Fevre Dream Read online

  Afterward he made his own dinner and washed it down with what was left of the second bottle of brandy the Johnstons had opened. He was just finishing up when Alain came into the kitchen. The blood had dried on his shirt and there was a burnt black hole where the shot had gone through, but otherwise he looked none the worse for wear. “It’s finished,” Alain told him. “Julian wants you in the library.”

  Sour Billy pushed away his plate and went to answer the summons. The dining room badly wanted cleaning, he noted when he passed through. Adrienne and Kurt and Armand were enjoying some wine amid the dim silence there, the bodies—or what was left of them—just feet away. Some of the others were off in the drawing room, talking.

  The library was pitch dark. Sour Billy had expected to find Damon Julian alone, but when he entered he saw three indistinct figures in the shadows, two seated, one standing. He couldn’t make out who they were. He waited in the door until Julian finally spoke. “In the future, do not ever bring such people into my library,” the voice said. “They were filthy. They left a smell.”

  Sour Billy felt a brief stab of fear. “Yes, sir,” he said, facing the chair from which Julian had spoken. “I’m sorry, Mister Julian.”

  After a moment of silence, Julian said, “Close the door, Billy. Come in. You may use the lamp.”

  The lamp was made of showy red-stained glass; its flame gave the dusty room the red-brown cast of dried blood. Damon Julian sat in a high-backed chair, his fine long fingers steepled beneath his chin, a faint smile on his face. Valerie sat at his right hand. The sleeve of her gown had gotten torn in the struggles, but she didn’t seem to have noticed. Sour Billy thought she was even paler than usual. A few feet away, Jean stood behind another chair, looking guarded and nervous, twisting a big gold ring on his finger.

  “Must he be here?” Valerie asked Julian. She glanced at Billy briefly, contempt in her big purple eyes.

  “Why, Valerie,” Julian replied. He reached out and took her hand. She trembled and pressed her lips together tightly. “I brought Billy to reassure you,” Julian continued.

  Jean gathered up his courage and stared right at Sour Billy, frowning. “This Johnston had a wife.”

  So that was it, Sour Billy thought. “You scared?” he asked Jean mockingly. Jean was not one of Julian’s favorites, so it was safe to taunt him. “He had a wife,” Billy said, “but it ain’t nothin’ to worry over. He never talked to her much, never told her where he was goin’ or when he’d be back. She ain’t goin’ to be comin’ after you.”

  “I do not like it, Damon,” Jean grumbled.

  “What about the slaves?” Valerie demanded. “They’ve been gone two years. They said things to the Johnstons, dangerous things. They must have talked to others as well.”

  “Billy?” Julian said.

  Sour Billy shrugged. “I expect they told stories to every damn nigger between here and Arkansas,” he said. “It don’t worry me none. Just a pack of nigger stories, ain’t nobody goin’ to believe it.”

  “I wonder,” said Valerie. She turned to Damon Julian, pleading. “Damon, please. Jean is right. We have been here too long. It is not safe. Remember what they did to that Lalaurie woman in New Orleans, the one who tortured her slaves for pleasure? The talk finally caught up with her. And what she did was nothing to . . .” She hesitated, swallowed, and added, quietly, “. . . to the things we do. The things we must do.” She turned her face away from Julian.

  Slowly, gently, Julian reached out a pale hand, touched her cheek, drew a finger down the side of her face in a tender caress, then caught her under the chin and made her look at him. “Are you so timid now, Valerie? Must I remind you of who you are? Have you been listening to Jean again? Is he the master now? Is he bloodmaster?”

  “No,” she said, her deep violet eyes wider than ever, her voice afraid. “No.”

  “Who is the bloodmaster, dear Valerie?” Julian asked. His eyes were lambent and heavy and bored right into her.

  “You are, Damon,” she whispered. “You.”

  “Look at me, Valerie. Do you think I need fear any tales told by a pack of slaves? What do I care what they say of me?”

  Valerie opened her mouth. No words came out.

  Satisfied, Damon Julian released his hold on her. There were deep red marks on her flesh where his fingers had pressed. He smiled at Sour Billy as Valerie drew back. “What do you think, Billy?”

  Sour Billy Tipton looked down at his feet and shuffled nervously. He knew what he ought to say, but he’d been doing some figuring lately, and there were things he had to tell Julian that Julian wouldn’t take kindly to hearing. He’d been putting it off, but now he didn’t see as how he had any more choice. “I don’t know, Mister Julian,” he said weakly.

  “You don’t know, Billy? What is it you don’t know?” The tone was cold and vaguely threatening.

  Sour Billy plunged on regardless. “I don’t know how long we can go on, Mister Julian,” he said boldly. “I been thinking on this some, and there’s things I don’t like. This here plantation brought in a lot of money when Garoux was runnin’ it, but it’s near worthless now. You know I can get work out of any slave, damned if I can’t, but them what’s dead or run off I can’t work. When you and your friends started takin’ kids from them shanties, or ordering the likely wenches up to the big house where they never come out, that was the start of our troubles. You ain’t had no slaves for more’n a year now, excepting those fancy girls, and they sure don’t stay around long.” He laughed nervously. “We don’t got no crops. We sold half the plantation, all the best parcels of land. And them fancy girls, Mister Julian, they’re expensive. We got us bad money troubles.

  “And that ain’t all. Doing in niggers is one thing, but using white folks for the thirst, that’s dangerous. In New Orleans, well, maybe that’s safe enough, but you and I know it was Cara killed Henri Cassand’s youngest boy. He’s a neighbor, Mister Julian. They all know there’s somethin’ peculiar over here anyway; if their slaves and children start to dyin’ we’re goin’ to have us real trouble.”

  “Trouble?” said Damon Julian. “We are almost twenty strong, with you. What can the cattle do to us?”

  “Mister Julian,” said Sour Billy, “what if they come by day?”

  Julian waved a hand casually. “It will not happen. If it does, we will deal with them as they deserve.”

  Sour Billy grimaced. Julian might be unconcerned, but it was Sour Billy took the biggest risks. “I think maybe she’s right, Mister Julian,” he said unhappily. “I think we ought to go somewheres. We’ve drained this place. It’s dangerous to stay on.”

  “I am comfortable here, Billy,” Julian said. “I feed on the cattle. I do not run from them.”

  “Money, then. Where we goin’ to get money?”

  “Our guests left horses. Take them to New Orleans tomorrow, sell them. See that they aren’t traced. You may sell off more of the land as well. Neville of Bayou Cross will want to buy again. Call on him, Billy.” Julian smiled. “You might even invite him to dinner here, to discuss my proposition. Ask him to bring along his lovely wife and that lithe young son of theirs. Sam and Lily can serve. It will be just as it used to be, before the slaves ran off.”

  He was taunting, Sour Billy thought. But it was never safe to treat any of Julian’s words lightly. “The house,” Billy said. “They’ll come to eat and they’ll see how far it’s gone. Isn’t safe. They’ll tell stories when they go home.”

  “If they go home, Billy.”

  “Damon,” Jean said shakily, “you can’t mean . . .”

  The dim, red-drenched room was hot. Sour Billy had begun to sweat. “Neville is—please, Mister Julian, you can’t take Neville. You can’t go on takin’ folks from around here and buyin’ fancy girls.”

  “Your creature is right for once,” Valerie said in a very small voice. “Listen to him.” Jean was nodding too, emboldened by having others on his side.

  “We could sell the whole place,” Billy
said. “It’s all rotted out anyhow. Move to New Orleans, all of us. It’d be better down there. With all them Creoles and free niggers and river trash, a few more or less won’t be missed, you know?”

  “No,” said Damon Julian. Icily. His voice told them he would stand no further argument. Sour Billy shut up real quick. Jean began to toy with his ring again, his mouth sullen and afraid.

  But Valerie, astoundingly, spoke up. “Let us go, then.”

  Julian turned his head languidly. “Us?”

  “Jean and I,” she said. “Send us away. It will be . . . better that way. For you, too. It’s safer when there are fewer of us. Your fancy girls will last longer.”

  “Send you away, dear Valerie? Why, I would miss you. And I would be concerned for you, too. Where would you go, I wonder?”

  “Somewhere. Anywhere.”

  “Do you still hope to find your dark city in a cave?” Julian said mockingly. “Your faith is touching, child. Have you mistaken poor weak Jean for your pale king?”

  “No,” said Valerie. “No. We only want a rest. Please, Damon. If we all stay, they will find us out, hunt us, kill us. Let us go away.”

  “You are so beautiful, Valerie. So exquisite.”

  “Please,” she said, trembling. “Away. A rest.”

  “Poor small Valerie,” Julian said. “There is no rest. Wherever you go, your thirst will travel with you. No, you shall stay.”

  “Please,” she repeated, numbly. “My bloodmaster.”

  Damon Julian’s dark eyes narrowed just slightly, and the smile faded. “If you are that eager to be away, perhaps I should give you what you ask for.”

  Both Valerie and Jean looked at him hopefully.

  “Perhaps I should send you away,” Julian mused. “Both of you. But not together, no. You are so beautiful, Valerie. You deserve better than Jean. What do you think, Billy?”

  Sour Billy smirked. “Send them all away, Mister Julian. You don’t need them none. You got me. Send them off, and they’ll see how much they like it.”

  “Interesting,” said Damon Julian. “I will think on it. Now leave me, all of you. Billy, go sell the horses. See Neville about the land.”

  “No dinner?” Sour Billy asked with relief.

  “No,” said Julian.

  Sour Billy was the last to reach the door. Behind him, Julian snuffed the light, and darkness filled the room. But Sour Billy hesitated at the threshold, and turned back again.

  “Mister Julian,” he said, “your promise—it’s been years now. When?”

  “When I do not need you, Billy. You are my eyes by day. You do the things I cannot. How could I spare you now? But have no fear. It will not be long. And time will seem as nothing to you when you join us. Years and days are alike to one who has the life eternal.” The promise filled Sour Billy with reassurance. He left to do Julian’s bidding.

  That night he dreamt. In his dreams he was as dark and graceful as Julian himself, elegant and predatory. It was always night in his dreams, and he roamed the streets of New Orleans beneath a full, pale moon. They watched him pass from their windows and their little iron-lace balconies, and he could feel their eyes upon him, the men full of fear, the women drawn to his dark power. Through the dark he stalked them, gliding soundlessly over the brick sidewalks, hearing their frantic footsteps and their panting. Beneath the swaying fire of a hanging oil lamp, he caught a fine young dandy and tore his throat out, laughing. A sultry Creole beauty watched him from afar, and he came after her, hunting her down alleys and courtyards as she ran before him. Finally, in a court lit by a wrought-iron flambeau, she turned to face him. She looked a bit like Valerie. Her eyes were violet and full of fire. He came to her and pushed her back and took her. Creole blood was as hot and rich as Creole food. The night was his, and all the nights forever, and the red thirst was on him.

  When he woke from the dream, he was hot and fevered, and his sheets were wet.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  St. Louis,

  July 1857

  The Fevre Dream lay up in St. Louis for twelve days.

  It was a busy time for the entire crew, but for Joshua York and his strange companions. Abner Marsh was up and about early every morning, and on the streets by ten, making calls on shippers and hotel proprietors, talking up his boat and trying to scare up business. He had a mess of handbills printed for Fevre River Packets—now that he had more than one packet again—and hired some boys to paste them up all over the city. Drinking and eating in all the best places, Marsh told and retold the story of how the Fevre Dream took the Southerner, to make sure the word got around. He even took out advertisements in three of the local papers.

  The lightning pilots that Abner Marsh had hired for the lower river came aboard as soon as the Fevre Dream put in to St. Louis, and drew their wages for the time they’d idled away waiting. Pilots didn’t come cheap, especially pilots like these two, but Marsh didn’t begrudge the money too much, since he wanted the best for his steamer. Once paid, the new men resumed their idling; pilots drew full wages all the time, but didn’t do a lick of work until the steamer was in the river. Anything besides piloting was beneath their dignity.

  The two pilots Marsh had found had their own individual styles of idling, though. Dan Albright, prim and taciturn and fashionable, strolled aboard the day the Fevre Dream put in, surveyed the boat, the engines, and the pilot house, nodded with satisfaction, and immediately took up residence in his cabin. He spent his days reading in the steamer’s well-stocked library, and played a few games of chess with Jonathon Jeffers in the main saloon, although Jeffers invariably beat him. Karl Framm, on the other hand, could usually be found in the billiard halls along the riverfront, grinning crookedly beneath his wide-brimmed felt hat and bragging about how him and his new boat were going to run everyone else off the river. Framm had a heller’s reputation. He liked to joke about how he kept one wife in St. Louis, one in New Orleans, and a third in Natchez-under-the-hill.

  Abner Marsh didn’t have the time to worry over much about what his pilots were doing; he was too busy with this task or that one. Nor did he see much of Joshua York and his friends, although he understood that York frequently went on long nightly walks into the city, often with Simon, the silent one. Simon was also learning how to mix drinks, since Joshua had told Marsh he had a mind to use him as night bartender on the run down to New Orleans.

  Marsh did frequently see his partner over supper, which Joshua York was in the habit of taking in the main cabin with the other officers, before he retired to his own cabin or the library to read newspapers, packets of which were delivered to him every day, fresh off incoming steamers. Once York announced that he was going in to the city to see a group of players perform. He invited Abner Marsh and the other officers to accompany him, but Marsh was having none of it, so York wound up going with Jonathon Jeffers. “Poems and plays,” Marsh muttered to Hairy Mike Dunne as they sauntered off, “it makes you wonder what this damn river is comin’ to.” Afterward, Jeffers began to teach York to play chess.

  “He has quite a mind, Abner,” Jeffers told Marsh a few days later, on the morning of their eighth day in St. Louis.

  “Who?”

  “Why, Joshua of course. I taught him the moves two days ago. Last night I found him in the saloon playing over the score of one of Morphy’s games, from one of those New York newspapers he takes. A strange man. How much do you know about him?”

  Marsh frowned. He didn’t want his people getting too curious about Joshua York; that was part of the bargain. “Joshua don’t like to talk much about himself. I don’t ask him. A man’s past is none of my business, I figure. You ought to take the same attitude, Mister Jeffers. In fact, see that you do.”

  The clerk arched his thin, dark eyebrows. “If you say so, Cap’n,” he replied. But there was a cool smile on his face that Abner Marsh found disquieting.

  Jeffers was not the only one to ask questions. Hairy Mike came to Marsh, too, and said that the roustabouts and stokers wer
e spreading some funny talk about York and his four guests, and did Marsh want him to do anything about it?

  “What kind of talk?”

  Hairy Mike shrugged eloquently. “Bout him only comin’ out at night. Bout those queer friends o’ his, too. You know Tom, who stokes the middle larboard? He been tellin’ this story—says that night we left Louisville, well, you ’member how thick the skeeters were, well, Tom says he saw that old Simon down on the main deck, jest kind o’ looking around, and a skeeter landed on his hand, and he went and swatted it with his other hand. Squashed it. But you know how full up skeeters git sometimes, so when you squash ’em they jest bust with the blood. Tom says that happen’d with the skeeter on the back of Simon’s hand, so it smeared up all bloody when he got it. Only then, Tom tells it, that Simon jest kind of stared at his hand for the longest while, then lifted it up, and damned if he didn’t lick it clean.”

  Abner Marsh scowled. “You tell your boy Tom that he better stop telling such stories, or he’s goin’ to be stokin’ the middle larboard on somebody else’s steamer.” Hairy Mike nodded, brought his iron billet into his other hand with a meaty thwack, and turned to go. But Marsh stopped him. “No,” he said. “Wait. You tell him not to go spreadin’ no stories. But if he sees anything else funny, he should come to you, or to me. Tell him we’ll give him a half-dollar.”

  “He’ll lie for the half-dollar.”

  “Well, forget the half-dollar then, but you tell him the rest of it.”

  The more Abner thought about Tom’s story, the more it bothered him. He was just as glad that Joshua York was going to install Simon as bartender, where he’d be out in public and a man could keep an eye on him. Marsh had never liked morticians, and Simon still reminded him of one something ungodly, when he didn’t remind him of one of their patrons, that is. He only hoped that Simon didn’t go licking up no mosquitoes while he was serving drinks to the cabin passengers. That kind of thing could ruin a boat’s reputation awful fast.