The River of Souls

by Robert McCammon

  It occurred to him one afternoon that he faced problems he could not solve. This greatly disturbed him but he took the cup of tea that his wife offered and thought how lucky and blessed he was to have such a woman loving him and to love, and he thought no more of such disturbing things.

  At length he was able to walk around the town, with Quinn always at his side. The citizens of Rotbottom knew that people came and went, there were always empty cabins that individuals and whole families moved into and out of, and everyone generally minded their own business. Thus it was noted that Quinn Tate was living with a new young man, and after one neighboring woman asked Quinn his name and was told it was “Daniel, my husband,” people gave her a wide berth. They also looked at Daniel strangely, but since this whole world seemed strange to him he dismissed their interest.

  One afternoon nearing two weeks since Daniel had sat up in Quinn’s bed, they were walking back from the wharf with a bucket of freshly-caught catfish when Daniel noted a cabin far down in the hollow, about forty yards beyond their own. It was untended, covered with vines and nearly obscured by the wilderness. The front porch sagged, the roof appeared near collapse, and the whole place had an air of supreme neglect. But obviously someone did occupy the place, because there were two horses in a corral and a wagon nearby.

  “Quinn,” said Daniel, “who lives there?”

  Her face tightened. “We don’t want to bother him. He’s a very mean man…like that Royce was.” She had spoken without thinking, and immediately wished she could take the name back.

  “Royce? Who is that?”

  “A man we knew, a time ago. But the man who lives down there,” she said quickly, changing the subject, “is to be left alone. Been here…oh…maybe six months. Heard he comes out after dark to go fishin’. He took up with the widow Annabelle Simms, and it was frightful how he beat her when he got drunk. After he broke her nose and her arm, she came to her senses and left.”

  “Hm,” said Daniel, pausing to stare down at the unkempt hovel. “He sounds dangerous. What’s his name?”

  “Annabelle said he used to be royalty, from some other country. Could hardly speak English, she had to teach him. Called himself Count…” Quinn hesitated, trying to come up with the name. “Dagen. Somethin’ like that. He’s got a crooked left wrist, looks like a break that didn’t set right.”

  Daniel nodded, but said nothing.

  “I say he’s to be left alone,” Quinn continued, “’cause a month or so past I saw him down in the woods swingin’ a sword around. Looks like he knows how to use one…so he’s not somebody I care to invite to supper.” She gave her man a smile and a playful nudge in the ribs. “Just enough catfish for us, anyway.”

  Daniel agreed, and he carried the bucket of fish on into their home.

  What night was it that he had the dream? Maybe not the same night he’d heard about the widow-beating count, but one soon after. The name Dagen kept bothering him. Something about it…it wasn’t right. In his dream he had been seated at a banquet table, with all manner of food on silver platters spread before him, and scrawled on the wall was the shadow of a swordsman at work, carving the air into tatters with a vicious and well-trained arm, and the air of danger had swirled thick and treacherous through the room.

  Dagen.

  Count Dagen.

  He used to be royalty, from some other country.

  In the middle of the night Daniel had sat up, not so quickly as to disturb his wife, and listened to a dog barking in the distance. Otherwise the world was silent, but questions pressed upon Daniel’s mind.

  What was a count from some other country doing in Rotbottom? A swordsman? A man with a crooked left wrist? And the name—Dagen—wasn’t right. No…that wasn’t the man’s name. Close, but…no.

  “Go to sleep,” said Quinn, reaching up to rub his bare shoulder. “Darlin’…go back to sleep.”

  He tried, but he could not. He lay there for a long time, beside his sleeping wife, thinking that there was a problem he desperately needed to solve but not quite sure what it was.

  Twenty-Two

  It worked on him.

  He kept it from Quinn because he didn’t wish for her to be as disturbed as himself, but she knew something was wrong. He could see it in her eyes. It was a kind of shiny fear, and where it came from he didn’t know but it was there all the same.

  One night, as summer moved on, the black-bearded and wiry Daniel Tate got up from their bed slowly and carefully so as not to wake his wife. He knew the small room by now and he was able to dress in the dark. In the front room he lit a candle and put it inside a lantern, and then—still moving quietly—he left the house and walked toward the harbor.

  The little town slept beneath a blaze of stars. Frogs croaked in the swamp grass and far off a nightbird sang, happy in its solitude.

  Also in solitude sat a man on the end of the wharf, a lantern and a wooden bucket beside him. He was intent on watching the bobber of his fishing line, but as soon as Daniel’s boots made noise on the planks the man’s head jerked around and he stared coldly at the newcomer through the darkness between them.

  “I vant no company!” said the man, in a heavy foreign accent.

  Prussian, Daniel thought…but he had no idea why he thought that. He continued onward, his boots thumping the boards. “I have need to speak to you,” he said. “If…indeed…you are the Count?”

  The man suddenly trembled. He grasped his lantern and stood up, fishing line and pole forgotten. By the yellow light Daniel saw the man was wearing a brown-checked shirt and dirty tan-colored breeches with patches on the knees. The left arm was grotesquely crooked at the wrist, indicating a severe break that had been poorly mended, if tended to at all.

  “Who are you?” asked the man, whose pale blond hair was matted and shaggy and hung limply about his shoulders. There was a note of frantic urgency in the voice, and Daniel saw the fingers of the man’s left hand grip with some difficulty around the wooden handle of a knife in a leather sheath at his waist.

  “I am Daniel Tate,” was the reply. “You are Count…is the name Dagen?”

  “Get avay from me!”

  “I want no trouble,” said Daniel. He lifted his own lantern higher to reveal his face. “Only a moment of your time.”

  The man drew his knife, which appeared a painful process to the warped wrist. He took a few steps forward, holding his lantern toward Daniel, and then stopped again. “You,” he said; a single word, delivered with both stunned disbelief and like a curse. “Of all to find me…you.”

  Daniel shook his head, uncomprehending. “Do you know me?”

  “I came here…to hide,” said the Count, his English strained and hard-earned. “From him. From whoever he vould send after me. I failed. He does not tolerate such.” The Count gave a bitter, anguished grin. “Of this place I heard in Charles Town…this vas the end of the earth. And now…you.” He came a few steps closer, the knife ready for a stabbing blow.

  Daniel did not retreat. He was thinking that if this madman came much nearer he would smash him in the face with one swing of the lantern. “I’ve never seen you before. Who do you think I am?”

  “You don’t know your own name?”

  “I told you my name. It’s Daniel Tate.”

  “Oh, no. Oh, no,” said the Count, still grinning. “You’re Matthew Corbett. You haff the scar on your forehead. I don’t forget that.” He held up the crooked wrist. “This too I don’t forget.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. My wife is Quinn Tate. I have lived here for…” Here Daniel had a stumble, for this part was blank. He tried again. “Lived here for…”

  “How long?” the Count taunted, coming a step closer.

  Daniel had a headache. He touched his left temple, which seemed to be the center of his pain. “I’ve suffered an accident,” he explained, his voice suddenly weak and raspy. “I hurt my head, and some things…I don’t remember.” What name had this man called him? “Who is Matthew C
orbett?” Daniel asked.

  The Count stood very still. Then, slowly, he lowered his knife.

  And he began to laugh.

  It was the laughter of the king of fools, a giddy outpouring of stupid mirth. He laughed and laughed and laughed some more, until his pallid, wolfish face had bloomed red and the tears shone in his green eyes. He laughed until he was too weak to stand and had to lower himself to the planks, and there at last he was silent but breathing heavily and staring at nothing, his lower lip curled with aristocratic disgust.

  “May I know the joke?” Daniel asked when the laughter was done.

  It was a moment before the other man replied. He seemed to be thinking very hard about something. Then he said, “Ve haff met before. Do you not remember me?”

  “I do not, sir.”

  “The name Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren means to you, nothing?”

  “Dahlgren,” Daniel repeated. Not Dagen. He had the memory of that dream again, and the shadow of a swordsman upon the wall of a banquet room. Perhaps at the center of the dream was the feeling of fear. The man sitting before him was very dangerous. But how and when they had met…if they had met…he had no idea. “You’re a swordsman,” Daniel ventured.

  “Ah, that! Yah…or…I vas. The sword demands balance. Timing. As vell as strenght. You see my crooked arm? Isn’t it lovely?”

  Daniel knew not what to say, so he said nothing.

  “My balance is no more. I am too veak on this side. Oh yah, I can still use the sword…but I am no longer her master. And for me…ah, such a shame.” Dahlgren gave Daniel a pained smile. “I vas taught…if you are not the best, you are nothing. All my years of training…of hardship…lost and gone. How do you think my arm vas broken? Do you haff any…guesses?”

  “None,” said Daniel. “I am sorry for your condition, however.”

  Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren came up off the planks with silent fury. Before Daniel could retreat, Dahlgren’s face was pressed nearly into his own and the knife’s sharp point was placed at Daniel’s throat. The man’s smile was a ghastly rictus.

  They stood like that for a few seconds, motionless on the edge of violence.

  Sweat had risen on Dahlgren’s face. His smile began to fade. The knife left Daniel’s throat.

  “Forgiff me, sir,” he said, stepping back and giving a slight bow. “It is not anger at you…but much anger at myself.” He put the knife away. “I vish that ve should be friends. Yah?”

  Daniel rubbed the place where the blade’s tip had not broken skin but certainly had left an impression. “I don’t know why you believe me to be someone else, sir,” he said, “but I will repeat that my wife is Quinn Tate, my name is Daniel, and—”

  “And you are wrong!” came the reply. “You believe these things because the voman has told you? Her husband Daniel died last summer. Everyone knows her head is verruckt! She is insane. This is not your home, and you are not Daniel Tate.”

  “You make no sense.”

  Dahlgren’s grin darkened, his eyes glittering above the lantern. “Then…please allow me to prove what I say is correct.”

  “Prove it? How?”

  “There is a man,” said Dahlgren, leaning closer as if not wanting anyone else to hear yet they were entirely alone upon the wharf, “who vishes to find you. I know this is true. This man is…a professor. A man of great learning, and great power. He knows all about you, and he vill embrace you with gladness once I bring you to him.”

  “The man’s name?”

  “He is called Professor Fell.”

  Did that name cause a shifting of shadows within Daniel’s brain? He knew the name, yet he did not know how he knew. “Why does he seek me?”

  “To reward you, for services you haff performed. But he does not seek Daniel Tate. He seeks Matthew Corbett…your true name, and true self.”

  Daniel felt pressure building once more in his head. “You said…you came here to hide. From him?”

  “I vas involved in a…shall ve say…failed business venture, and he is a var’ hard taskmaster. But I vill tell you…all vill be forgiven, vhen I bring you to him. He vill greatly reward both of us.”

  “I think you’re mad,” said Daniel, with some heat in his voice. “I know who I am.”

  “Do you? Then…valk the town…alone, and ask anyone to tell you about that voman. My voman Annabelle told me, before she left. Ask about Daniel Tate, and how he died. Now…how can there be two Daniel Tates?”

  “Mad,” the tormented young man repeated, and began to back away. “I am Daniel!”

  “You are not. The professor knows you. Allow me to prove so, by taking you to him.”

  “And where would you take me, to meet this professor?”

  “England, young sir,” said Count Dahlgren. “Ve vould board ship in Charles Town, and set sail for England. I haff two horses and a vagon to sell. That vould be enough for our passage.”

  “I’m going nowhere with you,” Daniel replied, continuing to back away. “Certainly not across the Atlantic! My wife is here, and so is my life.”

  “Your vife is not here,” Dahlgren countered. He motioned toward the east with his crooked arm. “And your life is out there.”

  Daniel had had enough. He turned and began to walk back the way he’d come.

  “Think on these things!” said Dahlgren. “And…Matthew…no vord of this to the madvoman who shares your bed, yah?”

  A confused young man returned to the Tate house, and slipping quietly inside he extinguished the lantern’s flame but found he could not put out the small fire that had begun to burn in his brain. He undressed and settled himself against Quinn’s body, and she moved to rest her head against his shoulder. He lay listening to her breathing. He tried to remember his childhood, or how he’d met Quinn, or their wedding day, or anything about the empty cradle—made from a hollowed-out log—that stood on the other side of the room.

  He could remember nothing. Do we have children? he’d asked her, thinking how sad it was that he did not know even this, and she’d replied, No, but we will in time.

  That name Dahlgren had called him. Matthew Corbett? And the other name…Professor Fell. Why did that name both repell and attract him? Why did it give him quick images of fiery explosions, rolling ocean waves and cannons being fired from a ship in the violet twilight? And stranger still…why did he think of what appeared to be a bloody fingerprint pressed upon a white card?

  These images could not be kept. They could not be held long enough to be more closely examined. But he knew they were important, and he knew they said something about himself that he had to rediscover.

  “I love you, Daniel,” Quinn whispered to him, from the depths of sleep.

  “I love you, Berry,” he whispered back, but he did not hear himself answer and Quinn had already faded away.

  He did not return to the wharf on the following night. Neither did he on the next night, for Quinn was aware of him getting out of bed and she grasped his hands and bade him return, for she’d suffered a bad dream that he was lost in the smoke of a burning wilderness and she could no longer even see his shadow.

  But on the following night, after they had made love in their gentle, sweet way and Quinn had fallen asleep, Daniel kissed Quinn’s cheek and smoothed her hair, and he wished he might stay exactly where he was until morning’s light but the fire of curiosity was burning in him, it was a blaze beyond endurance, and it would not let him rest. He dressed, lit a candle for his lantern, left the house and returned to the harbor, where Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren was both fishing and waiting.

  “Ah, there you are!” said Dahlgren, from his sitting position at the wharf’s end. “I vas sooner expecting you.”

  The young man walked out to him. “A warm night,” he said.

  “Yah, var’ varm. I myself like cold days and colder nights. I like the snowfall. The sound of it hissing through the pines. Someday I vill get back to my Prussia. Perhaps you vill help me?”

  “By going wi
th you to England?”

  “Yah, that.”

  “I tell you, I am Daniel Tate. I am—” He stopped, because he had no memories of being Daniel Tate and these mental flashes he was having spoke of a different life altogether.

  “You are not anymore so sure,” the Prussian said. “Othervise…you vould not be here.” He saw the bobber go under and felt the line jerk. “Ah! Caught something!” He pulled up a small silver fish, enough for a pan, took it flapping off the hook and dropped it into the wooden bucket with several of its kin. Then he rebaited the hook using a live cricket and put the line again into the water. His boots, Daniel noted, were nearly in the river.

  “You’re not afraid of alligators?” Daniel asked.

  “Alligators,” answered the Prussian with a slight snarl, “are afraid of me.”

  “Yet you fear this Professor Fell? Why is that?”

  “As I say, I was involved—much against my vill—in a failed business. But that is in the past, my friend. In the present, he is seeking you. All vill be right, when you present yourself to him. You see?” Dahlgren smiled up at Matthew Corbett, exposing a mouthful of gray teeth.

  “No, I do not see.”

  “You do know you are not Daniel Tate. You do not belong here, and neither do I. You know that. But…your problem is…you do not remember who you are, and you are trying to decide if you can trust me. Yah?”

  “I’m not sure I can trust someone who recently put a knife to my throat.”

  “Forgiff me, I am sometimes hot-headed. Also…” Dahlgren smiled again. “Bad mannered.” He returned his concentration to his fishing, as if he were again alone upon the wharf.

  Daniel waited for the man to speak once more, but nothing was offered. He realized the next move was his. “If I believed you…then tell me, how do you know me? And from where?”

  “Ve crossed—” The Count was silent for a moment, as if deliberating his choice of words “—paths once. More than that, I cannot say.”