Fevre Dream Page 0,12

one, "but we're getting nothing but the best, featherbeds and feather pillows, a mirror and an oil lamp for each room. Our cabins are larger than usual, too-won't be able to take quite as many passengers as some other boat our size, but they'll have more room." He smiled. "We can charge 'em more too."

Each cabin had two doors; one leading out onto the deck, the other inward, to the grand saloon, the main cabin of the steamer. "Main cabin isn't near finished," Marsh said, "but come look at it anyway."

They entered and stopped, while Brown raised the lantern to cast light all up and down the vast, echoing length of it. The grand saloon extended the length of the boiler deck, continuous and unobstructed except by a midship gangway. "Fore portion is the gents' cabin, aft for the ladies," Marsh explained. "Take a look. Ain't done yet, but she'll be something. That marble bar there is forty foot long, and we're going to put a mirror behind it just as big. Got it on order now. Well have mirrors on every stateroom door too, with silver frames around 'em, and a twelve-foot-high mirror there, at the aft end of the ladies' cabin." He pointed upward with his stick. "Can't see nothing now, with it being dark and all, but the skylights are stained glass, run the whole length of the cabin. We're going to put down one of them Brussels carpets, and carpets in all the staterooms too. We got a silver water cooler with silver cups that's going to stand on a fancy wooden table, and we got a grand piano, and brand new velvet chairs, and real linen tablecloths. None of it is here yet, though."

Even empty of carpeting, mirrors, and furniture, the long cabin had a splendor to it. They walked down it slowly, in silence, and in the moving light of the lantern bits of its stately beauty suddenly took form from the darkness, only to vanish again behind them: The high arched ceiling with its curving beams, carved and painted with detail as fine as fairy lace. Long rows of slim columns flanking the stateroom doors, trimmed with delicate fluting. The black marble bar with its thick veins of color. The oily sheen of dark wood. The double row of chandeliers, each with four great crystal globes hanging from a spiderweb of wrought iron, wanting only oil and a flame and all those mirrors to wake the whole saloon to glorious, glittering light.

"I thought the cabins too small," Katherine said suddenly, "but this room will be grand."

Marsh frowned at her. "The cabins are big, ma'am. Eight foot square. Six is usual. This is a steamer, you know." He turned away from her, pointed with his walking stick. "Clerk's office will be all the way forward there, the kitchen and the washrooms are by the wheelhouses. I know just the cook I want to get, too. Used to work on my Lady Liz."

The roof of the boiler deck was the hurricane deck. They walked up a narrow stair and emerged forward of the great black iron smokestacks, then up a shorter stair to the texas deck, which ran back from the stacks to the wheelhouses. "Crew's cabins," Marsh said, not bothering with a tour. The pilot house stood atop the texas. He led them up and in.

From here, the whole yards were visible; all the lesser boats wrapped in mist, the black waters of the Ohio River beyond, and even the distant lights of Louisville, ghostly flickers in the fog. The interior of the pilot house was large and plush. The windows were of the best and clearest glass, with stained glass trim around them. Everywhere shone dark wood, and polished silver pale and cold in the lantern light.

And there was the wheel. Only the top half of it was visible, so huge was it, and even that stood as high as Marsh himself, while the bottom half was set in a slot in the floorboards. It was fashioned of soft black teak, cool and smooth to the touch, and the spokes wore ornamental silver bands like a dancehall girl wears garters. The wheel seemed to cry out for a pilot's hands.

Joshua York came up to the wheel and touched it, running a pale hand over the black wood and silver. Then he took hold of it, as if he were a pilot himself, and for a long moment he stood like that, the wheel