Fevre Dream Page 0,63

Joshua had given orders not to be disturbed. Joshua was going to be almighty displeased by what Marsh had to say. The whole thing was tomfoolery, that poem had just plagued him with bad dreams, or maybe it was something he ate. Still, still...

He was still standing there, frowning in thought, his stick upraised, when the cabin door swung silently open.

Inside was as dark as the belly of a cow. Moon and stars cast some small light across the door frame, but beyond was hot velvet blackness. Several paces back from the door, a shadowy figure stood. The moon touched bare feet, and the vague shape of the man was dimly felt. "Come in, Abner," came the voice from the darkness. Joshua spoke in a raspy whisper.

Abner Marsh stepped forward across the threshold.

The shadow moved, and suddenly the door was closed. Marsh heard it lock. It was utterly dark. He couldn't see a thing. A powerful hand gripped him tightly by the arm and drew him forward. Then he was pushed backward, and he was afraid for an instant until he felt the chair beneath him.

A rustle of motion in the darkness. Marsh looked around, blindly, trying to make sense out of the black. "I didn't knock," he heard himself say.

"No," came Joshua's reply. "I heard you approach. And I have been expecting you, Abner."

"He said you would come," came another voice, from a different part of the darkness. A woman's voice, soft, bitter. Valerie.

"You," Marsh said in astonishment. He had not expected that. He was confused, angry, uncertain, and Valerie's presence made it even more difficult. "What are you doin' here?" Marsh demanded.

"I might ask the same of you," her soft voice answered. "I am here because Joshua needs me, Captain Marsh. To help him. And that is more than you have done, for all your words. You and your kind, with all your suspicion, all your pious-"

"Enough, Valerie," Joshua said curtly. "Abner, I do not know why you have come tonight, but I knew you would come sooner or later. I might have done better to take a dullard as a partner, a man who would take orders without questions. You are too shrewd perhaps for your own good, and mine. I knew it was only a matter of time until you saw through the tale I spun for you at Natchez. I've seen you watching us. I know about your little tests." He gave a rough, forced chuckle. "Holy water, indeed!"

"How... you knew, then?" Marsh said.

"Yes."

"Damn that boy."

"Don't be too hard on him. He had little to do with it, Abner, though I did notice him staring at me all during supper." Joshua's laugh was a strained, terrible sound. "No, it was the water itself that told me. A glass of clear clean water shows up in front of me a few days after our talk, and what am I to think? All the time we've been on the river, we've been getting water full of mud and sediment. I could have started a garden with the river mud I've left at the bottom of my glass." He made a dry, clacking sound of amusement. "Or even filled my coffin."

Abner Marsh ignored the last. "Stir it up and drink it down with the water," he said. "Make a riverman of you." He paused. "Or maybe just a man," he added.

"Ah," said Joshua, "so we come to the point." He said nothing more for a long time, and the cabin seemed suffocating, thick with darkness and silence. When Joshua finally spoke, his tone was chilled and serious. "Did you bring a cross with you, Abner? Or a stake?"

"I brung this," Marsh said. He pulled out the book of poems and tossed it through the air, to where he judged Joshua was sitting.

He heard a motion, a snap as the spinning book was snatched from the air. Pages rustled. "Byron," Joshua said, bemused.

Abner Marsh couldn't have seen his fingers wriggling an inch in front of his face, so thoroughly was the cabin shuttered and curtained. But Joshua could not only see well enough to catch the book, but to read it as well. Marsh felt goosebumps rise on him again, despite the heat.

"Why Byron?" asked Joshua. "You puzzle me. Another test, a cross, questions, those I might have anticipated. Not Byron."

"Joshua," said Marsh, "how old are you?"

Silence.

"I'm a fair judge of age," Marsh said. "You're a hard one, with your white hair and all. Still, from the looks of