Speaks the Nightbird

by Robert R. McCammon

  Matthew had to get out, because the magistrate had been reduced to babbling. He couldn’t bear to see the man—so proud, so regal, and so correct—on the verge of becoming a fever-dulled imbecile. He said, “I’m going,” but he still hesitated before he left the bedchamber. His tone had softened; there was no point now in harshness. “Can I get anything for you?”

  Woodward drew in a suffering breath and released it. “I want…” he began, but his agonized throat felt in jeopardy of closing and he had to start again. “I want…things to be as they were…between us. Before we came to this wretched place. I want us to return to Charles Town…and go on, as if none of this ever happened.” He looked hopefully at Matthew. “All right?”

  Matthew stood at the window, staring out at the sunlit town. The sky was turning bright blue, though the way he felt it might have been a dismal downpour out there. He knew what the magistrate wanted him to say. He knew it would ease him, but it would be a lie. He said quietly, “I wish it might be so, sir. But you and I both know it will not be. I may be your clerk…I may be under your watchcare, and live in your house…but I am a man, sir. If I fail to fight for the truth as I see it, then what kind of man am I? Surely not the kind you have taught me to be. So…you ask for something I am unable to give you, Isaac.”

  There was a long, torturous silence. Then the magistrate spoke in his dry husk of a voice: “Leave me.”

  Matthew walked out, taking the hateful decree downstairs to where Bidwell was waiting.

  twenty-six

  THE MAGISTRATE HAS MADE HIS DECREE,” Matthew said.

  Rachel, who was sitting on her bench with the coarse robe around her and the cowl shielding her face, hadn’t moved when Matthew and Bidwell entered the gaol. Now she simply gave a brief nod, signifying her acknowledgment of the document that was about to be read.

  “Go on, let’s hear it!” Bidwell had been in such a hurry that he’d demanded they walk instead of waiting for the horses and carriage to be readied, and now he was truly champing at his bit.

  Matthew stood beneath the roof hatch, which was open. He unrolled the document and began to read the preface in a calm, emotionless voice. Behind him, Bidwell paced back and forth. The master of Fount Royal abruptly stopped when Matthew reached the portion that began: “On the Charge of the Murder of the Reverend Burlton Grove…” Matthew could hear the man’s wolfish breathing at his back. “I Find the Aforesaid Defendant Guilty.”

  There was a smack as Bidwell struck his palm with his fist in a gesture of triumph. Matthew flinched, but kept his attention focused on Rachel. She showed no reaction whatsoever. “With a Stipulation,” Matthew continued. “That the Defendant Did Not Actually Commit the Murder, But Caused It to be Committed by Her Words, Deeds, or Associations.”

  “Yes, but it’s all the same, isn’t it?” Bidwell crowed. “She might as well have done it with her own hands!”

  Matthew kept going by sheer force of will. “On the Charge of the Murder of Daniel Howarth, I Find the Aforesaid Defendant Guilty, With a Stipulation.” At the word guilty, this time Rachel had given a soft cry and lowered her head. “That the Defendant Did Not Actually Commit the Murder, But Caused It to be Committed by Her Words, Deeds, or Associations.”

  “Excellent, excellent!” Bidwell gleefully clapped his hands together.

  Matthew looked fiercely into the man’s grinning face. “Would you please restrain yourself? This is not a five-pence play requiring comments from the idiots’ gallery!”

  Bidwell’s grin only broadened. “Oh, say what you like! Just keep reading that blessed decree!”

  Matthew’s task—performed so many times at the magistrate’s behest over criminals common and extraordinary—had become a test of endurance. He had to go on.

  “On the Charge of Witchcraft,” he read to Rachel, “I Find the Aforesaid Defendant…” and here his throat almost clenched shut to prevent him from speaking, but the horrible word had to be uttered, “…Guilty.”

  “Ah, sweet deliverance!” Bidwell all but shouted.

  Rachel made no sound, but she put a trembling hand to her cowl-shrouded face as if the word—which she had known would be delivered—had been a physical blow.

  “By Virtue of the Power Ascribed to Me As Colonial Magistrate,” Matthew read, “I Hereby Sentence the Aforesaid Defendant Rachel Howarth to Burning at the Stake As Warranted by the King’s Law. The Sentence to be Carried Out on Monday, the Twenty-Second of May, Sixteen-Ninety-Nine.” When the distasteful chore was finished, he dropped the document down by his side.

  “Your hours are numbered!” Bidwell said, standing behind Matthew. “Your master may have torched the schoolhouse last night, but we’ll build it back!”

  “I think you should leave,” Matthew told him, though he was too drained to raise his voice.

  “You may go to your reward knowing that all your work to destroy my town was for nothing!” Bidwell raved on. “Once you’re dead, Fount Royal shall rise to fame and glory!”

  Rachel gave no response to these cutting comments, if indeed she felt them through her sphere of misery.

  Still Bidwell wasn’t done. “This is truly the day that God made!” He couldn’t help it; he had to reach out and clap Matthew on the back. “A fine job you and the magistrate have done! And an excellent decision! Now…I must go start the preparations! There’s a stake to be cut, and by Christ’s blood it’ll be the best stake any damned witch was ever burned on!” He glared at Rachel through the bars. “Your master may send every demon in his barn to cause us woe between now and Monday morn, but we’ll weather it! You may rely on that, witch! So tell your black-cocked dog that Robert Bidwell never failed at anything in his life and Fount Royal will be no exception! Do you hear me?” He was no longer speaking directly to Rachel now but was looking around the gaol, his voice thunderous and haughty as if he were sending a warning to the very ears of the Devil. “We shall live and thrive here, no matter what treacheries you send against us!”

  His chest-beating complete, Bidwell stalked to the door but stopped when he realized Matthew had not followed. “Come along! I want you to read that decree in the streets!”

  “I take my commands from the magistrate, sir. If he requires me to read it for the public, I shall, but not until he so orders it.”

  “I’ve neither the time nor inclination to wrangle with you!” Bidwell’s mouth had taken on an ugly sneer. “Ohhhh…yes, I see why you wish to dawdle! You intend to console her! If Woodward could see this lovely scene, it would send him two steps nearer his death!”

  Matthew’s initial impulse was to advance upon Bidwell and strike his face so hard that what served as the man’s brains might dribble from his ears, but the ensuing duel that would likely follow would provide no good purpose save work for the gravedigger and a probable misspelling of his own name on the marker. Therefore he reined in his inclination and simply glowered daggers at the man.

  Bidwell laughed, which acted as a bellows to further heat Matthew’s banked fires. “A tender, touching moment between the witch and her latest conquest! I swear, you’d be better off lying in the lap of Mrs. Nettles! But do as you please!” He aimed his next jibe at Rachel. “Demons, old men, or babes in the woods: it doesn’t matter what flavor your suckets! Well, take your rapture, as you shall be paying dearly for it come Monday!” He turned and made his leave like the strutting bird whose gaudy blue colored his suit.

  In the aftermath of Bidwell’s departure, Matthew realized that words were not potent enough instruments with which to communicate his sorrow. He rolled up the document, as it would have to be placed on official file in Charles Town.

  Rachel spoke, her face still shielded. “You have done what you could. For that I thank you.” Her voice, though weakened and listless, yet held a full measure of dignity.

  “Listen to me!” Matthew stepped forward and grasped one of the bars with his free hand. “Monday is still a distance off—”

  “A small distance,” she interrupted. />
  “A distance, nevertheless. The magistrate may have issued his decree, but I don’t intend to stop my inquiries.”

  “You might as well.” She stood up and pushed the cowl back from her face. “It is finished, whether you accept it or not.”

  “I don’t accept it!” he shouted. “I never shall accept it!” He shut his mouth, shamed by his loss of control; he stared down at the dirty floor, searching within himself for any semblance of an articulate response. “To accept such a thing…means I agree with it and that is impossible. I can never, as long as I live, agree with this…this wrongful execution of an innocent victim.”

  “Matthew?” she said softly, and he looked at her. They stared at each other for a moment. Rachel approached him but stopped well short of the bars.

  She said, “Go on about your life.”

  He found no answer.

  “I am dead,” Rachel told him. “Dead. When I am taken on Monday to be burned, my body will be there for the flames…but the woman I used to be before Daniel was murdered is no longer here. Since I was brought to this gaol, I have slipped away. I did have hope, at one point, but I hardly remember what it felt like.”

  “You mustn’t give up hope,” Matthew insisted. “If there is one more day, there is always—”

  “Stop,” she said firmly. “Please…just stop. You think you are doing the right thing, by encouraging my spirit…but you are not. The time has come to embrace reality, and to put aside these…fantasies of my life being spared. Whoever committed these murders is too smart, Matthew. Too…demonic. Against such a power, I have no hope and I wish to cease this pretending. It does not prepare me for the stake, and that above all else is what I must do.”

  “I am close to learning something,” Matthew said. “Something important, though I’m not sure yet how it relates to you. I think it does, though. I think I have uncovered the first strands that form a rope, and the rope will lead me to—”

  “I am begging you,” she whispered, and now there were tears in her eyes though her face displayed no other betrayal of emotion, “to cease this playing with Fate. You can’t free me. Neither can you save my life. Do you not understand that an end has been reached?”

  “An end has not been reached! I’m telling you, I have found—”

  “You have found something that may mean something,” Rachel said. “And you might study it until a year from Monday, but I can’t wish for freedom any longer, Matthew. I am going to be burned, and I must—I must—spend the time I have left in prayer and preparation.” She looked up at the sunlight that streamed through the hatch, and at the cloudless azure sky beyond. “When they come for me…I’ll be afraid, but I can’t let them see it. Not Green, not Paine…especially not Bidwell. I can’t allow myself to cry, or to scream and thrash. I don’t want them sitting in Van Gundy’s tavern, boasting over how they broke me. Laughing and drinking and saying how at the end I begged for mercy. I will not. If there is a God in Heaven, He will seal my mouth on that morning. They may cage me and strip me, dirty me and call me witch…but they will not make me into a shrieking animal. Not even on the stake.” Her eyes met Matthew’s again. “I have a single wish. Will you grant it?”

  “If it’s possible.”

  “It is. I wish you to walk out of here and not return.”

  Matthew hadn’t known what to expect, but this request was as painful—and as startling—as a slap across the face.

  Rachel watched him intently. When he failed to respond, she said, “It is more than a wish, it is a demand. I want you to put this place behind you. As I said before: go on about your life.” Still he couldn’t summon an answer. Rachel came forward two more paces and touched his hand that gripped the bar. “Thank you for your belief in me,” she said, her face close to his. “Thank you for listening. But it’s over now. Please understand that, and accept it.”

  Matthew found his voice, though it was near perished. “How can I go on about my life, knowing such injustice was done?”

  She gave him a faint, wry smile. “Injustice is done somewhere every day. It is a fact of living. If you don’t already know that to be true, you are much less worldly than I thought.” She sighed, and let her hand fall away from his. “Go away, Matthew. You’ve done your best.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You have. If you need me to release you from some imagined obligation to me…there.” Rachel waved her hand past his face. “You are released.”

  “I cannot just walk out of here like that,” he said.

  “You have no choice.” Again, she levelled her gaze at him.

  “Go on, now. Leave me alone.” She turned away and went back to her bench.

  “I will not give up,” Matthew said. “You may…but I swear I won’t.”

  Rachel sat down and leaned over toward her waterbowl. She cupped her hand into it and brought water to her mouth.

  “I won’t,” he repeated. “Do you hear me?” She pulled her hood over her head, shrouding her face once more, and withdrew into her mansion of solitude.

  Matthew realized he might stand here as long as he pleased, but Rachel had removed herself to a sanctum that only she could inhabit. He suspected it was the place of reflection—perhaps of the memories of happier times—that had kept her mind from cracking during the long hours of her imprisonment. He realized also, with a twist of anguish, that he was no longer welcome in her company. She did not wish to be distracted from her inner dialogue with Death.

  It was indeed time to leave her. Still he lingered, watching her immobile figure. He hoped she might say something again to him, but she was silent. After a few moments he went to the door. There was no movement or response from Rachel. He started to speak once more, but he knew not what to say. Good-bye seemed the only proper word, yet he was loath to utter it. He walked out into the cruel sunlight.

  Shortly the smell of charred wood drifted to his nostrils, and he paused at the pile of blackened ruins. There was hardly anything left to attest that it had ever been a schoolhouse. All four walls were gone, and the roof had fallen in. He wondered if somewhere in the debris might be the wire handle of what had been a bucket.

  Matthew had almost told Rachel about his findings of last night, but he’d decided not to for the same reason he’d decided to withhold the information from Bidwell: for the moment, the secret was best kept locked in his own vault. He needed an answer to the question of why Winston was spiriting infernal fire from Charles Town and using it to set flame to Bidwell’s dream. He also needed from Winston further details—if the man could supply them—of the so-called surveyor who’d come to Fount Royal. Therefore his mission this morning was clear: to find Edward Winston.

  He inquired from the first person he saw—a pipe-smoking farmer carrying a flasket of yellow grain—as to the location of Winston’s house, and was informed that the dwelling stood on Harmony Street just shy of the cemetery. Matthew started off to his destination, walking at a brisk pace.

  The house did stand within a stone’s toss of the first row of grave markers. Matthew noted that the shutters were sealed, indicating that Winston must be out. It was by no means a large dwelling, and probably only held two or three rooms. The house had been painted white at some point in the past but the whitewash had worn off, leaving a mottled appearance to the walls. It occurred to Matthew that—unlike Bidwell’s mansion and some of the sturdier farmhouses—Winston’s abode had an air of shoddy impermanence akin to that found in the slave quarters. Matthew continued up the walk, which was made of packed sand and hammer-crushed oyster shells, and knocked soundly at the door.

  There was but a short wait. “Who is it?” came Winston’s voice—rough-edged and perhaps a bit slurred—from within the house.

  “Matthew Corbett. May I please speak with you?”

  “Concerning what?” This time he was making an obvious effort to disguise what might be termed an unbalanced condition. “The witch?”

  “No, sir. Concerning a surveyor who came to Fount
Royal four years ago.” Silence fell. “Mr. Bidwell has told me you walked the man around,” Matthew pressed on. “I’d like to know what you might recall of him.”

  “I…have no recollection of such a man. If you’ll forgive me now…I have some ledger business to attend to.”

  Matthew doubted that Winston had any business other than drinking and plotting more conflagrations. “I do have some information pertaining to Rachel Howarth. Might you want to see the magistrate’s decision? I’ve just come from reading it to her.”

  Almost at once there was the sound of a latch being undone. The door opened a few inches, enough for a slice of sunlight to enter the house and fall upon Winston’s haggard, unshaven face. “The decision?” he said, squinting in the glare. “You have it with you?”

  “I do.” Matthew held up the rolled document. “May I come in?”

  Winston hesitated, but Matthew knew the die had been cast. The door was opened wide enough to admit Matthew and then closed again at his back.

  Within the small front room, two candles burned on a wicker table. Beside the candles, and set before the bench that Winston had been occupying, was a squat blue bottle and a wooden tankard. Up until this moment Matthew had thought Winston to be—judging from his usual neatness of appearance and his precise manners—a paradigm of efficiency, but Matthew’s opinion suddenly suffered a sharp reversal.

  The room might have sickened a pig. On the floor lay scattered shirts, stockings, and breeches that Winston had not bothered to pick up. The smell of damp and musty cloth—coupled with body odor from some of the gamier articles—was somewhat less than appealing. Also littering the floor were crumpled balls of paper, spilled tobacco, a broken clay pipe here and there, a few books whose bindings had come unstitched, and sundry other items that had outlived their use but not been consigned to a proper garbage pit. Even the narrow little hearth was near choked with cold ashes and bits of trash. In fact, it might be within bounds to say that the entire room resembled a garbage pit, and Matthew shuddered to think what Winston’s bedchamber might conceal. A bucket of sulphurous chemicals might be the least noxious of it.