Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” the doctor asked, as proudly as any father might speak it.

  “She?”

  “Oh yes.” Firebaugh put his thumbs into the lapels of his brown jacket in an attitude of pride. “She. As beautiful as any woman I’ve ever laid eyes upon.”

  “You must be an inexpensive escort,” Matthew remarked.

  “Really, though! It’s wonderful! Look at all this, here at my disposal! And I am free to work through the night…all night…every night I choose to do so…and no one bothers me.” He cast a loving gaze around at his domain. “I am free to explore, to examine, to test, to…well…it’s just wonderful, is what it is. I would offer you some tea? It’s brewing in one of the burners.”

  “No thank you, I just had a cup. As I said, I won’t take much of your time but I wanted to say thank you for what you’ve done.”

  “Thank me? Oh Matthew! I should thank you! This is my dream come true! The dream of any chemical researcher! And the professor says I’m to go with Belyard day after tomorrow to Swansea to the medical supply house there, so I can stock up on some elements that are in decline here. So really…my thanks to you, sir, for making this all—”

  The door from the outer area suddenly opened.

  Julian came in. He stopped short.

  “Matthew,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know you were here. The front door was unlocked. Pardon me, I’ll come back later.”

  “Hello, Mr. Devane,” Firebaugh said coldly, still bearing the scars of his wounded ear and the cut down his forehead into the right eyebrow. “Now please leave, unless you’d like a taste of my latest mixture.”

  “What might that be?”

  “It will in time be an improvement on common laudanum. At present it is poisonous enough to kill four horses. Come on, I need a test subject.”

  Julian smiled. Matthew was unnerved by it and didn’t know exactly why. Julian wore a long gray fearnaught coat and a companion to his dark green tricorn sat rakishly upon the blonde hair growing from his scalp. The black gloves on his hands bore a slight sheen of blue.

  “I trust Berry is completely herself again?” Julian asked Matthew.

  “Yes, thank God. And the doctor, too, of course.”

  “And no chance of further complications?”

  “None,” huffed Firebaugh. “I know my chemicals, sir!”

  “Excellent,” Julian said, his voice still quiet. “Leave us, Matthew.”

  Now Matthew’s senses were at full alarm. “Julian, what are you—”

  “I thank you, Matthew,” said Firebaugh, “for bringing me here and giving me all this bounty, but this beast deserves no appreciation! If it hadn’t been for him, Elizabeth Mulloy would still be alive! A fine young girl, dead because he wished a hostage!” Firebaugh turned his back on Julian and grinned at Matthew. “He’s a born killer…the type to kill young girls and, I’m sure, little boys as well!”

  Julian was on him in three strides.

  The knife was already out.

  It glinted in the lamplight.

  It carved another grin from ear-to-ear below the one on the doctor’s mouth.

  Julian shoved the man to the floor and stood over him, his face blank, watching the runnels of blood stream across the stones.

  “Christ!” Matthew cried out. “What have you done?”

  “Wait,” Julian replied.

  Firebaugh’s body contorted. He clutched at the gape of his throat. The blood was spraying out, nearly hitting Matthew. Firebaugh’s eyes bulged from his face, the spectacles hanging by his good ear. He put a hand to the floor and tried to stand, but his hand slipped in the gore and he went down again. His chin cracked on the stones.

  “Wait,” Julian repeated.

  Firebaugh shivered. From the gashed throat there came a noise like the wind ripping through dry reeds.

  Then he was still, lying on his side like his own question mark.

  Julian knelt down and wiped the blade clean on the dead doctor’s shoulder.

  “I knew he was ill-named,” Julian said, straightening up again.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Matthew backed away. “Why?”

  Julian’s eyes were dark and hard, but his mouth twisted in the grimace of a smile. “No one,” he said, “makes me clean out their chamberpot and gets away with it.” He looked toward the writing desk and walked to it. He picked up the book of potions. He slid the knife into its sheath under his coat, and he took the glass chimney off the lantern and turned the wick up high.

  As Matthew watched with a mixture of terror and warped fascination, Julian began to methodically tear the pages from the book and touch them to the flame.

  “This book should not be. You know that as well as I,” he said as the smoke rose up and the papers curled and blackened. He dropped each one just before the flames reached his gloved fingers. The ashes fell like gray snowflakes around the doctor’s corpse. “Don’t speak, Matthew. Just stand there. Good boy,” he said, as the pages of the book continued to crisp away.

  When the last of the pages had been burned and its ashes joined with the others on the bloodied floor, Julian opened the book’s empty binding and laid it down almost reverentially across Firebaugh’s pallid face.

  “There,” Julian said. “Finished.”

  “You came here to kill him, didn’t you,” said Matthew.

  “Guilty.”

  “The professor will cut you to pieces for this.”

  “Not if the professor can’t find me.” Julian’s eyes were no longer hard but they were still cautious. “I am going to talk my way past McBray at the back gate. Easy enough. I am going to take a boat. A nice boat, not like that little splinter we took from Adderlane. I am leaving here, and soon I plan to be sailing off to Bristol.” He smiled faintly. “A plan. How quaint. Now…as for you…you won’t tell anyone where I’ve gone, will you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “I know you won’t. Because you’re a good man, Matthew.” Julian lifted his chin a fraction. His eyes caught shards of yellow light. “But I hope some bad has rubbed off on you. You’ll need it before it’s over. Good luck.”

  Matthew nodded. His senses were nearly overwhelmed by the carnage he’d witnessed, and perhaps he had begun to think of Firebaugh as a friend, but even though the doctor had saved Berry, the truth was that through Firebaugh the professor would’ve used that book to continue to keep the village’s inhabitants as drug-dazed prisoners, and probably worse to come. Now…what would be the result of its permanent absence?

  Julian was right. The book should not be. But whether Julian had killed the doctor and burned the book out of a sudden feeling for humanity or simply because it struck him to do so before he departed were the elements of a formula Matthew could not decipher.

  “To you as well,” Matthew answered.

  “And if you ever happen to wonder how I’m doing,” the bad man said, “be assured that I will always…always…start anew and afresh tomorrow.”

  With that Julian Devane turned and strode out the door, leaving a still-stunned Matthew standing alone in the beautiful laboratory of Y Beautiful Bedd with the ill-named Lazarus Firebaugh’s blood puddling around his boots.

  thirty-seven.

  “Let’s go across to the Old Crock and get a brew,” said Hudson.

  This suggestion brought forth a groan. “I can’t walk another step! You’ve near killed me today!”

  “Nonsense! Don’t you want a drink before you turn in?”

  “No,” Hugh Guinnessey replied from his supine position on the cowhide sofa. “You don’t need one either.”

  “Who said anything about need? Come on, man! Get up and let’s go.”

  “I can’t, Hudson. Really. I swear to God, I’m cooked.”

  Hudson stood before him in the sumptuous green-curtained roo
m with his hands on his hips. “I’m going across to get a drink. You coming or not?”

  “Not.” Guinnessey sat up and rubbed his aching calf muscles through his white stockings. “Damn, what a set of legs you have! Well…Christ take it all…go on and get your drink. I’m stayin’ right here.”

  “I don’t think the professor would like that. Aren’t you supposed to stick on me like tar-and-feathers without the feathers?”

  “He’s up in his room asleep by now. Anyway, where are you gonna go to? Ain’t like you were wantin’ to run off.”

  “True. Still…I like you, and I’d hate to get you in trouble with the boss.”

  Guinnessey scowled. “He ain’t had to be tryin’ to keep up with you all the damn day! Listen…go get your drink and come right back. If he don’t know you’re out, there’s no worry.”

  “What about the others?” Hudson asked, with an expression of genuine concern for the man who had been tasked to not only share this room but keep watch on him so all remained in order until their ship sailed in four mornings. “I wouldn’t want to run into any of them and have them tell the professor the extremely wild and dangerous Hudson Greathouse was let loose to roam around.”

  “They’re all likely asleep by now too. Hell, I’m not used to late nights!”

  “Hm,” said Hudson. He glanced at Guinnessey’s thin legs. The man himself was no raging bull. The scheme of the day seemed to have worked. “Then I have your permission to cross the street to the Old Crock and have one drink? After which I shall return as meekly as a little child attending the Sabbath?”

  “Yes! Just go and quit jabberin’! I’m near fallin’ asleep myself.”

  “If you insist. May I have some money?”

  “How much?”

  “Oh, four shillings ought to do it.”

  “Four shillin’s? You gonna get a bottle and a side of beef? Damn!” Guinnessey hauled himself off the sofa and, wincing with every step, hobbled to the table where his pouch of money lay. He unbuttoned it and held out the coins. “Take ’em and go on.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Hudson received the money, shrugged into the new leather coat with its fleece lining and hood he’d bought today with shillings from the same pouch—actually Professor Fell’s money, but who was counting?—and he dropped his newfound fortune into a pocket. He put on the new black leather gloves he had also purchased today in their hours-long shopping trip back and forth along the fashionable streets around the Emerald Inn, the same trip that had been calculated to wear out the legs of Hugh Guinnessey and make this late-night venture possible. Hudson’s watchdog had begun to howl and moan around noon, but Hudson had been adamant in finding an entire wardrobe of new clothes for the forthcoming trip to Italy. It wouldn’t do to look like a common ragamuffin aboard a privately-chartered ship, would it? Anyway, what was there to do in London but eat, drink and buy clothes at the most expensive and far-flung shops that could be found, and devil take the passing cabs because exercise in this sharp, cold and bracing January air was good for a body.

  Guinnessey groaned as he worked himself back on the sofa. “Bring me the change,” he said.

  “Surely. No need for me to take the key. I’ll return in half a shake of a pig’s tail.”

  “Listen,” Guinnessey said as Hudson started out into the lamp-lit hallway. “Just to the Old Crock and no further. I mean it. If he knew I was lettin’ you run free it would be my neck.”

  “Consider this,” Hudson replied at the door with the nice warm hood up over his head. “If I wished to escape from you, how many times today might I have done that? Of course you were carrying your pistol—an unnecessary weight on you, I believe, that you’re now paying for—and you might’ve shot me right there in broad daylight with a hundred thousand people as witnesses, but the truth is that I could’ve wrested that gun from you at any time and easily escaped. But as I told the professor…why would I want to escape? I’m going along to protect Matthew. It would be folly to turn my back on him, and a disgrace to me. So rest easy, Hugh…I’ll get my drink and come right back. Can I bring you anything?”

  “New legs,” Guinnessey said.

  Hudson gave a chortle, went out and closed the door.

  At the end of the corridor he went down the long curving emerald-green-carpeted staircase into the realm of the rich. A huge fireplace bordered with green and white tiles burned merrily, warming a few swells and their female swellettes who lounged about in the voluptuous chairs. He looked about and saw none of the three others Fell had brought along for this jaunt: Kirby, Sanderson and Dawes, all of them somewhat brighter and harder to deal with than Guinnessey, which was why Hudson had volunteered to share a room with him though the volunteering had to seem to be Hugh’s idea. That bastard Stalker had been left in charge of the village, so God help the village.

  As for the village, Hudson considered that Julian Devane had managed a neat vanishing act after putting the blade to Lazarus Firebaugh and destroying the book of potions. He understood that McBray had opened the back gate and allowed Devane to amble down to the harbor. And why wouldn’t he? Devane was no prisoner there, and in fact he was a valued member of the organization. Hudson had heard that Fell took the news in gloomy silence but with the larger prospect of the Italian trip ahead, what was he to do?

  Matthew had been interrogated about the incident by Stalker. Did he know anything of it? No, Matthew had said. It must’ve happened while he was having tea with Berry.

  Having tea with Berry, Hudson thought with a suppressed grin. In his youth it was called something else.

  For his money—all four shillings of it at the moment—Devane was not all bad.

  Hudson lowered the hood of his coat and strode directly across the soft heaven of carpet to the clerk’s desk.

  “Yes sir?” asked the young man on duty.

  “I need a sheet of paper, writing materials and an envelope.”

  “At once, sir.”

  When the items were presented on a green enamel tray—and Hudson thought that three more nights of everything green was all he could stand before he turned green himself—he asked where he might compose a letter and was directed to a writing desk in a well-lighted alcove.

  Hudson sat down at the desk’s chair. He spread the paper out on the desk’s blotter—yes, green—and thought out what he was going to write. He was much more gifted at fighting than writing, but here was the moment he’d been planning for all day.

  So, to the task at hand with the supplied pen and inkwell.

  It took him a while.

  When he was finished and had signed his name at the bottom, he folded the sheet and slid it into the envelope.

  On the envelope he scribed To Sheriff Gideon Lancer and beneath that, Whistler Green. Ah…here green was a necessity rather than a bilious luxury.

  Hudson took the tray of writing materials and the envelope back to the clerk. “Will you seal this with your stamp, please?”

  “Of course, sir.” There was a moment while the clerk fetched a candle—emerald green—and the official stamp of the Emerald Inn to seal the letter.

  When it was completed, Hudson said, “Will you get this out by express mail coach as soon as possible? First thing in the morning, I hope?” He was already reaching into his pocket for the money. He brought out two shillings and laid them on the clerk’s desk.

  “Sir, that’s far too much postage!”

  “First thing in the morning,” Hudson repeated, the stern notes of no nonsense and no mistakes shading his voice.

  The clerk nodded, slipped the envelope into a leather pouch along with a few other letters, and it was accomplished.

  Hudson pulled his hood up, walked out of the inn and into the cold night. He crossed the street to the Old Crock tavern, where he ordered an ale and sat at a back table listening to a young woman with long shining black hair playing the guitar and si
nging songs of lost love.

  Hudson mused that she should be singing songs of newfound love, to suit the occasion. Right now Matthew was probably up in Berry’s room. During the trip from Fell’s village they had stayed so close to each other Hudson thought it a wonder they hadn’t had to be pried apart with a crowbar. But who could fault that? Both of them had walked through their own territory of Hell, so for now let the angels sing.

  There was still some difficulty ahead, and not just concerning the trip to Italy. In the morning at six o’clock Berry’s ship sailed for New York. There would be copious tears, wailings and handwringings at the dock, and Hudson figured he might have to slap Matthew to get him out of it. Berry obviously did not particularly approve of this eastward journey but she was resigned to it, and Hudson had told her he would look after the boy as best he could.

  The boy?

  No longer a moonbeam, and far from it.

  The man.

  But after Berry’s ship departed in the morning, Hudson intended to get Matthew a little bit drunk, because whether Matthew knew it or not he needed to fly free out of that tight skin of his, at least for a while. He was going to get a little bit drunk too. He needed it just as much.