Speaks the Nightbird

by Robert R. McCammon

  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 remai
ned 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.

  In fact, the fire was so close to the gaol that Matthew was struck with dread like a blow to the belly. If the gaol was aflame, and Rachel was trapped in her cell…

  He started running toward Truth Street, his face tight with fear. He passed the spring, where one horse-drawn wagon was pulling away with a load of water barrels while a second had just arrived. “What’s burnin’?” a woman yelled at him as he went by a house, but he dared not answer. A score of citizens were converging onto the scene, some of them still wearing their night-clothes. He beat the water-wagon to its destination, and was keenly gratified to find that the fire was not burning down the gaol but was instead destroying the schoolhouse.

  It was a hot conflagration and was working with great speed. There was Bidwell, wearing a powdered wig but clad in a blue silk night-robe and slippers, hollering at the onlookers to make way for the approaching wagon. The horses got through, and the six firemen aboard the wagon jumped down and began to haul the barrels off. One of them scooped a bucket into the water and ran forward to dash the flames, but—as in the case of the previous fire Matthew had witnessed—it was clear to all that the schoolhouse was doomed.

  “Get that fire out! Hurry, all of you!” came a shout that was part command and part plea. Matthew saw the schoolmaster, bareheaded and wearing a long dark green robe with yellow trim. Johnstone was standing perilously close to the roaring blaze, leaning on his cane with one hand and motioning the firemen on with the other, sparks flying around him like red wasps and his face contorted with urgency. “Hurry, I beg of you, hurry!”

  “Alan, stand back!” Bidwell told him. “You’re in danger there!” A man grasped Johnstone’s arm and attempted to pull him away from the flames, but the schoolmaster’s mouth twisted with anger and he wrenched his arm free.

  “Damn it!” Johnstone bellowed at the firemen, who were obviously doing their best to throw their buckets of water but were being hindered by the sheer cruelty of the heat. “Put that fire out, you idiots! Can’t you move any quicker?”

  Unfortunately they could not, and all but the schoolmaster seemed to realize the futility of the battle. Even Bidwell simply stood with his hands on his hips and made no effort to bully the firefighters to a frenzied pace.

  As the schoolhouse was a small structure and the fire was so eager, Matthew doubted that sixty firemen with sixty buckets could have saved it. The second wagon arrived, bringing three additional men. Several more stalwarts from the crowd stepped forward to help, but it was a matter not of enough hands and hearts but of enough buckets and time.

  “Damn it!” Johnstone had ceased his pleading now, and had become visibly enraged. He hobbled back and forth, occasionally aiming a shout of disgust or derision at the ineffective firemen, then cursing the blaze itself. Fire had begun to chew through the schoolhouse’s roof. In another few moments Johnstone’s raving stopped; he seemed to accept that the fight was truly lost—lost, even, before it had begun—and so he retreated from the flames and smoke. The firemen continued to work, but at this point it was more to justify their presence than anything else. Matthew watched Johnstone, who in turn watched the fire with glazed eyes, his shoulders slumped in an attitude of defeat.

  And then Matthew happened to turn his head a few more degrees to the right and his heart rose to his throat. There not ten feet away stood Seth Hazelton. The blacksmith, who still wore a bandage bound to his injured face, was attentive to the spectacle of the flames and thus hadn’t seen his antagonist. Matthew doubted if Hazelton was aware of very much anyway, as the man held a brown clay jug at his side and took a long swig from it as Matthew observed him. Hazelton’s slow blink and slack-jawed countenance spoke as to the contents of that jug, and his dirty shirt and breeches proclaimed that Hazelton was definitely more interested in wine than water.

  Matthew carefully stepped backward a few paces, putting two other onlookers between them just in case the blacksmith might glance around. The thought—an evil thought, but compelling just the same—came to him that now would be an excellent time to search Hazelton’s barn. What with the man here at the fire, and weak from strong drink as well…

  No, no! Matthew told himself. That barn—and whatever was hidden in it—had caused him trouble enough! Hang it, and let it go!

  But Matthew knew his own nature. He knew he might present every reason in the world not to go to the blacksmith’s barn and search for the elusive burlap sack, up to and including further lashings. However, his single-minded desire to know—the quality that made him, in the magistrate’s opinion, “drunk beyond all reason”—was already at work in him. He had a lamp and the opportunity. If ever he was to find that well-guarded bag, now was the moment. Dare he try it? Or should he listen to that small voice of warning and chalk his back-stripes up as a lesson learned?

  Matthew turned and walked briskly away from the fire. One backward glance showed him that Hazelton had never noted his presence, but was again indulging in a taste from the jug. Matthew’s jury was still in deliberation concerning his future actions. He knew what Woodward would say, and he knew what Bidwell would say. Then again, neither of them doubted Rachel’s guilt. If whatever Hazelton was hiding had something to do with her case…

  He was aware that this was the same reasoning that had lured him into trying to open the grainsack to begin with. Yet it was a valid reasoning, in light of the circumstances. So what was the decision to be?

  As he reached the conjunction of streets, his scale swung in the direction that Matthew had known it would. He looked over his shoulder, making sure that the blacksmith was not coming up from behind, and then he held the lantern before him and broke into a run toward Hazelton’s barn.

  When Matthew reached the barn, he lifted the locking timber and pulled the door open just enough for him to squeeze through. The two horses within rumbled uneasily at his presence as he followed the glow of his lantern. He went directly to the area where he remembered finding the sack, put the lamp down on the ground, and then started searching through the straw. Nothing there but straw and more straw. Of course Hazelton had moved the sack, had dragged it to some other location either inside the barn or perhaps inside his house. Matthew stood up, went to another pile of straw on his right, and searched there, but again there was nothing. He continued his explorations to the very back of the barn, where the straw was piled up in copious mounds along with an ample supply of horse apples. Matthew thrust his hands into the malodorous piles, his fingers questing for the rough burlap without success.

  At last he realized it was time to go, as he’d already been here longer than was sensible. The sack, if indeed it remained in the straw, was not to be found this night. So much for his opportunity of discovery!

  He stood up from his knees, picked up the lantern, and started for the door. As he reached it, something
—an instinct of caution perhaps, or a stirring of the hairs on the back of his neck—made him pause to blow down the lantern’s chimney and extinguish the candle since he no longer needed the incriminating light.

  Which turned out to be a blessing of fortune, because as Matthew prepared to leave the barn he saw a staggering figure approaching, so close he feared Hazelton would see him, roar with rage, and attack him with the jug. Matthew hung in the doorway, not knowing whether to run for it or retreat. He had only a few seconds to make his decision. Hazelton was coming right at him, the blacksmith’s head lowered and his legs loose at the knees.

  Matthew retreated. He went all the way to the rear of the barn, where he sprawled flat and frantically dug both himself and the lantern into a mound of straw. But before he could do half a good job, the door was pulled open wider and there entered Hazelton’s hulking dark figure.

  “Who’s in here?” Hazelton growled drunkenly. “Damn your eyes, I’ll kill you!” Matthew stopped his digging and lay very still, the breath catching in his lungs. “I know you’re in here! I closed that damn door!” Matthew dared not move, though a piece of straw was fiercely tickling his upper lip.

  “I closed it!” Hazelton said. “I know I did!” He lifted the jug and Matthew heard him gulp a swallow. Then he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and said, “I did close it, didn’t I, Lucy?”

  Matthew realized he was addressing one of the horses. “I think I did. John Shitass, I think I’m drunk too!” He gave a harsh laugh. “Drunk as a damned lord, that’s what I am! What d’ya think of that, Lucy?” He staggered toward one of the horses in the dark, and Matthew heard him patting the animal’s hindquarters.

  “My sweet girl. Love you, yes I do.”

  The noise of Hazelton’s hand on horseflesh ceased. The blacksmith was silent, possibly listening for any sound of an intruder hiding in the bam. “Anybody in here?” he asked, but the tone of his voice was uncertain. “If you’re here, you’d best get out ’fore I take a fuckin’ axe to you!” Hazelton staggered back into Matthew’s field of vision and stood at the center of the barn, his head cocked to one side and the jug hanging loosely. “I’ll let you go!” he announced. “Go on, get out!”