River Runs Deep

by Jennifer Bradbury

  “Help me cast off,” Stephen said as he nimbly stepped into the boat. Elias set the jug in the boat and steadied the bow while Pennyrile climbed in. Stephen then grabbed a long pole laid up inside the dory and stood in the stern while Elias slipped the loop of rope from the rock it was tied around, bringing it to the boat as he hopped in. Stephen dipped the pole into the water and pushed off.

  Pennyrile picked up the jug and tipped it up to drink, loosening his scarf. Elias tried and failed not to gape at what he saw there.

  It was no wonder Dr. Croghan called it the King’s Evil. It looked evil, like fruit rotting from the inside out, great bruising shades of purple rimmed with yellow, swollen out to the size of crabapples, up and down the side of his neck, smeared in the ointment and crusting at the edges.

  “It’s a tricky approach from here.” Stephen’s voice was almost apologetic. “But from outside, you can start where the Nolin forks off. You know that place?”

  Pennyrile indicated he did, but Elias could see he wasn’t listening. Not really. He was staring at Stephen’s pocket. Elias followed his eyes and saw the shape of the little notebook outlined against the worn fabric.

  Something passed through Elias, like a ghost shuddering by.

  This something was trouble. Elias knew it deep, but there was no way he could say. Not now. Not until they’d seen it through.

  They slipped off the river, across a shallow channel and into a wide body of still water. Ever the tour guide, Stephen announced, “Lake Lethe.”

  He poled across the surface, sending the water rippling out to the edges of the cave, where it slapped against the shores, echoing like the chiming of tiny bells. Eerie and beautiful, the chorus grew stronger and fuller as they crossed the lake, but in the silence of the boat, in the worry that seemed to chant inside Elias’s head, the bells seemed to toll out a warning. And if he listened closer, they almost sounded like voices whispering. He’d not have been surprised at all to see the Lady of the Lake staring up at him from the other side of the mirrored surface.

  Stephen docked alongside a tunnel whose bottom edge sat a few feet above the lake’s surface, a trickle of water spilling over the lip. Elias tied the boat off to a handy spire as Stephen stepped up into the tunnel. Pennyrile followed, with Elias coming last. They climbed up the chute, feet sloshing in the water, then they ducked through a tunnel so low that they had to crawl. Pennyrile was struggling now, his breath growing ever more labored, sweating heavily.

  Then, all of a sudden, they could stand again. They had arrived.

  The pool was no more than four feet across, still as glass except when a drop fell from the rock above. “Water drips in all the time, but it’s spring-fed from below,” Stephen explained, anticipating their question. “And it’s as full as it was the day we found it. We been drawing off it near two years, but it never reduces.”

  Pennyrile frowned. He seemed to be waiting for something more.

  “Go on, drink,” Stephen said. “Sweeter water you won’t find. Folks paying near a dollar a bottle for a little one, but reckon you can set whatever price you want when word gets out what it can do.”

  Pennyrile sighed, screwed up his mouth like he wanted to say something, but then wrote.

  We? Who else?

  Stephen realized his mistake, but he recovered. “Me and Nick and Mat. We’re the only ones that know about it. I heard about it from a man who was here before me, who heard about it from a fellow before him, who was brought here by an old Shawnee.”

  Pennyrile rubbed his thumb over the edge of the slate.

  “But Nick and Mat won’t be any trouble. There’s enough water for them to take a little and keep selling on the sly.”

  Pennyrile then pointed at the shaft beyond, raised his eyebrows in question.

  “Dead end,” Stephen explained, digging into his pack and producing a bottle for Pennyrile to fill.

  But instead of taking it, Pennyrile lowered himself, scooped up some water in his palms, and drank it noisily. Then he removed his scarf, soaked a section of it in the cold water, and wrapped it back around his neck. Elias caught Stephen’s eye, trying to figure out if Pennyrile believed that this was indeed the pool.

  Elias almost felt bad for Pennyrile. Despite how awful he was, he was also awfully sick, no question. Elias felt terrible giving him false hope.

  Pennyrile breathed deep and smiled like it was the best water he’d ever drunk in all his life. He pointed at the jug in Elias’s hand and motioned for him to dump it out. Elias caught his meaning.

  “Go on, Elias,” Stephen said. Elias stepped aside and emptied the jug, the water sloshing onto the floor. Then he submerged the jug in the spring, the chill near freezing his hand. He lifted it out when the last bubble rose to the surface, stopped up the jug, and handed it to Pennyrile. Only it must have slipped from Pennyrile’s grasp, because the next thing Elias knew, it was crashing to the stone floor and busting all to pieces.

  Stephen had lunged forward to try to catch it, but he was too slow, stumbling onto his hands and knees. “Blast it, Elias,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Elias said. But Pennyrile didn’t seem to mind. He even grabbed Stephen about the waist and one shoulder, and helped him to his feet.

  “We can fetch you more jugs,” Stephen told Pennyrile. Pennyrile wrote.

  We can manage.

  Stephen and Elias exchanged looks.

  “Then we’re square?” Stephen asked. “You got what you came for? And you’ll take me North?”

  Pennyrile nodded emphatically.

  “I guess that’s it then,” Elias said, maybe a little too excited. “We ought to head back.”

  Pennyrile tapped his nose and pointed at Elias, winking. Then he ducked down with his light and crawled back through the passage without even waiting for Stephen to lead them through. As Pennyrile’s light faded, Elias whispered, “Think it worked?”

  Stephen closed his eyes. “Hope so. Lord, I hope so.”

  At the boat, Stephen took up the pole and made to shove off, but Pennyrile held up a hand and stood, sure as sure on legs that had spent plenty of time on boats. With his chalk he made a small white x on the wall above the passage, and sat back down. Elias almost collapsed with relief.

  Pennyrile was marking the way.

  And if he was marking the way, it meant he’d come back.

  It meant he believed them.

  * * *

  Even Stephen seemed to relax as they made their way back to the main cave. He asked Pennyrile if he needed any markers from the place where the Echo came out, where Pennyrile’s crew could come in and make their way to the false spring, but Pennyrile tapped his temple. He knew the spot.

  When they were close enough to the huts to smell the smoke from the fires, Pennyrile took up his slate. Can find my way from here.

  “I’ll see you back,” Stephen offered.

  Pennyrile waved him off, wrote Night is young for a spry pair like you. Expect you have another adventure waiting?

  Elias and Stephen exchanged a look. “Well . . .” Stephen began. It was past midnight, Elias figured, but he was too keyed up to sleep anyway. Plus, if they hurried they could get down to Haven and tell Hughes and everyone that Pennyrile had taken the bait.

  “ ’Member that spot you meant to show me?” Elias asked.

  Stephen took a beat, then nodded. “Mummy Ledge, right. I suppose we have time.” He turned to Pennyrile. “You sure you’ll be all right?”

  Pennyrile saluted with the hand still holding his chalk, and gave what Elias guessed must pass for a smile. Then he tromped up the path and back into the camp. He already seemed to be moving better, a little quicker. The thought of the healing water was already doing its work.

  When he was good and gone, Stephen said in a low voice, “I don’t know about this, Elias.”

  “Why? He seems pleased as punch. Notice how much quicker we got back up here? Like he thinks the water is already working or something!”

  “A fell
ow like Pennyrile is most dangerous when he seems pleased about something,” Stephen said carefully. “C’mon. Let’s go tell Hughes it’s done.”

  They were nearly to Haven, already past Smiley and quickening their steps. Elias was too busy watching his feet as they hurried when he should have been looking up. His head glanced against a sharp edge of rock jutting down from the ceiling of the maze.

  “Bells and bibles!” Elias said, hand flying to his temple, actual stars dancing across his eyes. He felt the blood seeping at his fingers.

  “Watch yourself, Elias!” Stephen slowed and reached into his pocket for a kerchief. “We don’t have time for—”

  Then he stopped.

  He thrust his hand into his other pocket. His eyes went round as marbles. Then he ripped off his coat and turned it inside out.

  “Stephen?” Elias asked, no longer worrying about the scrape, mopping up the blood with the tail of his green scarf.

  “It’s gone.” Stephen voice was a whisper.

  “What’s gone?” Elias asked, touching his forehead and then looking at his fingers. The bleeding had already stopped.

  “My book!”

  His book? “Your notebook? The one with—”

  “The maps.”

  Elias’s heart started thudding. “Maybe you dropped it on the path?”

  “I keep the pocket buttoned. Always. It’s never fallen out.”

  Suddenly it felt like the rock was giving way under their feet. “Pennyrile.” Elias gasped. He recalled the way he’d stared at Stephen’s pocket as he poled the boat. And he’d admired the knots Pennyrile had conjured up in his scarves, knew those fingers were nimble. Nimble enough to undo a button and lift the notebook when . . .

  “When he helped me up,” Stephen said at the same moment Elias was thinking it. He jammed his arms into his coat sleeves. “He filched it. C’mon!”

  Neither of them spoke as they raced back up to the ward. Neither of them said what they knew now to be true. They’d been wrong about what Pennyrile was after. Marking the tunnel had been his own bit of skullduggery, pretending they were giving him what he was after, when all the while he’d taken it for himself. They’d bet on him being after either the water or Haven. They hadn’t dreamed he was after both.

  They made it to the ward faster than Elias thought possible, but it was still too late. Lillian was slumped on the floor. Stephen ran to her side and helped her up. “Lillian?”

  She stirred, rubbing the back of her neck. “Something hit me.”

  “Where’s Pennyrile?” Stephen demanded, holding her head in his hands.

  She winced. “He came back a good while ago. Went in his room and then a little later—”

  Stephen looked at Elias, fear in his eyes. “Check his hut!”

  Elias bolted across the courtyard and threw back the curtain.

  “Gone!” Elias yelled. His eyes fell on the pigeon loft.

  There was only one bird left inside.

  He stepped closer.

  The big one, the one with the message tied on, was missing.

  Missing along with the one last message Pennyrile had ready, Elias supposed. Elias imagined the message tied to that pigeon’s leg must have been a simple one. One telling someone to come and fetch him. And he’d probably carried it aboveground himself.

  His heart sank as he tore out of the hut, racing for the entrance to the cave, Stephen at his heels.

  Chapter Eighteen

  TURK’ S HEAD

  Elias grew winded as they hiked to the entrance. Neither he nor Stephen said out loud how hopeless it was to chase Pennyrile—he had nearly an hour on them, what with how long they’d taken to realize he’d swiped the book. Once he got himself out of the cave, there was no telling where he’d go.

  They burst into the open air, the gray light of dawn pouring softly over the edge of the ridge above them. Elias ran ahead to the steps but found the rope piled in a heap, five or six yards down slope from where its end usually hung.

  “Sliced the rope.” Stephen cursed as they began to climb. It slowed them down, not having the rope to steady themselves, but they made it to the top faster than Elias would have thought possible.

  Still, Pennyrile was nowhere in sight.

  “They must have had it planned from the beginning!” Elias reasoned. “And then he let the pigeon go when he got up here.”

  “Sending word ahead to his crew,” Stephen added. He threw his hat against the ground and half growled, half bellowed. “We should have known! We should have figured on him knowing about all of us.”

  “Can he use the maps to get around?” Elias asked, stooping to pick up the hat, dusting it off.

  The birds were starting to wake up, chits and calls from all corners of the wood.

  “You saw it yourself,” Stephen said. “That night when you asked me why all the routes seemed to bend around that hollow place on the main map. You didn’t know what you were looking at then, but that was Haven.”

  “Just an empty space on the map?”

  “Only way I knew to make sure that if anybody ever found my notes they wouldn’t see it—”

  “But if a fella knew to look for it in the first place, and then figured on you maybe hiding it, even in your own maps—”

  “It’d be proof enough,” Stephen admitted.

  Elias watched the crimson of the sun creep up over the ridge. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a sunrise. But it didn’t feel hopeful, not at all.

  “Maybe . . . maybe he won’t know what to make of it,” Elias ventured.

  Stephen grabbed up a twig, broke it in half, and then into halves again.

  “We’ve been fools,” he said bitterly. “He knew what to make of it as soon as he came down here.”

  “But how could he?”

  Stephen let all the broken pieces of the twig fall from his fingers. “Bounty hunters been looking for a while. Trackers have tried for years to connect the railroad with the cave. Everybody figured since slaves have been hiding all over the countryside, why wouldn’t a place as big as Mammoth be better than a barn or under the floorboards of a house?”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble,” Elias said. “Getting himself sick, holing up in a cave, training all those pigeons . . . for what? How much could all of ’em be worth?”

  Stephen’s glare was dark. For the first time since he’d been there, Elias felt as young as he truly was. Stephen and the others had been treating him as a friend, an equal. But he wasn’t, and not because of his color only. But because in truth, he was just a kid. A pretty dumb one at the moment. One who let himself ask dumb questions. He stared at the ground, too ashamed to meet Stephen’s eyes.

  Stephen threw his head back. “Hard question.”

  “I meant—”

  “I know what you meant,” Stephen said, his tone a little kinder. “Hard to answer, though. Some of them know what they were worth on their masters’ inventories. Others don’t. But usually the bounty for bringing back a runaway is more than the price of a slave.”

  “Why?”

  “ A master can’t have slaves running off. Can’t have a tracker catch one just to find the nearest convenient market or farm to sell him off to. If the owner pays above price, the slave is likelier to end up back where he started. Back where the master can make an example of him for anyone else who might get notions about taking off.”

  Elias didn’t know what to say.

  “I expect if Pennyrile even got half the people in that cave out for himself, he and his crew profit somewhere north of five thousand dollars,” Stephen said.

  Elias’s jaw fell open. It was a powerful sum of money. He knew for a fact that the house in Virginia cost less than five hundred dollars and it was built brand-new.

  “We got to do something!” Elias clambered to his feet, pounding his fist against his thigh.

  “We got to do something, indeed.” Stephen stood. “We have to tell Hughes.”

  * * *

  “Y
ou mean he’ll be coming here?” Hughes loomed over Stephen, furious.

  “We all wanted him to be after the water. How could I—”

  Hughes’s grip tightened on the shaft of his cane. “How could you make a map to this place?”

  Elias stared, stunned. Even Hughes hadn’t known about the notebook!

  But Stephen wasn’t fazed. “I didn’t! I left the area where Haven is on the map marked unexplored. Nick and Mat and me even marked all the paths leading in as dead ends in case anybody ever wandered this far. But to someone who knows to look—”

  “We have guards,” Hughes interrupted, thinking ahead. “Sentries. And we can draw back farther from the river—”

  “Too dangerous,” Stephen said. “If he means to catch runaways, the exits will be unsafe. And if he finds this place . . . If they somehow slip past the sentries—”

  “Don’t suppose you were kind enough to write up all about our security in your little map book, were you?” Hughes snapped.

  Stephen fought to keep his voice steady. “ ’Course not. But if he comes here with weapons, with enough men—”

  Hughes waved a hand. “We can’t slip but one or two people in here at a time. He can’t get a whole gang down here at once.”

  “Either way,” Stephen said, “we must get folk ready to leave.”

  “I decide when we leave!” Hughes roared. Silence fell heavy around them.

  When Elias and Stephen had come in, life in Haven had been just stirring, breakfast over cook fires, folks still huddling under blankets. But now Elias saw that a small crowd had gathered round, eyes wide with fear, mouths set tight as they listened to Hughes and Stephen argue.

  Hughes collected himself. “We start leaving. Tonight.”

  “But they could still be up on the river—”

  “We’ll send scouts to find a good route. Three or four will go out and then double back to say if it’s safe. If they don’t come back, we’ll know it ain’t—”

  “But . . . the scouts might get caught!” Elias protested.

  “That’s all we can do!” Hughes said. “If it’s clear, we’ll keep going every night until we’re all out. But in the meantime we’ll shift to a better hiding place.”