The River of Souls

Magnus Muldoon was again a man on a mission.

Under the bright hot sunlight of morning he rowed up the River of Souls. He had asked for and been allowed this boat by Donovant Kincannon at the Green Sea plantation an hour earlier. The master of the Green Sea was once more on his feet, in spite of Dr. Stevenson’s admonitions to remain in bed for a few more days, but Sarah was being buried this afternoon in a plot beside the chapel. Kincannon was determined to bid farewell to his daughter while standing with his arm around his wife. In what was an unheard-of decision, the slaves Abram, Mars, Tobey and Granny Pegg were invited to the service, and Magnus as well. It was doubtful that Tobey would be there, as he was under the doctor’s care after the removal of the ball and the tending of two broken ribs. Magnus planned to be at Sarah’s funeral, but not in these grimy old clothes he was currently wearing.

Rain had fallen for two days straight, drowning out the fire that had been moving so hungrily through the forest. Magnus and the snake-bit but still surviving Caleb Bovie had found one of the boats left behind by the group of men Seth Lott had shepherded back to Jubilee, and rowing through the deluge they had come upon a strange sight: what at first appeared to be an empty rowboat drifting downriver, but which upon closer inspection revealed the corpse of Griffin Royce splayed at the bow, his eyes open toward the stormy heavens and a knife stuck in his heart.

He was a red-blooded man, that Royce, thought Magnus at the time. A lady-killer, possibly with a trail of dead ladies behind him…or, if not dead, at least changed for the worse. Gunn had known too many secrets about Royce, and might have been persuaded to spill them if Royce hadn’t blown his brains out. So there lay Royce, a heartless man felled by a wound to the heart…but who had struck the blow?

Upon reaching the Green Sea, Magnus had been told by Abram that Matthew and Quinn had been in the boat with Royce, but they’d been left behind and out of sight because of the rain and Abram’s haste to get help for Tobey. Matthew had had a pistol, Abram had said…but both he and Magnus had realized that the pistol likely was useless in such a downpour.

The question that Magnus intended to have answered this morning, and the reason for his mission, was to find out what had happened to Matthew and Quinn, and for that he was on his way to Rotbottom.

He rowed steadily past dozens of alligators lying motionless in the sun on either side of the river. Several drifted by his boat, and one particularly large beast bumped the bow with its knobby tail as it swam unhurriedly on. Further ahead he passed an area where several men in boats were using spears, nets and ropes to spear and trap their prey, and Magnus wondered if those nets had not recently brought up a few human remains. Not far beyond the realm of reptiles, daylight revealed the harbor of Rotbottom, a wharf around which were standing several weatherbeaten log structures, a few barns and livestock corrals, and back in the woods more log cabins and what appeared to be a larger meeting house at the center of town, if it could be called that.

Magnus approached the wharf and, spying an old man fishing nearby, called for a rope to be thrown to him to moor the rowboat. Directions were asked to the house of Quinn Tate, and the old man sent him off in search of a cabin “four to the left of the meetin’ house, got a flower garden in front, but,” the elder added, “that girl’s not right in the head, y’know.”

Magnus thanked him for this information and continued on his way.

The town of Rotbottom was not the collection of miserable hovels that Magnus had expected. The cabins were small, to be sure, but they were not very different from his own house. In fact, some were better maintained. The dirt streets were clean, willow and oak trees spread their leafy and cooling canopies over the roofs, and except for a fishy smell of decomposition wafting in the air—which Magnus took to be the odor of alligator innards or newly-skinned carcasses issuing from a barnlike structure that appeared to be a warehouse—Rotbottom was a community not unlike many others carved from the wilderness. Some of the houses had vegetable gardens and plots of corn. Apple, pear and peach trees grew in small orchards. There were chicken coops and hogpens, and a few cattle and horses grazing in corrals. Dogs bounded about, following the path of several children playing with rolling-hoops. As a stranger in town, Magnus attracted much attention from the children and from people sitting in the shade of their porches. He was called upon to pause, sit awhile and state his business but he had to go on, and soon found himself approaching the door of Quinn Tate’s house, if he’d followed the directions correctly. Someone was inside, because cooking-smoke was rising from the chimney.

He knocked at the door and waited. It was a tidy-looking place with a small porch, but all the windows were shuttered.

Still he waited. He knocked again, a little harder.

Did he hear a movement from within? He wasn’t sure. “Quinn Tate!” he called. “It’s Magnus Muldoon! You in there?”

And now…yes…he did hear footsteps creak the floorboards. But yet the door did not open, and Magnus had the feeling that if the girl was indeed on the other side, she was standing with her hand on the latch and indecision in her addled mind.

“I need to speak to you,” he said, quietly but firmly. “I’m lookin’ for Matthew. Do you know where he is?”

A few more seconds passed. And then a latch was turned and the door opened a crack, and there was Quinn’s face…strained and frightened-looking, with a bruised nose and dark blue bruises under both swollen eyes.

“Oh,” said Magnus, unnerved at the sight. “What happpened to you?”

“The man hit me,” she answered. “The pistol…it was wet. All that rain, comin’ down. He tried to get away.” She gazed past Magnus, as if expecting he’d brought someone else with him. “You’re alone?”

“I am.”

“Thought you were dead. That Royce killed you, with the others.”

“He tried,” said Magnus. “And he came awful close.”

“I thought…somebody might be comin’ for me. To take me off, maybe. I stabbed that man in the heart, and I left the knife in him. I had to…after what he did.”

“What did he do?”

“He hit Matthew with an oar. In the head, more than once,” Quinn said. “Matthew fell into the river. After I stabbed that man, I went into the river to find Matthew…but…” She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip.

“But what?” Magnus urged.

“The River of Souls took him,” she said, in a hushed voice. “He’s gone.”

“Gone? You mean…he drowned?”

“River took him,” Quinn repeated. “He must’ve been hurt bad. I dove for him, but I couldn’t find him. I stayed out there as long as I could, before the ’gators started comin’. After that…I had to get out and leave that place.”

“He’s not dead!” Magnus’s voice cracked. “He can’t be dead!”

“All I know is…the river took him. Please, sir.” She reached out and grasped his arm. “Are you going to send men here to get me? For stabbin’ that very bad man in the heart?”

Magnus shook his head. “No. Not my place to do that.” He had left Bovie in one boat and rowed back to the Green Sea with Royce’s body in the other, just to show the Kincannons what had happened. Bovie hadn’t been hesitant to tell the master and mistress of the Green Sea about Royce’s murder of Stamper and Barrows, and the killing of Joel Gunn. Magnus figured the story ought to end here, with Abram, Mars and Tobey pardoned and Sarah’s killer gone to his reward. No one at the Green Sea was going to ask who had put the knife into Griffin Royce, but if anyone did…maybe Matthew would want to take the credit for that. But Matthew dead, after all they’d been through? Magnus couldn’t believe it; or, maybe, he didn’t want to.

“How far upriver did Matthew go in?” Magnus asked.

“Just after we got started. I don’t know…it wasn’t far past where the slaves took their boat out.”

It was likely six or seven miles away, Magnus thought. With all those alligators in the water, a body wouldn’t last long. He was torn between rowing further upriver in search of the body and giving it up as a lost cause. But still… “You’re sure he didn’t crawl out? All that rain comin’ down…maybe you couldn’t see him? And you bein’ hurt and all?”

“I looked for him as long as I could,” she repeated, with some finality in her tone. “You know…the way I felt about him…I wanted to find him, more than anything.”

“How did you get back?”

“I walked out. Followed the river.”

“Matthew might still be alive,” Magnus said, mostly to himself. “Maybe pulled himself to shore, but he’s too hurt to travel.”

“I don’t know,” she answered, “but I stayed there awhile, and I didn’t see him.”

“Goin’ to Sarah’s funeral this afternoon,” he told her. “Important that I be there, I think.” He frowned and rubbed his forehead with the palm of an oversized hand, trying to figure out what he ought to do. He’d scrubbed himself at his house, but he could still smell the rank mud of the quicksand pit up his nostrils and he thought it would be a very long time before that memory went away.

“Did everything turn out all right?” Quinn asked. “About the slaves?”

Magnus nodded. “Pardoned, one and all. Tobey’s not able to be up and about yet, but he’ll live. Damn,” he said softly. “I should’ve stayed with you and Matthew. Maybe I should never have let him go out there, in the first place. Maybe I should’ve run him off, when he came to my house. Maybe…” He was overcome by the choices that had been made, and what had resulted. “I don’t know,” he said, which was as close to the truth as he could get.

“Or maybe,” Quinn said, her swollen eyes fixed upon the mountainous man, “things that were supposed to happen…have happened. Nothin’ can change ’em, just like the flow of the river can’t be changed. And nobody ever knows how a journey’s going to end, Mr. Muldoon. Happiness or sadness…right or wrong…justice or injustice…even life or death. Nobody knows, but it seems to me everybody has to take their own journey, and square up for it.” She paused, searching the troubled, black-bearded face. “Matthew took it on himself to go, as I understand it. I’m sorry for what happened…you know I am…heartsick at it…but I think if Matthew was really so much like my Daniel—if he was my Daniel, deep in his soul—then he knew he was doin’ what he had to do.”

Magnus considered that for a moment, as the summer sun shone down through the canopy of trees, birds sang up in the branches, dogs barked across Rotbottom and in the distance children laughed at their game of rolling-hoop. Life, like the River of Souls, moved on.

“Need to be at Sarah’s funeral this afternoon,” he said. Then he added, with determination in his voice, “Goin’ upriver tomorrow mornin’, though. If he’s there, I’ll find him. Seems like…if I can…I ought to bring him back.”

“I hope you can,” Quinn said.

“Is there anything I can do for you? Anything you need?”

“No, but thank you.” She gave him a sad smile. “I’m squared up, too.”

“Nobody’ll be botherin’ you,” Magnus promised. “The Kincannons have the body of the man who killed their daughter. They have the how and the why of it. That’s all they want.”

Quinn stared into space for a few seconds, and then she seemed to recover herself. “I’m forgettin’ my manners. I’ve got soup in a kettle and a little tea, if you’d like. Corncake’s bakin’.”

“Oh…no, I’d best be on my way, with Sarah’s funeral comin’ so soon.”

“Well…good fortune to you, sir,” she told him, and then: “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, ma’am,” Magnus replied. He waited for her to close the door. He heard the latch fall again, and the creak of the floorboards as she walked away. It was a lonely sound. He thought he might come here again someday soon and bring Quinn a colorful glass bottle or two, something to bring light into the house. At that point he might tell her about the Soul Cryer, and that it was simply a very large, burned and agonized panther…or not, for there was some value in letting a mystery remain a mystery, For now, though, he had to be going, and whether or not his involvement in the solving of Sarah’s murder and the safe return of the runaways had any bearing on if he was fated to spend time in Hell, he didn’t know. He did know he felt he’d done the right thing…both he and Matthew had…and maybe that ought to be enough, for he was certain he had much more life yet to be lived and a body could step into any number of Hell’s suckpits before it was over.

Magnus returned to his boat. He mopped his brow with a cloth he’d brought, asked the old fisherman to release the mooring line, and then Magnus took up the oars and began steadily rowing toward the Green Sea. Before he got too distant from Rotbottom’s harbor he looked back, up the River of Souls as far as he could see before the river curved and the trees closed in. He hoped to see…what? Matthew Corbett rowing his own boat back the way he’d come? Matthew Corbett, alive and well and not now drowned and mostly stripped to the bone by alligators? Well, there was a lot to be done soon. He didn’t know if the families of the dead wanted the bodies back for Christian burial; if they did, he would volunteer to return into that damned swamp with a group of searchers and bring back whatever was left. It seemed to him that by coming out alive he’d beaten the cursed river and the haunted swamp, and he ought to be mighty pleased with that fact. He ought to…yes, he decided…he ought to.

He had left his ride in the barn at the Green Sea, and mounting his black horse—named, not too imaginatively but rather more wishfully, Hero—he left the plantation. He didn’t know how often he would return here; it seemed very quiet and sad without Sarah’s presence. The Kincannons had been true to their word and yesterday paid him the twenty pounds that were supposed to be shared by himself and Matthew. He was suddenly in possession of the kind of riches his Pap had searched for all the man’s life—and had come to the New World to discover—but had never found. In other times Magnus might have stashed the gold under his thin mattress and defied the world to come take it, but on the day he’d received it, bright and shiny coinage in a brown leather bag, he had decided to return half of it to the Kincannons, for it was not his due. He suggested that Matthew might come back for it, but in his heart he had known something terrible had happened to the younger man. Before Magnus had left the Green Sea yesterday, he’d asked to make a purchase from the Kincannons with one of his coins, but they’d freely given him the three items he’d requested. So it was that now he was on his way home, with intent to make use of these items before returning for Sarah’s funeral.

Upon arriving, Magnus drew water from his well into a wooden bowl. He took the bowl into his house, and placed it upon a table alongside one of the three items given to him by the Kincannons, a small mirror on a pedestal. He angled the mirror upward so that he might see his own face.

How did I get to be who I am? he asked himself. And the better question: where does my river lead me, from here?

He recalled what Matthew had said, about his situation: I say remake yourself, beginning with a bath and clean clothes. Wash and trim your hair and your beard, take your emeralds and bottles to town and see what can be done. You might find your craft much in demand, and yourself as well by several ladies who are worth much more attention than Pandora Prisskitt. But…if you prefer this solitary life way out here, then by all means sink your roots deeper. Sink them until you disappear, if you choose. It’s your life, isn’t it?

“Yep,” Magnus said to the black-bearded face in the mirror. “My life.”

Only…it didn’t seem like so much of a life anymore. It seemed like a place to hide from life. To curl up and count your woes and plan vengeance upon people who cared not if you lived or died, because you meant nothing to them. It seemed to Magnus that for a long time he’d been waiting to be ready.

And now he was.

Maybe it was the death of the beautiful and kind-spirited Sarah that had unlocked his dungeon. Maybe also the loss of Matthew Corbett had made Magnus decide to throw away the key. For Magnus thought life was too short and fragile to waste as a hermit, shunning all people and thinking all could be painted with the same tar brush. But now he thought that people might be more like the sand and powdered colors that went into his bottles; you never knew what they were going to become, until you woke them up by giving them a breath of opportunity.

Magnus wished for a difference. He wished for his own opportunity to be newly born, as if he were one of his own bottles. And maybe…he could recreate himself, just as Matthew had said, and find his own way in the world that lay beyond his house. He wouldn’t start too large or expect too much…but he intended to start.

With a deep breath that indicated his resolve of purpose, he began to use the second implement he’d received from the Kincannons. The sharp scissors hacked away his thick black growth of beard, and maybe a flea or two did jump out. Goodbye, my brothers, Magnus thought. He continued to work the scissors until the beard was cut short enough to be handled by the third implement, a straight razor. By that time Magnus’ hand was sore; he’d had no idea how long and tangled and dirty he’d allowed his beard to become. He remembered telling Matthew that his Pap and Mam had said it made him handsome. No…it just made him appear more the wild and ragged beast that at heart he was not. And as Magnus soaped his face and began to scrape the razor over the contours of jaw, cheeks and chin—carefully, carefully, for this had long been forgotten territory to him—he saw the emergence of a new man, much younger-looking, and really—if he wished to be a little jaunty about it—somewhat kind of handsome.

He would wash his hair and wear his best and cleanest clothes to give his respects to Sarah. He would give his respects to Matthew Corbett by searching for him tomorrow, but he doubted the body would ever be found. It was a strange thing: he might have imagined that beyond the crack of the door Quinn Tate was hiding Matthew in that house, if the young madwoman had not invited him in for tea, soup and corncakes. But if Matthew had really been in the house, then why hadn’t he proclaimed himself?

Going out on the river tomorrow, Magnus told the younger and handsome man in the mirror. Going out and look for Matthew, one last time.

And then what? What about the day after tomorrow?

That would be the day Magnus Muldoon would take his green stones and some of his bottles to Charles Town, and he would present himself where he needed to be presented along the shops of Front Street, and maybe he would never be a true gentleman like the problem-solver from New York because he would always have too many rough edges that resisted smoothing, but still…

…it seemed to Magnus that any man who had come back alive from the River of Souls had somewhere else to go. Somewhere important, a destination not yet in sight, hidden around many further bends and twists. Like Quinn had said…everybody has to take their own journey, and square up for it.

He was ready for the first step out into the world. And day after tomorrow, he reckoned his journey would begin.