Freedom of the Mask

by Robert R. McCammon

  Others surged forward to grasp Hudson’s hand or clap his shoulder and convey the same message. Mother Munthunk’s slap on his back nearly popped his eyeballs out. Berry, her grandfather, Constance and John Five shouldering the trunk passed him, going up the gangplank.

  “Hurry up there, we’ve got a tide to catch!” bawled McClendon, pipe clenched between his teeth and brindle terrier in his arms. “Give ’em room there, you lot!”

  “I wish you good fortune,” Reverend Wade said to Hudson. “I’ll pray and ask my congregation to pray for your success.”

  “Thank you, sir. I have a feeling all the help I can get will be most welcome.”

  Suddenly there seemed to be a different sort of disturbance in the crowd and they parted like the Red Sea.

  They were making way for the approach of a tall, fleshy man in a pale blue suit with a ruffled shirt and ruffles at the cuffs. He wore a tricorn the same shade of blue and he carried a thin black cane. His face, daubed with white powder, might have made him popular among the horses at Winekoop’s stable, as they would think him an equine miracle walking on two legs. He passed through the throng, looking neither left nor right, as if it were a given that he owned all assembled, their clothing, houses, possessions and every brick in the town.

  This, then, was the Right Honorable Lord Cornbury, Edward Hyde, Governor of New York and New Jersey and cousin to Queen Anne. He was rarely seen without his usual feminine clothing and makeup, but today he was playing at being a man.

  The lord who was most times a lady came right up to Hudson and stopped within the length of a nose hair.

  “I understand,” said Lord Cornbury, in the very same dour tones he used when he wore his gowns, “that Mr. Corbett is in some difficulty and you are bound to…shall we say…rescue him?”

  “I’m planning on finding him, yes.”

  “Hm,” said Cornbury, with a nod. He took no interest in the crowd, but remained focused solely on Hudson. “That young man does get into trouble, doesn’t he?”

  “I don’t think they’re usually of his own making.”

  “True enough, though Mr. Corbett seems to enjoy stirring up the muddy bottom of dark waters. High Constable Lillehorne told me many times that the young man’s pride would lead him to disaster.” Cornbury let that linger for a moment, expecting Hudson to respond but none was forthcoming.

  “The ship’s soon to get underway,” Hudson said. “If you’ll pardon me?”

  “Yes, of course. Go about your business. And let me say that whatever Mr. Corbett is, he is one of us…therefore I do hope you find him and bring him back…but I have a feeling that before this is done, you’ll be the one needing rescue.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind, sir. And may I ask, just for the sake of curiosity, why you’re not—”

  “Dressed in my usual splendor? Ah…the question. I will tell you,” and here he pitched his voice a little lower so it carried no further than Hudson’s right ear, “that the letters I’ve sent a year ago to my cousin have not been answered, so why should I represent Her Majesty’s presence on these streets?” His upper lip curled, an ugly sight on an already unfortunate face. “From here on, Mr. Greathouse—or at least until I hear favorably from that person—I am walking in my own two shoes.”

  Hudson looked down. What a sight he got, for he thought he’d smelled such but had considered it to be Lord Cornbury’s breath at close quarters. “I fear you’ve already stepped in something,” he said.

  “Oh misery! Oh, damn it all, what a mess!” was Cornbury’s reaction, and perhaps the question of why the crowd had parted to give him room was answered. With as much decorum as a man could muster wearing clodhoppers that had failed to hop the clods, he turned about and stalked away leaving his untidy footprints on the boards.

  A bell was rung, and another sounded back. “All ashore who ain’t bound for seventy-six days on the Bonny Chance!” boomed Captain McClendon from the quarterdeck. In a previous conversation between Hudson and McClendon, the captain had confided that his fastest crossing stood at seventy-eight days, but he was determined to beat that by forty-eight hours. With luck and the captain’s resolve, Hudson hoped they wouldn’t be too far behind the Wanderer in reaching Plymouth…and maybe, if they were really fortunate, they might make harbor within a few days of what he understood was an ignoble vessel captained by a drunken sloth.

  But time would tell the tale.

  It took awhile longer for everything to be put in order. Marmaduke Grigsby stopped to ask Hudson to please watch over a headstrong granddaughter who he sincerely hoped would live to see the age of twenty-one. Hudson vowed to do his best, and Marmy departed. A few of Matthew’s friends and other relations of the passengers remained on the dock while the longboats began the task of rowing the Bonny Chance out of the harbor. Hudson stayed on deck, figuring he would have to get used to this as his cabin was so small; when the hammock was suspended from the overhead it was so tightly wedged between the walls that it wouldn’t swing.

  He watched the town diminish in size as the longboats rowed them out, and he had the strange feeling that New York was leaving him, rather than the other way around. He had the feeling it was getting smaller and smaller as if to make room for the larger—and more civilized yet many times more deadly and brutal—world beyond the Atlantic. There was a lot of world out there, and the people who had constructed it had had a long time to build their massive stone monstrosities of violence and brutality. He hoped finding Matthew was a real possibility and not a fool’s errand, but he would be a fool if it meant he had any chance of success.

  They passed the wild forest and rough rocks of Oyster Island on their passage toward the edge of the sea. The shops, taverns and houses on the rolling green hills of Manhattan seemed as toys to be played with by the hand of God. The sailing ships with their tall masts had become miniatures. All the people there…the hundreds of them…ants in the anthill that never slept.

  Berry joined him at the port side. She had removed her hat, and the freshening breeze had begun to blow through her tresses. She did not speak, but instead visored her hand over her eyes to look back toward the town, as the sun had strengthened and shards of golden light reflected off water that remained as gray as the morning’s mist.

  “You can’t see him from here,” Hudson said.

  “Pardon?” She dropped her hand and gave him a quizzical expression.

  “I’m sure he came out to watch the ship leave. He may be standing there still, but you can’t see him from here.” Of course Hudson knew Ashton McCaggers had certainly emerged from his attic domain at City Hall to watch the vessel—and Berry—take leave of New York, just as he was sure Katherine Herrald and Minx Cutter had watched from their own balcony or window.

  “Yes,” she answered quietly, “he probably did. I just…thought I’d take a look.”

  “Listen here,” he said, and summoned up the sternest gaze he could bludgeon her with, “I told Marmaduke I’d watch over you, so—”

  “You certainly don’t need to—”

  “Yes, I do,” he said forcefully. It was enough to cork her mouth. “If you’ve insisted on coming along against both my wishes and Marmy’s as well, you’re going to at least listen to me.” He paused for a few seconds to let that sink in, and it seemed to because suddenly she was all eyes, if not all ears. “When we reach Plymouth,” he went on, “you’re not to leave my side. The first thing we’ll do is check with the dockmaster to find out when the Wanderer arrived…and let’s hope to Christ it does arrive.” He declined to tell her that from what he’d heard at the Charles Town harbor, only the ship’s barnacles were holding the hull together. “Until then…” He didn’t know what else to say, because she was going to be down in the hold with those passengers who could afford only the least and most crude of accommodations, and though the crew seemed all business and very attentive to the captain’s orders as they prepared to lower the sails, Hudson knew that after a few weeks at sea things would be different. H
e was an avowed landlover, but he’d had enough nautical voyages to know that a crew could get very…the word would be rowdy…if not managed by an iron hand, and even then the goats and cows in the manger had to be on guard.

  “Yes?” Berry prompted.

  Hudson watched the town shrink to the size of an engraving on a pocket watch. “Hell,” he muttered, for there was only one way to make good his vow of protection.

  “A comment or a destination?” she inquired.

  He let go a long sigh before he returned his gaze to hers. “I want you to take my quarters. They’re tight, but at least the air’s fresher and there’s a latch on the door.”

  “Certainly not. I paid for what I’m getting.”

  “And you may pay a bit more, men being men and long at sea. I don’t like your being so close to the crew’s quarters, or to the manger for that matter. Pretty soon the aroma down there will not be—”

  “I sailed perfectly fine from England to New York before,” she said, but she conveniently left out the unfortunate incident of the dropped soap on the Sarah Embry.

  Hudson pulled up all quarter ton of his darkest scowl and thrust his chin toward her like a declaration of war. When he spoke, his voice came from the deepest cavern of his guts. “This is not a request, miss. You’re taking my quarters. You’ll be safer there and I’ll sleep easier down in the hold. Are we understood?”

  No, she wanted to say, but how could one say no to an approaching thunderstorm? In fact, he scared the blazes out of her. A little bit of anger danced in her eyes but it very quickly danced away. “All right,” she said. “Over my protest.”

  “Noted and discarded. I’ll bring your trunk up for you.”

  The longboats had dropped their lines. The sails came down and the rigging hummed with the power of the wind. Before they went below, both Hudson and Berry gave one last look across the gray water at the town they were leaving, and each held the memory of someone there who was being left behind. Neither of them shared this with the other, but both had the feeling that a very different chapter in their lives was in the process of unfolding, and who could know how long it would be before they set foot in New York again, and what changes would be wrought before they did?

  Up on the quarterdeck, McClendon hollered a course to the helmsman though the sailor at the wheel stood only a few feet away. The open sea stretched ahead, and dolphins rose from the depths to happily ride the skirts of the Bonny Chance.

  Time passed, and it did tell the tale.

  The tale it told for the Wanderer was one of continued wandering, under ill stars and a callous sun. Captain Peppertree had all but abandoned his command for the warmth and forgetfulness of the rum supply, which he had to protect from the angry crew at pistol point. Eventually someone broke into his cabin, the rum was seized and with that Captain Peppertree became an afternote in the story of nautical history. He might have been hanged from a yardarm had not Reverend Fanning promised the vengeance of God for such a crime. Thus Peppertree joined Matthew Corbett to be bound hand and foot with ropes in the soggy bowels of the ship’s lowest hold, while the other bilge rats were free to nip and hiss in the dim light of a single hanging oil lamp that swung back and forth over a thousand times a day. Matthew knew, for one day he kept count though the days themselves could only be counted by the ration of bread and water brought by a crewman at first light. At least the ropes had been tied so that the hands of the prisoners were in front of them, and they could brush the rats away from the hunks of dark-veined bread.

  Soon after being put into this makeshift brig, Matthew had heard the noise of much hammering and sawing above and figured the ship’s carpenter and the crew had seized upon a way to, if not fully repair the broken mast, at least jury rig the sails to catch as much wind as possible. Whoever had taken on the role of captain would now be trying to figure out how much foodstuffs and clean water had survived the storm, to calculate the remaining length of the trip with what canvas they had, and how best to keep himself and everyone else alive. The Wanderer staggered on, and Matthew figured everyone up top was terrified to the roots of their hearts by any dark cloud on the horizon.

  All in all, it was a sorry passage through Damnation that gnawed at the mind and sought to reduce a human being to an animalistic state. Determined not to fall again into that abyss from which he’d just crawled, Matthew kept himself mentally occupied by replaying games of chess he remembered playing at the Trot, and also turning over again and again the problem of how to get out of this situation and back to New York. Peppertree unfortunately was reduced to a babbling wreck after a few days, and after two weeks reduced to a silent heap that hardly moved except to throw himself upon his daily ration and fight the rats with all the fury of seven slavering madmen.

  Came the morning when the hatch was unlocked, and Reverend Fanning and Curt Randolph descended the ladder carrying oil lamps and the rations of the day.

  Though thin and weakened, Matthew had the presence of mind not to eat and drink everything he was given in a desperate few moments, but to make the bread last a few hours and the water a full day. He noted that Fanning and Randolph were filthy and wearing mold-greened clothes that hung on them like the rags of scarecrows. Their cheekbones had begun to show and their yellowed eyes seemed to be slowly pushing themselves out of their faces. He reasoned that everyone up there was on rations; by now the food and drinkable water must nearly be gone.

  When Fanning reached the bottom of the ladder, he retched and had to turn away for a moment.

  Matthew started to say Pardon our condition, but to his surprise no voice emerged. He had a brief horror that, just as his completeness of memory had returned, his ability to speak had departed. He tried again, and this time got out in a harsh croak, “Pardon.” Then the rest seemed too much effort to say so he gave it up.

  “Captain Spragg says we’re four days out,” said Randolph, and even he sounded labored with the rigors of speech.

  Peppertree made a gobbling noise that Matthew deciphered as Bastard​Spragg​stole​my​ship​see​him​hanged, the last of it rising to what was a nearly a shriek of revenge.

  “We are told the last of our food will see us through,” Randolph continued. “I regret to say—on the captain’s orders—you will get no more bread, but your water ration will remain as it is.”

  “Kind of him,” said Matthew. He wanted to say I’m sick of bread anyway, but it suddenly seemed very important not to waste his remaining strength.

  “You must know we’ve had a bad time. Jahns’s wife passed away last month and Mr. Montgomery died less than a week ago. Most of us have been very ill.”

  Matthew nodded. He spoke into the lamp that Randolph held. “Things are bad all over,” he said.

  Fanning had regained his composure and kept in his possession the meager contents of his stomach. He staggered toward Matthew and reached out to brace himself against a support post, as the ship’s rolling down here was truly vicious. “We have decided,” he said, in a weakened voice that yet carried the firm conviction of his faith, “what we must do with you.

  “We all agree that your master was a disagreeable man, and mayhaps there was bad blood between you, but to murder him…when he was so near to being saved…it’s a monstrous thing you’ve done.”

  “I told you before, when we came below after the storm,” said the bearded and half-starved problem-solver from New York, who could have stood before anyone he knew in that town and be called naught but an unclean beggar, a stranger in his own land. “Dahlgren wasn’t my master. I told you…he was taking me to England by false measures.”

  “Yes, you told us,” Randolph agreed, “but it makes no sense. False measures? He held no pistol to your head or blade to your back. Why would you be with him if not by your own free will?”

  Bastard​Spragg​stole​my​ship sobbed Peppertree, who had curled himself up as best he could into a little ball of misery.

  “I’m very tired,” Matthew said. “I can’t exp
lain everything to you. Just let me say…Dahlgren would’ve made certain I didn’t live to see Plymouth.”

  “You cannot plead self-defense,” said the minister, who clung to the post as the ship rolled in what seemed another storm, yet he knew that outside the sun was shining and the wind a gentle favor. “I—we all—fail to understand why your master was trying to harm you with that axe, and why you both fought so viciously, but…murder is murder. I saw that with my own eyes and by my oath to God and the common good I cannot let that pass.”

  “And neither can I,” Randolph added. “We have decided therefore—and all of us are one in this decision, including Spragg—that you be turned over to the law as soon as we reach port. Even though the Count may have been of foreign birth and the murder committed on the high seas, some accounting must be made.”

  To this Matthew made no reply, for what was to be said? He would have the chance to explain his situation to the law in Plymouth, and that at least was a blessing. And a greater blessing: barring any horrendous mishap between here and the coast, he had survived this voyage while others had perished. Also…if he were in the position of Fanning and Randolph and he didn’t know the whole picture, might he be of like mind in turning a murderer over to the law? Yes, he certainly would be. Therefore he said nothing, and after another moment the reverend made his unsteady way to the ladder, climbed up and went through the hatch.

  “We will all be glad to set foot on solid earth, I’m sure,” Randolph said. He lifted his lamp a little higher to have more of a view of Matthew’s face. “Listen…I think I can get you—both of you—a little drink of rum, if you’d care for that.”

  Peppertree made a noise like a dog drooling for a beefbone.

  “Thank you,” Matthew answered. “Much appreciated.”

  Randolph nodded, and then he too climbed out of the fetid chamber.

  Matthew was left with his thoughts and Peppertree’s soft, tragic whining. Surely the law in Plymouth would have heard of Professor Fell, Matthew reasoned. As soon as he mentioned this name and gave the particulars, no one was going to hold him accountable for the death of a Prussian killer. So there was just the remaining problem of how to get back to New York, and perhaps contacting the members of the Herrald Agency in London would see him to success. The name of that agency, too, would be known to the law.