The Providence Rider

Matthew may have shivered. He wasn’t sure, but it was cold in here and the blanket was thin. “How did you get in?”

One of the men, the very same who’d thrown his lantern at Matthew’s head, gave a little chuckle. Prideful, Matthew thought. “Lockpicking is Croydon’s claim to art,” Sirki said. “A low claim, but there it is anyway. As for the two unfortunates who spend the night here watching over their charges, the fat woman and the thin man are both sleeping soundly.”

“You’ve killed them?”

“Not at all! Unless a gift of tea from India could be considered deathly. I had occasion to speak to Dr. Polliver this afternoon. I offered up this gift as a token of friendship. Also the tea has healing powers I thought he might care to try. Possibly he’s sleeping very soundly in his bed at home.”

Drugged tea, Matthew thought. Of course. Fell’s people relied on drugs to move their mountains.

“The professor,” said Sirki, “wants you. He needs you, really. Because you seem to…um…get results, shall we say. And you’ve impressed him, Matthew. So now I shall tell you that it is time for your choice. One of three. Yourself, the stable or the boarding house. And yourself shall be returned here after this business is completed, whereas the others…sadly beyond the point of return. We have the key to your house, taken from Dr. Polliver’s safebox. Croydon will go to your miniature abode and remove whatever clothing you might need. You will be taken to a waiting boat, to be rowed out to meet the larger vessel. All we require you to do at the moment is roll onto this stretcher.”

At that pronouncement, Croydon and the other jackal unrolled the brown cloth and held the stretcher between them. Sirki moved aside so Matthew could do as instructed.

Matthew hesitated. He swallowed hard. His bruises pulsed, and his pulse felt bruised. For all the fear that danced its Mad Robin within him, he couldn’t suppress a grim smile. How many times had he felt alone at midnight, with the hard dark pressing in and no sign of morning? Many times before, and with luck he would survive this one as he had survived the others.

No, he decided. With more than luck.

With every skill of reasoning and power of concentration he had.

That, plus some good old fashioned lowdown strength of will.

He glared into Sirki’s eyes. “Get out of the way,” he told the giant. “I’ll walk.”

Sirki obeyed at once. “I thought you would, young sir. That is why I placed your boots and clothing on the floor before I woke you.” The dark eyes darted toward Croydon’s fart-partner. “Squibbs, find Matthew a cloak or a blanket worth its weight in wool. A heavy coat might do, which you’ll find hanging in the room where the sleepers doze. Move, please. It disturbs me to think my voice goes unheard.”

The way the East Indian killer said that, Squibbs might well have let loose another buttock-blast. However, Squibbs moved forthwith at the speed of terror.

Matthew eased himself to a sitting position on the side of the bed. The pain came up his sides like metal clamps snapping shut rib-by-rib. A red haze whirled before his eyes. Damned if he’d let himself pass out. He bit his lower lip until the blood nearly oozed.

“Croydon,” said Sirki. “Help the young gentleman put his boots on, and then hand him his clothes.”

Croydon wasted no time in following the command, and Matthew realized a Corbett had suddenly become royalty, of a strange kind.

The boots were struggled into, the smoke-pungent clothing put on, and then it was time to stand up. Matthew took a long, deep breath. He slid off the bed and took the weight on his legs and his knees ached and his thigh muscles tightened and shrieked for a few agonizing seconds but then he was up and, after wavering ever so slightly, had secured his balance in an insane world.

“Very good,” was the killer’s comment.

Squibbs returned with a brown coat and, in addition, a gray blanket. He helped Matthew get the coat on and then wrapped the blanket around him with the care of a man who suddenly wanted to seem excellently careful. Sirki tucked the stretcher up under one long and dangerous arm. He spoke Croydon’s name, and Croydon was off with a lantern in hand, obviously heading for Matthew’s dairyhouse to fetch more clothes for the young sir’s journey.

“Where are we going?” Matthew asked as he hobbled out onto the bracing cold of King Street, with Squibbs holding a lantern on one side and Sirki on the other.

“To a ship that will deliver you to an island,” Sirki answered. “You will find the weather much more pleasant there. Step lightly, young sir. We don’t wish you to sprain anything.”

Between them, they steered Matthew’s path toward the waterfront, and soon they were only two gleams of yellow lamplight in the dark and sleeping town.

Because she was still angry at Matthew Corbett, she had not gone to visit him today. Because she had not gone to visit him today, she missed seeing him and was in turn angry at herself for missing him. Because she was angry in so many areas at once, she could not sleep very soundly. And so because she could not sleep very soundly and had gotten out of bed to have a cup of water and eat a corn muffin, Berry Grigsby saw through the kitchen window the glimmer of light as someone carrying a lantern came out of Matthew’s house.

Her first thought, unladylike as it might have been, was: Damn! What’s this about? She blew out her own candle to avoid being seen. Her heartbeat had quickened and she felt the breath rasp in her lungs. She watched as the figure strode away, carrying what might have been a bundle of some kind.

Carrying it to where? she wondered. And to whom? To Matthew? At this time of night? It must have been Hudson Greathouse, she reasoned. Yes. Of course. Hudson Greathouse. Go back to bed, she told herself.

She could still see the swing of the man’s lantern as he walked south along Queen Street. Heading toward the King Street Publick Hospital, of course.

But…at this time of night?

Was someone robbing Matthew’s house?

She only had a few seconds to decide what to do. Her decision was rapidly made, and though she thought it might be the wrong one in the light of day it was perfectly right by the dark of night.

She rushed into her bedroom, where she knocked her knee on a table in her haste to get dressed. In her hurry, she pulled on a shift, then a petticoat and an old blue dress trimmed with yellow that she often wore when she was painting. Her stockings and shoes went on, also in a hurry, and then a dark blue woolen cloak and cap of the same color and material. Mittens for her hands, and she was ready. Her intent was to catch up with the thief, if at all possible, and then start calling for a constable. She lit a lantern from the steadily-burning candle in her bedroom and on the way to the front door had a thought to awaken Marmaduke, but her grandfather’s snoring buzzed behind his own bedroom door and she decided enough time had been lost. This was her…adventure, perhaps? Yes, she thought. And never let it be said that the high-and-mighty Matthew Corbett would not appreciate her coming to the rescue of his stolen items.

So there.

Berry left the house, and stepped into bitter cold.

She followed her lantern’s glow along Queen Street, heading south in the same direction as the thief. It crossed her mind that she was foolish out here in the wintry dark, chasing what was most likely Hudson Greathouse fetching some item of clothing for Matthew, but still…if one could not be foolish sometimes, what was the point of life? And…if it wasn’t Greathouse, then…who? Well, she would see what she would see, and furthermore she was determined to show Matthew she could be a help to him and not a hindrance.

For not so very far ahead, closer toward the masted ships that sat moored to the harbor, three lantern lights were showing. She slowed her pace as she approached. If she were an animal, she would be sniffing the wind for the smells of thievery, but she could only trust what she could see. At each street corner she passed she looked in vain for the green lantern of a constable; no, they were all warming themselves before fires somewhere, so in essence Berry Grigsby was her own constable this frigid midnight.

She got close enough to make out four figures at the wharfside, and one of them a giant wearing a multi-colored coat or robe of some fashion and a turban. The figures all had their backs to her. They were walking out along a pier. And…in the middle there, the third figure…yes, it was. She would know his walk anywhere. He was walking stiffly, still in pain, and he was bundled up in what appeared to be a gray blanket. He was following the giant, and behind him was a man holding a bundle of clothes under one arm and in the opposite hand a lantern. They were going toward a small skiff tied to the pier.

She didn’t like the looks of this.

A wind had picked up, bringing a touch of ice. Or she felt an icy touch at her heart, for she had the sure feeling Matthew was being taken where he did not wish to go. She looked desperately for any sign of a constable’s lantern, but there was no green glow to be seen. No, this night she was on her own.

As was Matthew. Or so he might think. He was being guided into the skiff, which was big enough for five or six men unless one of them was a turbaned giant. Matthew had his head down. In concentration or defeat? she wondered. Whichever…she wasn’t going to let him be taken away like this, in the dead of night by villains unknown. For they had to be villains, to be stealing away from her the man she loved.

She started forward. One step at first—a cautious step—and then the others came faster, for she saw her time was running out, and Matthew was being put into the boat and in another moment one of the men was going to cast off the lines and then the oars would be put into their locks and…

“Matthew!” she called to him, before this terrible journey could begin. And louder still: “Matthew!”

The giant, still on the dock’s planks, whirled toward her. Matthew stood up, his face ashen beneath the bruises. The other two men lifted their lanterns to catch her with their dirty light.

“Go back!” Matthew shouted. He nearly choked on the two words. “Go back!”

“Ah!” Sirki’s voice was soft and smooth. He smiled; he was already moving to cross the forty paces between them. “Miss Beryl Grigsby, isn’t it?”

“Berry!” Matthew couldn’t communicate his fear for her loudly enough: “Run!”

“No need for that,” said Sirki, as he came forward upon her with the sleek swiftness of a cobra. She backed away a few steps, but she realized as soon as she turned to run the giant would be at her back. “No need,” he repeated. “We’re friends here, you see.”

“Matthew! What’s going on?”

Sirki kept himself between them, a huge obstacle. “Matthew,” he answered as he steadily advanced, “is about to take a sea voyage. It is his own decision.” He came up within arm’s length. His smile broadened, but in it there was no joy. “I think you might also enjoy a sea voyage, miss. Is that correct?”

“I’ll scream,” she said, for it seemed the thing to say with the blood beating in her cheeks.

“Croydon?” Sirki spoke over his shoulder, but kept his eyes on Berry. “If this young woman screams, I want you to strike Matthew as hard as you can across the face. Do you understand?”

“Gladly!” Croydon said, and he meant it.

“He’s bluffing!” Matthew called out. He heard the weariness in his voice; his strength was departing him once more, and he knew that in his present state of disrepair there was nothing he could do to help her.

“I understand,” said Sirki, close now upon Berry. She could smell the sandalwood incense from his clothing. The lantern light gleamed off the pearl-and-turquoise ornament that secured his turban. His voice was a soft murmur, as if heard through the veil of sleep. “You wish no harm to come to your friend. And he is your friend, yes?”

“Berry! Get away!” Matthew urged her, with the last of his strength. Croydon clamped a hand on his shoulder that said Shut your mouth.

“Your friend,” Sirki repeated. “You know, I have the gift of seeing to the heart of matters. The heart,” he said, for emphasis. “You wouldn’t be here unless you were concerned for him, would you? And such concern should not be taken lightly. I would like for you to join us on our journey, miss. Walk before me to the boat, would you please?”

“I’m going for a constable,” she told him.

But she did not move, and neither did the giant.

He stared into her eyes, his mouth wearing a little amused half-smile.

“Walk before me to the boat,” he repeated. “I would appreciate your compliance.”

Berry caught a movement to her right. She looked to the west along Wall Street, and saw at the intersection of Wall and Smith streets the green-glassed lantern of a passing constable.

“I promise,” said Sirki in a cool, even tone, “to return you and Matthew safely here after his job is done. But if you cry for help or run, I will kill you before the cry leaves your lips and before you take two steps. I will deposit your corpse in the sea, where it shall never be found.” He waited, silently, for her to make her decision.

Matthew was listening also. He couldn’t help her, and he damned himself for it.

Berry watched the lantern’s green glimmer pass away. The cry was so near to bursting free…yet she knew this man standing before her would do exactly as he said, and there was no point in meeting her death this night. She turned her gaze back upon him. “What job does Matthew have to do?” Her voice was shaky, yet she was holding herself together with all the willpower she could muster.

“What he does,” Sirki answered. “Solving a problem. Will you walk before me to the boat, please? This cold can be doing you no good.”

She had an instant of thinking she might smash him in the face with the lantern. But he reached out and grasped her wrist, as if reading her thought as soon as it was born, and with a strangely gentle touch he led her out along the pier to the skiff where Matthew was pushed back down to a sitting position by Croydon’s rough hand.

“Squibbs,” said Sirki when Berry had been gotten aboard and situated, “cast off our lines, please.” It was done, and Squibbs stepped back onto the boat. Lanterns were placed on hooks at bow and stern. Two sets of oars went into their locks. Croydon and Squibbs went to work, rowing out into the dark, while Sirki took a seat between Matthew and Berry.

“Where are you taking us?” she asked the giant, and now her willpower was showing cracks and her voice did indeed tremble.

“First, the place you call Oyster Island. We’ll give a signal from there to the ship. Then…outward bound.” When he smiled, the diamonds in his front teeth glittered.

“Why?” Matthew whispered huskily. The question was directed at Berry, who did not answer. Therefore he asked again, from the bruised lips in his battered face. “Why?”

She couldn’t answer, for she knew he didn’t really wish to hear why a woman—any woman—would leave her safe abode in the cold midnight and undertake a journey at the side of a man she desired more than anything in the world. If she might be able to keep him safe…or keep him alive…then that was her own job, worth doing. Hang New York, she thought. Hang the world of safe abodes and warm beds. Hang the past, and what used to be. The future lay ahead for both of them, and though it was for now a forbidding place of dark water and uncertain destiny, Berry Grigsby felt more vital and more needed in this moment than ever before in her life.

The oars shifted water. The skiff moved steadily toward the black shape of Oyster Island, and Matthew Corbett the problem-solver could not for the life of him solve the problem of how to get Berry out of this.

Eleven

THE skiff’s bottom scraped rocks. “Out,” said Sirki, and at this command Croydon and Squibbs—two obedient seadogs—fairly leapt from the boat into the icy knee-deep water and dragged the skiff onto shore.

“Gentleman and lady?” Sirki made an expansive gesture with one arm and gave a bow, whether in mockery or with serious intent Matthew couldn’t tell. “We’ll be here only a short while,” the giant explained as he lifted his lantern to shine upon their faces. “I regret the cold and the circumstances. Step out, please, and do mind your footing on the stones.”

So land was reached with a stumble from Berry and a muttered curse from Matthew that would have gained approval at the roughest tavern in New York. Matthew caught her elbow and guided her onward over rocks, loose gravel and the ubiquitous pieces of oyster shells that crunched underfoot.

Standing amid the dead weeds and wild grass of shore, Sirki busied himself opening a leather pouch, from which he removed squares of red-tinted glass. He deftly removed the clear glass insets of his lantern and, shielding the candle’s guttering wick with his formidable body, he then slid the red glass squares into place. “Watch them,” he told the two mongrels, and then he strode off in the direction of the watchtower, which perhaps was only a hundred yards or so distant through the woods.

A signal was about to be given and the ship alerted that this scheme was underway, Matthew thought. He felt Berry shiver beside him, and he put his arm and part of the gray blanket around her.

Lights from the two lanterns held by Croydon and Squibbs wandered over Berry’s body. A bad sign, Matthew thought. “Where are we going?” he asked them, if just to divert their minds from their present—and highly disturbing—destination.

“Somewhere warmer than this,” said Croydon. “Thank Christ.”

“A three weeks voyage? To a warmer clime?” Matthew considered the geography; he put a map of the Atlantic in his mind and sought a harbor. “Not the Florida territory, I’m betting. Not into Spanish country. So…” Outward bound, Sirki had said. “The Bermuda islands,” Matthew announced. “Is that right?”

“You are a pretty thing,” said Squibbs, putting his light on Berry’s face. “Take off that cap and let your hair loose.”

“No,” Matthew answered. “She won’t.”

“Here, now!” Croydon stepped forward and fairly sizzled Matthew’s eyebrows by putting the lamp’s hot glass right up in his face. “No one’s talkin’ to you, are they? Squibbs is just askin’ her to be friendly, is all. A cold night and such…what’s the harm of being a little friendly?” He turned the light upon Berry, who couldn’t help but shrink back a step, for she realized these two were not so well-controlled without the East Indian giant giving them orders.

“Let your hair loose,” Squibbs repeated. His mouth sounded thick and wet.

“Sirki will be back any minute,” said Matthew. His body was a tense mass of bruised pain; in his present state he could neither deliver a blow nor take one.

“Any minute ain’t now,” was Squibbs’ reply. He reached out, grasped Berry’s cap and pulled it off, and her coppery-red tresses flowed free down her shoulders. “Pretty hair,” Squibbs said after a moment of deliberation. “Bet it smells nice.”

“Long time,” said Croydon, “since I smelled me a woman’s hair.”

Matthew took a position between the two men and Berry. He thrust his chin forward, daring a strike. “Sirki won’t like this. We’re supposed to be guests.” He spoke the word with dripping sarcasm.

“Ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong,” Squibbs answered, his eyes narrowed and his gaze focused beyond Matthew on the true object of his attention. “Just wantin’ to smell. Step aside.”

Matthew balled up his fists, for all the good that would do. His arms were leaden lengths of ache. “I’ll call him,” he promised. “He won’t—”

“Hear you,” said Croydon. “Be a good little shit and step aside.”

“I’m not moving.”

“Oh yes, you are,” said Squibbs, and with a quick powerful motion he grasped the front of Matthew’s coat and flung him aside. Matthew stumbled over his own legs and went down amid the weeds and brush, and once out of the way and out of the light he was a forgotten man.

Squibbs and Croydon pushed forward, and though Berry retreated another step she realized there was nowhere else to go, and perhaps she ought to stand perfectly still and get this over with for surely the giant would be back at any minute. But, as the one man had said, one minute wasn’t now.

They got on either side of her. Matthew said, “Stop it!” and tried to struggle out of what felt like a cluster of thorns. His legs would not obey. The two men got their faces up against Berry’s hair, and as they drew in draughts of woman-perfume she smelled their unwashed odor of dried sweat, salt and old fish.

“Nice,” Croydon breathed, and his free hand came up to stroke Berry’s cheek. “Real fuckin’ nice.”

Matthew tried to get up. His legs betrayed him yet again. “Stop it!” he repeated, but he might have been speaking to the hard stones on the ground beneath him. Squibbs was starting to draw his unshaven face slowly down along Berry’s throat. She made a noise of disgust with a frantic edge in it, and she pushed against Squibbs’ shoulder but he was going nowhere, and now Croydon’s gray-coated tongue flicked out and darted here and there amid the freckles on Berry’s left cheek.

Matthew could bear no more of this. He desperately searched about in the dark for a small rock, a stick, whatever he could get his hands on to throw at the two ruffians. He struggled to stand, and in further desperation he opened his mouth to shout for help from the East Indian giant.

Before he could deliver that shout, Matthew was yanked backward through the brush by a hand that closed on his coat’s collar.

At the same time, another hand that felt as rough as treebark clamped over his mouth, sealing shut all proposed shouts. He was dragged back and further back, the weeds and sawgrass and thorns tearing at his clothes, and then he was tossed unceremoniously aside, more like a beatup sack that needed to be gotten out of the way. A finger pressed hard to his mouth. The message was: Silence.

And Matthew knew, even in his state of brain-blasted befuddlement.

Here was the phantom of Oyster Island.

“What in bleedin’ hell was that noise?” Squibbs directed his light into the underbrush. “Hey now! Where’d that boy go to?”

“Shit!” Croydon had almost hollered it. His attention had left Berry’s freckles and was fixed on the empty place where Matthew Corbett had been a few seconds before. “He’s fuckin’ gone!”

“I know he’s fuckin’ gone!” Squibbs sounded near crying. “You don’t have to tell me he’s fuckin’ gone!”

“Run off! God blast it! That ape’ll have your head for this!”

“My head? You was supposed to be watchin’ him!”

“I was watchin’ him, ’til you started this shit with the girl!” Croydon backed away from Berry, sensing a terrible streak of bad luck coming his way. “Get in there and find that damned boy! He couldn’t have gone far!”

Squibbs surveyed the dark and forbidding expanse of forest. “In there?”

“Go on, man! You owe me for that last mess in London!”

Berry saw Squibbs give a little shrug of resignation, as if that last mess in London had forever enslaved him to his partner. Then the hideous man whose breath smelled like spoiled onions and horse dung—and she would always unfortunately remember that odor—followed his lantern’s light into the woods.

A few seconds of silence followed. “You got him, Squibbs?” Croydon called.

There was a smack.

A quick but brutal sound. Berry thought it sounded like a fist plowing into a bucket of mud. Maybe there was the crunch of a bone breaking in there, as well. She winced and tears burned her eyes, for she knew that Matthew could hardly survive a blow like that.

A body came flying out of the woods like dirty laundry being thrown from a hamper.

It landed nearly at Croydon’s slime-crusted boots. “Jesus!” Croydon yelled, for his light fell upon Squibbs’ face and the knot that was already turning purple at the center of the forehead. Squibbs’ eyes had rolled back and showed the whites; he was not dead, for his chest heaved in ragged inhalations of troubled air, but his life-candle had nearly been knocked cold.

And then the phantom of Oyster Island, followed closely by Matthew Corbett, stepped out of the darkness into the quivering orbit of Croydon’s lamp.

The massive freed slave Zed wore a ragged black coat over the same baggy brown breeches he’d worn when he’d leaped off a pier into the water back in November, and had last been seen swimming in the direction of Africa. He wore no shoes. A slice of bare chest showed between the straining buttons of his too-small coat. In the light from Croydon’s lantern, Zed was even more fearsome a figure than three months before. Though he had lost some muscle in his hulking shoulders, he had gained a wild black beard. His skull was still perfectly bald, having been scraped clean with perhaps a sharpened shell, and across his broad ebony face—imprinted upon cheeks, forehead and chin—were tribal scars that lay upraised on the flesh, and in these were the stylized Z, E, and D by which Ashton McCaggers had named him.

Now, however, Zed’s master was no longer Ashton McCaggers. A writ of manumission from Lord Cornbury had secured Zed’s freedom. This stony and wooded patch of earth might well have been the ex-slave’s kingdom, if he could not yet reach the golden shore of Africa. In any case, the scowling expression on Zed’s face spoke to Croydon, and it said in no uncertain terms: Get off my land or pay in blood.

Croydon understood that message, for he turned tail and fled for the skiff. Unfortunately for Croydon, the king of Oyster Island was not in a mood to treat a trespasser with a welcome hand. Even as Croydon reached the skiff and clambered into it, Zed was upon him. The flat of a hand against the back of Croydon’s head sent a spray of saliva from the man’s mouth and perhaps caused the teeth to snap shut on the tongue because there was a plume also of scarlet liquid. Then Zed followed that with a fist to the middle of the forehead, same as had been delivered to Squibbs. As Croydon slithered down like a gutted fish, Zed picked him up bodily from the boat and swung him onto the shoreline’s rocks, where the body made a hideous series of crunching sounds and began to twitch as if Croydon were dancing to Gilliam Vincent’s abusive direction.

“Ah!” came a voice with a quiet lilt. “What is this?”

Matthew and Berry saw that Sirki had returned from his task. Bloody light from his red-glassed lantern had fallen upon Zed, whose fathomless black eyes took in this new intruder and seemed to glow with centers of fire.

“A Ga,” said Sirki, with a note of true admiration. Obviously he knew the origin of the tattoos and the reputation of the Ga as supreme warriors. “I am pleased,” he went on, “to make your acquaintance. I see you have taken up for my guests. And now,” he said with a red-sparkly smile, “I suppose I shall have to kill you.” He hooked the lantern’s wire handle over a low-hanging tree branch, which would have been out of the reach of normal-sized men. Then he reached into his cloak and brought out a curved dagger whose grip gleamed with various precious stones. Its outer slashing edge was formed of vicious sawteeth. Matthew wondered if Sirki would have used it on Mrs. Sifford and Mr. Dupee if the tea had failed to put them under. Still smiling with murderous intention and delight, Sirki advanced upon Zed, who plucked up an oar, thrust out his chest and stood his ground.

There was nothing either Matthew or Berry could do. Sirki kept striding forward, now through the ankle-deep water, as if on a simple mission to cut open an extra-large grouper.

By the red light, the two forces neared conflict. Zed waited with the oar ready to strike, and Sirki’s blade made circles in the air.

Suddenly they were upon each other, with the same swiftness in the same second; whoever had made the first move was impossible to tell. Sirki dodged a swing of the oar and came up underneath it, his knife’s point going for Zed’s belly. But Zed retreated through the shallow water and turned aside, and the knife did no more damage than popping a button from his coat. When the energy of the thrust had been expended, Zed brought the oar’s handle up to slam against Sirki’s shoulder. The East Indian giant gave a hiss of pain, but no more than that, and as he staggered back to get out of range he was already swinging the blade at Zed’s face to imprint another initial upon the flesh.

Zed was faster still. The sawteeth missed his nose by an African whisker. The oar was in action again, coming at Sirki’s head. The giant threw up an arm and the oar’s shaft cracked and shattered across it, bringing from Sirki a small grunt as one might make stubbing a toe on a garden stone. The knife’s angle changed direction in midair and what had begun as a strike to the shoulder now became a quest for throat’s flesh. Zed’s free hand caught the wrist. A fist slammed into Zed’s jaw and made his knees wobbly but he stayed on his feet and thrust into Sirki’s midsection with the oar’s jagged end.

A sudden twist of the body and the oar tore through cloth underneath Sirki’s right arm. Sirki’s fist shot out again, catching Zed square in the mouth and rocking his head back. Still the massive black warrior did not fall, and now he squeezed Sirki’s wrist with a desire to burst bones and Sirki fought back by hammering at Zed’s skull with his fist. Zed’s concentration was complete; the blows to his head may have been painful but he shook them off like beats to a tribal drum, and letting go of the oar’s splintered shaft he grasped Sirki’s knifehand and began to squeeze those bones with the tenacity and power of a python.

Sirki resisted as long as he could, and then with a muffled gasp his fingers opened and the fearsome knife fell into the water. He was no longer smiling. He jabbed the fingers of his other hand into Zed’s eyes. Zed gave out a tongueless roar of pain and swung Sirki around in preparation to throw him sprawling into the rocky drink, but Sirki held tight to him and both the giants staggered and fell together into the water. They struck and splashed and kicked and grappled, rolling over stones layered with oyster shells. Zed got hold of Sirki’s turban and it came undone, revealing a brown scalp bald except for a thick strip of black hair down the middle. Then Sirki chopped the edge of a hand into Zed’s throat and Zed gurgled and fell back, and as Matthew and Berry watched in horror the East Indian killer got on top of the Ga warrior and, grasping the throat with both hands, forced the bearded face underwater. Zed thrashed to escape. Sirki’s arms quivered with the effort of holding him under.

Matthew saw the other oars in the skiff. He roused himself to action and started out over the rocks to get an oar and beat Sirki upon the head with it, but suddenly there was an upheaval of water and Zed came up with his teeth gritted and his eyes full of Hell. He took hold of Sirki’s throat with both hands and with a single powerful thrust he was suddenly on top of Sirki, whose face was sinking beneath the foam.

Now it was Sirki’s time to wildly thrash. The muscles of Zed’s shoulders and back bunched and twisted under the sopping-wet coat. Sirki’s hands came up, the fingers clawing at Zed’s tattoos. Zed’s body shook with the effort; Sirki was fighting for his life, and his strength was yet undiminished by the process of drowning.

In all this violence, the rowboat that slid onto the shore with a lantern at its prow hardly caused a ripple. Matthew saw it contained five men. And one woman. The woman being Rebecca Mallory, real name Aria Something. One of the men being Doctor Jason Mallory, real name unknown. But both certainly alive and well and unburnt to crisps as had been their unfortunate lie-ins.

“Stop that!” Doctor Jason shouted. Two of the men, having realized their stately champion was being defeated by this black misfit in drenched rags, were already clambering from the boat. They grabbed hold of Zed from either side and tried to pin his arms. That lasted only a few seconds before a Herculean shrug sent them flying, one to land in the water and one in the weeds.

“Mister Grimmer!” Doctor Jason was directing his shout to another man in the boat. “Run him through!”

A thin man in a brown tricorn and a dirty brown suit with ruffles of grimy lace at the sleeves and throat stood up, drew a rapier from its sheath and stepped into the water. He approached Zed with no hesitation, and raised the sword to drive it into the black warrior’s back.

“No!” Berry cried out. “Please! No!” She ran into the water to get between Grimmer and Zed, and the sallow swordsman looked for further instructions from the false Doctor Jason. Berry didn’t wait. She knew the next word would be her friend’s death. “Zed!” she said, with raw force in her voice. “Zed, listen to me! Let him go! Do you hear?”

His head turned. The bloodshot eyes found her, and read her fear for him. Still holding the flailing giant down, he turned his head to the other side and saw the swordsman standing there, ready to put the rapier to use.

Berry put her hand on Zed’s shoulder. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No.”

Zed hesitated only a few seconds longer. He brought his right hand up and with it made a flattening motion. All right, he had answered. He released Sirki, stood up and stepped back, and Sirki burst from the briny coughing and gasping and then turning over and throwing up his last New York dinner into the sea to be consumed by the small fishes of the night.

“Shall I kill him anyway, sir?” asked Grimmer, in a low sad voice that seemed to suit his name.

“I’ll kill him!” Sirki had found his curved dagger. He and his clothing were a mess. He was trying to wind his sodden turban back onto his head. The furious expression on his face made him appear to be not so much a giant as a big infant angry at being deprived of a sweet. “I’ll kill him this minute!” he nearly shrieked, and he lifted the sawtoothed blade and sloshed toward Zed, who stood immobile at the rapier’s point.

“You will not touch him!” This announcement had not come from Doctor Jason, but from the raven-haired, blue-eyed and fiercely beautiful Aria. She stood up in the boat; over a black gown she was wearing a dark purple cloak and on her head was a woolen cap the same color. “Sirki, put your knife down!” Her voice carried the promise of dire consequences if he did not obey; he did obey, almost immediately. Matthew watched this with great interest, getting the order of masters and followers in its proper perspective. “I see you have the girl,” Aria went on, with the slightest edge of irritation. “That may be for the best, despite all appearances. You see, the black crow means something to the girl, and the girl means something to Matthew. So no one is going to be stabbed or otherwise harmed this night, Sirki. We can use what we can use. Do you understand?”

“He’s nearly killed Croydon and Squibbs! And these other two! And he’s a Ga! A danger to everyone!”

“Danger,” said Aria, with a faint smile in the lamplight, “can be easily controlled, if one knows the right throat to pressure. Grimmer, put the tip of your sword against Miss Grigsby’s neck, please.”

Grimmer did so. Zed gave a warning rumble deep in his chest.

Matthew own throat had tightened. “There’s no need for that. I said I’m coming along.”

“Miss Grigsby,” said Aria, “inform your black prince—however you can—that your life depends on his good behavior. That we wish him to be meek and mild and for that he shall have a good dinner and a warm blanket in a ship’s brig tonight.”

“A ship’s brig?”

“Just inform him, however you are able. And you might tell him you will be in the next cell, so he won’t feel so lonely.”

Now came Berry’s challenge to communicate to Zed without benefit of the drawings they used to do together, which had served as a bridge between them. Zed was watching her intently, knowing that some message had been delivered to her from the black-haired woman and now was poised in his direction. Berry understood that he did know some of the English language, but how much she couldn’t tell since silence had been thrust upon him with the cutting out of his tongue, and silence also was his armor.

But it was true that Berry and Zed had spent much time together, at the behest of Ashton McCaggers, for whether Zed goeth so went his master at that time and McCaggers did enjoy Berry’s company, broken shoe heel or not. And in that time Berry had begun to “hear” Zed, in a fashion. It was a hearing of the senses and the mind. She could “hear” his voice in a gesture of the hand, a shrug of the shoulder, a fleeting expression. If it had been a spoken voice, it would have sounded a little low and gutteral, a little snarly as suited Zed’s view of the world that held him captive.

Now Berry stared into Zed’s eyes and held her hand out before him, palm outward. She spoke two words: “Do nothing.”

He looked at her hand, then at her face. Then at her hand again. He turned his head to take in the scene where unconscious men were coming back to their senses. He took in the woman on the boat and then the giant he’d just nearly drowned. He took in the sight of Matthew Corbett wrapped in a blanket, the young man’s face bruised by some incident beyond his understanding. He looked again at Berry Grigsby, his friend, and his lifting of the eyebrows and the slight twist of his mouth said, I will do nothing…for the moment.

“Good,” she answered, with the rapier’s tip nearly nicking her throat. She aimed her angry eyes at Grimmer. “You can put that down now.”

Grimmer waited for Aria to nod, and the rapier was lowered.

But not yet lowered was the heat of rage that steamed from Sirki, who pressed forward with his knife in hand. “I’ll kill you yet,” he promised Zed. The ex-slave understood the meaning quite well, and he gave a square-toothed grin that almost drove Sirki into a maddened fit.

“We have a tide to catch,” Aria announced. “Anyone who cannot walk will be staying here. Gentlemen, board your boats. Matthew, would you please come get into this one? I’ve saved you a place.” She sat down and patted the plank seat at her side.

The woman’s directions continued. Berry and Zed were put into the other boat, with Grimmer holding the sword ready and Sirki anxious with his knife. Everyone, it seemed, who had been knocked woozy could at least walk, and they returned to the boats. Squibbs seemed only to be able to walk in circles, however, and Croydon winced and grasped at his back with every step.

Matthew took his place beside Aria Whomever, and Doctor Jason sat facing him. The two boats were pushed off and the oarsmen went to work.

“You have made the right decision,” said Doctor Jason, when they were out on the choppy water away from Oyster Island.

Matthew watched the lamps of the second boat following. “I presume no harm will come to either Berry or Zed?” He stared into Aria’s intense sapphire-blue eyes, for she was the captain of this craft. “In fact, I insist on it.”

The woman gave a small laugh that might have been edged with cruelty. “Oh, you’re too cute,” she said.

“I imagine I’m going also into a cell in the ship’s brig?”

“Not at all. They will be, yes, because they are uninvited guests. But you, dear Matthew, will have a cabin of honor aboard the Nightflyer.” She motioned out into the dark. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

He had to ask the next question, if just to salve his curiosity. “What’s your real name? And his real name?”

“I am Aria Chillany,” she answered. “He is Jonathan Gentry.”

“At your service,” said Gentry, with a nod and a devilish smile.

Matthew grunted. Even the grunting hurt. He recalled something Hudson had told him, back in the summer, concerning Professor Fell’s criminal network: We know the names of the most vile elements. Gentleman Jackie Blue. The Thacker Brothers. Augustus Pons. Madam Chillany. They’re in the business of counterfeiting, forgery, theft of both state and private papers, blackmail, kidnapping, arson, murder for hire, and whatever else offers them a profit.

He felt Madam Chillany’s fingers at the back of his neck.

“You’re thinking of something important?” she inquired.

How to survive, madam, he thought. And how to keep Berry and Zed alive, too.

“We’re going to become very good friends, Matthew,” she said. “Poor boy.” She pursed her lips in a pout and now her fingers travelled over the tender terrain of his cheek. “All those bruises and scrapes. But you enjoy close scrapes, don’t you?”

“Not the scraping,” Matthew said. “The escaping.”

A ship’s bell rang, out in the distance. Suddenly a wet wall of black timbers was standing before them. Lanterns moved above. Men shouted back and forth. A rope ladder was lowered, and Aria Chillany said to Matthew, “You up first, darling. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Watch her, Matthew,” Gentry cautioned. His smile had gone a bit crooked. “When she gets behind you, you might find something thrust into your—”

“But don’t listen to him,” she interrupted. “He’s all talk, and precious little action.”

Matthew was beginning to think these two had so tired of their roles of loving husband and doting wife that they could’ve broken each others’ necks. Or, at least, stabbed each other below the waist. In any case, no wonder the false lovebirds had separate beds. The only fire in that house had been made by the bombs going off.

Now, though, as Matthew forced himself up the ladder—and no one else was going to help him up, for certainty—he felt Aria Chillany’s hand slide across his rump, and he thought that some wells in this vicinity were in desperate need of being pumped.

The sun was beginning to turn the eastern sky pale gray as Berry and Zed came aboard. They were quickly taken away belowdecks, without a chance for Matthew to speak or be spoken to. Sirki slinked along behind them, his turban still in disarray and his clothing dirtied by shore rocks and oyster shit. The two rowboats were hoisted up by men who looked as hard as New York cobblestones. Though Matthew was not overly familiar with the many types of ships and seacraft, he thought the Nightflyer might be considered a brigantine, having two masts with square sails on the foremast and fore-and-aft sails on the mainmast. It looked to be a low-slung, fast vessel, and its crew appeared highly efficient at their tasks. Orders were given, the Nightflyer turned to catch the wind, the sails filled and the spray began to hiss along the hull. A hand touched his arm as he stood at the starboard railing in the strengthening light. Madam Chillany regarded him with narrowed eyes. “I’m to show you to your cabin now. You’ll meet Captain Falco later. You’ll be served breakfast presently, and a large glass of wine to help you sleep.”

“Drugged wine?” Matthew asked.

“Would you prefer?”

He almost said yes. Maybe he would say yes, if he thought about it long enough. He was almost too tired to sleep of his own will, and who could sleep when they were summoned across the Atlantic to be Professor Fell’s personal providence rider?

Matthew saw the town of New York fading away behind them. It did appear gray, at this distance and in this light.

Farewell to the gray kingdom, he thought. For whatever he used to be and whoever he once was, he could no longer be. He had thought himself having to grow solid stones to meet the threat and violence of Tyranthus Slaughter. But now he realized that grisly adventure might have been a garden walk compared to this journey.

So farewell to the gray kingdom, for his mind must be clear and his vision sharp. He must be more Matthew Corbett than ever before. And, he thought grimly, God help Matthew Corbett.

The Nightflyer turned to secure its course. A dolphin leaped before the bow. Rays of sunlight streamed through the clouds to brighten the sea, and Matthew hobbled behind Madam Chillany in search of a good breakfast and a glass of sleep.