Free Benjamin January 4 - Sold Down The River by Barbara Hambly

the truth. Darkness fell. Mists rose from the river and rendered the moon away to a ravel of shining wool. Smoke from the mills hung thick in the raw air, and through night and fog smudges of gold burned like the maws of ovens, where the mills of every plantation blazed on through the night. January shivered, for it seemed to him they ran awfully close to the shore for low water, fog, and night, but Captain Ney, standing in the open pilothouse in his long coat of scarlet wool, seemed to know what he was doing.
    “Hell, he was born hereabouts, him,” said the cook, when January went to fetch another pot of coffee for Hannibal. “I seen him take her so close to shore you could kiss a girl that was standin' on the batture. One day he may blow her up, for he do like to lay on the speed, but he never snag her.”
    Following the receipt of this Dutch comfort January reemerged from the galley to the unpromising sight of every woman on the river was wearing, he had no doubt that the stokers and stewards would report the colors accurately to Shaw.
    His hand sought the rosary in his pocket, the rosary that never left him, and the touch of the blue beads like the grasp of God's reassuring fingers around his own.
    Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . . Pray for us sinners. Pray for us sinners.
    Me,
    
     and those I'm seeking to help in the house of chains.
    Men pelted by him, manhandling the gangplank into position. A rope was tossed across the narrowing space of black water. Captain Ney descended the steps from the hurricane deck and spoke to Fourchet as the planter came around the corner of the boat's barnlike superstructure. The younger man was distant and wary, January saw, as if the captain had indeed grown up watchful of this unpredictably violent man.
    In the torchlight on shore, January identified Esteban Fourchet at once-was it possible a man nearing fifty could look that much like the shuffle-footed boy he'd been?-and guessed the narrow-headed leathery gent in dark corduroy to be the overseer Thierry. The neat little fop in a beryl-green tailcoat would be the surviving son of Camille Bassancourt.
    It was time to get Hannibal and the luggage, and go ashore.
    And let's hope, January thought, as Fourchet's voice slashed the fog like an oyster shell tearing flesh, Shaw keeps the colors straight in his mind as well, and comes hotfoot if the bandanna says the same color two days running.
    Because if something prevents me from changing the signals, I'll be either dead, or a slave somewhere for life.

FOUR
     
    “This is Monsieur Sefton.” Simon Fourchet gestured stiffly as January carried Hannibal; wrapped in a number of blankets against the night's raw chill, down the Belle Dame's gangplank to the rough wharf floating at the river's edge. “He did me a good turn on the trip up from town, saved me from a bad investment. He'll be staying in the garçonniere until he's well enough to go on to St. Louis.”
    “Thank you,” whispered Hannibal, and coughed-for effect, this time. In Paris, January had seen the great Kean expiring as Romeo. So, it appeared, had Hannibal. “I am indebted to you beyond what I can say.”
    It was sixty feet from the levee to the house, but a green-lacquered barouche waited for them at the top of the flight of shallow plank steps. “Ben, give Lundy M'sieu Sefton's bags and get on the back,” ordered Fourchet curtly, as January helped Hannibal into the carriage and tucked the blankets around him. “Lundy, give Ben your torch and follow with the men. This is Baptiste.” He nodded toward the new butler. “He'll be taking Gilles's place.”
    January took the torch from the slim white-jacketed man who bore it, and stepped up onto the footman's perch at the rear of the carriage. Thierry, the overseer, sprang up beside the coachman with a catlike lightness, and the driver's wary flinch told January what he had to expect from this man, when he was working under him in the fields.
    “Robert,