Kingdom River

by Mitchell Smith

  Martha saw little eel-skiffs as they passed. The men crewing them stood, balancing, and bowed as the red boat, the long red banner, went sweeping by. She sat holding the pretty glass in her lap, concerned it might tip over and break if she set it down on the deck. The deck was as clean as a worn washboard.

  The lieutenant and his men were standing in the front of the boat. She could see them, see Ralph-sergeant past the great mast, its long, furled red sail. He turned his head, talking with another soldier... saw her looking, and smiled at her. Martha supposed the wind had completed the ruin of her ringlets.

  They passed more log houses... then a lord's strong-hold. It rose above the river's bank, three gray stone towers within gray stone walls, all higher than a man could throw a rock — almost high as a crossbow quarrel might reach. Two ladies were standing on a little carved-wood porch, halfway up the middle tower, their hands tucked into fur muffs. Their hair was combed up off their necks and coiled; Martha saw gold combs glinting. They were wearing woolen gowns, paneled — perhaps in linen. One's dress was dyed soft blue and gold, the other's darker. The ladies, standing so high, seemed perfect little dolls, dolls made for children like their own.

  Both together, they dipped behind the little porch's carved railing, curtsying as the blood-red boat went by.

  Martha imagined their brothers, their husbands, in the hold. Tall, handsome men with clean hands and several-dot tattoos — and their father, scarred, bearded, brave as a bear. All the men very big, but kind, so that nothing more than a mouse in their wardrobe had ever frightened the doll-ladies, or ever could.

  Martha waved up to them, but the blood-red boat had passed down the river, and the ladies didn't seem to see.

  A while later, after a ferry had sailed past them, borne upstream on the wind — its passengers had stood, crowded, to bow to the Queen's boat — Martha grew restless, and shifted where she sat.

  "Need relief?" The Bad-lip Lord hadn't moved from where he stood in all the traveling.

  He'd looked down to ask the question, and when Martha didn't answer, made an impatient face. "Do you need to piss, girl?" His breath smoked slightly in the cold.

  "...Yes, lord."

  The Bad-lip Lord muttered, "Rafting Jesus..." and lifted the forefinger of his right hand. The boy in the white jacket, who had been squatting by the rail, stood and came running.

  "Bring this girl and a piss-pot together in the captain's cabin." The Bad-lip Lord looked back at the Brown-cloak Captain. "With your permission, of course."

  "Does me honor," the Captain said, and he and the Bad-lip Lord both smiled.

  ...Relieved — a word that seemed so much nicer than 'pissed-out' — Martha had come to sit on her step again, her sheepskin cloak tucked tight around her against the wind. She watched the river run down with them, sometimes seeming to flow faster than the rowers could labor, though the drum kept beating like a heart, so steady that she forgot it from time to time.

  Now, the river — great gray pieces of raft ice drifting by — was crowded with more and more ships and fisher-boats, rowed barges, and poled barges along the shore, so there were masts and long oars and banners and house flags of all colors wherever she looked.

  Sometimes, as the wind blew this way or that, Martha could hear men singing on other ships as they passed — Gulf sailors and river-boatmen singing as they rowed or worked their lines. These men didn't interrupt their labor to bow to the Queen's boat, but only paused a moment to cup their right hands to their ears, to show they listened for any command.

  The river had become alive with people and boats. Along the shore were more holds, more stone walls and towers, and wide two-storied timber docks on square stone pilings set marching out into the current. Slaves — still naked though Daughter Summer had died — were working on them, stowing and transferring the goods come in, the cargoes going out. Her father had called slaves 'the Ordinaries' bane' and said they took fish and honey from free men's mouths…. A band was playing on some pleasure boat, horns and flutes.

  There seemed more to see than Jordan-Jesus could have noticed, though he was a river god, with all drops of water for his eyes.

  The sun's egg had sunk west to almost touch the water when the Brown-cloak Captain said, "Passing Vicksburg bluff." Martha looked over and could just see a line of green and perhaps a fortress, east, high along the bank.

  Soon after, the Captain said, "Island." And Martha saw, downstream, and far, far out into the current, what seemed a great walled town rising from the river, its stone gray and gold in early evening light.

  Amazed, she clapped her hands — thought it might be magic — and looked up to see if the Bad-lip Lord was also astonished. She pointed it out to him.

  He looked there, nodded, and said, "Island."

  It was a place Martha'd heard of all her life, but had never thought to see. She swayed where she sat, then swayed again as the rowers' slow steady beat shifted, and the blood-red boat swung farther from the shore. They were going out and out where the great town grew from white water.

  After a while, she saw fewer boats, fewer sailing ships.... And later, almost none, but huge tarred barrels floating, with signal masts on them flying flags of different colors. Martha noticed that what ships there were, steered by those flags and no other way.

  Now, she could see the town was made of walls and towers, all built on hills of heaped boulders, each larger than a house. Everything was heaved up and up out of the river, so the cold current foamed white and struck in waves against the stone.

  "Two hundred years of granite rock brought down from the Wall's lap by ice-boat and wet-boat, with a good man lost to the savages for every Warm-time ton." The Bad-lip Lord was looking at the distant walls and towers. "And those tons dropped into the river there to make the kings' island."

  "What a wonderful thing!"

  "Do you think so, Ordinary? Clever, certainly...."

  A horn sounded, deep and distant as a pasture bull's crying out. Martha looked that way and saw, over the ship's red rail, another ship just as blood-scarlet but much larger, with two rows of oars on a side. It was coming toward them so fast that it carved white water with its black iron ram. Ranks of oars flashed, rose, beat, and fell, seeming only to touch the river's skin as it came, banners streaming from its masts, gulls wavering in the river wind above it.

  The deep horn sounded again, calling to them. It was the most wonderful thing. Martha stood and stepped to the low rail — though no one had said she could — to see it better. She could hear drumbeats, now, even the soft spanking as its oars struck the river. It was coming terribly fast, and it was very big. There were men... men in ranks standing along the two decks, one above the other. These were soldiers, and each man's armor was enameled in halves, helmet to hip, left side blue, right side green. "Soldiers," she said.

  "Marines," said the Brown-cloak Captain — and shouted, "Still... oars... to heave to!"

  There were machine things on the great ship coming to them — things like giant hunting bows, but lying on their sides and fastened to timbers — and fire was burning in bronze braziers alongside them.

  Martha clapped her hands and jumped a little up and down. It was worth everything to have come to see such a ship. Beside it, all the other river boats were nothing.

  Another horn sounded behind her. She turned and saw, much farther away, two more of the great ships, both blood-red and flying blood-red banners.

  "Three of them!"

  "Three of the Fleet's two hundred and more," the Bad-lip Lord said. "Now, sit down, girl, before you fall overboard."

  Martha sat on her step again, but still could see as the great ship came to them, drums rolling and thundering so the gulls' cries sounded like music above it.

  It came almost to smash into them, so Martha held up her arm to ward it — then swung suddenly sideways in spray and clashing currents. Spaced along its hull, the iron fittings for its winter runners were massive as great tree-stumps… and as it turned, rows o
f white oars rose dripping, folding up together so it loomed over, high as a riverside cliff, blood-red and ranked with two-color soldiers. The ship was named in dark metal at its bow. QS Painful.

  At once a long, narrow wooden bridge fell from beside a mast, came swinging humming down through the air and crashed across the rail paces from Martha and the Bad-lip Lord.

  Soldiers — marines — came running the steep planking with battle-axes in their hands, and two officers — their helmets striped blue, green, and gold — came running with them, short-swords drawn, and all jumping to the deck so it shook under Martha's feet.

  One of the officers, the bigger one, stopped near her and called out, "Who comes toward Island? And why?"

  His sword was shaped like a butcher's knife, but bigger.

  "I come," the Bad-lip Lord said. "Sayre. And on the Queen's business."

  "And come properly? With nothing and no one hidden on this ship?"

  "Properly. Nothing hidden."

  The officer unfastened a little latch at his throat, and took his helmet off. He had four blue dots on one cheek, three on the other, and a round pleasant face spoiled by eyes with no color.... It seemed to Martha the helmet must be uncomfortable. None of the soldiers who'd brought her to Landing had worn their helmets. They'd kept them strapped to their packs.

  "Afternoon, milord." The officer bowed a little.

  "Afternoon, Conway — how does your father do?"

  "Dying."

  "Sickness... a sad end for an admiral."

  "Yes, sir. He would have chosen otherwise."

  Martha saw the marines with axes going here and there about the boat. Some of them went downstairs, under the deck. The other officer was talking to three sailors; they stood barefoot before him, their heads down.

  "We'll look through, and question — but quickly. Won't delay you, milord."

  "Better not. I'm bringing Her Majesty a present... of a sort."

  The officer looked down at Martha, and raised an eyebrow. "Don't ask," said the Bad-lip Lord.

  CHAPTER 8

  "This vessal to the Iron Gate," the big officer had said, speaking to the Brown-cloak Captain in a different voice than he'd used in conversation with the Bad-lip Lord. " — To the Iron Gate, directly and in order, otherwise at your peril."

  "Understood," the Captain had said, "and will be conformed to."

  And, after the officers marched the marines back up their ramp, the great two-decked ship had lunged away, its ranks of oars striking all together, its drums sounding slower beats, its trumpet a different call.

  Soon, Martha saw much closer the cliffs of gray stone, the river's milky rapids foaming against them. Along those stone walls, another boat came in order behind them... then a second one, and a third, so there were four in line. Martha stood to see them better, and was told to sit down.

  Then there was slow steady rowing into the river's wind, Island's gray wall, on their right, seeming endless as they passed — and high, so the gulls looked like snowflakes along the spaced stone teeth at its top.

  "Big," she said.

  "Very big." The second thing the boat's captain had said to her. "More'n a Warm-time mile long; near a mile wide. An' got more people on it than live on Isle Baton Rouge — well, damn near." He turned, talked with the sailor at the wheel, then turned back. "Milord, looks like a stuff-boat ahead of us for the gate."

  "Pass them out of line," the Bad-lip Lord said. "Queen's business."

  The Captain cupped his hands to his mouth and called, "Row up! Row up!" Martha heard their drum go rum-a-dum, rum-a-dum, rum-a-dum. The boat surged, surged… then swung left and slowly overtook a big barge that smelled of sheep and sheep shit.

  A fat man in boots and a hooded raw-wool smock stood by the barge's steering oar, two rivermen behind him gripping its long loom. The boat's great cockpit was crowded with sheep's backs, sheep's puzzled black faces. — As they drew alongside, the fat man made a nasty fuck-finger at them and yelled, "Get back, you bottom-holes!"

  "That's Peter Jaffrey," the Captain said. "I know him. Probably drunk."

  The Bad-lip Lord frowned. "Drunk or not, he should know a Queen's red ship when he sees one." He went to stand at the rail, and gave the barge captain a hard look across the distance of river. Martha saw the fat man's mouth, which had been open, suddenly shut, and he made a bow, then cupped his right ear for any command.

  "Not a bad guy," the Captain said, using a Warm-time word. "Lost his little boy to throat-pox years ago. Only son."

  When the Bad-lip Lord smiled, it made his lip look worse. "Alright, Crawford. But you might suggest the wisdom of courtesy to him when you meet again."

  "I will, milord."

  They swept on past the barge, then steered in again, closer to the wall. Martha, looking ahead through the boat's rigging, saw Ralph-sergeant near the bow, talking, laughing with another soldier — and beyond them, a great tower of gray stone standing out into the river.

  The boat swung out to pass the tower's base where the river's flow curled against it like goat's cream. Chunk ice bobbed there, striking the granite.

  Beyond, there was a great stone gateway, wide as a meadow and arched over high in the air with what seemed a spiderweb of iron... the span of a bridge where Martha saw tiny soldiers looking over. Harsh wind blew through the gateway, and a river current seethed into it. They turned with that tide — the red boat leaning, pitching — and ran on into the harbor, oars lifting, then falling to splash in foam... which became quieter water.

  They were in a made pond-lake, oars now barely stroking, with walls rising high around them like the eastern mountains Martha had heard of, where Boston's creatures hunted. She saw a row of long gray wharves with boats and great ships tied to them, and sweat-slaves working, loading and unloading.... Even in this deep harbor, the current swirled, complaining. There were slow whirlpools, and the river's icy wind gusted here and there, trapped by stone.

  A file of marines stood in order on a far dock as the red boat rowed slowly in. The Captain said something to his wheelman, and Martha felt the boat slowly turning toward those men. She had gotten used to that lifting, sliding motion, and thought she might become a barge-woman, being so at ease riding a wet-water ship.

  They drifted in, the oars folding up and back like a bird's wings... and the red boat struck fat canvas cushions at the stone dockside with a squeak and three thumps. The sailors heaved out heavy lines; three wharfers caught them and cleated them in.

  "Up." The Bad-lip Lord gestured Martha after him, as the gangplank was sliding out and down.

  She had no time to smile good-bye to Ralph-sergeant — needed to nearly run down to the dock, her possibles-sack flapping at her hip, to keep up with the Bad-lip Lord. The file of marines, who had struck their two-color breastplates with armored fists to greet him, now followed, marching very fast. The harbor and docks were quickly left behind. Their bootsteps echoed off stone walls, stone steps, echoed down passages under overhangs masoned from great blocks of granite. Down those passages... then others, and turnings left and right and left again. In shadowed places, Martha sometimes saw, through narrow slits, a flash of steel in lantern light.

  Other marines — more than a hundred in blue and green — came marching toward them down a way just wide enough, and passed so close as their officer called out, "Milord," and touched his breastplate, that Martha heard their armor's little clicks and slidings, smelled sweat and oil and sour birch-gum chew. Then they were gone, leaving only the fading sounds of their boots striking stone all together.

  The Bad-lip Lord led on, striding so Martha had to trot to keep up, the file of marines trotting to keep up with her. They came to broad stone stairs, and went right up them past many people coming down, who smiled and nodded to the Bad-lip Lord. One of the men said, "Later," to him as they went by. All these men and women were rich beyond doubt — wore linen, velvet, and thick fur robes that blew against their fine boots in the wind. The men belted heavy short-swords; the women
wore long, sheathed daggers in wide, jeweled sashes, and every one looked a lord or lady, except for several Ordinary women in brown wool, following their mistresses as tote-maids.

  Martha- stopped to do a stoop-curtsy to a group of no-question Extraordinaries, so as not to get into trouble, but the Bad-lip Lord took her arm and pulled her on up the steps. "Move!" he said.

  Two of those women smiled at him and called, "Sayre...!" But he didn't answer. When one lady's fur robe blew a little open, Martha saw she wore a wide skirt embroidered with yellow thread and paneled in blue, perhaps silk from the south.... They hurried on through four high-ceilinged rooms, one after the other. There were people in all of them, the same kind of people as on the stairs outside, any one of them looking richer than a mayor.... Then the Bad-lip Lord led down steep steps and into a long runnel of curved stone courses — the first tunnel Martha had ever been in, though she'd heard of them. The marines' boots, as they followed, sounded like the red ship's rowing-drum. The wind blew bitter after them along the stone, whining like a puppy.

  They came out of that darkness into daylight, then through a wide iron-barred gate into a great sunny garden in a gray stone square. But the garden, the whole space of plantings, was an inside-outside! The ceiling, wider than any other ceiling Martha had seen, was made of pieces of clear glass set in frames of metal. It was all held up by iron posts three times the height of a man, and as many as trees in a crab-apple orchard. There seemed to be at least a Warm-time acre under it, with rows of broccoli and cabbage, and what looked like onions planted at the distant edge. "Vegetables..."

  The Bad-lip Lord made a face, said, "Flooding Jesus..." and walked even faster, but she kept up.

  They walked through that wonderful garden along a graveled path — the file of marines still coming behind them — went out another door, then turned and turned down a twisted staircase to a stone walkway, and into another glass-roofed garden. They were going so fast now, they were almost running. It seemed to Martha there was no end to Island, no end to gray stone and the cold smell of stone. No end to icy river wind, to soldiers — marines — and Extraordinaries in jewels and fine furs. No end to women who smiled at the Bad-lip Lord as if he was alone, with no up-river girl, big as a plow horse, trotting behind him in a wrinkled homespun dress, a greasy sheepskin, and muddy shoes.