River Runs Deep

by Jennifer Bradbury

  “She’s got no light,” Elias said, staring into the dark behind him. “Jonah never did either.”

  Nick led him through the little tunnel. “All scouts trained to know routes without light. Can walk ’em by feel. And silent, too. That way, if they have to run ahead of somebody nosing in who got no business coming, they won’t be seen.”

  “Can you do it?” Elias asked. “Down here, I mean?”

  “Go without the light? When it suits me.”

  Elias thought about that—they were like bats, sailing around in the dark, not smashing themselves into walls. Or homing pigeons, knowing the right way to fly home. And then he thought about the danger of it—the fact that one misplaced foot could mean the end. His stomach tightened up like a figure eight knot.

  Elias followed Nick over the wall. Things looked just as they had been when he arrived the first time. There were people at the school, folk laughing as they stooped over cook fires, a few dipping bottles and jars into a big kettle of boiling water, still others stretched out on bedrolls here and there.

  “What are they doing?” Elias asked as they passed by the people with the kettle and the bottles.

  “Washing up. We boil ’em good before they’re refilled. Got that notion off Doctor Croghan. He has Lillian and me and th’others cook all his tools and bleeding things before he uses them on y’all.”

  “They really moved all those bottles in and out on the river?” There must have been fifty or sixty awaiting a dip in the kettle.

  “Mmhm. Backing up now, like the travelers. But folk we move in mostly through the main entrance.”

  “You’d never!”

  Nick grinned slyly. “Most runaways cain’t find the river entrances, only know that Haven is here. So they come through the main opening like everybody else. Getting ’crost the road and by the hotel risky, but if they can manage that, we bring ’em in when it’s safe. Mat brung Josie in,” he explained, spitting again before adding, “I reckon the doll’s her thanks.”

  “Don’t anybody recognize the strangers?” Elias asked.

  “Naw,” Nick said. “Only ones around here permanent are Croghan’s slaves and Croghan himself. Th’other hands don’t say nothing, and Croghan’s got enough to occupy him. Most guests don’t pay enough mind to even notice we’re different from one another.”

  Elias knew it was true. Knew it because of the way he’d not paid attention at first. Knew it because of the way even now he had a hard time picturing the features of the girl who served them back home. He felt a twinge of shame.

  Nick didn’t seem to notice. “See them?” He pointed to a young man and a girl about eighteen cozied up next to the light of a fire as they shared a book.

  “What about ’em?” Elias asked.

  “Got married two weeks ago. Met down here.”

  “Y’all got a minister?” Elias asked, staring at the pair.

  “Hughes does it. Ain’t a bad preacher, neither.”

  “Hughes does it all,” Elias said. “You think he’s got a plan cooked up yet?”

  “We’ll see.” As they made their way to Hughes, a few hands rose in greeting to Nick. When folks set eyes on Elias, men touched their caps and women whispered blessings.

  “Why they doing that?”

  “Thankful.”

  It made Elias feel funny. “But I didn’t do anything.”

  “Like I tol’ Josie—you don’t say much. That’s a whole lot to us and them.”

  Hughes was perched on his rock, eating a bowl of steaming mash and talking to Stephen. He lifted his chin toward Nick and Elias as they approached.

  “I told them what Pennyrile said to you,” Stephen explained. “Did you read the letter?”

  Nick nodded to Elias. “He did.”

  “It only said ‘Stand ready,’ ” Elias reported.

  Stephen and the others let it settle. Elias knew they understood what he’d worked out since reading the note: Pennyrile was confident that he’d get what he came for soon.

  Elias waited as Hughes scooped a lump of porridge with a wedge of corn cake. The man took a long pull from a glass bottle like the ones Elias saw the others washing earlier. Then he wiped his mouth on a red handkerchief and began carefully, “I’ve been thinking . . .”

  A small crowd began to gather around them. Soon Jonah was at his side.

  “I’ve been thinking about our problem,” Hughes continued after he took another drink of the water. “And the more I think on it, the more delicate I find it becomes.”

  “Not if we do what we ought to,” one man cried, edging forward. “He’s an old man. He’s a criminal, and he’s consumptive to boot. He ain’t bound to live long either way. And if we just move him along—”

  “Daniel!” Hughes said, the smoke and thunder back in his voice. “Killing him, no matter how rotten the man may be, won’t do.”

  Elias sat spellbound. They were talking about killing someone! A peculiar thought flitted through his mind—the knights and Arthur had to go around killing monsters and villains and giants all the time. He expected they wouldn’t have lost any sleep over someone like Pennyrile. But Elias was with Hughes: killing Pennyrile still sounded wrong.

  Stephen chimed in. “If you kill him, it doesn’t mean somebody else won’t come looking. Doesn’t mean his crew will just give up on him. Or on finding the spring.”

  “Exactly right,” Hughes said. “Exactly right.”

  Jonah whispered to Elias, “Could use us a glamour right ’bout now, wouldn’t you say?” A glamour would have been just the thing. When Merlin had a problem, or needed things to go a certain way, he used his magic. A dose of magic at the moment would be a whole lot neater and raise a lot fewer questions than a dead pirate.

  “Wouldn’t even have to last long,” Elias offered.

  And the possibility struck him. A wonderful possibility.

  A glamour didn’t have to last.

  Only long enough to fool somebody.

  Elias looked wide-eyed at Jonah. Jonah must have had the same thought, for he whispered, “We ain’t got to kill Pennyrile. We jes’ got to trick him.”

  “Right!” Elias said excitedly, loudly. Too loudly. He sensed all eyes upon him. Even Hughes stared at him.

  “Something to say?” Hughes leaned forward.

  “The best thing to do is to give him what he wants so he’ll go away,” Elias blurted out.

  Some of the men crowded in on him. Elias and Jonah sprang to their feet.

  Daniel stepped so close, he could have bumped chests with Elias. “Stephen may be fool enough to trust this boy, but it don’t mean we all are! We got no reason to believe he ain’t working with Pennyrile already.”

  Jonah made himself a wall between Elias and Daniel. “We didn’t mean—”

  Elias drew himself up as tall as he could go. “I’d never!”

  “Simmer down, the pack of you,” Hughes rumbled.

  “I meant we could trick him!” Elias fumed, not caring a whit that Hughes told him to be quiet.

  “Go on,” Hughes said.

  “You tell ’em, Jonah.” Elias didn’t trust his words to come out right. He felt the way he had on the day he’d punched Theodore Coates in the school yard. That feeling of running out of words, something else taking over.

  Jonah rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Elias and me was talking about Merlin and how he used his magic, made one person look like another when it suited him. And there’s this other story Merlin ain’t in but a green knight—”

  “Merlin? Green knights?” Daniel barked. He swung round to face Hughes. “We ain’t got time for fairy tales—”

  “What Jonah’s sayin’,” Elias broke in, “is that all we got to do is lead Pennyrile to some other spring or pool or something and make him think it’s the one y’all get your tonic from. He’s sick enough to believe what you give him. And he believes it works, thinks that’s why I’m better. He’s known about it the whole time he’s been down here, so he ought to be rea
dy to believe what you show him.”

  “It’s a kind of glamour,” Jonah put in, sounding proud to impress somebody with the word.

  No one spoke. Even Daniel seemed stuck dumb. Elias wasn’t sure if it was because they all thought the notion was so foolish, or so brilliant. Finally Stephen broke the silence. “It’d have to be near one of the river exits,” he said. “Pennyrile probably already knows we move most of it out on the river.”

  “And it’d have to be off the main runs we use,” Hughes added. “So they won’t see anything we don’t want them to.”

  “There’s that pool, just up from Lake Lethe,” Nick said excitedly. “Got a bit of that funny taste too. Might serve.”

  “Far enough away,” Hughes said at last as he began drawing crosshatch patterns in the sand with his cane.

  Even Daniel warmed to the notion. “That’d put him on the River Styx, which we don’t even use—”

  “Meaning the way out on the Echo and upstream would be safe for us,” Hughes supplied.

  The prospect of the way North opening again, of Haven finally exhaling after having held its breath for so long, seemed to brighten every eye.

  “Still . . . Pennyrile’s smart,” Hughes went on, somewhat reluctantly. “He may be desperate, but he’s too smart not to be suspicious. He’ll wonder why you’re willing to help him now.”

  Stephen was grim. “I thought the same thing. And I think I got a plan.”

  Stephen’s plan was the last thing Elias ever expected him to say.

  “I’m going to tell him he has to take me North.”

  Everyone froze.

  “Stephen—” Hughes began.

  “I’ve worked it over a thousand different ways. He won’t believe me unless he thinks I’m getting something out of it. And there can’t be anything I’d want from him except that.”

  The fire popped and hissed in the gloom. There they stood, surrounded by dozens of runaways who wanted to escape, biding their time until it was safe enough to continue on their way. And then there was Stephen, perhaps the only one who wanted to stay. The cave was his home, he’d said. He was as happy as he figured he could be.

  But he would give it all up. Run. So others could do the same.

  “You can’t . . . ,” Elias began, not sure what else to say.

  “I have to,” Stephen said, though there was no joy in saying it. “You all know it too. Plus, if he and his crew are busy smuggling me North, then they’ll be off the river for a spell, and give you all a clear shot out.”

  Nick laid a hand on Stephen’s shoulder. “You’re sure?”

  Stephen clenched his jaw and nodded once.

  Hughes seemed unable to speak for a good long while. Finally he said, “You’ve kept us going. And now you’ll give us a chance. We can’t ever make good on that debt.”

  Stephen just gazed at the sand beneath his feet. Elias was proud and sad and disbelieving all at once. Stephen was in every path and route and nook of this cave. He was this cave. His leaving was like . . . like . . . Arthur without Excalibur.

  But even Arthur’s time ended.

  Chapter Seventeen

  JUG SLING

  After supper Stephen and Elias approached Pennyrile’s hut. “You don’t think we ought to give it a day?” Elias whispered.

  “It has to be now,” Stephen insisted, sloshing the jug of the special water they’d brought along in case Pennyrile required proof. “Before he has time to learn more.”

  At the door, Pennyrile pulled back the curtain. His boots were laced up tight and his neck wrap had been freshly changed, almost as if he’d been waiting for them to arrive.

  “Evenin’, sir,” Stephen whispered, looking round as if somebody was going to pop out of the shadows. Pennyrile held his slate in one hand and his chalk in the other, but his arms were crossed.

  “There was no new letter,” Elias offered without being asked.

  Pennyrile shrugged without taking his eyes off Stephen.

  Stephen stepped forward. “I reckon we should talk.”

  Elias made to go back to his hut, but Pennyrile slapped his hand against the slate.

  “I figure you two—” Elias began, but Pennyrile pointed at the ground at his feet. He wanted Elias to stay.

  “Elias tells me you’re looking for something.” Stephen kept his voice low, but the two remaining pigeons in the loft still shied away.

  Pennyrile didn’t move. So Stephen went on.

  “How’d you know the water came from in here?” Stephen asked him.

  Pennyrile simply stared. He had no intention of giving up what he knew or how he knew it. Elias found it maddening, the waiting and guessing and wondering if this was going to work at all.

  “Look,” Stephen said, Pennyrile’s stony silence beginning to unnerve him as well. “I’ll take you to the water, but I’m not doing it out of kindness.”

  Pennyrile’s eyebrow lifted a hair. Stephen’s tone had drawn him out. It figured to Elias. Kindness didn’t seem to be in Pennyrile’s wheelhouse. Manipulation. Bargains. Skullduggery. Those were languages he spoke.

  The man lifted the slate and wrote hurriedly. I have money.

  “Don’t want money . . . ,” Stephen began, sounding more confident now that he’d moved Pennyrile to words. “I heard about a rough crew aboard a boat out on the Green. I wonder if they’re anything to do with you?”

  Pennyrile’s mustache quirked at the mention of the riverboat.

  “I wondered if with the pigeons and all, if that might be who’d you’d been writing to—”

  At this, Pennyrile began to scrawl frantically. Elias glanced at the birds. He was surprised to see that one had a little bit of paper wrapped around its leg.

  Curious, he thought. He’d figured Pennyrile had given up on the pigeons. How long had it been there?

  The chalk screeched across the slate as Pennyrile finished writing. No more nonsense. What do you want?

  Stephen took off his hat and rubbed his head. “Safe passage,” he said. “You and your crew will carry me up to the Illinois territory.”

  Pennyrile tilted his head to one side. Running? he wrote.

  “You and your boat may be my best chance.”

  When?

  Stephen put his hat back on. “I’ll show you the spring tonight,” he said. “There’s a new moon night after next. That’ll be the best time for me to slip away.”

  Water tonight? Pennyrile wrote, his eyes gleaming.

  “Sooner you get it, the sooner you start feeling stronger. And there’s nobody about to wonder what we’re up to but Lillian, and she’ll hold her tongue.”

  Pennyrile tapped his chalk against the slate, thinking. Then he hung the slate around his neck with a leather cord and gestured toward the door.

  Elias felt himself exhale. It might work. It just might.

  Stephen led them out. “Go on to bed, Elias—”

  Pennyrile rapped on the slate.

  “What now?” Stephen said.

  Pennyrile wrote, The boy comes.

  This had not been part of the plan. Stephen was supposed to go with Pennyrile alone. Elias was meant to stay behind.

  “I don’t—” Stephen began, but Pennyrile was writing again.

  Witness.

  It took Elias a second to figure out what he meant. His eyes flashed back and forth between the word and Pennyrile’s eyes. Then it dawned on him: Pennyrile didn’t trust Stephen, but he still saw Elias as an ally.

  “Fine,” Stephen relented, handing the water jug to Elias to carry. “But the both of you stay close and keep quiet.”

  They passed Lillian sitting by the fire. Her back was squared to them, and she was staring straight ahead, shaking her head stiffly from side to side. Elias could tell she was mad enough to walk right through that fire, but figured she’d done all her hollering at him when Stephen explained the plan to her beforehand.

  But someone was watching them go. Nedra stood at her window, a candle in her hand. She seemed about to
cry out, but fell to coughing instead, and Lillian jumped from her seat and ran to Nedra’s window, blocking her from view.

  “Elias!” Stephen whispered sharply. “Move!”

  Elias hurried to catch up and soon was near enough to smell the sour stink coming off those wraps on Pennyrile’s neck. He expected that if they lost Pennyrile, they could always hunt him down by scent. Not that that seemed likely. Pennyrile was already working hard, chest heaving, face glistening with sweat.

  At the path, Stephen handed Pennyrile a lantern. “We’re going deep down, sir,” Stephen said. “Farther than even Croghan knows about. Stay right on my heel. But we got to move if we’re going to get you two back before morning rounds.”

  Pennyrile waved his hands impatiently. He didn’t need to write the words out for them to know that he meant for Stephen to get on with it.

  They worked their way down the passage, three lights bouncing off the walls, three pairs of feet shuffling softly down the corridors. They filed past Giant’s Coffin, descended into Wooden Bowl, and back up to cross Bottomless Pit. Pennyrile crossed over the narrow footbridge without a moment’s hesitation. He had gumption, Elias had to give him that. But then again, he figured a body didn’t come to be a river pirate without a little bit of fire in the belly. Still, Elias was worried—more worried than he had been even before. If Pennyrile had that kind of steel in him, and was cagey enough to insist Elias came along so Stephen couldn’t pull something, would their plan be enough to trick him after all?

  Then again, the farther they went, the more often Pennyrile stopped to rest. He was sick. Bad sick.

  From the pit they wound down deeper, through the sideways squeeze of Fat Man’s Misery, into the vastness of River Hall, where Elias’s heart leaped a little at the prospect of finally seeing the river. He smelled it before he saw it, the heavy misting scent of river water, the whisper of the flow growing louder as they drew closer. But the joy sucked right out of him when he finally glimpsed it. The dark water lagged by slowly at their feet, as if it were confused at having found itself flowing underground, as if it were giving up. He wasn’t sure a river belonged underground.

  A little boat tethered up near the edge bounced against the rocks.