When this display of the defiance of gravity was ended, Rory perhaps clapped the loudest in the audience, and when he looked at his companion with a silver-toothed grin and said, “Have you ever seen such a sight?” then they both knew of what good circuses were.
The clown came out upon the stage and performed a number of pratfalls, a show of juggling with flowerpots and bricks, and some other tricks that involved colored handkerchiefs and a few sprays of water at the audience from a false rose in his lapel. Matthew was gratified to hear Rory laugh. The horror of the morning would never be forgotten but for the moment it was held at bay, which in itself was a miracle of mercy.
A woman with long red tresses and wearing a violet gown came out to sing, accompanied by a stout little man playing a fiddle. The song began as a soft, slow recitation of a maiden’s love for a young farmer. Very suddenly the bottom dropped out of it. The fiddler began to saw like mad and the songstress belted out rhymes using words like “cock-a-doodle” and “ruptured duck”, which likely accounted for the fact that in looking around Matthew had seen no children in the audience, but the grownups hollered along at the chorus like delighted ten-year-olds.
Then after that whoopsedaisie the master of ceremonies came back to the stage and in the yellow lanternlight looked out upon his listeners with a solemn face. He said in his leathery voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, please be aware that our next act hails from a savage land. A land of lions, tigers, fierce bears and venom-dripping reptiles! A land where one might step into a pit of quicksand and be pulled down to his doom from the face of the earth…”
Oh, Matthew thought, I’ve already been there, but he remained silent. His heart was hammering and he felt sweat at his temples.
“…a land of pitiless horrors, where death lurks under every tree of thorns!” The master paused, sweeping his eyes back and forth across the theater. “Yes!” he boomed. “Such a land shapes a man! He either perishes there or he becomes a mighty force to break the bonds of destiny! But…is he a man? Or is he a beast? I shall let you decide the answer, fair audience.” As he was speaking, the clown and the drummer wheeled out an object about seven feet tall and five wide and covered over with brown canvas. They left it at centerstage and withdrew, returning with a long piece of iron bar carried between them with obvious effort. “I give you, for your amazement and speculation,” said the master, as he motioned toward the covered object with a flourish, “the Mighty Coalblack!”
The clown and the drummer whipped the canvas away. There was a catch of breath among the onlookers. Underneath the canvas was an iron-barred prison cell on wooden wheels. At the bottom of the cell was a layer of hay, and crouched upon the hay was a large figure covered over with an ebon cloak.
The master of ceremonies clapped his hands twice. The shrouded figure stirred. It began to rise from the hay, and as it stood to its full height of well over six feet the black cloak fell off. The man exposed beneath was equally as black. His immensely-broad and muscular back was turned toward the audience. He was wearing only a lion’s skin around his waist, the mane and flattened head curved up over his right shoulder in Herculean fashion and secured in the front.
Was it Zed? Matthew asked himself. It had to be! This man was huge, just as Zed was! Yes! It had to be!
Coalblack growled, a guttural and terribly menacing sound. A few women in the audience gave little noises of fear and clung closer to their thin and pallid men.
Then Coalblack whirled around, gave a resounding but mutilated shout that made even Rory jump a few inches off the bench, and attacked the bars of his prison. His knotty hands gripped the iron and began to force the bars apart. Two women shrieked and a man cried out as if he’d just wet his breeches. Matthew saw the corded muscles move in the mighty arms, saw the chest swelling with tremendous power, saw the bars beginning to bend under Coalblack’s relentless force, saw the tribal tattoos that scarred the fearsome, black-bearded face…
…and saw also, that it was not Zed.
This African was a Ga, yes. Perhaps his tongue had been removed by the same tribe of slavers that had captured Zed, and perhaps the slave ship carrying him to London, or Amsterdam, or New York, or Charles Town had been attacked by pirates and destroyed, with this man the sole survivor…
…but Zed, he was not. His face was broader, his features different. His bald head was as round as a cannonball.
No, not Zed.
Coalblack had already burst a sweat. His teeth were clenched, a pale slash in the ebony face. He worked the bars apart with steady pressure and then, showing a display of stagecraft that even the most primitive elder of the Ga tribe would have admired, he thrust himself between the bent bars and out of the cage with a roar made more horrible by the loss of tongue.
Matthew thought that the audience was going to have a fit, and indeed some ran for the exit. But as Coalblack stood there fiercely flexing his awesome muscles for the crowd, with sweat gleaming on his face and his eyes tracking back and forth as if searching for the next lion to kill, the fiddler emerged from the lefthand side of the stage playing a spritely tune and Coalblack, whose grimace became a grin, began to dance.
It was like watching a bear try the minuet, but the sight calmed the crowd. What might have elicited laughter at any other time instead brought forth a sense of wonder, that such a massive creature could move so gracefully. To the crowd’s absolute silence, as the fiddle played, Coalblack flexed various parts of his body from shoulders down to calves. The master of ceremonies invited a man and woman at random up to test the validity of the iron bar. The man stepped up, but the woman declined. He almost fell on his face when he tried to lift the bar, much to the laughter of the audience. Then he returned to his seat and Coalblack stepped forward to the task. The Ga picked up the iron rod as if it were a length of hollow painted wood and proceeded to bend it ten different ways from the Sabbath.
Matthew felt satisfied. He’d had to see for himself. Now he was fairly sure Zed and Captain Falco had escaped Professor Fell, and even now Zed might be with his tribe, and Falco returning to New York to be with his wife Saffron and his son Isaac. That would be a very good thing. And now, watching Coalblack upon the stage and hearing the audience applaud the African’s feats of strength, he thought that Coalblack had found a place to belong as well, for though he obviously was many leagues from home he smiled warmly as he accepted the acclaim, and when he lifted the acrobat twins, one in each hand, and they did handstands upon his shoulders he treated them as carefully and respectfully as if they were living pieces of art.
So…that was also a very good thing.
When Coalblack’s act had ended, he joined the other performers in bowing to the crowd. He looked, really, to be a contented man. As the drummer, the fiddler and the singer put up a caterwaul to bid the audience goodnight and the master of ceremonies blew exaggerated kisses to the crowd, Matthew and Rory made their way out into the courtyard.
“Not bad, Matthew,” said Rory as they started up the steps. “For a circus, I—”
“Pardon me, please.”
Matthew looked around, for a hand had grasped at his cloak.
A young man—handsome, with a clean-cut face, high cheekbones and blonde hair beneath a rakishly-tilted dark green tricorn—was smiling at him. “Is your name Matthew Corbett?”
Instantly Matthew sensed danger. The cool gray eyes under thick blonde brows stared at him impassively, awaiting an answer.
“You have the wrong man,” Matthew said.
“Oh, pardon,” came the reply. “I thought you were he, because I have a message from Hudson Greathouse.”
Something was very, very wrong. “Sorry,” Matthew said. His guts were tight and roiling. He continued up the stairs under the merry multicolored lamps.
The young man climbed up beside him, with a brief glance and smile at Rory. “You bear quite a resemblance,” he offered. “I saw you in there, with your tricorn off. Not many people carry such a scar on their foreheads. It does mark you.”
“You are incorrect.”
“Really? Oh…well…I thought I heard your friend there speak your name just as I reached you. Was I also incorrect about that?”
Matthew turned his head toward the man to tell him, quite brusquely, to be off; in so doing, he saw the quick motion that was given to two other cloaked and hulking men waiting at the top of the steps, and he knew he and Rory were done.
“Mr. Corbett,” said the young man, who placed a firm grip upon Matthew’s shoulder. “Let’s go right up here to the coach we have waiting, shall we?”
“Hold on!” Fear jumped into Rory. He looked for a way out. Other people were coming up the stairs, pushing him forward. He couldn’t retreat, and he saw the two men waiting and recognized them not by name or by having seen them before, but as the killers he knew them to be. Then he was at the top of the stairs and the huskier of the two came over and put his arm around Rory’s shoulders as if they were the longest-lost of friends.
“A fine show, wasn’t it?” the young blonde-haired man in the dark green tricorn said to Matthew as he guided his captive toward the side-lamps of the coach that sat about halfway along the block. “Well,” he amended, “it was fine the first time I saw it, two nights ago. Tonight…eh!” He shrugged in dismissal. “Please be aware we all have pistols and we all very good shots and we don’t mind shooting any of the grinning idiots on this street if you have a mind to yell for help. So be a good boy and don’t drag your legs. All right?”
“Where are we going?” Matthew dared ask, but he already knew.
“You are going,” said the calmly-smiling young man, “to get a terrible spanking. Come along now, Mother’s waiting.”
Five
The Beautiful Grave
Twenty-Nine
IT was a sturdy two-storied house of brown and white bricks with a widow’s walk at the pinnacle. A long gravel drive that curved up from the main street through a gate that had to be unlocked by the young blonde man in the dark green tricorn before the coach could pass through. Afterward, he walked back and relocked it.
The house had many windows, all of them aimed toward the central city. Lanterns shone through the glass. The appearance of the house indicated that a party might be in progress.
But Matthew and Rory found themselves the center of attention at this gathering. They had been delivered to the house in absolute silence, no one even volunteering a name. They were herded through a pair of oak doors and through spacious rooms carpeted with bright Persian rugs and adorned with leather-upholstered furniture. They were taken through another door toward the rear of the house and down a staircase. In a lantern-lit cellar with a gray stone floor they were ordered to undress, and one of the men took their clothes away.
“A bit drafty down here, don’t you think?” Matthew asked the men as he stood in his nakedness, but he received no reply. Two of the men left the room. Another man, this one wearing a brown skullcap and smoking a small clay pipe, came in to stand with the blonde-haired gent, but they did no talking. They held their pistols down at their sides. Everyone remained that way for fifteen minutes or so, no one saying a word but all eyes focused on the prisoners.
Matthew might pretend to be oblivious to whatever was in store, but in fact he was scared to death. He thought the men had removed their clothing to make them feel even more defenseless and to watch their bodies involuntarily tremble. Matthew stared at the floor and tried to figure a way out of this, but he was fully and terribly aware that there was no way out.
Rory said to the two men, “You could at least give a sufferin’ bastard a coat, couldn’t ya?” His face was hard and his eyes defiant, but the shivering of his skin betrayed him. “What the fuck is this all about?” he demanded, but received only the ominous silence.
In another few minutes the other two reappeared, some words were quietly spoken, and Matthew and Rory were pushed out of this current room through a short corridor into another chamber. Oil lamps were fixed to the walls and smoked ever so slightly. In the room were four high-backed chairs with armrests, all about six feet apart. Matthew saw that the chairs had been either built or altered for a special purpose, for they had runners that had been fitted into the grooves of concrete blocks cemented to the floor. The chairs could not be overturned or otherwise moved when someone was sitting in them. He noted several nailheads nearly flush to the backs of the chairs, about where the head would rest. Around the chairs and on the concrete blocks were so many bloodstains it appeared that more than a single quartet of poor wretches had been skinned here.
Presently, Matthew and Rory were pushed upon two chairs side-by-side. Both of them were already wet with fear-sweat. The young blonde-haired man kept his pistol aimed at Matthew’s head and another man did likewise to Rory as leather cuffs locked wrists to armrests and ankles to chairlegs. A leather strap drawn tightly across the chest completed the securement.
“You got the wrong men,” said Rory. His voice trembled. “Swear to God you do.”
Everyone left but the blonde-haired man in the dark green tricorn. The last one of them out closed a door that looked to be three inches thick. No sounds would be escaping this room. Matthew figured that even if any noise got out of this torture chamber and then out of the house, the main street was still too far away for anyone to hear a peep.
Torture chamber, Matthew thought. That’s exactly what this was. This was a place where, obviously, up to four unfortunates could be tortured at a time. He wondered how that number had been decided upon. A roll of the dice? Was ‘four’ Mother Deare’s lucky number? He was sweating and shivering, hot and cold at the same time. The blonde-haired man had put his pistol away beneath his cloak, and he was leaning against a wall next to the door, dozing with his eyes closed.
“How’d you find me?” Matthew asked.
The eyes did not open, nor was there any further response.
“You were haunting the circus?” Matthew probed. “Mother Deare put you on guard there? How did she figure I might show up?”
There was absolutely no reaction.
“These fuckers are deef,” Rory said, with a nervous cackle. “Fuckin’ dumb, too.”
“But obviously they can read. Someone can, at least.” Matthew had an idea how this capture had been devised. “So Mother Deare’s a devotee of the Pin? Is that right?”
The blonde-haired man dozed on.
“Fuck you, blondie!” Rory called out. “You look like you et a bowl a’ man-nuts for your supper!”
Even this drew no reaction. Rory swore softly and lowered his head. “Shit, Matthew!” he muttered. “We’re in for it.”
“They’re not going to kill us. If they wanted to, we’d be dead already.” Matthew didn’t like hearing that from his own throat. The bloodstains around the chairs made the statement that in some cases death might be preferable to the long, slow…well, whatever technique was to be used, and Matthew chose to shut his mind to any further imaginations.
An hour might have passed, during which the blonde-haired man stirred himself and left the room for fifteen minutes or so. In his absence Matthew and Rory struggled to either loosen their bonds or test the stability of the chairs; in both cases, the security was beyond assault. When the man returned he was smiling thinly, for surely he knew what had been tried here and what had failed.
The door opened again. Matthew’s body jerked; he had the thought this is it. Two of the men he’d previously seen brought in a small round table and a stool and put them between Matthew and Rory. Then another man, previously unseen, entered.
“Hello, fellows,” he said, and he gave them the grandest smile with a mouthful of large white teeth. He was dressed in a light gray suit with a pale blue waistcoat and carrying a black leather bag, which he placed upon the table. “My name is Dr. Noddy. May I ask yours?”
“You already know them. She told you,” said Matthew.
“Quite true. Just trying to be friendly.” He drew from the black bag a piece of green cloth. He sp
read that out on the tabletop. “Matthew Corbett and Rory Keen,” he said. “Strapping young men, you both are.” His hand went into the black bag again, and he began to neatly and precisely lay out on the cloth an assortment of instruments that caused the hairs to ripple on the back of Matthew’s and Rory’s necks.
Shining in the lamplight was first a small pair of pliers, then joined by a thin silver rod with a fishhook on the end, then joined by several pairs of forceps, then joined by a collection of ivory-handled tools with various spear or spade-shaped ends, then joined by another thin silver rod with what looked to be a coarse-toothed file on the end, then joined by a silver tool holding a little square mirror, and finally completed by two assemblages of metal rods adorned with leather straps and hooks.
“My beauties.” The man beamed at his captive audience. “I’m a dentist,” he said.
Matthew felt sweat crawling down his face. Noddy was perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties, a rotund man with chubby cheeks and a reddish complexion. He was bald but for curly waves of white hair on the sides of his head, and he wore a neatly-trimmed white goatee and round-lensed spectacles that slightly magnified his brown eyes. He had a plentitude of laugh lines in his face, indicating a merry disposition. He was certainly a man who seemed pleased by his position. Matthew uneasily noted that his hands were not large in keeping with the rest of his body, but rather sinewy. Just right, he thought grimly, for working with the teeth.
“Tell her I’m ready,” Noddy said to the young blonde-haired man, who immediately left the room and closed the door behind him. Then Noddy, grinning widely, returned his attention to the two men in the chairs. “Beastly weather we’ve been having lately, don’t you think?”
Suddenly neither Matthew nor Rory wanted to open their mouths.
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