Speaks the Nightbird mc-1

by Robert R. McCammon

  "They're like to get they heads blowed off," Jennings said, both hands gripping the reins and his knuckles white.

  Paine put one boot against the door and kicked it wide open.

  "Careful," Woodward breathed.

  Paine and Tyler entered the tavern. The others waited, Matthew and Woodward expecting to hear shouts and shots. But no such things happened. Presently Paine reappeared. He held his pistol down at his side and motioned for Jennings to bring the wagon and the passengers the rest of the distance.

  "Where are they?" Woodward asked as he climbed down from the wagon. "Didn't you find them?"

  "No sir. It appears they've cleared out."

  "Damn it!" Heat rose into Woodward's face. "That cunning bastard! But wait, there's the barn to be searched!"

  "Duncan!" Paine called into the tavern's gloom. "I'm going back to the barn!" He started off, slogging through the mud, and Matthew followed at a distance respectful of any gunfire that might erupt from the barn or the forest. Matthew quickly noted that things had indeed changed: the horses were no longer in their corral, which was wide open, and the pigs were gone as well. The rooster, hens, and chicks were likewise vanished. The barn door was slightly ajar, its locking timber lying in the mud nearby. Paine lifted his pistol again. "Come out of there!" he called toward the entrance. "I won't hesitate to shoot!"

  But again, no one replied. Paine glanced sharply back at Matthew as a warning to remain where he was, then he walked forward and pulled the barn door open wider. He peered in, his pistol ready for any sudden movement. He drew a breath to steel himself and walked inside.

  Matthew waited, his heart pounding. Presently, Paine emerged with his pistol lowered. "Not in there," he said. "I found two wagons, but no horses."

  Then they were well and truly fled, Matthew thought. Probably when Shawcombe realized his intended victims might reach Fount Royal, he knew his reign had ended. "I'll show you where Shawcombe buried the bodies," he told Paine, and led him around behind the barn toward the woods. Back there, where the water-soaked earth had given way and revealed Shawcombe's misdeeds, a small storm cloud of flies swirled above the grisly remains. Paine put one hand over his mouth and nose to stifle the smell and approached the gravepit, but only close enough for a quick look before he retreated.

  "Yes," he said, his face gone pasty-gray. "I see the picture."

  Matthew and Paine returned to the tavern. Tyler had opened most of the shutters, allowing the daylight to overrun Shawcombe's sorry domain. With the onset of such illumination, the rats that had been making carnival in every room put up a fierce and indignant squealing and fled for their holes, save one large individual that bared its teeth and might've attacked had not Tyler's right boot dealt the first and bone-breaking blow. Jennings was happily busying himself by collecting such items as lanterns, wooden bowls, spoons and knives, and other small utensils that could be easily carted home. Matthew found the magistrate standing in the room from which they'd escaped; the light revealed the shattered door and on the floorboards the dark brown stains of Shawcombe's blood.

  "Gone," Woodward said grimly. "Everything, gone."

  And so it was. Their luggage—the two trunks and the wig box, the valise containing Matthew's writing quills, inkpot, and tablet—had disappeared.

  "My waistcoat." Woodward might've sunken down onto the straw pallet, but evidence of rodent habitation prevented him, even though he felt weak enough to faint. "That animal Shawcombe has taken my waistcoat, Matthew." He looked into the younger man's face, and Matthew saw that his eyes were damp with soul-deep anguish. "I'll never get it back now," he said. "Never."

  "It was just a garment, " Matthew answered, and instantly he knew it was the wrong thing to say because the magistrate winced as if he'd been physically struck.

  "No." Woodward slowly shook his head; he stood stoop-shouldered, as if crushed by a tremendous sadness. "It was my life."

  "Magistrate?" Paine called. He looked into the room before Woodward could rouse himself to respond. "They haven't been gone very long. The fire's still banked. Did you find your belongings?"

  "No. They've been taken."

  "Oh, I'm sorry. You had some items of value?"

  "Very much value, yes. Shawcombe took everything."

  "This is a strange state of affairs," Matthew said, after a moment of thought. He went to the open window and stared toward the barn. "There are no horses here, but Shawcombe left two wagons. I presume one of those is ours. Shawcombe took our luggage and his pigs and chickens, but he left behind the lanterns. I'd say a good lantern is as valuable as a hen, wouldn't you?"

  "Hey, hey! Looky what I done found!" came a happy cry from the front room. Paine hurried to see what the discovery was, followed by the magistrate and Matthew.

  Jennings, who'd uncovered a burlap sack in which to deposit his booty, was holding a wooden tankard. His lips were wet, his eyes shiny. "Rum!" he said. "This was a-settin' right on that table over there! Might be a bottle 'round somewhere. We oughta hunt it down a'fore we—"

  "One moment," Matthew said, and he approached the man and took the tankard from him. Without another word, Matthew held the tankard over the nearest table and upended it.

  "Great God, boy!" Jennings squalled as the drink poured out. "Are you era—" Plink!

  A gold coin had fallen from the bottom of the murky brown liquid. Matthew picked it up and looked closely at it, but he already knew what it was. "It's a Spanish piece," he said. "Shawcombe told me he got it off a dead Indian. I saw him drop it in that tankard."

  "Let me see that!" Paine reached out for it, and Matthew gave it up. Paine walked closer to a window, the better to inspect the coin's details. Tyler stood behind him, looking at the coin over Paine's shoulder. "You're right, it is Spanish," the militia captain said. "You say Shawcombe got it from a dead Indian?"

  "That's what he claimed."

  "Strange. Why would an Indian be in possession of Spanish gold?"

  "Shawcombe believed there was—" Matthew suddenly stopped. A Spanish spy hereabouts, he had been meaning to say. But he had the mental image of Paine lighting his cigar at the banquet last night. Smoking in the Spanish style. Who had taught Paine to take his tobacco in that fashion?

  Matthew recalled, as well, something else that Shawcombe had said about this Spanish spy: Hell, he might even be livin' in Fount Royal, an Englishman turned blackcoat!

  "Believed what?" Paine's voice was quiet and controlled; his fist had closed around the gold piece.

  "He . . . said ..." Matthew hesitated, thinking furiously. He couldn't make out the expression on Paine's face, as the steamy light held Paine in silhouette. "He . . . believed the Indians might have found pirate's gold," Matthew finished, lamely.

  "Pirate's gold?" Jennings had sniffed a new intoxication. "Where? 'Round here?"

  "Steady, Malcolm," Paine warned. "One coin does not make a fortune. We've had no squall with pirates, nor do we wish to." He cocked his head to one side and Matthew could tell his brain-wheels were turning. "Shawcombe was wrong," he said. "No black-flagger in his right mind would bury his loot in redskin wilderness. They hide their gold where they can easily get to it, but it would be a poor pirate whose winnings could be found and unearthed by savages."

  "I imagine so," Matthew said, unwilling to dig his grave of deceit any deeper.

  "Still . . . how else would an Indian get hold of this? Unless there was a shipwreck, and somehow this washed up. Intriguing, wouldn't you say, Magistrate?"

  "Another possibility," Woodward ventured, "that a Spaniard gave it to the Indian, down in the Florida country."

  "No, the redskins around here wouldn't travel that far. The tribes in the Florida country would make sure to part the scalps from their skulls."

  "Stranger still," Matthew spoke up, wanting to divert this line of discourse, "is the fact that Shawcombe left that coin in the tankard."

  "He must'a been in an almighty hurry to get out," Jennings said.

  "But he took th
e time to gather up our luggage and his pigs and chickens? I think not." Matthew swept his gaze around the room. Nothing was disturbed; no tables overthrown, no blood nor evidence of violence. The hearth was still warm, the cooking kettles still in the ashes. There was no hint of what had happened to Shawcombe or the others. Matthew found himself thinking about the girl; what had become of her, as well? "I don't know," he said, thinking aloud. "But I do know Shawcombe would never have left that coin. Under ordinary circumstances, I mean."

  Paine gave a soft grunt. He worked the coin with his fingers for a few seconds, and then he held it out to Matthew. "This is yours, I suppose. It's most likely all the revenge you'll have from Shawcombe."

  "Revenge is not our aim, sir," Woodward said curtly. "Justice is. And I must say that justice has been cheated this day."

  "Well, I don't think Shawcombe's going to return here." Paine bent down and picked up the burnt stub of a candle from the floor. "I would offer to stay the night and keep watch, but I don't care to be eaten alive." He looked uneasily around at the room's shadowy corners, from which some agitated squeaking could still be heard. "This is a place only Linch could abide."

  "Who?" the magistrate asked.

  "Gwinett Linch. Our ratcatcher in Fount Royal. Even he might wake up with his legs chewed off in this damn hovel." Paine tossed the candlestub into one of the dark corners. Something large scuttled for safety. "I saw tack and harness in the barn. Duncan, you and I can hitch our horses to the magistrate's wagon and let them take it back. Is that agreeable to you, Magistrate?"

  "Absolutely."

  "All right, then. I say we quit this place." Paine and Tyler went outside to discharge their pistols into the air, because the firing mechanisms, once wound, were as dangerous as coiled vipers. Tyler's pistol fired immediately, but Paine's threw sparks and went off only after a sputtering delay.

  Within a half hour, the horses were harnessed to the recovered wagon and Woodward was at the reins, following the first wagon on the swampy trail back to Fount Royal. Matthew occupied the uncomfortable plank beside the magistrate, while Paine and Tyler rode with Malcolm Jennings; he looked back at Shawcombe's tavern before they left it from sight, imagining what the place would be like in a few days—or, forbid the thought, a few weeks—of uninterrupted rodent dominion. The image of the young girl, who had seemed to be only a bystander to her master's crimes, again came to him, and he couldn't help but wonder why God could be so cruel. But she was gone to her fate—as they all were—and there was nothing more to be done. With that thought he turned his gaze from the past and aimed it toward the future.

  Matthew and Woodward were alone together for the first time since their arrival at Fount Royal, as their walk from Bidwell's mansion to the public stable this morning had been escorted by a young black servant boy on Mrs. Nettles's command. It was, therefore, the first opportunity Matthew had to make remarks about their dinner companions of the night before without the ears of strangers between them.

  But it was the magistrate who first grasped the chance to speak freely. "What do you make of Paine, Matthew?"

  "He seems to know his work."

  "Yes, he does. He seems also to know the work of. . . That term he used: a 'black-flagger' . . . Interesting."

  "How so?"

  "In New York some years ago ... 1 believe it was 1693 or thereabouts ... I sat at the docket on a case involving a man who had come up on charges of piracy. I recall the case because he was a learned man, a timber merchant who'd lost his business to creditors. His wife and two children had died by the plague. He was not at all the kind of man you might expect would turn to that life. I remember ... he referred to his compatriots as 'black-flaggers.' I'd never heard that term before." Woodward glanced up at the sky, making judgment on how long it might be before the thick gray clouds let loose another torrent. "I'd never heard the term since, until Paine spoke it." He returned his attention to the road ahead. "Evidently, it's a term used with respect and more than a little pride. As one member of a society speaking about another."

  "Are you suggesting that Paine—"

  "I'm suggesting nothing," Woodward interrupted. "I'm only saying that it's of interest, that's all." He paused to emphasize his position. Then he said, casually, "I should like to know more about Mr. Paine's background. Just for interest's sake, of course."

  "What happened to the timber merchant?"

  "Ex—timber merchant," the magistrate corrected. "He committed murder on the high seas, as well as piracy. He was guilty, no matter what the circumstances of his fall from grace. I ached for his soul, but I had no recourse other than to sentence him to hanging. And so it was done."

  "I was going to ask you what you thought of the guests last night," Matthew said. "Take Schoolmaster Johnstone. What do you make of his face powder?"

  "Such fashion is currently popular in Europe, but I've seen it in the colonies on occasion. Actually, though, I believe I have another explanation for his appearance."

  "What might that be?"

  "He attended Oxford, yes? All Souls' College. Well, that college had a reputation as being the plaything of young dandies and gamblers who were certainly not there for spiritual enlightenment. The core of the debauchers at All Souls' was an organization called the Hellfire Club. It was a very old gathering, closed to all but a select few within the college, those with wealthy families and debased sensibilities. Among Hellfire Club members the custom was to wear daubings of white ashes the morning after their bawdy banquets." He looked quickly at Matthew and then focused on the road once more. "There was some strange pseudo-religious significance to it, I think. As in washing their faces clean of sin, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, they couldn't powder their hearts. But perhaps Johnstone is simply aware of European fashion and wishes to mimic it, though why one would care to do so in this forsaken wilderness is beyond me."

  Matthew said nothing, but he was thinking about the magistrate insisting they dress for dinner at that wretched tavern.

  "It is peculiar, though," Woodward mused. "If Johnstone was a member of the Hellfire Club—and I'm not saying he was, though there are indications—why would he care to carry on its custom so long after he left Oxford? I mean to say, I used to wear a crimson jacket with green tassels dangling from the sleeves when I was a college student, but I wouldn't dream of putting on such an item today." He shook his head. "No, it must be that Johnstone has embraced the European trend. Of course, I doubt if he wears his powder in the daytime. Such would only be for nocturnal festivities."

  "He seems an intelligent man," Matthew said. "I wonder why a schoolmaster who'd earned his education at Oxford would consent to come to a settlement like Fount Royal. One would think he might prefer more civilized surroundings."

  "True. But why are any of them in Fount Royal? For that matter, why does anyone in his or her right mind consent to go live in a place that seems poised on the edge of the earth? But they do. Otherwise there would be no New York or Boston, Philadelphia or Charles Town. Take Dr. Shields, for instance. What prompted him to leave what was probably a well-established urban practise for a task of extreme hardship in a frontier village? Is Bidwell paying him a great deal of money? Is it a noble sense of professional duty? Or something else entirely?" Woodward tilted his gaze upward once more; his eyes had found the slow, graceful circling of a hawk against the curtain of clouds. It occurred to him that the hawk had spied a victim—a rabbit or squirrel, perhaps—on the ground.

  "Dr. Shields seems to me an unhappy man," Woodward went on, and he cleared his throat; it had been moderately sore and scratchy since his awakening this morning, and he resolved to gargle some warm salt water to soothe it. "He seems also to want to drown his sorrows in strong drink. I'm sure that the high rate of deaths in Fount Royal does nothing to ease the doctor's depression. Still . . . one would hope Dr. Shields does not rely too much on the cup when he's making his professional rounds." He watched the hawk wheel around and suddenly dive for its prey, and he had the thought
that death was always close at hand in this world of tumults and cataclysms.

  That thought led into another, which also involved death: he saw in his mind small fingers curled around the iron frame of a bedpost. The knuckles—so perfect, so fragile—were bleached white from the pressure of a terrified grip.

  Woodward squeezed his eyes shut. The sounds had almost come to him again. Almost. He could not stand hearing those sounds, even from this distance of time and place. From the deep green thicket on his left he thought he heard the shrill, triumphant cry of a hawk and the brief scream of some small animal.

  "Sir?" He opened his eyes. Matthew was staring at him. "Are you all right?"

  "Yes," Woodward said. "A little weary, perhaps. It will pass."

  "I'll take the reins, if you like."

  "Not necessary." Woodward gave them a flick across the horses' haunches to show he was in full command. "I would be just as weary riding as a passenger. Besides, at least this time we know Fount Royal is not very far."

  "Yes, sir," Matthew answered. After a moment, he reached into the pocket of his trousers and took out the gold coin he'd put there. He held it in his palm and studied the markings. "I told an untruth to Mr. Paine," he admitted. "About this coin. Shawcombe did take it from the body of an Indian . . . but he told me he believed there might be a Spanish spy hereabouts who was paying the Indians for their loyalty."

  "What? He said nothing about pirate's gold, then?"

  "No, sir. I made that up because of the fashion in which Paine took his tobacco after dinner last night. He smoked a roll called a 'cigar.' It's—"

  "A Spanish custom, yes." Woodward nodded; his eyes narrowed, a sign that told Matthew he was intrigued by this new information. "Hmmm. Yes, I understand your fiction. Very few Englishmen that I know of have taken to smoking in such a manner. I wondered about it last night, but I said nothing. But there's the question of how Paine might have become introduced to it."