The River of Souls

The dead young woman was still wearing her yellow dress of the afternoon, now stained with dark red blood across the front from the vicious wound in the hollow of her throat. Matthew had lifted the fouled linens carefully and gingerly, braced for what he might find beneath. A brief look at the throat wound told him Sarah couldn’t have called out if she’d tried; likely she’d been strangling on blood at the very first thrust of the blade.

Mrs. Kincannon shuddered and looked away. She drew a hard-earned breath and kept her head lowered.

“Has the knife been recovered?” Matthew asked.

The woman found a shred of a voice. “It’s in the house. An ordinary knife, nothing more.”

“Who brought it to you?”

“Griffin Royce.”

Matthew nodded. He reasoned from the wound that the knife had about a six-inch-long blade. Ordinary enough, but he’d still like to examine it if he could push Mrs. Kincannon that far. He noted the thick red dampness of the linens beneath Sarah’s body. He didn’t wish to take it upon himself or Magnus to turn the corpse; that would certainly be going too far. “Are the stab wounds on the upper or lower back?” he asked.

“The upper,” she said, with difficulty.

“Six wounds there?”

“I don’t know. Yes…six…I think so.”

The blade had pierced the lungs several times, Matthew thought. At least Sarah had not lingered very long. With all this blood loss, she had passed quickly. “I’d like to question Griffin Royce, if that would be possible.”

“He was heading to the wharf the last I saw him.”

“I’d be curious to know more particulars from Joel Gunn, as well.” Matthew leaned over to examine the throat wound more carefully. Just one brutal stab here, face-to-face with her killer, and then she’d likely turned to run and taken the others in the back. It gnawed at his guts that Sarah had been so alive and bright this afternoon, and already the process of decay would have begun. He saw that her arms were crossed over her body, as she would be resting in her coffin.

“Who arranged her this way?” Matthew asked. “Who pinned her hair up and positioned her arms?”

“I did,” said Mrs. Kincannon, and Matthew thought it was probably the most difficult task the woman had ever performed. “Royce and Gunn brought her in here. I asked Pegg to watch over her, while I went to see about my husband.”

Matthew remembered the girl’s hands clutching her book of poetry. He looked at her fingers, recalling how she’d offered him the purple bottle of fennel seed oil.

Wait, he thought. He leaned closer. And a little closer still.

Wait. What is that, right there?

There was something under the nails of the index and middle fingers of Sarah’s left hand. Something…the crust of a whitish substance…like clay?

He was mindful of his manners and Mrs. Kincannon’s suffering, but he had to carefully lift the left hand and use his own index fingernail to remove some of whatever it was.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Kincannon asked, alarmed.

“Matthew?” Magnus also sounded quite uneasy at this display.

Matthew was able to get a small amount of the claylike substance in the palm of his hand. He smelled it and caught a faint bready odor. Meal? he wondered. Possibly mixed with clay? There were flecks of green in the mixture as well. Herbs of some kind, he thought. Perhaps of a medicinal nature?

“Ah,” he said, as it came to him with a force like a blow to the heart.

“What is it?” Magnus asked, leaning over Matthew’s shoulder to look.

“It,” said Matthew, “is a scraping from the interior of a medical compress. At least that’s what I think. A mixture of clay, meal and herbs.” He gently lowered the dead girl’s hand and also the linens. He asked Mrs. Kincannon, “You say you last saw Griffin Royce heading to the wharf?”

“Yes, just awhile ago. What’s this about a medical compress?”

“Royce was bitten by a horse, yes? And Dr. Stevenson applied a medical compress to treat the infection? When I saw Royce this afternoon, he had the compress on his right forearm. Tonight when I saw him, the compress was gone and replaced by simple bandages. I believe we should find Royce, and ask why under the nails of Sarah’s left hand is material from inside of that compress, which might have happened when her fingers tore through the cheesecloth.”

“What’re you saying? Why would that be under Sarah’s fingernails?”

“It would be there,” said Matthew calmly, “if she’d tried to grasp Royce’s right forearm for some reason, and broken through the compress. And that reason might be…that she was trying to stop the thrust of a knife.” He let that sink into the silence. “I’d like to examine Royce’s forearm for scratches, as well.” He turned toward Granny Pegg. “The story as you know it, please. Now is not the time to hold anything back.”

Granny Pegg did not reply for a time, and Matthew thought that being a slave for likely a great part of her life had stolen her ability to be forthcoming with anything that might affect the others in the quarter. But then she seemed to steady herself, she closed her eyes for a few seconds as if either to pray or recall details, and then she opened her eyes again and spoke.

“Much goin’ on here neither the massa nor his lady know,” she began. “Massa Kincannon don’t get down to the quarter or out in the fields like he should…his leg givin’ him trouble. So he leave it up to them cap’ns to run things. Now we had a good or’seer with Cap’n Jameson, but he got on older and then they’s hired Cap’n Royce to help him. Wasn’t two month a’fore Cap’n Jameson’s house caught on fire, and they sayin’ he drunk in his bed and knocked over a candle into some clothes and that lit it up.” She made a noise of disgust. “Wasn’t how that been done.”

The last time the Green Sea’s alarm bell had been rung, Matthew recalled. A fire broke out over there, Magnus had said.

“Cap’n Royce got hisself to work gettin’ in close with Massa Kincannon,” the woman continued. “Tryin’ to get in close with Miss Sarah, too.”

“What?” Mrs. Kincannon asked sharply.

“Truth of it,” vowed Granny Pegg. “From the first he was here and Miss Sarah was fourteen year old, Cap’n Royce was after that girl. After other girls too. Livy…Molly Ann…Long Jane…Macy. Molly Ann was near givin’ birth to his child when all of a sudden she gone. You remember that, Mizz Kincannon? And everybody in the big house thought Molly Ann had run off, gone upriver?”

“I remember. You’re saying Royce did away with her?”

“Cain’t prove it. Just sayin’ what I see.”

“If this is true,” Mrs. Kincannon went on, “then why didn’t anyone tell my husband? He would’ve wanted to know!”

“Same reason Miss Sarah didn’t say nothin’ ’bout Cap’n Royce always doggin’ her,” said Granny Pegg. “She tell me…Cap’n Royce say funny how fire can get started in the quarter. How quick it can eat up a house and ever’body in it. He say, he don’t mean no harm to Miss Sarah, he just funnin’ with her, but if she took things wrong and told anybody how he tried to steal a kiss or grab at her when nobody was lookin’…then somebody was gonna pay for it. So she stayed as far away from him as she could, and she don’t say nothin’. Now look what’s been gone and done.”

“Royce killed her?” Magnus rumbled. It was a dangerous sound.

“Didn’t see it happen,” was the answer. “Just know what Miss Sarah’s been tellin’ me. Wasn’t long after Cap’n Jameson died that Cap’n Gunn came to work here. I heard it told from Vinia in the big house that Cap’n Royce wanted him here, told Massa Kincannon he was a hard worker and a good cap’n. They must’a worked together somewhere else. Like I say…Cap’n Royce and Cap’n Gunn are two peas in a pod. Whatever Cap’n Royce did, Cap’n Gunn made sure he did it too, and they’s watchin’ each other’s backs. Likely did the same on more than one plantation. Not sayin’ exactly I know what happened tonight, but I’m sayin’ my Abram had no need to kill Miss Sarah. Look to the man who coveted her, and the man who say he saw a knife in Abram’s hand.”

“Abram shouldn’t have run, then!” Mrs. Kincannon’s eyes had taken on a feverish glint. “Why didn’t he stay and defend himself?”

“Because Abram was breakin’ the law, ma’am,” said Granny Pegg. “He was out where he wasn’t supposed to be. Might be he stumbled onto the body on his way back to the quarter, and he picked up that knife. However it happened, Abram must’ve figured there was not gonna be no defense between hisself and the noose.”

Matthew said, “I think it’s time I ask Mr. Gunn to step back in for some questions.” The first would be: did a book happen to be lying on the ground along with the body? He went to the door and opened it, and found nothing but warm humid air and a cloud of gnats outside.

“Probably gone to join the hunt,” Matthew reported to the others. “The faster Abram is found and disposed of, the better for Royce and Gunn.”

Mrs. Kincannon shook her head back and forth, as this realization sank deeper. “My God…what would make a man want to possess a girl so much he would turn to murder?”

“Wantin’ what you can’t have,” said Magnus Muldoon, in the hard voice of experience. “What you think is better than you are. What you think will make you better.” He focused his fierce iron-gray eyes upon Matthew. “It can’t be left like this. Sarah was my friend. I’m goin’ out after Royce and Gunn. Get the truth out of ’em, maybe stop ’em from another killin’.” He nodded, as if he had answered his own internal question. “Seems right, with what I’ve done in the past. Maybe spare myself a little bit of Hell’s fire.”

Mrs. Kincannon came forward. She stood between Magnus and Matthew and looked down into her daughter’s pallid face. The tears welled up afresh. “She had so much life,” the woman said softly. She gently touched the girl’s cheek. “Our only child. Dear God…this about Abram, Mars and Tobey…and Royce and Gunn…I can hardly believe it. I can’t ask Donovant for help. What should I do?”

“You can fetch me a musket or a pistol, a powderhorn, some balls and fixin’s,” said Magnus. “A pouch of beef jerky and a torch would be appreciated. Then direct me to the wharf and a rowboat. I’ll do the rest.”

The woman looked into Matthew’s eyes. “Will you go with him? Please…as a representative of the law? I can pay you whatever amount you like.”

Matthew realized he was being asked to solve a problem, in his official capacity. It was not a task he relished, for he thought the runaways would be caught and killed before dawn, but it was a task he had been trained for and was expected to perform by both Madam Herrald and Hudson Greathouse. Also his own sense of justice demanded it. “I would ask twenty pounds,” he answered. “To be divided between myself and Mr. Muldoon. Is that suitable?” He was asking Magnus, who grunted an assent. “Then,” he told Mrs. Kincannon, “I would like to carry a sword, if you can honor that.” He figured he needed a sharp edge, out where they were going. “And also…very importantly…don’t move the body from where it is. All right?”

“All right. I’ll get what both of you ask. Pegg, will you take them to the boathouse? I’ll meet you there directly.” She paused for only a moment longer to once more regard the face of her daughter, and then with a strengthless sigh she turned away and left the chapel.

“Come with me, gen’l’men,” Granny Pegg instructed. “I’se old, but I can still walk fast. You two goin’ up the River of Souls…there are things you ought to know about that country. Come on, then, and I’ll tell you like I told my blood how best to keep y’selves alive.”