The River of Kings: A Novel

by Taylor Brown

  “‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand. But it shall not come nigh thee.’”

  Yes, say the deckboaters. Yes.

  “Goddammit,” says Hiram. He has seen plenty come nigh, no shield nor feathers in sight. He revs the little outboard, going around the deckboat in a snarl of whitewater.

  “‘Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder. The young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.’”

  Hiram can feel the words coming down on him, heavy and sure, trying to push their way through his skin. Words of power and might, which have done shit-all for him so far. Maybe in a world of dragons and lions, of make-believe. He spits.

  “‘He shall call upon me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him and—’”

  Hiram kinks his away around the last of the boats and cranks open the throttle, an angry wail beneath the hollows of the span. He flees it all. The man, the bridge, the secret stored in the white belly of scar on his palm.

  He is a mile upriver when he cuts the engine. He’s heard something, inside him or out, like a gnashing of iron teeth.

  A train is coming down the line.

  “Oh God,” he says. “The bridge.”

  He rips the motor to life and tears a circle in the river, racing back the way he came.

  42

  Fort Caroline, May 1565

  Le Moyne inhales, trying to still his hand. The stylus is trembling, as if he were about to do evil with it. He is only trying to draw the scenes he witnessed in the west. The shaman writhing upon the shield, the battle on the hill, the corpses dismembered by cleaver and knife. The events, chained with all those others before them, that brought them to this extremity. Alone and friendless, unable to feed themselves, the green enormity of the land all about them like a sea. They have driven away the Indians who might help them and failed to provision themselves against such want. They have waited for ships to come that never did.

  “Hunger is a wound,” La Caille tells him one night. “But it does not bleed. Rather it swallows up everything in itself. Compassion, decency. Even God. You must retain your purpose, Le Moyne, or you will become like those dogs out there. And die like one.” He throws his hand toward the dark of the fort, the boar tusks rattling at his throat.

  “Draw,” he commands.

  Le Moyne works his stylus across the paper, bleeding his memories onto the page. He works to recall every detail, every tendon that rippled beneath the shaman’s skin, every stripe of muscle that clad the three-tailed giant that Lord d’Ottigni killed, every speck that bloodied the cleaver used to part limb from trunk in the wake of battle. He leaves these images like a gift upon the paper, a story perhaps to caution those who come after, who might find these pages leather-bound in the hall of whichever Indian king scavenges them first. He feels himself in a race to finish. The others watch him with slackened jaws, confused. This man who draws as if his life depended on it. They come to watch.

  That night, Le Moyne lies on his bed looking at his own hand. Every vein is visible, blue as rivers in a desert of thinnest white flesh, of bony ridge and knuckled hill, a whole country on the back side of his hand—this strange device that pours out new lands still.

  “Tell me, La Caille, what is your own purpose in all this?”

  La Caille has his dagger out. He is cleaning his fingernails, spreading his hand wide to critique his work. Now he curls his fingers beneath his eyes, rubbing his thumb across the nails to test their sharpness.

  “I may yet get us out of this mess.”

  Laudonnière stands on the parade ground before his men. His cheeks look stove-in, his eyes tiny in their hollows, twitching like prey animals afraid of the light. The slack of his tunic belt is long as a tail. Lately he has been sick, confined to bed.

  He rises only for his chambermaid, say the men.

  Yea, that she may have something hard on which to sit.

  He is standing slightly canted, a post set errantly in the ground. Only his chest looks full, swelled by breath or bombast. La Caille steps forward from the audience.

  “Sir, you know that we honor your judgment as our commander, a position well merited, as evidenced by your conduct through our many travails—”

  “There is no need for preamble, Captain La Caille. You may state yourself plainly.”

  La Caille nods.

  “Sir, I fear we are falling victim to the fate of previous expeditions, believing ships will come that never do. Perhaps there is another war at home, or a storm has beset the fleet. Whatever the reason, we must work toward our own salvation now instead of waiting for it to arrive by sea. If we do not, we will perish within these walls before the year is out. This is not only my belief, but the belief of your men.”

  Laudonnière exhales, his chest falling. He frowns at his boots, nodding as if to a pipe melody. Such a strange sight, thinks Le Moyne, to see him so unhackled. Amenable. A humility found, perhaps, at the pointy ends of his bones. Finally he raises his head.

  “I must cling yet to the faith that our ships will come. To do any less would be to doubt our very destiny in this land, in the will of God to spread his name upon our lips.” He sighs, a scraping of stones in the throat. “But I believe we are prudent in preparing for ourselves some other means of returning home.”

  There are nods from the crowd, grunts of agreement.

  “But what would you propose, La Caille? The Breton cannot carry us all.”

  “No, sir. But if the shipwrights were to add two additional decks, I have done the figures and it would be close. Plus we have the caravel now. Between the two vessels, there should be space for all.”

  La Caille does not add what he’s confided in Le Moyne. He estimates the space sufficient only after their number has dwindled in the coming weeks. For men are beginning to die now, the first found unwaking in his bed three days ago, mouth frozen in final gasp, skin stretched like a death shroud over a weeks-old cadaver. Then another two this morning, lost to the eternal slumber. Already there are whispers over the bodies, what should become of them. What sustenance they might provide. Does life not spring from death? Is this not the order of the world?

  The seller of whelps: “Tell me, Le Moyne, do the Spanish not eat the flesh of Christ?”

  “Ask again, man, and I will drain the wine from your throat.”

  “And would you not thirst to drink it?”

  Laudonnière looks out across the assembled men, his head tilted as if making calculations. Perhaps he knows the secret of La Caille’s mathematics. Finally he nods.

  “It is a good proposal, La Caille. I will call together our artificers and shipwrights to draw up plans. We will begin work on the Breton immediately.”

  Le Moyne can feel the men come alive at this. A future. A hope. But La Caille raises his hands, settling them, his face cast grim.

  “Thank you, sir. But let us not forget that it will take weeks to ready the ships. We must secure sufficient provisions to stead us not only through the work, but the voyage that follows.”

  Before Laudonnière can reply, Lord d’Ottigni steps from a group of officers. His half-face gleams like newly hardened wax.

  “Sir, the savages extort us, prey upon us in our time of weakness. They treat us as if we are not but savages ourselves. Give me fifty able men and I shall bring them to heel. The steel at their throat, they will grant us whatever provisions we require.”

  There are murmurs of assent from the crowd, the rattling of swords.

  Laudonnière straightens, his eyes no longer shy in their wells. They glare.

  “We will resort to no such means. If we sour our relations with the natives, we abandon our duty to France. We swore each of us, gladly, to imperil ourselves in service to our king. We will not break that oath at any cost. Frankly, I am surprised you would even suggest it.”

  Lord d’Ottigni retreats back into the officers’ ranks. His scarred face is frozen, unblushed. A stormlike darkness settles into
its features. Laudonnière clasps his hands behind his back. He is taller now, in command. His doublet rounds across the chest.

  “I will lead a foraging party up the coast myself, commanding one of the barques.” He looks from man to man. “Place your faith in me, you men. I will secure the provisions we need. And recall your oaths. We are sons of France, the legacy of our nation in this land. We are to comport ourselves as such, leaving the name of our king untarnished should our very lives be forfeit. But know this: my own gut will wither before I let starve the men under my command.”

  It is a good speech. The men give ayes and happy grunts. They stamp the earth with their dirty, boot-shorn feet. Their commander will place his own life before them. He will undertake the most perilous and vital of all enterprises. He will fill their hurting bellies himself.

  Le Moyne looks closely at the man, trying to discern whether the glow of success is upon him in this venture, the favor of God. If it is not, they will soon be but a nation of ghost and bone, the dream of a king buried in alien ground.

  43

  Altamaha River, Day 4

  The producer man has on his floppy hat, the strap cinched tight under his chin. His cheeks bloom fat and red, as if by garrote, his jaw bulged fat with a jawbreaker or gumball. He is jabbing his finger at a log drifting downstream. The tumorous end vees snoutlike as it comes.

  “That one, that’s the one! Fucking Christ, it’s perfect.”

  The cameramen are fumbling with their devices, twisting off lenses and flipping switches, their hands trembling as they try to capture the shot in time. The producer makes a camera frame of his fingers, the L-shape of one hand inverted over the other. He squints one eye through the rectangular portal, tracking the log.

  “Yes, that’s it. Perfect for a commercial break. The Zeigarnik effect. Keep them enticed. Is this the glimpse we await?”

  They are floating in the shadow of an overarching cypress, lying in ambush for whatever suspicious piece of driftwood or debris comes floating downriver. Above them rises the pale shoulder of Clark’s Bluff, the high woods groomed here or there for the sometime placement of tents and campfires.

  Lawton raises a hand to hail them.

  “Ahoy there!” He has a double-stacked grin on his face, big as a truck.

  Four faces turn to look, long-jawed. The cameras drop slightly, and the log slips past unfilmed. The producer man looks at Lawton, at the passing log, then back at Lawton. He is trembling, reddening like he might burst. He jabs his finger at the log, jabs and jabs.

  “Keep filming, goddammit! If you miss this shot so help me God, I will rip off your heads and shit Butterfingers down your necks.”

  The crew, hunched beneath his words, swing their cameras toward the fleeing length of oak, but it’s too late.

  The producer man stomps the deck.

  “God damn me. God damn me to hell!”

  Lawton slides in alongside the johnboat. He watches squinty-eyed as the log drifts away, whistles.

  “Shame. Damn shame. You really could of fooled some them reality TV fools with that one.”

  The producer man has his hands on his hips. An apron of sweat darkens his shirt.

  “You son of a bitch, I’ll have you know I called the sheriff’s department on you.”

  “So they told me,” says Lawton. He yawns into the sun.

  The man’s face swells an ever darker red. Hunter feels the instinct to look away, like he would from an overinflated balloon.

  “I’ll be pressing charges through the appropriate channels as soon as we’re done filming.”

  “Oh come now, wasn’t nothing but a love-tap.”

  “It was assault.”

  “No.” Lawton rests a hand on the gunwale of the johnboat. “That wasn’t assault.”

  The man takes a deep breath and looks up at the trees, revealing three brown lines of grime lodged in the fatty folds of his neck. After a moment his chest clucks, in laugh or growl. He looks down again, and his face is changed. Lighter, somehow.

  “I’m beginning to think you are something sent by my enemies. A red-haired android programmed to fuck my ass.”

  Lawton grins. Now they are talking.

  “That sounds about right.”

  The man pushes his floppy hat off the back of his head.

  “Not if you’re me, son—” He catches himself at the word, but Lawton only smiles.

  “Listen.” He taps the gunwale of the boat. “Unless your enemy is Admiral of the Pacific Fleet, I don’t think we got a problem. All I’m looking for is a little information.”

  The man palms the balding dome of his head, strangely pale and tender over the red-weathered rest of him.

  “Information about what?”

  “About your boy Uncle King that’s hunting the Altamaha-ha.”

  “Ah,” says the man. “Him.”

  “We need to talk to him.”

  “So do I, Christ knows. So do I.”

  “You know where to find him?”

  “If I did, do you think we’d be filming shots of driftwood at the spot of a forty-year-old sighting of this goddamn monster he’s after?”

  Hunter speaks up. “People saw the Altamaha-ha here?”

  The producer nods. “That’s correct, in 1970. Two brothers were fishing from a houseboat, using a mixture of oatmeal and Red Man baking soda on a three-pronged hook. They reported hooking a creature the size of a small tree, gunmetal colored with a gatorlike snout. They said it made a wake like a powerboat, broke their forty-pound test line like that.” He snaps his fingers.

  Hunter looks across the water. It seems so calm, benevolent, not hiding a whole universe in darkness.

  Lawton grunts. “How come the old man’s hunting it?”

  The producer shrugs. “That’s a large part of what we’re trying to uncover in filming. He has some end-time ideas, certainly. Poles melting, waters rising. But it probably goes deeper, given his history.”

  “History?”

  The producer man thumbs the strap at his neck and cocks his head upriver.

  “They closed the bridge because of him. His two children drowned. Surely a man doesn’t emerge sane from that, not fully.”

  “Wait,” says Hunter. “That was him?”

  “That’s right. It’s not a secret, is it?”

  Hunter looks at Lawton, who squeezes his beard in his fist. They were schoolboys when it happened, the names long lost, first to go in the wake of tragedy.

  “Jesus,” says Hunter. “We didn’t know.”

  They are all silent a moment, listening for the far-off whistle of a train. Hunter squints an eye.

  “Hey, tell me something. How come y’all were filming that monster cypress up Miller Lake? Just for extra footage or what?”

  “We thought we might find him up in there. Those old trees, he likes to talk to them.”

  “Talk to them?”

  Hunter and Lawton look at each other. They know where to find the old man.

  * * *

  They paddle on, saying nothing to the film crew of where they are headed. Some three miles downriver is Lewis Island, a long tract of tidewater swamp that runs alongside the river. A wild place, undeveloped, its very shape fluid, shrinking and swelling based on tide and season and weather. Much of the year the few trails that lace it are underwater, the floor of the island concealed in flood. At its heart, hidden, stands an ancient grove of cypress and tupelo gum, thousand-year trees saved from the logging crews by their seclusion, their mysterious ability to remain unfound. Their father took them there as boys. He was one of the few who could find the place, marching them through the soupy earth, along paths cut by wild pigs and deer, until they stood among the old giants. Totems, they looked, of a disappeared civilization. Columns holding up the roof of a world so much older and larger than the one they knew. Hunter had never understood why their father, hard and hard-fisted as he was, would go out of his way to show them such places, with so little flourish or explanation. He would place t
he two of them before such a site like offerings almost, and Hunter would feel something was expected of them. What exactly, he was never sure.

  “All the trees on the river used to be like this,” their father told them. “Virgin forest, untouched since before time. Then we came and cut them all.” He stared at the trees, hands on his hips, then spat in the grass. “See if they might tell you something. They used to mean something to me, but I don’t know.”

  Afterward he marched them out, driving them through whining clouds of mosquitos and grasses that trembled with lizards and snakes. He warned them away from the place in the spring of the year. When the river was high, the wild pigs and cottonmouths retreated to what scarce clusters of dry ground remained, islands in miniature themselves, each become a savage congress of everything toothed and tusked and fanged. Everything that could kill you and would.

  They paddle for the island, the swollen river gurgling at its banks.

  BOOK III

  The old man is bent over the iron barb of his harpoon, sharpening. In his hand is a golden ingot, his whetstone. It gleams with oil. It is yellow coticule, a quartzite born in the bowels of mountains, heated and compressed into strata so hard only the most prized jewels can scratch it: ruby and sapphire, topaz and diamond. It is quarried from the Ardennes, famed for honing the swords of Roman phalanxes, the razors of Venetian barbers. He is trying to shave the thinnest layers from the yellow stone, like eons of old time. But it is the iron that yields. The edge of the flue whitens with malice, a sharpened rictus that will slide gleaming into the hearts of beasts and men.

  The old man lifts his head. Is that thunder he hears? There is a storm coming, after all. This he knows. Far over the horizon, clouds assemble heavy and dark as ships, an armada bellied with fire and flood. The waters will rise, their secrets laid bare, and new kings will reveal themselves, swelled with faith in their gods. The old man lifts the barb to his mouth and blows away the swarf, a silvery puff. Is it sharp enough yet? It must be as sharp as the spear of Longinus, the Holy Lance. It must be sharp enough to pierce the flesh of God.