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.”
“Yes, sir. Shawcombe also made mention that the Spanish spy might be an Englishman. Or at least an Englishman in appearance. And that he might be living in Fount Royal.”
“Curious. What would be the purpose of such a spy? Ah!” he said, answering his own question. “Of course! To report on the progress of Fount Royal. Which may yet turn out to be known as Bidwell’s Folly, I might add. But what part would the Indians play in this, that they would have to be tamed by Spanish gold?”
Matthew had already formulated this question and given it some thought. He ventured his opinion, something he was never reluctant to do: “One of Bidwell’s motives behind the creation of Fount Royal is as a fort to keep watch on the Spanish. It might be that they’re already much nearer than the Florida country.”
“You mean living with the Indians?”
Matthew
nodded. “A small expeditionary force, possibly. If not living with the Indians, then close enough to want to seek their good graces.”
Woodward almost reined the horses in, so hard did this speculation hit him. “My God!” he said. “If that’s true—if there’s any possibility of it being true—then Bidwell’s got to be told! If the Spaniards could incite the Indians to attack Fount Royal, they wouldn’t have to lift a finger to destroy the whole settlement!”
“Yes, sir, but I don’t think Mr. Bidwell should be alarmed in such a way just yet.”
“Why not? He’d want to know, wouldn’t he?”
“I’m sure he would,” Matthew agreed calmly. “But for now you and I are the only ones making these suppositions. And that’s what they should remain, until some proof can be found.”
“You don’t think the coin is proof enough?”
“No, I don’t. As Mr. Paine said, one coin does not make a fortune. Nor does it give proof that Spanish soldiers are encamped out in the wilderness. But if such an idea flew out of Mr. Bidwell’s mouth and into the ears of the citizens, it would mean the certain end of Fount Royal.”
“Do you propose we do nothing?” Woodward asked, rather sharply.
“I propose we watch and listen,” Matthew said. “That we make some discreet inquiries and—as far as we are able—monitor Mr. Paine’s activities. If indeed there is a spy, he might be waiting to see what develops concerning the witchcraft case. After all, with Satan walking the fields, Fount Royal may simply continue to shrivel up and soon dissolve.”
“Well, it’s a damnable thing!” the magistrate snorted. “You raise these speculations, but you don’t wish to act on them!”
“Now is not the time. Besides, sir, I believe we both have a more pressing engagement with Rachel Howarth.”
Woodward started to respond, but sealed his mouth. The wagon’s wheels continued to turn through the mud, the two horses keeping a slow but steady pace. After a spell of deliberation, Woodward cleared his throat again. “Rachel Howarth,” he said. “I can’t say I look forward to making her acquaintance tomorrow. What did you make of Garrick’s story?”
“Very strange.”
“A grand understatement, I should think. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anything quite like it. In fact, I know I haven’t. But is it believable?”
“Unless he’s one of the best liars I’ve ever heard, he believes it.”
“Then he did see someone or something behind that barn, yes? But that act he described…how in the name of all that’s holy could a woman perform in such a way?”
“I don’t think we’re dealing with a holy situation,” Matthew reminded him.
“No. Of course not. Two murders. It seems reasonable that the first murder should’ve been a minister. The diabolic would seek to destroy first and foremost a man who could wield the sword of God.”
“Yes, sir, it does. But in this instance, it appears the blade of Satan was a stronger weapon.”
“I’d keep such blasphemies chained, before you’re summoned to a higher court by a bolt of lightning,” Woodward cautioned.
Matthew’s eyes regarded the green, steamy wilderness that loomed beside the road, but his mind had turned to other sights: namely, the finding of truth in this matter of witchcraft. It was a blasphemous thought—and he knew he risked eternal damnation for thinking it—but sometimes he had to wonder if there was indeed a God who reigned over this earthly arena of fury and brutality. Matthew could sing the hymns and mouth the platitudes with the best of them, in the stiffly regimented Sabbath church services that basically consisted of the minister begging for five or six hours that Jehovah show mercy on His wounded and crippled Creation. But in his life Matthew had seen very little real evidence of God at work, though it seemed he’d seen much of Satan’s fingermarks. It was easy to sing praise to God when one was wearing a clean white shirt and eating from china platters, much less easy when one lay on a dirty mattress in an almshouse dormitory and heard the shrill scream of a boy who’d been summoned after midnight to the headmaster’s chambers.
SOMETIMES HE DID DREAM of his mother and father. Not often, but sometimes. In those dreams he saw two figures that he knew were his parents, but he could never clearly see their faces. The shadows were always too deep. He might not have recognized them even if he had been able to see their faces, as his mother had died of poisoned blood when he was three years old and his father—a taciturn but hardworking Massachusetts colony plowman who had tried his best to raise the boy alone—succumbed to the kick of a horse to the cranium when Matthew was in his sixth year. And with the flailing of that fatal equine hoof, Matthew was thrust into a pilgrimage that would both mold and test his mettle. His first stop on the journey was the squalid little cabin of his uncle and aunt who ran a pig farm on Manhattan island. As they were both drunks and insensate much of the time, with two imbecile children aged eight and nine who thought of Matthew as an object to be tormented—which included regular flights into a huge pile of pig manure beside the house—Matthew at seven years of age leaped upon the back of a southbound haywagon, burrowed into the hay, and so departed the loving embrace of his nearest relatives.
There followed almost four months of living hand-to-mouth on the New York waterfront, falling in with a group of urchins who either begged from the merchants and traders in that locale or stole from them when the fires of hunger became too hot. Matthew knew what it was like to fight for a few crumbs of hard bread and feel like a king when he came away from the battle bloody-nosed but his fists clenching sustenance. The finale to that episode in his life came when one of the harbor merchants roused the constable to action and men of the law subsequently raided the beach-wrecked ship where Matthew and the others were sheltered. They were caught in nets and bound up like what they were—kicking, spitting, frightened, vicious little animals.
And then a black wagon carried them all—still bound and now gagged to contain the foul language they’d gleaned from the merchants—over the city’s hard dirt streets, four horses pulling the load of snot-nosed criminals, a driver whipping, a bell-ringer warning citizens out of the way. The wagon pulled to a halt in front of a building whose bricks were soot-dark and glistening with rain, like the rough hide of some squatting lizard yellow-eyed and hungry. Matthew and the others were taken none too gently out of the wagon and through the iron-gated entrance; he would always remember the awful sound that gate made as it clanged shut and a latchpin fell into place. Then under an archway and through another door into a hall, and he was well and truly in the chill embrace of the Sainted John Home for Boys.
His first full day in that drear domain consisted of being scrubbed with coarse soap, immersed in a skin-stinging solution meant to kill lice and fleas, his hair shorn to the scalp, his nails trimmed, and his teeth brushed by the eldest of the boys—the “fellows,” he was to learn they were called—who were overseen by an eagle-eyed “commander” by the name of Harrison, aged seventeen and afflicted with a withered left hand. Then, dressed in a stiff-collared gray gown and wearing square-toed Puritan shoes, Matthew was taken into a room where an old man with sharp blue eyes and a wreath of white hair sat behind a desk awaiting him. A quill pen, ledgerbook, and inkwell adorned the desktop.
They were left alone. Matthew looked around the room, which held shelves of books and had a window overlooking the street. He walked directly across the bare wooden floor to the window and peered out into the gray light. In the misty distance he could see the masts of ships that lay at harbor. It was a strange window, with nine squares set in some kind of metal frame. The shutters were open, and yet when Matthew reached toward the outside world his hand was stopped by a surface that was all but invisible. He placed his palm against one of the squares and pressed, but the surface would not yield. The outside world was there to be seen, the shutters were open, but some eerie force prevented him from pushing his hand through.
“It’s called ‘glass,’” the man behind the desk said in a quiet voi
ce.
Matthew brought his other hand up and pressed all his fingers against this strange new magic. His heart was beating hard, as he realized this was something beyond his understanding. How could a window be open and closed at the same time?
“Do you have a name?” the man asked. Matthew didn’t bother answering. He was enraptured in studying the mysterious window.
“I am Headmaster Staunton,” the man said, still quietly. “Can you tell me how old you are?” Matthew pressed his face forward, his nose pushing against the surface. His breath bloomed before him. “I suspect you’ve had a difficult time. Would you tell me about it?”
Matthew’s fingers were at work again, probing and investigating, his young brow furrowed with thought.
“Where are your parents?” Staunton asked.
“Dead,” Matthew replied, before he could think not to.
“And what was your family name?”
Matthew tapped at the window with his knuckles. “Where does this come from?”
Staunton paused, his head cocked to one side as he regarded the boy. Then he reached out with a thin, age-spotted hand, picked up a pair of spectacles on the desk before him, and put them on. “The glazier makes it.”
“Glazier? What’s that?”
“A man whose business is making glass and setting it in lead window frames.” Matthew shook his head, uncomprehending. “It’s a craft not long introduced into the colonies. Does it interest you?”
“Never seen the like. It’s a window open and shut at the same time.”
“Yes, I suppose you might say that.” The headmaster smiled slightly, which served to soften his gaunt face. “You have some curiosity, don’t you?”
“I don’t got nothin’,” Matthew said adamantly. “Them sonsabitches come and now we ain’t got nothin’, none of us.”
“I have seen six of your tribe so far this afternoon. You’re the only one who’s shown interest in that window. I think you do have some curiosity.”
Speaks the Nightbird Page 11