“Two breakfasts,” she finally said.
“Two?” Archie said, sputtering biscuit crumbs. But she hadn’t heard him; she was already picking her way among the Daigle family’s piled belongings toward the stern. “Papa!” she called. “Mr. Archie’s waked up!”
Peter poked his head out from under the canvas stretched across the boat’s middle portion. “So he has. Good morning, Mr. Prescott. Afternoon, I should say.”
Archie stood up and stretched, grunting at the sting of cloth peeling away from blisters. “Anyone who saves my life gets to call me Archie,” he said.
“I am Peter, then,” Peter said.
“Great. Ah, your daughter—Martha?”
Daigle nodded.
“Martha said … Peter, how long was I asleep?”
“Ah. Hm,” Peter said. “It’s past noon now, so,” he counted briefly on his fingers, “forty hours or so.”
“Forty hours?” Nearly two days. The realization brought a fearsome aching pressure to bear on Archie’s bladder.
“More or less,” Peter shrugged. “We thought you had died for a while, but you kept having nightmares.”
“Nightmares?” Archie couldn’t remember any. “Did I say anything?”
“Just sleep-talking. In any case, it’s Thursday. Come, eat; you must be starving.”
Archie worked his way methodically through three bowls of wonderful fish stew, a miraculous change from several days of salt pork and whiskey. “Mrs. Daigle,” he finally said, “I could eat this all the way around the world.”
She laughed and took his bowl to a washbasin filled with river water. “A starving man will say anything. But thank you.”
“No,” Archie said. “I should thank you. I haven’t yet been— properly grateful to you for picking me up. I’ll certainly do whatever I can to make good on your hospitality.” He felt stilted and formal, but for some reason it was important to get all of that said.
“Nonsense,” Marie said, completely disrupting the gravity of the situation. “It wouldn’t be hospitality if you had to work for it.”
“I suppose he could fish, couldn’t he, Marie?” Peter said. “That is, if he’s going to eat like that all the way—”
“Peter, please.” Marie glared at him while trying to suppress a smile.
“Or, if he can’t fish,” Peter said, his voice rising, “perhaps he could teach me to read, because everyone on this boat now knows that Peter Daigle won’t listen to a woman.” Marie was laughing now, and Peter himself was having trouble keeping a straight face.
He stopped in mid-gesticulation. “Where is it you’re going, anyway?”
“Only to Louisville,” Archie said.
“Well, you’ll have all the fish stew you can choke down for the next six days, then.”
“Six days,” Archie repeated. That put their arrival on the twenty-ninth, the first of the nemontemi, the unlucky days. If the chacmool had to be inactive on those days, then it would already be at the cave by then—and would already have ensconced Jane, God knew where. In another six days, Archie’s only hope would be to intercept them at the cave itself.
Seeing the look on Archie’s face, Peter shrugged apologetically. “We can’t travel at night,” he said. “And the river only flows so fast. But we could drop you in Maysville, or Cincinnati if you need to hurry …” he shrugged again.
“No,” Archie said quickly, although Peter’s offer made perfect sense. A steamer could carry him from Maysville to Louisville in two days, if he remembered the schedule correctly. But his experience aboard Maudie was too fresh in his mind; traveling by keelboat with a migrating family of French-Canadians seemed so much safer, so much more sane.
Deeper fears were at work as well, Archie had to admit. Keelboats could hit snags and sink as easily as steamers could explode. Sitting there with Peter Daigle, surrounded by the happy chaos of his family, Archie realized that despite his single-minded obsession with rescuing Jane from her abductors, the prospect of their reunion terrified him. What would he say to her, this eleven-year-old girl whom he hadn’t given a kind word since she was a toddler? Would he be able to face her if she was angry?
Archie watched the three Daigle girls—son Ramon, at two-and-a-half, was too young to work yet, and clung to his mother—go about minor chores, drying dishes or sweeping windblown leaves from the deck. Even in the middle of a months-long journey to an uncertain destination, they had created a home on an Ohio River keelboat. There is something I have to learn from this, Archie thought. Something a father should know.
Thinking back to Jane’s infancy, Archie realized that the Prescott household—when there had been one—had never been so calmly cheerful. He had loved Helen as much as he thought it was possible for a man to love a woman, but he had used her death as an excuse to dive headfirst into a morass of self-pity from which he was only now beginning to emerge. Now he was being offered an opportunity to redeem himself, and all he could think was Do I deserve this? Do I deserve a daughter who has the faith to pursue me through seven years of abandonment and rejection?
If I’m doing this just to prove that I’m not the bastard I thought I was, Archie thought, then I’d just as well not do it. Good acts for bad reasons aren’t any better than bad ones for good.
“No,” he said again suddenly, remembering that he was in a conversation. “You’ve been too generous.” He managed a weak smile. “I couldn’t reject your hospitality at this point, could I?”
Royce was damned glad that the chacmool hadn’t decided to come along with him. After what it had done to Charlie, he wasn’t sure if he could stand to be near it, wondering when it would get ideas about changing him into some kind of baby vampire too. He could still hear the thing that had been Charlie wailing in its awful old infant voice, for all the world like a hungry babe. And for the chacmool to blame it all on him, because Prescott hadn’t died when he was supposed to …
God, what sort of mad fairy tale could give rise to something like that?
He didn’t want to know, really. In fact, Royce was wishing that he knew a great deal less about Riley Steen’s plans, and the chacmool, and wherever it had come from. And he wanted to know nothing at all about the girl.
He’d had to untie her after being left alone to drive old Farmer John’s wagon. She couldn’t lie under the straw in the back all day, even if she would have, which he doubted; either she would roll herself to the slats and hop over them while he wasn’t looking, or she’d have some sort of reaction to all the dust and keel over dead. So he’d untied her and warned that if she made any trouble, he’d cut out her tongue and tell anyone who asked that she was mad. “People are always willing to believe that about little girls, you know,” he’d said, “especially with the way you look.” She’d nodded and touched one of the thick scabs on her scalp, and Royce had felt a bit low. It wasn’t right to hurt a little girl’s feelings.
So now she rode next to him on the driver’s bench, her feet hobbled by a short length of rope and the knots covered by a blanket that had until recently cushioned the bench for Charlie’s delicate bum. Even when I get the driver’s seat, Royce thought sourly, my ass still suffers.
Having the girl with him gave him a twenty-four-hour case of the shakes, even though they’d passed through several small villages and she hadn’t given a peep. They were making fairly good time, but Royce hadn’t really slept since sometime before the train wreck, and he was starting to hear things. Now they were off in the wilderness again, he hadn’t any idea where, and every time she had to pee he was afraid she’d go hopping off like a rabbit into the deep woods, and then how would he find her?
I’m a city b’hoy, he thought. Forests and fields aren’t for me. He felt out of place in the country. Everything from his soap-locks to the red piping on his pants marked him as an Easterner. Worse, an Irish Easterner. In New York, times could be rough, but an Irishman/could always find kin; out here, though, some Nativist sons of bitches could ride up and hang him at any moment.
He’d heard stories.
At least then he wouldn’t have to think about what would happen to the girl, though. Royce had worked for Riley Steen since he was a boy, but he hadn’t killed anyone until he was sixteen, three years ago. He’d been frightened half to death when he volunteered for the job, and nearly pissed himself when he’d actually carried it out, but with time he’d grown fond of his reputation. Killing was probably wrong, he thought, but everyone he’d ever slipped a blade into had known the rules of the game. Even Archie Prescott. Hadn’t Royce warned him to stay clear of Tammany business and then found him smack in the middle of the chaos at the museum?
The girl, though, Prescott’s daughter, was different. She hadn’t crossed a Tammany brave or interfered with Steen’s day-to-day operations. She was, so far as Royce could tell, just a little girlie who had the misfortune to be born on a singularly unlucky day. A girl who reminded him uncomfortably of himself seven or eight years before: all toughness and snap on the outside, but on the inside … poor creature. Royce had a bit of a chill at the thought. What had seven years done to him?
Well, he thought. I know the rules of the game too, and I’ve long since gotten in too deep to stop playing now. Royce McDougall still had a reputation to uphold as a man who finished the business that he started. This job he would get over with as soon as possible, handing the girl off in Louisville and getting shut of the whole sordid mess.
That is, as soon as he’d dealt with the elder Prescott. The only thing keeping Royce in the driving seat of the damned wagon, bouncing down nameless ruts until his spine felt like it was made of broken glass, was unfinished business with Prescott. He had known the rules of the game, if not that night at the Brewery then certainly by the time he’d lit out after the chacmool. Royce was man enough to admit his mistakes, and leaving Prescott still breathing in the Brewery had been a big one. Too many insane things had happened that night, and he’d let his fear get the better of him when Prescott’s ear had blazed up like a Roman candle between Charlie’s teeth. Next time there would be no mistake. Royce would take care of Archie Prescott, like he should have a long time ago, and be on the first boat back to New York. Reputation was all a man had sometimes.
Memories of that night still made him uneasy. Not that he was squeamish when it came to violence, but from first to last Steen hadn’t seemed in control of the situation. Royce was beginning to wonder just how much of the chacmool’s escape was due to Prescott’s meddling and how much could be laid at the feet of Steen’s poor planning. He’d thought the cordon of cornstalks was a ridiculous idea from the beginning, and said so, but Steen had insisted that interfering with the chacmool while it was still dormant would queer the whole enterprise. That had seemed reasonable enough at the time—reasonable, at least, as anything else Steen ever cooked up—but now, with the advantage of three months’ time to look back on it, Royce doubted that Steen had really known what he was doing. He’d spent enough time with his nose in old books, but books didn’t tell the whole story. And even with all his learning, Steen had admitted to Royce later that they’d all nearly been killed by the Old God, whatever that was.
Yes sir, it was clear that Riley Steen had lost whatever control he might once have had over the situation. Some other force was opposing him, or the chacmool, it didn’t matter which. And Steen, although he knew his enemy’s name, didn’t seem able to anticipate it or fight back.
Might be time to look into a different line of work, Royce mused. Steen might not live through his next encounter with the Old God. Hell, he might not survive his next meeting with the chacmool, as birdy as it was acting. Royce had no desire to go down with Steen, but he also didn’t want to cut himself off in case the whole mad scheme actually worked. If that happened, the difference between living well and not living at all might be how well Royce could feign loyalty.
If the new world, or Sixth Sun or whatever, didn’t happen, then Royce would be needing leverage. Bad things would be coming from the Pathfinders, and a man with the Tammany mark on him would be dodging the executioner’s blade for a long time.
Leverage, at least, he thought he had. If something bad happened to Steen, Royce intended to take the girl and run. Probably he would go north, into Canada. Then when the Pathfinders tracked him down, he could point to saving the girl as evidence that his heart had never been in the whole thing from the beginning.
“Pipe up there, damsel,” he said to the girl. “The accommodations still to your satisfaction?”
She didn’t answer, just sat slumped at the other end of the bench staring straight ahead.
“Look, lass, it’s not so bad,” Royce said, and realized as he did that for the first time in his American life he was feeling guilty. “Steen’ll take care of you.”
She glared at him, then looked back out over the road.
“You’ve been hungry, right? So have I. You’ve been cold; me, too. I’ve got no family, and your old man hasn’t been a prince to you.” Another glare. “I understand a bit more than you think,” Royce went on. “For an Irishman I’m not stupid. We find ways to get along, lass. We do what we can. Steen’ll keep you warm, he’ll feed you. He needs you. Better than begging pennies and stuffing newspaper in your shoes, isn’t it?”
Now Jane sat rock-still, her fierce gaze directed over the just-budding forests.
“Ah, well,” Royce said. For such a young girl, he thought, she’s a sharp, one. Doesn’t want me talking to her, doesn’t want me to get close. Her face and hands were beginning to practically bloom with tiny scabs, each scarcely larger than a fly, but she didn’t scratch at them nearly as much as Royce thought he would have. Yes, she was a tough one. He could see her thinking, probably conjuring escape plans from the spring air.
A girl after his own heart, really. Terrible, it was, what was going to happen to her.
It didn’t seem fair to Jane that traveling across the country for the second time, they had taken the same road. I’ve been to Ohio before, she thought. I want to see something different. But then, nothing else was different. She was still a captive, and the Dead Rabbit driving the wagon had used the same threat on her that Riley Steen had when she was a little girl, and she would have bet everything she had that they would leave the wagon in Aberdeen, across the river from Maysville, and take a boat the rest of the way. Why shouldn’t they travel the same road?
She wondered if anyone would believe the Rabbit if he told them that she was mad. Probably; lots of her friends in New York had been locked up in reformatories because people said they were mad. She scratched her scalp, drawing a glance from the Rabbit. Royce was his name. Probably waiting for me to attack him, she thought, scratch out his eyes or something and run away with my feet still bound. That’s why he was talking to her, trying to keep her calm. But she hadn’t tried that with Steen, and she wouldn’t now. It was best just to play passive and wait for the right chance. Jane’s scalp still itched, and she scratched again, feeling the fine new hairs growing through the fading scar tissue. If only her skin wasn’t so tender. Every time she touched herself it seemed like another scab appeared.
The Indian had done this to her, the same black Indian who had done something horrible to the other Rabbit, the smelly dwarf. Jane didn’t understand how he could be so cruel when he’d done such a wonderful thing for her. She was still covered in scabs, but the pain from them was good. Scabs healed, while scars just stayed ugly forever. Scabs meant that she was growing new skin again, that someday she wouldn’t draw shocked glances from people in the street. She was starting to feel different, not wanting to disappear every time someone looked at her.
Royce and the other Rabbit, Charlie, had called the Indian chacmool, but she didn’t think that was his name. She wondered if he had a name, and why nobody knew it. Maybe he would tell her, the next time they saw each other. Which would be soon—she visualized Kentucky on her maps, like a thumb extended east from the Mississippi with Louisville at the crook of the big knuckle. That’s where she was going,
and the chacmool wanted her to do something there. Something important. If he could make her scars go away, Jane thought, she would do anything for him, because with her scars gone, Da would recognize her again.
Thinking of Da, she bit her lip to stop its trembling and turned away from Royce, looking out into the forest. The trees were still naked, but fresh buds were beginning to appear on the sprawling bushes along the roadside. Creeping vines showed bright green against the still-sleeping trees, reminding her of the brake of Da’s train, how it had suddenly sprouted and split apart, derailing the car and tipping it into the ditch. The Indian had done that, too, she was sure, but why? Why would it be so kind to her and at the same time wreck Da’s train?
She watched as the forest gave way to open fields stubbled with last fall’s shorn stalks of corn, spotted here and there by crows pecking at the muddy soil. She didn’t know what to think. Da could have been hurt in the wreck, or even killed, and then …
Again she bit her lip, harder this time, and fought back tears. She didn’t want to cry in front of Royce; she would be passive if she had to, but not weak. Da was alive. He had to be. Because if he wasn’t, he would never see her after her scars had faded away.
“Don’t cry, lass,” Royce said. She looked at him angrily and he reached out to give her shoulder an awkward pat. “Can’t bear to see a young girl cry. Would you like to stop for a bit, have a bite to eat? Chacmool’d have my balls, as dear old Charlie used to say— excuse the language—but it’s three days off at least, and I know I could use a minute to stretch my legs.”
He reined in the swaybacked mule pulling the wagon and hopped to the ground, grunting as he bent to touch his toes. “All this traveling makes me feel older than London Bridge,” he grumbled. “Nice day like this, we ought to take a minute to enjoy it.”
Jane got down from the wagon too, stepping carefully because of the short length of rope binding her ankles. She was happy to be standing still, even for a moment, but mightily confused as well. Two days before, Royce had threatened to cut out her tongue, and now he was worried when she shed a tear. Perhaps he wasn’t the monster she’d thought him to be.
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