The River of Souls (7 page)

“Well,” Matthew answered, “as you mention it,
yes
. Or rather, a personal issue I’d like to address. May I ask if either of you know a man named Magnus—” 

“Muldoon?” the doctor interrupted. “Of course! He’s done work on the estate, clearing trees and such. A tireless worker, to be sure. And I tended to his father in the poor man’s last days of swamp fever, just after I arrived last summer, Muldoon’s mother having passed away several years ago. You have business with him?” 

“I do. Might I ask how to find him?” 

“I’ve never been to his house,” was the reply. “He brought his father to me in their wagon to tend to. But I believe it’s up the North Road past the town of Jubilee and the Green Sea Plantation, which is maybe eight miles from here.” He gave an impish smile. “You might ask for further directions there, as the trails up along the River of Souls are…shall we say…for the adventurous.” 

“The River of Souls?” Matthew asked. 

“Yes, the Solstice River, which branches off from the Cooper. The Green Sea Plantation grows rice along there.” 

“Ah.” Matthew nodded. He’d heard of the Solstice River during his time spent here as a magistrate’s clerk, but neither he nor Magistrate Woodward had ever had need to travel in that northward direction. For the most part they had remained within the town’s walls, dedicated to the local legal matters. “Swamp country, then.” 

“What
isn’t
, around here?” The doctor shrugged. “One gets used to damp earth under the boots.” 

“Just so the boots aren’t under the damp earth,” Matthew said, thinking of his last escapade through muddy water on Pendulum Island. “I lived here for several years, but I’ve never heard the Solstice River called the River of Souls.” 

“Witchcraft,” Rachel answered. 

“Pardon?” Matthew turned his attention to her, and the word he thought he would never hear issue from her lips. 

“Supposedly,” David Stevenson said, bringing up his bemused smile, “a witch cursed the river, for drowning her son. And cursed the entire swamp around it, as well. This was many, many years ago…if such really happened. So now the river’s upper course remains largely unexplored, and according to the tale I heard it was said that…well…ridiculous indeed, but those who travel up it are destined to witness horrors that test the soul. And that the witch still lives and searches for a soul to trade the Devil for her son’s.” He had spoken these last two sentences with a quietly jocular air, worthy of a sophisticated distance between those who believed such poppycock and those who did not. He glanced up at the sun’s progress. “Getting hot early, I fear. It’ll be sweltering by noon.” 

“Yes, certainly,” Matthew agreed, feeling the risings of sweat on the back of his neck even though they stood in tree-shade. In regards to the River Solstice, as he had spent much of his time in Charles Town either reading, plotting out chess problems, studying Latin and French or scribing testimony for the magistrate in cases that went on for hour after hour, Matthew had been primarily a single citizen of his own world. The selfsame for the Sword of Damocles Ball and all the other events meant for the town’s elite; he’d existed far below their influence, and certainly would never have been in the rarified orbit as the Prisskitts or anyone at that damnable festivity. “You heard this tale from whom, and when?” 

“An elderly negress, nearing ninety years, at the Green Sea Plantation only a few days ago. She told a very compelling story, also entertaining, as I worked. I was summoned there to apply a compress to a horse bite on an overseer’s arm. It had become infected. While I was there I suggested an inspection of the slaves and house servants, thirty-four in all. I wound up pulling a few teeth and washing out some minor wounds.” 

“The whip?” asked Matthew, having had some experience with that particular pain. 

“No, thankfully not. The Kincannon family restrains the use of that. The wounds I tended were snakebites—not poisonous, obviously—and others related to working in the ricefields. I
have
had to go there and amputate a hand mangled by an alligator, unfortunately.” 

“Dangerous work, it seems,” said Matthew. “Very dangerous. And often deadly. But the rice must grow and be harvested, and the new fields carved from the swamps.” Matthew checked the degree of the sun, and decided that if he were going he’d best get to the nearest stable, secure a horse and be on his way. An eight-mile trip would be about two hours, depending on the trail. 

He reached out and took Rachel’s hand. “I’m so pleased to have seen you,” he told her. “Pleased also that you are happy, and have found a true home.” He squeezed her hand quickly and then released it. “Sir,” he said to Dr. Stevenson, “I wish you both a fine life and excellent health. If I’m in this vicinity again anytime soon, I’ll surely accept a visit to your estate and dinner.” 

“Our pleasure, sir,” answered the doctor, who reached forward again to shake Matthew’s hand and give it another bone-crush. 

“Goodbye, Matthew.” Rachel dared to deliver a kiss to his left cheek, which was likely more scandalous here than in New York, and yet it was correct. “Good travels to you today, and I hope…” She paused, searching the chest of hope that Matthew had given her when he had freed her from her bondage. “I hope you find a solution to every problem,” she finished, with a tender smile. 

“Myself as well,” he answered, and giving a slight bow to Dr. and Mrs. Stevenson, he turned away and walked in the direction of the stable from which he’d rented his chestnut steed a few days ago. He was very tempted to look back, and with each step forward tempted a bit more, but the point of going forward was progress and thus he was to all eyes admirably progressive. He continued on, following his shadow along Front Street’s white-and-gray stones and thinking that he should be turning around and heading to the packet boat dock to secure his ticket and then going to the inn for his bags, and yet…

Matthew knew himself. When he was curious about a situation or a person, there was no retreat until he had satisfied his curiosity. He could not let this go. Thus his intended trip to the mountain Muldoon today, up the North Road into rice and Green Sea country, into the supposed realm of witches and devils on the River Solstice, into the future unknown…if only for a few hours, which suited him just fine. 

He walked on at a steady pace, seeing the stable ahead, and readied his money for the rental of a noble horse to carry the warrior onward.

Five

"Ya ain’t from around here, are ya?” 

An understatement, Matthew thought. But he said politely, “No sir, I am not. I am seeking the house of a—” He paused, because more and more people in this little town of Jubilee were coming forward along the dusty street to get a gander at the newcomer in his sweat-damp clothing. Matthew had removed his coat and tricorn hat in tribute to the oppressive heat, which seemed to not only be boiling from the hot yellow ball of the midday sun but also roiling off the huge willow trees that ought to be cooling the town, not inflaming it. Matthew felt like a wet rag. His chestnut horse, Dolly, was underneath him presently drinking from a trough at a hitching-post. He wished he’d had the sense to bring a simple water bottle on this jaunt. So much for preparations from someone who always considered himself well-prepared! Fie on it! he thought. He spied a well that stood at what seemed to be the center of this community of patchwork houses, and he said to the grizzled old man who’d first approached him, “Pardon me while I get a drink, please.” 

“He’p y’self,” the fellow offered, and took the reins to tie Dolly to the post while she drank. 

Matthew put on his tricorn, got out of the saddle and excused himself past many of the rather threadbare-looking citizens who had come to take the measure of his worth. Men, women, children, dogs and chickens had arrived on the scene. He felt the stroke of a few hands, not along his body but along the material of his linen shirt and the suit jacket he held over his shoulder. Eight miles north of Charles Town had brought him into a wholly different world. The structures here were ramshackle hovels, except for one larger building that seemed fit enough to stand against an evening breeze, with the title
Jubilee General Store
painted in white above its front doorway. A lean, rawboned man wearing a floppy-brimmed hat with a raven’s feather in the hatband sat in a rocking-chair on the store’s porch, a jug of something perched on a barrel at his side and his eyes aimed at Matthew, who nodded a greeting as he approached the well. The man failed to respond, but a couple of dogs and a few small children ran circles around Matthew and stirred up what seemed to the visitor the very dust of discontent. 

He cranked the bucket up. He could look to the northeast and see—beyond several more houses and wooden fences—fishing boats and canoes pulled up upon a swampy shore. The River Solstice flowed past Jubilee, merging into the Cooper only two hundred yards to the southeast. It was notable in that it was a third as wide as its larger brethren, which was nearly a mile across in places, but seemed in what he’d seen of it so far through the trees and underbrush to be a nervous river, full of twists and turns in contrast to the Cooper’s stately progress. Indeed, the North Road—a weatherbeaten trail, at its best description—had led him alongside the Cooper for a time before hiding it behind dense forest, and then had revealed it again near the point where the two waters converged. 

Though the sun shimmered on the surface of the River of Souls in bright coinage, Matthew thought the water in its vault looked dark. Darker than the Cooper, it appeared. More gray in its belly, and fringed with the black of swamp mud where it agitated the earth. Across the river was naught but further wilderness, a whole country of it. 

Matthew took his tricorn off and used his hand to scoop up some water. He drank first, then wet his face, hair and the back of his neck. The cloud of biting insects that had been swirling around him and darting into his eyes for the better part of the last hour retreated, but they would soon be back with—Matthew was sure—reinforcements. In this swampland, such a battle went on incessantly. 

He saw that a large cornfield stood northward, and along with it a grainfield of some variety of wheat. Jubilee thus maintained itself as a farming community, but it appeared that visitors here were few and far between. And just as Matthew thought that and was taking another slurp of water from his palm, a wagon being drawn by four horses came trundling down the same narrow track he’d followed from the North Road, where the word
Jubilee
was painted on the trunk of a huge mossy willow. The wagon’s wheels stirred up another floating curtain of yellow dust, people stepped aside to get out of the way for it seemed the wagon’s driver had no qualms about running anyone over, and in another moment the wagon passed Matthew and the well and pulled up in front of the general store. 

The rawboned man with the raven’s feather in his hatband stood up in greeting, at the same time as four young black males—slaves, without a doubt—who’d been riding in the back of the wagon got out and stood obviously waiting for a command. They were dressed not in rags but in regular and clean clothing of white shirtings, black trousers, white stockings and boots. The driver was a white man, thick-shouldered and dark-haired, also wearing simple clothes. A second white man, who’d been sitting alongside the driver, climbed carefully down from the plank seat and he was the one to whom Sir Raven’s Feather spoke. This individual was older, wore a gray shirt and a pair of dark green trousers with stockings the same hue, and had some difficulty with his right leg, for he limped and it seemed to pain him. After a quick conference with Sir Feather he motioned the slaves to go into the store. They obeyed, and a moment later were engaged in the labor of bringing out barrels and grainsacks to load onto the wagon. 

Supplies for the Green Sea Plantation, is what Matthew surmised. The wagon’s driver did not offer to help the loading process; he was content to light a pipe from his tinderbox, sit back and watch the slaves earn their keep. The distance between Matthew and the driver was not too far for Matthew to note on the man’s right forearm a medical compress fixed in place by a wrapping of cloth bandages, as his sleeves were rolled up. So there was the overseer who’d suffered the horse bite, Matthew thought. And from Matthew’s knowledge of medicine Dr. Stevenson’s compress, to soothe the wound and draw out infection, would be a soft mixture of meal, clay and certain herbs wrapped up in cheesecloth, heated and applied to the wound. Matthew assumed that the doctor had left more of the mixture at the plantation and instructions on how to change the compress, for within a short time the application would be dried out and unworthy. 

Some of the citizens came to watch the wagon being loaded, as the slaves worked quickly at their task. Dogs barked and scampered around, enjoying the activity. Other citizens edged closer to Matthew, still curious about his presence. And suddenly Sir Feather pointed toward Matthew, and with a puff of pipesmoke the overseer took Matthew in and the older gentleman in gray and green also turned his head to view the visitor.