Speaks the Nightbird

SOMETIMES HE DID DREAM of his mother and father. Not often, but sometimes. In those dreams he saw two figures that he knew were his parents, but he could never clearly see their faces. The shadows were always too deep. He might not have recognized them even if he had been able to see their faces, as his mother had died of poisoned blood when he was three years old and his father—a taciturn but hardworking Massachusetts colony plowman who had tried his best to raise the boy alone—succumbed to the kick of a horse to the cranium when Matthew was in his sixth year. And with the flailing of that fatal equine hoof, Matthew was thrust into a pilgrimage that would both mold and test his mettle. His first stop on the journey was the squalid little cabin of his uncle and aunt who ran a pig farm on Manhattan island. As they were both drunks and insensate much of the time, with two imbecile children aged eight and nine who thought of Matthew as an object to be tormented—which included regular flights into a huge pile of pig manure beside the house—Matthew at seven years of age leaped upon the back of a southbound haywagon, burrowed into the hay, and so departed the loving embrace of his nearest relatives.

There followed almost four months of living hand-to-mouth on the New York waterfront, falling in with a group of urchins who either begged from the merchants and traders in that locale or stole from them when the fires of hunger became too hot. Matthew knew what it was like to fight for a few crumbs of hard bread and feel like a king when he came away from the battle bloody-nosed but his fists clenching sustenance. The finale to that episode in his life came when one of the harbor merchants roused the constable to action and men of the law subsequently raided the beach-wrecked ship where Matthew and the others were sheltered. They were caught in nets and bound up like what they were—kicking, spitting, frightened, vicious little animals.

And then a black wagon carried them all—still bound and now gagged to contain the foul language they'd gleaned from the merchants—over the city's hard dirt streets, four horses pulling the load of snot-nosed criminals, a driver whipping, a bell-ringer warning citizens out of the way. The wagon pulled to a halt in front of a building whose bricks were soot-dark and glistening with rain, like the rough hide of some squatting lizard yellow-eyed and hungry. Matthew and the others were taken none too gently out of the wagon and through the iron-gated entrance; he would always remember the awful sound that gate made as it clanged shut and a latchpin fell into place. Then under an archway and through another door into a hall, and he was well and truly in the chill embrace of the Sainted John Home for Boys.

His first full day in that drear domain consisted of being scrubbed with coarse soap, immersed in a skin-stinging solution meant to kill lice and fleas, his hair shorn to the scalp, his nails trimmed, and his teeth brushed by the eldest of the boys—the "fellows," he was to learn they were called—who were overseen by an eagle-eyed "commander" by the name of Harrison, aged seventeen and afflicted with a withered left hand. Then, dressed in a stiff-collared gray gown and wearing square-toed Puritan shoes, Matthew was taken into a room where an old man with sharp blue eyes and a wreath of white hair sat behind a desk awaiting him. A quill pen, ledgerbook, and inkwell adorned the desktop.

They were left alone. Matthew looked around the room, which held shelves of books and had a window overlooking the street. He walked directly across the bare wooden floor to the window and peered out into the gray light. In the misty distance he could see the masts of ships that lay at harbor. It was a strange window, with nine squares set in some kind of metal frame. The shutters were open, and yet when Matthew reached toward the outside world his hand was stopped by a surface that was all but invisible. He placed his palm against one of the squares and pressed, but the surface would not yield. The outside world was there to be seen, the shutters were open, but some eerie force prevented him from pushing his hand through.

"It's called 'glass,'" the man behind the desk said in a quiet voice.

Matthew brought his other hand up and pressed all his fingers against this strange new magic. His heart was beating hard, as he realized this was something beyond his understanding. How could a window be open and closed at the same time?

"Do you have a name?" the man asked. Matthew didn't bother answering. He was enraptured in studying the mysterious window.

"I am Headmaster Staunton," the man said, still quietly. "Can you tell me how old you are?" Matthew pressed his face forward, his nose pushing against the surface. His breath bloomed before him. "I suspect you've had a difficult time. Would you tell me about it?"

Matthew's fingers were at work again, probing and investigating, his young brow furrowed with thought. "Where are your parents?" Staunton asked. "Dead," Matthew replied, before he could think not to. "And what was your family name?"

Matthew tapped at the window with his knuckles. "Where does this come from?"

Staunton paused, his head cocked to one side as he regarded the boy. Then he reached out with a thin, age-spotted hand, picked up a pair of spectacles on the desk before him, and put them on. "The glazier makes it."

"Glazier? What's that?"

"A man whose business is making glass and setting it in lead window frames." Matthew shook his head, uncomprehending. "It's a craft not long introduced into the colonies. Does it interest you?"

"Never seen the like. It's a window open and shut at the same time."

"Yes, I suppose you might say that." The headmaster smiled slightly, which served to soften his gaunt face. "You have some curiosity, don't you?"

"I don't got nothin'," Matthew said adamantly. "Them sons-abitches come and now we ain't got nothin', none of us."

"I have seen six of your tribe so far this afternoon. You're the only one who's shown interest in that window. I think you do have some curiosity."

Matthew shrugged. He felt a pressure at his bladder, and so he lifted the front of his gown and peed against the wall.

"I see you've learned to be an animal. We must unlearn some things. Relieving yourself without benefit of a bucket—and in privacy, as a gentleman—would earn you two stings of the whip given by the punishment captain. The speaking of profanity is also worthy of two lashes." Staunton's voice had become solemn, his eyes stern behind the spectacles. "As you're new here, I will let this first display of bad habits pass, though you shall mop up your mess. The next time you do such a thing, I will make certain the lashes are delivered promptly and—believe me, son—the punishment captain performs his task very well. Do you understand me?"

Matthew was about to shrug again, dismissing the old man's complaint; but he was aware of the fierce gaze that was levelled at him, and he had some idea that he might be doing himself future harm not to respond. He nodded, and then he turned away from the headmaster to once more direct his full attention to the window's glass. He ran his fingers over it, feeling the undulating ripples and swells of its surface.

"How old are you?" Staunton asked. "Seven? Eight?"

'"Tween 'em," Matthew said.

"Can you read and write?"

"I know some numbers. Ten fingers, ten toes. That makes twenty Double that's forty. Double again's . . ." He thought about it. His father had taught him some basic arithmetic, and they'd been working on the alphabet when the horse's hoof had met skullbone. "Forty and forty," he said. "I know a-b-c-d-e-f-g-h-i-j-n-l-o-p-k too."

"Well, it's a beginning. You were given a name by your parents, I presume?"

Matthew hesitated; it seemed to him that telling this headmaster his name would give the man some power over him, and he wasn't ready to do that. "This here window," he said. "It don't let the rain in?"

"No, it doesn't. On a windy day, it allows sunlight but turns away the wind. Therefore I have more light to read by, but no fear of my books and papers being disturbed."

"Damn!" Matthew said with true wonder. "What'll they think of next?"

"Watch your language, young man," Staunton cautioned, but not without a hint of amusement. "The next profanity will raise a blister on your hide. Now, I want you to know and remember this: I want to be your friend, but it is your choice whether we are friends or adversaries. Enemies, I mean to say. In this almshouse there are sixty-eight boys, ages seven to seventeen. I do not have the time nor resources to coddle you, nor will I overlook bad manners or a troublesome attitude. What the lash does not cure, the dunking barrel remedies." He paused to let that pronouncement sink to its proper depth. "You will be given studies to achieve, and chores to perform, as befits your age. You will be expected to learn to read and write, as well as calculate arithmetic. You will go to chapel on the Sabbath and learn the holy writ. And you shall comport yourself as a young gentlemen. But," Staunton added in a gentler tone, "this is not a prison, and I am not a warden. The main purpose of this place is to prepare you for leaving it."

"When?" Matthew asked.

"In due time, and not before." Staunton plucked the quill from the inkwell and poised it over the open ledgerbook. "I'd like to know your name now."

Matthew's attention had wandered back to the window's glass once more. "I sure would like to see how this is made," he said. "It's a puzzle how it's done, ain't it?"

"Not such a puzzle." Staunton stared at the boy for a moment, and then he said, "I'll strike a deal with you, son. The glazier has a workshop not far from here. You tell me your name and your circumstances, and—as you're so interested in the craft—I'll ask the glazier to come and explain it. Does that sound reasonable?"

Matthew considered it. The man, he realized, was offering him something that set a spark to his candle: knowledge. "Rea-son'ble," he repeated, with a nod. "My name's Matthew Corbett. Two t's and two t's."

Headmaster Staunton entered the name into the ledger in small but precise handwriting, and thus was Matthew's life greatly altered from its previous muddy course.

Given books and patient encouragement, Matthew proved to be a quick study. Staunton was true to his word and brought the glazier in to explain his craft to the assembly of boys; so popular was the visit that soon followed a shoemaker, a sailmaker, a blacksmith, and other honest, hardworking citizens of the city beyond the almshouse walls. Staunton—a devoutly religious man who had been a minister before becoming headmaster—was scrupulously fair but set high goals and expectations for his charges. After several encounters with the lash, Matthew's use of profanity ended and his manners improved. His reading and writing skills after a year were so proficient that Staunton decided to teach him Latin, an honor given only to two other boys in the home, and the key that opened for Matthew many more volumes from Staunton's library. Two years of intense Latin training, as well as further English and arithmetic studies, saw Matthew leave the other scholars behind, so sharp and undivided was his power of concentration.

It was not a bad life. He did such chores as were required of him and then returned to his studies with a passion that bordered on religious fervor. As some of the boys with whom he'd entered the almshouse left to become apprentices to craftsmen, and new boys were brought in, Matthew remained a fixed star—solitary, aloof—that directed his light only toward the illumination of answers to the multitude of questions that perplexed him. When Matthew turned twelve, Staunton-—who was now in his sixty-fourth year and beginning to suffer from palsy—began to teach the boy French, as much to sow a language he himself found fascinating as well as to further cultivate Matthew's appreciation of mental challenges.

Discipline of thought and control of action became Matthew's purpose in life. While the other boys played such games as slide groat and wicket, Matthew was likely to be found dredging through a Latin tome on astronomy or copying French literature to improve his handwriting. His dedication to the intellectual—indeed his slavery to the appetite of his own mind—began to concern Headmaster Staunton, who had to encourage Matthew's participation in games and exercise by limiting his access to the books. Still, Matthew was apart and afar from the other boys, and had grown gangly legged and ill-suited for the rough-and-tumble festivities his compatriots enjoyed, and so even in their midst he was alone.

Matthew had just seen his fourteenth birthday when Headmaster Staunton made a startling announcement to the boys and the other almshouse workers: he had experienced a dream in which Christ appeared, wearing shining white robes, and told him his work was done at the Home. The task that remained for him was to leave and travel west into the frontier wilderness, to teach the Indian tribes the salvation of God. This dream was to Staunton so real and compelling that there was no question of disobedience; it was, to him, the call to glory that would assure his ascent into Heaven.

Before he left—at age sixty-six and severely palsied—Headmaster Staunton dedicated his library of books to the almshouse, as well as leaving to the Home's fund the majority of the money he'd banked over his service of some thirty years. To Matthew in particular he gave a small box wrapped in plain white paper, and asked the boy not to open it until he'd boarded a wagon and departed the following morning. And so, after wishing every boy in his charge good fortune and a good life, Headmaster Staunton took the reins of his future and travelled to the ferry that would deliver him across the Hudson River into his own personal promised land, a Bible his only shield and companion.

In the solitude of the Home's chapel, Matthew unwrapped the box and opened it. Within it was a palm-sized pane of glass, especially made by the glazier. Matthew knew what Headmaster Staunton had given him: a clear view unto the world.

A short time later, however, the Home had a new headmaster by the name of Eben Ausley, who in Matthew's opinion was a rotund, fat-jowled lump of pure vileness. Ausley quickly dismissed all of Staunton's staff and brought in his own band of thugs and bullies. The lash was used as never before, and the dunking barrel became a commonplace item of dread employed for the slightest infraction. Whippings became beatings, and many was the night that Ausley took a young boy into his chambers after the dormitory's lamps were extinguished; what occurred in that chamber was unspeakable, and one boy was so shamed by the deed that he hanged himself from the chapel's belltower.

At fifteen, Matthew was too old to attract Ausley's attentions. The headmaster left him alone and Matthew burrowed ever deeper into his studies. Ausley didn't share Staunton's sense of order and cleanliness; soon the place was a pigsty, and the rats grew so bold they seized food off the platters at suppertime. Several boys ran away; some were returned, and given severe whippings and starvation diets. Some died and were buried in crude pinewood boxes in a cemetery beside the chapel. Matthew read his books, honed his Latin and French, and in a deep part of himself vowed that someday, somehow, he would bring justice to bear on Eben Ausley, as a grinding wheel on a piece of rotten timber.

There came the day, toward the midst of Matthew's fifteenth year, that a man arrived at the Home intent on finding a boy to apprentice as his clerk. A group of the five eldest and best educated were lined up in the courtyard, and the man went down the line asking them all questions about themselves. When the man came to Matthew, it was the boy who asked the first question: "Sir? May I enquire as to your profession?"

"I'm a magistrate," Isaac Woodward said, and Matthew glanced at Ausley, who stood nearby with a tight smile on his mouth but his eyes cold and impassive. "Tell me about yourself, young man," Woodward urged.

It was time to leave the Home. Matthew knew it. His view upon the world was about to widen further, but never would he lose sight of this place and what he'd learned here. He looked directly into the magistrate's rather sad-eyed face and said, "My past should be of little interest to you, sir. It is my usefulness in the present and future that I expect you wish to ascertain. As to that, I speak and write Latin. I'm also fluent in French. I don't know anything about law, but I am a quick study. My handwriting is legible, my concentration is good, I have no bad habits to speak of—"

"Other than being full of himself and a bit too big for his britches," Ausley interrupted.

"I'm sure the headmaster prefers smaller britches," Matthew said, still staring into Woodward's eyes. He felt rather than saw Ausley go rigid with barely controlled anger. One of the other boys caught back a laugh before it doomed him. "As I was saying, I have no bad habits to speak of. I can learn whatever I need to know, and I would make a very able clerk. Would you get me out of here, sir?"

"The boy's unsuitable for your needs!" Ausley spoke up again. "He's a troublemaker and a liar! Corbett, you're dismissed."

"One moment," the magistrate said. "If he's so unsuitable, why did you even bother to include him?"

Ausley's moon-shaped face bloomed red. "Well. .. because . . . that is to say, I—"

"I'd like to see an example of your handwriting," Woodward told the boy. "Write for me . . . oh . . . the Lord's Prayer. In Latin, if you're such a scholar." Then, to Ausley, "Can that be arranged?"

"Yes sir. I have a tablet and quill in my office." Ausley cast Matthew a look that, had it been a knife, would've plunged between the eyes, and then he dismissed the other boys and led the way to his chamber.

When it was done, the magistrate satisfied as to Matthew's value, and the papers of transferral drawn up, Woodward announced he had some business to attend to elsewhere but that he would return the next morning and take the boy away. "I do expect the young man will be in good condition," Woodward told the headmaster. "As he is now my charge, I shouldn't like it that he might suffer an accident in the night."

"You needn't be concerned, sir," was Ausley's rather chill reply. "But I require the sum of one guinea to house and feed him until your return. After all, he is your charge."

"I understand." The gold guinea coin—worth twenty-one shillings, an exorbitant price to pay—was removed from Woodward's wallet and placed into Ausley's outstretched hand. Thus was the agreement sealed and Matthew's protection bought.

At supper, however, one of Ausley's thuggish helpers entered the dining hall. A silence fell as the man walked directly to Matthew and grasped his shoulder. "You're to come with me," he said, and Matthew had no choice but to comply.

In the headmaster's chamber, Ausley sat behind the same desk that Staunton had occupied in happier times. The place was dirty, the window's glass panes filmed with soot. Ausley lit a churchwarden pipe with the flame of a lamp and said, "Leave us," to his accomplice. When the other man had retreated, Ausley sat smoking his pipe and staring with his small dark eyes at Matthew.

"My supper's getting cold," Matthew said, daring the lash.

"Oh, you think you're so smart, don't you?" Ausley drew on the pipe and expelled smoke from his nostrils. "So damned clever. But you're not near as clever as you take yourself to be, boy."

"Do you require a response from me, sir, or do you wish me to be silent?"

"Silent. Just stand there and listen. You're thinking that because you're off to be the ward of a magistrate you can cause some trouble for me, isn't that right? Maybe you think I've done some things that ought to be called to his attention?"

"Sir?" Matthew said. "Might I suggest a book on logic for your bedtime reading?"

"Logic? What's that got to do with anything?"

"You've told me to be silent, but then posed questions that require an answer."

"Shut your mouth, you little bastard!" Ausley rose to his feet on a surge of anger. "Just mark well what I say! My commission gives me absolute authority to run this institution as I see fit! Which includes the administering of order and punishments, as I see fit!" Ausley, realizing he was on the edge of losing all control, settled back into his chair and glared at Matthew through a blue haze of pipesmoke. "No one can prove I have been remiss in that duty, or overzealous in my methods," he said tersely. "For a very simple reason: I have not been so. Any and all actions I have taken here have been to benefit my charges. Do you agree with that, or do you disagree?"

"I presume you wish me to speak now?"

"I do."

"I have small qualm With the method of your punishments, though I would consider some of them to have been delivered with a sickening sense of joy," Matthew said. "My objections concern your methods after the dormitory lamps have been put out."

"And what methods are you referring to? My private counseling of wayward, stubborn boys whose attitudes are disruptive? My willingness to take in hand these boys and guide them in the proper direction? Is that your reference?"

"I think you understand my reference very clearly, sir."

Ausley gave a short, hard laugh. "You don't know anything. Have you witnessed with your own eyes any impropriety? No. Oh, you've heard things, of course. Because all of you despise me. That's why. You despise me, because I'm your master and wild dogs cannot bear the collar. And now, because you fancy yourself so damned clever, you think to cause me some trouble by way of that black-robed magpie. But I shall tell you why you will not."

Matthew waited while Ausley pushed more tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, tamped it down, and relit it with deliberately slow motions.

"Your objections," Ausley said acidly, "would be very difficult to prove. As I've said, my commission gives me absolute authority. I know I've delivered some harsh punishments; too harsh perhaps. That is why you might wish to slander me. And the other boys?

Well... I like this position, young man, and I plan on staying here for many years to come. Just because you're leaving does not mean the others—your friends, the ones among whom you've grown up—will be departing anytime soon. Your actions might have an effect on their comfort." He drew on the pipe, tilted his head upward, and spewed smoke toward the ceiling. "There are so many young ones here," he said. "Much younger than you. And do you realize how many more the hospitals and churches are trying to place with us? Hardly a day goes by when I don't receive an enquiry concerning our available beds. I am forced to turn so many young ones away. So, you see, there will always be a fresh supply." He offered Matthew a cold smile. "May I give you some advice?"

Matthew said nothing. "Consider yourself fortunate," Ausley continued. "Consider that your education concerning the real world has been furthered. Be of excellent service to the magistrate, be of good cheer and good will, and live a long and happy life." He held up a thick finger to warrant Matthew's full attention. "And never—never—plot a war you have no hope of winning. Am I understood?"

Matthew hesitated; his mind was working over the planes and angles of this problem, diagramming and dissecting it, turning it this way and that, shaking it in search of a loose nail that might be further loosened, stretching it like a chain to inspect the links, and hoping to find one rust-gnawed and able to be broken.

"Am I understood?" Ausley repeated, with some force.

Matthew was left with one response. At least for the moment. He said, "Yes, sir," in his calmest voice.

"Very good. You may go back to your supper."

Matthew left the headmaster's office and returned to his food; it was, indeed, cold and quite tasteless. That night he said goodbye to his friends, he climbed into his bunk in the dormitory, but he found sleep elusive. What should have been an occasion of rejoicing was instead a time for reflection and more than a little regret. At first light, he was dressed and waiting. Soon afterward, the bell at the front gate rang and a staff member came to escort him to Magistrate Woodward in the courtyard.

As the magistrate's carriage pulled away, Matthew glanced back at the Home and saw Ausley standing at the window, watching. Matthew felt the tip of a blade poised at his throat. He looked away from the window, staring instead at his hands clenched together in his lap.

"You seem downcast, young man," the magistrate said. "Are you troubled by something?"

"Yes, sir, I am," Matthew had to admit. He thought of Ausley at the window, the carriage wheels turning to take him far away from the almshouse, the boys who were left behind, the terrible punishments that Ausley could bring down upon them. For now, Ausley held the power.Iplan on staying here for many years to come, the headmaster had said. In that case, Matthew knew where to find him.

"Is this a matter you wish to talk about?" Woodward asked. "No sir. It's my problem, and mine alone. I will find a way to solve it. I will."

"What?"

Matthew looked into the magistrate's face. Woodward no longer wore his wig and tricorn, his appearance much aged since that day he'd driven Matthew away from the almshouse. A light rain was falling through the thick-branched trees, steam hanging above the muddy track they were following. Ahead of them was the wagon Paine drove.

"Did you say something, Matthew?" the magistrate asked. I will, he thought it had been.

It took Matthew a few seconds to adjust to the present from his recollections of the past. "I must have been thinking aloud," he said, and then he was quiet.

In time, the fortress walls of Fount Royal emerged from the mist ahead. The watchman on his tower began to ring the bell, the gate was unlocked and opened, and they had returned to the witch's town.

seven

IT WAS DARK-CLOUDED and cool, the sun a mere specter on the eastern horizon. From the window of his room, which faced away from Fount Royal, Matthew could see Bidwell's stable, the slaves' clapboard houses beside it, the guard tower, and the thick pine forest that stretched toward the swamp beyond. It was a dismal view. His bones ached from the continual damp, and because of a single mosquito that had gotten past the barrier of his bed-netting, his sleep had been less than restful. But the day had come, and his anticipation had risen to a keen edge.

He lit a candle, as the morning was so caliginous, and shaved using the straight razor, soap, and bowl of water that had been left in the hallway outside. Then he dressed in black trousers, white stockings, and a cream-colored shirt from the limited wardrobe Bidwell had provided him. He was blowing out the candle when a knock sounded at his door. "Breakfast is a'table, sir," said Mrs. Nettles.

"I'm ready." He opened the door and faced the formidable, square-chinned woman in black. She carried a lantern, the yellow light and shadows of which made her stern visage almost fearsome. "Is the magistrate up?"

"Already downstairs," she said. Her oiled brown hair was combed back from her forehead so severely that Matthew thought it looked painful. "They're waitin' for you before grace is said."

"Very well." He closed the door and followed her along the hallway. Her weight made the boards squeal. Before they reached the staircase, the woman suddenly stopped so fast Matthew almost collided into her. She turned toward him, and lifted the lantern up to view his face.

"What is it?" he asked.

"May I speak freely, sir?" Her voice was hushed. "And trust you na' to repeat what I might say?"

Matthew tried to gauge her expression, but the light was too much in his eyes. He nodded.

"This is a dangerous day," she said, all but whispering. "You and the magistrate are in grave danger."

"Of what nature?"

"Danger of bein' consumed by lies and blasphemies. You seem an able-minded young man, but you nae understand this town and what's transpirin' here. In time you might, if your mind is na' poisoned."

"Poisoned by whom? The witch, do you mean?"

"The witch." It was said with more than a hint of bitterness. "Nay, I'm na' speakin' of Rachel Howarth. Whatever you hear of her—however you perceive her—she is na' your enemy. She's a victim, young man. If anythin', she needs your he'p."

"How so?"

"They're ready to hang her," Mrs. Nettles whispered. "They'd hang her this morn, if they could. But she does na' deserve the rope. What she needs is a champion of truth. Somebody to prove her innocent, when ever'body else is again' her."

"Madam, I'm just a clerk. I have no power to—"

"You're the only one with the power," she interrupted. "The magistrate is the kind of man who plows a straight furrow, ay? Well, this field's damn crooked!"

"So you contend that Madam Howarth is not a witch? Even though her husband was brutally murdered, poppets were found in her house, she can't speak the Lord's Prayer, and she bears the Devil's marks?"

"Lies upon lies. I think you're a man of some education: do you believe in witchcraft?"

"The books on demonology are well founded," Matthew said.

"Hang the books! I asked if you believe." Matthew hesitated; the question had never been posed to him. Of course he knew the Salem incident, which had occurred only seven years ago. He'd read Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences and Richard Baxter's Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits, both of which secured witchcraft and demon possession as fact. But he'd also read John Webster's The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft and John Wagstaffe's The Question of Witchcraft Debated, and both of those volumes held that "witchcraft" was either deliberate fraud or that "witches" were insane and should be bound for an asylum rather than the gallows. Between those two poles, Matthew hung suspended.

"I don't know," he said.

"Mark this," Mrs. Nettles told him. "Satan does walk in Fount Royal, but Rachel Howarth's na' the one beside him. Things that nae want to be seen are plentiful here. And that's God's truth."

"If you believe so, why don't you speak to Mr. Bidwell?"

"What? And then he'll be thinkin' I'm bewitched too? Because any woman or man who speaks up for Rachel Howarth would have a noose ready for—"

"Mrs. Nettles!" came a shout from the bottom of the stairs. "Where's Mr. Corbett?" It was Bidwell and he sounded quite irritated. "We're awaiting our breakfast, woman!"

"I'm at your mercy!" she whispered urgently to Matthew. "Na' a word about this, please!"

"All right," he agreed.

"We're here, sir!" Mrs. Nettles called to the master of the house, as she started toward the staircase again. "Beg pardon, the young man was late a'risin'!"

Their breakfast was slices of ham and cornmeal porridge, biscuits and locally gathered honey, all washed down with mugs of strong amber tea. Matthew was still full from last night's dinner of turtle soup, turtle steaks, and cornbread, so he ate only sparingly. Woodward, who'd awakened with a raw throat and clogged nostrils after a restless night, drank as much tea as he could and then sucked on a lemon. In ravenous appetite, however, was Bid-well; the master of the house consumed slice after slice of ham and a whole serving bowl full of porridge, as well as a platter of biscuits.

At last Bidwell leaned back in his chair, expelled air, and patted his bulging stomach. "Ahhhh, what a breakfast!" His gaze fell upon an unclaimed soul amid the carnage. "Magistrate, are you going to finish that biscuit?"

"No, sir, I'm not."

"May I, then?" Bidwell reached for it and pushed it into his mouth before an assent could be made. Woodward swallowed thickly, his throat very painful, and afforded himself another drink of the tart tea.

"Magistrate, are you not feeling well?" Matthew asked; it would have been difficult not to notice the man's pallor and the dark circles beneath his eyes.

"I didn't sleep very soundly last night. The mosquitoes here seem to favor me."

"Tar soap," Bidwell said. "That's what you should bathe in this evening. Tar soap keeps them away. Well . . . most of them, that is."

"I thought the insects were particularly greedy in Charles Town." Woodward scratched at a reddened welt on the back of his right hand, one of a dozen bites he'd suffered already this morning. "But your mosquitoes, sir, have no compare."

"You have to get used to them, that's all. And the tar soap does help."

"I look forward, then, to being tarred." He knew he appeared rather peaked, as the shaving mirror had told him. He was miserable in these borrowed clothes, which might have been a plowman's pride but were ill-suited for his elegant tastes. Also, he felt near naked without his wig, and terribly conscious of his age-spots. Never in his life had he felt so old, and such a prisoner of fate. Without the wig, it seemed to him that his entire face drooped near off the skull bones, his teeth appeared chipped and crooked, and he feared he looked more of a country bumpkin than an urban sophisticate. His sore throat and swollen air passages further tortured him; on any other morning, he might have returned to bed with a cup of hot rum and a medicinal poultice but on this morning he had major work ahead. He realized Matthew was still staring at him, the young man's sense of order disturbed. "I'll be fine directly," Woodward told him.

Matthew said nothing, unwilling to embarrass the magistrate by appearing overly concerned. He poured some tea for himself, thinking that Woodward's bare-headed exposure to the raw swamp humours was certainly not beneficial to his health. Not very far from the forefront of his mind, however, was the encounter he'd had with Mrs. Nettles. Her passion on the subject had been undeniable, but was her purpose to cloud his mind instead of clear it? Indeed, if she were bewitched she would be in the employ of Rachel Howarth's master as well. Was that master trying to use him, to taint the magistrate's judgment? He couldn't help but ponder the vastly different opinions on the subject of witchcraft by the authors of the tomes he'd read. He'd spoken the truth to Mrs. Nettles; he honestly didn't know what he believed.

But Matthew didn't have time for much reflection, because suddenly Mrs. Nettles appeared in the dining room's doorway. "Sir?" she said, addressing Bidwell. "The carriage is ready." Her visage was stern again, and she gave not even a glance in Matthew's direction.

"Excellent!" Bidwell stood up. "Gentlemen, shall we go?"

Outside, the carriage's team was reined by the elderly black servant, Goode, who had played the violin at the first dinner and caught the turtle for the second. Bidwell, Woodward, and then Matthew climbed into the carriage and under tumultuous clouds were taken away from the mansion and past the spring along Peace Street. A few citizens were out, but not many; the quality of light-—or lack of such—made for a gloomy morning, and Matthew saw clearly that life was fast ebbing from this forsaken village.

At the useless sundial, Goode turned the carriage's team eastward onto Truth Street. A fit of nerves seemed to affect Bidwell as they neared the gaol, and he eased his mounting tension with a doubleshot of snuff up the nostrils. Goode steered them around the pigs that wallowed in Truth's mud, and in a moment he reined the horses to a halt before the grim and windowless wooden walls of the gaol. Two men were awaiting their arrival; one was Nicholas Paine, the other a stocky, barrel-chested giant who must have stood six feet tall. The giant wore a tricorn, but the hair that could be seen was flaming red, as was his long and rather unkempt beard.

Upon departing from the carriage, Bidwell made introductions between the magistrate, Matthew, and the red-bearded giant. "This is Mr. Hannibal Green, our gaol-keeper," he said. When Woodward shook the man's red-furred hand, he had the feeling that his fingers might be snapped like dry sticks. Green's eyes, an indeterminate dark hue, were deeply sunken into his head and held no expression other than—in Matthew's opinion—a promise to do bodily harm to anyone who displeased him.

Bidwell drew a long breath and released it. "Shall we enter?"

Green, a man of no words, produced two keys on a leather cord from a pocket of his buckskin waistcoat and inserted a key into the padlock that secured the gaol's entry. With one sharp twist, the lock opened and Green removed a chain that the lock had held fastened across the door. He pulled the door open to reveal a dark interior. "Wait," he rumbled, and then he walked inside, his boots pounding the rough planked floor.

Staring into the gaol's darkened recesses, both the magistrate and his clerk felt the gnaw of anxiety. The bittersweet smells of damp hay, sweat, and bodily functions came drifting out into their faces, along with the sense of what it must be like to be caged in that stifling and humid environment. Green soon returned, carrying a lantern that shed only paltry light through its filmed glass. "Come in," he told them. Bidwell took another quick snort of snuff and led the way.

It was not a large place. Past the entrance room there were four iron-barred cells, two on each side of a central corridor. The floor was covered with hay. Matthew presumed it had been a small stable before its conversion. "Thank Christ you're here!" called a man's voice, off to the right. "I was startin' to believe you'd forsaked me!"

Green paid him no mind. The gaol-keeper reached up to the utter height of his outstretched hand and caught hold of a chain that dangled from the ceiling. He gave it a good firm pull and with the sound of ratchets turning a hatch opened up there, allowing in more fresh air and much-needed illumination.

The light—gray and murky yet still much better than the dirty lamp—afforded a view of the man who stood in the nearest cage on the right, his hands gripping the bars, his beard-grizzled face pressed against them as if he might somehow squeeze himself to freedom. He was young, only five or six years elder than Matthew, but already thick around the middle. He had husky forearms and a stout bull's neck, his unruly black hair falling over his forehead, and a pair of gray eyes glittering on either side of a bulbous nose that was—as were his cheeks—covered with pock-marks. "I'm ready to go home!" he announced.

"She's in the cell back here," Bidwell said to the magistrate, ignoring the young man.

"Hey! Bidwell!" the man hollered. "Damn you, I said I'm ready to go—"

Wham! went Green's fist into one of the man's hands gripping the bars. The prisoner howled with pain and staggered back holding his injured fingers against his chest.

"You speak with respect," Green said, "or you don't speak at all. Hear me?"

"Ahhhh, my hand's near broke!"

"Noles, you have one more day and night on your sentence," Bidwell told the prisoner. "You'll be released tomorrow morning, and not one minute sooner."

"Listen! Please!" Noles, now apologetic, came to the bars again. "I can't bear another night in here, sir! I swear before God, 1 can't! The rats are terrible! They et up most all my food, and I near had to fight 'em off my throat! Ain't I paid my penance yet, sir?"

"Your sentence was three days and three nights. Therefore: no, you have not yet paid your penance."

"Wait, wait!" Noles said, before Bidwell and the others could move along. "It ain't just the rats I'm feared of! It's her." He'd whispered the last sentence, and motioned with a tilt of his head toward the last cage on the left of the corridor. His eyes were wide and wild. "I'm feared she's gonna kill me, sir!"

"Has she threatened you?"

"No sir, but. . . well. . . I've heard things."

"Such as?" Bidwell's interest had been fully secured now, and he gave Noles a long ear.

"Last night... in the dark . . . she was talkin' to somethin'," Noles whispered, his face once more pressed against the bars. "I couldn't hear much of it . . . but I heard her speak the word 'master.' Yessir, I did. 'Master', she said, three or four times. Then she started a'laughin', and by Christ I hope to never hear such a laugh as that again, because it was nothin' but wickedness."

"And what happened after that?"

"Well. . . she talked some more, to whatever it was. Just jab-berin', like to scare the moon." He ran his tongue across his lips; his eyes flickered across Woodward and Matthew and then returned to Bidwell. "Then ... I saw a light back there. Like fire, but it was cold blue. Yessir. Cold blue, and it was burnin' in her cage. Well, I drew myself back and laid down, 'cause I didn't want to see what it was."

"Go on," Bidwell urged, when Noles paused again.

"Well sir . . . there came a hummin' and a buzzin'. And I seen what I took to be a fly, leavin' the witch's cage. Only it was burnin' blue, makin' the air spark. Then it flew into here and started flittin' 'round my head, and I swatted at it but to tell the truth I didn't really care to touch it. It flew 'round and 'round, and I crawled over there in that corner and threw some hay at it to keep it away from me. After a while it flew on out of here and went away."

"Went away? To where?"

"I don't know, sir. It just vanished."

Bidwell looked gravely at the magistrate. "You see what we're up against? The witch's master can transform himself—itself—into shapes that have no equal on this earth."

"Yessir, that's right!" Noles said. "I'm feared for my life, bein' in here with her! I seen what I seen, and she's like to kill me for it!"

"Might I ask a question?" Matthew proposed, and Bidwell nodded. "What offense has this man committed?"

"He whipped his wife bloody with a carpet-beater," Bidwell said. "Dr. Shields had to attend to her. As it was Noles's second offense, I ordered him here."

"And what was his first offense?"

"The same," Bidwell said.

"She's a liar and a nag!" Noles spoke up adamantly. "That woman don't know when to shut her mouth! I swear, even a saint would pick up an ax and cleave her head when she starts that damn prattlin'!" The man's attention fixed on Bidwell once more. "Will you let me out then, to save my life?"

"Well—" He looked to Woodward for aid in this question. "Richard Noles is a good Christian fellow. I shouldn't want to leave him to the mercy of the witch. What do you propose I do, sir?"

"Has his wife recovered?"

"She is abed at Dr. Shields's infirmary. Her arm was broken during the incident, and her back much bruised. But . . . after all, sir . . . she is his property, by the writ of marriage."

"I have a suggestion," Matthew said, which relieved Woodward of a difficult decision. "Since Mr. Noles last night defeated the Devil with a handful of hay, surely he can hold off the demons of Hell with a carpet-beater. Why not bring him one with which he might defend himself."

Bidwell slowly blinked. "Are you joking, young man?"

"No, sir. He seems to be proficient with such a weapon, doesn't he?"

"What kind of damned horseshit is this?" Noles said, almost hollering again. "I want out of here, right now!"

"I won't have this man's blood on my hands, if the witch strikes him dead tonight." Bidwell nodded at Green. "Let him loose."

"Sir?" Matthew said, as the gaol-keeper found the proper key from his ring. "If the witch strikes Mr. Noles dead tonight, I don't believe there'll be need to interview the other witnesses."

"He's right," said Paine, standing behind Matthew. "It would put the rope around the witch's neck, pure and simple!"

"Hold." Bidwell grasped Green's arm before the key could be inserted in its lock.

"Have you lost your damned minds?" Noles bellowed. "She'll kill me tonight if you don't let me out!"

Matthew said, "I don't think she will. It would be against her interests."

"You!" Noles stared at Matthew, his eyes hot. "I don't know who you are, but you'd best beware me when I get out!"

"That loose tongue might earn you a further sentence," Woodward warned. "I'm a magistrate, and the young man is my clerk."

Bidwell added, "Constrain your speech, Noles! That is, if you value your freedom come morning!"

"Damn you all, then!" the prisoner shouted. Turning, he picked up from the floor a bucket above which several flies of the non-demonic variety were circling. His face purple with anger, Noles braced his body to fling the bucket's contents at his tormentors.

"Noles!" Green's voice seemed to shake the gaol's walls. "Your teeth in trade!"

The bucket hung poised on the edge of being thrown. Even in his rage, Noles realized it was a bad bargain. He paused, shaking, his face contorted in a sneer that might have cracked a mirror. He lowered the bucket to his side and finally let it drop into the hay.

"Tomorrow morning you shall be free," Bidwell said. "If you so wish, I'll . . . have brought to you a carpet-beater, with which you might—"

Noles laughed harshly. "Give it to that skinny whelp and he can stick it up his arse! Go on, I've nothin' more to say to you!" He sat down on the bench and turned his face toward the wall.

"All right." Bidwell motioned Green on. "Let's see to Madam Howarth."

They moved along the corridor, to the final cell on the left-hand side. From the occupant of this cage there was no outburst of noise or apparent movement. A hooded figure wrapped in coarse gray clothing lay huddled in the hay.

Bidwell's voice was tight when he spoke. "Open it."

Green used the second key on the leather cord, which evidently unlocked all the cells. The key turned, the lock clinked, and the gaol-keeper pulled the barred door open.

"Madam?" Bidwell said. "Stand up." The figure did not move. "Do you hear me? I said, stand up!" Still, there was no response.

"She tests me," Bidwell muttered, grim-lipped. Then, louder, "Will you stand up, madam, or will Mr. Green pull you to your feet?"

At last there was a movement, but slow and deliberate. Woodward thought it was as dangerously graceful as the uncoiling of a serpent. The figure stood up and remained standing against the far wall, head fully cloaked and arms and legs shrouded by the gray sackcloth.

"I've brought visitors," Bidwell announced. "This is Magistrate Isaac Woodward and his clerk, Matthew Corbett. The magistrate desires to ask you some questions."

Again there was no reaction. "Go ahead, sir," Bidwell said.

Woodward stepped forward, into the cage's doorway. He took note of the cell's furnishings: a refuse bucket, the same as afforded Noles; another smaller bucket that held water; a bench, and upon it a wooden tray with some scraps of bread and what appeared to be chicken bones. "Madam Howarth?" Woodward said. "I am here to ascertain the facts concerning your situation. Do I have your compliance?"

Nothing, from the hooded woman.

Woodward glanced quickly at Bidwell, who nodded for him to continue. The magistrate was aware that Green and Paine were flanking him, presumably to catch the woman should she fling herself at him. Matthew watched with acute interest, his hands clenching the bars. Woodward said, "Madam Howarth, would you please speak the Lord's Prayer?"

Again, nothing. Not a word, not a nod, not even a curse.

"Do you know the Lord's Prayer?"

"Of course she does!" Paine said. "But speaking it would scorch her tongue!"

"Please." Woodward held up a hand to beg the man's silence. "Madam, on these matters I do need your response. Your unwillingness to repeat the Lord's Prayer can be taken as your inability to speak it. Do you not understand how important this is?"

"She'll understand the noose, all right!" Bidwell said.

Woodward paused, putting his thoughts in order. "Silence is guilt, madam," he continued. "I want you to listen well to what I say. There is much talk here of nooses and hangings. You know of what you stand accused. Many witches in these colonies have met their deaths by hanging . . . but since you stand accused of murdering your husband, to whom by law you owed obedience, this is also a case of what is called 'petty treason.' The punishment for such treason is not the rope, but death by fire at the stake. Therefore it does you no good whatsoever to remain mute to my questions."

He may as well have been speaking to a gray-gowned statue. "This is absurd!" he protested to Bidwell. "It's all useless, if she refuses to speak! "

"Then we ought to get a stake ready, yes?"

"Sir?" Matthew said. "May I pose her a question?"

"Yes, go ahead!" Woodward answered, disgusted with the whole thing.

"Madam Howarth?" Matthew kept his voice as quiet and un-threatening as possible, though his heart was beating very hard. "Are you a witch?"

Bidwell gave an abrupt, nervous laugh that sounded like an ill-tuned trumpet. "That's a damned foolish question, boy! Of course she's a witch! None of this would be necessary if she wasn't!"

"Mr. Bidwell?" Matthew speared the man with a cold gaze. "It was a question I posed to the woman, not to you. I'd appreciate if you would not presume to answer for her."

"Why, you're an impudent young cock!" The blood flushed to the surface of Bidwell's jowls. "If you were more than half a man, I'd require satisfaction for that sharp tongue of—"

"I," spoke the woman, loud enough to command attention. Bidwell was immediately silent. ". . . am . . .judged a witch," she said, and then nothing more.

Matthew's heart was now at full gallop. He cleared his throat. "Do you judge yourself one?"

There was a long pause. Matthew thought she wouldn't reply, but then the hooded head tilted a fraction. "My husband has been taken from me. My house and land have been taken." Her voice was wan but steady; it was the voice of a young woman, not that of a wizened crone as Matthew had expected. "My innocence has been taken from me, and my very soul has been beaten. Before I answer your question, you answer mine: what more do I possess?"

"A voice. And knowledge of the truth."

"Truth," she said acidly. "Truth in this town is a ghost, its life long departed."

"There, listen!" Bidwell said, his excitement rampant. "She speaks of ghosts!"

Hush! Matthew almost snapped, but he restrained himself. "Madam, do you commune with Satan?"

She took a long breath and let it go. "I do not."

"Did you not create poppets for use in spells of witchcraft?" Woodward asked, feeling he should endeavor to take command of this questioning.

The woman was silent. Woodward realized, uncomfortably, that she was indeed making a statement: for whatever reason, she would only speak to Matthew. He looked at his clerk, who was also discomfited by the woman's behavior, and gave a shrug of his shoulders.

"The poppets," Matthew said. "Did you make them?" Bid-well let out an exasperated snort, but Matthew paid him no heed. "No, I did not," the woman answered.

"Then how come they to be found in the floor of her house?" Paine asked. "I myself found them!"

"Madam Howarth, do you know how the poppets came to be in your house?"

"I do not," she said.

"This is a fool's court!" Bidwell was about to burst with impatience. "Of course she's going to deny her wickedness! Do you expect her to confess her sins?"

Matthew turned to the captain of militia. "How did you know to investigate the floor of her house?"

"The locality of the poppets was seen in a dream by Cara Grunewald. Not the exact locality, but that the witch had something of importance hidden underneath the floor of her kitchen. I took some men there, and we found the poppets beneath a loosened board."

"Was Madam Howarth still living there when you made this discovery?"

"No, she was here in the cell by then."

"So this Cara Grunewald told you where to look?" Woodward asked. "According to the dictates of a vision?"

"That's correct."

"I should think we might want to speak to Madam Grunewald, as well," the magistrate decided.

"Impossible!" Bidwell said. "She, her husband, and four children left Fount Royal two months ago!"

Matthew frowned, rubbing his chin. "How long was Madam Howarth's house empty before these poppets were discovered?"

"Oh . . . two weeks, perhaps." Now it was Paine's turn to wear a furrowed brow. "What's your direction, young man?"

"No direction yet." Matthew offered a faint smile. "I'm only testing the compass."

"Magistrate, I protest this ridiculous behavior by your clerk!" Bidwell had nearly snarled the word. "It's not his place to be posing these questions!"

"It is his place to be helping me," Woodward said, his temper beginning to fray from the man's insinuations. "As we all desire to find the truth in this situation, anything my well-versed scrivener can add to that process is—to me, at least—entirely welcome."

"The truth is already clear as glass, sir!" Bidwell retorted. "We should put the witch to death—fire, hanging, drowning, whatever—and be done with it!"

"It seems to me there are too many questions yet to be answered," Woodward said steadfastly.

"You want proof of her witchcraft, do you? Well, here it is then, and she won't have to speak a word! Green, remove the witch's clothing!" The burly gaol-keeper started into the cage. Instantly the gray-cloaked figure backed against the wall, so tightly as if to press herself into it. Green didn't hesitate; in another two strides he was upon her, reaching out to grasp a handful of sackcloth.

Suddenly the woman's right hand came up, its palm lodging against the man's chest to restrain him. "No," she said, and the force of her voice stopped Green in his tracks.

"Go on, Green!" Bidwell insisted. "Strip her!"

"I said no!" the woman repeated. Her other hand came up from the folds, and suddenly her fingers were working at the wooden buttons of her cloak. The gaol-keeper, realizing she had elected to disrobe herself, retreated to give her room.

Her fingers were nimble. The buttons came undone. Then she reached up, pushed the hood back from her face and head, shrugged quickly out of her clothes, and let the sorry garment slide into the hay.

Rachel Howarth stood naked before the world.

"Very well," she said, her eyes defiant. "Here is the witch."

Matthew almost fell down. Never in his life had he seen a naked woman; what's more, this woman was . . . well, there was no other description but belle exotique.

She was no wizened crone, being perhaps twenty-five years or thereabouts. Whether by nature or due to the gaol's diet, she was lean to the point of her rib cage being visible. Her flesh was of a swarthy mahogany hue, her Portuguese heritage. Her long, thick hair was black as midnight but in dire need of washing. Matthew couldn't help but stare at her dark-nippled breasts, his face reddening with shame but his eyes wanton as those of a drunken seaman. When he removed his gaze from that area, he instantly was attracted to the mysterious triangle of black curls between her slim thighs. His head seemed to be mounted on a treacherous swivel. He gazed into the woman's face, and there found further undoing of his senses.

She was staring at the floor, but her eyes—pale amber-brown, verging on a strange and remarkable golden hue— burned so fiercely they might have set the hay aflame. Her face was most pleasing—heartshaped, her chin marked with a small cleft—and Matthew found himself imagining how she would appear if not in such dire circumstances. If his heart had been galloping before, now it was a runaway. The sight of this lovely woman naked was almost too much to bear; something about her was frail, deeply wounded perhaps, while her expression conveyed an inner strength the likes of which he'd never witnessed. It hurt him to view such a creature in this ignoble fashion and he sought to rest his eyes somewhere else, but Rachel Howarth seemed the center of the world and there was nowhere he could look without seeing her.

"Here!" Bidwell said. "Look here!" He strode toward the woman, grasped her left breast in a rough grip, and lifted it. He pointed at a small brown blotch underneath. "This is one. Here is another!" He pressed a forefinger against a second mark on her right thigh, just above the knee. "Turn around!" he told her. She obeyed, her face blanked of emotion. "The third one, here!" He put his finger against a dark blotch—a bit larger than the others, though not by very much—on her left hip. "Devil's marks, one and all! This third one here even seems to be the impression of her master! Come, look closer!"

He was speaking to Woodward, who was having as difficult a time in the presence of this compelling nudity as was Matthew. The magistrate stepped forward to get a better view of the skin blotch that Bidwell was showing. "You see? Right here? And there too?" Bidwell asked. "Don't those appear to be horns growing from a devil's head?"

"I . . . well... I suppose so," Woodward answered, and then decorum dictated that he retreat a few paces.

"Her right arm," Matthew said, with an uptilt of his chin. He'd recognized two small, blood-crusted wounds near the elbow. "Rat bites, I think."

"Yes, I see. Another on the shoulder." Bidwell touched the shoulder wound, which was gray-rimmed with infection, and the woman winced but made no sound. "The rats have been after you, Madam?" She didn't reply, nor did she need to; it was obvious the rodents had been visiting. "All right, we can't have you eaten up in your sleep. I'll have Linch catch the bastards. Put your clothes back on." He walked away from her and immediately she bent down, picked up her sackcloth, and covered herself. Then, shrouded once more, she huddled in the hay as she'd been at the beginning.

"There you have it!" Bidwell announced. "She cannot speak the Lord's Prayer, she created those poppets to enchant her victims, and she has the marks. For some unholy reason known only to herself and her master, she murdered or caused the murder of Burlton Grove and Daniel Howarth. She and her hellish kin are responsible for the fires we've been lately enduring. She conjures phantasms and demons and I believe she's cursed our orchards and fields as well." He placed his hands on his hips, his chest bellowing out. "It is her plan to destroy Fount Royal, and on that account she has made great and terrible progress! What more remains to be said?"

"One question," Matthew said, and he saw Bidwell visibly flinch. "If indeed this woman commands such awesome and unholy powers—"

"She does!" Bidwell asserted, and behind him Paine nodded.

"—then why," Matthew went on, "can she not strike mere rodents dead with a touch?"

"What?"

"The rats, sir. Why is she bitten?"

"A good point," Woodward agreed. "Why would she allow herself to be bitten by common rats, if she's joined with such a demonic league?"

"Because . . . because . . ." Bidwell looked for help from Green and Paine.

The militia captain came to his rescue. "Because," Paine said forcefully, "it's a trick. Would you not think it more peculiar that Noles was attacked by the rodents, but the witch was spared? Oh, she knows what she's doing, gentlemen!" He looked directly at Matthew. "She is attempting to blind you, young man. Her evil is well planned. If she has the bites of rodents on her flesh, it was done by her will and blasphemous blessing."

Woodward nodded. "Yes, that sounds reasonable."

"Then there's no disagreement of the fact that she is a witch?" Bidwell prompted.

Matthew said, "Sir, this is a matter for careful consideration."

"What damned consideration? Who else has poisoned my town but her? Who else murdered her husband and the reverend? Boy, the facts are there to be seen!"

"Not facts. Contentions."

"You push me, boy! Remember, I'm your host here!"

"Would you take my clothes and turn me out into the forest if I refuse to view contentions as facts?"

"Please, please!" the magistrate said. "Nothing is being accomplished by this."

"My point exactly!" Bidwell steamed. "Your clerk seems determined to blunt the weapon you were brought here to wield!"

"And what weapon might that be, sir?" Woodward's raw throat and this dank gaol had combined to inflame his nerves. He felt his self-control slipping.

Bidwell's face might have been a pickled beet. "The law, of course!"

"Listen well to me." The magistrate's voice was calm but strained, and the power of it seized Bidwell like a hand around the scruff of a cur. "My clerk and I have come to this place to discover the truth, not to use the privilege of law as a battering ram." Bidwell glowered at him but didn't speak. "You may be the master of Fount Royal, but I am the master of a larger realm. I will decide whether Madam Howarth is a witch or not, and I will determine her fate. And no man shall rush or shove me to judgment. You may take that as a fact. If you have some problem with it, Matthew and I will be glad to find other lodgings."

"Let me understand this fully, then!" Bidwell said. "Who is the magistrate and who is the clerk?"

Woodward clenched his teeth to restrain what he'd really like to say. "I need some air," he told Matthew. "Will you join me in walking back to Mr. Bidwell's house?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is that all?" Paine asked. "Aren't you going to interview the witch further?"

"Not today." Woodward motioned toward the woman's crumpled form. "I don't believe she's in a communicative mood, and I'm damned certain I'm not! Matthew, come along!" He turned away and started for the exit.

"She needs a hot iron to loosen her tongue, is what she needs!" Bidwell shouted after them as they went along the corridor between the cages. Noles gave a snort and a spit as they passed. His senses still shaken by his introduction to Rachel Howarth, Matthew knew he would win no contests of popularity hereabouts, and especially that he should beware making further enemies in the uncertain days to come.

eight

OUTSIDE THE GAOL, the humid air and clouded light seemed the breath and glow of paradise. Woodward disdained the carriage, where Goode sat on the driver's seat whittling a piece of wood with a small blade, and began walking in the direction of the spring. Matthew followed close behind.

"That man galls me!" Woodward said. "I may be a servant of the law, but I'm not his slave and neither are you!"

"No, sir. I mean, yes, sir." Matthew got beside him and kept pace. "As much as his manner grates, however, I can understand his anxiety."

"Well, aren't you the generous soul!"

"I might be as eager for an execution if I'd put so much money into Fount Royal, and now saw my investment near ruin."

"To the Devil with his investment!"

"Yes, sir," Matthew said. "I think that's what he fears."

Woodward slowed his pace and then stopped. He mopped beads of sweat from his face with his shirtsleeve, looked up at the ominous sky and then at his clerk. "That's why you're so invaluable to me, you know," he said, his anger dissolving. "At a glance you see the picture, the frame, the nail, and the wall."

"I see only what's there to be seen."

"Yes, and surely we've today seen a bit too much of Madam Howarth. She was . . . younger than I suspected. Much more handsome, as well. One might say lovely, if in different circumstances. When she disrobed, I . . . well, I haven't judged very many female defendants. Never have I stood and seen a woman disrobe willingly before strangers."

"Not willingly," Matthew said. "She knew her clothes would be taken from her, so she elected to remove them herself."

"Yes. What does that say about the woman?"

"That she wishes to retain some measure of control over herself. Or, at least, deny that control from Bidwell."

"Hmm." Woodward began walking west along Truth Street again, and Matthew walked alongside. Though the village still seemed very quiet, there were residents going about their daily business. Two women were crossing the street ahead, one of them carrying a large basket. A man at the reins of an oxcart passed, hauling bales of hay and a few barrels. "I should like to know," the magistrate said, "... what intrigues you have with Mrs. Nettles."

"Sir?"

"You may wear that expression of innocent surprise with everyone but me. I know you too well. On this day, of all days, you would never have been late rising from bed. In fact, I suspect you were up early in anticipation. So why did Mrs. Nettles say such a thing to Bidwell?"

"I . . . promised her I wouldn't betray her confidence."

Woodward pulled up short again, and this time when he looked at Matthew his gaze was more penetrating. "If it has to do with Madam Howarth, I should like to be informed. In fact, it's your requirement as my clerk to inform me."

"Yes, sir, I know. But—"

"Promise her anything you please," Woodward said. "But tell me what I ought to be told."

"She did ask that I not speak a word to Mr. Bidwell."

"Well, neither shall I. Tell me."

"In essence, she requested that you and I both approach this case with an open mind. She believes Madam Howarth to be falsely accused."

"And she told you why she believes this?"

"No, sir. Just that she fears our minds will be poisoned."

Woodward stared off across Truth Street at a small pasture where several cows grazed. A woman wearing a straw hat was on her knees in a beanfield, pulling up weeds, while her husband was at work nailing shingles atop their farmhouse. Nearby, on the other side of a split-rail fence, stood a farmhouse that had been abandoned by its previous tenants, its field now a swampy thicket. Three crows perched on the roof of the forlorn house, looking to Woodward like a trio of black-robed magistrates. Perhaps, he mused, they were awaiting the departure of the next-door neighbors.

"You know," he said quietly, "that if Rachel Howarth is a witch, then she has powers of influence that are much beyond our perception."

"Mrs. Nettles asked me not to mention our conversation to Bidwell, for the reason that he might think her so influenced."

"Hmm," Woodward said, a sound of thought. "Poison can be served from many cups, Matthew. I'd beware the one from which I chose to drink. Come, let's walk." They started off once more. "What did you make of Noles's story?"

"Hogwash. He wants out of his cage."

"And the Devil's marks on the woman's body?"

"Inconclusive," Matthew said. "Such marks are common on most people." He didn't have to mention the blotches that marked Woodward's pate.

"Granted. What, then, of the poppets?"

"I think you should see them for yourself."

"Agreed. I'm sorry Madam Grunewald is no longer available."

"You should ask Bidwell for a list of witnesses who are available," Matthew suggested. "Then you should secure some place to interview them where Bidwell can't interfere."

"Yes." He nodded, then darted a sidelong glance at Matthew. "We will have to interview Madam Howarth again, of course. At length. She seems to be acceptable to your questions, but mute to anyone else. Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know."

Woodward let them stride a few more paces before he spoke again. "You don't think it's possible that she knew Mrs. Nettles would speak to you this morning? And that by only addressing your questions she might. . . how shall I put this?. . . Win some favor from you?"

"I'm just a clerk. I have no—"

"—powers of influence?" Woodward interrupted. "You see my point, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," Matthew had to admit. "I do."

"And her unwillingness or inability to speak the Lord's Prayer is especially damning. If she would or could speak it, then why won't she? Do you have any theories?"

"None," Matthew said.

"Except for the obvious, that—as Paine said—her tongue would be scorched by mention of the Holy Father. It's happened before in witchcraft trials that the accused made an attempt at speaking the prayer and fell convulsed with agony to the courtroom floor."

"Has it ever happened that anyone accused of witchcraft spoke the prayer and was set free?"

"Of that I can't say. I'm far from an expert in these matters. I do know that some witches are able to speak the name of God without ill effect, being somehow shielded from harm by their master. That much I've read in court dockets. But if Madam Howarth did speak the prayer—in its entirety, with proper holy attitude and without fainting or crying out in pain—then it would go a distance in helping her cause." The magistrate frowned, watching another crow circling above their heads. It came to him that the Devil could take many forms, and he ought to be wary of what he said and where he said it. "You do realize, don't you, that Madam Howarth today made a confession of sorts?"

"Yes, sir." Matthew knew what he meant. "When she disrobed, she said, 'Here is the witch.'"

"Correct. If that's not a confession, I never heard one. I could order the stake to be cut and the fire to be laid this afternoon, if I had a mind to." He was silent for a moment, during which they neared the conjunction of Fount Royal's streets. "Tell me why I should not," he said.

"Because the witnesses should be heard. Because Madam Howarth deserves the right to speak without pressure from Bid-well. And because . . ." Matthew hesitated, "I'd like to know why she murdered her husband."

"And I the—" same, Woodward was about to say, but before he could finish he was interrupted by the high-pitched voice of a woman.

"Magistrate! Magistrate Woodward!"

It was so sharp and startling that for an instant Woodward thought the crow had spoken his name, and if he were to look up he would see the evil bird about to sink its talons into his scalp. But suddenly a woman came into view, hurrying across the square where Fount Royal's streets met. She wore a simple indigo blue dress, a blue-checked apron, and a white bonnet, and she carried a basket that held such household items as candles and blocks of soap. The magistrate and Matthew halted as the woman neared.

"Yes, madam?" Woodward asked.

She gave him a sunny smile and a quick curtsey. "Forgive me, but when I saw you walking I had to come and introduce myself. I am Lucretia Vaughan. My husband is Stewart, who owns the carpentry shop." She nodded in the direction of Industry Street.

"My pleasure. This is my clerk, Matthew—"

"Corbett, yes, I know. Oh, you two gentlemen are quite the talk hereabouts. How you defied that mad innkeeper and fought off his brood of murderers with a single sword! It's made for a welcome tale of bravery among us!" Matthew had to hold back a laugh; it seemed their midnight flight from Shawcombe's tavern was being transformed by the residents of Fount Royal into something akin to Ulysses's monumental battle with the Cyclops.

"Well," Woodward said, unconsciously puffing out his chest a bit, "it did take all our wits to escape that gang of killers." Matthew was forced to lower his head and study the ground.

"But how exciting that must have been!" the woman went on, almost breathless. It had already registered to Woodward that she was a very handsome figure, in her thirties perhaps, with clear blue eyes and a friendly, open demeanor. Curls of light brown hair escaped her bonnet, and her face—though lined by time and the rigors of the frontier life—was as pleasing as a warm lantern on a chill, dark night. "And to have found such a treasure, as well!"

Woodward's smile faltered. "A treasure?"

"Yes, the sack of gold coins you discovered! Spanish gold, wasn't it? Come, sir, please don't be coy with a simple country lady!"

Matthew's heart was beating somewhere in the vicinity of his Adam's apple. He said, "May I ask a question?" then waited for Mrs. Vaughan to nod. "Who informed you of this sack of gold coins?"

"Well, I heard it from Cecilia Semmes, who heard it from Joan Baltour. But everyone knows, Mr. Corbett! Oh!" Her eyes widened, and she put a finger to her lips, "Was it supposed to be a secret?"

"I fear you've been misinformed," Woodward said. "My clerk found a single coin of Spanish gold, not a sackful."

"But Cecilia promised me it was God's truth! And Cecilia's not one to pass on tales that aren't true!"

"In this case, your friend has erred. Grievously," Woodward added.

"But, I can't understand why—" She stopped, and a knowing smile spread over her face. Her eyes gleamed with delight. "Ohhhh, I see! The cat jumped out of the bag, didn't it?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"You can trust me, sir! Mum's the word!"

"I'm afraid mum is not the word. If you're thinking that we have a sack of gold coins that we wish to keep a secret, you're sadly mistaken."

The coin was in the pocket of Matthew's breeches, and he would've taken it out to show her but he doubted it would do any good but simply set more tongues in motion. "I really did only find one," he told her.

"Yes." Her smile remained constant. "Of course you did. That's what I certainly shall tell anyone who asks me . . ." She looked hopefully at the magistrate. "When will the witch swing, sir?"

"Well, I—"

"I would like to know in advance, so I might make some pies to sell. There will be a great number of people there to see it, I'm sure. The whole town, most likely. Where will the gallows be constructed?"

It took Woodward a few seconds to recover from the jarring shock of the woman's rather brusque questions. "I really don't know, Mrs. Vaughan. But at the moment there are no plans to construct a scaffold."

"Oh?" Her smile began to fade, a frown tugging at the edges of her cupid's-bow mouth. "I presumed you were here to carry out an execution."

"You and many others, evidently. I am here to satisfy justice."

"I see. So you're saying there will be an execution, but it may be delayed for several days?"

Now it was Woodward's turn to study the ground.

"The witch must swing," Mrs. Vaughan plowed on. Her initial sweetness had given way to something more sour. "For the sake of this town and everyone in it, she must be executed as soon as possible. I mean to say, as soon as justice is satisfied. Do you have any idea when that might be?"

"No, I do not."

"But. . . you're in charge, aren't you? Surely you're not going to suffer the witch to live and keep cursing us too much longer, are you?"

"Magistrate!" Woodward and Matthew saw that Bidwell's carriage had stopped nearby, before it made the turn onto Peace Street. Bidwell had removed his tricorn and held it between both hands, a gesture that Woodward took as contrition. "Good day there, Mrs. Vaughan! I trust you and your family are well?"

"I'm feeling quite ill after learning Rachel Howarth won't swing anytime soon!" the woman replied, her comely face now stitched tight with disgust. "What's wrong with this magistrate? Has the witch already claimed him?"

Bidwell decided, at this combustible moment, to deny the powder its flame. "Magistrate Woodward has the situation well in hand, madam. He operates in a considered and proper judicial manner. Magistrate, may I have a word with you?"

"Good day, Mrs. Vaughan," Woodward said, and she gave an indignant grunt, lifted her pinched nose in the air, and strode away in the direction she'd come. He walked to the carriage. "Yes?"

Bidwell stared at his tricorn, his fingers working the curled brim. "I . . . must make a deepfelt apology, sir. Sometimes I let my impatience guide my tongue." He glanced quickly up to gauge the magistrate's reaction, then lowered his eyes once more. "I'm very sorry to have caused you grief. I know this is a difficult situation as it is for all of us. But you do understand my responsibility here, don't you?"

"I do. I trust you understand and will respect mine."

"Absolutely."

"In that case, I accept your apology. I'd also like you to know I will do my best to resolve your predicament as soon as possible, within the bounds and necessities of the law."

"I ask nothing more," said Bidwell, and then he put his tricorn back on and gave a visible exhalation at the fact that this distasteful business of apology was concluded. "Might I offer you and your clerk a ride?"

"Yes, I'd certainly accept one. It is terribly humid this morning, isn't it?" Woodward was also grateful that the air had been cleared, since any difficulty with their host would be painful to endure. He stepped up on the carriage's footclimb as Bidwell opened the door for him, and then he eased himself into the seat that faced the other man. He realized that Matthew hadn't moved an inch from his previous position.

"Matthew? Aren't you coming?"

"No, sir, I am not."

"My apology," Bidwell said, and now the word tasted like spoiled cheese, "was directed to your clerk as well as to you, sir." He was staring at Woodward, not even bothering to lay eyes on the boy.

"I'd rather walk," Matthew said, before the magistrate was put in the position of having to be a diplomat passing chilly responses between warring powers. "I would like the chance to think awhile. Also to explore the town."

"If your clerk desires to walk, he shall walk." Bidwell raised his voice to deliver a command to his servant: "Goode! Drive on!"

At once Goode gave the reins a flick, the team of horses responded, and the carriage moved away from Matthew. It turned left onto Peace Street, running out of its path a couple of scruffy-looking dogs who were growling over a muddy bone. Matthew watched with amusement as a third dog—much smaller than the other two—darted in just behind the carriage's wheels, grabbed up the bone, and fled at speed while its rivals seemed to gape in an amazed stupor before they took pursuit.

Matthew was on his own. He began walking again, going no particular place and certainly in no hurry. He crossed the intersection of streets and headed westward on Industry. Strolling past more fields and farmhouses, picket fences and barns, he greeted and was greeted by several people who were either at work on their various labors of living or who were walking to other destinations. Here and there stood groups of oak trees, massive shapes that overhung their branches above the roofs and yards. The number of large treestumps told Matthew that it had been an endeavor of some sweat and toil to clear this land for any kind of use, but the fallen trees had been put to good service in the walls that protected Fount Royal. It had been no easy job to build this town to its present condition, that was a surety; the sheer willpower of the people to settle what not long ago had been thick woods at the edge of a seaboard swamp greatly impressed Matthew, and seeing the number of houses and plowed fields, greened pastures, and gardens made him fully realize the hopes that humans held to be masters of an untamed land.

"Good mornin' to you!" called a man who was mending a broken fence.

"Good morning," Matthew answered.

"Your magistrate's gonna deliver us from the witch, I hear," the man said, straightening up from his work.

"The problem is being considered," was all Matthew felt free to say.

"I hope he does more'n consider it! Sooner she hangs, sooner we can sleep well at night!"

"Yes, sir. I'll be sure to pass that along to the magistrate." He kept walking, continuing on his westward trek. He expected another response, but the man had returned to his task.

They're ready to hang her, Mrs. Nettles had said. They'd hang her this morn, if they could.

He thought of the shape wrapped in gray sackcloth, huddled in the hay.

What she needs is a champion of truth.

He thought of the way she'd risen to her feet, the slow and sinuous movement that had started his heart beating harder.

Somebody to prove her innocent. . . He thought of the sackcloth coming open, and what was revealed beneath. He saw her lean taut body, her raven-black hair, her heartshaped face and strange gold-hued eyes . . . when ever'body else is again' her.

He had to stop thinking. The thoughts were causing him distress. He heard the dark growl of distant thunder and realized, not without a sense of humor, that he'd grown his own lightning rod. That was a damnable thing, and to be ashamed of. The woman was, after all, a widow. But still she was a woman, and he a man; though he often wore a lightning rod at the sight of some female that might be passing by, he had devised methods of deflating the issue. Reciting by memory Bible verses in Latin, mentally working complex mathematics problems, or observing the patterns of nature; all those had sufficed at one time or another. In this instance, however, neither Deuteronomy nor geometry had the least effect. Therefore he steered himself by the foremast toward the nearest mighty oak and sat down beneath it to ease his passions in study of grass, clouds, and anything else that needed studying.

More rain, that gift of life the people of Fount Royal certainly could live without for a time, was coming. Matthew saw the charcoal-gray clouds against the lighter gray, and could smell the scent of water in the air. It would soon be above the town, and Matthew welcomed it because it would wash some of this nonsense out of him. And it was nonsense, really, to let himself be so bothered, so discomforted, by the sight of a woman's nudity. He was the clerk—the trusted clerk—of an important magistrate, and by that office and responsibility he should be above these transgressions of thought.

He watched the storm clouds fast approaching. In a pasture nearby, the cows began lowing. A man on horseback rode past, his steed visibly nervous and fighting the bit. The smell of rain was stronger now, and the next boom of thunder was like the sound of a kettledrum being pounded. Still Matthew stayed where he was, though he'd begun to wonder about finding better shelter. Then the wind came and made the oak's branches shiver over his head, and so he got up and started walking eastward along Industry Street.

Lightning flared across the sky. Within another moment, large drops of rain began pelting Matthew's back. He picked up his pace, realizing he was in for a thorough soaking. The severity of the rainfall rapidly increased, as did the hard-blowing wind. Matthew had not yet reached the conjunction of streets when the bottom fell out of the bucket with a boom and crash, and the rain descended in a gray torrent that all but blinded him. In a matter of seconds he was as wet as a carp. The wind was fierce, almost shoving him headlong into the mud. He looked desperately around, rain slapping his face, and saw in the aqueous gloom the square of an open doorway. There was no time to beg invitation; lie ran toward the shelter, which proved to be a small barn, and once inside he stepped back from the windblown entrance and shook the rain from himself like one of Fount Royal's bone-chasing mongrels.

Matthew surmised he would be captive here for a while. On a wallpeg hung a lantern, a flame aglow within its bell; Matthew realized someone had been recently here, but where that someone now was he didn't know. There were four narrow stalls, two of them each confining a horse; both horses stared at him, and one rumbled a greeting of sorts deep in the throat. Matthew ran a hand through the stubble of his wet hair and watched the deluge at a prudent distance from the doorway.

The barn was well put together. There were a few pattering raindrops falling from the roof, but not enough to be bothersome. He looked about for a place to rest and saw a pile of hay over against the far wall; going to it, he sat down and stretched his legs out to await the storm's finale. One of the horses nickered, as if asking him what he was doing. Matthew hoped that whoever owned this barn would not be too troubled by his presence here, but he didn't care to drown on the way to Bidwell's mansion. A boom of thunder and flash of lightning made the horses jump and whinny. The rain was still pouring down—if anything, harder than before—and Matthew figured that his stay here would be, unfortunately, longer than he'd planned.

A drop of rain plunked him on the top of the head. He looked up in time to receive another raindrop between his eyes. Yes, he was sitting directly beneath a leak. He moved two feet or so to the left, nearer the wall, and stretched his legs out before him again.

But then he became aware of a new discomfort. Something was pressing into his spine. He reached back, his hand winnowing into the hay, and there his fingers came into contact with a surface of rough burlap. A sack of some kind, he realized as his fingers did their exploring. A sack, buried in the hay.

He pulled his hand away from it. Whatever the sack contained, it was not his business. After all, this was private property. He should be gracious enough not to go looking through private piles of hay, shouldn't he?

He sat there for a moment, watching the rain. Perhaps it had lessened somewhat, perhaps not. The leak that had moved him aside was still dripping. He reached back, almost unconsciously, sank his hand into the hay, and felt the sack's surface once more. Then again withdrew his fingers. Private property, he told himself. Leave it alone.

But a question had come to him. This was indeed private property, so why had its owner felt the need to hide a burlap sack at the bottom of a haypile? And the next question, of course— what did the sack contain that merited hiding?

"It's not my business," he said aloud, as if saying it could convince him.

He recalled then something else that Mrs. Nettles had said: Satan does walk in Fount Royal, but Rachel Howarth's na' the one beside him. Things that nae want to be seen are plentiful here. And that's God's truth.

Matthew found himself wondering if that burlap sack held one of the things that, as Mrs. Nettles had expressed it, nae wanted to be seen.

If that was so, might it have some bearing on the case of witchcraft? And if it did, was he not bound to investigate it as a representative of Magistrate Woodward?

Perhaps so. Then again, perhaps not. He was torn between his curiosity and his respect for private property. Another moment passed, during which the frown of deliberation never left Matthew's face. Then he made his decision: he would clear away enough hay to get a good look at the sack, and thereafter dictate his actions.

When the job was done, Matthew saw that it was simply a plain dark brown grainsack. Touching it, however, indicated that its content was not grain; his fingers made out a circular shape that seemed to be made of either wood or metal. More study was needed. He grasped the sack and, in attempting to dislodge it, quickly learned how heavy it was. His shoulders protested the effort. Now all reluctance to pierce this mystery had fled before the attack of Matthew's desire to know; he gave the sack a mighty heave and succeeded in pulling it free about half of its length. His hands felt another circular shape, and the folds and creases of some unknown material. He got a firm grip on the thing, in preparation of dragging it out so he might inspect its other—and presumably open—end.

One of the horses suddenly gave a snort and a whuff of air. Matthew felt the small hairs move on the back of his neck and he knew in an instant that someone else had just entered the barn.

He started to turn his head. Before he could, he heard the crunch of a boot on the earthen floor and he was grasped by two hands, one around the back of the neck and the other seizing his right arm just above the elbow. There was a garbled cry that might have been a curse with God's name in it, and an instant after that Matthew was picked up and thrown through the air with terrifying force. He had no time to prevent a bad landing; on the journey his right shoulder grazed a wooden post and then he collided with the gate that secured one of the empty stalls. The breath was knocked from his lungs and he fell to the floor, his bones having suddenly become unjointed and less solid than as objects of pliable putty.

He was struggling to get his breath when his attacker loomed over him again, and now a hand took hold of his shirt and pulled him up and another hand clamped upon his throat. The pressure was such that Matthew feared his eyeballs would explode from their sockets. "You sneakin' bastard, you!" the man was shouting. With a violent twisting motion the man threw Matthew once more, this time into the wall with such force that the entire barn trembled and old dust blew from the chinks. The stunned clerk felt his teeth bite into his tongue, and as he sank to the ground again in a haze of pain he tasted bitter blood.

The man came after him. "I'll kill you, you damn sneak!" he raged, and he swung a booted foot directly at Matthew's head. Matthew knew in a flash that if he didn't move, his skull would be bashed in, so he scrabbled forward and at the same time threw up an arm to ward off the blow. The kick got him on the right shoulderblade, bringing a cry of pain from his bloody lips, but he kept frantically crawling and pulled his legs underneath himself before the man could get balanced to kick him again. Matthew staggered up, his knees buckled, but he forced them to hold true with sheer willpower, and then he turned to face his attacker, his back pressed against the wallboards.

By the lantern's light he recognized the man. He'd seen this fellow in passing yesterday morning, when he and the magistrate had met Paine at the public stables behind the blacksmith's foundry. It was indeed the blacksmith; by name, according to the sign of his business, Seth Hazelton. The smithy was a squat, round-bellied man of middle age, with a wet gray brush of hair and a coarse and dripping gray beard. His face was as rugged as weathered rock, his nose a hooked precipice. At the moment his intense blue eyes were lit with the fire of sheer, white-hot fury, and the knotty veins stood out in relief on his bull-thick neck. He paused in his onrush, as if recognizing Matthew as the magistrate's clerk, but the respite was only for a few seconds; his face flamed anew and, bellowing a cry of mingled wrath and anguish, he hurtled forward again.

Matthew was fast when he needed to be. He gauged Hazel-ton's swinging blow, ducked under the fist, and ran for the way out. The smithy, however, was also quick of foot when it deemed him to be so; he bounded after Matthew like a corpulent hound and caught the boy's shoulder in a grip fashioned hard by the contest with iron. Matthew was spun around, two hands set upon his throat, he was lifted off his feet and carried backward to slam once more into the wall with a force that near shattered his spine. Then the hands began to squeeze with deadly intent.

Matthew grasped the man's wrists and tried to unhinge those killing hands, but even as he fought he knew it was in vain. Hazel-ton's sweating face was pressed right into his, the man's eyes glazed from the heat of this—rather onesided—combat. The fingers were digging deep into Matthew's throat. He couldn't breathe, and dark motes were beginning to dance before his eyes. He was aware, strangely, that one horse was whinnying piteously and the other was kicking in its stall.

He was going to die. He knew it. In a few seconds, the darkness was going to overcome him and he would die right here by this blacksmith's crushing hands.

This was the moment he should be rescued, he thought. This was the moment someone should come in and tear Hazelton away from him. But Matthew realized it wasn't likely to happen. No, his fate would be interrupted by no Samaritan this sorry day.

The lantern. Where was the lantern?

On his right, still hanging from its peg. With an effort he angled his head and eyes and found the lamp several feet away. He reached for it; he had long arms, but the lantern was at the very limit of his grasp. Desperation gave him the strength to lurch the two or three extra inches. He plucked the hot lamp from its peg. Then he smashed it as hard as he could into the side of Hazelton's face.

An edge of unsmoothed tin did its work. A cut opened across the blacksmith's cheek from the corner of the eye to the upper lip, and crimson rivulets streamed down into his beard. Hazelton blinked as the pain hit him; there was a pause in which Matthew feared the man's fit of rage was stronger than the desire to preserve his face, but then Hazelton let out a howl and staggered back, his hands leaving Matthew's throat to press against the tide of blood.

Matthew sucked air into his lungs. His head swimming, he half-ran, half-stumbled toward the barn's open doorway. The rain was still falling, but not near with its previous velocity. Matthew didn't dare to look behind to see if the smithy was gaining on him, as that glance would surely slow him down a precious step. Then he was outside the barn. The rain hit him and the wind swirled about him, his left foot snagged a treeroot that almost sent him sprawling, but he recovered his balance and ran on into the tumult, aiming his flight in the direction of Bidwell's mansion. Only when he'd reached the conjunction of streets did he slow his pace and look over his shoulder. If the blacksmith had followed, he had been left behind.

Still, Matthew didn't care to tarry. He spat blood into a mud-puddle and then tilted his head back, opened his mouth to wash it with rain, and spat again. His back and shoulders felt deeply bruised, his throat savaged by Hazelton's fingers. He would have quite a tale to tell the magistrate, and he knew he was damned lucky he was alive to tell it. He started off again, walking as fast as he could, toward Bidwell's house.

Two questions remained in his mind: what had been in the burlap sack? And what had the blacksmith concealed that he would kill to protect?

nine

THAT'S A DAMNABLE STORY!" Bidwell said, when Matthew had finished telling it. "You mean Hazelton tried to strangle you over a grainsack?"

"Not just a grainsack." Matthew was sitting in a comfortable chair in the mansion's parlor, a pillow wedged behind his bruised back and a silver cup of rum on a table next to him. "There was something in it." His throat felt swollen, and he'd already looked into a handmirror and seen the blacksmith's blue fingermarks on his neck. "Something he didn't want me to see."

"Seth Hazelton has a cracked bell in his steeple." Mrs. Nettles stood nearby, her arms crossed over her chest and her dark gaze positively frightening; it was she who had fetched the cup of rum from the kitchen. "He was odd 'fore his wife died last year. Since then, he's become much the worse."

"Well, thank God you weren't killed!" Woodward was sitting in a chair across from his clerk, and he wore an expression of both profound relief and concern. "And I thank God you didn't kill him, either, or there would surely be Hell to pay. You know you were trespassing on private property, don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"I understand your desire to find shelter from that storm, but what on earth prompted you to dig into the man's hidden possessions? There was no reason for it, was there?"

"No, sir," Matthew said grimly. "I suppose there wasn't."

"I tell you there wasn't! And you say you struck him a blow to the face that brought the blood flowing?" Woodward winced at the gravity of the legal wheels that might have to turn because of this. "Was he on his feet the last you saw him?"

"Yes, sir."

"But he didn't come out of the barn after you?"

Matthew shook his head. "I don't think so." He reached for the rum and downed some of it, knowing where the magistrate was headed. His wounded tongue—which was so enlarged it seemed to fill up his mouth—had already been scorched by the liquor's fire and was mercifully numbed.

"Then he could have fallen after you left." Woodward lifted his gaze to Bidwell, who stood beside his chair. "The man could be lying in that barn, severely injured. I suggest we see to him immediately."

"Hazelton's as tough as a salt-dried buzzard," Mrs. Nettles said. "A wee cut on the face would nae finish 'im off."

"I'm afraid it was more than a wee ... I mean, a small cut," Matthew admitted. "His cheek suffered a nasty slice."

"Well, what did he expect?" Mrs. Nettles thrust out her chin. "That you should let 'im choke you dead without a fight? You ask me, I say he deserved what he got!"

"Be that as it may, we must go." Woodward stood up. He was feeling poorly himself, his raw throat paining him with every swallow. He dreaded having to leave the house and travel in the drizzling rain, but this was an extremely serious matter.

Bidwell too had recognized the solemnity of the situation. His foremost thought, however, was that the loss of the town's blacksmith would be another crippling hardship. "Mrs. Nettles," he said, "have Goode bring the carriage around."

"Yes sir." She started out toward the rear of the house. Before she'd gotten more than a few steps, however, the bell that announced a visitor at the front door was rung. She hurried to it, opened it—and received a shock.

There stood the blacksmith himself, hollow-eyed and gray-faced, a bloody cloth secured to his left cheek with a leather strap that was knotted around his head. Behind him was his horse and wagon, and in his arms he held a dark brown burlap sack.

"Who is it?" Bidwell came into the foyer and instantly stopped in his tracks. "My God, man! We were just on our way to see about you!"

"Well," Hazelton said, his voice roughened by the pain of his injury, "here I be. Where's the young man?"

"In the parlor," Bidwell said.

Hazelton came across the threshold without invitation, brushing past Mrs. Nettles. She wrinkled her nose at the combined smells of body odor and blood. When the blacksmith entered the parlor, his muddy boots clomping on the floor, Matthew almost choked on his rum and Woodward felt his hackles rise like those of a cat anticipating the attack of a large and brutish dog.

"Here." Hazelton threw the sack down at Matthew's feet. "This is what you were sneakin' to see." Matthew stood up— carefully, as his back's stability was precarious.

"Go on, open it," Hazelton told him. "That's what you wanted to do, ain't it?"

Matthew got his mouth working. "I'm sorry, sir. I shouldn't have invaded your priva—"

"Swalla that shit and have a look." Hazelton bent down, lifted the stitched end of the sack, and began to dump its contents out onto the floor. Bidwell and Mrs. Nettles had come in from the foyer, and they witnessed what Hazelton had fought so viciously to protect.

Clothes spilled from the sack, along with two pairs of scuffed and much-worn shoes. A woman's wardrobe, it was: a black dress, an indigo apron, a few yellowed blouses, and a number of patched skirts that at one time had fit a pair of very broad hips. A small, unadorned wooden box also slid from the sack, and came to rest against Matthew's left shoe.

"Sophie's clothes," the blacksmith said. "Ever'thin' she owned. Pick up that box and open it." Matthew hesitated; he was feeling at the moment like a complete horse's ass.

"Go on, open it!" Hazelton commanded. Matthew picked it up and lifted the lid. Within the box were four ivory hairpins, a comb fashioned from golden-grained wood, a silver ring that held a small amber stone, and another silver ring etched with an intricate rope-like design.

"Her ornaments," the blacksmith said. "Weddin' ring, too. When she passed, I couldn't bear to throw them things away. Couldn't bear to have 'em in the house, neither." He pressed a hand against the bloody cloth. "So I put 'em in a sack and hid 'em in my barn for safekeepin'." Hazelton's dark-rimmed eyes stared furiously at Matthew. "Thought it was someplace nobody'd go pokin'. Then I come in and there you be, tryin' to drag it out." He turned his gaze upon Woodward. "You be the magistrate, huh? A man of the law, sworn to uphold it?",

"That's correct."

"If it be so, I want some satisfaction. This whelp come in my barn uninvited and go to diggin' out my dear wife's belongin's. I ain't done nothin' wrong, I ain't tryin' to hide nothin' but what's mine and nobody else's business." Hazelton looked at Bidwell for a response. "Maybe I did go some crazy, like to try to kill that boy, but damn if I didn't think he was tryin' to steal my Sophie's things. Can you blame me, sir?"

"No," Bidwell had to admit, "I cannot."

"This boy"—Hazelton lifted an accusing, bloodstained finger to point at Matthew—"cut my face wide open, like to blinded me. I'm gonna lose work over it, that's for sure. A wound like I've suffered won't bear the furnace heat 'til it's near mended. Now you tell me, Mr. Bidwell and Mr. Magistrate, what you're gonna do to give me my satisfaction."

Bidwell stared at the floor. Woodward pressed his fingers against his mouth, realizing what had to come out of it, and Matthew closed the lid of Sophie Hazelton's ornament box. At last the magistrate had to speak. "Mr. Hazelton, what would you consider a proper satisfaction?"

"If it was up to my quirt, I'd lash 'im," the blacksmith said. "Lash 'im until his back was laid open good and proper."

"His back has already received injury," Woodward said. "And he'll have your fingermarks on his throat for some time to come, I'm sure."

"Don't make no mind! I want him whipped!"

"This is a difficult position you put me in, sir," the magistrate said, his mouth tightening. "You ask me to sentence my own clerk."

"Who else'll sentence 'im, then? And if he wasn't your clerk, what would your judgment be?"

Woodward glanced quickly at Matthew and then away again; the younger man knew what torments of conscience Woodward was fighting, but he also knew that the magistrate would be ultimately compelled to do the correct thing.

Woodward spoke. "One lash, then," he said, almost inaudibly.

"Five!" the blacksmith thundered. "And a week in a cell, to boot!"

Woodward drew a long breath and stared at the floor. "Two lashes and five days."

"No sir! Look at this!" Hazelton tore the bloody bandage away from his face, revealing a purple-edged wound so ugly that Bidwell flinched and even Mrs. Nettles averted her eyes. "You see what he done to me? Tell me I ain't gonna wear a pretty scar the rest of my life! Three lashes and five days!"

Matthew, dazed at all this, sank down into the chair again. He reached for the rum cup and emptied it.

"Three lashes," Woodward said wearily, a vein beating at his temple, "and three days." He forced himself to meet the power of Hazelton's stare. "That's my judgment and there will be no addition or reversal to it. He will enter the gaol at six o'clock in the morning and will receive his lashes at six o'clock on the third morning. I expect Mr. Green will administer the whip?" He looked at Bidwell, who nodded. "All right, then. As a magistrate under the King of England and the governor of this colony, I have made my decree."

The blacksmith scowled; it was an expression fierce enough to scare the shine from a mirror. But then he pushed the cloth back against his injury and said, "I reckon it'll have to do, then, you bein' such a fair-minded magistrate and all. To Hell with that sneakin' bastard, is what I say."

"The decree has been made." Woodward's face had begun to mottle with red. "I suggest that you go pay a visit to the physician."

"I ain't lettin' that death-doctor touch me, no sir! But I'll go, all right. It smells like a pigsty in here." He began to quickly stuff the clothes back into the burlap sack. The last item in was the ornament box, which Matthew had set down upon the table. Then Hazelton held the sack in his thickly corded arms and looked defiantly from Woodward to Bidwell and back again. "It's a damn bad world when a man has to wear a scar for de-fendin' his wife's memory, and the law won't lay the lash on good and proper!"

"The lash will be laid on good and proper," Woodward said coldly. "Three times."

"You say. Well, I'll be there to make sure, you can mark it!" He turned around and started out of the parlor.

"Mr. Hazelton?" Matthew suddenly said. The blacksmith stopped and cast a brooding gaze upon his antagonist.

Matthew stood up from the chair. "I wish to say . . . that I'm very sorry for my actions. I was grievously wrong, and I beg your pardon."

"You'll have my pardon after I see your back split open."

"I understand your emotions, sir. And I must say I am deserving of the punishment."

"That and more," Hazelton said.

"Yes, sir. But. . . might I ask something of you?"

"What?"

"Might you let me carry that sack for you to your wagon?"

Hazelton frowned like five miles of bad road. "Carry it?

Why?"

"It would be a small token of my repentance." Matthew took two steps toward the man and extended his arms. "Also my wish that we might put this incident behind us, once my punishment is done." Hazelton didn't speak, but Matthew could tell that his mind was working. It was the narrowing of the smithy's eyes that told Matthew the man knew what he was up to. Hazelton, for all his brutish behavior and oxlike countenance, was a crafty fox.

"That boy's as crazy as a bug in a bottle," Hazelton said to Woodward. "I wouldn't let 'im loose at night, if I was you." And with that pronouncement the blacksmith turned his back on the company, strode out of the parlor and through the front door into the drizzling rain. Mrs. Nettles followed behind him, and closed the door rather too hard before she returned to the room.

"Well," Woodward said as he lowered himself into his chair like a suddenly aged invalid, "justice has been served."

"My regrets over this situation," Bidwell offered. "But to be truthful about it, I would have imposed the five lashes." He looked at Matthew and shook his head. "You knew better than to disturb a man's private property! Boy, you delight in causing grief wherever you wander, don't you?"

"I have said I was wrong. I'll repeat it for you, if you like. And I'll take the lashes as I deserve . . . but you must understand, Mr. Bidwell, that Hazelton believes he's made a fool out of all of us."

"What?" Bidwell made a face, as if he'd tasted something foul. "What're you going on about now?"

"Simply that what Hazelton revealed to be in that sack was not its contents when it was hidden beneath the hay."

There was a silence. Then Woodward spoke up. "What are you saying, Matthew?"

"I'm saying that the weight of the sack when I tried to dislodge it was much heavier than old clothes and some shoes. Hazelton knew I was trying to ascertain its weight, and of course he didn't want me touching it."

"I should say not!" Bidwell dug into a pocket of his waistcoat for his snuffbox. "Haven't you had enough of Hazelton for one day? I'd mind my step around him!"

"It's been . . . oh, about forty minutes since our meeting," Matthew went on. "I believe he used the time to either remove what was originally in that sack and replace it with the clothes, or he found another similar sack for the purpose."

Bidwell inhaled a pinch of snuff and then blinked his watering eyes. "You never quit, do you?"

"Believe what you like, sir, but I know there was something far more substantial than clothing in the sack I uncovered. Hazelton knew I'd tell the tale, and he knew there might be some suspicion about what he would hide and then kill to protect. So he bandaged himself, got in his wagon, and brought the counterfeit sack here before anyone could go there and make inquiries about it."

"Your theory." Bidwell snorted snuff up his nose again, then closed the box with a snap. "I'm afraid it won't do to save you from the lash and the cage. The magistrate's made his decree, and Mrs. Nettles and I have witnessed it."

"A witness I may be," Mrs. Nettles said with frost in her voice, "but I tell you, sir, that Hazelton's a strange bird. And I happ'n to know he treated Sophie like a three-legged horse 'fore she died, so why should he now treat her mem'ry the better? Most like he kept her clothes and ornaments to sell 'em after a space a' time."

"Thank you, Mrs. Nettles," said Bidwell sarcastically. "It seems the 'theory tree' is one plant that's taken firm root in Fount Royal!"

"Whatever the truth of this matter is," the magistrate observed, "what cannot be altered is the fact that Matthew will spend three nights in the gaol and take the lashes. The blacksmith's private property will not be intruded upon again. But in reference to your statement, Mr. Bidwell, that you would've insisted on five strikes of the whip, let me remind you that the proceedings against Rachel Howarth must be delayed until Matthew has paid his penance and recovered from it."

Bidwell stood like a statue for a few seconds, his mouth half-open. Woodward continued in a calm tone, anticipating another storm from the master of Fount Royal, and bracing himself for it. "You see, I require a clerk to take notation when I interview the witnesses. I must have in writing the answers to my questions, and Matthew has developed a code that I can easily read. If I have no clerk, there is no point in scheduling the interviews. Therefore, the time he spends in your gaol and the time spent in recuperation from being lashed must be taken into account."

"By God, man!" Bidwell blustered. "What're you telling me? That you won't get to questioning the witnesses tomorrow?"

"I would say five days at the least."

"Damn it all, Woodward! This town will wither up and blow away before you get to work, won't it?"

"My clerk," the magistrate said, "is indispensable to the process of justice. He cannot take notation from a cage, and I dare say he won't be up to the task of concentration with fresh whip burns on his back."

"Well, why can't he take notation from a cage?" Bidwell's thick brows lifted. "There are three witnesses on the list I've given you. Why can you not set up your office in the gaol and have the witnesses brought there to testify? As I understand the law, they would be required to speak in the presence of the accused anyway, am I correct?"

"Yes, you are."

"All right, then! They can speak in the gaol as well as in the meetinghouse! Your clerk can be given a table and scribing materials and he can do the work while he carries out his sentence!" Bidwell's eyes had a feverish gleam. "What say you to that?"

Woodward looked at Matthew. "It is a possibility. Certainly it would speed the process. Are you agreeable?"

Matthew thought about it. He could feel Mrs. Nettles watching him. "I'd need more light in there," he said.

Bidwell waved an impatient hand. "I'll get you every lantern and candle in Fount Royal, if that's what you require! Winston has quills, ink, and foolscap aplenty!"

Matthew rubbed his chin and continued to contemplate. He rather enjoyed having Bidwell lapping at his feet like a powdered spaniel.

"I might point out one thing to you," Bidwell said quietly. His voice had some grit in it again, proving he was nobody's cur. "Mr. Green owns three whips. One is a bullwhip, the second is a cat-o'-nine, and the third is a leather braid. The magistrate may have decreed the punishment, but as master—governor, if you will—of Fount Royal it is my right to choose the implement." He paused to let Matthew fully appreciate the situation. "Now ordinarily in a violation of this nature I would ask Mr. Green to use the bullwhip." Bidwell gave the merest hint of a cunning smile. "But if you are employed in, shall we say, a noble task to benefit the citizens of my town whilst imprisoned, I should be gratified to recommend the braid."

Matthew's contemplation came to an end. "You make a persuasive argument," he said. "I'd be happy to be of service to the citizens."

"Excellent!" Bidwell almost clapped his hands together with joy. He didn't notice that Mrs. Nettles abruptly turned and walked out of the room. "We should notify the first witness, then. Who shall it be, Magistrate?"

Woodward reached into a pocket and brought out the piece of paper upon which were quilled three names. Bidwell had given him the list on his request when they'd returned from the gaol. "I'll see the eldest first, Jeremiah Buckner. Then Elias Garrick. Lastly the little girl, Violet Adams. I regret she must be questioned in the gaol, but there is no recourse."

"I'll have a servant go inform them all directly," Bidwell offered. "I presume, since your clerk is going to the gaol at six o'clock, that we may have Mr. Buckner appear before you at seven?"

"Yes, if Matthew's table and scribing materials are present and I have a comfortable place to preside."

"You shall have it. Well, now our horses are getting somewhere, are they not?" Bidwell's smile would have paled the glow from his chandelier.

"The poppets," Woodward said. He remained cool and composed, unwilling to share Bidwell's ebullience. "Who has them?"

"Nicholas Paine. Don't worry, they're in safekeeping."

"I should like to see those and speak to Mr. Paine concerning them after the first three witnesses."

"I'll arrange it. Anything else?"

"Yes, there is." Woodward glanced quickly at Matthew and then returned his gaze to Bidwell. "I would request that you not be present during the interviews."

The man's buoyant mood instantly sagged. "And why not? I have a right to be there!"

"That, sir, is debatable. I believe your presence might have some undue influence on the witnesses, and certainly on Madam Howarth when she gives her testimony. Therefore, in fairness to all, I wish no spectators in my court. I understand that Mr. Green must be present, as he has the keys to the gaol, but he may sit at the entrance until he is required to lock the gaol again at the end of the hearing."

Bidwell grunted. "You'll want Mr. Green closer at hand the first time the witch throws her slopbowl at you!"

"It will be explained to her that if she disrupts the proceedings in any way, she shall be bound and—as much as I detest to do so—gagged. Her opportunity to respond to the charges will come when the witnesses have been heard."

Bidwell started to protest once more, but he decided to let it go in favor of moving the witch nearer the stake. "Regardless what you think of me and my motives," he said, "I am a fair-minded man. I will go reside in Charles Town for a week, if that's what you need to hold your court!"

"That won't be necessary, but I do appreciate your cooperation."

"Mrs. Nettles!" Bidwell hollered. "Where did that woman get off to?"

"I think she went to the kitchen," Matthew said.

"I'll have a servant go inform the witnesses." Bidwell started out of the parlor. "It will be a happy day when this ordeal is over, I can assure you that!" He walked toward the kitchen, intent to have Mrs. Nettles choose a servant to carry out the necessary errands.

When Bidwell had gone, the magistrate ran a hand across his forehead and regarded Matthew with a stony stare. "What ever possessed you to invade a man's privacy in such a fashion? Didn't you stop to consider the consequences?"

"No, sir, I didn't. I know I should have, but . . . my curiosity was stronger than my good sense."

"Your curiosity," Woodward said in a chill tone, "is like strong drink, Matthew. Too much of it, and you're drunk beyond all reason. Well, you'll have time to repent in the gaol. And the three lashes are mild punishment indeed for such an injury as you did Hazelton." He shook his head, his lips grim. "I cannot believe it! I had to sentence my own clerk to the cage and the whip! My God, what a weight you put on me!"

"I suppose," Matthew said, "this is not the proper time to insist to you that what was originally in the sack was not what Hazelton revealed it to be."

"No! Certainly not!" Woodward swallowed painfully and stood up. He was feeling weak and listless, and he thought he might have a touch of fever. It was the humidity, of course. The swamp air, contaminating his blood. "There is no way to prove your theory. And I don't think it really matters, do you?"

"Yes, sir," came the firm reply. "I do think it matters."

"It does not because I say it doesn't! That man is within his rights to have you horsewhipped until your back is split to the bone, do you understand? You'll keep your nose out of his barn, his sacks, and his business!"

Matthew didn't respond. He fixed his gaze to the floor, waiting for the magistrate's anger to ebb. "Besides," Woodward said after another moment, his voice softer, "I should need your help in this case, and having you behind bars or suffering in bed from the stripes will do nothing to advance our progress." There was sweat on his brow. He felt near faint, and had to retire. "I am going upstairs to rest."

Instantly Matthew was on his feet. "You're not well, are you?"

"A sore throat. Some weakness. I'll feel better once I'm accustomed to these swamp humours."

"Do you wish to see Dr. Shields?"

"No! Heavens, no. It's a matter of acclimation, that's all. I should want to rest my voice, too." He hesitated before he went to the stairs. "Matthew, please restrain your investigations for the remainder of the day, will you promise me that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very good." Woodward turned away and took his leave.

The day's hours passed. Outside, the rain fell in fits and spits. Matthew discovered a small library room that held a few shelves of books on subjects such as the flora and fauna of the New World, European history, some well-known English plays, and the business of shipbuilding. Only the latter tomes showed any kind of wear whatsoever. The library also held two chairs that faced each other on opposite sides of a chessboard, its squares formed of beautiful pale and dark wood, the chesspieces of the same materials. A map of Fount Royal was fixed to a wall. Upon closer study, Matthew saw the map was a fanciful representation of what Bidwell proposed the town to be in the future, with elegant streets, orderly houses, huge quiltwork farms, spreading orchards, and of course the precise pattern of the naval yards and docks.

Matthew chose a book on the history of Spain, and when he opened it the leather binding popped like the report of a pistol. He read until a late lunch of corncakes and barley-and-rice soup was served in the dining room. Bidwell was absent from the table, and when one of the servant girls went upstairs to fetch the magistrate she reported to Matthew that he had decided to decline eating. So Matthew lunched alone—his concern for Woodward's health beginning to gnaw at him—after which he returned to reading in the library.

He noted that Mrs. Nettles didn't make another appearance, and he judged that either she was busy on some errand for her master or she was avoiding him because she regretted her confidences. That was fine with him, as her opinions surely clouded what should be based solely on fact. Several times the image of Rachel Howarth opening her cloak came to him, and the vision of her lovely though stern-eyed face. It had occurred to him that, as Noles would be released on the morrow, he would be the woman's lone gaol-mate for the next three days. And then, of course, there was the braid's kiss awaiting him. He set to translating Spanish history into the French tongue.

Darkness fell, the house's lamps were lighted, and a dinner of chicken pie was presented. Both Bidwell and Woodward did attend this meal, the former light in spirits and the latter more heavily cloaked in responsibility. Attending the dinner, as well, was another contingent of mosquitoes that hummed about the ears and did their damnedest to swell their bellies. The master of the mansion offered up a bottle of Sir Richard and made toast after toast congratulating Woodward's "sterling abilities" and "clear sight of the harbor ahead," among other pufferies. The magistrate, who was hollow-eyed, feeling quite ill, and not at all receptive to a celebration, endured this falderal with stoicism, sipped the rum sparsely and picked at his food, but truly ate only a third of his portion. Though Woodward's demeanor was noticeably poor, Bidwell never inquired as to his health—probably because, Matthew surmised, the man feared a further delay in the witch's trial.

At last, over a dessert of egg custatd that Woodward deigned to touch, Matthew had to speak. "Sir, I believe you're in need of Dr. Shields."

"Nonsense!" Woodward said hoarsely. "I told you, it's the swamp air!"

"You don't look very well, if you'll pardon my saying so."

"I look like what I am!" The magistrate had neared the raw edge of his nerves, what with his painful throat, swollen nasal passages, and this plague of biting insects. "I'm a bald-headed old man who's been robbed of his wig and waistcoat! Thank you for your flattery, Matthew, but please constrain your opinions!"

"Sir, I only meant to say—"

"Oh, the magistrate seems fit enough to me," Bidwell interrupted, a false smile frozen upon his face. "The swamp air does take some getting used to, but it's nothing a good toss of rum can't cure. Isn't that right, sir?"

Woodward was unwilling to be gracious. "Actually, no. The rum inflames more than it cures."

"But you are well, are you not?" Bidwell pressed. "I mean, well enough to carry out your duties, yes?"

"Certainly I am! Perhaps I do feel a shade under the weather—"

"Who does not, with all this rain?" Bidwell said, and uttered a quick and nervous laugh.

"—but I have never in my entire career been unfit to carry out my duties, and I won't blemish that record here and now." He gave Matthew a pointed glance. "I have a sore throat and I'm a little weary, that's all."

"I would still like for you to see Dr. Shields."

"Damn it, boy!" Woodward snapped. "Who is the father here?" Instantly his face bloomed red. "I mean . . . who is the guardian here?" He lowered his eyes and stared at his fingers, which gripped the table's edge. Silence reigned in the room. "Forgive me," Woodward said quietly, "I misspoke. Of course I am my clerk's guardian, not his father." The blood was still scorching his cheeks. "It seems my mind is rather slipshod. I believe I should retire to my room now and try to rest." He stood up from his seat and Matthew and Bidwell also rose as a measure of respect. "I require to be awakened at five o'clock," he told his host. Then, to Matthew, "And I suggest you get to sleep early, as you will find the gaol ill-suited to comfort. Good night, gentlemen." So saying, the magistrate stiffened his spine and left the room with as much dignity as he could muster.

Silence again held sway as Matthew and Bidwell returned to their places. The older man hurriedly finished his custard, drank a last swallow of rum, and departed the table with a chill "I'll take my leave now. Good night," leaving Matthew alone with the ruins of the meal.

Matthew decided it would be wise to follow the magistrate's advice, and so he went upstairs, traded his clothes for a nightshirt, and climbed into bed under the mosquito netting. Through the closed shutters of his window he heard the distant sound of a woman singing, accompanied by the double-quick plucks of a violin. He realized the music was coming from the servants' quarters, and it had to be Goode playing his instrument in a much more relaxed manner than his recital on the first evening. It was a pleasant, lively sound, and it distracted Matthew from thoughts of the gaol, Rachel Howarth, and the braid awaiting him. Therefore he pushed aside the netting, got out of bed, and opened the shutters to allow the music in.

Lanterns were aglow down in the small village of clapboard houses where the servants resided. Now Goode's tune altered itself, and the woman—who had a truly regal voice—began to sing a different song. Matthew couldn't make out any of the words; he thought it must be in some kind of African dialect. A tambourine picked up the rhythm and another, deeper-toned drum began to beat counterpoint. The woman's voice rose and fell, wandering around the tune, jesting with it, then returning to its arms. Matthew leaned his elbows against the windowframe and looked up at the sky; the clouds were too thick to see any stars or the moon, but at least the drizzle that had aggravated the afternoon had ceased.

He listened to the music, enjoying the moment.

Who is the father here? What a strange thing for the magistrate to say. Of course he wasn't feeling well, and his mind was indeed somewhat disordered, but. . . what a strange thing to say.

Matthew had certainly never thought of the magistrate as his father. His guardian, yes; his mentor perhaps. But father? No. Not to say that Matthew didn't feel an affinity for the man. After all, they'd been working and living together for five years. If Matthew had not been performing his duties in a satisfactory manner, he felt sure he never would have lasted so long in the magistrate's employ.

And that's what the arrangement was, of course. An employment. Matthew had hopes to continue his obligation for as many years as Woodward needed him, and then perhaps to make a study of law himself. Woodward had told him he might even make a magistrate someday, if he decided to enter that field.

Father? No. There were so many things that Matthew didn't know about the magistrate, even after five years. What Woodward's past had been in London, and why he'd come to the colonies. Why he refused to talk about this mysterious "Ann" he sometimes mentioned when he was enthralled in a bad dream. And the great significance of the gold-striped waistcoat.

Those were all things a father would explain to a son, even one secured from an almshouse. They were, likewise, things of a highly personal nature that an employer would not discuss with his employee.

After a short while the music came to a melodic conclusion. Matthew stared toward the swamp and the sea, both veiled by night, then he dtew the shutters closed, returned to bed, and found sleep waiting.

When he awakened—with a jarring, frightful start—he knew immediately what had roused him. He could still hear the echo of a tremendous blast of thunder. As it receded, dogs began to bay and bark all across Fount Royal. Matthew turned over, intending to return to the land of Somnus, and was no sooner drifting in that direction when a second thunder cannon went off seemingly above his head. He sat up, unnerved, and waited for the next detonation. The flash of lightning could be seen through the shutters' slats, and then the entire house quaked as Vulcan hammered on his forge.

Matthew got up, his bruised back considerably stiff, and opened the window to view the storm. It was an uncertain hour somewhere between midnight and dawn. The lanterns were all extinguished down in the servants' village. No rain had yet begun to fall, but the wind was thrashing through the forest that stood at the swamp's edge. The lightning flared again, the thunder spoke, and Matthew heard the dogs answer.

He was thinking how Fount Royal might conquer the Devil, only to be washed away by God, when something caught his attention. A furtive movement, it was, down amid the Negro shacks. He peered into the dark, watching that area. In another moment the lightning streaked overhead once more, and by its fierce illumination he saw a figure depart the corner of a house and begin to walk briskly toward Fount Royal. Then the night rolled in again, like ocean waves. Matthew was left with the impression that the figure was a manor, at least, had a masculine stride—wearing dark clothes and a monmouth cap. Had there been something swinging from the right hand? Possibly, but it was difficult to say. Also impossible to determine was if the person had been white-skinned or black. The next bolt of lightning revealed that the figure had gone from the window's viewpoint and thus out of Matthew's sight.

He closed the shutters and latched them. How very peculiar, he thought. Someone skulking around the servants' village in this slim hour, taking care—or certainly it appeared—not to be seen. How very, very peculiar.

Now: was this his business, or not? An argument might be made for either position. It was not unlawful for a person to walk where they pleased at whatever time they pleased . . . but still, it seemed to Matthew that the blacksmith was not the only person in Fount Royal who might have something to hide.

The boom and bluster of the storm—which yet held its torrents in check—in addition to this new intrigue made Matthew anything but sleepy. He scraped a sulphur match across a flint-stone and lit the lamp he'd been afforded, then he poured himself a cup of spring water from the clay pitcher atop the dresser and downed it. The water, he'd already decided, was most certainly the best thing about Fount Royal. After his drink he decided to go to the library and fetch a book with which to beckon sleep, so he took the lantern before him and ventured out into the hallway.

The house was silent. Or so Matthew thought, until he heard a faint voice speaking somewhere nearby. He stopped, listening; more thunder came and went, and the voice was quiet. Then it began again, and Matthew cocked his head to judge its origin.

He knew that voice. Even though it was muffled by the thickness of a door, it was recognizable to him. The magistrate, a heavy sleeper, was speaking to his own demons.

Matthew approached the man's room. The voice faded and became a snore that would have shamed a sawblade fighting iron-wood. As the next peal of thunder rang out, the snoring seemed to increase in volume as if in competition with nature's cacophony. Matthew was truly concerned for Woodward's health; indeed, the magistrate had never allowed illness to prevent him from doing his work, but then again the magistrate was rarely under the weather. This time, however, Matthew felt sure he should seek assistance from Dr. Shields.

The snoring abruptly stopped. There was a silence, and then a groan from beyond the door. "Ann," the magistrate said. "Ann, he's hurting."

Matthew listened. He knew he should not. But this, he thought, was somehow a key to the man's inner torment.

"In pain. Pain." The magistrate drew a quick, rattling breath. "Ann, he's hurting. Oh dear God . . . dear God . . ."

"What's going on in there?" The voice, spoken so close to his ear, almost made Matthew leap not only from his nightshirt but the very skin his bones were bound up in. He twisted around, his mouth agape—and there stood Robert Bidwell, wearing a robe of crimson silk and holding a lantern.

It took Matthew a few seconds to regain his voice, during which the thunder crashed mightily again. "The magistrate," Matthew managed to whisper. "He's having a difficult night."

"He's snoring down the house, is what he's doing! I could sleep through the storm, but his noise trepanned my skull!"

Even as Bidwell spoke, the magistrate's snoring began anew. It was never so loud and disagreeable as this, Matthew knew; probably it was due to his ill health.

"My bedroom's next to his," Bidwell said. "I'm damned if I can get a wink!" He reached for the doorknob.

"Sir?" Matthew grasped his wrist. "I would ask that you leave him be. He'll snore again, even if you disturb him. And I do think he needs his rest for tomorrow."

"What about my rest?"

"You won't be interviewing the witnesses, as the magistrate will be."

Bidwell made a sour face. Without his lavish and expensive wig, he seemed a diminished presence. His hair, the color of sand, was cropped to the scalp. He pulled his arm away from Matthew's grip. "A second-rate citizen in my own house!" he fumed.

"I thank you for your understanding."

"Understanding be damned!" He flinched as Woodward sputtered and moaned.

"Hurting," the magistrate said. "Dear God . . . hurting . . ." His voice was overcome once more by the darktime sawing.

Bidwell released the breath from between his teeth. "I suppose he ought to see Dr. Shields, then, if he's suffering so grievously."

"He's speaking to a dream," Matthew explained.

"A dream? Well, he's not the only one in Fount Royal with evil dreams! Satan plants them in the mind like bad seeds!"

"It isn't something new. I've heard him this way on many occasions."

"My pity on your ears, then!" Bidwell ran a hand across his coarse-cut hair, his vanity making him realize how much an opulent wig added to his stature. "What're you doing up? Did he awaken you?"

"No, it was the thunder. I looked out my window and saw—" Matthew hesitated. Saw what? he asked himself. A man or woman? Negro or white? Carrying something or not? This news might add to Bidwell's impression of him as a wolf-crier. He decided to let the matter pass. "The storm approaching," he said.

"Ha!" Bidwell grinned. "You're not as smart as you fancy yourself, clerk!"

"Pardon?"

"Your window faces the sea. The storm's approaching from i he west."

"Oh," Matthew said. "My mistake, then."

"Hell's bells!" Bidwell growled as the thunder crashed again. "Who can sleep in this?"

"Not I. In fact, I was on my way down to your library for something to read."

"To read? Do you know what time it is? Near three o'clock!"

"The lateness of the hour never stopped me from reading before," Matthew said. He had a sudden thought. "Of course . . . since you're unable to sleep, you might indulge me."

"Indulge you in what?"

"A game of chess. I saw your board and the pieces there. Do you play?"

"Yes, I certainly do!" Bidwell thrust out his chin. "And very well too, I might say!"

"Really? Well enough to beat me?"

"Well enough," Bidwell said, and offered a slight smile, "to grind you into a powder and puff you to the winds!"

"I should like to see that."

"Then see it you shall! After you, my swell-headed clerk!"

In the library, as the storm continued to bellow and boom outside the shuttered windows, they set the lamps down to give light upon the board and Bidwell announced his choice of the white pieces. Once seated, Bidwell advanced a pawn with ferocious alacrity. "There!" he said. "The first soldier who seeks to have your head!"

Matthew moved a knight. "Seeking," he said, "is a long distance from having."

Another pawn entered the fray. "I was schooled in chess by an expert, so don't be alarmed at the speed with which you're conquered."

"I suppose I am at a disadvantage, then." Matthew studied the board. "I was self-taught."

"Many evenings I played on this same board with Reverend Grove. In fact, this was his chess set. Now surely you're not going to tarry very long over what must be a simple move, are you?"

"No," Matthew said. "Not very long." His next move was a minute more in being placed. Within twelve moves, Bidwell saw his queen impaled between a bishop and a rook.

"Go on, then! Take her, damn it!" he said.

Matthew did. Now it was Bidwell's turn to study the board. "You say Reverend Grove taught you?" Matthew asked. "He was a chess scholar as well as a minister?"

"Are you being witty?" Bidwell's tone had turned sharp.

"No, not at all. I asked an honest question."

Bidwell was silent, his eyes searching for moves but registering the fact that his king would soon be threatened by the very same knight with which Matthew had begun his game. "Grove wasn't a chess scholar," Bidwell said, "but he did enjoy playing. He was a bright man. If he was a scholar at anything, it was Latin."

"Latin?"

"That's right. He loved the language. So much that when he played—and this never failed to infuriate me, which I suppose was partly the point—he announced his moves in Latin. Ah! There's my savior!" Bidwell started to take the offending knight with a bishop.

"Uh ... if you move that piece," Matthew said, "your king will be in check from my queen."

Bidwell's hand stopped in midair. "I knew that!" he snapped. "Do you think I'm blind?" He quickly altered the destination of his hand to move a knight toward Matthew's king.

Which Matthew instantly killed with a pawn that had been lying in wait. "Did Reverend Grove have any enemies?" he asked.

"Yes. Satan. And the witch, of course." Bidwell frowned, rubbing his chin. "I must need spectacles, to have missed that little bastard!"

"How long had the reverend been here?"

"Since the beginning. He offered himself the very first month."

"Where did he come from?"

"Charles Town. Winston and Paine met him on a trip to buy supplies." Bidwell looked into Matthew's face. "Are you playing at chess or playing at magistrate?"

"It's your move, I believe."

"Yes, and here it is!" A rook was picked up and slammed down, taking Matthew's second knight.

The rook died by the sword of Matthew's queen. "Mr. Paine," Matthew said. "From where did he come?"

"He answered my placard for citizens, which was placed in Charles Town. Most of the first residents came from there. Why are you asking?"

"Curious," Matthew told him, staring at the board. "Was Mr. Paine ever a sailor?"

"Yes, he was. He served as the first mate on an English brig-antine in his younger years. Many times we've talked of ships and the sea." He narrowed his eyes. "How come you to ask that question?"

"Mr. Paine . . . strikes me as having a seaman's knowledge. What exactly is a brigantine?"

"A ship, of course!"

"Yes, sir." Matthew gave a polite, if fleeting, smile. "But what kind of ship?"

"It's a two-masted square-rigger. Fast ships, they are. Used in coastal commerce. And brigantines, because of their speed, have unfortunately found favor with the more brutal element."

Matthew lifted his eyebrows. "Sir?"

"Pirates and privateers," Bidwell said. "Brigantines are their vessels of choice. They can get in and out of tight harbors. Well, when my naval port is complete we're going to run those dogs down and hang them from their skins." His hand flashed out and moved his remaining rook to threaten Matthew's queen between it and a bishop.

"Check," Matthew said, as he moved a lowly pawn next to Bidwell's king.

"There, then!" The king slayed the pawn.

"Check," Matthew said, as he moved his queen into a position of attack.

"Not so easily, you don't!" Bidwell placed a pawn in the queen's path.

"Mate," Matthew said, as he picked up his first knight and executed the pawn.

"Just a moment!" Bidwell near shouted, frantically studying the board.

He didn't have long to complete his fruitless study. A bell began clamoring outside. A shout came through the shutters; it was a fearsome word, and struck terror like a blade into Bidwell's heart.

"Fire! Fire!"

At once Bidwell was on his feet and had thrown the shutters open. There was the glow of flames against the night, the conflagration being whipped back and forth by the wind, orange sparks flying.

"Fire! Fire!" was the shout, and the alarm bell at the watchman's tower continued to ring.

"My God!" Bidwell cried out. "I think it's the gaol!"

ten

THERE WERE SHOUTS to hurry the buckets. Another wagon pulled up, carrying two barrels full of water, and instantly a man climbed up beside the barrels and began to fill the buckets that were offered to him. Then, moving rapidly, he returned each bucket to the line of men to be passed along until the water was thrown upon the flames. It was clear to Matthew and the other onlookers, however, that the buckets were no match against a wind-tossed fire; the structure was already almost eaten by the flames, and would soon be beyond all redemption.

Matthew thought that nearly all of Fount Royal's citizens had been roused by the watchman's cries, and had come to Truth Street to either help the line of firemen or watch the flames do their work. Most of them had come to the scene as had Matthew and Bidwell: still clad in their nightshirts, with hurriedly donned trousers and shoes, or in the case of the women, robes and cloaks over their night apparel. Matthew had run upstairs, put on his breeches, and then gone to awaken the magistrate but heard the awesome snoring before he'd reached the door. Not even the cries of the crowd nor the alarm bell had pierced Woodward's sleep, though as the shutters were surely closed in his room the sounds would not have overcome his own nasal rhapsody. Therefore Matthew had decided not to take the time to hammer at his door, but had instead run down the stairs to follow Bidwell.

The heat was ferocious, the wind whipping the fire into a frenzy. It was now the zenith of irony, Matthew realized. Though thunder still rumbled and lightning flashed over the sea, this time the clouds hadn't opened above Fount Royal. He knew that Bid-well would wish for a downpour to smother this conflagration, but it was not to be. The farmhouse—the very same deserted farmhouse upon which three crows had been sitting the previous morning as Matthew and Woodward had paused to talk—was doomed.

But there wasn't much danger of the fire spreading. Certainly the firemen knew it, which was why they had formed only a single line instead of a double or triple. Yesterday's torrential rain had soaked the occupied house that stood opposite a split-rail fence from the burning structure, and other houses—and the gaol, as well—were distant enough from the flying embers. It was a fierce fire in appearance and it was gnawing down its victim quickly, but it would not leap to any other roof.

Which had started Matthew thinking. Everything had been so thoroughly wet; how had this fire started? A lightning strike, perhaps? He wasn't sure if even lightning had the power to burn drenched wood. No, the fire had to have begun inside the house. Even so, how?

"That one's gone," a man said, standing to Matthew's right.

Matthew glanced at the speaker. He was a tall, slim man wearing a brown cloak and a woolen cap. It took Matthew a few seconds to register the man's face: a long, aristocratic nose and lofty forehead, narrowed and reserved dark blue eyes. Without his white wig, his face powder, and rouge the schoolmaster looked— at least at first glance—a different person altogether. But Johnstone leaned on his twisted cane with its ivory handle, the flames daubing his face red and orange. "It was William Bryerson's house," he said. "His two sons used to come to school."

"When did the family leave?"

"Oh, William didn't leave. He lies in the cemetery yonder.

But his widow took the boys and they left ... I suppose it was early last year." Johnstone turned his gaze upon Matthew. "I understand your magistrate is beginning his interviews tomorrow?"

"Yes, sir."

"I heard so from Mr. Winston. I also heard that you got into some trouble with Seth Hazelton?" Matthew nodded. "Talk is a great currency in this town," Johnstone said. "Everyone knows everyone else's business. But you happened to have stumbled onto a secret, is that correct?"

"Who told you this?"

"Winston, again. Mr. Bidwell confides everything in him. He visits me of an afternoon. We play a few hands of all fours and a game or two of chess, after which I am completely educated as to current events." He stared at the burning house again. Bidwell was shouting orders, trying to get more barrels of water to the scene, but the energy of the firemen was dwindling. "You're going to spend three days in the gaol and receive three lashes, I understand."

"Correct."

"And the interviews are to be held in the gaol? That will be a novel setting."

"It was on Mr. Bidwell's request."

"Mr. Bidwell," Johnstone said, his face showing not a shade of emotion, "is a bastard hungry for coin, young man. He presents himself as an altruistic gentleman, concerned for the future of safe shipping to this colony, when indeed his one single goal is the further stuffing of his pockets. And for that purpose he will have Rachel Howarth executed."

"He believes she's a witch." Matthew paused a few seconds. "Don't you?"

Johnstone gave a faint half-smile. "Do you?"

"It remains to be seen."

"Ah, diplomacy in action. It's to be commended in this day and age, but I'd request a more honest answer." Matthew was silent, not knowing what more he should reveal. "The magistrate," Johnstone said, looking around. "Where is he?"

"I left him asleep at the house. He's not easily awakened."

"Evidently not. Well, since he's not within earshot, I'd like to know what you honestly think about Rachel Howarth."

"It would be betraying my office, sir."

Johnstone thought about that for a moment, and then nodded. He tilted his head to one side, intently watching the fire. "Thank you; you've told me what I needed to know. I assumed you were an educated young man, freed from the bondage of ancient thinking. You have your doubts about witchcraft, as I do. Rachel Howarth is in a cage because of several reasons, not the least of which being she is a beautiful woman and threatens the sensibilities of the more portly cows in this town. Her Portuguese blood is also a mark against her. Too close to being a Spaniard. Add to that the fact that Daniel Howarth was a man of Bidwell's stripe, without his charm. He had enemies here, without a doubt."

"What, then?" Matthew had to take a glance around to make sure no one was standing close enough to overhear. "You believe someone else murdered him?"

"Yes, I do. Not Satan. A man. Or a woman who has a man's strength, of which there are some hereabouts."

"But Mr. Garrick saw Madam Howarth and . . . something . . . behind the barn."

"Mr. Garrick," Johnstone said calmly, "has a mind like an iron sieve. I would question if not his eyesight, then his soundness of sanity."

"Why did you not speak out at our dinner, then?"

"Yes, and then I might find myself a cellmate with Rachel Howarth. That's an honor I would not wish to have."

"This is a merry damnation, isn't it?" someone else spoke up, stepping beside the schoolmaster. The small-framed Dr. Shields was in his nightshirt, his long hair wild and wind-whipped, his pale blue eyes large behind the oval spectacles. "It's no use the waste of good water!"

"Hello, Benjamin." Johnstone gave a slight nod. "I should think you'd stay in bed, these fires being such a commonplace nowadays."

"I could say the same for you. In truth, this is much more exciting than watching crops fail to grow." He steadied his gaze at Matthew. "Hello there, young man. In some trouble yesterday, I hear."

"A little," Matthew said.

"Three days in the gaol and three lashes is a modicum, not a minimum. Favor me, as I shall be applying liniment to your stripes before long. Where's the magistrate?"

"In bed," Johnstone said before Matthew could answer. "He's a sensible sleeper, it seems, not given to excitement over the burning of abandoned houses."

"Yes, but he's a man of the city, and therefore has learned how to sleep through all manner of holocausts." Shields faced the fire, which was now totally beyond control. Bidwell was still hollering orders, trying to rouse the firemen to further action but some of the urgency had gone from his demeanor. Matthew saw Nicholas Paine conferring with Bidwell, who waved an impatient arm in the direction of his mansion. Then Paine merged into the onlookers again and was gone from sight. Matthew noted also the presence of Mrs. Nettles, who was wrapped up in a long black robe; there was the giant gaol-keeper, Mr. Green, standing off to one side smoking a corncob pipe; Garrick was there, looking mightily worried; Edward Winston, wearing a gray shirt and wrinkled brown trousers that appeared hastily climbed into, stood beside Garrick. Winston glanced back over his shoulder and his eyes locked for a second or two with Matthew's. Then he too moved off into the throng of onlookers.

"I'm going home to bed," Johnstone announced. "The dampness gives my knee the devil of an ache."

"I'll give you some more liniment, if you like," Shields offered.

"You and that liniment! Matthew, if it's the same hogsfat preparation for your stripes as it is for my knee, you have my sincerest condolences. I suggest you practise wearing a clothes pin on your nose." Johnstone started to limp away, but then paused. "You think on what I've said, young man," he entreated. "When your time is served, I should like to talk to you further on this subject."

"What, are these secrets I shouldn't be hearing?" Shields asked.

"No secrets, Benjamin. I'm just attempting to advance the young man's education. Good night." So saying, he turned and followed his cane through the crowd.

"Well," Shields said with a sigh, "I should be returning to bed myself. I have a long hard day of watching another patient die." He gave a twisted smile. "Life in the New World, indeed."

A few minutes after the doctor had gone, the house's red-glowing roof collapsed. Sparks shot to the heavens and spun 'round and 'round in the whirlwinds. Bidwell had ceased giving orders; now he just stood back, his arms hanging at his sides. One of the firemen threw a final bucket of water, but then he retreated from the conflagration and suddenly the entire front wall buckled and caved in.

"It's the Devil, speakin' to us!" a man shouted. Matthew saw Bidwell's head snap around, the dark-circled eyes hunting the shouter like a hawk after a rodent. "It's Satan hisself, tellin' us to leave this damn town 'fore we all burn up!"

Someone else—a woman with reddish hair and a gaunt, long-chinned face—took up the cry. "Neal Callaway's right!" she hollered. "Satan's warnin' us to get out!"

"Stop that!" Bidwell's voice made the thunder sound meek. "I won't hear such talk!"

"Hear it or don't, as you please!" another man yelled, standing a few feet to Matthew's left. "I've had enough! I'm takin' my wife and children out of here before we all end up in caskets!"

"No, you're not!" Bidwell fired back. He was silhouetted by the flames and looked the part of a demon himself. "Cutter, don't be a fool!"

"It's a fool who stays when the Devil wants him gone!" Cutter shouted. "First light, my Nora and me are packin' up!" He surveyed the crowd, his eyes glittering with fire. "Anybody with sense oughta do the same! This town ain't worth livin' in no more, 'cause that bitch and her master want it!"

That statement caused a ripple of reactions: many shouting their accord, a few—a very few—trying to holler him silent. Bid-well spread his arms, a patronly gesture. "Listen to me!" he yelled. "The magistrate's going to start the hearings this very day! I promise to you, by my very soul, that the witch shall be dealt with and out of our lives before much longer!" Matthew said nothing, but he thought that Bidwell had just placed his soul in jeopardy.

"One day's too long for me!" Cutter was playing the crowd now, like an actor upon a stage. "No, sir! First light, we're gettin' out 'fore our skins are burnt off or the plague gets us!"

"Hush, hush!" Bidwell shouted anew, trying to quash that evil word. "There's no plague here!"

"You dig up them bodies fresh buried in the graveyard!" a woman near shrieked.

"You ask 'em what kilt 'em, 'cause that doctor a'yours sure did 'em no good!"

WHILE THIS UGLY SCENE was unfolding and Bidwell fought for control of the crowd, Isaac Woodward had awakened in a cold sweat. His throat, however, was aflame. He lay in bed on his back, staring up through the insect net at the ceiling; the net had not prevented at least one new intruder from leaving a welt on his grizzled cheek. The particulars of his nightmare—that common, cruel visitor—remained in his mind like the details of a woodcut. He saw small fingers clenched around the bars of an iron bed, and he heard a soft and terrible gasping. Ann, his voice had spoken. Dear God, he's . . .

A light! A strange light was in the room.

Woodward was aware of it now. It was not part of the nightmare, and he thought he had passed the purple edge of sleep into full reality again. But the strange light was indeed real; it was a leaping, writhing luminescence ruddy-orange in hue. He looked at the window and realized the light was coming between the shutters. The morning sun—would that there would be a morning sun!—never appeared so drunk before. And now he could smell it, and he thought that this was what might have awakened him: the bitter scent of smoke.

Still somewhat hazed in the mind, Woodward got up out of bed and opened the shutter. And there was the view of a house afire, down along Truth Street. Dangerously close to the gaol, he thought; but it looked to be on the opposite side of the street. In the phantasmagoric light he could see a crowd of onlookers, and the swirling wind brought him the crackle of the flames and the noise of shouts that sounded raised in more anger than alarm. He didn't know how long this had been going on, but it seemed his sleeping must have been a little death. He lit his lamp with its sulphur match and left the room, going across the hall to Matthew's door.

Just as he lifted his hand to knock, he heard a soft click from within.

The latch, he realized. Matthew must have either locked or unlocked the door.

He knocked. "Matthew! There's a fire outside, did you know?" There was no response.

"Matthew? Open, please!" Still, nothing. "Are you feeling well?" A fine question for him to ask, he thought; his voice sounded like sawblades and bloody bones.

Matthew did not speak, nor did he open the door. Woodward placed his hand on the knob and started to turn it, but he hesitated. This was so unlike Matthew, but then again . . . the young man was going to a cage shortly, so who could predict what his emotions and actions might be? But why would he not even speak through the door?

"Matthew, I'm going downstairs. Do you know if Bidwell's up?" Woodward waited, and then said with some exasperation, "I do think you should at least answer my question, don't you?"

But no answer was forthcoming.

"As you please!" Woodward turned away and stalked along the corridor toward the staircase. That was so strange and rude for Matthew, he thought. The young man was if nothing always courteous. But he was probably brooding in there, mad at the world. Woodward stopped. Well, he decided, I shall pound on that door until he opens it! I shall pound it down, because if his frame of mind is dark he'll be no use to me when the first witness arrives! He started to turn again to retrace his steps.

A hand reached out from behind him and viciously swept the lamp from Woodward's grasp. The candle was extinguished. A shoulder hit the magistrate's body and shoved him aside, and he shouted and stumbled and went down upon the floor. Then the figure was past him, the sound of footsteps running down the stairs in the dark. Though stunned, Woodward knew what he was dealing with. "Help!" he hollered. "Thief! Thief!"

AT THE FIRE, Matthew decided it was time to return to Bidwell's mansion. The shouts and accusations were still being flung about and Bidwell had been reduced to a croaking hoarseness attempting to answer all the discord. A further incentive to vacate the scene was the fact that Matthew had spied Seth Hazelton—bandage still strapped to his face—standing in the throng watching the commotion. It flashed through Matthew's mind—his wicked, wicked mind—to run over to the blacksmith's barn and find the other sack that must be hidden somewhere in there. But he dashed that idea for the sake of his skin and turned to leave the area.

He collided with a man who'd been standing right behind him. '"Ere, 'ere!" the man bawled, his accent reeking of London's backstreets. "Watch yer clumsy self."

"I'm sorry." Matthew's next impression was that the accent was not the only thing that reeked. He wrinkled up his nose and drew back, getting a good look at the man.

He was a short, fatbellied toad; at least, that was Matthew's first thought. The man's skin was even a toadish shade of gray,

but Matthew realized it was the color of grime. This dirty citizen was perhaps in his early forties, with tousled brown hair from which was rising a bald dome at the crown. His face was round, with a beard that had streaks of gray running through it. He wore a loose-fitting garment that looked like nothing so much as rags sewn together by a drunken seamstress. The man was repellent to Matthew's sensibilities, but one feature snared his attention: the grimy toad had eyes so clear gray as to be nearing the white shade of ice on a January morning, and yet their centers seemed to be as fiery as any smith's furnace. Those compelling eyes were lodged beneath matted tufts of brows that appeared in need of brushing. Suddenly the nostrils of the man's wide, rather coarsely shaped nose flared and he looked down at the ground.

"Don't move," he said; it carried the force of a shouted command, and yet it was not a shout. He lifted his right arm. In it was a long wooden stick. The arm plunged down, and then he grinned a mouthful of yellow teeth and raised the business end of the stick up to Matthew's face.

Impaled upon a blade was a black rat, kicking in its agony. "They like to be near people," the man said.

Matthew looked down, and now he saw dark scurrying shapes running hither and yon between the shoes and boots— and bare feet, in some cases—of the assembly.

"Think they can get 'em some crumbs, a crowd like this." The man was wearing deerskin gloves stained with the fluids of previous executions. With his free hand he adroitly unfastened the leather strap of a long brown seedbag that hung from his belt, and he pushed the stick's blade and the writhing rat into it. Then he reached down into the bag and Matthew saw his hand give a sickening twist before the blade was withdrawn minus its victim. The bag, Matthew couldn't fail to notice, bulged with a number of carcasses. At least one that had not yet given up the ghost was still twitching.

Matthew realized he'd just witnessed Gwinett Linch—the ratcatcher—at his noble profession.

"Somebody's got to do it," Linch said, reading Matthew's expression. "A town may live without a magistrate, but it ain't no place to live without a ratcatcher. Sir." He gave an exaggerated bow and walked past Matthew, making sure his bag of booty brushed along the young man's hip.

And now it was surely time to move on. The burning house had become a pile of seething embers and fiery spits. An old woman had begun hollering about how Rachel Howarth should be hauled from the gaol and beheaded with an axeblade bathed in the blood of a lamb. Matthew saw Bidwell standing staring into the waning flames, his shoulders slumped, and truly the master of Fount Royal appeared to have lost his foundations.

Matthew watched his footing as he walked back to the mansion. He also watched his back, taking care that Seth Hazelton wasn't stalking him.

He returned to find a number of lanterns illuminating the parlor, and Mrs. Nettles in attendance to the magistrate. Woodward was in the room's most comfortable chair, his head back, eyes closed, and a compress laid against his forehead. At once Matthew deduced that something very serious had happened. "What's wrong?"

Woodward's eyes immediately opened. He sat bolt upright. "I was attacked, Matthew!" he said forcefully, though his voice was strained and weak. "By someone I took to be you!"

"Took to be me?"

"Someone was in your room." Mrs. Nettles took the compress from Woodward's head and wet it again in a bowl of water nearby. "The magistrate heard your door bein' latched."

"In my room?" Matthew was aware he sounded all at sea, which he was. "Who was it?"

Woodward shook his head. Mrs. Nettles replaced the wet compress. "Didn't see his face," Woodward said. "It happened so swiftly. He knocked the lantern from my hand and near broke my shoulder. I heard him run down the stairs, and then . . . gone."

"This happened only a short time ago?"

"Twenty minutes a' th' most," Mrs. Nettles said. "I'd just returned from the fire, and I heard him hollerin' 'Thief.'"

"You mean the man stole something?"

"I don't know." Woodward lifted a hand and held it against the compress. "It was all I could think of at the moment. That he was a thief trying to ransack your room."

"Well, I'm sure he was quite disappointed. Everything I have is borrowed." And then it struck Matthew like a musketball. "Except for one thing." He picked up a lantern and hurriedly ascended the stairs. He found his room to be neat and orderly, not a trace of an intruder. Except for one thing, and this was what he'd suspected.

Before going to bed, he'd placed the gold coin upon the dresser top. The coin was now gone, and Matthew doubted that it would be found in this room.

A thief indeed, Matthew thought. He spent a moment searching the floor for a gold glint, but it was not to be. "Damn!" he swore softly.

"Anythin' missin'?" Mrs. Nettles asked when Matthew returned to the parlor. "Yes. My gold coin."

"Oh my Lord! Mr. Bidwell keeps some coins in a box next to his bed! I'd best go up and see if they've been plucked too!" She took a lamp and went up the stairs with a speed that Matthew would never have assigned to her.

He stood next to the magistrate's chair. Woodward was a pasty color and his breathing was very harsh. "You're not well at all," Matthew said.

"Who would be, after such an encounter? Goode's gone to fetch me some rum. I'll be better presently."

"It's more than the encounter. Your health concerns me."

Woodward closed his eyes, his head tilted back. "I'm under the weather. I told you, it's this swamp ai—•"

"No, sir," Matthew interrupted. "I think the swamp air is the least of it. I'm going to have one of the servants go get Dr. Shields."

"No, no, no!" Woodward swatted a hand at that idea as if it were one of the bothersome insects. "I have a job to do, and I intend to do it!"

"You can still do your job. But Dr. Shields needs to be informed of your condition. Perhaps he can prescribe a tonic."

"Sir?" It was Goode, bringing a tray upon which sat a tankard of West Indies tonic. Woodward took it and put down two swallows that made his throat feel as if scraped with a razor.

Mrs. Nettles returned to the parlor. "Everythin's there. At least, that box a' coins hasn't been touched. Must be you scared him off'fore he could get to Mr. Bidwell's room."

"Likely someone who thought . . . because of the attention drawn to the fire ... he could rob at his leisure." Woodward dared to take another drink; the pain was severe, but bearable.

"There are some people jealous of what Mr. Bidwell has, for sure."

"Did this thief carry a lantern?" Matthew asked the magistrate.

"No. I told you . . . the lantern was knocked from my hand. Quite forcibly."

Goode, who was standing behind Woodward's chair, suddenly spoke, "Seems to me it had to be somebody knew this house." All eyes stared at him. "What I mean is . . . whoever it was had to know his way up and down them stairs in the dark. No rail to hold on to, you could break your neck if you mis-stepped."

"And you say you heard the man run down the stairs?" Matthew returned his attention to Woodward. "Yes. Definitely."

"If I may ask, sir . . . was nothin' stolen, then?" Goode asked of Matthew.

"One thing only, at least from my room. A Spanish gold coin."

"A gold coin," Goode repeated, and he frowned. "Uh ... if I may ask another question, sir?" He paused. "Yes, go ahead."

"Uh . . . where might you got this coin from, sir?"

"It was in the possession of a tavern-keeper on the road from Charles Town." He saw the black servant's frown deepen, and this perplexed him. "Why?"

"No reason, sir." Instantly Goode's frown relaxed. "No reason, just curious 'bout such a thing. Forgive an old man's boldness, sir."

"I understand." What Matthew understood was that Goode might know somewhat more about this incident than he was willing to say, but now was not the time to pursue it.

"Is there anythin' else I'm required for, ma'am?" Goode asked Mrs. Nettles, and she told him he was free to go. The servant left the parlor, moving rather hurriedly for his age.

Presently Bidwell returned to the house. His face was damp with sweat and streaked dark by ashes, and his regal bearing had been reduced to a pauperly state by the grievances of the crowd. Though he was bone-tired and sick at heart, still his presence of mind was sharp enough to immediately see from the gathering of Mrs. Nettles, Woodward, and Matthew that something untoward had occurred.

"We've suffered a thief," Mrs. Nettles said, before the master of the mansion could speak. "A man was in Mr. Corbett's room. He knocked the magistrate to the floor on escapin'."

"Near broke my shoulder," Woodward added.

"A thief? Did you recognize the man? What was taken?"

"I didn't see his face," the magistrate said. "But the man evidently stole Matthew's gold coin."

"The coin you found at Shawcombe's tavern?" Bidwell had heard about it from Paine just after they'd returned from their expedition.

Matthew nodded. "Yes, sir."

"I have to say I'm not surprised!" Bidwell put a hand into the bowl of water and wiped it across his sooty face. "I understand the tales that were spreading magnified that single coin into a treasure box full! Small wonder some poor farmer didn't dare to come in here and make off with the fortune!"

"Sir?" Matthew said. "Goode has advanced the theory that whoever did it might have been a frequent visitor to your house, in that he could negotiate the stairs without benefit of a candle. Do you have many poor farmers as your guests?"

"No. Excepting Garrick, of course. But he's only been here twice, and the second time was at our dinner." Again he wet his face with a handful of water. It dawned upon him what Matthew was getting at. "You believe the thief was a common acquaintance of mine?"

"A probability. I found no lantern in my room. The man may have entered in the dark and been familiar enough with your house not to need illumination."

"A servant, then!" Bidwell looked at Mrs. Nettles. "Have you seen to my bedchamber yet?"

"Yes sir, I have. Your coin box is undisturbed. I took the liberty also of inspectin' your study. Nothin' missin' there, as far as I could tell. And—if I ma' speak my mind, sir—the servants know where your coin box is. There're Dutch gold pieces aplenty in it." She lifted her eyebrows. "You follow what I'm sayin', sir?"

"Mr. Bidwell?" Matthew said. He had come to a conclusion of sorts. "Whoever entered your house had been here before, probably many times. I believe he specifically wanted the coin that was in my possession. He knew I wouldn't be in the room. He knew also that the magistrate was a hard sleeper. Because I told him."

"You did?"

"Yes, sir. Except this theory is somewhat flawed. Schoolmaster Johnstone couldn't have run down the stairs."

Bidwell stared at him, mouth agape. And then from that open mouth came a laugh like donkey's bray. "Now you've shown your true intellect, boy!" he said, with more than a touch of glee. "Schoolmaster Johnstone a thief! Put this in your broken pipe and puff on it: the man's even unable to climb stairs, much less run down them! He has a deformed knee, in case it's escaped you!"

"I've seen what appears to be a deformed knee," Matthew said calmly. "I've not seen the knee itself."

"By God, you are a right brash set of bones!" Bidwell grinned savagely. "Have you lost whatever mind you brought to this town?"

"I am only telling you, sir, that I informed the schoolmaster that Magistrate Woodward was asleep in his room."

"Well, Hell's burnin' bells! I told the same thing to Nicholas Paine, when he asked where the magistrate was!"

"And Mr. Winston asked me," Mrs. Nettles said. "I told him I thought the magistrate was still abed."

"Mrs. Nettles knew it!" Bidwell brayed on. "I think she could knock a man down, don't you?" His wet face flushed when he realized what he'd just said. "No offense, Mrs. Nettles."

"None taken, sir. I once threw my dear departed husband through a winda."

"There, you see?" Bidwell turned his glare upon Woodward. "Sir, if this was the most able clerk you could discover, I pity the judicial world!"

"He's able enough," was the magistrate's rather frosty reply. "Even if he does sometimes put his cart before his horses."

"In this case, his cart is lacking not only horses but wheels!" Bidwell shook his head, disgusted with the whole business. "Oh, if I live to see the new year I shall count it as a miracle! Here, what's that you're drinking?"

"Rum," Woodward answered.

"What's rum for one is rum for two, then!" Bidwell took the tankard from him and swigged the rest of it down.

"There is another thing," Matthew said; he'd remembered it, just as Bidwell had mentioned living to see the new year. "Dr. Shields."

"Yes? What about him? Was he in here with the schoolmaster, both of them thieving?"

"He also inquired as to the whereabouts of the magistrate, and Mr. Johnstone told him what I'd said. The doctor excused himself from my presence just after Mr. Johnstone left."

"Oh, so now we have a gang of thieves! The schoolmaster, Dr. Shields, Mr. Paine, Winston, and Mrs. Nettles! A fearsome five, indeed!"

"Make light as you wish," Matthew said, "but I think one of those five entered this house and took my gold coin."

"Not me!" the woman said sharply. "Surely you don't mean me!"

"Of course he means you!" Bidwell assured her. "If he can accuse a cripple of running down a staircase in the dark, he can accuse whomever the hell he pleases!"

"It wasn't the doctor." Woodward placed his hand against his bruised shoulder. "The man who hit me had some size to him. Six feet he was, at least. A giant, possibly. And he moved as swiftly as a snake."

"Yes, sir." Matthew gave a faint smile. "And we fought off Shawcombe with candles versus daggers, didn't we?"

Woodward understood his meaning, and tucked his head down an inch or so. Bidwell slammed the tankard down upon the nearest tabletop. "I'm going back up to bed, for whatever sleep I can find! I daresay it won't be much!" He focused his gaze directly at Matthew. "First light will be here in two hours. I'll expect you to be ready to carry out your sentence."

"I shall be."

Bidwell picked up a lantern and took three weary steps toward the staircase. Then he abruptly stopped and looked back, his face daubed yellow in the glow. "Is there something in particular about that coin I should know?"

Matthew recalled the conversation he'd had with Woodward, concerning the theory that there might be an encampment of Spanish soldiers near the Indians' village. Now, however, seemed not the moment to bring it up with Bidwell, his being in such a fractious temperament.

"What I'm asking is," Bidwell continued, "why would someone risk entering my house for one gold coin?"

Matthew said, "I don't know."

"No ideas? Have your theories failed you?"

"For the moment, yes."

"I think," Bidwell said bluntly, "that you know much more about this than you wish to say. But I'll let it go, as I'm in no mood for a fencing match with you. Good night, gentlemen." Bidwell ascended the stairs, and Mrs. Nettles gave the two men a crisp good night—her face a solemn mask that told Matthew she was quite offended at his accusation of thievery—and went about her business.

Woodward waited until he was positive they were alone. Then he gave a quiet laugh. "Of course you have a theory, don't you? You have a theory for everything under the sun."

"If you mean I fervently desire to know the why of things, you're correct."

"The why of things," Woodward repeated, and there was a bitter edge in his voice. "Knowing the why of things can kill a man, Matthew." He put his hand to his throat and massaged it. "Sometimes it's best not to ask too many questions. Haven't you learned that yet?"

"It's not my nature, sir," Matthew replied; he felt sure that Woodward's attitude in this matter of the why had to do with the man's past life in London.

"You are young. I am old. That makes all the difference." He let go a long, pained sigh. "All right, then. Tell me what you're thinking."

"We may have had a visit tonight," Matthew said quietly, "from the Spanish spy." Woodward didn't respond. He scratched the mosquito bite on his cheek. "That coin may be evidence of the Spanish presence near the Indians' village, wherever it might be," Matthew continued, keeping his voice hushed. "The spy may have felt it necessary to remove it from sight."

"But the damage has been done. Bidwell already knows about the coin. The entire population does, it seems."

"Yes, sir, but—as Bidwell might say—a hole in a ship must be patched, regardless how much water has already flooded the hull. The thief didn't expect to be interrupted. Perhaps he hoped I might believe the coin to be misplaced. But removing it from sight would also remove it as an object of Bidwell's interest."

"And of course," Woodward added, "the spy wouldn't know your suspicions."

"Exactly."

"What action do you propose, then?"

"I propose ... to serve my sentence and scribe the answers of the witnesses. Then I propose to endure the whip as best I can, and hope I neither weep in public nor soil my breeches. I propose for you to visit Dr. Shields and ask for a tonic."

"Matthew, I told you that I'm—-"

"You're ill, sir," Matthew said firmly. "And you might worsen, without help. I shall not retreat on this subject."

Woodward made a sound of exasperation. He knew the young man could be as tenacious as a dockside dog trying to gnaw through a crab's shell. "All right," he relented. "I'll go."

"Tomorrow."

"Yes, yes. Tomorrow."

"Your visit should be twofold," Matthew said. "One, to aid your health. Two, to make some inquiries—subtle, of course— about Mr. Paine, Mr. Winston, and Schoolmaster Johnstone."

"The schoolmaster? It can't be him, Matthew! His deformed knee!"

"I should like to know if Dr. Shields has ever inspected it."

"You're accusing an Oxford brother," Woodward said, with an uptilt of his chin. "I find that objectionable."

"I'm accusing no one, sir. But I would wish to know the schoolmaster's history, just as I would wish to know the histories of Mr. Winston and Mr. Paine."

"And what of Dr. Shields's history?"

"His, too. But I think the doctor may be less than candid about his own life, therefore other sources will have to be tapped."

"All this is well and good." Woodward eased himself to his feet. "However, we can't forget our main purpose here. We're primarily concerned with a witch, not a spy."

"A woman accused of witchcraft," Matthew corrected. He had spoken it a little too sternly, and he had to amend his tone. "Sir," he said.

"Of course." The magistrate nodded, his eyelids drooping. "Good night."

"Good night, sir." Matthew let him start walking away before he decided, on an impulse, to say the next thing that left his lips. "Magistrate? Who is in pain when you call to Ann?"

Woodward stopped as if he had collided with a wall. He stood very still.

"I couldn't help but overhear. But it's not something I haven't heard before, sir." There was no response. "Forgive my intrusion. I had to ask."

"No." Woodward's voice was tight. "You did not have to ask." He remained standing exactly as he was, his back toward the young man. "This is one why you should leave be, Matthew. Heed what I say. Leave it be."

Matthew said nothing more. He watched as the magistrate walked out of the parlor, his back ramrod-straight.

And thus the night ended, with more questions and no answers.

eleven

A SMALL BUT IMPORTANT MIRACLE greeted Matthew as he awakened, responding to the insistent fist of Robert Bidwell upon his chamber door: the sun had appeared.

It was a weak sun, yes, and in imminent danger of being clouded over by the jealous sky, but there it was all the same. The early light, a misty golden sheen, had brought forth Fount Royal's roosters in fine trumpeting form. As Matthew shaved and dressed, he listened to the orchestra of cocks vying for vocal dominance. His gaze kept slipping down to where the Spanish coin had been resting atop the dresser, and he couldn't help but wonder whose boots had crossed the floor to steal it. But today another matter was supreme. He would have to forswear his mind from the subject of the coin and the spy and concentrate fully on his task—which was, after all, his raison d'etre.

A breakfast of eggs, fried potatoes, and corncakes filled Matthew's belly, all washed down with a cup of sturdy dark brown tea. Woodward was late to the table, his eyes swollen and his breathing harsh; he appeared to have either slept not at all for the remainder of the night or suffered dreams that prevented rest. Before Matthew could speak, Woodward lifted a hand and said in a croaking voice, "I promised I would visit Dr. Shields today, and I shall. As soon as we have interviewed Mr. Buckner."

"Surely you're going to interview more than one witness today, aren't you? As tomorrow is the Sabbath, I mean." Bidwell was sitting at the head of the table, his breakfast platter already scraped clean. Though he'd been severely tried by the recent events, he was clean-shaven, freshly washed, and dressed in a tan-colored suit. The ringlets of his lavish wig cascaded down around his shoulders.

"I will interview Mr. Buckner this morning." Woodward seated himself on the bench across the table from Matthew. "Then I'm going to visit Dr. Shields. If I am up to the task, I will interview Mr. Garrick in the afternoon."

"All right, then. Just so there is some movement, I should be satisfied."

"I, too, should be satisfied with a movement," Woodward said. "My system has been clogged by these country meals." He pushed aside his breakfast dish, which had been loaded with food by a servant girl in preparation for his arrival. Instead he reached for the green ceramic teapot and poured a cup, which he drank down with several noisy swallows.

"You'll be feeling better before long," Bidwell assured him. "The sun cures all ills."

"Thank you, sir, but I do not desire platitudes. Will we have the proper furnishings on hand when we reach the gaol?"

"I've arranged for Mr. Winston and Mr. Green to take care of what you need. And I must say, there's no reason to be snappish. This is a great day, sir, for the history of Fount Royal."

"No day is great when murder is involved." Woodward poured a second cup of tea and that, too, went down his hatch.

It came time to leave. Bidwell announced that Goode was already waiting in front with the carriage, and he wished them both—as he put it—"good hunting." Woodward felt positively feeble as he left the house, his bones heated and flesh clammy, his throat paved by Hell's burning brimstone. It was all he could do to suck in a breath, as his nostrils were so constricted. But he would have to carry on, and hopefully Dr. Shields could relieve his discomfort later in the day.

Clouds had moved in, obscuring the blessed sun, as Goode flicked the reins and the carriage wheels began to turn. But as they passed the spring—where two women were already drawing water into buckets—the sun's rays slipped their bondage and shone down upon the surface. Matthew saw the spring suddenly glow golden with a marvelously beautiful light. Around the water, the green tops of oak trees were cast with the same gilded lumination, and for a moment Matthew realized the power that Fount Royal held over its citizens: a place carved from the wild, fenced and tamed, baptized in sweat and tears, made useful by sheer human will and muscle. It was a dream and a damnation too, this desiring to control the wilderness, to shape it with axe-blade and shovel. Many had perished in the building of this town; many more would die before it was a harbor city. But who could deny the temptation and challenge of the land?

In some old Latin tome on philosophy he'd read, Matthew recalled that the author had assigned all reflection, peace, and piety to God; to the Devil had been assigned the need of man to go forth and conquer, to break asunder and rework, to question and reach beyond all hope of grasping.

It seemed to him, then, that according to that philosophy the Devil was indeed at work in Fount Royal. And the Devil was indeed at work in him, because the question of why was rooted in the tree of forbidden fruit. But what would this land—this world—be without such a question? And where would it be without those instincts and needs—seeds from the Devil, some might say—that caused men to wish for more than God had given them?

The clouds shifted, and suddenly yet again the sun had vanished. Matthew looked up and saw patches of blue amid the gray, but they were becoming slimmer and smaller. In another moment, the gray clouds held dominion once more.

"So much for the healing properties of the sun," Woodward said.

Smoke was still drifting from the charred ruins of what had yesterday been a farmhouse. Along Truth Street the acrid odor of burning remained strong. Presently Goode bade the horses slow and reined them in before the gaol. The giant red-haired and red-bearded Mr. Green was waiting outside for them, along with Edward Winston.

"Your wishes have been met," Winston said, eager to please. "I've even donated my own desk and Bible to the cause."

Green took them all inside. Matthew was relieved to see that Noles had been released and had fled his coop. The roof hatch was open, allowing in the hazy gray light, and Green had lit several lanterns and hung them from wallhooks. Back in the last cell, the woman was huddled in the straw, her sackcloth clothing bundled about her.

"This is where you'll be," Green rumbled, opening the door of the cage opposite the one in which Noles had been confined. Clean straw had been laid down. In a corner had been placed two buckets, one empty and the other brimmed with fresh water. At the center of the cell stood a desk and chair, a leatherbound Bible (suitable for swearing truth upon) atop the desk, and the chair holding a comfortable-looking blue cushion. Before the desk was a stool for the witness. To the right of the magistrate's position was a second, smaller combination desk and chair—removed from the schoolhouse, Matthew presumed—and atop it another blotter and a rectangular wooden box. Matthew's first act upon entering the cell was to lift the box's lid; he found within it a thick sheaf of rather yellowed paper, a well of black ink, three quills, a small brush, and a square of coarse brown cloth with which to clean clots of ink from the writing instruments.

"Is everything satisfactory?" Winston asked, waiting at the cell's threshold as Matthew inspected his tools and the magistrate tested the firmness of the cushion with the palm of his hand.

"I believe it is," Woodward decided. "One request, though: I'd like a pot of tea."

"Yes sir, I'll see to it."

"A large pot, please. With three cups."

"Certainly. Mr. Paine has gone to fetch Jeremiah Buckner, and should be returning presently."

"Very good." Woodward was loath to sit down yet, as he didn't fancy these surroundings. In his career there'd never been an equal to this set of circumstances. He heard the rustling of straw, and both he and Matthew saw Rachel Howarth rise up from her repose. She stood at the middle of her cage, her head and face hooded by her garment.

"Not to be alarmed, madam," Winston told her. "Your court is about to convene." She was silent, but Matthew sensed she was well aware of what was in preparation.

"There'll be no disruptions from you, hear?" Green warned. "Mr. Bidwell's given me the authority to bind and gag you if I must!"

She made a sound that might have been a bitter laugh. She said, "Aren't you feared to touch me? I might conjure you into a frog and stomp you flat!"

"Did you hear?" Green's eyes had widened; he looked from Woodward to Winston and back again. "She's threatenin' me!"

"Steady," Woodward said. "She's talking, nothing more." He raised his voice to address the woman. "Madam, I would suggest to you that such claims of ability are not helpful to your position."

"My position? What position?" Now she reached up, pulled back her hood, and her fiercely beautiful face was fully exposed, her black hair dirty and wild, her amber eyes aflame. "My position is already hopeless! What lesser depth can there be?"

"Mind that tongue!" Green shouted, but it seemed to Matthew that he was trying to make up in volume for what he might be lacking elsewhere.

"No, it's all right." The magistrate walked to the bars and peered through them into the woman's face. "You may speak your mind in my court. Within reason of course."

"There is no reason here! And this is not a court!"

"It is a court, because I have decreed it so. And as for the matter of reason, I am here to find it. I am going to be questioning witnesses who have some knowledge of your activities, and it will be for your benefit if you don't attempt to make a mockery of the proceedings."

"A mockery," she repeated, and she laughed again. Some of her fire, however, had been extinguished by the magistrate's calmness of tone. "Why don't you go ahead and pronounce me guilty? Put me to the rope or the stake, or whatever. I can't receive a fair trial in this town."

"On the contrary. I am sworn before the law to make certain you do receive a fair trial. We are holding court here because my clerk has been sentenced to three days—"

"Oh?" Her gaze fixed on Matthew. "Have they pronounced you a warlock?"

"Three days," Woodward repeated, shifting his position so that he stood between the woman and his clerk, "for a crime that does not concern you. If I were not interested in the fairness of your trial, I should have you taken to some other location and kept confined. But I wish for you to be present and hear the accusations, under the tenets of English law. That does not mean, however"—and here he lifted a finger for emphasis—"that you will be suffered to speak during the questioning." He had to pause for a moment, to clear his ravaged throat of what felt like a slow, thick stream of phlegm. He was going to need the acidity of the tea to get through this day. "Your time to speak will come, and you shall have all the opportunity you need to refute, explain, or otherwise defend yourself. If you choose the path of disruption, you shall be bound and gagged. If, when the opportunity of your speaking arrives, you choose silence as the cornerstone of your defense, that is your privilege. Now: do we have an understanding?"

She stared at him, saying nothing. Then, "Are you really a magistrate?"

"Yes, I really am."

"From where?" Her eyes narrowed, like those of a suspicious cat.

"Charles Town. But I originally served the bench in London for many years."

"You have experience in witch trials?"

"No, I do not. I do, however, have much experience in murder trials." He offered a faint smile. "All the jurists I know who have experience in witchcraft trials are either writing books or selling lectures."

"Is that what you hope to do?"

"Madam, I hope to find the truth," Woodward said. "That is my profit."

"And where's Bidwell, then? Isn't he attending?"

"No. I've instructed him to keep his distance." She cocked her head to one side. Her eyes were still slightly narrowed, but Woodward could tell that this last bit of information had cooled her coals.

"If you please?" Winston said, desiring the magistrate's attention. "I'll go fetch your tea now. As I said, Nicholas should be here shortly with Mr. Buckner. Three cups, did you say?"

"Three. For me, my clerk, and the witness. Wait. Make that four. A cup for Madam Howarth as well."

"This is a gaol!" Green protested. "It ain't no social club!"

"Today it's a court," Woodward said. "My court, and I'll preside over it as I please. At the end of the day, it will be a gaol again. Four cups, Mr. Winston."

Winston left without another word, but Green shook his red-maned head and grumbled his disapproval. The magistrate paid him no further heed, and sat down in the desk's chair. Likewise, Matthew situated himself at his clerk's station. He took a sheet of paper from the box, set it before him, and then shook the inkwell to mix the pigments and opened it. He chose a quill, dipped the nib, and made some circles so as to get the feel of the instrument; all quills might look similar, he'd learned, but some were far more suited for the task of writing than others. This one, he found directly, was a wretched tool. Its nib was much too broad, and unevenly split so that the ink came out in spots and dollops rather than a smooth flow. He snapped it in two, dropped it to the floor, and chose a second quill. This one was better; it was a neater point and the ink flowed sufficiently well, but its shape was so crooked that the hand would be paralyzed before an hour's work was finished.

"Horrible," Matthew said, but he decided not to break the second one before he tested the third. His regular quills—the ones carried in a leather holder that had been lost back at Shawcombe's tavern—were precision instruments that, not unlike fine horses, required only the lightest of touches to perform their task. He longed for them now, as he tried the third quill and found it to be the sorriest of the batch, with a crack down its center that caused ink to bleed into the feathers. He broke it at once, and therefore was wed to the handkiller.

"Are the tools unsuitable?" Woodward asked as Matthew practised writing a few lines of Latin, French, and English on the rough-skinned paper.

"I'd best accept what I've got." He was leaving blotches of ink on the paper, and so he further lightened his pressure. "This will do, once I've tamed it."

Within a few moments Nicholas Paine entered the gaol with the first witness. Jeremiah Buckner walked slowly and unsteadily even with the use of a cane. His beard, far more white than gray, trailed down his chest, and what remained of his snowy hair hung about his frail shoulders. He wore loose-fitting brown breeches and a faded red-checked shirt. Both Woodward and Matthew stood as a show of respect for the aged as Paine helped the old man across the threshold. Buckner's watery brown eyes marked the presence of Rachel Howarth, and he seemed to draw back a bit but allowed Paine to aid him in sitting on the stool.

"I'm all right," he said; it was more of a gasp than speech.

"Yes sir," Paine said. "Magistrate Woodward will protect you from harm. I'll be waiting just outside to take you home when you are done here."

"I'm all right." The old man nodded, but his eyes kept returning to the figure in the next cage.