The Dark River

THE DOOR OPENED and she heard the first mate’s voice. “Storage locker.”

A man with a London accent said, “Right.” It was just one word, but the way it was delivered reminded her of certain aspects of Britain. I’m all right, Jack. Backyard gardens with ceramic gnomes. Chips and peas. Almost immediately, the door was shut and that was it: inspection over.

They waited some more and then Captain Vandergau entered the locker and dismantled the wall of boxes. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you three ladies, but now it’s time to leave. Follow me, please. A boat has arrived.”

A dense fog had rolled in while they were hiding below. The deck was wet, and little beads of water clung to the railing. The Prince William of Orange was moored within the East London docks, but Captain Vandergau quickly escorted them to the starboard side of the ship. Attached by two nylon ropes, a narrow boat rode on the waves. The wooden boat was forty feet long and built for shallow water. It had a large central cabin with porthole windows and an open back deck. Maya had seen other narrow boats in London whenever she crossed one of the canals. People lived on the boats and used them for holidays.

A bearded man wearing a black mackintosh was standing on the stern of the boat, holding the tiller. A hood covered his head and made him look like a monk from the Inquisition. He gestured-Come down-and Maya saw that a rope ladder was now attached to the side of the ship.

It took Maya and Alice only a few seconds to climb to the deck of the narrow boat. Vicki was a good deal more cautious, gripping the wooden steps of the rope ladder, and then glancing down at the narrow boat as it rose up and down on the waves. Finally her feet touched the deck and she let go. The bearded man with the hood-whom Maya began to think of as Mr. Mackintosh-bent down and started the boat’s engine.

“Where are we going?” Maya asked.

“Up the canal to Camden Town.” The bearded man had a strong East London accent.

“Shall we stay in the cabin?”

“If you want to stay warm. No reason to worry about the cameras. No cameras where we’re goin’.”

Vicki retreated to the little cabin, where a coal fire was burning in a cast-iron stove. Alice went in and out of the cabin, inspecting the galley, the sunroof, and the walnut paneling.

Maya sat next to the tiller as Mackintosh turned the boat around and headed up the Thames. A rainstorm had surged through the city’s drainage system, and the water had turned dark green. The dense fog made it difficult to see more than ten feet in any direction, but the bearded man was able to navigate without visible landmarks. They passed a clanging buoy in the middle of the river and Mackintosh nodded his head. “That one sounds like an old church bell on a cold day.”

Fog drifted around them, and the damp coldness made her shiver. The splashing waves disappeared, and they passed a dock with yachts and other pleasure boats. Maya heard a car horn in the distance.

“We’re in Limehouse Basin,” Mackintosh explained. “They used to bring everything here and dump it on barges. Ice and timber. Coal from Northumberland. This was the mouth of London, swallowing everything up so the canals could take it to the rest of the body.”

The fog parted slightly as the narrow boat entered the concrete channel that led to the first canal lock. Mackintosh climbed a ladder to shore, closed a pair of wooden gates behind the boat, then pushed a white lever. Water surged into the lock and the boat rose up from the level of the basin to the canal.

Weeds and scrubland were on the left side of the canal; a flagstone pathway and a brick building with barred windows were on the right. It felt as if they had entered the London of an earlier time, a place with carriages and chimney soot that lingered in the air. Passing beneath a railway bridge, they continued up the canal. The water was shallow, and a few times the bottom of the boat scraped across sand and gravel. They had to stop every twenty minutes to enter a lock and rise up to the next level. Waterweeds brushed against the bow of the slowly moving boat.

Around six o’clock, they passed through the last canal and approached Camden Town. This once run-down neighborhood had become a site for small restaurants, art galleries, and a weekend street fair. Mackintosh pulled over to one side of the canal and unloaded the canvas shoulder bags that contained the women’s belongings. Vicki had bought clothes for Alice back in New York, and everything was stuffed into a pink knapsack that had a unicorn on the back.

“Go up to the road and look for an African bloke named Winston,” Mackintosh said. “He’ll take you where you want to go.”

Maya led Vicki and Alice up the pathway to the road that cut through Camden. A Harlequin lute was scrawled on the sidewalk, and it had a small arrow pointing north.