. Stamper narrowed his eyes and looked ahead. Matthew followed his gaze; there was no sight of a fire through the trees, yet the smell was certainly wood burning.

  “Campfire?” Royce asked.

  “Strong smell,” said Stamper. “Could be lightnin’s hit a tree, set it afire. Whatever it is, it’s not far away.”

  “We should be movin’,” Royce prodded. “Leave Corbett here, if he can’t go on. Muldoon, you and the girl want to stay with him, that’s fine by me. I think we’re gettin’ close to the skins, and I won’t be slowed down.”

  “Mr. Stamper,” said Matthew, “I would remind you…that the reward is for the runaways…dead or alive. Mrs. Kincannon wants them returned alive, as I do…for Abram to answer some questions. Is that too much to ask?”

  Stamper thought about it. He ran a hand across his grizzled chin. “No,” he said at last. “Not too much. All right then, we’ll take ’em alive. No ears cut off, no harm done ’em.”

  “Ha!” was Royce’s response. “Those animals won’t go back so easy! You’ll see!”

  “Go with them, Magnus,” Matthew urged. “I’m used up for awhile. You have to go.”

  “Leave you and her with that thing out here? No, I’m stayin’.”

  “You have to go,” Matthew repeated, with some force behind it. “To make sure, Magnus. You have to.” He lifted his sword. “I’ve got this.”

  “Little of nothin’.”

  “Better than nothing.”

  “Losin’ time,” said Barrows. “Let’s move.”

  Bovie turned away and started off. Royce followed. Gunn hesitated only briefly before he went, and then Barrows and Foxworth. Stamper gave a long weary sigh, and he said, “Sorry to leave you, but we’ve got to go on. We’ll come back this way, soon as we get ’em. Muldoon, you comin’ or not?”

  Magnus nodded. “I’m comin’. Matthew,” he said, “you two stay right here. Don’t move, and keep a sharp eye out. All right?”

  “We will,” Quinn answered. “You be careful.”

  “Always,” said the bearded mountain, and he followed Stamper into the dar
k woods.

  “I’ll just rest a little while,” Matthew said. His voice was becoming slurred. “I’ll be all right…soon as I rest.”

  “Put your head in my lap,” Quinn offered, and Matthew accepted. He stretched out upon the ground and his eyes closed. He felt Quinn’s hand running back and forth through his hair. I am not Daniel, he thought as he sank into the silence. Then he felt her lean forward and very tenderly kiss his forehead, and he let go of this world and fell away.

  Sixteen

  He was standing in a room in which there were five doors. They were all ordinary doors, with ordinary handles, yet Matthew sensed that behind each was something extraordinary…and perhaps terrifying.

  For better or for worse, he was compelled to open the first on his left, which opened onto a scene he remembered well: Rachel Howarth in the dirty cell in Fount Royal, throwing off her gray cloak and hood to reveal her naked body, and saying defiantly to the world Here is the witch.

  Suddenly Matthew’s hand was on the next door, and opening it displayed the Prussian swordsman Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren, he of the blond hair, gray teeth and deadly command of the rapier. He whom Matthew had bested, broken his left wrist and sent him reeling into a fishpond. He who had seemingly vanished from the world, and was yet out there somewhere in the shadows. In this instance, however, Dahlgren had the use of both arms and was coming at him, teeth bared, with a rapier. Matthew slammed the door in his face.

  The third door showed a wagon travelling under a sky threatening rain, and a man with a patchwork beard sitting in the back with his eyes closed, his arms and legs confined by irons. A fly landed at the corner of the man’s mouth. The man did not move, nor did his eyes open. The fly began to crawl across the lower lip, unhurriedly, and when it reached the center the man’s mouth moved in a blur. There was a quick sucking sound, and then Matthew heard the faintest crunch. The eyes of the killer Tyranthus Slaughter opened and fixed upon Matthew, and when the man grinned there was a bit of crushed fly on one of his front teeth.

  Matthew also slammed that door.

  The fourth door opened upon a dining hall, and sitting in a chair before the assembled guests was a man who was not a man, but appeared to be an automaton, a wiry-looking construction of a man dressed in a white suit with gold trim and whorls of gold upon the suit jacket and trouser legs. It wore a white tricorn, also trimmed in gold, white stockings and black shoes with gold buckles. The hands were concealed in flesh-colored fabric gloves, and a flesh-colored fabric cowl covered the face and head yet showed the faintest impression of nose-tip, cheekbones and eye-sockets. With a sound of meshing gears and the rattling of a chain the figure began to move, the head turning…slowly…left to right and back again, the right hand rising up to press against the chin as if measuring a thought, and then from the bizarre figure issued a tinny voice with a hint of a rasp and whine, One of you has been brought here to die.

  Matthew closed that door firmly, but with an unfirm hand.

  He stood staring at the fifth door.

  Behind that one…what? He feared that one, perhaps more than any other. Behind it was…something he had never known before, something that perhaps he could not survive. Something that perhaps would remove Matthew Corbett from life itself, and distance him from everything and everyone he had ever known and loved.

  That door…the fifth one…he could not bear to open, yet it must be opened because he realized it was his destiny.

  He reached for it and took the handle. He had no choice but to open it, and see what was ahead for him…if he could indeed take the sight of his future and not lose who and what he was in the present.

  He began to open the door.

  Wisps of smoke drifted out. He smelled the smoke, very strongly.

  “Matthew? Matthew?”

  He opened his eyes. He was lying on the ground, with his head on Quinn’s lap, and the odor of smoke was not confined to the realm of dreams. Indeed, smoke had drifted into the storm-dark woods and moved sinuously around them like spirits of the dead.

  “Matthew?” Quinn said again, shaking his uninjured shoulder.

  And he realized then that they were not alone.

  He sat up.

  Standing not twenty feet away in the thicket were three black men. Two were younger, and supported an older man between them. The older man, who had a pate of close-cropped white hair and a frizz of white beard, looked to be in pain; he was putting no weight on his left leg. The elder was thin, with a seamed face that looked as if it had suffered many hardships, but the two younger men were thicker-bodied and fit-looking. One was bald, with heavy eyebrows and a long chin adorned by a dark patch of beard, while the other had a high forehead, high cheekbones and expressive eyes that also held the darkness of suffering. The elder man wore brown trousers and a gray shirt, his clothing tattered by thorns. The other two were dressed in similar brown trousers, both with patched knees. The bald one was wearing a dark green shirt and the other man a white shirt stained with sweat. All their clothes were much the worse for wear, having been torn at by the claws of the wilderness.

  They stood staring at Matthew and Quinn, as if trying to decide what to do. Tendrils of smoke crawled through the woods around them, and not too far behind them the smoke was thick enough to blur out the trees.

  Matthew spoke. “Which one of you is Abram?”

  They didn’t answer, nor did they move.

  “Mars,” Matthew said to the elder, “I’ve spoken to your grandmother. Help me stand up, please,” he requested of Quinn, and she did. He wavered on his feet but found his balance. “You have to go back to the Green Sea. Abram?”

  The man with the expressive, suffering eyes said, “Yes.”

  “I’ve come out here to find you. There’s a group of men looking for you…all of you. Among them Royce and Gunn. They don’t want you to tell the Kincannons what you know. If they can, I think they’ll try to kill you.”

  “Likely try,” said Abram.

  “Who’re you, suh?” Mars asked, pain etched on his face. “Out here with a girl?”

  “My name is Matthew Corbett. I’m from Charles Town, I was nearby and I heard the bell ringing last night. This is Quinn Tate, from Rotbottom.” My wife? he almost said.

  “Where are the other men?” Tobey asked. “How many?”

  “They’ve gone on ahead. Seven in number, but one of them knows the truth too and he’s here as I am…to prevent any more killing.”

  “The truth?” Abram asked, his eyes narrowing. “What truth do you know?”

  “I believe,” Matthew said, “that Griffin Royce was jealous of the attention Sarah was showing you. I believe he thought something else was going on between you in the barn. She was teaching you to read, is that correct?”

  Abram nodded. “Against the law. Against the law for me to be out of the quarter and in that barn, too. A whippin’ offense. Miss Sarah said she’d protect me. Cap’n Royce told me to stay away from her, or he’d fix things. Hurt one of the women, he said, and I’d be to blame for it. I told Miss Sarah…but she say, not gonna let Cap’n Royce tell her what to do. Couldn’t tell Massa Kincannon, though. Against the law, all of it.”

  “Mrs. Kincannon knows all that now,” Matthew said. “I believe also that at the Green Sea I can prove Royce killed Sarah and left that knife in her for you to pull out. He knew you’d be walking to the quarter that way. Then he waited and watched. He wanted you to run, to look guilty. But what are you doing here? Why are you doubling back?”

  “Pap broke his ankle, happened last night,” Tobey answered. “Figured there’d be men behind us, but didn’t know how far they’d follow. We talked ’bout it. Ran into a fire up ahead, saw trees burnin’. Wind’s movin’ it toward the river. Heard the Soul Cryer last night, too.” He had an expression of anguish on his face. “We don’t know where we’re goin’, suh. We thought we could run away…but there ain’t no runnin’ away. River of Souls leads on and on, but it don’t take you nowhere…you just get mor
e lost. Granny tried to help us, said for us to get away and keep goin’…but where do you go, when there ain’t nowhere? She was wrong, suh. So we talked ’bout it, and we thought on it. With Pap’s hurt…and with what’s out there…we’re goin’ back. Face what has to be faced. That’s the all of it.”

  Matthew reasoned that Stamper would read their trail and see the slaves had turned back, if he hadn’t already. He didn’t care to wait for Royce and Gunn. Smoke was drifting through the woods and was caught like mist in the tops of the trees, but yet there was no sight nor sound of a moving fire. “We have fresh water,” he said, motioning to Quinn’s water gourd. “Have some if you like. Then we’ll start back.”

  Quinn took the gourd’s strap off her shoulder, uncorked it and offered it to the three men as they came forward. Mars winced with pain as he was supported between his sons, for his injured foot snagged on the brush in spite of their efforts to lift him up. He was indeed leaving a clear trail for Stamper to follow.

  “Can’t figure you, suh,” said Mars to Matthew after he’d had his drink. “You say you can prove Abram didn’t kill Sarah? How?”

  “Leave that to me when we get there.”

  “Look hardly able to walk y’self, forgive me for sayin’. All that blood, you took a bad injury.”

  “I’ll survive it. Royce and Gunn found your boat. We’ve got to get back to it. Can you find the way?” Matthew was asking both Abram and Tobey.

  “Best way is to get to the river and follow it down,” said Abram. “We go southwest, we’ll likely get there in maybe an hour or two.”

  Matthew nodded. It was going to be slow travelling, with Mars’s broken ankle. He took a drink of water from the gourd and so did Quinn, who then corked it again and put its strap back around her shoulder. She gave Matthew an encouraging smile, and he had the thought that she was a ragged angel, come to see him through this ordeal. “Ready?” he asked the runaways, and Abram pointed out the direction they should go. Matthew started off, with Quinn right behind him and the two sons helping their father struggle on.