Speaks the Nightbird mc-1

by Robert R. McCammon

  "His death . . . the way he died . . . could not help but taint the rest of our days," Woodward said. "Ann had always been fragile .. . now her mind was blighted. Her spirit grew dark, as did mine. She turned against me. She could no longer bear to live in that house, and she began to suffer violent rages. I think . . . she was so frustrated ... so angry against God . . . that she was reduced to the impulses of an animal." He paused and swallowed. "Took to drink. Took to being seen in unsavory places . . . with unsavory people. I reached out for her, tried to get her into church, but that made things worse. I believe . . . she needed someone to hate on this earth as much as she hated the Lord. Finally, she left the house. I was told that Ann had been seen drunk in a certain neighborhood, in the company of a man of ill repute. My career began to suffer. It was rumored that I was a drunk as well—which was sometimes true—and that I was open to bribes. Which was never true. A convenient lie for some persons who wished me harm. My debts came due, as debts will when a man is down. I sold most of what I owned. The house . . . the garden, the fountain, the bed upon which Thomas had died ... all of it was repugnant to me, anyway."

  "But you kept the waistcoat," Matthew said.

  "Yes. Because ... I don't know why. Or perhaps I do. It was one item of my past. . . that remained clean and unblemished. It was ... a breath of yesterday, when all the world was fragrant."

  "I'm sorry," Matthew said. "I had no idea."

  "Well, why would you? Over time . . . the cases I heard grew fewer. I must say much of my disgrace was my fault, as I allowed Brother Rum to accompany me to the bench. I decided ... as my future appeared to be dim in London, I might try my torch in the colonies. But before I left ... I tried to find Ann. I heard she'd fallen in with other women of her class who had . . . experienced the deaths of their husbands by the plague, and who had become . . . rumpots and flesh merchants by necessity. By this time, she was completely gone to me. Gone to herself, as well." He gave a labored sigh. "I think that's what she wished. To lose her identity, and thus the past." He stared past Matthew, into the incalculable distance. "I believe I saw her. In a crowd at the harbor. I wasn't sure. I didn't care to be sure. I walked away Later I boarded a ship . . . and hence to a new world."

  Woodward lay his head back and closed his eyes again. He swallowed pus and tried to clear his throat, to no avail. His voice was all but gone now, yet he forced himself on because he feared so for Matthew's soul and wished him to understand these things. "Imagine my surprise ... to find that Manhattan was not paved with gold. I found that the New World ... is no different from the Old. There are the same passions and crimes. The same sins and scoundrels. Only here . . . there's so much more opportunity to sin . . . and so much more space in which to do it. God only knows what the next century will bring."

  "I spoke with Goode about that," Matthew said, offering a trace of a smile. "His wife believes the world will be destroyed by fire, while he believes it might be—as he put it—a 'century of wonders.'"

  Woodward opened his bloodshot eyes. "I don't know . . . but I do believe it will be a wonder if Fount Royal reaches the new century. This town will surely die if Rachel Howarth is not executed."

  Matthew's smile vanished. "Is the future of this settlement your basis for putting a woman to death, sir?"

  "Of course not. Not entirely, I mean. But the evidence is there . . . the witnesses . . . the poppets . . . her own blasphemous demeanor. Not to mention her grip on you."

  "What grip? I fail to see how my interest in the truth can be construed as—"

  "Cease and desist," Woodward said. "Please. The more you go on, the less you convince anyone . . . least of all me. I daresay it is not only Jerusalem who has designs on the woman . . . though I believe it's actually she who has designs on you."

  Matthew shook his head. "You're absolutely wrong."

  "I have heard enough cases. To know how blinding is the fire of temptation. And how hot it burns." Woodward massaged his throat once more. "My voice is near its end, but this I have to tell you," he whispered. "There was once a merchant. An eager, industrious young man. His business . . . required him to rise early and thus to bed early. But one evening ... he stayed awake past his usual hour . . . and in so doing he heard the wondrous singing of something he'd never heard before: a nightbird. The next night, he managed to stay awake later ... to hear more of the bird's song. And the following night. He became so ... so intoxicated with the nightbird's voice that he thought only of it during the day. Came the time when he spent all the night listening to that song. Could not carry out his business during the sunlit hours. Soon he turned his back altogether on the day, and gave himself over to the nightbird's beautiful voice . . . much to the sad end of his career, his health . . . eventually his life."

  "A fine parable," Matthew said curtly. "Is there a point to it?"

  "You know its point. A parable, yes, but there's great truth and warning in it." He gave Matthew a piercing stare. "It is not enough to love the nightbird's song. One must also love the nightbird. And . . . one must eventually fall in love with the night itself."

  "You mistake my motives. I am simply interested in—"

  "Helping her," Woodward interrupted. "Finding the truth. Being of service. However you choose to phrase it . . . Rachel Howarth is your nightbird, Matthew. I'd be no guardian if I saw you in danger of being consumed by the darkness and failed to warn you."

  "Consumed by the darkness?" Matthew raised his eyebrows. "I think that's an overstatement, sir."

  "I think it's an understatement." Woodward gazed up at the ceiling, his strength almost expired. He felt as if his body were a cumbersome clay jar being baked over a fire, his true self trapped within it and yearning for a breath of clean, cool air. "That woman has entranced you, for her own purposes. She wants nothing more of you . . . than to help her escape the stake . . . which would be a sin that would forever mark you in the eyes of God."

  Matthew stood up, unwilling to listen to such nonsense. It occurred to him to stalk out of the room, but he did not because he knew the magistrate was sincere and also that he would regret such rashness. "Sir? May I ask you a question, and request that you think hard on it before you answer?"

  A nod gave him permission.

  "Do you honestly—with all your heart and soul—believe that Rachel is a witch?"

  "Your question ... is weighted on the side of emotion," Woodward answered. "I have responsibility to uphold and carry out the law. The evidence tells me she is a witch . . . therefore I must apply the law in its strictest measure."

  "Put aside the robe for one moment, and then reply."

  "I am satisfied," came the firm response. "Yes, there are missing details. Yes, there are questions I would have answered, and more witnesses interviewed. But ... I must proceed on what I have. And what I have . . . obvious to both of us ... is testimony and physical evidence any judge would rule sufficient to burn her. She knows it. She must find a way to escape . . . and that involves you."

  "I'd think Satan would free her, if she were really his servant."

  "Servants are cheap," Woodward said. "I think ... it suits Satan's purpose to stand aside and let his nightbird speak."

  Matthew started to parry the thrust, but he realized it was no use. They had come to an impasse, and beyond it they could not travel together.

  "I will continue to read through the documents," the magistrate offered. "I would not wish to present my decree with any undue haste."

  "May I read what you've already gone through?"

  "As you wish." Woodward picked up the sheaf of papers and put them into his clerk's hands. "Beware, though ... no further words on this matter. Do you hear me?"

  "Yes, sir," Matthew said, though the agreement had a bitter taste.

  "And you'll not return to see Madam Howarth?"

  This was a more difficult point. Matthew didn't have to ponder it. "I'm sorry, but I can't promise that."

  The magistrate pursed his lips and released a forlorn exhalat
ion. He too, however, had realized the limits of Matthew's obedience. "Your choice," he whispered. "I pray to God it is a wise one." Then he motioned toward the door. "Go. I need my rest."

  "Yes, sir." Matthew stared at Woodward for a moment, studying the angles and planes of the man's face.

  "What is it?" Woodward asked.

  "I have to ask this, sir. Did you come to the almshouse in search of a clerk, or a replacement for your son?"

  "My son . . . could never be replaced."

  "I'm aware of that. But you and I both know you might have secured an experienced clerk through a legal office. I had to ask, that's all." He turned and went to the door.

  "Matthew?" Woodward pushed himself up on his pillows, his face bleached with pain. "I don't know ... if I came looking for a son or not. Perhaps I did. But I do know I wanted to shape someone. I wanted to . . . protect someone ... to keep him clean, from this filthy world. Do you understand?"

  "I do," Matthew replied. "And I wish to thank you for your concern on my behalf. If you hadn't removed me from that place, I dread to think what might have become of me."

  Woodward eased himself back down. "The whole world is before you. You have a bright future. Please . . . beware those who would destroy it, I beg you."

  Matthew left the room with the sheaf of papers under his arm, and in his own room he lit a candle, washed his face with cool water, and then opened the shutters. The light was almost gone, but he looked out across the slaves' quarters toward the watchman's tower and the swamp beyond. It seemed to him now that one might wander into a morass at any time, anywhere, without warning. There were no easy answers to any question in this world, and it seemed that year after year the questions grew more complicated.

  He did believe that the magistrate had entered the almshouse searching for a son. How it must agonize Woodward now, to think he might lose another one to the corruption of circumstance. But as much as Matthew felt for the magistrate, he would not—could not-—turn away from Rachel. He might be a substitute for a son, yes . . . but he was also a man, and he must do what he thought to be the correct thing.

  Which meant fighting to prove her innocence, right up to the moment of her execution.

  Nightbird or not, she had indeed spoken to him. He heard her even now, suffering in the darkness of her cage. What was he going to do tomorrow, when the magistrate asked him to prepare the decree of death and sign it as a witness beneath Woodward's seal?

  He set the candle down and reclined on his bed—carefully, as the stripes on his back were hot. Then he began reading the court documents in the hope that something in them would lead him to a fact that had been overlooked, and that single fact might be the key to Rachel's freedom.

  But he feared it would not be there.

  Time was very short now. If Satan indeed dwelled in Fount Royal, Matthew presumed he must be grinning. Or if not Satan...then the grin belonged to someone else. A true fox, as Mrs. Nettles had said.

  But even the most crafty fox left a trace of its passage, Matthew believed. It was up to him to find it, with all the bloodhound instincts in his possession. If they failed him, Rachel was lost, and he himself was damned to a fate he considered worse than the flames of Hell: the struggle with unanswerable questions that would haunt him to his grave.

  twenty-three

  SATAN SAID, "I have a gift for thee." Matthew could not speak or move; his mouth was frozen shut, his body rigid. He saw, however, in the leaping crimson firelight that Satan indeed wore a black cloak with six gold buttons arranged three by three. A hood covered the fiend's head, and where his face should have been was only deeper darkness.

  "A gift," Satan repeated, in a voice that sounded much like that of Exodus Jerusalem. He opened his cloak with long-fingered, bloodless hands, exposing the gold-striped waistcoat he wore beneath it. Then from the confines of his waistcoat he produced a wet and dripping turtle, squirming in its dark green shell, which he held out toward Matthew.

  Satan's hands gripped opposite edges of the shell and with no apparent effort tore the reptile open. The carapace cracked like a musket shot. The slow and horrid twisting of those infernal hands ripped the turtle's exposed body in two, and Matthew saw the creature's mouth gape wide with agony. Then its gory internals oozed and slithered out, their colors the red, white, and blue of the British flag.

  Gold and silver coins began to fall from the mass of ruined vitals, like money spilling from the bottom of a razor-sliced purse. Satan winnowed his left hand into the guts and showed Matthew his bloody palm: in it was a single gold piece, fouled with carnage.

  "This one belongs to thee, " Satan said. He drifted forward, his left arm outstretched and the coin between forefinger and thumb. Matthew was unable to retreat, as if his legs and arms were bound. Then Satan was upon him like a dark bird of prey, and placed the coin's edge against Matthew's lips.

  Slowly, inexorably, the gold piece was pushed into Matthew's mouth. He felt his eyes widen and tasted bitter blood. It was then that he saw what was aflame, just behind the master of Pandemonium: a burning stake, and lashed to it was a fire-consumed figure that writhed in untold damnations of the flesh.

  Matthew heard himself moan. The coin was in his throat. He was choking on it. And then from within the hood Satan's face began to emerge, within inches of Matthew's own. Bared fangs came out, set in a jaw of exposed bone. A skeletal muzzle followed, and empty canine eyesockets. The dog's skull pressed against Matthew's face and exhaled a hot breath that carried all the mephitic abomination of the charnel house.

  He awakened with a further moan. A few heartbeats passed before he realized where he was, and that his audience with the Devil had been an exceptionally vivid dream. He thought he could still taste the blood, but then he recognized it as the strongly peppered sausage Bidwell had offered him at dinner. In fact, the sausage was most likely responsible for the entire production. His heartbeat was still rapid, and beads of sweat had collected on his face and chest. The first order of business was banishing this darkness. He found the matchholder and flint on his bedside table, struck a flame—a match never flared on the first strike when one really needed it—and lit the lantern he'd extinguished upon retiring. Then he got out of bed and went to the dresser, where he poured himself a cup from the water pitcher and drank it down, followed by a second.

  "Whew!" Matthew said, in an exclamation of relief. Still, he felt his senses were yet affected by the nightmare, as the walls of his room seemed to be closing in on him. He crossed to the window, opened the shutters wide, and drew a long, deep breath to clear his head of the confusion.

  But for the distant barking of a single dog, the night was quiet. No lanterns burned in the slave quarters. Matthew saw a flash of lightning over the sea, though the storm looked to be very far away. And then he saw something that gladdened his soul: a glimpse of stars through the slow-moving clouds. Dare he hope that the grim weather was taking its leave? This strange May with its chills and swelters had been enough to drain the energy of the strongest man, and perhaps with the coming of sustained sunlight June might be a kinder month for Fount Royal.

  Then again, what did it matter to him? He and the magistrate would very soon be departing this town, never to return. And good riddance to it and Bidwell, Matthew thought. At dinner, the man had been contentious in his remarks concerning Rachel, such as—between bites of that hellish sausage—"Clerk, if you're growing so fond of the witch, I'm sure it might be arranged for you to hold her hand while she burns!"

  Matthew had answered that and other goads with silence, and after a while Bidwell had ceased his needling and concentrated on stuffing his face. Matthew would rather have taken his dinner upstairs with the magistrate, who forced down his distressed throat a bowlful of pap and some hot tea. Then Dr. Shields had arrived again, and the lancet and bleeding bowl had seen more work. Matthew had left Woodward's room halfway through the grisly procedure, his stomach in knots, and he reckoned that sight of the dripping crimson fluid had also counted
toward his nightmare.

  He watched the stars disappear and then reappear again, as the clouds continued their advance. He had read Buckner's testimony in the documents Woodward had already finished, but had found nothing there that might lead him toward his fox; tomorrow he would read the testimonies of Garrick and Violet Adams after the magistrate was done, but by then Woodward would be close to dictating his decree.

  The particulars of his nightmare haunted him: Satan in the black cloak with six gold buttons... nothing but darkness where the face should have been... the fresh-caught turtle... the sinewy hands breaking open the green shell, and bloody coins spilling out...

  The coins, Matthew thought. Gold and silver pieces. He saw in his mind's eye the contents of the turtle bellies that Goode had shown him. Spanish coins swallowed by turtles. Where had they come from? How was it that an Indian and turtles shared possession of such lucre?

  His theory about the Spanish spy was still alive, even though it had been severely wounded by Paine's revelations. However, the fact remained that Shawcombe had gotten the gold piece from a redskin, and that the Indian must've received it from a Spaniard. But what Spaniard had fed gold and silver coins to turtles?

  Matthew had taken his fill of the night air, though he was in no hurry to return to bed. He watched the dance of the stars for a moment longer, and then he grasped hold of one of the shutters in preparation of closing it.

  Before he did, he saw an orange glare of light that reminded him much too uncomfortably of the burning stake in his dream. It was not a light whose source was visible, but rather the reflection of light originating from a westerly direction. Perhaps ten seconds passed, and then there came a man's distant shout affirming what Matthew had already suspected: "Fire! Fire!"

  The call was picked up and echoed by a second man. Directly Matthew heard a door slam open and knew it must be Bidwell, roused from sleep. The alarm bells began to ring, more people were shouting, and the dogs of Fount Royal were barking up a fury. Matthew hurriedly dressed in the clothes he'd worn yesterday, took the lantern to illume his way down the stairs, and went outside. There he saw the red and orange flames attacking a structure on Truth Street, terribly near to the gaol.