River Runs Deep

by Jennifer Bradbury

  “There’s no other place big enough and hidden enough for everyone,” Stephen said. “I don’t know how we’ll get supplies in—”

  “You’ll have to,” Hughes said, daring Stephen to say more. Stephen started to, then bit back his words.

  “I’ll go tonight,” Davie offered, stepping into the ring.

  Elias looked at Davie in awe.

  “Thank you, Davie,” Stephen said.

  Elias couldn’t stay quiet any longer. This was all partly his fault. Pennyrile hadn’t gotten close until he’d crooked Elias into carrying letters for him. And now this. It made him want to bury himself in some hole deeper than where they stood now, the shame he felt at the danger he’d put them in. Elias swallowed hard. “How long do you think you’ll have before he comes?”

  Stephen and Hughes exchanged looks. “There’s no way to know,” Stephen said. “But I can’t imagine he’d wait long. Not having left me behind to warn everyone.”

  He was right. They had to be ready. Soon.

  “Get some extra bodies on the river watches,” Hughes ordered.

  Men began to stir into action. But something troubled Elias.

  “Who says he’ll only try the river?”

  Stephen frowned. “He’s a river pirate, Elias. And that’s the clearest way through the middle of the ball of nothing on my map. It’s what I’d do.”

  Elias saw the reason, but Pennyrile and Stephen couldn’t be more different. How did any of them know what he would do?

  Chapter Nineteen

  ANGLER’ S LOOP

  News of Pennyrile’s disappearance set the whole cave on its head. There were search parties above and belowground. Croghan suspended his rounds to direct and participate in the searches. He called all the slaves off the tours and had them join the hunt. And though Elias was confined to his hut and spoke precious little to Stephen or Nick, he expected Haven was just as panicked.

  But after two days with no signs of Pennyrile, and with no news of his appearance at any of the towns nearby, the uproar finally began to ebb. Croghan could neglect his patients no longer, so he resumed his examinations.

  The doctor, of course, continued to worry, as did Elias, though for different reasons. Two days Pennyrile had been gone. Two days to prepare. But for what?

  And Davie had not returned from his scouting mission.

  “You gonna send out another search party later?” Elias asked, cautious, as the doctor examined him.

  “After the tours are finished for the day, I’ll have Stephen and Nick and Mat go out again. I’m still flummoxed by how he slipped off in the first place. Lillian really should have kept a closer watch.”

  Lillian had fibbed to the doctor, forced to say that she’d gone in to sit with Nedra and that Pennyrile must have snuck off then. Croghan had been fit to be tied. Elias wondered how much Croghan would worry about Pennyrile if he knew that the rogue had hit poor Lillian in the back of the head like a coward.

  Elias burned with wanting to tell him.

  For his part, the doctor didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He’d listened to Elias’s chest three times. “I sent Stephen to look again today. Nick is out as well. I can’t afford to delay the tours any longer, so Mat will be taking a group this morning. I’ve a couple of other men who mostly work up at the hotel out looking in the forest and along the river, but—” He broke off, looking past Elias. “I can’t deny I fear the worst.”

  Elias stayed quiet. Doctor Croghan had no idea that the truth was much more awful than what he was probably imagining.

  “The growth on his neck was spreading,” Croghan said, sounding so sorry about it that it was hard for Elias to keep back what he knew about Pennyrile. “My treatments weren’t doing much for the poor man. I shouldn’t have admitted him in the first place, but he was so persistent. And so devoted to my treatments after he arrived.”

  Elias dug his fingernails into his palms. It rankled him something fierce, having to go on letting the doctor think Pennyrile was some poor lost lamb.

  Elias still wondered if they should—could—trust the doctor. But Croghan, in the end, owned Stephen and Nick and all the others. Maybe he treated his slaves better than some, but how would he react to learning that those slaves he trusted so much were hiding runaways right under his nose, in his own cave?

  It was a big leap to go from being decent to your own slaves to wishing others could get free. And helping runaways was a crime.

  Bedivere flutter-hopped from the table to the quilt, curving his neck down toward Elias’s hand to see if he had any feed hidden in his palm.

  Croghan eyed the bird. “We noticed one of the pigeons he kept was missing, so that makes me think he might have been going toward the entrance to release it, though I thought he’d abandoned the practice weeks ago. He could have gotten lost on the way there or back . . . or fallen or . . .” He trailed off, still watching the bird. He tilted his head, looking oddly like Bedivere. “You two had become friendly, hadn’t you?”

  Elias’s face grew hot. Friendly. The word made his flesh goose up. But he only said, “We visited a little. When I fetched food for Bedivere.”

  “Did he say anything? Anything odd?”

  Elias coaxed Bedivere onto his wrist. “Odd?”

  “About things inside the cave?”

  Elias was careful not to react at all. “Not to my recollection—”

  “It’s just that”—the doctor checked Elias’s eyes—“he once asked me about springs in the cave.”

  Elias focused on Bedivere, the way the feathers on his wings nestled neatly into each other, the knobs on his toes. Anything but the doctor and his question. “We didn’t talk much about the cave,” Elias said.

  “I think he’d gotten into his head there was some fountain of youth in there somewhere,” the doctor said sadly, feeling around Elias’s neck. “He asked about it only once, but—” He stopped himself, fingertips going to the scab that had formed at Elias’s temple.

  “What happened here?” the doctor asked.

  Elias shied away, the scrape still stinging, the skin bruised and sore around it. “Just knocked my head. Being careless.”

  The doctor seemed dissatisfied, but Elias was saved from telling further half truths when Nick appeared at the door.

  “Sir?” Nick was breathing fast, the top of his pack spotted with rain.

  Croghan stirred. “What is it, Nick?”

  “Titus up at the hotel just tol’ me somethin’. . . .” Nick stole a look at Elias before he continued. “Horse missing from the stables. Belonged to that painter fella who’d come round to draw. Titus figured the painter hadn’t shut the stall good, but they still ain’t found it wandering.”

  “Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?” Croghan’s voice grew sharp. Elias noticed his trousers had a new tear at the hem.

  “Titus weren’t keen to bother you with Mr. Pennyrile missin’, but then he seen a saddle was gone too and he reckoned—”

  Croghan sounded not quite relieved, but at least calmer. “That might be the best news of all,” he said.

  To Elias, the fact that Pennyrile had likely stolen the horse wasn’t exactly welcome, but it did explain how the man had disappeared so completely and so quickly.

  Croghan ran his hands through his hair, causing it to stick up at odd angles. “I must say, the possibility is better than the alternative. I was beginning to fear that one of the tours would happen upon him. Go back up top and send riders toward Cave City and Bowling Green,” he ordered Nick. “Maybe someone saw him. Even on horseback, Pennyrile couldn’t have gotten far in his state.”

  Nick withdrew, leaving Elias and Croghan alone again. Croghan stared at Bedivere.

  “I shouldn’t have let him stay,” Croghan said to himself, almost forgetting Elias was there. “Not when his mind seemed to be slipping.”

  Elias felt bad for him. “You did all you could for him, Doctor.”

  Croghan swallowed hard. “But it wasn’t enough,
was it? None of it is enough.” He was more broken down than Elias imagined he could be. Croghan was so low, so despairing. Elias realized that while there were all those runaways down below whose world had just been blown apart, Croghan’s had too. His last chance at medical success seemed to be dying with the lot of his patients.

  “But at least we’ve had one bright spot.” The doctor forced a smile. “I wrote your mother,” he explained. “Sharing news of your recovery.”

  “Really? When?” Elias asked.

  Croghan narrowed his eyes, thinking. “Before all this happened, Pennyrile vanishing, I mean. Thursday, perhaps? She’ll have the letter soon if not already. I told her there was nothing left for me to do for you. I thought about asking if I could keep you at the hotel for a while, just to see if your recovery lasted, to make sure the consumption didn’t recur. If I’m perfectly forthright, I’d love to have more time to figure out why you’re better and everyone else . . .”

  He trailed off, listening to Nedra coughing weakly from across the ward.

  “But it wouldn’t be right to keep you from your family.”

  “You mean . . .”

  Croghan snapped his bag shut and sat forward on the chair. “Yes, young man,” he said. “I’m sending you home. As soon as I have your mother’s reply, you’ll be on your way. Possibly within the week.”

  His first reaction was joy. A week! He’d get to go home! He’d run with Charger on the beach, maybe even go back to school. It seemed almost too good to believe—even the part about school. Most of all, it confirmed what he’d been too afraid to admit to even himself all this time. He was better. He wasn’t going to die.

  And yet another thought struck him. A week. Haven! He couldn’t leave. Not when Haven was in danger.

  “Are you all right, Elias?” the doctor asked. “I should have thought you’d be much happier at such news.”

  “I am happy,” Elias managed. “Just surprised a little. I miss home terrible, but I might miss this place a little too.”

  Croghan stood. “It does grow on people, I think. And it certainly has on you. Go and soak it up while you may,” he said, sliding his watch from his waistcoat. “Mat’s tour should be along soon. You ought to be able to catch it up at Broadway. Maybe he’ll have a new tale to tell today. Maybe he’ll show you something you haven’t seen before.”

  Elias buttoned up his shirt and wrapped the green scarf about his neck. But Croghan didn’t go. Instead he stood there, looking at Elias. Then he stuck out his hand. Elias shook it, like men do when they’re finished doing business. And by the look of Croghan, they were finished. The doctor was, at any rate.

  * * *

  Elias laid out food for Bedivere.

  Bedivere.

  What would he do with the pigeon? He supposed he’d figure out a way to fetch him home. Tillie would love him. Granny would hate him. The notion made him smile. Maybe Nick could help fashion some kind of cage to transport him in.

  The wondering of it carried him down the slope, but as he made his way up to Giant’s Coffin, his worries all climbed back up as well. He wasn’t in the mood to take the tour. But he wasn’t keen on sitting on his hands back in the ward, either.

  The tour was already past the coffin. Elias usually loved to hear Mat give the tourists a bad time, but today it didn’t appeal the same way. Plus the group was duller than usual. Elias did a quick count. Eight men, no ladies among them. That was peculiar. There was almost always a wife or a sister or a mother in the group. Pity, Elias mused. The ladies’ reactions and carryings-on were often the best part. They scared the best.

  Odder still was the way the men didn’t seem to care a whit about what Mat pointed out. Most folk spent all their time with their heads thrown back, swiveling around like owls trying to take it all in. But these men seemed more interested in Mat himself.

  Mat was off too. He wasn’t lashing out and talking roughly. He kept his voice low, only giving out the most necessary of details.

  Why, Mat seemed nervous!

  Elias started to move closer to see what was so odd about this group, when he felt a presence at his elbow.

  Jonah. Hands on his hips, eyes were narrowed at Mat.

  “H’lo, Jonah,” Elias whispered.

  “Mornin’,” Jonah offered.

  Mat’s group slipped around a bend. The two boys followed.

  “Doc means to send me home. Reckons I’m better.”

  “That’s good. Real good.”

  “Davie come back yet?”

  Jonah acted as if he didn’t hear. “Give me that lamp,” he said, reaching for it. He stowed it in a cleft in the wall, and it glowed bright enough to guide them back, but not bright enough to show them off.

  “What’re you doin?” Elias asked.

  “Teachin’ you to go in the dark.” He took hold of Elias’s wrist and led him toward the others. “Want to get a closer look.”

  “You seen it too?” Elias whispered. “How odd that group Mat’s leading is?”

  “Somethin’s peculiar,” Jonah said.

  Elias found the walking got easier as they went on, but he couldn’t imagine doing it without Jonah leading him. Not in a million years. He felt Jonah yank hard on his wrist, pulling him to the left, away from the group, and felt the path slope sharply down. Jonah moved like a fish through a stream. “Here.”

  Soon Elias could see light breaking up ahead.

  Jonah explained, in a voice two steps below a whisper, “We’re coming up from Indian Avenue. Get a better look this way and they won’t see us.”

  Sure enough, they reached a short wall of rock and peeked over, finding themselves at eye level with the floor of the Star Chamber.

  Mat stood on a rise above the tour group twenty yards off, facing Elias and Jonah’s hiding spot. Mat had set the torch for the stars to start twinkling, but even this did not seem to impress the men. Mat had fallen silent.

  The sight of Mat struck dumb was strange enough, but there was something stranger.

  Elias counted the group again. Ten.

  Ten?

  Ten men surrounded Mat.

  Ten where there had been only eight before.

  And then Elias heard it: the sound of chalk against a slate.

  Elias’s lungs tightened up all of a sudden, as if the wheeze that had been gone for so long was now creeping back. He panicked, ducked back, and flattened himself against the wall.

  Elias felt Jonah’s fingernails dig into his wrist: a silent message. He’d seen it too.

  They’d already come!

  Pennyrile and this other fellow must have been waiting down in the Star Chamber for Mat to bring the group there.

  Pennyrile’s river pirates had walked right in the front door.

  One of the men said something.

  “Look here, somebody told—” Mat began before a rap on the slate cut him off.

  Elias screwed up his courage and peeked over again. Pennyrile was scrawling on his slate. Mat stared, wide-eyed, looking from man to man and shaking his head. “I don’t know what you’re on about,” he said. “There’s nothing down there!”

  “Quit your lying!” the man beside Pennyrile growled. “We know. We have that other one’s maps!” He waved Stephen’s book in the air, his thumb marking the place where the big map spread across the two pages in the middle. The two sides of the book flapped like a pigeon’s wings.

  He signaled to the man to his left, a giant, big as Davie at least, who hauled Mat roughly off the rock and threw a fist into his gut. Elias winced as Mat doubled over.

  The same man spoke again. “We’ll pay you well. My brother says you’re the least loyal of the whole lot down here.”

  Brother! The man was Pennyrile’s brother! But Elias didn’t have time to think on it long.

  Mat still was half hunkered over, sputtering. Elias and Jonah stood stock-still.

  They both knew Mat didn’t have much to do with Haven. Mat merely put up with Croghan, and he had more reason than anybod
y to try to take what he could and get himself gone. However, Mat raised himself fully up, still struggling to catch his breath. “Thank your brother for the kindness,” he said, breathing heavily. “But seeing how I don’t have a notion of any underground colony, I’m afraid I must disappoint him.”

  Pennyrile was writing again. “Yes, Victor,” the man said, after glancing at the slate. Then he addressed Mat, handing Stephen’s book over to Pennyrile. “My brother expected you might set yourself stubborn against us.”

  He pulled something from inside the folds of his long traveling coat and held it out so Mat could get a good look.

  Mat changed in a second. Fire leaped back into his eyes. “Where’d you get that?”

  Elias felt sick.

  It was the doll Josie had made for Mat’s little girl.

  “Where?” Mat demanded.

  “Same place we found your two little brats this morning,” Pennyrile’s brother said. “Over by your place, near the river. Your wife—Parthena, ain’t it? She’ll be sore worried over ’em by now—”

  “Those’re my children!” Mat pleaded.

  Pennyrile’s brother waggled the doll in front of Mat. “Well, by the letter of the law, they belong to Parthena’s master, don’t they? But either way, we’ve got ’em now. And whether they end up back at home safe with you and your pretty wife, or carried off downriver with us, where we’ll sell ’em off to the worst, low-down—”

  “All right!” Mat roared. “All right.”

  Pennyrile’s brother chuckled. “See, boys? Their kind do feel attachments after all.”

  As the others laughed, Elias wanted to scream. He found his hand clutching up a fist-size rock, and he ached to throw it.

  “I—” Mat began before catching himself.

  Mat was looking right at them. Past the shoulders of the ring of men surrounding him straight at the spot where Elias and Jonah were hiding.

  Though it was dark, though they hadn’t made a sound or a movement, Mat somehow knew they were there.

  “I’ll show you the way.”

  Elias couldn’t breathe.

  “It’s a long way,” Mat said, nearly shouting, much louder than he’d been talking before. “From here it’s quickest to head on down Main Cave, then through the Rotunda, and the Cataracts down to Echo River. Then we got to go upriver, ’crost Lake Lethe, work up through Fat Man’s, cross Bottomless, then over t’the Wooden Bowl, and then sideways before we cross Smiley Pit.”