Marsh sat heavily on the bed. “Goddamn,” he said, “this is a hell of a place you got me to, Joshua. This is as bad as Natchez-under-the-hill was twenty, thirty years ago. Damned if I ever expected to find you in a place like this.”
Joshua York smiled and sat down in a frayed old armchair. “Neither will Julian or Sour Billy. That is the point. They are searching for me, I know. But even if they think to search Gallatin Street, it will be difficult. Julian would be attacked for his obvious wealth, and Sour Billy is known here by sight. He has taken off too many women who have never returned. Tonight there were at least two men in the Green Tree who would have killed him on sight. The streets outside belong to the Live Oak Boys, who might beat Billy to death just for the fun of it, unless they decided to help him.” He shrugged. “Even the police won’t come to Gallatin Street. I am as safe here as I would be anywhere, and on this street my nocturnal habits draw no notice. They are commonplace.”
“Never mind about that,” Marsh said impatiently. “You sent me a letter. Said you’d made your choice. You know why I come, but I ain’t sure why you sent for me. Maybe you better tell me.”
“I scarcely know where to begin. It has been a long time, Abner.”
“For both of us,” Marsh said gruffly. Then his tone softened. “I looked for you, Joshua. For more goddamned years than I care to think about, I tried to find you and that steamboat of mine. But there was just too goddamned much river and not enough time nor money.”
“Abner,” said York, “you might have had all the time and money in the world, and you would never have found us on the river. For the past thirteen years, the Fevre Dream has been on dry land. She is hidden near the old indigo vats on the plantation that Julian owns, some five hundred yards from the bayou, but quite thoroughly concealed.”
Marsh said, “How the hell . . .”
“It was my doing. Let me start from the beginning, and tell you all of it.” He sighed. “I must go back thirteen years, to the night I took my leave from you.”
“I remember.”
“I went upriver as quickly as I could,” Joshua began, “anxious to get back, worried that the thirst would come upon me. Travel was difficult, but I reached the Fevre Dream on the second night after my departure. She had moved only slightly. She now stood well away from the shore, the dark water rushing around her on both sides. It was a cold, foggy night when I approached her, and she was absolutely dead and dark. No smoke, no steam, not a flame showing anywhere, so silent that I almost missed her for the fog. I did not want to return, but I knew I must. I swam out to her.” He hesitated briefly. “Abner, you know the sort of life I have led. I have seen and done many terrible things. But nothing prepared me for that steamer the way I found her, nothing.”
Marsh’s face grew hard. “Go on.”
“I told you once that I thought Damon Julian was mad.”
“I recollect it.”
“Mad and heedless and dreaming of death,” Joshua said. “And he had proven it. Oh, yes. He had proven it. When I pulled myself up onto deck, the steamer was deathly quiet. No sound, no movement, just the river rushing past. I wandered through the boat unmolested.” His eyes were fixed on Abner Marsh, but they had a far-off glazed look, as if they were seeing something else, something they would always see. York stopped.
“Tell me, Joshua,” Marsh said.
York’s mouth grew tight. “It was a slaughterhouse, Abner.” He let that simple statement hang in the air for a moment, before he went on. “Bodies were everywhere. Everywhere. And not intact, either. I walked through the main deck, and found corpses . . . among the freight and back with the engines. There were . . . arms, legs, other body parts. Ripped loose. Torn off. The slaves, the stokers Billy had bought, most of them were still in the manacles, dead, their throats torn out. The engineer had been hung upside down above the cylinder, and cut so . . . he must have bled down onto . . . as if blood could take the place of oil.” Joshua gave a small grim shake of his head. “The number of dead, Abner. You can’t imagine. And the way they were torn, the grotesque mutilations. The fog had seeped onto the boat, so I could not see the whole at once. I walked, I wandered, and these things would suddenly appear before me where, an instant before, there had been nothing but vague shadows and a drifting veil of fog. And I would look at whatever new terror the mist had yielded up to me, and move away, and take only two or three steps before the vapors dissolved yet again to reveal something even more vile.
“Finally, sick at heart and filled with a wrath that burned in me like a fever, I went up the grand staircase to the boiler deck. The saloon . . . it was more of the same. Bodies and pieces of bodies. So much blood had been spilled that the carpet was still wet with it, even then. Everywhere I found signs of struggle. Dozens of mirrors were shattered, three or four stateroom doors had been smashed in, tables were overturned. On one table that still stood there was a human head upon a silver platter. I have never known more horror than I did as I walked the length of that saloon, those terrible three hundred feet. Nothing moved in the darkness, in the fog. Nothing living. I moved back and forth listlessly, not knowing what to do. I stopped before the water cooler, that great silver ornamental water cooler you had placed at the forward end of the cabin. My throat was very dry. I picked up one of the silver cups and turned the handle. The water . . . the water came slowly, Abner. Very slowly. Even in the darkness of that saloon, I could see that it was black and viscous. Half . . . clotted.
“I stood with the cup in hand, looking about blindly, my nose filled with the smell . . . the smell, I have hardly mentioned that, the smell was terrible, it . . . you can imagine, I’m sure. I stood in the midst of it all watching that agonizing slow trickle from the water cooler. I felt as though I was choking. My horror, my outrage, I . . . felt them rise within me. I tossed the cup across the cabin, and I screamed.
“Then the noises began. Whispers, thumpings, begging sounds, weeping, threats. Voices, Abner, living human voices. I looked about me, and grew even sicker, even more angry. At least a dozen stateroom doors had been nailed shut, their occupants imprisoned within them. Waiting, I knew, for tonight or the night after. Julian’s living larder. I began to tremble. I moved to the nearest door and started to pull loose the boards that held it shut. They pulled out with a loud creaking sound, almost a cry of agony. I was still working on that door when he said, ‘Dear Joshua, you must stop that. Dear lost Joshua, come back to us.’
“When I turned, they were there. Julian smiling at me, Sour Billy at his side, and the others, all the others, even my own people, Simon, Smith and Brown, all of them that were left . . . watching me. I screamed at them all, wild and incoherent. They were my people, and yet they had done this. Abner, I was filled with such loathing . . .
“Later, days later, I heard the whole story, learned the full depth of Julian’s madness. Perhaps it was my fault, in a sense. In saving you and Toby and Mister Framm, I brought on the death of more than a hundred innocent passengers.”
Abner Marsh snorted. “Don’t,” he said. “Whatever happened, it was Julian that had done it, and him that has to answer for it. You weren’t even there, so don’t go blamin’ yourself, you hear?”
Joshua’s gray eyes were troubled. “So I have told myself many times,” he said. “Let me finish the story. What had happened—Julian had woken that night to find us gone. He was furious. Wild. More—those words sound too feeble to convey what must have been his rage. Perhaps it was the red thirst in him that woke, after all those centuries. Moreover, it must have looked to him as if destruction were near to hand. His pilots were all gone. The steamer could not move without a pilot. And he must have known that you intended to return, to attack by day and destroy him. He could not have guessed that I would come back instead, to save them. No doubt my treachery and Valerie’s desertion filled him with fear, with uncertainty about what would come next. He had lost control. He had been bloodmaster, and yet we had acted against him. In all the history of the peopl
e of the night, it had never happened before. I think, during that terrible night, that Damon Julian thought he saw the death he both hungered for and feared.
“Sour Billy, I learned later, urged that they go ashore, split up, travel overland separately and meet again in Natchez or New Orleans or somewhere. That would have been sensible. But Julian was past sense. He had just entered the main cabin, his madness seething in his eyes, when a passenger approached him and began to complain that the steamer was far behind schedule, that she had not moved all day. ‘Ah,’ Julian said, ‘then we must move it immediately.’ He had her taken a bit farther out, so no one could get to shore. When it was done, he returned to the main cabin, where the passengers were dining, and approached the man who had complained, and killed him, in full view of all.
“Then the slaughter began. Of course, people screamed, ran, hid, locked themselves in their staterooms. But there was no place to go. And Julian used his power, used his voice and his eyes, and sent his people forth to kill. I understand the Fevre Dream had about a hundred thirty passengers aboard that night, against about twenty of my people, some driven by the thirst, some by Julian. But the thirst can be terrible at a time like that. Like a fever it can leap from one to the next, until all of them burn. And Sour Billy had the men he hired at Natchez-under-the hill assist in the fighting, too. He told them it was all part of a plan to rob and kill the passengers, and that they would share in the loot. By the time my people turned against their human helpers, it was far too late.
“It was happening even as you and I stood talking that last night, Abner. The screams, the carnage, Julian’s wild death spasm. He did not have everything his own way. The passengers fought back. I am told that virtually all my people sustained injuries, though of course they healed. Vincent Thibaut was shot through the eye, and died. Katherine was seized by two firemen and thrust into one of the furnaces. They burned her to death before Kurt and Alain intervened. So two of my people met their ends. Two of us, and well over a hundred of your kind. The survivors were penned within their own cabins.
“When it was over, Julian settled down to wait. The others were full of fear, and wanted to flee, but Julian would not permit it. He wanted to be discovered, I believe. They say he spoke of you, Abner.”
“Me?” Marsh was thunderstruck.
“He said he had promised you that the river would never forget your Fevre Dream. He laughed and said he made good on that promise.”
Abner Marsh’s anger welled up in him and came out in a furious snort. “Damn him to hell!” he said, in a strangely quiet tone.
“That,” said Joshua York, “was how it happened. But I knew none of that the night I returned to the Fevre Dream. I only knew what I saw with my eyes, what I smelled, what I could guess and imagine. And I was wild, Abner, wild. I was tearing free those boards, as I said, and then Julian was there, and suddenly I was screaming at him, screaming incoherently. I wanted vengeance. I wanted to kill him as badly as I have ever wanted to kill anyone, wanted to rip open that pale throat of his, and taste his damnable blood! My anger . . . ah, the words are so useless!
“Julian waited until I had finished screaming, and then he said quietly, ‘There are two boards left, Joshua. Pull them off and let him out. You must be very thirsty.’ Sour Billy sniggered. I said nothing. ‘Go on, dear Joshua,’ Julian said. ‘Tonight you will truly join us, so you may never run again. Go on, dear Joshua. Free him. Kill him. And his eyes held mine. I felt their force, pulling, pulling me inside him, trying to take hold of me and make me do his bidding. Once I had tasted blood again, I would be his, body and soul, forever. He had beaten me a dozen times, forced me to kneel to him, compelled me to let him drink of my own blood. But he had never been able to make me kill. It was my last protection of what I was and what I believed in and what I tried to do, and now his eyes were tearing it down, and behind it was only death and blood and terror, and the endless empty nights that soon would be my life.”
Joshua York stopped then, and looked away. There had been something clouded and unreadable in his eyes. Abner Marsh saw to his astonishment that Joshua’s hand was shaking. “Joshua,” he said, “whatever happened, it was thirteen years ago. It’s past, it’s gone like all those folks you killed in England and such. And you didn’t have no choice, no choice a-tall. It was you that told me you can’t have good or evil without a choice. You ain’t what Julian is, no matter if you did kill that man.”
York looked at him straight on and gave a strange little smile. “Abner, I did not kill that man.”
“No? Then what . . .”
“I fought back,” said Joshua. “I was wild, Abner. I looked him in the eyes, and I defied him. I fought him. And this time I won. We stood there for a good ten minutes, and finally Julian broke away, snarling, and retreated up the stairs to his cabin, Sour Billy scurrying after him. The rest of my people stood staring at me astonished. Raymond Ortega stepped forward and challenged me. In less than a minute, he was kneeling. ‘Bloodmaster,’ he said, bowing his head. Then, one by one, the others began to kneel. Armand and Cara, Cynthia, Jorge and Michel LeCouer, even Kurt, all of them. Simon had such victory on his face. So did others. Julian’s had been a bitter reign for several of them. Now they were free. I had vanquished Damon Julian, for all his strength, for all his age. I was the leader of my people once again. I realized then that I faced a choice. Unless I acted, and quickly, the Fevre Dream would be discovered, and I and Julian and all our race would die.”
“What did you do?”
“I found Sour Billy. He had been mate, after all. He was outside Julian’s cabin, confused, cowering. I put him in charge of the main deck, and told the others to do as he told them. They worked. As stokers, as strikers, as engineers. With Billy half-scared to death and giving orders, they got our steam up. We fueled her with wood and lard and corpses. Ghastly, I know, but we had to get rid of the bodies, and we could not stop to wood up without great risk. I went up to the pilot house and took the wheel. Up there, at least, no one had died. She ran with all her lights out, so no one could see us even if they had eyes to penetrate that fog. At times we had to take soundings and creep along, and other times—when the fog pulled back from us—we slid downriver fast enough to make you proud, Abner! We passed a few other steamboats in the dark, and I whistled to them and they whistled back, but no one got close enough to read our name. The river was empty that night, most of the traffic tied up because of the fog. I was being a reckless pilot, but the alternative was discovery and certain death. When dawn came, we were still on the river. I would not let them retire. Billy had the tarpaulins rigged around the main deck, as protection from the sun. I remained in the pilot house. We passed New Orleans near sunbreak, went downstream, and turned off into the bayou. It was narrow and shallow, the most difficult part of the trip. We had to sound every inch of it. But finally we reached Julian’s old plantation. Only then did I let myself seek the shelter of my cabin. I was badly burned. Again.” He smiled ruefully. “I seem to have made a habit of that,” he said. “The next night I surveyed Julian’s land. We had tied up the steamer at a half-rotted old wharf on the bayou, but she was too conspicuous. If you thought to come to Cypress Landing, you would find her easily. I was loath to destroy her, since we might need the mobility she gave us, yet I knew she had to be better hidden.
“I found my answer. The plantation had once been given over to indigo. The owners had begun growing the more lucrative sugarcane more than fifty years before, and of course Julian had grown nothing at all—but well south of the main house, I found the old, abandoned indigo vats on a waterway leading from the bayou. It was a still, stagnant backwater, overgrown and foul-smelling. Indigo is not wholesome. The channel was barely wide enough for the Fevre Dream, and clearly not deep enough.
“So I contrived to deepen it. We unloaded the steamer, and worked at clearing the undergrowth and cutting back the trees and dredging the backwater. A month of labor, Abner, nearly every night. And then I took the steamer
down the bayou, angled her into the backwater with much difficulty, and squeezed her through. When I stopped her, we were scraping bottom, but she was essentially invisible, screened on all sides by foliage. In the weeks that followed we dammed up the mouth of the backwater where it met the bayou, replaced the mud and sand we had so laboriously dredged out, and endeavored to drain the waterway. Within a month or so, the Fevre Dream rested on damp, muddy ground, veiled by live oak and cypress, and one would never guess there had been water there.”
Abner Marsh frowned unhappily. “That’s no goddamned end for a steamboat,” he said bitterly. “Not her, especially. She deserved better’n that.”
“I know,” said Joshua, “but I had the safety of my people to think about. I made my choice, Abner, and when it was done I was pleased and triumphant. We would never be found now. Most of the bodies had been burnt or buried. Julian had hardly been seen since the night I had defied and conquered him. He left his cabin infrequently, and then only for food. Sour Billy was the only one who spoke to him. Billy was afraid and obedient, and the others all followed me, drank with me. I had ordered Billy to remove my liquor from Julian’s cabin and keep it behind the bar in the main saloon. We drank it every night with supper. There was only one major problem remaining before I went on to consider the future of my race—our prisoners, those passengers who had survived that night of terror. We had kept them confined all during our flight and labors, though none of them had suffered harm. I had seen that they were fed and well-treated. I had even tried to talk to them, to reason with them, but it was useless—when I entered their staterooms, they would become hysterical with fear. I had no appetite for keeping them caged up indefinitely, but they had seen everything, and I did not see how I could safely let them go.
“Then the problem was solved for me. One black night, Damon Julian left his cabin. He still lived on the steamer, as did a few others, those who had been closest to him. I was ashore that night, with a dozen others, working in the main house, which Julian had allowed to deteriorate shamefully. When I returned to the Fevre Dream, I found that two of our prisoners had been taken from their staterooms and killed. Raymond and Kurt and Adrienne were sitting in the grand saloon over the bodies, feeding, and Julian was presiding over it all.”