Kingdom River Page 9

  The Khan might have difficulty campaigning against that kingdom while leaving his underbelly exposed the whole winding length of the Bravo border. So, he was sending — gently at first — to see how the metal of North Map-Mexico rang when struck. A touch, and a warning.

  And why was that news so welcome? So good to hear? Why seemed so rich with opportunity? The answer came like certain music as Sam began to drift to sleep... came as dreamed trumpet calls, sounding, Duty, duty, duty. What trumpet call did not?

  ...Had he taken his damn boots off? Couldn't remember.

  CHAPTER 7

  Martha had washed herself, and her hair — drawn it up into a loose knot and pinned it, then combed and finger-curled a long ringlet in front of each ear. Charlotte Garfield had told her that her long hair, dark as planting ground, was her best feature. "Only feature," Charlotte's sister had said, and had neighed in fun at Martha's size.

  Though clean, her hair done, Martha was scrubbing homespun small-clothes — just discovered dirty beneath her father's bed — in the tub on the dog-trot, when she glimpsed metal shining through the trees. She took her hands off the rippled board, shook hot water and lye suds from her fingers, and watched that shining become soldiers marching up along the River Road.

  There was a short double-file of men, East-bank soldiers armored throat to belly with green-enameled strips of steel across their chests... lighter steel strips down their thighs, sewn to the front of thick leather trousers. An officer was marching in front, and so must be a lieutenant. Lieutenants marched with their men, and never rode.

  Martha watched them through the trees — her wet, reddened hands chilled by the early-winter air. Many soldiers traveled the River Road, now, because of fighting in Map-Missouri.... Though that was the West-bank army, fighting over there. She'd heard that army wore blue steel.

  As Martha watched, the lieutenant and his men reached the cabin path — then turned neatly and marched up it. They were coming to her father's house, something soldiers had never done before. These were crossbowmen — heavy windlass bows and quarrel bundles strapped to their packs, short-swords and daggers at their belts. Long, green-dyed woolen cloaks, rolled tight, were carried over their left shoulders.

  "Daddy!" She thought surely William Bovey had died after all, and they were coming to take her to hang.

  Her father came to the door, said, "What is it?" Then saw what it was.

  More than three Warm-time weeks before, Big William Bovey and two other large men had come out to the cabin, angry over a deal for a four-horse wagon team, and begun to beat Edward Jackson with sticks and their fists. It had seemed to Martha they were killing her father.

  She'd run into the farry shed, taken up a medium hammer, and come out and brained William Bovey. Then she'd beaten his friends so bones were broken, and they'd run.

  Bovey, a corner of his brain tucked back in, had been asleep ever since at his aunt's house up in Stoneville. It was the opinion of Randall-doctor that he would never wake up.

  "No death done," the magistrate had said, "and some excuse for the fighting on both sides, since Edward Jackson is a horse-dealer and cheat. Yet his daughter, only seventeen, had reason to fear for his life." The magistrate, who chewed birch gum, had spit a wad of it into a brown clay jar on his table. "All parties are now ordered to both peace and quiet under the Queen's Law. Nothing will save any who break either."

  And that had been that. Until now.

  "Run!" her father said — too late, as the old man was usually too late.

  Martha stood waiting, drying her hands on her apron, and wished for her mother.

  ... The lieutenant was young, but not handsome, a freckled carrot-top in green-steel strap armor. His face was shaved clean, like all soldiers'. He swung up the path to the door-yard, and his men marched behind him — twelve of them and all in step, their steel and leather creaking, till he put up his left hand to halt them.

  "Well — " Though slender, the lieutenant had a deep voice. "Well, Honey-sweet, you're certainly big enough." His breath steamed slightly in the morning air. "You are Ordinary Mattie Jackson?"

  "What do you want here?" Martha wished her father would say something.

  The lieutenant smiled, and looked handsomer when he did. He had one dot tattooed on his left cheek, two on his right. "It's not what I want… not what the captain wants... not what the major wants… not even what the colonel wants."

  A big man behind the lieutenant — a sergeant, he seemed to be — was smiling in a friendly way. The sergeant was bigger than Martha, as a man should be.

  "No," the lieutenant said, "it appears to be a matter of what Island wants. And Island's wishes are our commands."

  "You leave us alone."

  The lieutenant shook his head, still smiling.

  Martha's father said nothing. Edward Jackson was worse than having no father at all.

  "Get what things you can carry," the lieutenant said, not in an unpleasant way. "You're coming with us."

  "Is William Bovey dead?"

  "I don't know any William Bovey, though I wish him well. I do know that you are ordered to come with us. So, get your whatevers; put your shoes on — if you have shoes — and do it fairly quickly."

  "No," Martha said, and couldn't imagine why she'd said it. The big sergeant, standing behind his lieutenant, frowned at her and shook his head.

  "Ralph, be still," the lieutenant said, though he couldn't have seen what his sergeant was doing. "Now, Mattie — it is Mattie?"

  "Martha."

  "Martha. Right. Now listen, even though it may cost my men some injuries" — his soldiers smiled — "I will have you subdued, bound, and carried with us as baggage, if necessary. Don't make it necessary."

  "But... why?"

  "Orders."

  Her father still said nothing, just stood in the doorway silent as a stick. Suddenly, Martha felt she wished to go with the soldiers. It was a strange feeling, as if she'd eaten something spoiled.

  She turned to Edward Jackson and said, "You're not my father, anymore." Then she went into the cabin to get her best linen dress, her sheepskin cloak, her private possibles (a bone comb, clean underdrawers and stockings folded in a leather sack), and her shoes — one patched at the toe, but good worked leather that laced up over her ankles.

  ...They walked south — the soldiers marched, she walked — through the rest of the day. Martha had started out beside the lieutenant, possibles sack on her hip, her cloak, like theirs, rolled and tied over her shoulder — but he'd gestured her behind him with his thumb, so she'd stepped back to walk beside the sergeant, Ralph, the one who'd frowned and shook his head at her. He was even taller than she was, and wider.

  It had always seemed to Martha, when she'd seen them in parade at Stoneville, that soldiers marched slowly. But now, going with them, she found they moved along in a surprising way. It was a steady never-stopping going, nothing like a stroll or amble, that ate up time and Warm-time miles until her legs ached and she began to stumble.

  Ralph-sergeant took her left arm, then, to steady her. He smelled of sweat, and of leather and oiled steel.

  They camped at dark, but lit no fire, though frost had filtered down. The soldiers drank from tarred-wood canteens — the sergeant let her drink from his — and chewed dry strips of meat.

  He gave her some of that as well.... Then the soldiers went into the woods to shit, came out, and lay down in dead grass in their long woolen cloaks as if they were under a roof and behind house walls — the lieutenant, too. Only one man was left standing under the trees, watching, with a quarrel in his crossbow as if this was enemy country.

  The sergeant had stood guard, yards away and his back turned, while Martha did her necessary behind a tree. Then he'd cut evergreen branches for her to lie on.... She supposed her ringlets had straightened some from walking and sweating, so she had no good feature, now.

  And that was the first day, traveling.

  The second day, they rose before dawn, ate dried m
eat and drank water. Then the soldiers brought river water up in a little iron pot, made a small fire to heat it, and shaved their faces with their knives, the lieutenant first. After that, they went marching again. No one spoke to Martha — or spoke among themselves, either — except the lieutenant once said, "Pick up the pace," and they did, marching faster down the middle of the River Road, crunching through shallow, ice-skimmed puddles with everyone they met standing aside to let them pass. They went faster, but Martha kept up, her cloak flapping at her calves. It had became a pleasure to her to march with soldiers, to leave where she'd always been to go to someplace new, someplace that would be a surprise, with a surprising reason for coming to it.

  Even so, sometimes a dread came rising that she might be being taken where an example would be made of girls who hammered men. But Martha swallowed those fears like little frozen lumps, managed to keep them down, and decided not to ask again where she was bound, or why, for fear of the answer.

  Instead, she gave herself up to marching, and often could see the river on their right, flashing gray-white through stands of trees along the bank. Its icy current — still fed by Daughter Summer's melt, far upstream at the Wall — was too wide to see across, and milky with stone dust washed from the great glacier in Map-Ohio.

  Several times, she saw barges and oared boats far out from the shore, still summer-fit this far down the river, sailing with black-and-orange flags and banners fluttering in the river's wind.

  Martha's legs were aching in the worst way by the time they came to Landing in the afternoon. Landing was the farthest from her home — the farthest south — she'd ever been. The Ya-zoo River came to Kingdom River there — though her father had said it was the other way round, and Kingdom had grown over to Yazoo as blessing and welcome. Her father had brought horses down for the fair, that time, and she'd come with him, riding Shirley. Some rough river-boys had made fun of her.

  But now, though hard Ordinaries — wagoneers, sailors, warehousemen, and keel-boaters — stood drinking outside whorehouses and dens with their girls or pretty-boys all down the muddy road to Rivers-come-together, none had a word to call to hurt her feelings. They were quiet as the soldiers marched by — still in step through mud, horse-shit, and wagon ruts... then past a summer storage yard of huge racks of ships' skates and runners, long beams whose heavy bright blades gleamed greased and sharpened for winter-fitting.

  They marched past loads of stacked lumber, sheep hides, sides of beef, pig, and goat… sacks of coal from Map-West Virgina, crates of warm-frame cabbages, onions, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower... barrels of pickles, brine kraut, smoked and salted river char.

  The docks were even busier, noisier. Martha hadn't remembered everything being so large, loud, and confusing. The soldiers marched past starters shouting and flicking their slim blacksnakes at sweat-slaves trotting pokes of last potatoes up the ramps of two big pole-boats painted dark blue. Martha could spell out the letters on the company flags. Jessup's Line.... A herd of spotted cattle was being run down to a black barge, forty or fifty of the animals, driven by rust-colored dogs and three men with long sticks to prod them.

  Martha had had a dog named Parker, when she was a little girl, a coon-hound with a blind left eye. Because of the eye, she'd been able to buy him with fifteen buckets of blueberries — no softs and no stems. Only two days' picking....

  Those herding the spotted cattle, though, were different dogs, squat, barky, and quick. Interesting to watch work. Martha thought it had been worth such hard marching to come to Landing, with so much to see. And smell, too; the docks had the rich stink of the Rivers-come-together running beneath them, dirty float-ice, rotting mud, and fish guts.... Someone was playing a pluck-piano; she could hear the quick, twanging notes up the road behind them as a den door opened.

  "Some moments for beer, sir?" The first thing Ralph-sergeant had said since morning.

  "No," the lieutenant said, and led them to a dock at the far left, calling, "Clear the way!" to a work gang of skinny tribes-women, naked, with fox-mask tattoos covering their faces. They were smeared with pig-fat against the cold wind the river brought down.... The women stood aside as the soldiers marched out onto the planking, the wide boards booming beneath their boots. One — thin, and with teeth missing — stuck her tongue out at them. Two of the others called out to the soldiers together, in an up-river language that sounded like sticks rattling. It wasn't Book, wasn't even near book-English. Martha couldn't understand a single word.

  A ruined barge was sunk along the left dockside, so only its rails and pole-walk showed above swirling water. Gray sea-birds — come all the way up from the Gulf Entire, Martha supposed — strutted and pecked along the railings. The birds had pale yellow eyes, crueler than crows'.

  There was a wonder floating at the end of the dock — a galley beautiful as the circus boat that once came down from Cairo. But this one was painted all red as fresh blood, not striped green and yellow, and there was no music coming from it. A long red banner hung from the mast, stirring a little in the breeze.

  The galley had one bank of oars, just above where the iron skate-beam fittings ran — and a red sail, though that was bundled tight to a second mast slanting low over the deck, reaching almost from the front of the boat to the back. A lateeno, Martha's father would have called it.

  The lieutenant marched his men and Martha right up a ramp and onto the red galley. Everything there was the same bright red, or brass this-and-thats so bright in the sunshine they hurt her eyes. A line of men sat low on rowing benches along each side. They were naked as the tribeswomen had been, but with steel collars on their necks, and none of them looked up.

  "You're late!" A soldier, standing on a high place at the back of the boat, had called that. This soldier wore a short-sword on a wide gold-worked belt. A long green-wool cloak, fastened in gold at his throat, billowed slightly in the river wind. His chest was armored in green-enameled steel, but with pieces of gold hanging from short green ribbons there.

  "Late," he called again, as they came along the deck. He was much older than the lieutenant, and had an unpleasant face, made more unpleasant because his lower lip had been hurt, part of it cut away so his teeth showed there. He had five blue dots tattooed on each cheek.

  ... Martha had never seen a Ten-dot man before. Never seen more than a Six-dot, and that was the Baron Elliot, and she'd seen him only once at the Ice-boat races.

  "I'm at fault, milord," the lieutenant said, "and have no excuses."

  "No excuse, is not excuse enough," the Bad-lip Lord said. "So, three months pig-herding on Fayette Banks, for you and your slow men."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And this" — Bad-lip pointed at Martha — "this Ordinary is the object of the exercise?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You, Big-girl — sit up here out of the way, and rest. We have cranberry juice; would you like some of that?"

  "Yes, thank you." Martha came and sat on a little step below where he was standing. She wrapped her cloak around her and thought, too late, she should have said "milord."

  The Bad-lip Lord leaned down and gripped her shoulder. "Some muscle there. Did the soldiers treat you with respect and kindness?"

  "Yes, they did... milord." Martha thought of saying "especially Ralph-sergeant," but didn't.

  The Bad-lip Lord nodded, then called, "Captain! South, to Island — at the courier beat!"

  "At your orders, milord." A black man in a long brown cloak was standing back by a sailor at the wheel. "Loose! Loose and haul!"

  Then, barefoot sailors Martha hadn't noticed were running here and there untying ropes. The whole boat swung out into the river, dipping, rolling slightly. And so suddenly that she jumped a little, a deep drum went boom boom. Then boom boom again, and the rowers' long oars came out, flashed first dry then wet as they struck the water all together, and the boat started away like a frightened horse. They were surging, hissing over the water, gray birds flying with them, circling the long crimson banner th
at unfurled, coiled, and weaved in the wind. Martha could hear it snapping, rumpling.

  A boy in white pants and white jacket came running to her, knelt down, and held out a blown-glass cup — glass so clear she could see the juice in it perfectly, juice the same blood-red as the boat.

  Martha thought of asking the boy why she was going where she was going, then decided not.

  She had heard that Kingdom's rowers were whipped — and this was certainly a Queen's boat — but no soldier whipped the red boat's rowers. Still, they worked their oars like farming horses in summer furrows. She could feel the boat's heave... and heave at each stoke they pulled together. The red sail was still furled… the wind blowing cold upriver, into their faces.

  It seemed odd to be sailing in a summer-fitted boat through still-wet early-winter water. Martha had imagined one day traveling on a winter-fit's slanting deck as the ship skated hissing over the river's ice on angled long steel runners... lifting, tilting as the wind caught its sails, so it almost flew, banners and wind-ribbons curling and snapping through the air.

  But this was still a summer-fit, with rowers. She wondered what work the rowers would be put to, with Lord Winter already striding down to bathe in the river, and freeze it.

  The juice — cranberry juice — in the beautiful glass, was sweet and bitter at once. Martha'd never tasted it before, and didn't know if she was supposed to finish it all, or only sip, and leave the rest. She looked up to see if the Bad-lip Lord was watching, and he was.

  "It's for you, Ordinary. Drink it."

  So she did. The juice grew sweeter with each swallow, and she hoped it was a River-omen of sweeter things to come.

  The west bank was too far away to be seen. She'd never seen it, though her father had when he'd worked fishing. But they were staying close enough to the east side of the river that sometimes she could see a piling-dock there, its house or warehouse high above the water, back under the trees. Then, a log house… and a while later, another.