Speaks the Nightbird

"There's a fitting motto for an educator... is it not?" Woodward asked. "As a jurist, I might... disagree with it... but then again, we were all young and yet to be schooled... at the university of life, were we not?"

"Oxford was difficult, " Johnstone said. "But the university of life is well nigh impossible."

"Yes. It does... grade rather harshly." The magistrate gave a long sigh, his newfound strength now almost spent. "Pardon me... for my rambling. It seems that when one is ill... and so near death... the past becomes paramount... to ease the dwindling of one's future."

"You need never ask apology of me to reflect on Oxford, Magistrate, " Johnstone said with what seemed to Matthew an admirable grace. "I too still walk those halls in my memory. Now... if you'll please forgive me... my knee also has a memory, and it is calling for liniment. Good night to you all."

"I'll walk with you, Alan, " Winston offered, and Johnstone accepted with a nod. "Good night, Mr. Bidwell. Magistrate. Mt. Corbett."

"Yes, good night, " Bidwell replied.

Winston followed as Johnstone limped out of the room, leaning even more than usual on his cane. Then Bidwell poured himself the last few swallows of wine from the decanter and went upstairs to avoid any discourse or possible friction with Matthew. As Woodward half-dozed in the chair, Matthew awaited the arrival of Dr. Shields.

The question of Linch/Lancaster was uppermost in Matthew's mind. Here, at last, might be some hope to cling to. If Smythe could positively identify Linch as this other man, it would be a starting point to convince Bidwell that a fiction had been created around Rachel. Was it too much to hope for that all this might be accomplished on the morrow?

thirty-four

A PASSING THUNDERSHOWER had wet the earth just before dawn, but Saturday's sun shone through the dissipating clouds, and the blue sky again reappeared before the hour of eight. By then Matthew had finished his breakfast and was on his way to the maskers' camp.

He discovered—by sense of hearing before sense of sight— Phillip Brightman in discourse with two other thespians, all of them sitting in chairs behind a canvas screen, reading over and reciting pages from one of their morality scenes. When Matthew asked where he might find David Smythe, Brightman directed him to a yellow awning set up to protect a number of trunks, lanterns, and sundry other prop items. Beneath it Matthew found Smythe inspecting some brightly hued costumes that one of the troupe's women was adorning with rather used-looking peacock feathers.

"Good morning, Mr. Smythe, " Matthew said. "May I have a word with you?"

"Oh... good morning, Mr. Corbett. What may I help you with?"

Matthew glanced quickly at the seamstress. "May we speak in private, please?"

"Certainly. Mrs. Prater, these are coming along very well. I'll speak with you again when the work is further advanced. Mr. Corbett, we might go over there if you like." Smythe motioned toward a stand of oak trees about sixty feet behind the encampment.

As they walked, Smythe slid his thumbs into the pockets of his dark brown breeches. "I think an apology is in order for our behavior last night. We left so abruptly... and for such an obvious reason. At least we might have tempered it with a more diplomatic excuse."

"No apology is necessary. Everyone understood the reason. And better the truth than a false excuse, no matter how diplomatic."

"Thank you, sir. I appreciate your candor."

"The reason I wished to speak to you, " Matthew said as they reached the oak trees' shade, "concerns Gwinett Linch. The man you believe to be Jonathan Lancaster."

"If I may correct you, not believe to be. As I said last night, I would swear to it. But he appears... so different. So changed. The man I knew would not be... well, would not be caught dead in such dirty rags. In fact, I recall he had a marked affinity for cleanliness."

"And order?" Matthew asked. "Would you say he had an affinity for that as well?"

"He kept his wagon neat enough. I remember one day he complained to my father about not having a supply of wheel grease on hand to silence a squeak."

"Hm, " Matthew said. He leaned against the trunk of an oak and crossed his arms. "Exactly who was... I mean, who is... Jonathan Lancaster?"

"Well, I mentioned he had an act that involved trained rats. He had them jump through hoops and run races and such. The children loved it. Our circus travelled through most of England, and we did play London on several occasions but we found ourselves restricted to a very bad part of the city. So we mostly travelled from village to village. My father was the manager, my mother sold tickets, and I did whatever needed doing."

"Lancaster, " Matthew said, guiding Smythe back to the subject. "He made his living with this trained rat show?"

"Yes, he did. None of us were exactly wealthy, but... we all pulled together." Smythe frowned, and Matthew could tell he was forming his next statement. "Mr. Lancaster... was a puzzling man."

"How so? Because he worked with rats?"

"Not only that, " Smythe said. "But because of the other act he performed. The one that was done... well... that was done only behind closed curtains, for a small audience of adults—no children allowed—who wished to pay an extra coin to see it."

"And what was that?"

"His display of animal magnetism."

"Animal magnetism?" Now it was Matthew's turn to frown. "What is that?"

"The art of magnetic manipulation. Have you not heard of such a thing?"

"I've heard of the process of magnetism, but never animal magnetism. Is this some theatrical whimsy?"

"It's been more popular in Europe than in England, I understand. Particularly in Germany, according to what my father told me. Mr. Lancaster was once a leading light of the cult of magnetism in Germany, though he was English-born. This is also according to my father, who if nothing else has a fortune of friends in the craft of public entertainment. That was, however, in Mr. Lancaster's younger years. An incident occurred that caused him to flee Germany."

"An incident? Do you know what it was?"

"I know what my father told me, and wished me to keep secret."

"You are no longer in England and no longer under your father's jurisdiction, " Matthew said. "It is vital that you tell me everything you know about Jonathan Lancaster. Particularly the secrets."

Smythe paused and cocked his head to one side. "May I ask why this is so important to you?"

It was a fair question. Matthew said, "I'm going to trust you, as I hope you will trust me. Obviously Lancaster has hidden his true identity from Mr. Bidwell and everyone else in this town. I wish to know why. Also... I have reason to believe that Lancaster may be involved with the current situation in which this town finds itself."

"What? You mean the witch?" Symthe offered a nervous smile. "You're joking!"

"I am not, " Matthew said firmly.

"Oh, that can't be! Mr. Lancaster may have been strange, but he wasn't demonic. I'd venture that his closed-curtain talent appeared to some to be witchcraft, but it was evidently based on principles of science."

"Ah." Matthew nodded, his heartbeat quickening. "Now we approach the light, Mr. Smythe. What exactly was his closed-curtain talent?"

"Manipulation of the mind, " Smythe answered, and Matthew had to struggle to suppress a victorious grin. "By the application of magnetic force, Mr. Lancaster could deliver mental commands to some members of his audience, and cause them to do, believe, and say things that... um... would probably not suit the eyes and ears of children. I have to admit; I sneaked behind the curtains and watched on more than a few occasions, because it was a fascinating show. I recall he would cause some to believe day was night, and that they were getting ready for their beds. One woman he caused to believe was freezing in a snowstorm in the midst of July. A particular scene I remember was a man he caused to believe had stepped into a nest of biting ants, and how that man jumped and hollered was nothing short of ludicrous. The other members of the audience laughed uproariously, but that man never heard a giggle of it until Mr. Lancaster awakened him."

"Awakened him? These people were put to sleep in some way?"

"It was a sleep-like state, yet they were still responsive. Mr. Lancaster used various objects to soothe them into this state, such as a lantern, a candle, or a coin. Anything that served to secure their attention. Then he would further soothe and command them with his voice... and once you heard his voice, it was unforgettable. I myself would have fallen under his magnetism, if I hadn't known beforehand what he was doing."

"Yes, " Matthew said, staring past Smythe in the direction of Fount Royal. "I can well understand that." He directed his gaze back to the man. "But what is this about magnetism?"

"I don't quite fathom it, but it has to do with the fact that all bodies and objects hold iron. Therefore a skilled practitioner can use other objects as tools of manipulation, since the human body, blood, and brain also contain iron. The attraction and manipulation is called magnetism. That, at least, is how my father explained it when I asked him." Symthe shrugged. "Evidently it was a process first discovered by the ancient Egyptians and used by their court magicians."

Matthew was thinking 7 have you now, Sir Fox.

"This must be very important to you indeed, " Smythe said, dappled sunlight falling through the oak branches and leaves onto his face.

"It is. As I said, vital."

"Well... as you also said, I am no longer in England or under my father's jurisdiction. If it's so vital that you know... the secret my father asked me to keep concerns Mr. Lancaster's career before he joined the circus. In his younger years he was known as a healer of sorts. A faith-healer, I suppose, in that he could use magnetism to deliver people from illnesses. Apparently he travelled to Europe to practise this art, and drew the attention of a German nobleman who wished Mr. Lancaster to teach him and his son how to be magnetizers themselves. Now... be aware that all this I recall my father telling me, and I might have garbled it in the retelling."

"I shall, " Matthew said. "But please continue."

"Mr. Lancaster did not speak German, though his host spoke a little English. There was a translation problem. Whether that had anything to do with the results, I don't know, but my father told me Mr. Lancaster had fled Germany because the nobleman and his son were adversely affected by their studies. The latter killed himself with a poisoned dagger, and the former went half-mad. Which I suppose testifies to the power of magnetism falling into the wrong hands. In any case, a bounty was offered on Mr. Lancaster's head and so he returned to England. But he obviously was a changed man, too, and he sank to the level of trained rats and a few magnetist's tricks behind closed curtains."

"Possibly he wished to keep a low profile, " Matthew said, "for fear that someone would seek him out and claim the bounty." He nodded. "Yes, that explains a lot. As, for instance, why Goode told me no Dutchmen or Germans had seen the Devil. It was because Lancaster feared Germans and likely is limited to only the English tongue."

"Goode?" Smythe asked, looking perplexed. "I'm sorry, I'm not following you."

"My apologies. My thoughts became words." Matthew, his nervous energy at high flux, began to pace back and forth. "Tell me this, if you will: what caused Lancaster to leave the circus, and when was this?"

"I don't know. My family and I left before Mr. Lancaster did."

"Oh. Then you haven't seen Lancaster since?"

"No. Certainly we didn't wish to return to that circus."

Matthew caught a hint of bitterness. "Why? Was your father discharged?"

"Not that. It was my father's wish to leave. He didn't care for the way Mr. Cedarholm—the man who owned the circus—had decided to run things. My father is a very decent man, God love him, and he bridled about bringing in the freaks."

Matthew suddenly stopped his pacing. "Freaks?"

"Yes. Three of them, to begin with."

"Three, " Matthew repeated. "May I... ask what they were?"

"The first was a black-skinned lizard, as big as a ram. The thing had come from some South Sea island, and it near made my mother faint to look upon it."

"The second, " Matthew said, his mouth dry. "Might it have been an imp of some kind? A dwarf, possibly, with a childlike face and long white hair?"

"Yes. Exactly that. How did..." Now Smythe truly appeared confounded. "How did you know?"

"The third, " Matthew prompted. "Was it... an unspeakable thing?"

"The third one was what made my father pack our bags. It was a hermaphrodite with the breasts of a woman and... the tools of a man. My father said even Satan would shrink to look upon such a blasphemy."

"Your father might be interested, Mr. Smythe, to know that all three of those creatures have lately found work in Fount Royal, with Satan's blessing. Oh, I have him now! I have him!" Matthew couldn't restrain himself from smacking his palm with his fist, his eyes bright with the fire of the hunt. He immediately reined in his enthusiasm, as he noted that Smythe took a backward step and appeared concerned that he might be dealing with a lunatic. "I have a request. Again, a very important one. I happen to know where Lancaster lives. It's not very far from here, at the end of this street. Would you go there with me—this moment—and look upon him face-to-face and tell me you positively know he's the man you claim him to be?"

"I've already told you. I saw his eyes, which are as unforgettable as his voice. It is him."

"Yes, but nevertheless I require you to identify him in my presence." Matthew also wanted Lancaster to know before another hour had passed that a blade had been thrust into his repugnant, inhuman plans, and twisted for good measure.

"I... do have some work to get done. Perhaps later this afternoon?"

"No, " Matthew said. "Now." He correctly read the reticence in Smythe's eyes. "As an officer of the court, I must tell you this is official business. Also that I am empowered by Magistrate Woodward to compel you to accompany me." It was an outright falsehood, but Matthew had no time for dawdling.

Smythe, who obviously had well learned the lessons of decency from his esteemed father, said, "No compelling is necessary, sir. If this has to do with a matter of law, I should be glad to go."

Matthew and Smythe proceeded along Industry Street—the former in expectant haste and the latter more understandably moderate in his willingness to advance—toward the house of the formerly known Gwinett Linch. Smythe's pace slowed as they reached the execution field, and he regarded the stake and pyre with dread fascination. An oxcart had been pulled up beside the woodpile, and two men—one of them the giant Mr. Green, Matthew saw—were at work unloading another cargo of witch-burning fuel.

Yes, build it up! Matthew thought. Waste your muscles and your minutes, for when this day is done one less nightbird shall be confined in a cage and one more vulture there in her place!

Further on stood the house. "My God!" Smythe said, aghast. "Mr. Lancaster lives there?"

"Lancaster lives within, " Matthew replied, his pace yet quickening. "The ratcatcher has groomed the exterior."

He felt a gnaw of disappointment. No smoke rose from the chimney, though indeed the breakfast hour was long past. But all the shutters were closed, indicating that Lancaster was out. Matthew inwardly muttered a curse, for he'd wished to have this identification promptly done and then escort Smythe directly to see Bidwell. It dawned on him that if Lancaster was indeed in there, closed up from the sunlight like a night-faring roach, he might turn violent, and they had no weapon of defense. Perhaps it would be best to go fetch Mr. Green as a precaution. But then another thought hit Matthew, and this one had terrible implications.

What if Lancaster, upon knowing he'd been recognized, had fled Fount Royal? He would have had ample time last night. But what was the procedure for getting out the gate after sunset? Surely such a thing was unheard of. Would the watchman have allowed him to leave without informing Bidwell? But what if Lancaster had saddled a horse and gone yesterday afternoon while it was still light?

"You're near running!" Smythe said, trying to keep up. Without Lancaster, Rachel's fate was still in doubt. Damned right Matthew was nearly running, and he did break into a run the final twenty yards.

He slammed his fist on the door. He had expected no answer, and therefore was immediately prepared to do what he next did: open the door and enter.

Before he could cross the threshold, Matthew was struck in the face.

Not by any physical fist, but rather by the overwhelming smell of blood. He instinctively recoiled, his mouth coming open in a gasp.

These were the things he saw, in a torrent of hideous impressions: light, streaming between the shutter slats and glistening off the dark red blood that had pooled on the floorboards and made large brown blotches on the pallet's sheet; Lancaster's corpse, lying on its right side on the floor, the left hand gripping at the sheet as if to pull itself up, the mouth and icy gray eyes horribly open in a slashed and clawed face, and the throat cut like a red-lipped grin from ear to ear; the formerly meticulous household ravaged as if by a whirlwind, clothes pulled from the trunk and strewn about; desk drawers wrenched out and upturned, cooking implements thrown hither and yon; hearth ashes scooped up and tossed to settle over the corpse like grave dust.

Smythe had also seen. He gave a choked moan and staggered back, and then off he ran along Industry Street in the direction of his companions, his face bone-white and his mouth trailing the shattering cry, "Murder! Murder!"

The shout might have alarmed everyone else who heard it, but it served to steady Matthew's nerves because he knew he had only a short time to inspect this gruesome scene before being intruded upon. He realized as well that the sight of Lancaster lying dead and so brutally disfigured must have been the same sight viewed by Reverend Grove's wife and by Jess Maynard, who had discovered Daniel Howarth's body. Little wonder, then, that Mrs. Grove and the Maynards had fled town.

The cut throat. The face savaged by demonic claws. And, it appeared, the shoulders, arms, and chest also slashed through the bloody ribbons of the man's shirt.

Yes, Matthew thought. A true Satan had been at work here.

He felt sick to his stomach and scared out of his wits, but he had time for neither debility. He looked about the wreckage. The desk's drawers, all the papers and everything else dumped out, the inkwell smashed. He wished to find two items before Mr. Green surely arrived: the sapphire brooch and the book on ancient Egypt. But even as he knelt down to negotiate this mess of blood, ink, and blood-inked papers he knew with a sinking certainty that those two items, above all else, would not be found.

He spent a moment or two in search, but when he suffered the smear of blood on his hands he gave up the quest as both impossible and unreasonable. He was fast weakening in this charnel house, and the desire for fresh air and untainted sunlight was a powerful call. It occurred to him that Smythe had been correct: Lancaster would indeed not be caught dead in his ratcatcher's rags, as he wore what had once been a white shirt and a pair of dark gray breeches.

And now the need to get out was too much to withstand. Matthew stood up and, as he turned to the door—which had not opened to its full extent, but rather just enough to allow his entry—he saw what was scrawled there on its inner surface in the clotted ink of Lancaster's veins.

My Rachel Is Not Alone

In the space of a hammered heartbeat Matthew's flesh prickled and the hairs rose at the back of his neck. The first words that came to his mind were Oh... shit.

He was still staring numbly at that damning declaration a moment later when Hannibal Green came through the door, followed by the other rustic with whom he'd been working. At once Green stopped in his tracks, his red-bearded face twisted with horror. "Christ's Mercy!" he said, stunned to the soles of his four-teen-inch boots. "Linch?" He looked at Matthew, who nodded, and then Green saw the clerk's gore-stained hands and hollered, "Randall! Go fetch Mr. Bidwell! Now!"

In the time that ensued, Green would have thought Matthew a bloody-handed murderer had not David Smythe, pallid but resolute, returned to the scene and explained they'd both been together when the corpse was discovered. Matthew took the opportunity to wipe his hands on one of the clean shirts that had been so rudely torn from the trunk. Then Green had his own hands full trying to keep people who'd been alerted by Smythe's cry—among them Martin and Constance Adams—out of the house.

"Is that Lancaster?" Matthew asked Smythe, who stood to one side staring down at the corpse.

Smythe swallowed. "His face is... so... swollen, but... I know the eyes. Unforgettable. Yes. This man... was Jonathan Lancaster."

"Move back!" Green told the onlookers. "Move back, I said!" Then he had no choice but to close the door in the gawkers' faces, and thereupon he saw the bloody scrawl.

Matthew thought Green might go down, for he staggered as if from a mighty blow. When he turned his head to look at Matthew, his eyes seemed to have shrunken and retreated in his face. He spoke in a very small voice, "I shall... I shall guard the door from the outside." So saying, he was gone like a shot.

Smythe had also seen the bloody writing. His mouth opened, but he made not a sound. Then he lowered his head and followed Green out the door with similar haste.

Now the die was well and truly cast. Alone in the house with the deadly departed, Matthew knew this was the funeral bell for Fount Royal. Once word got out about that declaration on the door—and it was probably beginning its circuit of tongues right now, starting with Green—the town wouldn't be worth a cup of cold drool.

He avoided looking at Lancaster's face, which had not only been severely clawed but had become misshapen from such injury. He knelt down and continued his search for the brooch and book, this time using a cloth to move aside blood-spattered wreckage. Presently a wooden box caught his attention, and he lifted its lid to find within the tools of the ratcatcher's trade: the odious long brown seedbag that had served to hold rodent carcasses, the stained deerskin gloves, the cowhide bag, and various wooden jars and vials of—presumably—rat bait. Also in the box was the single blade—wiped clean and shining—that had been secured to the end of the ratcatcher's sticker.

Matthew lifted his gaze from the box and looked around the room. Where was the sticker itself? And—most importantly— where was that fearsome appliance with the five curved blades that Hazelton had fashioned?

Nowhere to be seen.

Matthew opened the cowhide bag, and in doing so noted two drops and a smear of dried blood near its already-loosened drawstring. The bag was empty.

To be such a cleanliness fanatic, why would Lancaster have not wiped the rodent blood from the side of this bag before putting it back into the wooden box? And why was the five-bladed appliance—-that "useful device" as Lancaster had called it—not here with the other utensils?

Now Matthew did force himself to look at Lancaster's face, and the claw marks upon it. With a mind detached from his revulsion he studied the vicious slashings on the corpse's shoulders, arms, and chest.

He knew.

In perhaps another fifteen minutes, during which Matthew searched without success for the appliance, the door opened again—tentatively, this time—and the master of Fount Royal peered in with eyes the size of teacup saucers. "What... what has happened here?" he gasped.

"Mr. Smythe and I found this scene. Lancaster has left us, " Matthew said.

"You mean... Linch."

"No. He was never truly Gwinett Linch. His name is— was—Jonathan Lancaster. Please come in."

"Must I?"

"I think you should. And please close the door."

Bidwell entered, wearing his bright blue suit. The look of sickness contorted his face. He did close the door, but he remained pressed firmly against it.

"You ought to see what you're pressing against, " Matthew said.

Bidwell looked at the door, and like Green he staggered and almost fell. His jerking away from it made him step into the bloody mess on the floor and for a dangerous instant he balanced on the precipice of falling alongside the corpse. His fight against gravity was amazing for a man of his size, and with sheer power of determination—and more than a little abject, breeches-wetting terror—he righted himself.

"Oh my Jesus, " he said, and he took off both his bright blue tricorn and his gray curled wig and mopped his sandy pate with a handkerchief. "Oh dear God... we're doomed now, aren't we?"

"Steady yourself, " Matthew instructed. "This was done by a human hand, not a spectral one."

"A human hand? Are you out of your mind? Only Satan himself could have done this!" He pushed the handkerchief to his nose to filter the blood smell. "It's the same as was done to the reverend and Daniel Howarth! Exactly the same!"

"Which should tell you the same man committed all three murders. In this case, though, I think there was a falling out of compatriots."

"What are you running off at the lips about now?" Bidwell's sickness had receded and anger was beginning to flood into its mold. "Look at that on the door! That's a message from the damned Devil! Good Christ, my town will be dust and maggots before sunset! Oh!" It was a wounded, terrible cry, and his eyes appeared near bursting out. "If the witch is not alone... then who might the other witches and warlocks be?"

"Shut up that yammering and listen to me!" Matthew advanced upon Bidwell until they stood face to sweating face. "You'll do yourself and Fount Royal no good to fall to pieces! If your town needs anything now, it's a true leader, not a bullier or a weeper!"

"How... how dare you..."

"Put aside your bruised dignity, sir. Just stand there and listen. I am as confounded about this as you, because I thought Linch—Lancaster—was alone in his crimes. Obviously—and stupidly—I was wrong. Lancaster and his killer were working together to paint Rachel as a witch and destroy your town."

"Boy, your love for that witch will put you burning at her side!" Bidwell shouted, his face bright red and the veins pulsing at his temples. He looked to be courting an explosion that would blow off the top of his head. "If you wish to go to Hell with her, I can arrange it!"

"This was written on the door, " Matthew said coldly, "by a human hand determined to finish Fount Royal at one fell swoop. The same hand that cut Lancaster's throat and—when he was dead or dying—used the ratcatcher's own five-bladed device to strike him repeatedly, thereby giving the impression of a beast's claws. That device was also used to inflict similar wounds on Reverend Grove and Daniel Howarth."

"Yes, yes, yes! It's all as you say, isn't it? Everything is as you say!"

"Most everything, " Matthew answered.

"Well, you didn't even see those other bodies, so how can you know? And what nonsense is this about some kind of five-bladed device?"

"You've never seen it? Then again, I doubt you would have. Seth Hazelton forged it for the use—he thought—of killing rats. Actually, it was probably planned for its current use all along."

"You're mad! Absolutely roaring mad!"

"I am neither mad, " Matthew said, "nor roaring, as you are. To prove my sanity, I will ask Mr. Smythe to go to your house and explain to you Lancaster's true identity as he explained it to me. I think you'll find it worth your while."

"Really?" Bidwell sneered. "If that's the case, you'd best go find him! When my carriage passed their camp, the actors were packing their wagons!"

Now a true spear of terror pierced Matthew's heart. "What?"

"That's right! They were in a fever to do it, too, and now I know why! I'm sure there's nothing like finding a Satan-mauled corpse and a bloody message from Hell to put one in mind for a merry play!"

"No! They can't leave yet!" Matthew was out the door faster even than Green's pistol-ball exit. Straightaway his progress was blocked by the seven or eight persons who stood just outside, including Green himself. Then he had to negotiate a half-dozen more citizens who dawdled between the house and Industry Street. He saw Goode sitting in the driver's seat of Bidwell's carriage, but the horses faced west and getting them turned east would take too long. He set off toward the maskers' camp, running so fast he lost his left shoe and had to forfeit precious time putting it back on.

Matthew let loose a breath of relief when he reached the campsite and saw that, though the actors were indeed packing their trunks, costumes, featherboxes, and all the rest of their theatrical belongings, none of the horses had yet been hitched to a wagon. There was activity aplenty, however, and it was obvious to Matthew that Smythe's tale of what was discovered had put the fear of Hell's wrath into these people.

"Mr. Brightman!" Matthew called, seeing the man helping another thespian lift a trunk onto a wagon. He rushed over. "It's urgent I speak with Mt. Smythe!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Corbett. David is not to be spoken with." Brightman looked past Matthew. "Franklin! Help Charles fold up that tent!"

"I must, " Matthew insisted.

"That's impossible, sir." Brightman stalked off toward another area of the camp, and Matthew walked at his side. "If you'll pardon me, I have much work to do. We plan on leaving as soon as we're packed."

"You needn't leave. None of your troupe is in danger."

"Mr. Corbett, when we discovered your... um... situation with the witch from a source in Charles Town, I myself was reluctant—extremely reluctant—to come here. But to be perfectly honest we had nowhere else to go. Mr. Bidwell is a very generous friend, therefore I was talked into making the trip." Brightman stopped walking and turned to face Matthew. "I regret my decision, young man. When David told me what had happened... and what he saw in that house... I immediately gave the order to break camp. I am not going to risk the lives of my troupe for any amount that Mr. Bidwell might put on our table. End of pronouncement." He began walking once more and boomed, "Thomas! Make sure all the boots are in that box!"

"Mr. Brightman, please!" Matthew caught up with him again. "I understand your decision to leave, but... please... it is absolutely urgent that I speak to Mr. Smythe. I need for him to tell Mr. Bidwell about—"

"Young man, " Brightman said with an exasperated air as he halted abruptly. "I am trying to be as pleasant as possible under the circumstances. We must—I repeat must—get on the road within the hour. We'll not reach Charles Town before dark, but I wish to get there before midnight."

"Would it not be better to stay the night here, and leave in the morning?" Matthew asked. "I can assure you that—"

"I think neither you nor Mr. Bidwell can assure us of anything. Including the assurance that we'll all be alive in the morning. No. I thought you had only one witch here, and that was bad enough; but to have an unknown number, and the rest of them lurking about ready and eager to commit murder for their master... no, I can't risk such a thing."

"All right, then, " Matthew said. "But can't I request that Mr. Smythe speak to Mr. Bidwell? It would only take a few minutes and it would—"

"David cannot speak to anyone, young man, " Brightman said firmly. "Did you hear me? I said can not."

"Well, where is he? If I can have a moment with him—"

"You are not listening to me, Mr. Corbett." Brightman took a step toward him and grasped his shoulder with one of those viselike hands. "David is in one of the wagons. Even if I allowed you to see him, it would do no good. I am being truthful when I say that David cannot speak. After he told me what he'd seen—and particularly about the writing—he broke into a fit of shivering and weeping and thereafter was silent. What you don't know about David is that he is a very sensitive young man. Precariously sensitive, I might say."

Brightman paused, staring intently into Matthew's eyes. "He has had some nervous difficulties in the past. For that reason, he lost his positions with both the Saturn Cross Company and James Prue's Players. His father is an old friend of mine, and so when he asked me to take his son on as a favor—and watch over him—I agreed. I think the sight of that murdered man has sent him to the edge of... well, it's best not to say. He has been given a cup of rum and a pair of day-blinders. Therefore I certainly will not let you see him, as he must rest and be quiet for any hope of a prompt recovery."

"Can't I... just... for one..."

"No, " Brightman said, his voice like the tolling of a bass-tuned bell. He released his grip on Matthew's shoulder. "I'm sorry, but whatever it is you want with David cannot be granted. Now: it was a pleasure to meet you, and I hope all goes well with this witchcraft situation. I hope you sleep with a Bible in your bed and a candle by your hand tonight. Perhaps also a pistol under your pillow. Good luck to you, and goodbye." He stood with his arms crossed, waiting for Matthew to move away from the camp.

Matthew had to give it one more try. "Sir, I'm begging you. A woman's life lies in the balance."

"What woman?"

He started to speak the name, but he knew it wouldn't help. Brightman regarded him with a stony stare.

"I don't know what intrigues are in progress here, " Bright-man said, "and neither do I wish to know. It is my experience that the Devil has a long arm." He scanned the vista of Fount Royal, his eyes saddened. "It pains me to say it, but I doubt we shall have need to come this way next summer. Many fine people lived here, and they were very kind to us. But... such are the tides of life. Now please pardon me, as I have work to do."

Matthew could say nothing more. He watched as Brightman walked away to join a group of men who were taking down the yellow awning. Horses were being hitched to one of the wagons, and the other horses were being readied. It occurred to him that he might assert his rights and go to each wagon in turn until Smythe was found, but what then? If Smythe was too anguished to speak, what good would it do? But no, he couldn't let Smythe just ride out of here without telling Bidwell who the ratcatcher really was! It was inconceivable!

And it was equally inconceivable to grab an ailing person with a nervous disorder by the scruff of the neck and shake him like a dog until he talked.

Matthew staggered, light-headed, to the other side of Industry Street and sat down at the edge of a cornfield. He watched the camp dwindling as the wagons were further packed. Every few minutes he vowed he would stand, march defiantly over there and find Smythe for himself. But he remained seated, even when a whip cracked and the cry "Get up!" rang out and the first wagon creaked away.

Once the departure of wagons had begun, the others soon followed. Brightman, however, remained with the final wagon and helped the Falstaffian-girthed thespian lift a last trunk and two smaller boxes. Before the work was completed, Bidwell's carriage came into view. Bidwell bade Goode halt, and Matthew watched as the master of Fount Royal climbed down and went to speak with Brightman.

The discussion lasted only three or four minutes. Bidwell did a lot of listening and nodding. It ended with the two men shaking hands, and then Brightman got up onto the driver's plank of his wagon, which the Falstaffian gentleman already occupied. A whip popped, Brightman boomed, "Go on there, go on!" and the horses began their labor.

Matthew felt tears of bitter frustration burn his eyes. He bit his lower lip until it nearly bled. Brightman's wagon trundled away. Matthew stared at the ground until he saw a shadow approaching, and even then he kept his head bowed.

"I have assigned James Reed to guard the house, " Bidwell said. His voice was wan and listless. "James is a good, dependable man."

Matthew looked up into Bidwell's face. The man had donned both his wig and tricorn again, but they sat at crooked angles. Bidwell's face appeared swollen and the color of yellow chalk, his eyes like those of a shot-stunned animal. "James will keep them out, " he said, and then he frowned. "What shall we do for a ratcatcher?"

"I don't know, " was all Matthew could say.

"A ratcatcher, " Bidwell repeated. "Every town must have one. Every town that wishes to grow, I mean." He looked around sharply as another wagon—this one open-topped and carrying the hurriedly packed belongings of Martin and Constance Adams—passed along Industry Street on its way out. Martin was at the reins, his face set with grim resolve. His wife stared straight ahead also, as if terrified to even glance back at the house they were fleeing. The child, Violet, was pressed between them, all but smothered.

"Essential for a town, " Bidwell went on, in a strangely calm tone. "That rats be controlled. I shall... I shall put Edward on the problem. He will give me sound advice."

Matthew clasped his fingers to his temples and then released the pressure. "Mr. Bidwell, " he said. "We are dealing with a human being, not Satan. One human being. A cunning fox of which I have never before seen the like."

"They'll be frightened at first, " Bidwell replied. "Yes, of course they will be. They were so looking forward to the maskers."

"Lancaster was murdered because his killer knew he was about to be exposed. Either Lancaster told that man—or a very strong and ruthless woman—about Smythe identifying him... or the killer was in your house last night when Smythe related it to me."

"I think... some of them will leave. I can't blame them. But they'll come to their senses, especially with the burning so near."

"Please, Mr. Bidwell, " Matthew said. "Try to hear what I'm saying." He lowered his head again, his mind almost overwhelmed by what he was thinking. "I don't believe Mr. Winston to be capable of murder. Therefore... if indeed the killer was someone in your house last night... that narrows the field to Mrs. Nettles and Schoolmaster Johnstone." Bidwell was silent, but Matthew heard his rough breathing.

"Mrs. Nettles... could have overheard, from outside the parlor. There may be... may be a fact I've missed about her. I recall... she said something important to me, concerning Reverend Grove... but I can't draw it up. The schoolmaster... are you absolutely certain his knee is—"

Bidwell began to laugh.

It was possibly the most terrible sound Matthew had ever heard. It was a laugh, yes, but also in the depths of it was something akin to a strangled shriek.

Matthew raised his eyes to Bidwell and received another shock. Bidwell's mouth was laughing, but his eyes were holes of horror and tears had streaked down his cheeks. He began to back away as the laughter spiralled up and up. He lifted his arm and aimed his index finger at Matthew, his hand trembling.

The crazed laughter abruptly stopped. "You, " he rasped. And now not only was he weeping, but his nose had begun to run. "You're one of them, aren't you? Sent to ruin my town and drive me mad. But I'll beat you yet! I'll beat all of you! I've never failed and I shall not fail! Do you hear me? Never failed! And I shall not ... shall not... shall—"

"Mr. Bidwell, suh?" Goode had stepped beside the man and gently taken hold of his arm. Though it was such an improper gesture between slave and master, Bidwell made no attempt to pull away. "We ought best be goin'."

Bidwell continued to stare at Matthew, his eyes seeing only a prince of destruction. "Suh?" Goode prompted quietly. "Ought be goin'." He gave Bidwell's arm just the slightest tug.

Bidwell shivered, though the sun was bright and warm. He lowered his gaze and wiped the tearstreaks from his face with the back of his free hand. "Oh, " he said; it was more the exhalation of breath than speech. "I'm tired. Near... worn out."

"Yes suh. You do needs a rest."

"A rest." He nodded. "I'll feel better after a rest. Help me to the carriage, will you?"

"Yes suh, I will." Goode looked at Matthew and put a finger to his lips, warning Matthew to make no further utterances. Then Goode steadied Bidwell, and the slave and master walked together to the carriage.

Matthew remained where he was. He watched Goode help his master into a seat, and then Goode got up behind the horses, flicked the reins, and the horses started off at an ambling pace.

When the carriage had departed from sight, Matthew stared blankly at the empty field where the maskers had been and thought he might weep himself.

His hopes of freeing Rachel were wrecked. He had not a shred of evidence to prove any of the things he knew to be true. Without Lancaster—and without Smythe to lend credence to the tale—the theory of how Fount Royal had been seduced by mental manipulation was a madman's folly. Finding the sapphire brooch and the book on ancient Egypt would have helped, but the killer had already known their value—and must have been well aware of their presence—and so had stolen them away as efficiently as he had murdered Lancaster. He—or she, God forbid—had even torn up the house so no one would know the ratcatcher's true living habits.

So. What now?

He had come through this maze to find himself at a dead end. Which only meant, he believed, that he must retrace his steps and search for the proper passage. But the time was almost gone.

Almost gone.

He knew he was grasping at straws by accusing either the schoolmaster or Mrs. Nettles. Lancaster might have told his killer yesterday that he'd been recognized, and the cunning fox had waited until long after dark to visit the wretched-looking house. Just because Smythe had revealed his recognition to Matthew in Bidwell's parlor didn't mean the killer had been there to overhear it.

He trusted Mrs. Nettles, and did not want to believe she had a hand in this. But what if everything the woman had said was a lie? What if she had been manipulating him all along? It might not have been Lancaster who took the coin, but Mrs. Nettles. She certainly could have laid the magistrate out cold if she'd chosen to.

And the schoolmaster. An Oxford man, yes. A highly educated man. The magistrate had seen Johnstone's deformed knee, it was true, but still...

There was the question of the bearded surveyor and his interest in the fount. It was important. Matthew knew it was, but he could not prove it.

Neither could he prove the fount was a pirate's treasure vault, nor indeed that it held a single coin or jewel.

Neither could he prove that any of the witnesses had not actually seen what they believed to see, and that Rachel hadn't made those damning poppets and hidden them in her house.

Neither could he prove that Rachel had been chosen as the perfect candidate to paint as a witch by two persons—possibly more?—who both were masters of disguise.

Certainly he couldn't prove that Linch was Lancaster and Lancaster had been murdered by his accomplice, and that Satan himself didn't scrawl that message on the door.

Now Matthew truly felt close to weeping. He knew everything—or almost everything—of how it had been done, and he felt sure he knew why it had been done, and he knew the name of one of the persons who'd done it...

But without proof he was a beggar in the house of justice, and could expect not a single scrap.

Another wagon passed along Industry Street, carrying a family and their meager belongings away from this accursed town. The last days of Fount Royal had come.

And Matthew was keenly aware that Rachel's last hours were passing away, and that on Monday morning she would surely burn and for the rest of his life—the rest of his miserable, frost-souled life—only he would know the truth.

No, that was wrong. There would be one other, who would grin as the flames roared and the ashes flew, as the houses emptied and the dream perished. Who would grin as the thought came clear: All the silver, gold, and jewels... all mine now... and those fools never even knew.

Only one fool knew. And he was powerless to stop either the flow of time or the flow of citizens fleeing Fount Royal.

thirty-five

AND NOW THE WHOLE WORLD was silent. Or at least it seemed so, to Matthew's ears. In fact, the world was so silent that the sound of his feet creeping on the hallway's floorboards sounded to him like barely muffled cannonades, and the errant squeak of a loose timber like a high-pitched human shriek.

He had a lantern in hand. He was dressed in his bedclothes, as he had retired to sleep several hours ago. In reality, though, he had retired to ponder and wait. The time had arrived, and he was on a journey to Bidwell's upstairs study.

It was now the Sabbath morning. He reasoned it was sometime between midnight and two o'clock. The previous day had truly been nightmarish, and this current day promised to be no less an ordeal.

Matthew had himself seen eight more wagons departing Fount Royal. The gate had been opened and closed with a regularity that would have been comical had it not been so tragic. Bidwell had remained in his bedchamber all day. Winston had gone in to see him, as had Dr. Shields, and once Matthew had heard Bidwell's voice raving and raging with a frightful intensity that made one believe all the demons of Hell had ringed his bed to pay their ghastly respects. Perhaps in Bidwell's tortured mind they had.

During the course of the day Matthew had sat at the magistrate's bedside for several hours, reading the book on English plays and attempting to keep his mind from wandering to the Florida country. He was also there to guard against the magistrate finding out what had occurred this morning, as it might cause Woodward deep grief that would sink him again into sickness. The magistrate, though certainly able to communicate more clearly and feeling positive about his chances of improvement, was yet weak and in need of further rest. Dr. Shields had administered three more doses of the powerful medicine, but had been wise enough during his visits not to mention anything that could harm his patient's outlook. The medicine did what it was meant to do: it sent Woodward to the dreamer's land, where he could not know what tumult was taking place in reality.

Fortunately, the magistrate had been asleep—or, rather, drugged—when Bidwell had carried out his raging. In the evening, as darkness called upon Fount Royal and many fewer lamps answered than the night before, Matthew had asked Mrs. Nettles for a deck of cards and played a dozen or so games of five and forty with the magistrate, who was delighted at the chance to challenge his sluggish mind. As they played, Matthew made mention of Woodward's dream of Oxford, and how Johnstone had also seemed to enjoy the recollections.

"Yes, " Woodward had said, studying his cards. "Once an Oxford man... always so."

"Hm." Matthew had decided to let another hand go by before he mentioned the schoolmaster again. "It is a shame about Mr. Johnstone's knee. Being so deformed. But he does get around well, doesn't he?"

A slight smile had crept across the magistrate's mouth. "Matthew, Matthew, " he'd said. "Do you never quit?"

"I'm sorry, sir?"

"Please. I am not... so ill and... weak-minded that I can't see through you. What is this now... about his knee?"

"Nothing, sir. I was just making mention of it, in passing. You did say you saw it, did you not?"

"I did."

"At close quarters?"

"Close enough. I could smell nothing... because of my condition... but I recall that Mr. Winston was... quite repelled... by the odor of Mr. Johnstone's hogsfat liniment."

"But you did clearly view the deformity?"

"Yes, " Woodward had said. "Clearly, and... it was a viewing... I would not care to repeat. Now... may we return to our game?"

Not long after that, Dr. Shields had arrived with the magistrate's third dose of the day, and Woodward had been sleeping calmly ever since.

Matthew had, in the afternoon, taken the opportunity for a quick look into Bidwell's study, so now in the middle of the night he had no problem getting inside. He closed the door behind him and crossed the gold-and-red Persian rug to the large mahogany desk that commanded the room. He sat down in the desk's chair and quietly pulled open the topmost drawer. He found no map there, so he went on to the next drawer. A careful search through papers, wax seals with the scrolled letter B, official-looking documents and the like revealed no map. Neither did the third drawer, nor the fourth and final one.

Matthew stood up, taking his lantern to the study's bookshelves. On the way, the squeal of a loose pinewood floorboard made his flesh crawl. Then he began to methodically move all the leatherbound books one from another, thinking that perhaps the map might be folded up and stored between two of them. Of course, the map might also be folded up inside one of the books, which was going to necessitate a longer search than he'd anticipated.

He was perhaps near midway in his route through the bookshelves when he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. He hesitated, listening more intently. The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and also hesitated. There was a space of time in which neither Matthew nor the person in the hallway moved. Then he heard the footsteps approaching and he saw lantern light in the space between door and floorboards.

Quickly he opened the glass of his own lamp and blew out the flame. He retreated to the protection of the desk and crouched down on the floor.

The door opened. Someone entered, paused for a few seconds, and then the door was closed again. Matthew could see the ruddy glow of the person's lantern upon the walls as it moved from side to side. And then the voice came, but cast low so as not to leave the room: "Mr. Corbett, I know ye just blew out a candle. I can smell it. If you'd show y'self, please?"

He stood up and Mrs. Nettles centered her lamplight on him. "Ye mi' care to know that my own quarters are 'neath this room, " she said. "I heard someone walkin' and 'sumed it must be Mr. Bidwell, as this is his private study."

"Pardon me, I didn't mean to wake you."

"I'm sure you didn't, but I was already waked. I was plan-nin' on comin' up and lookin' in on 'im, since he was in such an awful bad way." She approached him and set the lantern down on the desktop. She wore a somber gray nightcap and a nightgown of similar hue, and on her face was a smoothing of ghastly green-tinted skin cream. Matthew had to believe that if Bidwell saw Mrs. Nettles in this state, he might think a froggish phantasm had crawled from its Hellish swamp. "Your intrusion in this room, " she said sternly, "canna' be excused. What're you doin' in here?"

There was nothing to be done but tell the truth. "I understand from Solomon Stiles that Bidwell has a map of the Florida country, drawn by a French explorer. I thought it might be hidden in this room, either in his desk or on the bookshelves."

Mrs. Nettles made no reply, but simply stared holes through him. "I am not saying I've decided, " Matthew continued. "I'm only saying I wish to see the map, to gain some idea of what the terrain is like."

"It would kill you, " she said. "And the lady too. Does she know what you're wantin'?"

"No."

"Don't ye think askin' her oughta be the first thing, a'fore ye start the plannin'?"

"I'm not planning. I'm only looking."

"Plannin", lookin'... whate'er. Mi' be she doesn't care ta perish in the jaws of a wild beast."

"What, then? She'd rather perish by burning? I think not!"

"Keep your voice reined, " she warned. "Mr. Bidwell mi' be mind-sick, but he's nae ear-deef."

"All right. But... if I were to continue my search for this map... would you leave the room and forget you saw me here? This is my business and my business alone."

"Nae, you're wrong. It's my business too, for it was my urgin' brought you into this. If I'd kept my tongue still, then—"

"Pardon, " Matthew interrupted, "but I must disagree. Your urging, as you put it, simply alerted me to consider that not all was as it seemed in this town. Which, whether you realize it or not, was a grand understatement. I would have had serious doubts as to Rachel's being a witch even if you had been one of the witnesses against her."

"Well then, if her innocence is all so clear to you, why canna' the magistrate see it?"

"A complicated question, " he said. "The answer involves age and life experience... both of which, in this case, seem to be liabilities to cleat thinking. Or rather, I should say, liabilities to thinking beyond the straight furrow in a crooked field, which you so elegantly pointed out on our first meeting. Now: Will you allow me to search for the map?"

"Nae, " she answered. "If you're so all-fired to find it, I'll point it out." She picked up the lantern and directed its glow to the wall behind the desk. "There it hangs."

Matthew looked. Indeed on the wall hung a brown parchment map, stretched by a wooden frame. It was about fifteen inches or so across and ten inches deep, and it was positioned between an oil portrait of a sailing ship and a charcoal drawing of what appeared to be the London dockside. "Oh, " he said sheepishly. "Well... my thanks."

"Best make sure it's what you're needin'. I know it's French, but I've never paid much mind to it." She offered him the lantern.

Matthew found in another moment that it was indeed what he was needing. It actually appeared to be part of a larger map, and displayed the country from perhaps thirty miles north of Fount Royal to the area identified, in faded quill pen, as Le Terre Florida. Between Fount Royal and the Spanish territory the ancient quill had drawn a representation of vast forest, broken here and there by clearings, the meandering of rivers, and a number of lakes. It was a fanciful map, however, as one lake displayed a kraken-like creature and was named by the mapmaker Le Lac de Poisson Monstre. The swamp—identified with symbols of grass and water instead of tree symbols-—that stretched along the coastline all the way from Fount Royal to the Florida country was titled Marais Perfide. And there was an area of swamp in the midst of the forest, some fifty or sixty miles southwest of Fount Royal, that was named Le Terre de Brutalitie.

"Is it he'pful to ye?" Mrs. Nettles asked.

"More daunting than helpful, " Matthew said. "But yes, it does do some good." He had seen what looked to be a clearing in the wilderness ten or twelve miles southwest of Fount Royal that stretched for what might have been—by the strange and skewed dimensions of this map—four miles in length. Another clearing of several miles lay to the south of the first, and in this one was a lake. A third, the largest of the three, was reachable to the southwest. They were like the footprints of some primordial giant, and Matthew thought that if indeed those cleared areas—or at least areas where the wilderness was not so perfide—existed, then they constituted the route of least resistance to the Florida country. Perhaps this was also the "most direct route" Solomon Stiles had mentioned. In any case, it appeared somewhat less tasking than day after day of negotiating unbroken woodland. Matthew also noted the small scratchings of Indien? at three widely separate locations, the nearest being twenty miles or so southwest of Fount Royal. He assumed the question mark indicated a possible sighting of either a live Indian, the discovery of an artifact, or even the sound of tribal drums.

It was not going to be easy. In fact, it would be woefully hard.

Could the Florida country be reached? Yes, it could. By the directions of southwest, south, southwest and the linking together of those less-wooded giant's footprints. But, as he had previously considered, he was certainly no leatherstocking and the merest miscalculation of the sun's angle might lead him and Rachel into the Terre Brutalitie.

Then again, all of it was terre brutalitie, was it not?

It was insane! he thought as the frustration of reality hit him. Absolutely insane! How could he have ever imagined doing such a thing? To be lost in those terrible forests would be death a thousand times over!

He handed the lantern back to Mrs. Nettles. "Thank you, " he said, and he heard the defeated resignation in his voice.

"Aye, " she said as she took the lamp, "it does seem a beast."

"Mote than a beast. It seems impossible."

"You're puttin' it out of mind, then?"

He ran a hand across his brow. "What am I to do, Mrs. Nettles? Can you possibly tell me?"

She shook her head, looking at him with saddened compassion. "I'm sorry, but I canna'."

"No one can, " he said wearily. "No one, except myself. The saying may be that no man is an island... but I feel very much like at least a solitary dominion. Rachel will be led to the stake within thirty hours. I know she is innocent, yet I can do nothing to free her. Therefore... what am I to do, except devise outlandish schemes to teach the Florida country?"

"You are ta forget her, " Mrs. Nettles said. "You are ta go on about your own life, and let the dead be dead."

"That is the sensible response. But part of me will die on Monday morning too. The part that believes in justice. When that dies, Mrs. Nettles, I shall never be worth a damn again."

"You'll recover. Ever'one goes on, as they must."

"Everyone goes on, " he repeated, with a taint of bitter mockery. "Oh, yes. They go on. With crippled spirits and broken ideals, they do go on. And with the passage of years they forget what crippled and broke them. They accept it grandly as they grow older, as if crippling and breaking were gifts from a king. Then those same hopeful spirits and large ideals in younger souls are viewed as stupid, and petty... and things to be crippled and broken, because everyone does go on." He looked into the woman's eyes. "Tell me. What is the point of life, if truth is not worth standing up for? If justice is a hollow shell? If beauty and grace are burnt to ashes, and evil rejoices in the flames? Shall I weep on that day, and lose my mind, or join the rejoicing and lose my soul? Shall I sit in my room? Should I go for a long walk, but where might I go so as not to smell the smoke? Should I just go on, Mrs. Nettles, like everyone else?"

"I think, " she said grimly, "that you do nae have a choice." He had no response for this, which by its iron truth crushed him.

Mrs. Nettles sighed, her face downcast and her shadow thrown huge by the lamplight. "Go ta bed, sir, " she said. "There's nae any more can be done."

He nodded, retrieved his dark lantern, and took the first two steps to the door, then hesitated. "You know... I really thought, for a brief while at least, that I might be able to do it. That I might be able, if I dared hard enough."

"Ta do what, sir?"

"To be Rachel's champion, " he said wistfully. "And when Solomon Stiles told me about the two slaves who'd escaped—the brother and sister—and that they'd nearly reached the Florida country... I thought... it « possible. But it's not, is it? And it never was. Well. I do need to get to bed, don't I?" He felt as if he could sleep for a year, and awaken bearded and forgetful of time. "Good night. Of rather... good morning."

"The brother and sister?" Mrs. Nettles said, with a perplexed expression. "You mean... the two slaves who ran away... oh, I s'pose it must'a been the verra first year."

"That's right. Stiles told me it was the first year."

"Those two got near ta the Florida country? Mr. Corbett, they were but children!"

"Children?"

"Yes sir. Oakley Reeves and his sister, Dulcine. I recall they ran away after their mother died. She was a cook. The boy was all of thirteen, sir, and the girl no older'n twelve."

"What? But... Stiles told me they were put in irons. I assumed they were adults!"

"Oh, they were held in irons, even though the boy was lamed. They were both put on a wagon and taken away. I knew they'd run a piece, but I had nae an idea they'd gotten so far."

"Children, " Matthew repeated. He blinked, stunned by this revelation. "My God. If two children could make it that distance..." He took the lantern from her hand and again studied the French explorer's map, this time with a silent intensity that spoke volumes.

"They were desperate, " Mrs. Nettles said.

"No mote so than I."

"They cared nae if they lived or died."

"I care that Rachel lives. And myself as well."

"I'm sure they had someone helpin' 'em. An older slave, gatherin' what they needed."

"Yes, " Matthew said. "They probably did." He turned toward her, his eyes glittering with fierce resolve. "Would you perform such a function for me, Mrs. Nettles?"

"Nae, I wouldn't!" she answered. "I'm dead set against it!"

"All right, then. Would you betray me if I myself gathered the necessary items? Some of them would be matches and a flint, a knife, clothing and shoes both for myself and Rachel, and a supply of food. I would have to take those items from the household."

Mrs. Nettles did not reply. She scowled, her froggishly green face nothing short of fearsome.

"I ask only of you what you once asked of me, " he said.

"The Lord my witness, I canna' bear ta see ye go on such a folly and lose your young life. And what of the magistrate? Would you abandon him?"

"I thank the same Lord who is your witness that Magistrate Woodward is on the path to recovery. There is nothing I can do to speed his progress."

"But leavin' him like this can ruin it. Have you thought on that?"

"I have. It is a bitter choice to have to make, between the magistrate and Rachel. But that's where I find myself. I intend on writing a letter to him, explaining everything. I must hope that he reads that letter and fully understands my reasoning. If not... then not. But I hope—I believe—the magistrate will."

"Your time. It's awful wee."

"Everything would have to be gathered and readied within twenty-four hours. I want to get her out of there and be gone long before sunrise."

"This is daft!" she said. "How do ye plan on gettin' that key from Green? He won't likely open up the door and let you march in and out!"

"I'll have to give that some thought."

"And how will you go, then? Right through the front gate?"

"No, " Matthew said. "Through the swamp, the same as the slaves."

"Ha! If ye make five miles, you'll have the luck of Angus Mc-Coody!"

"I have no idea who that might be, but I presume it's some personage of fortune in your native land. If it's a blessing, I accept it." He had put his own darkened lantern on the desk and was measuring with the fingers of his free hand the distances involved. "I must have a compass, " he decided. "I'll never find the way without one." A thought came to him. "I would wager Paine owned a compass. I don't think he would mind if I searched his house. Alas, Mrs. Nettles, I shall also have to free this map from its prison."

"Don't tell me such a thing. I don't care ta know."

"Well, I'll leave it alone for the time being. There's no point in advertising my intentions."

"They'll be after you, " she said. "Most likely Mr. Stiles, leadin' the way. They'll hunt ye down quick enough."

"Why should they? Rachel and I have no value to Bidwell. In fact, he may be more pleased to see the last of me than of her. I think he'll send Stiles out to make a quick search, but it will be only rudimentary."

"I say you're mistaken. Mr. Bidwell wants ever'one here ta see her burn."

"I doubt there will be many remaining to watch the display." Matthew removed the candle from his lantern and lit it with hers. Then he returned the lamp to her hand. "After I get Rachel there—to a place of safety, a town or fort or some such—and come back, I'll explain everything to him."

"Hold." Mrs. Nettles regarded him now as if his bell was severely cracked. "What're you sayin'? Come back?"

"That's correct. I'm taking Rachel to the Florida country, but I don't intend to stay. If I can follow the map and compass there, I can follow them back."

"You young fool! They won't let you come back! No, sirrah! Once those Spaniards get their claws on you—an English citizen—they'll ship you right quick ta their own damned land! Oh, they'll treat Rachel fair enough, her bein' a Portuguese, but you they'll parade through their streets like a dancin' monkey!"

"Not if they don't get their claws—as you put it—on me. I said I would take Rachel to some town or fort, but I didn't say I myself would enter it. Oh... one more thing I need to find: a stick, line, and hook I might use for fishing."

"You're a city boy, " she said, shaking het head. "What do ye know of fishin'? Well, that wilderness will cure your insanity soon enough. God help you and that poor woman, and bless your bones when they're a-layin' in a beast's lair chewed ta the marra!"

"A delightful image to sleep upon, Mrs. Nettles. And now I must leave your company, as my day will surely be full." He took his lantern and went to the door, treading lightly.

"A moment, " she said. She stared at the floor, a muscle working in her jaw. "If ye haven't yet considered this... you mi' think to fetch some clothes and the like from her house. All her belonging are still in there, I believe. If you're wantin' an extra pair a' boots... I mi' can he'p you with that."

"Any help would be greatly appreciated."

She looked up sharply at him. "Sleep on this, and think on it again with a clear mind. Hear me?"

"I do. And thank you."

"You ought ta curse me, and thank me only if I put a pan ta the side of your head!"

"That makes me think of breakfast. Would you awaken me promptly at six o'clock? And grant me an extra helping of bacon?"

"Yes, " she said glumly. "Sir."

Matthew left the room and went to his own. He got into bed, extinguished the lantern, and lay on his back in the dark. He heard Mrs. Nettles go along the hallway to Bidwell's room and quietly open the door. There was a period of quiet, during which Matthew could envision the woman lifting her light to check on her sleeping—-and near-mad-—master. Then he heard her walk back along the hall and descend the stairs, after which all was silent again.

He had less than four hours to sleep, so he ought to get to it. There was indeed much to do on the morrow, most of it not only duplicitous but highly dangerous.

How was that key to be gotten from Green? Possibly something would come to him. He hoped. It was vital to find a compass. And clothes and proper shoes for Rachel, as well. Then food must be procured; preferably dried beef, though if it was heavily salted the need for water would increase. He had to write a letter to the magistrate, and that might be the most difficult task of all.

"My God, " he whispered. "What am I about to do?"

At least a hundred and forty miles. On foot. Through a land cruel and treacherous, following a path of least resistance mapped out by a long-dead hand. Down to the Florida country, where he would set his nightbird free. And then back again, alone?

Mrs. Nettles was right. He didn't know a damn thing about fishing.

But he had once survived by his wits for four months at the harbor of Manhattan. He had fought for crumbs, stolen, and scavenged in that urban wilderness. He had endured all manner of hardships, because he had to. The same was true of his trek with the magistrate through the wet woods and across the sodden earth from Shawcombe's tavern. He had kept the magistrate going, when Woodward had wanted to quit and sit down in the muck. And Matthew had done that because he had to.

Two children had nearly made the Florida country. And might have, had not the eldest broken his ankle.

It was possible. It had to be possible. There was no other answer.

But the question remained in his mind, and it disturbed him so much that sleep became more elusive: What am I about to do?

He turned over on his side, curling up like an infant about to be expelled from a womb into the hard reality of life. He was afraid to the very marrow of those bones that Mrs. Nettles predicted would be chewed in a beast's lair. He was afraid, and hot tears born of that fear burned his eyes but he wiped them away before they spilled. He was no champion, no leatherstocking, and no fisherman.

But, by God, he was a survivor, and he intended for Rachel to survive as well.

It was possible. It was. It was. It was. It was.

He would say that to himself a hundred times, but at the rising of the sun and the first cock's crow he would be no less afraid than he was in this merciless dark.

thirty-six

ARE YOU WELL? Truthfully, now." Matthew had been staring out the open window in the magistrate's room, out over the sun-washed roofs and the fount's sparkling blue water. It was mid-afternoon, and he was watching yet another wagon pass through the distant gate. This morning he'd been aware of an almost-continual departure of wagons and oxcarts, their rumbling wheels and thudding animal hooves kicking up a haze of yellow dust that blotted the air around the gate like a perpetual stain. A sad sight had been that of Robert Bidwell, his wig dusty and his shirttail hanging out, as he stood on Harmony Street pleading with his citizens to remain in their homes. At last Winston and Johnstone had led him away to Van Gundy's tavern, even though it was the Sabbath. Van Gundy himself had loaded his belongings—included that wretched gittern—and quit Fount Royal. Matthew assumed that a few bottles still stocked the tavern, and in them Bidwell was seeking to lessen the agony of his perceived failure.

Matthew would have been surprised if any less than sixty persons had departed Fount Royal since dawn. Of course the threat of meeting nightfall between here and Charles Town had choked off the flow as the day progressed, but obviously there were those who preferred to risk the night journey rather than spend another eve in a witch-haunted town. Matthew predicted a similar flight at tomorrow's sunrise, notwithstanding the fact that it was Rachel's execution morn, since by the declaration so cleverly written in Lancaster's house, every neighbor might be a servant of Satan.

Today the church had been empty, but Exodus Jerusalem's camp had been full of terrified citizens. Matthew mused that Jerusalem must have thought he'd truly found himself a gold-pot. The preacher's braying voice had risen and fallen like the waves of a storm-whipped sea, and also rising and falling in accord had been the frenzied cries and shrieks of his fear-drowned audience.

"Matthew? Are you well?" Woodward asked again, from his bed.

"I was just thinking, " Matthew said. "That... even though the sun shines brightly, and the sky is clear and blue... it is a very ugly day." So saying, he closed the shutters, which he had only opened a minute or two before. Then he returned to his chair at the magistrate's bedside and sat down.

"Has something..." Woodward paused, as his voice was still frail. His throat was again in considerable pain and his bones ached, but he wished not to mention such worrisome things to Matthew on the eve of the witch's death. "Has something happened? My ears seem stopped up, but... I think I have heard wagon wheels... and much commotion."

"A few citizens have decided to leave town, " Matthew explained, deliberately keeping his tone casual. "I suspect it has something to do with the burning. There was an unfortunate scene in the street, when Mr. Bidwell stationed himself to try to dissuade their departure."

"Was he successful?"

"No, sir."

"Ah. That poor soul. I feel for him, Matthew." Woodward leaned his head back on his pillow. "He has done his best... and the Devil has done his worst."

"Yes, sir, I agree."

Woodward turned his face so he had a good view of his clerk. "I know we have not been in agreement... on very much of late. I regret that any harsh words were spoken."

"As do I."

"I know also... how you must be feeling. The despondence and despair. Because you still believe her to be innocent. Am I correct?"

"You are, sir."

"Is there nothing... I can say or do to change your mind?"

Matthew offered him a slight smile. "Is there nothing I can say or do to change yours?"

"No, " Woodward said firmly. "And I suspect that... we might never come to common ground on this." He sighed, his expression pained. "You will disagree, of course... but I appeal to you... to lay aside your obvious emotion and consider the facts as I did. I made my decree... based on those facts, and those facts alone. Not based on the accused's physical beauty... or her prowess at twisting words... or her misused intelligence. The facts, Matthew. I had no choice... but to pronounce her guilty, and to sentence her to such a death. Can you not understand?"

Matthew didn't reply, but instead stared at his folded hands.

"No one ever told me, " Woodward said softly, "that... being a judge would be easy. In fact... I was promised... by my own mentor that it would be an iron cloak... once put on, impossible to remove. I have found it doubly true. But... I have tried to be fair, and I have tried to be correct. What more can I do?"

"Nothing more, " Matthew said.

"Ah. Then perhaps... we might return to common ground after all. You will understand these things so much better... after you wear the iron cloak yourself."

"I don't believe I ever shall, " came Matthew's answer, before he could guard his speech.

"You say that now... but it is your youth and despair speaking. Your affronted sense of... what is right and wrong. You are looking at the dark side of the moon, Matthew. The execution of a prisoner... is never a happy occasion, no matter the crime." He closed his eyes, his strength draining away. "But what joy... what relief... when you are able to discover the truth... and set an innocent person free. That alone... justifies the iron cloak. You will see... all in God's time."

A tap at the door announced a visitor. Matthew said, "Who is it?"

The door opened. Dr. Shields stood on the threshold, holding his medical bag. Matthew had noted that since the murder of Nicholas Paine, the doctor's countenance had remained gaunt and hollow-eyed, much as Matthew had found him at the infirmary. In truth, the doctor appeared to Matthew to be laboring under an iron cloak of his own, as Shields's moist face was milk-pale, his eyes watery and red-rimmed beneath the magnifying lenses of his spectacles. "Pardon my intrusion, " he said. "I've brought the magistrate's afternoon dose."

"Come in, doctor, come in!" Woodward pulled himself up to a sitting position, eager for a taste of that healing tonic.

Matthew got up from his chair and moved away so Dr. Shields might administer the dose. The doctor had already this morning been cautioned again—as yesterday—not to mention the events transpiring in Fount Royal, which he had the good sense not to do even if he hadn't been cautioned. He agreed with Matthew that, though the magistrate appealed to be gaining strength, it was yet wise not to pressure his health with the disastrous news.

When the dose had been swallowed and Woodward settled again to await the oncoming of precious sleep, Matthew followed Dr. Shields out into the hallway and closed the magistrate's door.

"Tell me, " Matthew said in a guarded tone. "Your best and honest opinion: When will the magistrate be able to travel?"

"He does improve daily." Shields's spectacles had slipped down his beak, and he pushed them up again. "I am very pleased with his response to the tonic. If all goes well... I would say two weeks."

"What do you mean, 'if all goes well'? He's out of danger, isn't he?"

"His condition was very serious. Life-threatening, as you well know. To say he's out of danger is an oversimplification."

"I thought you were so pleased with his response to the tonic."

"I am, " Shields said forcefully. "But I must tell you something about that tonic. I created it myself from what I had at hand. I purposefully strengthened it as much as I dared, to encourage the body to increase its blood flow and thereby—"

"Yes, yes, " Matthew interrupted. "I know all that about the stagnant blood. What of the tonic?"

"It is... how shall I say this... an extreme experiment. I've never before administered that exact mixture, in so powerful a dosage."

Matthew had an inkling now of what the doctor was getting at. He said, "Go on."

"The tonic was mixed strong enough to make him feel better. To lessen his pain. To... reawaken his natural healing processes."

"In other words, " Matthew said, "it's a powerful narcotic that gives him the illusion of well-being?"

"The word powerful is... uh... an understatement, I fear. The correct term might be Herculean."

"Then without this tonic he would regress to the state he was in before?"

"I can't say. I do know for certain that his fever is much reduced and his breathing greatly freed. The condition of his throat has also improved. So: I have done what you required of me, young man. I have brought the magistrate back from death's door... at the penalty of his being dependent on the tonic."

"Which means, " Matthew said grimly, "that the magistrate is also dependent on the tonic's maker. Just in case I might wish to pursue you in the future for the murder of Nicholas Paine."

Shields flinched at this, and pressed a finger to his mouth to request that Matthew regulate his volume. "No, you're wrong, " he said. "I swear it. That had nothing to do with my mixing the tonic. As I said, I used what was at hand, in a strength I judged sufficient for the task. And as for Paine... if you'd please not mention him again to me? In fact, I demand you do not."

Matthew had seen what might have been a blade-twist of agony in the doctor's eyes, a fleeting thing that had been pushed down as quickly as it had appeared. "All right, then, " he said. "What's to be done?"

"I am planning, after the execution, to begin watering the dosage. There will still be three cups a day, but one of them will be half strength. Then, if all goes well, we shall cut a second cup to half strength. Isaac is a strong man, with a strong constitution. I am hopeful his body will continue to improve by its own processes."

"You're not going back to the lancet and blister cups, are you?"

"No, we have crossed those bridges."

"What about taking him to Charles Town? Could he stand the trip?"

"Possibly. Possibly not. I can't say."

"Nothing more can be done for him?"

"Nothing, " Shields said. "It is up to him... and to God. But he does feel better and he does breathe easier. He can communicate, and he is comfortable. These days... with the medicines I have on hand... I would say that is a miracle of sorts."

"Yes, " Matthew said. "I agree, of course. I... didn't wish to sound ungrateful for what you've done. I believe that under the circumstances you've performed with admirable skill."

"Thank you, sir. Perhaps in this case there was more luck involved than skill... but I have done my best."

Matthew nodded. "Oh... have you finished your examination of Linch's body?"

"I have. I calculate from the thickness of blood that he had been dead some five to seven hours before discovery. His throat wound was the most glaring, but he was also stabbed twice in the back. It was a downward thrust, both stabs piercing his lung on the right side."

"So he was stabbed by someone standing behind and over him?"

"It would appear so. Then I believe his head was pulled backward and the throat wound administered."

"He must have been sitting at his desk, " Matthew said. "Talking to whoever killed him. Then, when he lay dying on the floor, the slash marks were applied."

"Yes, by Satan's claws. Or by the claws of some unknown demon."

Matthew was not going to argue the matter with Dr. Shields. Instead, he changed the subject. "And what of Mr. Bidwell? Has he recovered?"

"Sadly, no. He sits at the tavern with Winston as we speak, getting drunker than I've ever seen him. I can't blame him. Everything is crumbling around him, and with more witches yet to be identified... the town will soon be empty. I slept last night—the little I did sleep—with a Bible at both ends of my bed and a dagger in my hand."

Matthew's thought was that Shields could use a lancet with far deadlier effect than a dagger. "You needn't fear. The damage has been done, and there's no need for the fox now to do anything but wait."

"The fox? Satan, you mean?"

"I mean what I said. Pardon me, doctor. I have some things to tend to."

"Certainly. I shall see you later this evening."

Matthew retired to his room. He drank a cup of water and picked up the ebony-wood compass he'd found in Paine's house early this morning. It was a splendid instrument, the size of his palm, with a blued steel needle on a printed paper card indicating the degrees of direction. He'd realized the compass was a prime example of the process of magnetism, the needle having been magnetized—by a method he didn't fully understand—so as to point north.

Matthew had made other discoveries in Paine's bloodless house, not including the body-sized area of floorboards that had been pulled up and then hastily laid down again underneath the pallet. A brown cotton bag with a shoulder strap served to hold his other finds: a knife with a seven-inch-long blade and an ivory handle; a buckskin bladesheath and waistbelt; and a pair of knee-high boots that could be made useable by an inch of padding at the toes. He also found Paine's pistol and the wheel-lock spanner, but as he knew absolutely nothing about loading, preparing, and firing the temperamental weapon, its use would probably result in his shooting himself in the head.

Matthew had much to do, now that he'd decided.

Near midday, his decision—which up until that point had been wavering—was made solid. He had walked to the execution field and actually gone fight up to the pyre and the stake. He'd stood there imagining the horror of it, yet his imagination was not so deranged as to permit him a full and complete picture. He could not save Fount Royal, but at least he might cheat the fox of Rachel's life.

It was possible, and he was going to do it.

He had been on his way to the gaol, to inform Rachel, when his steps had slowed. Of course she needed to know beforehand... or did she? If his resolve failed tonight, should she be waiting in the dark for a champion who never arrived? If he tried with all his intelligence and might and could not get the key from Green, should Rachel be waiting, hopeful of freedom?

No. He would spare her that torment. He had turned away from the gaol, long before he'd reached its door.

Now, in his room, Matthew sat down in his chair with the document box. He opened it and arranged before him three clean sheets of paper, a quill, and the inkpot.

He spent a moment arranging his thoughts as well. Then he began writing.

Dear Isaac:

By now you have discovered that I have taken Rachel from the gaol. I regret any distress this action may cause you, but I have done such because I know her to be innocent yet I cannot offer proof.

It is my knowledge that Rachel has been the pawn in a scheme designed to destroy Fount Royal. This was done by a manipulation of the mind called "animal magnetism" which I understand will be as much of a puzzle to you as it was to me. Fount Royal's ratcatcher was not who he appeared to be, but indeed was a master at this process of manipulation. He had the ability to paint pictures in the air, as it were. Pictures that would seem to be true to life, except for the lack of several important details such as I have pointed out in our conversations. Alas, I have no proof of this. I learned Linch's true identity from Mr. David Smythe, of the Red Bull Players, who knew him from a—

Matthew stopped. This sounded like utter madness! What was the magistrate going to think when he read these ramblings! Go on he told himself. Just go on.

—circus in England several years ago; I do not wish to ramble any further and alarm you. Suffice it to say I was devastated when Mr. Smythe and the players left town, as he was my last hope at proving Rachel guiltless.

I have a great concern for the safety of Mr. Bidwell. The person who murdered Linch did so before that true identity could be revealed. That same person has been behind the scheme to destroy Fount Royal all along. I believe I know the reason, but as I have no proof it matters not. Now about Mr. Bidwell's safety: if Fount Royal is not soon totally abandoned, Mr. Bidwell's life may be in jeopardy. To save himself, he may have to leave his creation. I am sorry to pass this news on, but it is vital that Mr. Winston remain at Mr. Bidwell's side day and night. I do trust Mr. Winston.

Please believe me, sir, when I tell you I am neither out of my mind nor bewitched. However, I cannot and will not bear to see justice so brutally raped. I am taking Rachel to the Florida country, where she might proclaim herself a runaway slave or English captive and thereby receive sanctuary by the Spanish.

Yes, I can hear your bellow, sir. Please calm yourself and let me explain. I plan on returning. When, I do not know. What will happen to me when I do return, I do not know either. It will be your judgment, and I bow before your mercy. At the same time, I would hope that Mr. Smythe might be found and encouraged to speak, as he will make everything clear to you. And, sir, this is very important: make certain you ask Mr. Smythe to explain why his family left the circus. You will understand much.

As I said, I do plan on returning. I am an English subject, and I do not wish to give up that privilege.

Matthew paused. He had to think about the next part.

Sir, if by some chance or the decision of God that I should not return, I wish to here and now thank you for your intercession in my life. I wish to thank you for your lessons, your labors, and—

Go on, he told himself.

—your love. Perhaps you did not come to the almshouse that day in search of a son. Nevertheless, you found one.

Or, more accurately, sir, you crafted one. I would like to think that I made as good a son as Thomas might have been. You see, sir, you have been a magnificent success at crafting a human being, if 1 may speak so grandly of myself. You have given me what I consider to be the greatest gifts: that of self-worth and a knowledge of the worth of others.

It is because I understand such worth that I choose to free Rachel from her prison and her unjust fate. No one has made this decision but myself. When I go to the gaol tonight to free her, she will be unaware of my intentions.

There is no way you could have known that Rachel was not guilty. You have steadfastly followed the rules and tenets of law as outlined for cases of this nature. Therefore you came to the only conclusion available to you, and performed the necessary action. In doing what I have done this night, I have put on my own iron cloak and performed the only action available to me.

I suppose that is everything I need to say. I will close by saying that I wish you good health, a long life, and excellent fortunes, sir. I intend to see you again, at some future date. Again, please attend to Mr. Bidwell's safety. ■

I remain Sincerely Your Servant, Matthew—

He was about to sign his last name, but instead he made one final dot.

Matthew.

Folding the pages carefully, he slid them into an envelope he'd taken from the desk in Bidwell's study. He wrote on the front of the envelope To Magistrate Woodward, then he lit a candle and sealed the letter with a few drops of white wax.

It was done.

The evening crept up, as evenings will. In the fading purple twilight, with the last bold artist's stroke of red sun painting the bellies of clouds across the western horizon, Matthew took a lantern and went walking.

Though his pace was leisurely, he had a purpose other than taking in a sunset view of the dying town. He had at dinner inquired of Mrs. Nettles where Hannibal Green lived, and had been directed to it by a single clipped and disapproving sentence. The small whitewashed house stood on Industry Street, very near the intersection and the fount. Thankfully it wasn't as far down the street as Jerusalem's firelit camp, from which hollering and shrill lamentations issued forth to hold back the devils of night. To the right of Green's house was a neatly arranged garden of flowers and herbs, indicating either that the giant gaol-keeper was a man of varied interests or he was graced with a wife who had—yes, it was true—a green thumb.

The shutters were cracked open only a few inches. Yellow lamplight could be seen within. Matthew had noticed that the shutters of most of the still-occupied houses were closed, presumably on this warm evening to guard against the invasion of those same demons Reverend Jerusalem currently flailed. The streets were all but deserted, save for a few wandering dogs and the occasional figure hurrying from here to there. Matthew also couldn't fail to note the alarming number of wagons that were packed with furniture, household goods, baskets, and the like, in preparation for a sunrise departure. He wondered how many families would lie on bare floors tonight, restless until the dawn.

Matthew stood in the middle of Industry Street and looked from Green's house toward Bidwell's mansion, studying the windows that could be seen from this perspective. Then, satisfied with his findings, he walked back the way he'd come.

Winston and Bidwell were in the parlor when he arrived, the former reading over figures in a ledgerbook while the latter slumped gray-faced in a chair, his eyes closed and an empty bottle on the floor beside him. Matthew approached with the intention to ask how Bidwell was feeling but Winston lifted a hand in warning, his expression telling Matthew that the master of Fount Royal would not be pleased to awaken and set eyes upon him. Matthew retreated and quietly climbed the stairs.

When he entered his room, he found on his dresser a package wrapped in white waxed paper. Opening it he discovered a loaf of dense dark bread, a fist-sized chunk of dried beef, a dozen slices of salted ham, and four sausages. Matthew saw also that on his bed lay three candles, a package of matches and a flint, a corked glass bottle filled with water, and—lo and behold—a coil of cat-gut line with a small lead ballweight and a hook already tied, a small bit of cork pressed onto the sharp point. Mrs. Nettles had done all she could; it was up to him to find the stick.

Later that night, Dr. Shields arrived to give the magistrate his third dose. Matthew remained in his room, lying on the bed with his gaze directed to the ceiling. Perhaps an hour after that, the sound of Bidwell's intoxicated raging came up the stairs along with the sound of his footsteps and those of the person—two persons, it sounded to be—assisting him. Matthew heard Rachel's name hurled like a curse, and God's name taken in vain. Bidwell's voice gradually quieted, until at last it faded to nothing.

The house slept, fitfully, on this execution eve.

Matthew waited. Finally, when there were no more noises for a long while and his inner clock sensed the midnight hour had been passed, Matthew drew a breath, exhaled it, and stood up.

He was terrified, but he was ready.

He struck a match, lit his lantern, and put it on the dresser, then he soaped his face and shaved. It had occurred to him that his next opportunity to do so would be several weeks in the future. He used the chamberpot, and then he washed his hands and put on a clean pair of brown stockings, sand-colored breeches, and a fresh white shirt. He tore up another pair of stockings and padded the boot toes. He worked his feet into the boots and pulled them up snugly around his calves. In his bag, grown necessarily heavy with the food and other items, he packed the soap-cake and a change of clothes. He placed the explanatory letter on his bed, where it would be seen. Then he slipped the bag's strap over his shoulder, picked up the lantern, and quietly opened the door.

A feeling of panic struck him. I can yet change my mind, he thought. I can step back two paces, shut the door and—Forget? No.

Matthew shut the door behind him when he entered the hallway. He went into the magistrate's room and lit the double-candled lantern he had earlier brought there from downstairs. Opening the shutters, he set the lantern on the windowsill.

The magistrate made a muffled noise. Not of pain, simply some statement in the justice hall of sleep. Matthew stood beside the bed, looking down at Woodward's face and seeing not the magistrate but the man who had come to that almshouse and delivered him to a life he never would have imagined.

He almost touched Woodward's shoulder with a fond embrace, but he stayed his hand. Woodward was breathing well, if rather harshly, his mouth partway open. Matthew gave a quick and silent prayer that God would protect the good man's health and fortunes, and then there was no more time for lingering.

In Bidwell's study, that damned floorboard squealed again and almost sent Matthew out of his stolen boots. He lifted the map from its nail on the wall, carefully removed it from its frame and then folded it and put it down into his bag.

Downstairs—after an agonizingly slow descent meant to avoid any telltale thumps and squeaks that might bring Bidwell staggering out into the hallway—Matthew paused in the parlor to shine his lantern on the face of the mantel clock. It was near quarter to one.

He left the mansion, closed the door, and without a backward glance set off under a million stars. He kept the lantern low at his side, and shielded by his body in case the gate watchman—if indeed there remained in town anyone brave or foolish enough to sit up there all night—might happen to spy the moving flame and set off a bell-ringing alarm.

At the intersection he turned onto Truth Street and proceeded directly to the Howarth house. It was wretched in its abandonment, and made even more fearsome by the fact that Daniel Howarth had been found brutally murdered nearby. As Matthew opened the door and crossed the threshold, shining the lantern before him, he couldn't help but wonder that a ghost with a torn throat should be wandering within, forever searching for Rachel.

Ghosts there were none, but the rats had moved in. The gleam of red eyes and rodent teeth glittering under twitching whiskers greeted him, though he was certainly not a welcome guest. The rats scurried for their holes, and though Matthew had seen only five or six it sounded as if a duke's army of them festered the walls. He searched for and found the floorboard that had been lifted up to display the hidden poppets, and then he followed the lantern's glow into another room that held a bed. Its sheets and blanket were still crumpled and lying half on the floor from the March morning when Rachel was taken away.

Matthew found a pair of trunks, one containing Daniel's clothing and the other for Rachel's. He chose two dresses for her, both with long hems and full sleeves, as that was both the fashion and her favor. One dress was of a cream-colored, light material that he thought would be suitable for travelling in warm weather, and the other a stiffer dark blue printed material that impressed him as being of sturdy all-purpose use. At the bottom of the trunk were two pairs of Rachel's no-nonsense black shoes. Matthew put a pair of the shoes into his bag, the garments over his arm, and gladly left the sad, broken house to its current inhabitants.

His next destination was the gaol. He didn't go inside yet, however. There was still a major obstacle to deal with, and its name was Hannibal Green. Pinpricks of sweat had formed on his cheeks and forehead, and his insides had jellied at the thought of what could go wrong with his plan.

He left the garments and the shoulderbag in the knee-high grass beside the gaol. If all went as he hoped, he wouldn't be gone long enough for any rodent to find and investigate the package of food. Then he set his mind to the task ahead and began walking to Green's house.

As he went west on Truth Street he glanced quickly around and behind, just as a matter of reassurance—and suddenly he stopped in his tracks, his heart giving a vicious kick. He stood staring behind him, toward the gaol.

A light. Not there now, but he thought he'd seen a very brief glow there on the right side of the street, perhaps seventy or eighty feet away.

He paused, waiting, his heart slamming so hard he feared Bidwell might hear it and think a night-travelling drum corps had come to town.

If a light had indeed been displayed, it was gone. Or hidden when someone carrying it had dodged behind the protection of a hedge or wall, he thought grimly.

And another thought came to him, this one with dark consequences: had a citizen seen the flame of his lantern and emerged from a house to follow him? He realized someone might think he was either Satan incarnate or a lesser demon, prowling Fount Royal for another victim here in the dead of night. A single pistol shot would end his plans and possibly his life, but a single shout would have the same effect.

He waited. The urge to blow out his lamp was upon him, but that might truly be an admittance of foul deeds in progress. He scanned the dark. No further light appeared, if it had been there at all.

Time was passing. He had to continue his task. Matthew went on, from time to time casting a backward glance but seeing no evidence that he was being tracked. Presently he found himself in front of Green's house.

Now was the moment of truth. If he failed in the next few moments, everything would be ended.

He swallowed down a lump of fear and approached the door. Then, before he could lose his nerve, he balled up his fist and knocked.

thirty-seven

WHO... WHO'S THERE?" Matthew was taken aback. Green actually sounded frightened. Such was the double power of murder and fear, to imprison persons inside their own homes.

"It's Matthew Corbett, sir, " he said, emboldened by the tremor in Green's voice. "I have to speak with you."

"Corbett? My Lord, boy! Do you know the hour?"

"Yes, sir, I do." And here was the beginning of the necessary lie. "I've been sent by Magistrate Woodward." Amazing, how such a falsehood could roll off a desperate tongue!

A woman's voice spoke within, the sound muffled, and Green answered her with, "It's that magistrate's clerk! I'll have to open it!" A latch was thrown and the door cracked. Green looked out, his red mane wild and his beard a fright. When he saw that it was only Matthew standing there and not an eight-foot-tall demon he opened the door wider. "What's the need, boy?"

Matthew saw a rotund but not unpleasant-looking woman standing in the room behind him. She was holding a lantern in one hand and the other arm cradled a wide-eyed, red-haired child two or three years of age. "The magistrate wishes to have Madam Howarth brought before him."

"What? Now?"

"Yes, now." Matthew glanced around; no other lights had appeared in the houses surrounding Green's, which was either a testament to fear or the fact that they had been abandoned.

"She'll be led to the stake in three or four hours!"

"That's why he wishes to see her now, to offer her a last chance for confession. It's a necessary part of the law." Again, an able-tongued lie. "He's waiting for her." Matthew motioned toward Bidwell's mansion.

Green scowled, but he took the bait. He emerged from his house, wearing a long gray nightshirt. He looked in the direction of the mansion and saw the light in the upstairs window.

"He would have preferred to go to the gaol, but he's too ill, " Matthew explained. "Therefore I'm to accompany you to the gaol to remove the prisoner, and from there we shall escort her to the magistrate."

Green was obviously dismayed at this request, but since he was the gaol-keeper and this was official business he could not refuse. "All right, then, " he said. "Give me a minute to dress."

"A question for you, please, " Matthew said before Green could enter the house again. "Can you tell me if the watchtowers are manned tonight?"

Green snorted. "Would you sit up there tonight, alone, so somethin' might swoop in and get you like Linch was got? Every man, woman and child in Fount Royal—left in Fount Royal, I mean to say—are huddled in their houses behind latched doors and closed shutters!"

"I thought as much, " Matthew said. "It's a shame, then, that you should have to leave your wife and child alone. Undefended, I mean. But then again, it is an official request."

Green looked stricken. He rumbled, "Yes, it is. So there's no use jawin' about it."

"Well... I might make a suggestion, " Matthew offered. "This is a very precarious time, I know. Therefore you might give me the key, and I'll take Madam Howarth to the magistrate. She'll probably not need to be returned to her cell before the execution hour. Of course, I wouldn't care to face her without a pistol or sword. Do you have either?"

Green stared him in the face. "Hold a minute, " he said. "I've heard talk you were sweet on the witch."

"You have? Well... yes, it was true. Was true. She blinded me to her true nature while I was imprisoned with her. But I've since realized—with the magistrate's help—the depth of her powers."

"There are some who say you might be turned to a demon, " Green said. "Lucretia Vaughan spoke such at the reverend's camp on the Sabbath."

"Oh... did she?" That damned woman!

"Yes, and that you might be in league with the witch. And Reverend Jerusalem said he knew you to be desirous of her body."

It was very difficult for Matthew to maintain a calm expres-sion, when inside he was raging. "Mr. Green, " he said, "it was I who delivered the execution decree to the witch. If I were truly a demon, I would have entranced the magistrate to prevent him from finding her guilty. I had every opportunity to do so."

"The reverend said it could'a been you made Woodward sick, hopin' he'd die 'fore he could speak the decree."

"Was I the central subject of the reverend's rantings? If so, I should at least ask for a percentage of the coin he made off my name!"

"The central subject was the Devil, " Green said. "And how we're to get out of this town still wearin' our skins."

"After the reverend is done, you'll still have your skins, but your wallets will be missing." He was wandering from the point of his mission, and doing himself no good. "But please... there is the magistrate's request to consider. As I said, if you'll give me the key, I might—"

"No, " Green interrupted. "Much as I despise to leave my home, the prisoner's my charge, and no hand shall unlock her cage but my own. Then I'll escort the both of you to the magistrate."

"Well... Mr. Green... I think that, in light of the reason to stay and defend your—" But Matthew was left talking to the air, as the giant gaol-keeper turned and entered his house.

His plan, tenuous at best, had already begun unravelling. Obviously Green was wary of Matthew's intentions. Also, the red-bearded monolith was faithful to duty even to the point of leaving his wife and child on this Satan-haunted eve. The man was to be commended, if Matthew wasn't so busy cursing him.

In a few moments Green emerged again, wearing his nightshirt over his breeches and heavy-soled boots on his feet. Around his neck was the leather cord and two keys. He carried a lantern in his left hand and his right paw brandished, to Matthew's great discomfort, a sword that might be used to behead an ox. "Remember, " he said to his wife, "keep this door latched! And if anyone even tries to get in, let out the loudest holler your lungs ever birthed!" He closed the door, she latched it, and he said to Matthew, "All right, off with you! You walk ahead!"

It was time, Matthew thought, for his second plan.

The only problem was that there was no second plan. He led Green toward the gaol. He didn't look but, from the way the flesh on the back of his neck crawled, he assumed Green kept the sword's point aimed at it. The barking of a dog further up on Harmony Street caused a second canine to reply from Industry, which Matthew knew would be no soothing melody to Green's nerves.

"Why wasn't I told about this?" Green asked, as they approached the gaol. "If it is such a necessary part of the law. Couldn't it have been done in daylight?"

"The law states the accused in a witchcraft trial shall be afforded the opportunity for confession no more than six hours and no less than two hours before execution. It is called the law of... um... confessiato." If Jerusalem could get away with his rite of sanctimonity, Matthew figured he might employ a similar stratagem. "Usually the magistrate would visit the accused's cell in the company of a clergyman, but in this case it is impossible."

"Yes, that makes sense, " Green admitted. "But still... why wasn't I told to expect it?"

"Mr. Bidwell was supposed to inform you. Didn't he?"

"No. He's been ill."

"Well, " Matthew said with a shrug, "there you have it."

They entered the gaol, Matthew still leading. Rachel spoke to the lights instead of the persons carrying them, her voice wan and resigned to her fate. "Is it time?"

"Almost, madam, " Matthew said stiffly. "The magistrate wishes to see you, to allow you opportunity for confession."

"For confession?" She stood up. "Matthew, what's this about?"

"I suggest you be silent, witch, for your own good. Mr. Green, open the cell." He stepped aside, feverishly trying to think of what he was going to do when the key had turned.

"You step over there, away from me, " Green instructed, and Matthew did.

Rachel came to the bars, her face and hair dirty, her amber eyes piercing him. "I asked you a question. What is this about?"

"It is about your life after you leave this place, witch. Your af-tetlife, in a faraway realm. Now please hold your tongue."

Green slid the key into its lock, turned it, and opened the cage's door. "All right. Come out." Rachel hesitated, gripping the bats. "It's the law of confessiassho! Come on, the magistrate's waitin'!"

Matthew's mind was racing. He saw the two buckets in Rachel's cell, one for drinking water and the other for bodily functions. Well, it wasn't much but it was all he could think of. "By God!" he said, "I think the witch wants to defy us, Mr. Green! I think she refuses to come out!" He stabbed an urgent finger at her, motioning toward the rear of the cell. "Will you come out, witch, or shall we drag you?"

"I don't..."

"By God, Mr. Green! She's defying the magistrate, even at this final hour! Will you come out, or will you make things difficult?" He added the emphasis on the last three words, and he saw that Rachel was still puzzled but she'd realized what he wanted her to do. She retreated from the bars, stopping only when her back met the wall.

"Matthew?" she said. "What game is this?"

"A game you will regret, madam! And don't think speaking so familiarly to me shall prevent Mr. Green from going in there and dragging you out! Mr. Green, have at it!"

Green didn't budge. He leaned on his sword. "I ain't goin' in there and risk gettin' my eyeballs scratched out. Or worse. You want her so bloody bad, you go get her."

Matthew felt the wind leave his sails. This was becoming a farce worthy of a drunken playwright's most fevered scribblings. "Very well then, sir." He clenched his teeth and held out his hand. "Your sword, please?"

Green's eyes narrowed. "I'll go in and drag her out, " Matthew pressed on, "but you don't expect me to enter a tiger's den without a weapon, do you? Where's your Christian mercy?"

Green said nothing, and did not move. "Matthew?" Rachel said. "What's this—"

"Hush, witch!" Matthew answered, his gaze locked with the giant's.

"Ohhhhh, no." A half-smile slipped across Green's mouth. "No, sirrah. I ain't givin' up my sword. You must think me a proper fool, if you'd believe I'd let it out of my hand."

"Well, someone has got to go in there and pull her out! It seems to me it should be the man with the sword!" By now Matthew was a human sweatpond. Still Green hesitated. Matthew said, with an exasperated air, "Shall I go to the magistrate and tell him the execution will be postponed because the law of confessiato cannot be applied?"

"She doesn't care to confess!" Green said. "The magistrate can't force her to!"

"That's not the point. The law says..." Think, think! "... the accused must be afforded an opportunity, in the presence of a magistrate, whether they want to confess or not. Go on, please! We're wasting time!"

"That's a damn ridiculous law, " Green muttered. "Sounds just like somethin' from a bunch of highwigs." He aimed his sword at Rachel. "All right, witch! If you won't move on your own will, you'll move at a prick on your arse!" Sweat glistening on his face, he entered the cell.

"Look how she steps back!" Quickly, Matthew set his lantern on the floor and entered directly behind him. "Look how she hugs the wall! Defiant to a fault!"

"Come on!" Green stopped, motioning with the sword. "Out with you, damn it!"

"Don't let her make a fool of you!" Matthew insisted. He looked down at the buckets and made the choice of the one that was about half-full of water. "Go on!"

"Don't rush me, boy!" Green snapped. Rachel had slid away from him along the wall toward the bars of the cell Matthew had occupied during his incarceration. Green went after her, but cautiously, the lantern in his left hand and the sword in his right.

Matthew picked up the water bucket. Oh God, he thought. Now or never!

"I don't want to draw blood, " Green warned Rachel as he neared her, "but if I have to I'll—"

Matthew said sharply, "Look here, Mr. Green!"

The giant gaol-keeper whipped his head around. Matthew was already moving. He took two steps and flung the water into Green's face.

It hit the behemoth directly, blinding him for an instant but an instant of blindness was all Matthew had wanted. He followed the water by swinging the empty bucket at Green's head. Wham! went the sound of the blow, wood against skull, and skull won. The sturdy bucket fairly burst to pieces on impact, leaving Matthew gripping the length of rope that had served as its handle.

Green staggered backward, past Rachel as she scrambled aside. He dropped the lantern and collided with the bars with a force that made the breath whoosh from his lungs. His eyes had rolled back in his head. The sword slipped from his fingers.

Then Green toppled to his knees in the straw, the floor trembling as he hit.

"Have you... have you gone mad?" was all Rachel could think to say.

"I'm getting you out of here." Matthew bent, picked up the sword—a heavy beast—and pushed it between the bars into the next cell.

"Getting me... out? What're you—?"

"I'm not going to let you burn, " he said, turning to face her. "I have clothes for you, and supplies. I'm taking you to the Florida country."

"The... Florida..." She stepped back, and Matthew thought she might fall as Green had. "You... must be mad!"

"The Spanish will give you sanctuary there, if you pass yourself as a runaway slave or English captive. Now, I really don't think we have time to debate this, as I have crossed my own personal point of no return."

"But... why are you—"

She was interrupted by a groan from the awakening gaol-keeper, who was still on his knees. Matthew looked at Green in alarm and saw his eyes fluttering. Then, suddenly, Green's bloodshot eyes opened wide. They darted from Matthew to Rachel and back again—and then Green's mouth opened to deliver a yell that would awaken not only Fount Royal but the sleepers in Charles Town.

In a heartbeat, Matthew grabbed up a double-handful of straw and jammed it deeply into Green's mouth even as the yell began its exit. Perhaps a syllable escaped before the straw did its work. Green began to gag and choke, and Matthew followed the act with a blow to the gaol-keeper's face that seemed to do not a whit of damage except to Matthew's knuckles. Then, still dazed and his voice unavailable, Green grasped the front of Matthew's shirt and his left forearm, lifted him off the floor like one of the demonic poppets, and flung him against the wall.

Now it was Matthew's turn to lose his breath as he crashed against the timbers. He slid down to the floor, his ribs near caved in, and saw through a haze of pain that Green was reaching through the bars to grasp the sword's handle, bits of straw flying around his face as he tried to cough the stuff out. Green's fingers closed on the weapon, and he began drawing it toward himself.

Matthew looked at Rachel, who was still too stunned at this turn of events to react. Then he saw the wooden bench beside her, and he hauled himself up.

Green almost had the sword pulled through. His large hand, clasping the sword's grip, had lodged between the bars. He gave a mighty heave, near tearing the flesh from his paw, and suddenly the sword was again his protector.

But not for long, if Matthew had his way. Matthew had picked up the bench, and now he slammed it down across Green's head and shoulders with all his strength. The bench went the way of the bucket, exploding upon impact. Green shuddered and made a muffled groan, his throat still clogged, and again the sword fell from his spasming fingers.

Matthew reached down to get that damned blade and do away with it once more—and Green's hands, the right one bruised and blackening from its contest with the bars, seized his throat.

Green's face was mottled crimson, the eyes wild with rage and terror, a stream of blood running from the top of his head down to his eyebrows and straw clenched between his teeth. He stood up to his full height, lifting Matthew by the throat, and began to strangle him as surely as if Matthew had been dangling from a gallows-tree. Matthew's legs kicked and he pushed against Green's bearded chin with both hands, but the giant's grasp was killing him.

Rachel now saw that she must act or Matthew would die. She saw the sword, but her wish was not to kill to save. Instead she launched herself at Green's back like a wildcat, scratching and pummelling at his face. He turned and with a motion that was almost casual flung her off, after which he continued his single-minded execution as Matthew thrashed ineffectually.

A shimmering red haze was starting to envelope Matthew's head. He cocked back his right fist, judging where he should strike to inflict the most pain. It hardly mattered. Green gave the threatening fist a quick glance and a straw-lipped sneer and his crushing hands tightened even more.

The blow was delivered, with a sound like an axe striking hardwood. Green's head snapped back, his mouth opened, and a tooth flew out, followed by a spatter of blood.

Instantly the giant's hands loosened. Matthew dropped to the floor. He clutched at his throat, his lungs heaving.

Green turned in a dazed circle, as if he were dancing a reel with an invisible partner. He coughed once, then again, and straw burst from his throat. His eyes showing only red-tinged whites, he fell like a hammer-knocked steer and lay stretched out on the floor.

It had been one hell of a blow.

However, it had been delivered before Matthew's own puny offering. Mrs. Nettles spat on her knuckles and wrung her hand. "Ow, " she said. "I've nae hit a harder head!"

Matthew croaked, "You?"

"Me, " she answered. "I heard you up 'n' about in Mr. Bidwell's study. I thought I'd tag along, keep a watch o'er ye. Near saw my lantern, 'fore I dowsed it." She looked at Rachel, and then cast a disapproving eye around the cell. "Lord, what a filth-pot!"

Rachel was so amazed at all this, when she'd been preparing herself for the final morn, that she felt she must be in some strange dream even though she'd not slept since early afternoon.

"Here, c'mon." Mrs. Nettles reached down, grasped Matthew's hand, and hauled him up. "You'd best be off. I'll make sure Mr. Green keeps his silence."

"You're not going to hurt him, are you? I mean... any more than you already have?"

"No, but I'm gonna strip him naked and bind his wrists and ankles. His mouth, too. That nightshirt ought ta give up some ropes. But it wouldn't do for him ta ever know I was here. Go on now, the both of you!"

Rachel shook her head, still unbelieving. "I thought... I was to burn today."

"You shall yet burn, and the young man too, if you do'nae go." Mrs. Nettles was already pulling the nightshirt off Green's slumbering body.

"We have to hurry." Still rubbing his bruised throat, Matthew took Rachel's hand and guided her toward the threshold. "I have clothes and shoes for you outside."

"Why are you doing this?" Rachel asked Mrs. Nettles. "You're Bidwell's woman!"

"Nae, lass, " came the reply. "I am employed by Mr. Bidwell, but I am my own woman. And I am doin' this 'cause I never thought you guilty, no matter what was claimed. Also... I am rightin' an old wrong. Off with ye!"

Matthew picked up his lantern. "Thank you, Mrs. Nettles!" he said. "You saved my life!"

"No, sir." She continued her methodical stripping of Green, her back turned to Matthew. "I just sentenced you both ta... whatever's out there."

Outside, Rachel staggered and held out her arms as if to embrace the night and the stars, her face streaked with tears. Matthew grasped hold of her hand again, and hurried her to where he'd left the shoulderbag, garments, and shoes. "You can change clothes after we get out, " he said, slipping the bag's strap over his shoulder. "Will you carry these?" He gave her the garments. "I thought the light one would be best for travelling."

She gave a soft gasp as she took the dresses, and she caressed the cream-colored garment as if it were the returning to her of a wonderful treasure. Which it was. "Matthew... you've brought my wedding dress!"

If he'd had the time to spare, he might have laughed or he might have cried, but which one he was never to know. "Your shoes, " he said, giving them to her. "Put them on, we're going through rough country."

They started off, Matthew leading the way toward Bidwell's house and the slave quarters. He had considered going out the front gate, as there was no watchman, but the gate's locking timber was too heavy for one man, and certainly for one man who had nearly been rib-busted and choked to death.

He looked up at the lantern in Isaac's window and wished the man might truly know what he meant to Matthew. Alas, a note was a poor goodbye but the only one available to him.

Through the slave quarters, Matthew and Rachel moved as if they were dark, flying shadows. Perhaps the door of John Goode's house cracked open a few inches, or perhaps not.

Freedom awaited, but first there was the swamp.

thirty-eight

THE LAND WAS GOD and Devil both. Matthew had this thought during the third hour of daylight, as he and Rachel paused at a stream to refill the water bottle. Rachel dipped the hem of her bride's dress into the water and pressed the cool cloth—once white on her wedding day, but faded by the Carolina humidity to its current cream hue— against her face. She scooped up a handful of water, which gurgled over flat stones and moved quietly through reeds and high grasses, and wet her thick ebony hair back from her forehead. Matthew glanced at her as he went about uncorking and filling the bottle, thinking of Lucretia Vaughan's repugnant idea concerning Rachel's locks.

Rachel took off her shoes and slid her sore feet into the sun-warmed stream. "Ahhhhh, " she said, her eyes closed. "Ahhhhhh, that feels better."

Fthrough the woods in the direction they'd come. His face was red-streaked from an unfortunate encounter with a thorn thicket before the sun had appeared, and patches of sweat blotched his shirt. This certainly wasn't horse country, though, and therefore Solomon Stiles and whoever else might be with him would also be travelling on foot. It was rough going, no matter how experienced the leatherstocking. Still, he knew bettet than to underestimate Stiles's tracking skills, if indeed Bidwell had sent men in pursuit.

"I'm tired." Rachel lowered her head. "So tired. I could lie in the grass and sleep."

"I could, as well. That's why we have to keep moving."

She opened her eyes and looked at him, a pattern of leaf-shadow and morning sun on her face. "Don't you know you've given up everything?"

Matthew didn't respond. She'd asked him this question earlier, at the violet-blushed dawn, and neither had he answered then.

"You have, " she said. "For what? Me?"

"For the truth." He removed the bottle from the stream and pushed its cork back in.

"The truth was worth so much?"

"Yes." He returned the bottle to his shoulderbag, and then he sat down in the wiry grass because—though his spirit was willing—his aching legs were not yet ready to travel again. "I believe I know who killed Reverend Grove and your husband. Also this person was responsible for the ratcatcher's murder."

"Linch was murdered?"

"Yes, but don't trouble yourself over him. He was as vile as his killer. Almost. But I believe I know the motive, and how these so-called witnesses were turned against you. They really did think they saw you... um... in unholy relations, so they were not lying." He cupped some water from the stream and wet his face. "Or, at least, they didn't realize they were."

"You know who killed Daniel?" Her eyes had taken on a hint of fury. "Who was it?"

"If I spoke the name, your response would be incredulity. Then, after I'd explained the reasoning, it would be anger. Armed with what you know, you would wish to go back to Fount Royal and bring the killer to justice... but I fear that is impossible."

"Why? If you know the name?"

"Because the cunning fox has erased all evidence, " Matthew said. "Murdered it, so to speak. There is no proof whatsoever. So I would say a name to you, and you would be forever anguished that nothing can be done, just as I shall be." He shook his head. "It's best that only one of us drinks from that poisoned cup."

She pondered this for a moment, watching the flowing stream, and then she said, "Yes. I would want to go back."

"You may as well forget Fount Royal. I think the final hand has been dealt to Bidwell's folly, anyway." He roused himself and, considering that he wanted to put at least ten more miles at their backs before sundown, he stood up. He took a moment to study the map and align himself with the compass, during which Rachel put her shoes back on. Then Rachel pulled herself up too, wincing at the stiffness of her legs.

She looked around at the green-leafed trees, then up at the azure sky. After so long being confined, she was still half-dazed with the pine-perfumed breeze of freedom. "I feel so small, " she said. "Hardly worth the sacrifice of a young man's life."

"If the young man has anything to do with it, " he said, "it will not be a sacrifice. Are you ready?"

"I am."

They set off again, crossing the stream and heading once more into the dense forest. Matthew might not be a leather-stocking, but he was doing all right. Even very well, he thought. He had gone so far as to cinch the buckskin knife in its sheath around his waist in the best Indian-scout tradition, so the blade's handle was within easy reach.

Of Indians they'd seen not a footprint nor a feather. The wild beasts they'd encountered, not counting the chirping birds in the trees, consisted of a profusion of squirrels and a black snake coiled on a sun-splashed rock. The most difficult part of the journey so far had been the two miles of tidewater swamp they'd negotiated upon leaving Fount Royal.

But the land was God and Devil both, Matthew mused, because it was so beautiful and frighteningly vast in the sunny hours—but in the night, he knew, the demons of the unknown would creep to their pinestick fire and whisper of terrors beyond the circle of light. He had never ventured into a territory where there were no paths at all, just massive oaks, elms, and huge pines with cones the size of cannonballs, a carpet of leaf decay and pine needles in some places ankle deep, and the feeling that one would survive or perish here almost at the whim of Fate. Thank God for the map and the compass, or he would have already misplaced his sense of direction.

The land rose, forcing them up a slight but rugged incline. At its top, a crust of red rocks afforded a view of more unbroken wilderness stretching beyond the power of the eye. God spoke to Matthew and told him of a country almost too grand to imagine; the Devil spoke in his other ear, and told him such tremendous, fearful expanse and space would be seeded by the bones of some future generation.

They descended, Rachel walking a few paces behind Matthew as he cleaved a path through waist-high grass. Her wedding dress made a rustling sound, and small thorny pods stung her legs and clung to her hem.

As the sun continued its climb, the day warmed. Matthew and Rachel walked through a forest of gigantic, primeval trees where the hot sun was bright one second, streaming between the limbs seventy feet above, and the next second the shadows were dark green and as cool as caverns. Here they saw their first true wilderness creatures: four grazing does and a huge, watchful buck with a spread of antlers easily five feet across. The does lifted their heads to stare at the two humans, the buck gave a snort and bounded between his charges and the intruders, and then suddenly all the animals turned and vanished into the green curtains.

Not very further on, Matthew and Rachel again stopped at the edge of light and shadows. "What are those?" Rachel asked, her voice tensing.

Matthew approached the nearest oak. It was a Goliath of a tree that must've stood a hundred feet tall and had a trunk thirty feet around, but it was by no means the largest in these ancient woods. Lichens and moss had been pulled away from the trunk.

Carved into the bark were man-shaped pictograms, swirling symbols, and sharp-edged things that might have been the representations of arrowheads. Matthew saw that it was indeed not the only trunk so adorned; a dozen more trees had been carved upon, displaying the figures of more humans, deer, what might have been the sun or moon, and waved lines that possibly stood for wind or water, among a variety of other symbols.

"They're Indian signs, " Rachel said, answering her own question, as Matthew ran his fingers over a head-high symbol that seemed to either be a frightfully large man or a bear. "We must be in their territory."

"Yes, we must." Ahead of them, in that vast shadowy forest, were a few more carved trunks beyond the main line of decorated trees, and then beyond those the oaks were unadorned. Matthew consulted his map and compass once again.

"Perhaps we should change our route, " Rachel suggested.

"I don't think changing our route would suffice. According to the compass, we're moving in the proper direction. I also think it would be difficult to say what was Indian territory and what was not." Uneasily, he looked around. A breeze stirred the leaves far overhead, making the shadows and sunlight shift. "The sooner we get through here, the better, " he said, and he started walking again.

In an hour of rigorous travel, during which they saw thirty or forty more grazing deer, they emerged from the green forest into a wide clearing and in so doing were greeted with an amazing sight. Nearby a hundred wild turkeys the size of sheep were pecking in the grass and brush, and the intrusion of humans startled them to ungainly flight. The wind of their wings fanned the clearing and made a sound like the onrush of a hurricane.

"Oh!" Rachel cried out. "Look there!" She pointed, and Matthew's sight followed the line of her finger to a small lake whose still water reflected blue sky and golden Sol. "I'm going to rest here, " she told him, her eyes weary. "I'm going to take a bath and wash the gaol smell off me."

"We should keep moving."

"Can we not make our camp here for the night?"

"We could, " Matthew said, judging the sun's progress, "but there's still plenty of light. I didn't intend to camp until nightfall."

"I'm sorry, but I must rest, " she insisted. "I can hardly feel my legs anymore. And I must bathe, too."

Matthew scratched his forehead. He, as well, was just about worn to a nubbin. "All right. I think we might stay here for an hour or so." He slipped the bag's strap off his chafed shoulder and retrieved the soapcake, offering it to her further amazement. "Never let it be said I did not bring civilization to the wilderness."

At this point in their relationship, which seemed more intimate than the wedded state, it was nonsense for Matthew to walk into the dark line of woods and afford Rachel privacy. Neither did she expect it. On the edge of the lake, as Matthew reclined on his back and stared up at the sky, Rachel took off her shoes and the faded bridal dress and waded naked into the water to her waist. She turned her back to the shore and soaped her private area, then her stomach and breasts. Matthew glanced once... then again... a third time, more than a glance... at her brown body, made lean by gaolhouse soup. He might have counted her ribs, if he'd chosen. Her body was womanly, yes, but there was a hardness of purpose to it as well, a purity of the will to survive. He watched as she walked deeper into the water, chillbumps rippling across her taut skin even as the sun soothed her. She leaned over and wet het hair, then soaped a lather into it.

Matthew sat up and pulled his knees to his chin. His thorn-cut face had blushed at the image in his mind: that of his own hands, moving over the curves and hollows of Rachel's body as if they too were explorers in a new territory. A winged insect of some kind buzzed his head, which helped to distract him from that line of thought.

After her hair was washed and she was feeling clean, Rachel's attention returned again to Matthew. Also returned was her sense of modesty, as if the gaol's grime had clothed her from view and now she was truly naked. She knelt down in the water, up to her neck, and approached the shore.

Matthew was eating half of a slice of ham from the food package, and had set aside the other half for Rachel. He saw she intended to emerge from the water, so he turned his back. She came out of the lake, dripping, and stood for a moment to dry herself, her face offered to the sun.

"I fear you'll have to invent a falsehood when you enter a Spanish town or stockade, " Matthew said, painfully aware of how near she stood. "I doubt even the Spanish would care to grant sanctuary to an accused witch." He finished the ham and licked his fingers, watching her shadow on the ground. "You should claim yourself to be an escaped household servant, or simply a wife who sickened of British rule. Once they know your country of birth, you should have no troubles." Again that insect—no, two of them—buzzed around him, and he waved them away.

"Wait, " she said, picking up her wedding dress. "You're speaking only of me. What about you?"

"I am helping you reach the Florida country... but I'm not going to stay there with you." Rachel let this revelation sink in as she put her dress back on.

He had seen her shadow don the garment, so he turned toward her again. Her beauty—the thick, wet black hair, the lovely proud face and intense amber eyes—was enough to quicken his heart. The nightbird was even more compelling by day. He sighed and chose to stare at the ground once more. "I'm an Englishman, " he said. "Bound by the conventions and laws of English life, whether I like them or not. I couldn't survive in a foreign land." Matthew managed a brief, halfhearted smile. "I should be too longing for boiled potatoes and roast beef. Besides... Spanish is not my tongue."

"I don't understand you, " she said. "What kind of man are you, who does what you've done and expects nothing in return?"

"Oh, I do expect something, make no mistake. I expect to be able to go on living with myself. I expect you will return to Portugal, or Spain, and rebuild your life. I expect to see Magistrate Woodward again and plead my case before him."

"I expect you'll find yourself behind stronger bars than held me, " Rachel said.

"A possibility, " he admitted. "A likelihood. But I won't stay there long. Here, do you want this?" He held up the portion of ham for her.

She accepted it. "How can I tell you how much this means to me, Matthew?"

"What? One half slice of ham? If it means so much, you can have a whole—"

"You know what I'm saying, " she interrupted. "What you've done. The incredible risk." Her face was grim and set, but tears glistened in her eyes. "My God, Matthew. I was ready to die. I had given up my spirit. How can I ever repay such a debt?"

"It is I who owe the debt. I came to Fount Royal a boy. I left it as something more, " Matthew said. "You should sit down and rest."

She did sit down, and pressed her body against his as if they sat crushed by a crowd of a thousand people, instead of just alone in this God-made, Devil-touched land. He started to move away, discomforted by his own reaction to her closeness, but she gently grasped his chin with her left hand.

"Listen to me, " Rachel said, in what was nearly a whisper. Her eyes stared into his own, their faces only parted by a few inches of inconsequential air. "I loved my husband very much, " she said. "I gave him my heart and my soul. Even so, I think... I could love you the same... if you would allow it."

The few inches of air shrank. Matthew did not know who had first leaned toward the other, but did it really matter? One leaned and one met, and that was both the geometry and poetry of their kiss.

Though Matthew had never before done this, it seemed a natural act. What was most alarming was the speed of his heart, which if it had been a horse might have reached Boston by first star. Something inside him seemed molten, like blue-flamed glass being changed and reshaped by the power of a breath. It was both strengthening and weakening, thrilling and frightening— again that conjunction of God and Devil that seemed to be at the essence of all things.

It was a moment he would remember the test of his life.

Their lips remained sealed together, melded by bloodheat and heartbeat. Who drew away first was also unknown to Matthew, as time had slipped its boundaries like rain and river.

Matthew looked into Rachel's eyes. The need to speak was as strong as a force of nature. He knew what he would say. He opened his mouth. "I—"

A winged insect suddenly landed on the shoulder of Rachel's wedding dress. His attention was drawn to it, and away from the moment. He saw it was a honeybee. The insect hummed its wings and took flight, and then Matthew was aware of several more of them circling round and round.

"I—" Matthew said again, and suddenly he was not sure at all what he was going to say. She waited for him to speak, but he was speechless.

He stared into her eyes once more. Was it the desire to love him he saw there, or the desire to thank him for the gift of her life? Did she even know which emotion reigned in her heart? Matthew didn't think so.

Even as they travelled together, they were moving in opposite directions. It was a bitter realization, but a true one. Rachel was bound for a place he could not live, and he must live in a place where she could not be bound.

He dropped his gaze from her. She, too, had realized that there could be no future for two such as them, and that Daniel was still as close to her as the dress she had worn on the day of their joining. She drew away from Matthew, and then noticed the circling insects.

"Honeybees." Matthew scanned the clearing, his eyes searching. And there it was!

A stand of two dead oaks—probably lightning-struck, he thought—stood apart from the main line of forest, fifty yards from the lake's edge. Near the top of one of them was a large knothole. Around it the air was alive with a dark, shifting mass. Sunlight made a stream of liquid down the tree's trunk shine gold.

"Where there are honeybees, " Matthew said, "there is honey." He took the bottle from the bag, emptied its water—since fresh water was an abundant resource at this distance from the seacoast and swamp—and stood up. "I'll see if I can obtain us some."

"I'll help." She started to stand, but Matthew put his hand on her shoulder.

"Rest while you can, " he advised. "We're going to have to move on very soon."

Rachel nodded and relaxed again. In truth, she would have to summon the energy for their continued journey, and a walk to a dead tree fifty yards there and back—even for the sweet delicacy of honey—strained her imagination.

Matthew, however, was intent on it, particularly after their kiss and the jarring return to reality that had followed. As Matthew started toward the tree, Rachel warned, "Take care you're not stung! The honey wouldn't be worth it!"

"Agreed." But he'd seen the spill of golden nectar down the trunk from what appeared a very copious comb, and he felt sure he might at least get a bottleful without incurring rage.

The bees had been highly productive. The honey had streamed down from forty feet above all the way to the ground, where a sticky puddle had accumulated. Matthew drew the knife from its sheath, uncorked the bottle, and held it into the flow, at the same time pushing the thick elixir—a natural medicine good for all ills, Dr. Shields would have said—in with his blade. A few bees hummed around, but they did not strike and seemed mostly curious. He could hear the steady, more ominous tone of the large dark mass of them as they went about their business tending the comb.

As he worked, Matthew's mind went to the magistrate. The letter would have been long read by now. Whether it had been digested or not was more difficult to say. Matthew listened to the singing of birds in the forest beyond, and wondered whether the magistrate might be able to hear such song at this very moment, or be able to see the sun on this cloudless day. What must Isaac be thinking? Matthew fervently hoped that he'd written the missive coherently—and eloquently—enough so that Isaac would know he was in his right mind, and adamant about Smythe being located. If that man would agree to talk, then much could be—

Matthew paused in his work, the bottle near halfway filled. Something had changed, he thought.

Something.

He listened. He could still hear the drone of the working bees. But... the birdsong. Where was the birdsong? Matthew looked toward the shadowed line of forest.

The birds had ceased their singing.

A movement to the left caught his eye. Three crows burst from the foliage, cawing loudly as they shot across the clearing.

Beside the lake, Rachel lay on her back, drowsing. The voices of the crows came to her, and she opened her eyes in time to watch the birds pass overhead.

Matthew stood motionless, staring at the impenetrable area from which the crows had come.

Another movement seized his attention. Far up in the sky, a single vulture was slowly wheeling around and around.

All the saliva had left his mouth and become cold sweat on his face. The sensation of danger stabbed him like a knife in the neck.

He felt certain something in the woods was watching him.

Moving with careful deliberation though his nerves shrieked to turn and run, Matthew pushed the cork back into the bottle. His right fist tightened around the knife's handle. He began to retreat from the honey-flowing tree, one step at the time, his eyes darting back and forth across the treacherous woods.

"Rachel?" he called. His voice cracked. He tried again. "Rachel?!" This time he looked over his shoulder to see if she'd heard.

A heavy form suddenly exploded from its place of concealment at the forest's edge. Rachel was the first to see it, by only a second, and she let go a scream that savaged her throat.

Then Matthew faced it too. His feet seemed rooted to the earth, his eyes wide and his mouth open in a soundless cry of terror.

The monstrous bear that was racing toward him was an old warrior and fully gray. Patches of ashy malignant mange infected its shoulders and legs. Its jaws were stretched to receive human flesh, streams of drool flying back past its head. Matthew had just an instant to register that the bear's left eye socket was puckered and empty, and he knew.

He was about to be embraced by Jack One Eye.

Maude... at Shawcombe's tavern... Jack One Eye hain't jus' a burr. Ever'thin' dark 'bout this land... ever'thin' cruel, and wicked.

"Rachel!" he screamed, twisting toward her and running for his life. "Get in the water!"

There was nothing she could do to help him except pray to God he made the lake. She ran toward the water and leaped into it, swimming in her bridal dress toward deep water.

Matthew dared not look behind. His legs were pumping furiously, his face distorted by fear, his heart on the verge of bursting. He heard the thunderous impact of paws behind him, gaining ground, and he knew with awful certainty that he would never reach the lake.

He clenched his teeth and threw himself to the left—the bear's blind side—at the same time letting out a shriek that he hoped might startle the beast enough to give him extra time. Jack One Eye hurtled past him, its rear claws digging up furrows of earth. A front claw swung and made the air between them shimmer.

Then Matthew was running for the lake again, dodging and swerving with every step. Again the earth trembled at his heels. The bear was bigger than the biggest horse he'd ever seen, and it could crush every bone in his body just with its forward progress alone.

Matthew leaped to the left in a maneuver that nearly snapped his knees. He almost lost his balance as the bear went past, its massive mange-riddled head thrusting in search of him. The jaws came together with a noise like a musket shot. He smelled the reeking bestial stink of the thing, and was close enough to see the broken shafts of four arrows in its side. Then he was running again, and he prayed that God grant him the speed of a crow.

Again Jack One Eye was almost upon him. Again Matthew lunged to the left—but this time he had misjudged both the geometry and the flexibility of his knees. The angle was too sharp and his feet skidded out from beneath him. He went down on his right side in the grass. He was only vaguely aware of Rachel's screams through the thunder in his head. The gray wall of Jack One Eye rose before him. He staggered up, fighting for balance.

Something hit him.

He had the impression of the world turned upside down. A searing pain filled his left shoulder. He knew he was tumbling head over heels, but could do nothing about it. Then he landed hard on his back, the breath bursting from his lungs. He tried to scramble away, as again that gray wall came upon him. Something was wrong with his left arm.

Matthew was struck in the ribs on the left side by a red-hot cannonball that picked him up and flung him like a grainsack. Something grazed by his forehead while he was tumbling—a musket ball, he thought it must be, here on this field of battle— and a red film descended over his eyes. Blood, he thought. Blood. He hit the ground, was dragged and tossed again. His teeth snapped together. I'm going to die, he thought. Right here. This sunny, clear day. I am going to die.

His left arm was already dead. His lungs hitched and gurgled. The mangy gray wall was there in his face again, there with an arrow shaft stuck in it.

He decided, almost calmly, that he would do his own sticking.

"Hey!" he hollered, in a voice that surprised him with its desperate power. "Hey!" He brought the knife up and stabbed and twisted and wrenched and stabbed and twisted and wrenched, and the beast grunted roared roared breath hot as Hades smelling of decayed meat and rotten teeth stabbed and twisted and wrenched blood red on the gray streaming down a glorious sight die you bastard you bastard you!

Jack One Eye might be huge, but it had not grown to such a ripe old age by being stupid. The stickings had an effect, and the bear backed away from the mosquito.

Matthew was on his knees. In his right hand, the blade was covered with blood. He heard a dripping, pattering sound, and he looked down at the gore falling into the red-stained grass from the twitching fingers of his left hand. He seemed to be burning up from within, yet the fiery pain of shoulder and ribs and forehead was not what made him sob. He had peed in his breeches, and he had brought no other pair.

Jack One Eye circled him to the left. Matthew turned with the beast, dark waves beginning to fill his head. He heard, as if from another world, the sound of a woman—Rachel was her name, Rachel yes Rachel—screaming his name and crying. He saw blood bubbling around the bear's nostrils, and crimson matted the gray fur at its throat. Matthew was near fainting, and he knew when that happened he was dead.

The bear suddenly stood up on its hind legs, to a height of eight feet or more. It opened its broken-toothed mouth. What emerged was a hoarse, thunderous, and soul-shaking roar that brimmed with agony and perhaps the realization of its own mortality. Two snapped arrow shafts were buried in festered flesh at the beast's belly, near a bloody-edged claw wound that must have been delivered by one of its own breed. Matthew also saw that a sizeable bite had been ripped from Jack One Eye's right shoulder, and this ugly wound was green with infection.

It occurred to him, in his haze of pain and the knowledge of his impending departure from this earth, that Jack One Eye was dying too.

The bear fell back down onto its haunches. Ami now Matthew pulled himself up, staggered and fell, pulled himself up again, and shouted, "Haaaaaaaaaaa!" in the maw of the beast.

After which he fell to the ground once more, into his own blood. Jack One Eye, its nostrils dripping gore, shambled toward him with its jaws open.

Matthew wasn't ready to die yet. Come all this way, to die in a clearing under the sun and God's blue sky? No, not yet.

He came up with the sheer power of desperation and drove the blade under the bear's jaw, giving the knife a violent ripping twist. Jack One Eye gave a single grunt, snorted blood into Matthew's face, and pulled back, taking the imbedded blade with it. Matthew fell on his belly, the pain in his ribs making him curl up like a stomped worm.

Again the bear circled him to the left, shaking its head back and forth in an effort to rid itself of the stinger that had pierced its throat. Banners of blood flew in the air from its nostrils. Even on his belly, Matthew crawled to keep the beast from getting behind him. Suddenly Jack One Eye came in again, and Matthew pulled himself up, throwing his right arm up over his face to protect what was left of his skull.

The movement made the bear turn aside. Jack One Eye backed away, its single orb blinking and glazed. The bear lost its equilibrium for a second and staggered on the edge of falling. It caught itself, then stood less than fifteen feet from Matthew, staring at him with its head lowered and its arrow-stubbled sides heaving. Its gray tongue emerged, licking at the bleeding nostrils.

Matthew pulled himself up to his knees, his right hand clutching his ribs on the left side. It seemed the most important thing in the world to him, to keep his hand pressed there so that his entrails would not stream out.

The world, red-tainted and savage, had dwindled to the single space of distance between man and animal. They stared at each other, measuring pain, blood, life, and death each by their own calculations.

Jack One Eye made no sound. But the ancient, wounded warrior had reached a decision.

It abruptly turned away from Matthew. It began half-loping, half-staggering across the clearing the way it had come, shaking its head back and forth in a vain effort to dislodge the blade. In another moment the beast entered its wilderness again.

And Jack One Eye was gone.

Matthew fell forward onto the bloody battleground, his eyes closed. In his realm of drifting, he thought he heard a high-pitched and piercing cry: Hiyiiiiiiii! Hiyiiiiiiii! Hiyiiiiiiii! The vulture's voice, he thought. The vulture, swooping down upon him.

Tired. So... very... very... tired. Rachel. What... is to... become... of...

The vulture, swooping down.

Screaming Hiyiiiiiiii! Hiyiiiiiiii! Hiyeeeeee!

Matthew felt himself fall away from the earth, toward that distant territory so many explorers had gone to journey through, and from which return was impossible.

thirty-nine

MATTHEW'S FIRST REALIZATION of his descent to Hell was the odor.

It was as strong as demon's sweat and twice as nasty. It entered his nostrils like burning irons, penetrated to the back of his throat, and he was suddenly aware that he was being wracked by a fit of coughing though he had not heard it begin.

When the smell went away and his coughing ended, he tried to open his eyes. The lids were heavy, as if weighted by the coins due Charon for his ferry trip across the Styx. He couldn't open them. He heard now a rising and falling voice that must surely be the first of untold many souls lamenting their scorched fate. The language sounded near Latin, but Latin was God's language. This must be Greek, which was more suitably earthy.

A few more breaths, and Matthew became knowledgeable of the torment of Hell as well as its odor. A fierce, stabbing, white-hot pain had begun to throb at his left shoulder and down the arm. The ribs on that side also began an agonizing complaint. There was a pain at his forehead too, but that was mild compared to the others. Again he tried to open his eyes and again he failed.

Neither could he move, in this state of eternal damnation. He thought he was attempting to move, but he couldn't be sure.

There was so much pain, growing worse by the second, that he decided it was more reasonable to give up and conserve his energy, as surely he would need it when he walked through the brimstone valley. He heard the crackling of a fire—of course, a fire!—and felt an oppressive, terrible heat as if he were being roasted over an inferno.

But now a new feeling began to come over him: anger. It threatened to burst into full-flamed rage, which would put him right at home here.

He had considered himself a Christian and had tried his very best to follow the Godly path. To find himself cast into Hell like this, with no court to hear his case, was a damned and unreasonable sin. He wondered in his increasing fury what it was he'd done that had doomed him. Run with the orphans and young thugs on the Manhattan harbor? Flung a horse-apple at the back of a merchant's head, and stolen a few coins from the dirty pocket of a capsized drunk? Or had it been more recent wrongdoing, such as creeping into Seth Hazelton's barn and later cutting the man's face with a tin lantern. Yes, that might be it. Well, he would be here to greet that lover of mares when Hazelton arrived, and by that time Matthew hoped to have built up some seniority in this den of lawyers.

The pain was now excruciating, and Matthew clenched his teeth but he felt the cry rising up from his parched throat. He couldn't restrain it. He was going to have to scream, and what would the company of diaboliques then think of bis fortitude?

His mouth opened, and he let loose not a scream but a dry, rattling whisper. Even so, it was enough to further drain him. He was aware that the murmuring had ceased.

A hand—so rough-fleshed it might have been covered with treebark—touched his face, the fingers starting at his chin and sliding up his right cheek. The singsong murmuring began once more, still in that undecipherable language. What felt like a thumb and finger went to his right eye, and endeavored to push the lid up.

Matthew had had enough of this blindness. He gave a soft gasp at the effort it involved, but he forced his eyes open of his own accord.

Immediately he wished he had not. In the red, leaping light and drifting smoke of Hades, the visage of a true demon greeted him.

This creature had a narrow, long-chinned brown face with small black eyes, its flesh wrinkled and weathered like ancient wood. Blue whorls decorated the gaunt cheeks, and a third eye— daubed bright yellow as the sun—was painted in the center of the forehead. The earlobes were pierced with hooks from which dangled acorns and snail shells. The head was bald save for a topknot of long gray hair that grew from the back of the scalp and was adorned with green leaves and the bones of small animals.

To make Matthew's induction to Hell even worse, the demon opened its mouth and displayed a set of teeth that might have served as a sawblade. "Ayo pokapa, " the creature said, nodding. Or at least that was the sound Matthew heard. "Ayo pokapa, " the demon spoke again, and lifted to its lips half of a broken clay dish in which something was densely smoking. With a quick inhalation, the creature pulled smoke into its mouth and then blew the noxious fumes-—that nasty demon's-sweat odor—into Matthew's nostrils.

Matthew attempted to turn his head aside, and that was when he realized his skull was bound in some way to whatever hard pallet he lay upon. Avoiding the smoke was impossible.

"Yante te napha te, " the creature began to murmur. "Saba yante napha te." It slowly rocked back and forth, eyes half-closed. The light from one or more hellfires glowed red through the dense pall of smoke that drifted above Matthew. What sounded like a pineknot burst, and then there came a hissing noise like a roomful of rattlesnakes from beyond the murmuring, rocking di-abolist. The acrid woodsmoke seemed to thicken, and Matthew feared that the little breath he could grasp would soon be poisoned. "Yante te napha te, saba yante napha te, " went the repeated, rising and falling voice. Again the ritual with the broken dish and the inhalation was repeated, and again the smoke— damn Hell, if there was such a powerful stink to be smelled for eternity!—was blown up Matthew's nostrils.

He couldn't move, and assumed that not only his head was bound down but also both wrists and ankles. He wished to be a man about this, but tears sprang to his eyes.

"Ai!" the demon said, and patted his cheek. "Mouk takani soba se ha ha." Then it was back to the steady murmuring and rocking, and another blast of smoke up the nose.

After a half-dozen draughts, Matthew was feeling no pain. The cogwheels that usually regulated the order of his mind had lost their timing, and one rocking motion by the demon stretched to the speed of the snails whose shells hung from the earlobe hooks, while the next was gone past in an eyeblink. Matthew felt as if he were floating in a red-flamed, smoky void, though he could of course sense the hard pallet at his back.

And then Matthew knew he must be truly insane, for he suddenly realized something very strange about the piece of broken dish from which the murmuring, smoke-blowing creature was inhaling.

It was white. And on it was a decoration of small red hearts.

Yes, he was insane now. Absolutely insane, and ready for Hell's Bedlam. For that was the same dish Lucretia Vaughan had thrown into the fount, only then it had been whole and contained a sweet yam pie.

"Yante te napha te, " the demon crooned, "saba yante napha te."

Matthew was fading again. Losing himself to the swelling dark. Reality—such as it was in the Land of Chaos—disappeared in bits and pieces, as if the darkness were a living thing that hungered first for sound, then light, and then smell.

If it was possible to die a death in the country of the dead, then that was Matthew's accomplishment.

But he found that such a death was fleeting, and there was very little peace in it. The pain grew again, and again ebbed. He opened his eyes, saw moving, blurred figures or shadows, and closed them for fear of what had arrived to visit him. He thought he slept, or died, or suffered nightmares of Jack One Eye running him down in a bloody clearing while the ratcatcher rode the bear's back and thrust at him with the five-bladed sticker. He awakened sweating summer floods, and fell to sleep again dry as a winter leaf.

The smoke-breathing demon returned, to continue its tortures. Matthew once more saw that the broken dish was white, with small red hearts. He dared to speak to the creature, in a feeble and fearful voice, "Who are you?" The murmured chant went on.

"What are you?" Matthew asked. But no answer was given.

He slept and waked, slept and waked. Time had no meaning. He was tended to by two more demons, these more in the female shape with long black hair similarly adorned by leaves and bones. They lifted the mat of woven grasses, moss, feathers, and such that covered his nakedness, cleaned him when he needed to be cleaned, fed him a gray paste-like food that tasted strongly of fish, and put a wooden ladle of water to his lips.

Fire and smoke. Shifting shadows in the gloom. That murmured, singsong chanting. Yes, this was surely Hell, Matthew thought.

And then came the moment when he opened his eyes and found Rachel standing beside him in this realm of flames and fumes. "Rachel!" he whispered. "You too? Oh... my God... the bear..."

She said nothing, but pressed a finger to her lips. Though dead, her eyes were as bright as gold coins. Her hair cascaded in ebony waves about her shoulders, and Matthew would have been lying if he'd said the infernal light didn't make her heart-achingly beautiful. She was wearing a dark green shift decorated around the neck with intricate blue beadwork. He stared at the pulse that beat in the hollow of her throat, and saw moisture glisten on her cheeks and forehead.

It must be said, these demons did excellent work at the illusion of life.

He tried to angle his face toward her, but still his head was confined as were his arms and legs. "Rachel... I'm sorry, " he whispered. "You shouldn't be here. Your time in Hell... was already served on earth."

Her finger went to his lips, to bid him be silent.

"Can you ever... ever forgive me?" he asked. "For bringing you to... such a bad end?" Smoke drifted between them, and somewhere beyond Rachel the fires crackled and seethed.

She gave him an eloquent answer. Leaning down, she pressed her lips to his own. The kiss lingered, and became needful.

His body—the illusion of a body, after all—reacted to this kiss as it would have done in the earthly sphere. Which didn't surprise Matthew, for it was a well-known fact Heaven would be full of angelic lutes and Hell full of flesh flutes. In that particular regard, perhaps it was not such a disagreeable place.

Rachel pulled back. Her face remained within his field of vision, her lips damp. Her eyes were shining, and the fire shadows licked her cheek.

She reached back and undid something. Suddenly the blue-beaded garment slipped off her and fell to the ground.

Her hands returned, lifting the woven mat from Matthew's body. Then she stepped up onto what must be a platform of some kind and slowly, gently eased her naked body down against his own, after which she pulled the grass mat over them again and kissed his mouth with longing.

He wanted to ask her if she knew what she was doing. He wanted to ask her if this was love, or passion, or if she looked at him and saw Daniel's face.

But he didn't. Instead, he surrendered to the moment; to be more accurate, the moment demanded him. He returned her kiss with a soul-deep longing of his own, and her body pressed against his with undeniable urgency.

As they kissed, Rachel's hand found the scrivener's readied instrument. Her fingers closed about him. With a slow shifting of her thighs, she eased him into her, into the moist and heated opening that relaxed to allow entry and then more firmly grasped once he was sheathed deep.

Matthew was unable to move, but Rachel was unrestricted. Her hips began a leisurely, circular motion punctuated by stronger thrusts. A groan left Matthew's mouth at the incredible, otherworldly sensation, and Rachel echoed it with her own. They kissed as if eager to merge one into the other. As the woodsmoke swirled about them and the fires burned, as their lips sought and held and Rachel's hips moved up and then down to push him still deeper, Matthew cried out with a pleasure that was verging on pain. Even this central act, he thought in his state of sweating rapture, was a cooperation of God and Devil.

Then he just stopped thinking and allowed nature to rule.

Rachel's movements were steadily strengthening. Her mouth was against his ear, her pine-scented hair in his face. She was breathing quickly and harshly. His heartbeat slammed, and hers pounded against his damp chest. She gave two more thrusts and her back arched, her head coming up and her eyes squeezed tightly shut. She shivered and her mouth opened to release a long, soft moan. An instant later, the feeling of pleasure did translate into a white flashing pain for Matthew, a fierce jolt that rippled from the top of his head down his spine. In the midst of this riot of sensations, he was aware of his burst into Rachel's clinging humidity, an explosion that brought a grimace to his face and a cry from his lips. Rachel kissed him again, so ardently as if she wished to capture that cry and keep it forever like a golden locket in the secret center of her soul.

With a strengthless sigh, Rachel settled against him yet supported herself on her elbows and knees so as not to rest all her weight. He was still inside her, and still firm. His virginity was a thing of the past and its passage left him with a delicious aching, but his flame had not yet been extinguished. And obviously neither had Rachel's, for she looked him in the face, her wondrous eyes sparkling in the firelight and her hair damp from the heat of exertion, and began to move upon him once again.

If this was indeed Hell, Matthew thought, no wonder everyone was in such a fever to make their reservations.

The second time was slower-paced, though even more intense than the first. Matthew could only lie and vainly attempt to match Rachel's motions. Even if his movements had been totally free, a weakness that affected every muscle save one had claimed his strength.

Finally, she pressed down on him and—though he'd tried to restrain it for as long as he might—he again experienced the almost-blinding combination of pleasure and pain that signalled the imminent nearing of a destination two lovers so vigorously sought to reach.

Then, in the warm wet aftermath, as they breathed and kissed and played a game of tongues, Matthew knew the coach must by necessity be retired to its barn, as the horses had gone their distance.

Presently, he closed his eyes and slumbered again. When he opened them—who knew how much later—the demon with a yellow third eye was at his side, using a white stone to crush up a foul-looking brown mixture of seeds, berries, and fetid whatnot—and the whatnot was the worst of it—in a small wooden bowl. Then the demon gave a combination grunt-and-whistle and pushed some of the stuff toward Matthew's mouth between thumb and forefinger.

Ah ha! Matthew thought. Now the true torments were to begin! The mixture being forced upon him looked like dog excrement and smelled like vomit. Matthew clamped his lips shut. The demon pushed at his mouth, grunting and whistling in obvious irritation, but Matthew steadfastly refused to accept it.

Another figure emerged from the smoke and stood beside Matthew's pallet. He looked into her face. Without speaking, she took up a pinch of the exquisite garbage and put it into her own mouth, chewing it as a display of its worth.

Matthew couldn't believe his eyes. Not because she'd voluntarily eaten it, but because she was the dark-haired, thin mute girl he'd last seen at Shawcombe's tavern. Only she was much changed, both in demeanor and dress. Her hair was clean and shining, more chestnut colored than truly dark brown, and on her head was a tiara-like toque formed of densely woven, red-dyed grass. Smudges of ruddy paint had been applied to her cheekbones. Her eyes were no longer glazed and weak but held determined purpose. Also, she wore a deerskin garment adorned with a pattern of red and purple beads down the front.

"You!" Matthew said. "What are you doing h—" The thumb and forefinger struck, getting some of that gutter porridge past his lips. Matthew's first impulse was to spit, but the demon had already clamped one hand to his mouth and was massaging his throat with the other.

Matthew had no choice but to swallow it. The stuff had a strange, oily texture, but he'd tasted cheese that was worse. In fact, it had a complexity of tastes, some sour and some sweet, that actually... well, that actually called for a second helping.

The girl—Girl, he recalled Abner saying with a laugh when Matthew had asked her name—moved away into the fire-thrown shadows before he could ask her anything else. The demon continued to feed him until the bowl was empty.

"What is this place?" Matthew asked, his tongue picking at seeds in his teeth. There was no answer. The demon took his bowl and began to also move away. "This is Hell, isn't it?" Matthew asked.

"Se hapna ta ami, " the demon said, and then made a clucking noise.

In another moment Matthew sensed he was alone. Up above, he now could make out through the smoke haze what looked to be wooden rafters—or rather, small pinetrees with the bark still on them.

It wasn't long before his eyelids grew heavy. There was no resisting this sleep; it crashed over him like a green sea wave and took him down to depths unknown.

Dreamless. Drifting. A sleep for the ages, absolute in its peace and silence. And then, a voice.

"Matthew?"

Her voice.

"Can you hear me?"

"Ahhhhh, " he answered: a sustained, relaxed exhalation of breath.

"Can you open your eyes?"

With only a little difficulty—and regret, really, for his rest had been so deeply satisfying—he did. There was Rachel, her face close to his. He could see her clearly by the flickering firelight. The dense smoke had gone away.

"They want you to try to stand up, " she said.

"They?" He had a burned, ashy taste in his mouth. "Who?"

The demon, who no longer wore the third eye, came up and stood beside her. With an uplifting motion of the hands and a guttural grunting, the meaning was made plain.

Two of the females who'd attended Matthew appeared, and began to work around his head. He heard something being cut— a leather strap, he thought it might be—and suddenly his head was free to move, which immediately put a cramping pain in his neck muscles.

"I want you to know, " Rachel said as the two females continued to cut Matthew free from his pinewood pallet, "that you've been terribly injured. The bear—"

"Yes, the bear, " Matthew interrupted. "Killed me, and you as well."

She frowned. "What?"

"The bear. It killed—" He felt the straps give way around his left wrist, then around the right. He'd stopped speaking because he realized Rachel wore her wedding dress. On it were grass stains. He swallowed thickly. "Are we... not dead?"

"No, we're very much alive. You nearly died, though. If they hadn't come when they did, you would have bled to death. One of them bound your arm to stop the flow."

"My arm." Matthew remembered now the terrible pain in his shoulder and the blood dripping from his fingers. He couldn't move—or even feel—the fingers of his left hand. He had a sickened sensation in the pit of his stomach. Dreading to even glance at the limb, he asked, "Do I still have it?"

"You do, " Rachel answered grimly, "but... the wound was very bad. As deep as the bone, and the bone broken."

"And what else?"

"Your left side. You took an awful blow. Two, three ribs... how many were broken I don't know."

Matthew lifted his right arm, unscathed save for a scabbed wound on his elbow, and gingerly touched his side. He found a large patch of clay covering the area, adhered by some sort of sticky brown substance, with a bulge underneath that to indicate something else pressed directly to the wound.

"The doctor made a poultice, " Rachel said. "Herbs, and tobacco leaves, and... I don't know what all."

"What doctor?"

"Um." Rachel glanced toward the watchful demon. "This is their physician."

"My God!" Matthew said, dumbstruck. "I must be in Hell! If not, then where?"

"We have been brought, " Rachel answered calmly, "to an Indian village. How far it is from Fount Royal, I can't say. We travelled over an hour from where the bear attacked you."

"An Indian village? You mean... I've been doctored by an Indian?" This was absolutely unthinkable! He would have preferred a demonic doctor to a savage one!

"Yes. And well doctored, too. They have been very kind to me, Matthew. I've had no reason to fear them."

"Pok!" the doctor said, motioning for Matthew to stand. The two women had cut the leather thongs that had secured his ankles, then had withdrawn. "Hapape pok pokati!" He reached out, picked up the woven mat that covered Matthew's torso, and threw it aside, leaving Matthew naked to the world. "Puh! Puh!" the doctor insisted, slapping his patient's legs.

Reflexively, Matthew started to cover his private area with both hands. His right hand went quickly enough, but a searing pain shot through his shoulder at the mere nerve impulse of moving the left. He gritted his teeth, fresh sweat on his face, and made himself look at the injury.

His shoulder all the way past his elbow was wrapped in clay, and presumably other so-called medicines were pressed to the wound beneath the earthen bandage. The clay also was smoothed over a wooden splint, and his elbow was immobilized in a slightly bent position. From the edge of the clay to the fingertips, the flesh was mottled with ugly black and purple bruises. It was a ghastly sight, but at least he still had the arm. He lifted his free hand to touch his forehead. He found another clay dressing, secured with the sticky paste-like material.

"Your head was gashed, " Rachel said. "Do you think you can stand?"

"I might, if I don't fall to pieces." He looked at the doctor. "Clothes! Do you understand me? I need clothes!"

"Puh! Puh!" the doctor said, again slapping Matthew's legs.

Matthew directed his appeal at Rachel. "Might you please get me some clothes?"

"You have none, " she told him. "Everything you wore was covered with blood. They performed some kind of ritual over them, the first night, and burned them."

What she'd said sent a spear through him. "The first night? How long have we been here?"

"This is the fifth morning."

Four whole days in the grasp of the Indians! Matthew couldn't believe it. Four whole days, and they still had their scalps! Were they waiting for him to get well enough to slaughter both him and Rachel together?

"I think we've been summoned by their mayor, or chief, or whatever he is. I've not seen him yet, but there's some special activity going on."

"Puh! Puh!" the doctor insisted. "Se hapape ta mook!"

"All right, " Matthew said, choosing to face the inevitable. "I'll try to stand."

With Rachel's help, he eased down off the pallet onto a dirt floor. Modesty called him but he couldn't answer. His legs held him though they were fairly stiff. The clay dressing on his broken arm was heavy, but the way the splint crooked his elbow made it bearable. At his left side his ribs thundered with dull pain under the clay and poultice, but that too could be borne if he didn't try to breathe too deeply.

He knew he would have been instantly killed if Jack One Eye himself hadn't been so old and infirm. To meet that beast in its younger years would have meant a quick decapitation, or a long suffering death by disembowelment such as Maude's husband had endured.

The Indian doctor—who would have been naked himself but for a small buckskin garment and strap covering his groin— walked ahead, to the far side of the rectangular wooden structure that housed a number of pallets. Matthew realized it was their version of an infirmary. A small fire crackled in a pit ringed with stones, but from the huge pile of ashes nearby it was evident a smoky inferno had raged in here.

He leaned on Rachel for support, if just until his legs grew used to holding him up again. His mind was still hazed. It wasn't clear to him now if his amorous encounter with Rachel had been real or a fevered dream brought on by his injuries. Surely she wouldn't have crawled up on that pallet to make love to a dying man! From her there was no indication that anything had occurred between them.

Yet still... might it have happened?

But here was something real that he'd imagined to be a figment of his dreams: on the floor, along with other clay cups and wooden bowls and carved bone pipes around the fire, was the broken half of Lucretia Vaughan's heart-decorated pie dish.

The healing savage—who would have made his compatriot Dr. Shields blanch with terror—drew aside a heavy black-furred bearskin from the infirmary's entryway.

Blinding white sunlight flooded across the floor, making Matthew squeeze his eyes shut and stagger. "I have you, " Rachel said, leaning into him so he might not fall.

There was a great excited clamor from outside, complete with squeals, whoops, and giggling. Matthew was aware of a brown mass of grinning faces pressing forward. The Indian doctor began to shout in a voice whose irritated tone was universal: Stand back, and give us space to breathe!

Rachel led Matthew, naked and dazed, into the light.

forty

THE FOREMOST GROUP of them backed away, heeding the doctor's continued shouts. As Matthew and Rachel followed the loinclothed healer, the Indians trailed in their wake and the shouting, giggling, and excited vocals began to surge loudly again.

Matthew would have never dreamed in a barrel of rum that he might have found himself naked before the world, clinging to Rachel and walking through a horde of grinning, hollering Indians. His vision was returning, though he was still overwhelmed by all this light. He saw a score of round wooden huts, some covered with dried mud and others moss-grown, with roofs upon which grass grew as thickly as from the earth. He caught sight of a lush plot of cornstalks that would have dropped the farmers of Fount Royal to their knees. Two dogs— one gray and the other dark brown—came to sniff around Matthew's legs, but a shout from the doctor sent them running. The same happened when a giggling pack of four naked brown children neared the pallid patient, and they ran away squealing and jumping.

Matthew saw that most of the men—who shared the doctor's narrow facial structure, lean body, and topknot of hair growing from an otherwise shaved head—were nearly nude, but the women were clothed in either deerskin garments or brightly dyed shifts that appeared to be woven from cotton. Some of the females, however, had chosen to let their breasts be bared, a sight that would have made the citizens of Fount Royal swoon. Their feet were either bare or clad in deerskin slippers. Many of the men were adorned with intricate blue-dye tattoos, and also a few of the older women. These tattoos appeared not only on the face but also on the chest, arms, thighs, and presumably just about everywhere else.

The mood was festive. Men and women were childlike in their glee, and the children—of which there were many—like little scampering squirrels. Of real creatures, there were aplenty as well: pigs, chickens, and a barking battery of dogs. Then the doctor led Matthew and Rachel to a hut that seemed to be centrally located within the village, drew back a buckskin decorated with blade carvings to gain admittance, and escorted the visitors into the cool, dimly lit interior.

The light came from small flames burning in clay bowls that held pools of oil, set in a circle. Facing this circle, a man sat cross-legged on a dais supported by wooden poles about three feet off the ground, and cushioned by various animal skins.

It was the sight of this man that made Matthew stop in his tracks. His mouth opened and his teeth might have fallen out, so great was his shock.

The man—who obviously was the village's chief, governor, lord, or however the savages termed him—wore a buckskin loincloth that barely covered his genitalia. That, however, was by now a commonplace. What so shocked Matthew was that the chief had a long, white, tightly curled judicial wig on his head, and his chest was covered by...

I'm dreaming! Matthew thought. I have to be insensible to imagine this!

... Magistrate Woodward's gold-striped waistcoat.

"Pata ne." The doctor motioned Matthew and Rachel into the circle, and then made gestures for them to sit. "Oha! Oha!"

Rachel obeyed. When Matthew started to lower himself, pain stabbed his ribs and he clutched at the clay bandage, his face tightening.

"Uh!" the chief spoke. He had the long-jawed, narrow face and wore circular blue tattoos on both cheeks, more tattoos trailing down his arms, like blue vines, and covering his hands. The tips of his fingers were dyed red. "Se na oha! Pah ke ne su na oha sau-papa!" His commanding voice instantly stirred the doctor to action, namely that of grasping Matthew's right arm and pulling him up straight. When Rachel saw, she thought the chief wanted her to rise as well, but as she began to stand she was pushed down again—rather firmly—by the doctor.

The chief stood up on his dais. His legs were tattooed from the knees to the bare feet. He put his hands on his hips, his deep-set black eyes fixed on Matthew, and his expression serious as demanded his position of authority. "Te te weya, " he said. The doctor retreated, walking backward, and left the hut. The next words were directed at Matthew: "Urn ta ka pa pe ne?"

Matthew simply shook his head. He saw that the chief wore Woodward's prized waistcoat unbuttoned, and more tattoos adorned his chest. Though age was difficult to estimate among these foreign people, Matthew thought the chief was a young man, possibly only five or six years older than himself.

"Oum?" the chief asked, frowning. "Ka taynay calmet?"

Again, Matthew could only shake his head.

The chief looked down at the ground for a moment, and crossed his arms over his chest. He sighed and seemed lost in thought; deliberating, Matthew feared, how best to murder his captives.

Then the chief lifted his gaze again and said, "Quel chapeau portez-vous?"

Matthew now almost fell down. The Indian had spoken French. A bizarre question, yes, but French all the same. The question had been: "What hat do you wear?"

Matthew had to steady himself. That this tattooed savage could speak a classic European language boggled the mind. It was such a jolt that Matthew even forgot for a few seconds that he was standing there totally naked. He replied, "Je ne porte pas de chapeau." Meaning "I don't wear a hat."

"Ah ah!" The chief offered a genuine smile that served to further light and warm the chamber. He clapped his hands together, as if equally amazed and delighted at Matthew's understanding of the language. "Tous les hommes portent des chapeaux. Mon chapeau est Nawpawpay. Quel chapeau portez-vous?"

Matthew now understood. The chief had said, "All men wear hats. My hat is Nawpawpay. What hat do you wear?"

"Oh, " Matthew said, nodding. "Mon chapeau est Mathieu."

"Mathieu, " Nawpawpay repeated, as if testing its weight on his tongue. "Mathieu... Matthew, " he said, still speaking French. "That is a strange hat."

"Possibly it is, but it's the hat I was given at birth."

"Ah! But you've been reborn now, and so you must be given a new hat. I myself will give it to you: Demon Slayer."

"Demon Slayer? I don't understand." He glanced down at Rachel, who—not having a grasp of French—was totally confounded at what they were saying.

"Did you not slay the demon that almost took your life? The demon that has roamed this land for... oh... only the dead souls know, my father among them. I can't say how many brothers and sisters have passed away by those claws and fangs. But we tried to slay that beast. Yes, we tried." He nodded, his expression grave again. "And when we tried, the demon worked its evil on us. For every arrow that was shot into its body, it delivered ten curses. Our male infants died, our crops withered, the fishing was poor, and our seers had dreams of the end of time. So we stopped trying, for our own lives. Then everything got better, but the beast was always hungry. You see? None of us could slay it. The forest demons look after their own kind."

"But the beast still lives, " Matthew said.

"No! I was told how the hunters saw you travelling, and followed you. Then the beast struck! I was told how it attacked you, and how you stood before it and gave a mighty war cry. That must have been a sight to see! They said it was hurt. I sent some men. They found it, dead in its den."

"Oh, I see. But... it was old and tired. I think it was already dying."

Nawpawpay shrugged. "That may be so, Matthew, but who struck the last blow? They found your knife, still under here." He pressed beneath his own chin with a forefinger. "Ah, if it's the forest demons that concern you, you may rest knowing they only haunt our kind. Your kind frightens them."

"Of that I have no doubt, " Matthew said.

Rachel could stand it no longer. "Matthew! What's he saying?"

"They found the bear dead and they believe I killed it. He's given me a new name: Demon Slayer."

"Is it French you're speaking?"

"Yes, it is. I have no idea how—"

"An interruption, my pardon, " Nawpawpay said. "How is it you come to know King LaPierre's tongue?"

Matthew shifted his thinking from English back to French once more. "King LaPierre?"

"Yes, from the kingdom of Franz Europay. Are you a member of his tribe?"

"No, I'm not."

"But you've had some word from him?" It was said with eagerness. "When will he return to this land?"

"Um... well... I'm not certain, " Matthew said. "When was he last here?"

"Oh, during my grandfather's father's time. He left his tongue with my family, as he said it was the tongue of kings. Do I speak it well?"

"Yes, very well."

"Ah!" Nawpawpay beamed like a little boy. "I do recite it, so as not to lose its taste. King LaPierre showed us sticks that shot fire, and he caught our faces in a pouch pond. And... he had a little moon that sang. All these are carved down on the tablet."

He frowned, perplexed. "I do wish he would return, so I might see those wonders as my grandfather's father did. I feel I'm missing something. You're not of his family? Then how do you speak the king's tongue?"

"I learned it from a member of King LaPierre's tribe, " Matthew decided to say.

"I see now! Someday... someday..." He lifted a finger for emphasis. "I shall go over the water in a cloudboat to Franz Europay. I shall walk in that village and see for myself the hut of King LaPierre. It must be a grand place, with a hundred pigs!"

"Matthew!" Rachel said, about to go mad from this conversation of which she could not partake. "What is he saying?"

"Your woman, sad to say, is not civilized like you and I, " Nawpawpay ventured. "She speaks mud words like that white fish we caught."

"White fish?" Matthew asked. He motioned for Rachel to remain quiet. "What white fish?"

"Oh, he's nothing. Less than nothing, for he's a murderer and thief. The least civilized beast I have ever had the misfortune to look upon. Now: can you tell me anything more of the village of Franz Europay?"

"I'll tell you everything I know of that place, " Matthew answered, "if you'll tell me about the white fish. Did you... find your present clothing... and your headdress, at his hut?"

"These? Yes. Are they not wonderful?" He spread his arms wide, grinning, so as to better display the gold-striped waistcoat.

"May I ask what else you found there?"

"Other things. They must have some use, but I just like to look at them. And... of course... I found my woman."

"Your woman?"

"Yes, my bride. My princess." His grin now threatened to slice his face in two. "The silent and lovely one. Oh, she shall share all my treasures and give me a hut full of sons! First, though, I'll have to make her fat."

"And what of the white fish? Where is he?"

"Not far. There were two other fish—old ones—but they have gone."

"Gone? To where?"

"Everywhere, " Nawpawpay said, spreading his arms wide again. "The wind, the earth, the trees, the sky. You know."

Matthew feared that he did know. "But you say the white fish is still here?"

"Yes, still here." Nawpawpay scratched his chin. "You have a nature full of questions, don't you?"

"It's just that... I might know him."

"Only uncivilized beasts and dung buzzards know him. He is unclean."

"Yes, I agree, but... why do you say he's a murderer and thief?"

"Because he is what he is!" Like a child, Nawpawpay put his hands behind himself and began to bounce up and down on his toes. "He murdered one of my people and stole a courage sun. Another of my people saw it happen. We took him. Took them all. They were all guilty. All except my princess. She is innocent. Do you know how I know that? Because she was the only one who came willingly."

"A courage sun?" Matthew realized he must mean the gold coin. "What is that?"

"That which the water spirit gives." His bouncing ceased. "Go visit the white fish, if you like. See if you know him, and ask him to tell you what crimes he's committed."

"Where can I find him?"

"This direction." Nawpawpay pointed to Matthew's left. "The hut that stands nearest the woodpile. You will know it."

"What's he pointing to, Matthew?" Rachel asked. "Does he want us to go somewhere?" She started to stand.

"Ah, no no!" Nawpawpay said quickly. "A woman doesn't stand before me in this place."

"Rachel, please stay where you are." Matthew rested his hand on her shoulder. "Evidently it's the chief's rule." Then, to Nawpawpay, "Might she go with me to see the white fish?"

"No. That hut is not a woman's territory. You go and come back."

"I'm going to go somewhere for a short time, " he told her. "You'll need to stay here. All right?"

"Where are you going?" She grasped his hand.

"There's another white captive here, and I want to see him. It won't take long."

He squeezed her hand and gave her a tight but reassuring smile. Rachel nodded and reluctantly let go.

"Oh... one other thing, " Matthew said to Nawpawpay. "Might I have some clothing?"

"Why? Are you cold on such a hot day as this?"

"Not cold. But there is a little too much air here for my comfort." He gestured toward his exposed penis and testicles.

"Ah, I see! Very well, I shall give you a gift." Nawpawpay stepped out of his own loincloth and offered it.

Matthew got the thing on with a delicate balancing act, since he was able only to use one arm. "I'll return presently, " he told Rachel. Then he retreated from the hut, out into the bright sun.

The hut and the woodpile were not fifty paces from the chief's abode. A small band of chattering, giggling children clung to his shadow as he walked, and two of them ran round and round him as if to mock his slow, pained progress. When he neared the hut, however, they saw his destination, fell back, and ran away.

Nawpawpay had been correct, in saying that Matthew would know the place.

Blood had been painted on the outside walls, in strange patterns that a Christian would say was evidence of the Indians' Satanic nature. Flies feasted on the gore paintings and buzzed about the entrance, which was covered with a black bearskin.

Matthew stood outside for a moment, steeling himself. This looked very bad indeed. With a trembling hand, he pulled aside the bearskin. Bitter blue smoke drifted into his face. There was only a weak red illumination within, perhaps the red embers of a past fire still glowing.

"Shawcombe?" Matthew called. There was no answer. "Shaw-combe, can you hear me?" Nothing.

Matthew could make out only vague shapes through the smoke. "Shawcombe?" he tried again, but in the silence that followed he knew he was going to have to cross the dreadful threshold.

He took a breath of the sulphuric air and entered. The bearskin closed behind him. He stood where he was for a moment, waiting for his eyes to grow used to such darkness again. The awful, suffocating heat coaxed beads of sweat from his pores. To his right he could make out a large clay pot full of seething coals from which the light and smoke emitted.

Something moved—a slow, slow shifting—there on his left.

"Shawcombe?" Matthew said, his eyes burning. He moved toward the left, as currents of smoke undulated before him.

Presently, with some straining of the vision, he could make out an object. It looked like a raw and bloody side of beef that had been strung up to dry, and in fact was hanging from cords that were supported further up in the rafters.

Matthew neared it, his heart slamming.

Whatever hung there, it was just a slab of flayed meat with neither arms nor legs. Matthew stopped, tendrils of smoke drifting past his face. He couldn't bear to go any further, because he knew.

Perhaps he made a sound. A moan, a gasp... something. But—as slowly as the tortures of the inner circle of Hell—the scalped and blood-caked head on that slab of meat moved. It lolled to one side, and then the chin lifted.

His eyes were there, bulging from their sockets in that hideously swollen, black-bruised, and black-bloodied face. He had no eyelids. His nose had been cleaved off, as had been his lips and ears. A thousand tiny cuts had been administered to the battered torso, the genitals had been burned away and the wound cauterized to leave a glistening ebony crust. Likewise sealed with terrible fire were the hacked-off stumps of arms and legs. The cords had been tied and knotted around those grue-somely axed ruins.

If there was a description for the utter horror that wracked Matthew, it was known only by the most profane demon and the most sacred angel.