Freedom of the Mask

by Robert R. McCammon

  “What?” Lillehorne again tore himself away from what seemed to Matthew nearly an addiction the entire city shared. “Interesting that I am above bribery?”

  “Not that. I trust what you say. Interesting that six common criminals can afford lawyers schooled enough to manipulate the courts, and that six common criminals are for some reason worth the effort and cost of bribery. Is there nothing more to connect these men?”

  “Matthew,” said Lillehorne with a cool air of superiority, “you might have been a so-called ‘problem-solver’ in New York, but here you are simply a problem. If you will look deeply into your situation, you will see a prisoner fresh loosed from chains, riding in a prison coach en route to stand before a judge and hope—quite fervently hope—Judge Greenwood is not suffering from indigestion, gout or any itchy thing that might cause him discomfort, for this is far from being a sure thing. Now do you mind if I do some bit of reading before we reach our destination, which will be in about ten minutes if another ale wagon doesn’t burst its barrels?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t mind,” said Matthew. “Go right ahead.”

  Within ten minutes the coach turned into an alley and stopped alongside an oak door set in a wall of brown stones. The door appeared scorched and might well have been a survivor of the Great Fire. Matthew figured prisoners such as himself, particularly dressed as he was, were not allowed to sully the front steps of the palatial courthouse complex. “Get out and remain silent until you’re asked to speak,” said Lillehorne. “They brook no hint of disrespect here.”

  Matthew nodded, though it seemed to him that bringing a copy of the Pin into the Old Bailey was a form of disrespect to the law of common sense, yet neither Lillehorne nor the guard had qualms about this. He followed the guard through the door with Lillehorne behind him, and once inside he was made to stop in a chamber where chains and padlocks hung from hooks on the walls. A bewigged officer sat at a desk with an oil lamp, a ledger book, a quill and inkpot before him. Two other guards emerged from a hallway. Quick work was done to lock the chains once more to Matthew’s wrists and ankles, making him again have to bend over in a back-aching position. He stared at the floor in disgust; to appear before a judge in this condition was a disgrace. He could feel lice crawling in his hair, he smelled his own terrible body odor, his gray shirt and trousers were filthy and he knew he must look a fright. But so be it. He had no choice but to trust Lillehorne and hope this entire ordeal would soon be ended.

  “This way with you,” said one of the newly-arrived guards. Matthew was guided toward a narrow staircase, the risers worn down by the shoes of many unfortunates before him.

  They ascended three floors, went through a door and into a corridor with a black-and-white checkered floor. High windows admitted as much light as the London clouds would allow, which meant a murky atmosphere illuminated by oil lamps fixed to the walls. Massive paintings of stern men in black robes and huge white wigs glowered down upon the prisoner; they were the kind of paintings whose eyes stayed upon Matthew until he reached the domain of the next, and that eminent painted personage then took his turn applying the evil eye. The noise of the guards’ and Lillehorne’s boot heels clacking upon the checkered floor sounded like pistols going off, and Matthew’s chains clattered in a place that most likely usually held the hush of a cemetery.

  “Here,” said Lillehorne, motioning toward another passageway. They turned down it, came to a door inset with panes of colored glass, and the guards stood back to surround Matthew as Lillehorne opened the door.

  It was a regular office with a single oval window, the floor carpeted in dark green. A young man with straw-colored hair and square-lensed spectacles sat at a tidy desk before a row of wooden filing cabinets. He’d been scribing something as Lillehorne, Matthew and the guards entered. His eyes darted to Matthew and then quickly away again, and he put aside his quill. “Good afternoon, Mr. Lillehorne. You have an appointment with the judge, I see.”

  “Yes, Steven. Is he ready to speak to us?”

  “Not quite yet. Judge Archer asks that you be patient. He just returned from the gymnasium a short while ago.”

  “Judge…Archer? Oh…well…I fear there’s been a mistake. My appointment is with Judge Greenwood.”

  “There’s been a change.” Steven picked up a sheet of parchment from his desk and offered it to Lillehorne. “By formal decree, Judge Archer has taken responsibility in this matter.”

  “Let me see that! Please,” he added, so as not to sound so disturbed. He took the parchment and read it silently, his mouth moving. He gave Matthew a stricken look that made the prisoner’s heart start thumping harder and rise to the vicinity of his throat, for something had definitely gone wrong with this plan. Lillehorne returned the paper to the clerk’s hand. “I don’t understand. This morning all was agreed with Judge Greenwood. Why has Judge Archer taken an interest?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the lad, “you’ll have to ask him.” He motioned toward a pendulum clock in the corner, the time being eight minutes after three. “Sir Archer has asked that you go ahead to his courtroom.”

  “His courtroom instead of his office?”

  “I am told to inform you of where to meet him, sir. I trust I’ve done my duty.”

  “Yes. All right. Very well,” said Lillehorne, who seemed to be struggling with inner difficulties involving his process of thought. He took a step toward the desk, reversed himself and took a backward step, and for a moment Matthew thought the man was going to bow before the clerk. Then Lillehorne said tersely, “Come with me,” and Matthew had an extra added twinge of unease—of fear, really—because the assistant to the High Constable of London would no longer make eye contact with him.

  They retraced their steps. Out in the corridor under the grim-faced paintings, Lillehorne said to the guards, “Step away and give us some privacy, please.”

  They obeyed. Matthew couldn’t help but note that as soon as they distanced themselves the one with the Pin began reading the articles to the others and they all started grinning like pure fools.

  “We are in serious trouble,” said Lillehorne. “I mean to say, you are in serious trouble.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “What has happened…is that for some reason our lenient Judge Greenwood has excused himself from hearing your case, and Judge William Atherton Archer has stepped into the breach.”

  “Well…can’t this Judge Archer be reasoned with?”

  “Matthew, Matthew, Matthew,” Lillehorne said, if speaking to an idiot child. “You don’t grasp the situation. Judge Archer is known as the ‘Hanging Judge’. It is said he cannot eat his breakfast until someone dangles from a noose at his order. And I can warrant you…he does not miss many breakfasts. This is who will hear your statements. Are you ready?”

  “No,” said Matthew.

  “Gird yourself,” said Lillehorne, who at this moment seemed Matthew’s only friend in the world. “And for God’s sake don’t stand close enough him to let him get a whiff.”

  Ten

  MATTHEW Corbett had never been afraid of a door before, but this one terrified him.

  It was glossy ebony and had a shining brass handle that made him think of the grip and trigger of a pistol. The small brass nameplate across it read W. A. Archer. The door was situated next to the high bulwark of the judge’s bench, which itself was a testament to the power of English law; sitting tall up there one might have a bird’s-eye view of the entire kingdom, or at least the view of a hawk upon the tattered crows that came hopping in their chains upon the polished planks below.

  Any second now Judge Archer would come through that door. Matthew could not stop his heart from pounding. His breathing was ragged; he wondered if he hadn’t been poisoned by the moldy air at St. Peter’s Place. All the air of London was moldy, it seemed to him. Today London smelled like bread that had been left to ferment in pickle juice, or perhaps that was just himself. In any case, he felt light-headed and near passing out as he stood bef
ore the bench, with Lillehorne positioned a few paces to his right. The guards had remained in the vestibule. Not another soul occupied this great columned courtroom with its vaulted ceiling, its upper balcony and its row upon row of spectator seats. Behind the bench there was a white wall sculpture of a heroic male figure at the reins of a six-horse chariot, the horses bounding forward and the muscles of the driver tensed as he held the steeds in check. Matthew noted that the driver wore a breastplate, his teeth were clenched and he’d been given a grin that said he was equal to the challenge of controlling this vehicle. Matthew had to wonder if the driver was modelled after the judge who sat beneath it.

  There came the sound of the door’s handle being turned. Matthew’s heart stutter-stepped. Then…nothing. Perhaps the judge had forgotten something and gone back for it, or for some reason he’d paused in his entry. A few seconds passed, as Matthew watched the door that did not open.

  Quite abruptly the handle turned, the door was nearly thrown open, and a slim man of medium height, his blonde hair bound in a queue with a black ribbon, came through. He was wearing a pearl-gray suit and waistcoat and he held a brown leather valise. He looked neither right nor left nor did he cast a glance at either of the two supplicants awaiting him, and he climbed up to his chair with the quick movements of a man who had energy to burn.

  He situated himself, opened the valise and drew out some papers. He began to silently page through them. His mouth did not move as he read. Matthew had expected an older man but Judge Archer looked probably to be only in his early forties, or perhaps he was just well-maintained. He appeared a man who enjoyed a healthy breakfast. He had a high forehead, now furrowed as he digested the documents, and a long, narrow aristocratic nose. His eyes looked to be either dark blue or gray, it was difficult to tell at this distance. All in all, Judge Archer was a handsome man who certainly appeared to be cut from the upper crust, and Matthew figured he was from a long line of good breeding, exquisite manners, family money and mansions and of course the Oxford or Cambridge education. A doting wife, two delightful children with great prospects—if one was male certainly a future as a lawyer and judge himself—and all the English world spread out before him like a gigantic banquet on the best table money and old family connections could buy. Matthew felt very, very small—and very poor—indeed.

  “Damn,” said the judge without looking up. Though he had the appearance of an Oxford gentleman, he owned the voice of a dockside brawler. “When’s the last time you had a bath?”

  “Your Honor,” said Lillehorne, “Mr. Corbett was imprisoned in Plymouth, directly he disembarked from the—”

  “Was I asking you?” The lean face with its sharp cheekbones came up. The equally-sharp gray eyes under thick blonde brows pierced Gardner Lillehorne as an archer’s arrow might pierce a soft, ripe apple. “Can this man speak, or is he as dumb as he looks?”

  Matthew cleared his throat. God help him, he gave a little squeak in doing so. “I can speak, sir. My last bath was—”

  “Forever ago, I’m sure. If I’d known your condition I would have met you in the alley and been done with this.” He slapped the papers down with a force that made Matthew jump and caused Lillehorne to nearly lose his grip on his cane. The gray eyes shifted toward the sheet in Lillehorne’s possession. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Your Honor, it’s the latest—”

  “Oh, that’s what I’m smelling! The offensive odor of a beggar’s rag, printed with ink strained from the bowels of diseased lepers! Dare you bring that into my court? Here, approach the bench and deposit it, I’ll have my clerk come in and take it to be burned after we’re done.”

  “Yes sir.” Lillehorne flashed a helpless glance at Matthew that said We are all up here, good luck and God’s mercy on your neck. He approached the bench, stood on tiptoes and reached up so high his back cracked, but he did deliver the Pin as instructed. Then he backpedalled, his head lowered and his eyes firmly fixed upon the floor.

  “Mr. Matthew Corbett,” said Judge Archer, and then he simply sat staring at the prisoner as if getting ready to test the reins of this particular chariot, as broken-down and filthy as it was.

  The silence stretched.

  “Your tale interests me,” he went on. “An associate of the Herrald Agency? Well, I wouldn’t brag on that, as they cause the legal system here more trouble than they’re worth. Dealings with Professor Fell? A myth, as far as I’m concerned, and no one can make me believe he’s a single man. If indeed there is a ‘Professor Fell’, he is a stewpot of various other criminals who have forged some kind of alliance with each other, the better to do their harm to England.”

  “Your Honor,” said Matthew, “I can tell you that—”

  “Don’t interrupt me.” The fierce expression would have caused a lion’s balls to shrivel. “To continue: loss of memory? An abduction by a Prussian count who you say meant to kill you? And this business aboard the ship…what was its name?” He found the item in his papers. “Wanderer. Mr. Corbett, from what I have read you have committed murder. Now…your plea upon the magistrate at Plymouth that there is no proof of this man’s death, for there is no body, carries some truth, but to allow you to walk away from this incident with no penalty whatsoever would be an affront to my colleagues here and to my entire career. You know you meant to commit murder. The witnesses know it, and I know it. Even Lillehorne there, who has very inably come to your defense, must know it. It’s all here.” Archer lifted the papers in a sinewy hand and then let them fall, one after the other, while maintaining his nearly mocking gaze upon the prisoner. “You try trickery upon this court, Mr. Corbett, and we shall not abide it.”

  Matthew saw his future tumbling away in the fall of those papers and this man’s callous—even sadistic—attitude. The panic that leaped up within him was tinged with the first embers of anger. “Please listen to me,” he said. “When I regained my memory and was going to tell the law about the murder of Quinn Tate, I was no longer of use to—”

  “Ah, the murder of a poor madwoman in a wretched hovel! How is the court to know that is true, and not a lie or a delusion in keeping with this nonsense about Professor Fell?”

  “You’re not hearing me!” This was delivered more loudly than Matthew had intended, and he felt his cheeks reddening not with shame but with indignation. “I was in the presence of Professor Fell! I have spoken with him and I know part of his history! He’s real, I can assure you! Didn’t Lillehorne tell you about Pendulum Island and the gunpowder—”

  “That is Mister Lillehorne to you, sir!” Archer snapped. “And refrain from raising your voice to me in my courtroom! No, he has told me nothing of that, and he knows what I think of that whole mythology! I sincerely doubt your tale, sir, and so should the Honorable Mr. Lillehorne, for one central and inescapable reason…you are still alive, which should not be if indeed you did what you purport to have done! Now facts are facts, and the overwhelming fact is that you cut a lifeline in a storm at sea that doomed a man to certain death, and please don’t go jabbering on and taunting this court with melodies of whether the man is actually dead or not! My father was—and remains—a sea captain and I was born at sea. I know what a raging ocean does to a man in peril, and in this case it aided the murderous use of an axe to—”

  “You need to see a physician immediately!” Matthew shouted, and at once there was silence.

  “Matthew!” Lillehorne grasped his arm. “Don’t! Please remember your—”

  “Hush,” Matthew said, and pulled his arm away. He kept his own hot gaze fixed on Judge Archer’s; where they met the air should have sizzled. He knew he ought to shut his mouth, he knew he ought to cower like a whipped dog…but he had to speak, and by God he was no whipped dog, even in these chains. “You need to see a physician immediately,” Matthew repeated, in spite of all the gongs and chimes of alarm ringing in his head, “to have him clean the tonnage of wax from your ears that prevent you from hearing anything you don’t wish to hear.” He let that s
immer for a few seconds. Lillehorne gave a soft groan, but Archer sat without speaking or moving. “Everything I have stated is the truth,” Matthew vowed. “Count Dahlgren would have surely killed me before we reached port. I was never his servant, I was his unwitting captive. Should I have chopped that rope? No, I should not have. But at the moment…in that storm…after the fight and with my memory back…I lost my balance. And I’m telling you also that Professor Fell is no myth. If you think so, woe to you and woe to England because you’re playing directly into his hands. If I were sitting on that bench I would at least have the sense to interview my constables, to verify—”

  “That,” said Judge Archer, in a very quiet voice, “will do.”

  “Oh no it won’t! I’m not done!”

  “Yes,” still said quietly, “you are done. Constable, if the prisoner makes one more offensive and belligerent noise in my courtroom I wish you to strike him across the face.” To Lillehorne’s expression of dismay, Archer added, “Or you too will find punishment for disobedience.”

  “You can’t stop me from speaking!” Matthew objected.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Lillehorne under his breath, and he struck Matthew across the cheek with the flat of his hand.

  “You call that a strike?” Archer asked. “That was a weak-willed tap.”

  Matthew stared daggers at the judge. “A court can’t stop a man—”

  He was hit again, harder.

  “—from speaking!” Matthew shouted. “You refuse to even con—”

  The next blow was much harder still, though delivered with a child-sized fist. “I’m sorry,” Lillehorne repeated. “Please…don’t—”

  “—consider my circumstances!” Matthew continued, his voice ringing from the balcony, from the vaulted ceiling, from the sculpture of the heroic figure commanding the chariot, though now through a haze of pain Matthew thought the figure was not so heroic, it was not grinning so much as it was grinding its teeth trying to hold in check a team of runaways determined to run to freedom or die trying.