SNOWFALL

by Mitchell Smith

  There was a short double-file of men, East-bank soldiers armored throat to belly with green-enameled strips of steel across their chests... light steel strips down their thighs, sewn to the front of thick leather trousers. An officer was marching in front, and so much be a lieutenant. Lieutenants marched with their men, and never rode.

  As Martha watched, the lieutenant and his men reached the cabin path—then turned neatly, and marched up it. They were coming to her father's house, something soldiers had never done before. These were crossbowmen—heavy windlass bows and quarrel bundles strapped to their packs, short swords and daggers at their belts. Long green-dyed woolen cloaks, rolled tight, were carried over their left shoulders.

  "Daddy!" She thought surely William Bovey had died after all, and they were coming to take her to hang.

  More than three Warm-time weeks before, Big William Bovey and two other large men had come out to the cabin, angry over a deal for a four-horse wagon-team, and begun to beat Edward Jackson with sticks and their fists. Martha had run into the farry-shed, taken up a medium hammer, and come out and brained William Bovey. Then she'd beaten his friends so bones were broken, and they'd run.

  Bovey, a corner of his brain tucked back in, had been asleep ever since at his aunt's house up in Stoneville. It was the opinion of Randall-doctor that he would never wake up.

  "No death done," the Magistrate had said.

  And that had been that. Until now.

  "Run!" her father said—too late, as the old man was usually too late.

  Martha stood waiting, drying her hands on her apron, and wished for her mother.

  The lieutenant was young, but not handsome, a freckled carrot-top in green-steel strap armor. His face was shaved clean, like all soldiers'. He swung up the path to the door-yard, and his men marched behind him—twelve of them and all in step, their steel and leather creaking, till he put up his left hand to halt them.

  "Well, Honey-sweet, you're certainly big enough." Though slender, the lieutenant had a deep voice. His breath steamed slightly in the morning air.

  "What do you want here?" Martha wished her father would say something.

  The lieutenant smiled, and looked handsomer when he did. He had one dot tattooed on his left cheek, two on his right. A big man behind the lieutenant—a sergeant, he seemed to be—was smiling in a friendly way. The sergeant was bigger than Martha, as a man should be.

  "Get what things you can carry," the lieutenant said, not in an unpleasant way. "You're coming with us."

  "Is William Bovey dead?"

  "I don't know any William Bovey. I do know that you are ordered to come with us. So, get your whatevers; put your shoes one—if you have shoes—and do it fairly quickly."

  "No," Martha said. The big sergeant frowned at her and shook his head.

  "Ralph, be still," the lieutenant said, though he couldn't have seen what his sergeant was doing. "Now listen, even though it may cost my men some injuries," his soldiers smiled, "I will have you subdued, bound, and carried with us as baggage, if necessary. Don't make it necessary."

  "But... why?"

  "Orders."

  Her father still said nothing, just stood in the doorway silent as a stick. Suddenly, Martha felt she wished to go with the soldiers. It was a strange feeling, as if she had eaten something spoiled.

  She turned to Edward Jackson, and said, "You're not my father, anymore." Then she went into the cabin to get her best linen dress, her sheepskin cloak, her private possibles (a bone comb, clean underdrawers and stocking folded in a leather sack) and her shoes—one patched at the toe.

  They walked south—the soldiers marched, she walked— through the rest of the day. Martha had started out beside the lieutenant, but he'd gestured her behind him with his thumb, so she'd stepped back to walk beside the sergeant, Ralph, the one who'd frowned and shook his head at her. He was even taller than she was, and wider.

  It had always seemed to Martha, when she'd seen them in parade at Stoneville, that soldiers marched slowly. But now, going with them, she found that they moved along in a surprising way. It was a steady never-stopping going, nothing like a stroll or amble, that are up time and Warm-time miles until her legs ached and she began to stumble.

  Ralph-sergeant took her left arm, then, to steady her. He smelled of sweat, and of leather and oiled steel.

  * * *

  The second day, in the afternoon, they reached Landing. Landing was the farthest from her home Martha had ever been. The Yazoo river came to Kingdom River there, and her father had brought horses down for the fair, one time, and she'd some with him.

  Martha and the soldiers marched past loads of stacked lumber, sheep-hides, sides of beef, pig, and goat... sacks of coal from Map-West Virginia, crates of warm-frame cabbages, onions, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower... barrels of pickles, brine-kraut, smoked and salted river char.

  The soldiers marched past men shouting and flicking their slim blacksnakes at Sweat-slaves trotting pokes of last potatoes up the ramps of two big pole-boats painted dark blue. A herd of spotted cattle was being run down to a black barge, forty or fifth of the animals, driven by rust-colored dogs and three men with long sticks to prod them.

  There was a wonder floating at the end of the dock—a galley beautiful as the circus boat that once came down from Cairo. But this one was painted all red as fresh blood, not striped green and yellow, and there was no music coming from it. A long red banner hung from the mast, stirring a little in the breeze.

  The galley had one bank of oars, just above where the iron skate-beam fitting ran—and a red sail, though that was bundled tight to a second mast slanting low over the deck, reaching almost from the front of the boat to the back.

  The lieutenant marched his men and Martha right up a ramp and onto the red galley. Everything there was the same bright red, or brass this's-and-that's so bright in the sunshine they hurt her eyes. A line of men sat low on rowing benches along each side. They were naked, with steel collars on their necks, and none of them looked up.

  "You're late!" a soldier called, standing on a high place at the back of the boat. He wore a short sword on a wide gold-worked belt. A long green wool cloak, fastened in gold at his throat, billowed slightly in the river wind. His chest was armored in green-enameled steel, but with pieces of gold handling from short green ribbons there.

  He was much older than the lieutenant, and had an unpleasant face, made more unpleasant because his lower lip had been hurt, part of it cut away so his teeth showed there. He had five blue dots tattooed on each cheek.... Martha had never seen a Ten-dot man before. Never seen more than a Six-dot, and that was only once at the Ice-boat races.

  Bad-lip pointed at Martha. "This is the object of the exercise?"

  "Yes, sir," said the lieutenant.

  "You, Big-girl—sit up here out of the way, and rest. We have cranberry juice; would you like some of that?"

  "Yes, thank you." Martha came and sat on a little step below where he was standing. The Bad-lip Lord leaned down and gripped her shoulder. "Some muscle there, he said. Then, "Captain! South, to Island—at the courier beat!"

  "At your orders, milord." A black man in a long brown cloak was standing back by a sailor at the wheel. "Loose! Loose and haul!"

  Barefoot sailors Martha hadn't noticed were running here and there untying ropes. The whole boat swung out into the river, dipping, rolling slightly. And, so suddenly that she jumped a little, a deep drum went boom boom. Then boom boom again, and the rowers' long oars came out, flashed first dry then wet as they struck the water all together, and the boat started away like a frightened horse. They were surging hissing over the water, gray birds flying with them, circling the long crimson banner that unfurled, coiled, and weaved in the wind. Martha could hear it snapping, rumpling.

  A boy in white pants and white jacket came running to her, knelt down, and held out a blown glass cup—glass so clear she could see the juice in it perfectly, juice the same blood-red as the boat.

  Martha thou
ght of asking the boy why she was going where she was going, then decided not.

  She had heard that Kingdom's rowers were whipped—and this was certainly a Queen's boat—but no soldier whipped the red boat's rowers. Still, they worked their oars like farming horses in summer furrows. She could feel the boat's heave ... and heave at each stroke they pulled together. The red sail was still furled... the wind blowing cold upriver, into their faces.

  The juice in the beautiful glass was sweet and bitter at once. Martha's never tasted it before, and didn't know if she was supposed to finish it all, or only sip, and leave the rest. She looked up to see if the Bad-lip Lord was watching, and he was.

  "It's for you, Ordinary. Drink it."

  So she did. The juice grew sweeter with each swallow, and she hoped it was a River-omen of sweeter things to come.

  * * *

  The sun's egg had just sunk west to 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 evening light.

  Amazed, she clapped her hands. 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' 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.

  Soon 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.

  Closer, they swept on. 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 current curled against it like goat's cream. Chunk-ice in the current bobbed and struck and granite. Beyond, there was a great stone gateway, wise as a meadow and arched over high in the air with what seemed a spider's web of iron . .. the span of an iron bridge, where Martha saw tiny soldiers looking over. Harsher wind blew through the gateway, and a river current seethed flowing 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 .. . that 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 wheelmen, and Martha felt the board 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 he gangplank was sliding out and down.

  She had no time to smile goodbye 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. Many passages, many turnings, left and right and left again. In shadowed places, Martha saw, through narrow slits, a flash of steel in lantern light.

  * * *

  Thus Martha came to Island, and her life was changed forever.