Freedom of the Mask

by Robert R. McCammon

  “Too far from home! Too far from home!” Dippen Nack chortled. His small shoulders were hunched forward and the teeth showing in a cherubic, fat-cheeked face reddened with the flow of excited blood. The brutal little billyclub-toting bully had come up in the world; he wore a dust-colored suit—though marred by food stains on the front—with silver buttons and upon his head a black tricorn. Beneath the tricorn was a white wig of many ostentatious curls. Nack’s eyes, which always held red centers of anger, were accentuated with dark brown makeup, which made them appear as ugly pits of mud. But same as before, for he lifted that accursed ebony billyclub and placed its blunt end beneath Matthew’s bearded chin. With it, he forced the young man’s head up. “Looky looky!” grinned Nack. “Crumble yer cookie!”

  “I have no idea what that means,” said Matthew, pulling his head back from the billyclub’s kiss.

  “It means we gots the power now, Mr. High-And-Mighty!” came the heated response, with plenty of spittle flying from between the jagged teeth. “Ain’t nobody steppin’ in to save yer bacon!”

  “You’re making me hungry,” said Matthew.

  “Please, Nack. Restrain yourself.” Lillehorne used his cane to push the billyclub away in what seemed for a few seconds might become a battle between the villainous instruments.

  Nack allowed the cane to win, though he hissed, “Seems yer forgettin’…this ain’t New York, Sir Lillehorne. The rules is changed here.”

  “I forget nothing, dear friend. But let’s not break Mr. Corbett’s jaw before he has a chance to speak.”

  Some chance he had! Matthew thought. These two would not make a full brain between them. Still…the old adage that beggars could not be choosers was never more à propos.

  They were sitting at a table in a small, dank conference room. An oil lamp glowed atop the table and two half-melted candles burned in wall sconces. Beyond the single shuttered window Matthew could hear rain hitting the glass; he had not seen the sun in the four days since he’d arrived in London and been brought directly to this gaolhouse, where he shared a cell with three other unfortunate men, one who lay silently on the floor, curled up as if accepting Fate’s decision that he should die a soul-shattered scarecrow. Moncroff had referred to the building as St. Peter’s before handing over all the papers to an official and wishing Matthew well, but whether the place was really named that or it was a gaoler’s grim jest he did not know.

  Matthew’s impression of London had been blocks of massive buildings, streets choked with all manner of conveyances and mobs of people, the smells of unwashed humanity and what seemed a sour scorched odor remaining from the Great Fire of thirty-seven years ago, as incredible as that might be, and that incessant sound of life in progress. Was there any place in London where one might find a silence? Certainly not in St. Peter’s gaolhouse, where the screams and cries of desperate men became a kind of depraved music throughout all hours of the candle-clock. Other than those cursory impressions of the city, fog had masked the details and street placards and so Matthew had no idea where he was on a map of London, what was around him, where the Thames was, or much of anything else. His world had become the small cell, his dirty bunk and a blanket that smelled of death; at least in this perdition he had been relieved of the thunderball, though to have this audience with the assistant to the High Constable—who had taken his own sweet time in coming after Moncroff had made the official request and passed Matthew’s name along through the proper channels—Matthew was required to again wear his shackles, wrists locked to chain locked to ankles. Therefore he was forced to shuffle along with his back bent over as if in reverence to the holy law of London.

  “You,” said the nearly-diminutive Lillehorne, “are in a predicament.” Lillehorne had the hands of a child and looked as if a hard wind could break his bones. His black goatee and mustache were, however, as precisely-trimmed as they’d been in New York, his hair—pulled back into a queue with a lavender ribbon—had the same artificial hue of black dye with a pronounced blue sheen, his nose was still small and pointed, his lips still like those of a painted doll’s, his arrogance and sense of importance to the world also the same. In this case, his importance to Matthew’s world was paramount. Matthew figured Lord Cornbury had pulled some strings to get Lillehorne this position, but that probably meant that Cornbury had been found at some skullduggery by Lillehorne, and Nack’s presence meant that Nack had found Lillehorne at some skullduggery, and it was a wonder the colonies of New York and New Jersey still had a guinea left in their treasuries. Mayhaps the money bags in the vaults were filled with wooden tokens or Indian beads. Something to look into when he got back home, he decided.

  “A predicament,” Lillehorne repeated. “I have read the statements of the witnesses and your own tale of this nasty business as recorded by the clerk at the court of Plymouth. I am to take it that this Count Dahlgren was the same individual who escaped justice by fleeing the Chapel estate when we raided the place? And…incidentally…saved your life, for which I believe there has yet to be proper recompense.”

  “The same man,” Matthew answered. “Intent on delivering me to Professor Fell while I was in a state of distress. As I said, I had no memory of who I was or what had—”

  “Yes, yes.” The small fingers waved that away like so much smoke. “I’ve heard of such things happening but never witnessed it. Few have. It would be very difficult to prove at court.”

  “If I hadn’t lost my memory, why would I be travelling with him? And being taken to the professor to be murdered? I believe Dahlgren wanted to trade me to get into Fell’s good favor, perhaps be brought back into the fold. Listen…Gardner…surely they know Fell’s name here! And they must know about the Herrald Agency! Why is that I’m sitting in that cell when all this could be explained in half-a-day’s work?”

  “Because,” Lillehorne replied, and for once his voice was patient and nearly soothing, in his own way, “no one has half-a-day to spend on you. I am here unofficially, taking time from other pressing matters.” He cocked his head to one side and his lips pressed tightly together before he spoke again. “You have yet to realize where you are. London is not New York. There we had a few robberies, a few altercations in taverns, a little strife between lovers or husband and wife, a murder now and again. Here, Matthew…you have a merry town black as sin. If a gentleman can walk two blocks at night and not be robbed and killed, he might consider his life charmed. I do understand that Professor Fell brought the gangs together into what might be considered a business organization, but time moves on. The gangs have been reborn with much younger and more vicious members. They control entire sections of the city. And murders…oh, Lord God! In this town knives are used more for cutting throats than for gutting fish. Every morning we take the wagons out to load up the corpses, and you never know what you might find: a headless little girl of eight or nine, a man torn open and his intestines carefully displayed on either side of the body like precious artifacts, a woman with her private parts cut away and missing…never to be found. Dozens of murder victims, nameless and often literally faceless, each and every day.” Lillehorne paused, because there had been a tremor of emotion in his voice and it had surprised him as much as it surprised Matthew.

  Rain was beating harder at the window. One of the candles in its sconce hissed and flared as its wick fired a particularly oily remnant of hog’s fat.

  It was a moment before Lillehorne steadied himself to go on.

  “Some know the name of Professor Fell,” he said quietly. “Most do not. It does not serve his purpose to be known by the population at large. But I will tell you, Matthew…that from what I have heard…from what I’ve seen, in just these few short months…there are worse than Professor Fell out there. As I say, time moves on. There are younger hands eager to take filthy money and many innocent lives, if need be. In New York there is a conscience, Matthew…there is a respect for other people. Here…well…New York had a population of around six thousand at the last census. London holds
a population of six hundred thousand, all jammed together wanting what the other has, and fighting to stay alive any way possible. More are pouring in every day from all points of the compass. Do you get my drift?”

  “Yes,” Matthew said.

  “And the law here is also fighting for survival,” Lillehorne continued. “A bitter struggle, to be sure. There are parts of London no sane man will enter. They are fit only for animals. Here a whorehouse where the eldest girl is twelve and the youngest six, there a back alley den where impoverished men and women are induced to fight each other to the death for the benefit of the gamblers’ pockets. Bring a new influx of cheap and mind-robbing gin to the equation, and you have the makings of Dante’s Inferno upon English earth.” Lillehorne stared into the flame of the oil lamp, and it was not just the low temperature of the mean little room that gave Matthew a chill but the expression of pain in the man’s eyes. Obviously he hadn’t been totally prepared for the job, nor for the realities of Londontown in the year 1703. “This city,” Lillehorne said, “eats its young and weak. It cuts the heads off children and batters the faces of men and women into pulp for the taking of a few shillings. It corrupts the mind and destroys the soul. It has no bottom. So…no, there is no one to spend half-a-day on you, young man. Better for you than here,” he said, “would have been to jump overboard and follow to a watery grave the unlamented Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren.”

  A silence fell but for the noise of the rain. Nack’s mouth contorted as he was about to loose a further insult at Matthew. Lillehorne said in a dry and distant voice, “Don’t speak,” and his cohort in some unknowable crime remained mute.

  It occurred to Matthew that Lord Cornbury might not have done either Lillehorne or Nack such a favor.

  Matthew drew in a long breath and then let it go. He asked the question he’d never thought he would have to pose to Gardner Lillehorne: “Can you help me?”

  Lillehorne regarded the flame for a few seconds more as if transfixed by it, or if its light was for a brief time a torch of sanity in a world of madness. Then he returned to his senses and the present moment, and he answered with no hint of the irony involved, “I will convey your situation to the general clerk at the Old Bailey and ask to see Judge Thomason Greenwood. Judge Greenwood is a fair and honest man…a young man, known to be lenient under compelling circumstances. The questions you brought up before Magistrate Akers are also in the papers I read and they will be of interest to the judge. I will stand up for you, and we shall devise some method of repayment for this service at a later date.”

  “Fine,” said Matthew, with an almost overwhelming rush of relief. “May I ask how long this will take?”

  “I’ll contact the clerk in the morning. After that…I can’t say with any certainty, but hopefully we can get you standing at the Old Bailey by the end of the month.”

  “The…end of the month? But it’s barely November! You mean I have to stay here for nearly another whole month?”

  “Appreciate where you are, young sir,” said Lillehorne with a cutting edge to his voice. “You are fortunate because St. Peter’s Place is the Dock House Inn of prison facilities here. You’re a reader of the Gazette, you know you could do worse. Nack, fetch the guard.”

  Nack was up and knocking on the door at Lillehorne’s command. The door was unbolted from the other side and a man who made Magnus Muldoon look puny came in, though most of his bulk was fat and he had a shaven head with a little chunk of it missing above the left eye.

  “Mind your manners while you’re in here,” Lillehorne advised as the guard hauled Matthew up from his chair as if he were the weight of a potato sack. “Do what you’re told and stay out of trouble…if that is possible for you, I mean.”

  “I will.” The guard’s hands on Matthew’s shoulders were like bands of iron. No chains were needed with this goliath around. Too bad the man seemed to have the sense of a ten-year-old child. “And thank you, Gardner. I mean it sincerely.”

  “Of course you do.” This was followed with a small smirk. “A prison cell has a way of producing sincerity as well as humility. Let’s hope these life lessons stick.”

  The last word—four of them, to be exact—was delivered by Dippen Nack, with a scowl and a spit and a brandishment of the billyclub to which he evidently was married: “Too far from home!”

  Then the guard took Matthew hobbling away, back to the cold cavern of cells, and the two gentlemen of London took their leave, out into the gray rain and the vast metropolis of gray buildings, gray sidewalks, and gray faces.

  As soon as the Bonny Chance had fixed its lines to its berth in the Plymouth wharf and the gangplank lowered, Hudson Greathouse and Berry Grigsby were off to find the harbormaster. They were tired and grimy in their mold-streaked clothes and their first steps on an unmoving surface had them grabbing hold of each other as if one spinning top might secure the balance of another, but somehow they made it down the plank without splashing into the drink.

  It was late afternoon, the Bonny Chance having been made by signal flag to sit at anchor in the harbor for four hours before the longboats could be sent out. The wharves at Plymouth had been exceptionally busy today and a mishap at unloading cargo had, in a series of increasing delays, caused in turn delays of the mooring of all new arrivals. Those four hours had seemed the longest in their lives to both Berry and Hudson, who could do nothing but wait. Now, though, it was time for action, and weariness, grime, mold and the torment of Hudson’s itchy gray beard be damned…where was the harbormaster in this confusion of crates and trunks, ropes, horses and wagons, cursing sailors, shouting captains, caterwauling cargo chiefs and—the same as in New York—a more-than-motley crew of fiddlers, squeezeboxers, beggars, dancers and higglers hawking pastries and geegaws. All in all, a chaotic scene…and then quite suddenly from the leaden sky the rain began to beat down upon captain and fiddler alike.

  Both drenched to the skin and resembling nothing more than beggars and ragmops themselves, Hudson and Berry after a time of searching found the harbormaster snug in his dockside cabin next to a roaring fire and with a cup of rum halfway to his mouth.

  “The Wanderer,” said Hudson when it was apparent business was meant and no man was going to dislodge him from this purpose. “Look through your records. Has it arrived? And if so—I hope—when?”

  The answer was forthcoming on the arrival to the harbormaster’s palm of twenty shillings, plus sped to speech by the sight of Hudson’s fist cocked back to make a shredding of his lips. The ledger showed that the Wanderer had indeed arrived two weeks ago, that it was under legal seizure concerning a lawsuit Captain Sullivan Peppertree had filed against his crew, that the ship had unfortunately sunk at its berth three days after being tied up, and it was still there serving as a headache, an eyesore and a roost for a hundred seagulls. So what of it?

  “You have a list of passengers?”

  “I do not. God speed them on their way. I have only listings for cargo.”

  “We’re looking for a young man named Matthew Corbett,” Berry said, hoping to ease some of the tension in the room. “He was a passenger on the—”

  “Oh, I remember that name!” came the reply. “There was quite a fuss on the wharf when the ship docked. It’s not often that a constable is summoned to arrest a murderer as soon as he’s brought down the plank. I know, because the preacher came first to me to arrange it.”

  “A murderer?” Hudson frowned. His heart had jumped. “Who was murdered?”

  “A foreign count, I heard. I don’t know all the details. But this Corbett fellow you’re askin’ for…he did the killin’.”

  Hudson and Berry looked at each other, both for the moment at a loss for words.

  Berry recovered first, though her head was still swimming. “Where has he been taken?”

  “The gaolhouse, I suppose. I know Constable Moncroff came here to make the arrest. Hey now!” His already-beady eyes narrowed. “What are all these questions about, anyway? You got a stake in this?�
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  “You might say that,” Hudson replied. “Direct us to the gaol.”

  “Not a place most people want to visit, but I’ll direct you. Got five more shillings on you?”

  Within the hour Hudson and Berry had taken a carriage through the rainy streets of Plymouth to the Town Hall and gaol, a distance of about a half-mile from the harbor. In this dismal building they found that Constable Moncroff had gone for the day, the prisoner was no longer in the Plymouth gaol, the records of the matter were not for public display, and no—said the constable on duty, a rather strapping young fellow with a knife scar on his chin and hard eyes that dared an altercation—they could not have the home address of Constable Moncroff. They would have to come back tomorrow morning and that was that.

  “At least tell us where he’s been taken,” Berry said, with a note of pleading in her voice. She felt near crying from frustration. “Won’t you please do that?”

  “Away from here. Moncroff signs in at seven o’clock sharp,” said the young constable, and the set of his jaw told Berry there would be no more information.

  Hudson would have smacked the fool out of this gent and been done with it but he cared not to spend a night behind bars. There was nothing more to do but return to the harbor, get their luggage taken off, and find an inn for the night. At this rate, Hudson thought, Matthew was going to owe him a year’s worth of doing his laundry.

  The rain was still falling. Darkness had begun to spread over the town. They got into the carriage that Hudson had wisely asked to wait for them, and they set off again toward the docks.

  To Berry’s silence, Hudson said, “We’ve come this far, one more night won’t make a difference.”

  “It might,” she said, and then lapsed again into quiescence. She was bedraggled, her hair was wet and dirty, there were dark circles under her eyes and never had she felt so weary. She’d forgotten the toll a sea voyage took on a person, even a voyage as calm and uneventful—mostly—as that on the Bonny Chance. At least she’d not been the reason for anyone falling overboard, breaking a leg on a stairway, or any other calamity she might imagine. True, one of the women passengers did give birth to twins on the trip and Berry had been the one to assist the ship’s doctor in this event, but that had certainly been a positive and not a negative.