River Runs Deep Read online

  Nick hollered from below. “Don’t you go that fast coming down,” he warned. “You’re liable to tumble and snap your own neck. Then the doc’ll have mine!”

  Elias waved him off and wandered a few steps until he was out of sight. The ground was drier than it had been the day he’d arrived, wagon ruts starting to crumble at the peaks. He fished the letter from his pocket, studied the symbol printed on the wax, and began to search.

  Nick called up for him to hurry, and as he shouted back that he’d be right down, he spied the tree. The beech’s silvery trunk was stout at the bottom, but about two feet from the soil it forked, sending two trees growing off in opposite directions. And right where they split, at the base of the V, he saw the emblem from Pennyrile’s letter cut neatly into the bark, small enough you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking for it, big enough to make out all the detail and know it had been put there on purpose if you were.

  Elias rushed to the tree and brushed the dried leaves at the base out of the way. Someone had hollowed out the space between two of the roots, and in it was an old glass jar. Elias fished it out and popped off the rusty tin lid.

  Just as Pennyrile said, there was something inside.

  Elias unscrewed the lid of the jar and removed the letter. It was sealed the same way Pennyrile’s was, with the same symbol, only this time done up in green wax. He peeled the corner back a hair and saw the top part of the first page.

  Dear Brother,

  Brother? Pennyrile had a brother? Pennyrile had a brother to whom he couldn’t send a proper letter out in the post with the rest of the mail? A brother who was near enough to correspond with him this way? But had Pennyrile ever had a visitor? Maybe he had a brother he didn’t want anyone to know about? Or maybe he was party to one of those churches where they all called one another brother even though they weren’t any relation at all?

  “Elias!” Nick called up again, his voice insistent. Elias swapped the notes and stowed the jar back in its place, covering it up with leaves again. He studied the symbol carved on the tree one last time. What was Pennyrile up to? He’d work it out later. Right now he had fish to catch. And Nick had waited long enough.

  * * *

  Back on the path inside the cave, Elias matched Nick’s strides. They took a jog without warning off to the left of the main path into a passage Elias had never been in before. They found themselves in a low-ceilinged room, the rock above them smooth and nearly flat. A cairn of loose stones had been built up in the middle like some sort of pillar, though Elias expected it was just for show and didn’t really hold anything up. But on the ceiling, all over the room, he saw names, dozens and dozens of them.

  Some were written in black soot, others in chalk. Names and dates, too. Some of them more than fifty or sixty years old. Elias scanned them as they walked. Even noticed an advertisement for a miracle tonic cure scratched in among them.

  “Tourists like to write they names in here.”

  “Like you and Stephen and Mat do when you go exploring,” Elias said, reading all the while.

  Nick’s head see-sawed as if to say they weren’t the same, but he didn’t explain.

  “But why are some of them backward?”

  “Lots of ’em use a candle tied on the end of a stick. They hold the flame up close to the rock to blacken it, bit by bit. But they don’t want the wax dripping in they faces, so we put a mirror on the floor. They look in that, make the name by looking in the reflection, and sometimes they forget to switch the letters round to make ’em look proper.” It seemed right to Elias, somehow, that the images were reversed. His mind leaped to Nedra’s poem, the lady weaving, her mirror.

  “You want to write your name?” Nick asked. Ladies’ names crowded up next to fancy ones with words like Honorable before them, or Esquire after them. Elias wanted to. Something about putting your name up on a wall was irresistible, sort of like you couldn’t stand long in front of a river or a pond without eventually tossing rocks out into it.

  But when he looked at Nick, he found him watching expectantly. And something about the way he stared told Elias he wanted him to say no.

  “Nah,” Elias said. “Thanks anyway.” Nick smiled like Elias had said something right, and he started walking back down to the main cave. Elias couldn’t help but glow a little, feeling like he’d passed some kind of test.

  “Stephen showed me this,” Elias said a few minutes later as they reached the Star Chamber. Croghan’s office was empty and dark.

  “Star Chamber’s good for more than just gawking. Got half a dozen tunnels that take us where we need to go.” He led them across the room as Elias lifted the light higher, trying to set some of the stars twinkling. He felt lucky indeed to see stars and sunshine within the span of a few minutes.

  They tucked into another tunnel where the floor sloped down sharp. They descended rapidly.

  “We going fishing now?”

  “If they any left to catch,” Nick said, and Elias could almost hear him smiling as he said it.

  “Why you want to fish down here?” Elias asked. “Best part of fishing is sitting on the pier or out in a boat. Can’t nothing that grows underground taste good, can it?”

  “Fish ain’t for eating,” Nick said. They dropped farther, and here and there Elias had to use the sides of the walls to steady himself. His foot splashed in a puddle, and he heard the sound of water lapping against stone for the first time. Nick offered Elias a hand now and then, or told him where to step to avoid a hole or a puddle. Elias was fairly certain they weren’t on the tour.

  “What are they for, then?” Elias asked once the walking became easier again.

  “Sellin’.”

  “Sellin’?”

  “You’ll see.” And a moment later he did. A fine vein of water cut through the floor. Elias figured it must have been deep, it ran so smooth, but he could straddle its width with ease. Downstream, it collected in a little basin before it tipped slowly over a wash of rock and into a seam in the wall. Nick hung his lantern off a spur of rock.

  “See that?” Nick pointed to a basket sort of thing, a few inches of it poking out above the water. The reed was woven tight and true, and when Nick lifted the trap out of the pool, the water drained from it slow like seawater through sailcloth. The trap was bigger than Elias expected it to be based on what poked up through the surface of the stream. By the time Nick had cleared it from the water, it stood nearly as tall as Elias, and about two feet wide. Nick had made it specially to fit. There was a slot cut into the side that yawned like a mouth.

  “Yessir,” Nick said as he laid the trap on its side. Elias heard a sound that could only be a fish flopping. Nick unhinged the bottom and three lily-white fish flipped out.

  Three lily-white fish that didn’t have any eyes.

  “Frogs and stars,” Elias whispered.

  It was . . . it was . . . Why, it was like the time he went to the sideshow with his father down at the parade grounds. They had seen a bearded lady, a two-headed calf, and all sorts of things that defied imagination. That was what these fish did—defied imagination.

  “Cave fish,” Nick said, holding one up carefully. Its fins were like lace, or fairy wings, hardly anything there at all. Its snout angled sharply up, but there was nothing like an eye anywhere on its head. Elias could see right through its skin, the heart pumping away.

  “I sell ’em to the tourists on the sly.”

  Elias watched Nick open the waterskin—the very one he’d had Elias drinking from the first time he came out—and slide the fish inside. “Why?” Elias asked, though he wasn’t sure if he meant why did Nick sell them or why did people want them.

  “Folk pay a whole dollar for ’em,” Nick said.

  “A dollar?” Elias asked, stunned. Nick scooped up the other two fish.

  “I mean to buy my freedom with these fish.”

  “How many you need?”

  Nick hesitated. “Not sure, really. They don’t go round telling us what we’re worth.
But once a man tried to buy me offa Bransford, offered four hunerd fifty. And Croghan leasing me and Mat for near a hundred dollars a year.”

  It was a small fortune, Elias knew that much.

  “So I reckon,” Nick went on, “I save up as much as I can, sell me about a thousand of these fish, and then I ought to be able to buy myself out. Then maybe I set up someplace with a wife.”

  Elias had no idea how long it would take Nick to gather that many fish. He knew enough about Nick to know he was the patient sort, but it would take years. Years of nabbing up these little fish, years of leading people around on tours.

  “Why’nt you just run?” Elias asked suddenly, thinking of Jonah.

  “Running ain’t no good.” Nick did the clasps at the bottom back up. “Man can’t live a life wondering if someone’s going drag him back to some place he don’t want to be. That’s what I told—”

  His sentence stayed unfinished as he busied himself resetting the trap in the water.

  “Told who?” Elias pressed.

  Nick wiped his hands dry on his trousers. “Nobody.”

  But Elias wondered. Was Stephen going to run? Or Mat? A piece of Elias thrilled at the idea. But another piece worried that Nick was right. That running away was just a lot more pain in the end. How long could Jonah hide down there before he got caught? Before he haunted somebody who wasn’t as friendly as Elias or Sarneybrook?

  It wasn’t like Nick was doing anything wrong, was he? Buying his freedom, all things considered, seemed the most honorable way to get free.

  But still. Doctor Croghan owned the cave. And the fish. Did that mean Nick was stealing from him?

  But in a flash of clear, quiet thought, Elias understood that he didn’t care. He only hoped there were enough fish hiding in these waters to make up what Nick needed.

  Chapter Eight

  STRANGLE KNOT

  Let us say a special prayer on behalf of our departed friend, the widow Patton.”

  Elias’s head yanked up. The widow Patton?

  Departed?

  Though he’d never met her, having barely even heard her voice while he waited outside during Croghan’s rounds only a week or so before, the knowledge that she’d died shuddered through Elias.

  Dead. Just like that, he thought. She was alive yesterday, and now she was not. It seemed awfully unfair that she’d put herself down there, stayed in the dark, and did what the doctor said, only to die.

  The cave was supposed to be making them better. Supposed to be giving Croghan time to cure them. But was anybody besides Elias improving?

  Maybe the widow had been too old to fight off the consumption, or maybe she hadn’t squared up with Doc Croghan’s remedies. He reminded himself how important it was that he follow the doctor’s prescriptions and avoid the little treats Jonah left, no matter how tempting they were.

  But poor widow Patton.

  He bowed his head and prayed along with the rest of them that the Lord would speed her along to his side in paradise. “Amen,” Pastor Tincher finished. They all sat down to eat. Doctor Croghan had thought it might benefit them all to take Sunday supper together. Stephen and Mat and the others had set up long tables and benches in the space outside Doctor Croghan’s office, which blazed with light. It was a stone hut just like so many of the others, but it had a wooden floor, a proper door, and an honest-to-Pete roof.

  As they’d walked in, Elias had been teased by the smell of the cooking fire and bacon grease. And through the blessing his stomach had flipped and rolled, his mouth watering at all the food soon to be spread on the table. There was ham sizzling, and Elias was almost sure he could smell potatoes. What he wouldn’t give for a mess of potatoes fried up crisp and golden, thick slices of greasy onions mixed in the pile. But when he sat down, Lillian passed him by with her big skillet full of home fries. Hannah acted like she might give him some of that bread she was carrying round before she remembered. Finally Nick brought him a plate of fried eggs, three of them, and his mug of tea. His eyes signaled his apology for Elias’s sad plate.

  Elias sighed, picked up his fork, and ate dutifully.

  After he finished he sat and listened to the adults talking. But they all seemed out of practice with visiting, and none protested as Hannah and Lillian began escorting them back to the huts.

  Elias, however, had no intention of wasting another day in his room.

  “Hey, Bishop!” Elias whispered when Stephen came close to collect plates. “Nick took me out fishin’ yesterday!”

  Stephen picked up a teacup. “So I heard.”

  “What’re we gonna do today?” Elias asked Stephen.

  Stephen stopped stacking the plates and dropped his voice low. “We can’t bring you out today.”

  Elias’s heart sank. “But you said—”

  “All of us got things to do.”

  “But . . . it’s Sunday,” Elias argued.

  “Sunday doesn’t mean the same thing for us,” Stephen said, his voice curt.

  Stung, Elias settled for the next best thing. Stephen had books, books Elias hadn’t read the words off the pages yet. “C’n I have a look at some of your books, then maybe? I was thinking I wouldn’t mind seeing them maps—”

  If a body hadn’t been watching, they’d have thought Stephen dropped the plate that suddenly crashed to the floor out of clumsiness. But Elias had been watching, and he was pretty sure Stephen threw the plate he was about to add to the stack in his hand.

  The crash and clatter of the clay plate against the rock floor choked off all other sound and conversation. Everyone stopped and stared. More important, it cut off Elias’s question.

  “Apologies,” Stephen said, bending down to collect the shards. Lillian rushed over to help him.

  “What’d you do that—” Elias started.

  “Not. Another. Word,” Stephen said low so only Elias heard, sweeping the slivers aside with his coat sleeve.

  Elias stared at Stephen’s back. He’d been helpful the other night, hadn’t he? What had he done to make Stephen so cross? And who was Stephen to get angry with him, anyway? He had half a mind to ask Doctor Croghan to make Stephen take him out, but quickly dismissed the notion. Elias wanted Stephen to want to take him, not be saddled with him like his mother did when she used to make him look after Tillie.

  Elias fumed, wondering if there were anything he could say to maybe change Stephen’s mind, when a heavy form settled next to him, the nails in the bench creaking as they took his weight. Pennyrile.

  Elias had managed to avoid him since last night when he dropped off the letter he had collected at the tree.

  The slate tap-tapped on the tabletop. Elias gripped the side of the bench. Most of the others were gone, but some were lingering to touch what looked like a bundle of laundry on a low flat rock behind Croghan’s office.

  Pennyrile held the slate so Elias could see it. Gone long time yesterday just to fetch my letter back and forth.

  Pennyrile was the last person Nick would want to know about the fish or his plan. “Nick just took me about. Showed me some gypsum flowers and such.” The lie sounded thin to Elias, but Pennyrile was already writing again.

  You’re friendly with them.

  Elias read the words and looked at Pennyrile. It was unmistakable, that look in his eyes. Part disbelief, part disgust. Like back when Elias still went to school, and some of the boys found out he’d volunteered to stay after to empty the ashes out of the woodstove for the new teacher. Peter and Lawrence and Trumbull couldn’t believe he’d done such a thing, and accused him of being sweet on her, which he might have been a little, but still.

  Elias shifted. “So what?”

  Pennyrile twitched his nose like he smelled something foul. But he let it drop and wrote again.

  How do the darkies get around out there?

  “They do fine,” Elias said, wondering what he was after.

  More writing. Blazes on the route? Maps?

  “Mostly they just know where they are and wh
ere they want to be,” Elias said, “but Stephen’s got a good—”

  He caught himself. Stephen had dropped that plate on purpose, right as Elias was asking about looking at the maps. And now Pennyrile was asking about the same thing. Had he been watching them? Listening?

  And Elias now understood: Stephen didn’t want anyone to know about his book.

  “Stephen’s got a good sense of direction,” Elias finished.

  After a beat, Pennyrile scribbled, Have letter. Take tonight. He waited just long enough to make sure Elias had read it, then erased it quickly.

  Elias fought the overwhelming urge to tell him what he could do with his letter, not that it would have mattered as Pennyrile was scribbling away, longer and longer. At last he showed Elias the slate. Don’t want to get your new pals into trouble, do you? Doctor’s looser with slaves than he ought to be, but even he would have to take a firm hand with that lot taking advantage of a sickly lad who doesn’t know better.

  Elias’s neck grew hot. “Now you know it’s not a thing like that!” He could barely keep himself from shouting.

  Pennyrile erased the slate and wrote again. They’ll fool you blind if you give them half a chance.

  Elias shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

  Pennyrile shrugged. But he didn’t have to be right to get Elias to obey.

  Elias set his jaw. “Fine. But I don’t know when I’ll get back up there. Stephen said he can’t take me out today.”

  Pennyrile waved dismissively. You’ll work it out, he jotted down before he passed another wax-sealed letter under the table to Elias.

  Then began the halting, huffing work of raising himself off the bench. Once Pennyrile was standing again, he stared at the bundle on the rock. Tincher the preacher was lingering beside it, head bowed like he was praying. So Elias asked, “What’s that going on over there?”

  Pennyrile wrote, Corpse Rock.

  Elias’s breath caught. Corpse Rock.

  It wasn’t laundry laid out on the stone. It was the widow Patton. All the others were filing past, paying their last respects. Elias stared, undone by being so close to the body this whole time without even knowing it, and undone by the fact that it all appeared to be so routine to the others.