Fevre Dream

  “Yeah,” said Abner Marsh. No sooner had the suggestion been made than Marsh felt incredibly weary. He hadn’t slept in something like thirty hours now. “I’d appreciate that,” he said.

  “Show him to a room, Jim,” the planter said. “And Cap’n, Robert will pay a call on the undertaker, too. For that unfortunate woman. Most tragic, most. What did you say her name was?”

  “Valerie,” Marsh said. For the life of him, he couldn’t recall what last name she’d been using. “Valerie York,” he improvised.

  “She’ll get a good Christian burial,” Gray said, “unless you want to take her to her family, perhaps?”

  “No,” said Marsh, “no.”

  “Fine. Jim, take Cap’n Marsh upstairs. Put him near that poor burned-up friend of his.”

  “Yessuh, Daddy.”

  Marsh hardly bothered glancing at the room they gave him. He slept like a log.

  When he woke, it was dark.

  Marsh sat up in bed stiffly. The rowing had taken its toll. His joints creaked when he moved, he had a terrible cramp in his shoulders, and his arms felt like somebody had beaten on them with a big oak club. He groaned and edged slowly to the side of the mattress, lowering his bare feet to the floor. Every step sent pains through him as he went to the window and opened it wide to let some cool night air into the room. Outside was a small stone balcony, and beyond it a fringe of China trees and the fields, desolate and empty in the moonlight. In the distance Marsh could make out the dim glow of the bagasse, still sending up its veil of smoke. Beyond it, only a faint glimmering from here, was the river.

  Marsh shivered, closed the window and went back to bed. It was chilly in the room now, so he pulled the blankets over himself and rolled onto his side. The moonlight etched darks and shadows everywhere, and the furniture, all strange to him, became stranger still in the faint light. He could not sleep. He found himself thinking of Damon Julian and the Fevre Dream, and worrying about whether the steamer was still where he’d left her. He thought of Valerie as well. He had gotten a good look at her when they’d pulled her out from under the yawl, and she hadn’t been a pretty sight. You’d never have thought that she’d been beautiful, pale and graceful and sensual, with those great violet eyes. Abner Marsh felt sorry for her, and thought that was strange of him, seeing as how it was only last night around this time that he’d tried to kill her with that buffalo gun of his. The world was an awful queer place, he thought, when so goddamned much could change in a day.

  Finally he slept again.

  “Abner,” came the whisper, disturbing his dreams. “Abner,” came the voice, calling, “let me in.”

  Abner Marsh sat up suddenly. Joshua York was standing on his balcony, rapping on the glass of his window with a pale, scarred hand.

  “Hold on,” Marsh said. It was still black outside and the house was quiet. Joshua smiled as Marsh climbed out of bed and padded toward him. His face was lined with cracks and fissures, husks of dying skin. Marsh opened the doors to the balcony, and Joshua stepped through, wearing his sad white suit, all stained and rumpled now. It wasn’t until he was in the room that Abner Marsh remembered the empty bottle he’d tossed into the river. He stepped back suddenly. “Joshua, you ain’t . . . you ain’t thirstin’, are you?”

  “No,” said Joshua York. His gray cloak moved and curled in the wind that rustled through the open balcony doors. “I did not want to break the lock, or the glass. Do not be afraid, Abner.”

  “You’re better,” Marsh said, looking at him. York’s lips were still cracked, his eyes were sunk in deep purple-black pits, but he was much improved. At noon he’d looked like death.

  “Yes,” Joshua said. “Abner, I’ve come to take my leave.”

  “What?” Marsh was flabbergasted. “You can’t leave.”

  “I must, Abner. They saw me, whoever owns this plantation. I have a vague memory of being treated by a doctor. Tomorrow I will be healed. What will they think then?”

  “What will they think when they go to bring you breakfast and you ain’t there?” Marsh said.

  “No doubt they will be puzzled, but it will be easier to account for nonetheless. You can be as shocked as they are, Abner. Tell them that I must have wandered off in a fever. I will never be found.”

  “Valerie is dead,” Marsh said.

  “Yes,” said Joshua. “There is a wagon outside with a coffin in it. I guessed it was for her.” He sighed and shook his head. “I failed her. I have failed all my people. We should never have taken her.”

  “She made her choice,” Marsh said. “At least she got free of him.”

  “Free,” Joshua York said bitterly. “Is this the freedom I bring my people? A poor gift. For a time, before Damon Julian came into my life, I dared to dream that Valerie and I might be lovers someday. Not in the fashion of my own people, inflamed by blood, but with a passion born of tenderness, and affection, and mutual desire. We talked of that.” His mouth twisted in self-reproach. “She believed in me. I killed her.”

  “Like hell,” Marsh said. “At the end, she said she loved you. She didn’t have to come with us. She wanted to. We all got to choose, you said. I think she picked right. She was an awful pretty lady.”

  Joshua York shuddered. “She walks in beauty, like the night,” he said very quietly, staring down at his clenched fist. “Sometimes I question whether there is an hour for my race, Abner. The nights are full of blood and terror, but the days are merciless.”

  “Where are you goin’?” Marsh asked.

  Joshua looked grim. “Back.”

  Marsh scowled. “You can’t.”

  “I have no other choice.”

  “You just escaped from there,” Marsh said hotly. “After all we went through to get loose, you can’t just up and go back. Wait. Hide in the woods or something, go to some town. I’ll get loose of here and we’ll join up, make some plans for getting that steamboat back.”

  “Again?” Joshua shook his head. “There is a story I never told you, Abner. It happened a long time ago, during my first months in England, when the red thirst still came upon me regularly, driving me out in search of blood. One night I had fought it, and lost, and I hunted through the midnight streets. I came upon a couple, a man and a woman hurrying somewhere. My habit was to shun such prey, to take only those who walked alone, for safety’s sake. But the thirst was on me badly, and even from a distance I could see that the woman was very beautiful. She drew me like a flame draws the moth, and I came. I attacked from darkness, and got my hands around the man’s neck, and ripped away half his throat, I thought. Then I shoved him aside and he fell. He was a huge man. I took the woman in my arms, and bent my teeth to her neck, ever so gently. My eyes held her still, entranced her. I had just tasted the first hot, sweet flow of blood when I was seized from behind and torn from her embrace. It was the man, her companion. I had not killed him after all. His neck was thick with muscle and fat, and while I had ripped it open so it dripped blood, he was still on his feet. He never said a word. He only put up his fists as a prizefighter might, and hit me square in the face. He was quite strong. The blow stunned me, and opened a gash above my eye. I was already distracted. Being pulled from your victim like that is a sickening feeling, dizzy, disorienting. The man hit me again, and I lashed out backhanded at him. He went down heavily, long gashes across his cheek, one of his eyes half-torn from his skull. I turned back to the woman, pressed my mouth to the open wound. And then he was on me again. I tore his arm loose of me and all but ripped it from its socket, and I broke one of his legs for good measure, with a kick. He went down. This time I watched. Painstakingly, he got up again, raised his fists, moved toward me. Twice more I knocked him down, and twice more he rose. Finally I broke his neck, and he died, and then I killed his woman.

  “Afterward, I could not put him from my mind. He must have known that I was not entirely human. He must have realized, strong as he was, that he was no match for my strength, my speed, my thirst. I was distracted by my own fever,
and the beauty of his companion, and I missed my kill. He might have been spared. He could have run. He could have called out for help. He could have taken a moment and found a weapon. But he did not. He saw his lady in my arms, saw me bleeding her, and all he could think of was to get up and come at me with those big, foolish fists of his. When I had time to reflect, I found myself admiring his strength, his mad courage, the love he must have had for that woman.

  “But Abner, for all that, he was stupid. He saved neither his lady nor himself.

  “You remind me of that man, Abner. Julian has taken your Fevre Dream from you, and all you can think of is getting her back, so you get up and cock your fists and come straight on, and Julian knocks you down again. One day you will not get up, if you continue these attacks. Abner, give it up!”

  “What the hell you sayin’?” Marsh demanded in an angry voice. “It’s Julian and his vampires got to worry now. That goddamn steamer ain’t goin’ no place without a pilot.”

  “I can pilot her,” said Joshua York.

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.”

  Marsh felt sick with anger and betrayal. “Why?” he demanded. “Joshua, you ain’t like them!”

  “I will be, unless I return,” York said gravely. “Unless I have my potion, the thirst will come on me, all the fiercer for the years I have held it at bay. And then I will kill, and drink, and be as Julian is. The next time I entered a bedroom by night, it would not be to talk.”

  “Go back then! Fetch your damned drink! But don’t move that damned steamer, not until I can get there.”

  “With armed men. With sharpened stakes and hate in your hearts. To kill. I will not permit that.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “The side of my people.”

  “Julian’s side,” spat Marsh.

  “No,” said Joshua York. He sighed. “Listen, Abner, and try to understand. Julian is the bloodmaster. He controls them, all of them. Some of them are like him, corrupt, evil. Katherine, Raymond, others, they follow him willingly. But not all of them. You saw Valerie, you heard her in the yawl today. I am not alone. Our races are not so very different. All of us have good and evil in us, and all of us dream. Yet if you attack the steamer, if you move against Julian, they will defend him, no matter what their private hopes may be. Centuries of enmity and fear will drive them. A river of blood flows between day and night, and it cannot be crossed easily. Those who hesitate, if any, will be compelled.

  “If you come, Abner, you and your people, there will be death. And not Julian’s alone. The others will guard him, and they will perish, and your people as well.”

  “Sometimes you got to take that risk,” Marsh said. “And those who help Julian deserve to die.”

  “Do they?” Joshua looked sad. “Perhaps they do. Perhaps we all should die. We are out of place in this world your race has built. Your kind has killed all but a handful of us. Perhaps it is time to slaughter the last survivors as well.” He smiled grimly. “If that is what you intend, Abner, then remember who I am. You are my friend, but they are blood of my blood, my people. I belong with them. I thought I was their king.”

  His tone was so bitter and despairing that Abner Marsh felt his anger fading. In its place was pity. “You tried,” he said.

  “I failed. I failed Valerie, and Simon, failed all those who believed in me. I failed you and Mister Jeffers, and that infant as well. I think I may even have failed Julian, in some strange way.”

  “It ain’t your fault,” Marsh insisted.

  Joshua York shrugged, but there was a cold grim look in his gray eyes. “Past is past. My concern is with tonight and tomorrow night and the night after. I must go back. They need me, though they may not realize it. I must go back and do what I can, however little it may be.”

  Abner Marsh snorted. “And you tell me to give it up? You think I’m like that damned fool kept comin’ at you? Hell, Joshua, what about you? How many times has Julian bled you now? It appears to me you’re just as damned stubborn and stupid as you say I am.”

  Joshua smiled. “Perhaps,” he admitted.

  “Hell,” Marsh swore. “All right. You’re goin’ back to Julian, like some egg-suckin’ idyut. What the hell do you want me to do?”

  “You had better leave here as quickly as you can,” Joshua said, “before our hosts get more suspicious than they are already.”

  “I’d figured out that much.”

  “It’s over, Abner. Don’t come looking for us again.”

  Abner Marsh scowled. “Hell.”

  Joshua smiled. “You damned fool,” he said. “Well, look if you must. You won’t find us.”

  “I’ll see about that.”

  “Maybe there’s hope for us yet. I’ll return and tame Julian and build my bridge between night and day, and together you and I will outrun the Eclipse.”

  Abner Marsh snorted derisively, but down inside he wanted to believe. “You take care of my goddamned steamboat,” he said. “Ain’t never been a faster one, and she better be in good repair when I get her back.”

  When Joshua smiled it made the dry, dead skin around his mouth crackle and tear. He lifted a hand to his face and tore it away. It peeled off whole, like it was only a mask he’d been wearing, an ugly mask full of scars and wrinkles. Beneath it his skin was milky white, serene and unlined, ready to begin anew, ready for the world to write upon it. York crumbled his old face in his hand; wisps of old pain and flakes of skin sifted through his fingers and fell to the floor. He wiped his hand on his coat and held it out to Abner Marsh. They shook.

  “We all got to make choices,” Marsh said. “You told me that, Joshua, and you was right. Them choices ain’t always easy. Someday you’re goin’ to have to choose, I think. Between your night folks and . . . well, call it good. Doing right. You know what I mean. Make the right choice, Joshua.”

  “And you, Abner. Make your own choices wisely.”

  Joshua York turned, his cloak swirling behind him, and went outside. He vaulted over the balustrade with easy grace and dropped the twenty feet to the ground like it was something he did every day, landing on his feet. Then he was gone, vanished, moving so quick he seemed to fade into the night. Maybe he turned himself into a goddamned mist, Abner Marsh thought.

  Away off on the distant shine that was the river, a steamer sounded her whistle, a faint melancholy call, kind of lost and kind of lonely. It was a bad night on the river. Abner Marsh shivered and wondered if there’d be a frost. He shut the balcony doors and walked on back to bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Fever Years:

  November 1857–April 1870

  Both of them were true to their word: Abner Marsh kept on looking, but he did not find her.

  They left Aaron Gray’s plantation as soon as Karl Framm was strong enough to travel, several days after Joshua York had vanished. Marsh was glad to be gone. Gray and his kin were getting mighty curious by then about why there was nothing in the papers about a steamboat explosion, and why none of their neighbors had heard of it, and why Joshua had taken off. And Marsh was getting tangled up in his own lies. By the time he and Toby and Karl Framm got themselves upriver, the Fevre Dream was gone, as he’d known she would be. Marsh returned to St. Louis.

  Through the long dreary winter, Marsh kept up his search. He wrote more letters, he loitered around the riverfront bars and billiard halls, he hired some more detectives, he read too damn many newspapers, he found Yoerger and Grove and the rest of the crew of the Eli Reynolds and sent them up and down the river, cabin passage, looking. All of it turned up nothing. No one had seen the Fevre Dream. No one had seen the Ozymandias either. Abner Marsh figured they’d changed her name again. He read every goddamned poem Byron and Shelley ever wrote, but this time it was no use. It got so bad he had the damn poems memorized, and he even went on to other poets, but the only thing he found that way was a sorry-looking Missouri stern-wheeler named the Hiawatha.

  Marsh did get one report from his detectives
, but it told him nothing he hadn’t figured out already. The side-wheel steamer Ozymandias had left Natchez that October night with about four hundred tons of freight, forty cabin passengers, and maybe twice as many deckers. The freight had never been delivered. Neither the steamer nor the passengers had ever been seen again, except at a few woodyards just downstream of Natchez. Abner Marsh read over that letter a half dozen times, frowning. The numbers were way too low, which meant that Sour Billy was doing one damn poor job—unless he’d kept them down deliberate, so Julian and his night folks could have an easy time of it. A hundred and twenty people were gone, vanished. It gave Marsh a cold sweat. He stared at that letter and remembered what Damon Julian had said to him: No one on the river will ever forget your Fevre Dream.

  For months Abner Marsh was plagued by terrible nightmares of a boat moving down the river, all black, every lamp and candle extinguished, the big black tarpaulins hung all around the main deck so even the ruddy light of the furnaces could not escape, a boat dark as death and black as sin, a shadow moving through moonlight and fog, hardly seen, quiet and fast. In his dreams she made no sound as she moved, and white shapes flitted about her decks silently and haunted her grand saloon, and inside their staterooms the passengers huddled in fear, until the doors opened one midnight, and then they began to scream. Once or twice Marsh woke up screaming as well, and even in his waking hours he could not forget her, his dream boat cloaked in shadows and screams, with smoke as black as Julian’s eyes and steam the color of blood.

  By the time the ice was breaking up on the upper river, Abner Marsh was faced with a hard choice. He had not found the Fevre Dream, and the search had brought him to the brink of ruin. His ledger books told a grim story; his coffers were almost empty. He owned a steamboat company without any steamboats, and he lacked even the funds to have a modest one built. So, reluctantly, Marsh wrote his agents and detectives and called off the hunt.