Speaks the Nightbird

by Robert R. McCammon

  Matthew had, in the afternoon, taken the opportunity for a quick look into Bidwell’s study, so now in the middle of the night he had no problem getting inside. He closed the door behind him and crossed the gold-and-red Persian rug to the large mahogany desk that commanded the room. He sat down in the desk’s chair and quietly pulled open the topmost drawer. He found no map there, so he went on to the next drawer. A careful search through papers, wax seals with the scrolled letter B, official-looking documents and the like revealed no map. Neither did the third drawer, nor the fourth and final one.

  Matthew stood up, taking his lantern to the study’s bookshelves. On the way, the squeal of a loose pinewood floorboard made his flesh crawl. Then he began to methodically move all the leatherbound books one from another, thinking that perhaps the map might be folded up and stored between two of them. Of course, the map might also be folded up inside one of the books, which was going to necessitate a longer search than he’d anticipated.

  He was perhaps near midway in his route through the bookshelves when he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. He hesitated, listening more intently. The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and also hesitated. There was a space of time in which neither Matthew nor the person in the hallway moved. Then he heard the footsteps approaching and he saw lantern light in the space between door and floorboards.

  Quickly he opened the glass of his own lamp and blew out the flame. He retreated to the protection of the desk and crouched down on the floor.

  The door opened. Someone entered, paused for a few seconds, and then the door was closed again. Matthew could see the ruddy glow of the person’s lantern upon the walls as it moved from side to side. And then the voice came, but cast low so as not to leave the room: “Mr. Corbett, I know ye just blew out a candle. I can smell it. If you’d show y’self, please?”

  He stood up and Mrs. Nettles centered her lamplight on him. “Ye mi’ care to know that my own quarters are ’neath this room,” she said. “I heard someone walkin’ and ’sumed it must be Mr. Bidwell, as this is his private study.”

  “Pardon me, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t, but I was already waked. I was plannin’ on comin’ up and lookin’ in on ’im, since he was in such an awful bad way.” She approached him and set the lantern down on the desktop. She wore a somber gray nightcap and a nightgown of similar hue, and on her face was a smoothing of ghastly green-tinted skin cream. Matthew had to believe that if Bidwell saw Mrs. Nettles in this state, he might think a froggish phantasm had crawled from its Hellish swamp. “Your intrusion in this room,” she said sternly, “canna’ be excused. What’re you doin’ in here?”

  There was nothing to be done but tell the truth. “I understand from Solomon Stiles that Bidwell has a map of the Florida country, drawn by a French explorer. I thought it might be hidden in this room, either in his desk or on the bookshelves.”

  Mrs. Nettles made no reply, but simply stared holes through him. “I am not saying I’ve decided,” Matthew continued. “I’m only saying I wish to see the map, to gain some idea of what the terrain is like.”

  “It would kill you,” she said. “And the lady too. Does she know what you’re wantin’?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t ye think askin’ her oughta be the first thing, a’fore ye start the plannin’?”

  “I’m not planning. I’m only looking.”

  “Plannin’, lookin’…whate’er. Mi’ be she doesn’t care ta perish in the jaws of a wild beast.”

  “What, then? She’d rather perish by burning? I think not!”

  “Keep your voice reined,” she warned. “Mr. Bidwell mi’ be mind-sick, but he’s nae ear-deef.”

  “All right. But…if I were to continue my search for this map…would you leave the room and forget you saw me here? This is my business and my business alone.”

  “Nae, you’re wrong. It’s my business too, for it was my urgin’ brought you into this. If I’d kept my tongue still, then—”

  “Pardon,” Matthew interrupted, “but I must disagree. Your urging, as you put it, simply alerted me to consider that not all was as it seemed in this town. Which, whether you realize it or not, was a grand understatement. I would have had serious doubts as to Rachel’s being a witch even if you had been one of the witnesses against her.”

  “Well then, if her innocence is all so clear to you, why canna’ the magistrate see it?”

  “A complicated question,” he said. “The answer involves age and life experience…both of which, in this case, seem to be liabilities to cleat thinking. Or rather, I should say, liabilities to thinking beyond the straight furrow in a crooked field, which you so elegantly pointed out on our first meeting. Now: Will you allow me to search for the map?”

  “Nae,” she answered. “If you’re so all-fired to find it, I’ll point it out.” She picked up the lantern and directed its glow to the wall behind the desk. “There it hangs.”

  Matthew looked. Indeed on the wall hung a brown parchment map, stretched by a wooden frame. It was about fifteen inches or so across and ten inches deep, and it was positioned between an oil portrait of a sailing ship and a charcoal drawing of what appeared to be the London dockside. “Oh,” he said sheepishly. “Well…my thanks.”

  “Best make sure it’s what you’re needin’. I know it’s French, but I’ve never paid much mind to it.” She offered him the lantern.

  Matthew found in another moment that it was indeed what he was needing. It actually appeared to be part of a larger map, and displayed the country from perhaps thirty miles north of Fount Royal to the area identified, in faded quill pen, as Le Terre Florida. Between Fount Royal and the Spanish territory the ancient quill had drawn a representation of vast forest, broken here and there by clearings, the meandering of rivers, and a number of lakes. It was a fanciful map, however, as one lake displayed a kraken-like creature and was named by the mapmaker Le Lac de Poisson Monstre. The swamp—identified with symbols of grass and water instead of tree symbols—that stretched along the coastline all the way from Fount Royal to the Florida country was titled Marais Perfide. And there was an area of swamp in the midst of the forest, some fifty or sixty miles southwest of Fount Royal, that was named Le Terre de Brutalitie.

  “Is it he’pful to ye?” Mrs. Nettles asked.

  “More daunting than helpful,” Matthew said. “But yes, it does do some good.” He had seen what looked to be a clearing in the wilderness ten or twelve miles southwest of Fount Royal that stretched for what might have been—by the strange and skewed dimensions of this map—four miles in length. Another clearing of several miles lay to the south of the first, and in this one was a lake. A third, the largest of the three, was reachable to the southwest. They were like the footprints of some primordial giant, and Matthew thought that if indeed those cleared areas—or at least areas where the wilderness was not so perfide—existed, then they constituted the route of least resistance to the Florida country. Perhaps this was also the “most direct route” Solomon Stiles had mentioned. In any case, it appeared somewhat less tasking than day after day of negotiating unbroken woodland. Matthew also noted the small scratchings of Indien? at three widely separate locations, the nearest being twenty miles or so southwest of Fount Royal. He assumed the question mark indicated a possible sighting of either a live Indian, the discovery of an artifact, or even the sound of tribal drums.

  It was not going to be easy. In fact, it would be woefully hard.

  Could the Florida country be reached? Yes, it could. By the directions of southwest, south, southwest and the linking together of those less-wooded giant’s footprints. But, as he had previously considered, he was certainly no leatherstocking and the merest miscalculation of the sun’s angle might lead him and Rachel into the Terre Brutalitie.

  Then again, all of it was terre brutalitie, was it not?

  It was insane! he thought as the frustration of reality hit him. Absolutely insane! How could he have ev
er imagined doing such a thing? To be lost in those terrible forests would be death a thousand times over!

  He handed the lantern back to Mrs. Nettles. “Thank you,” he said, and he heard the defeated resignation in his voice.

  “Aye,” she said as she took the lamp, “it does seem a beast.”

  “Mote than a beast. It seems impossible.”

  “You’re puttin’ it out of mind, then?”

  He ran a hand across his brow. “What am I to do, Mrs. Nettles? Can you possibly tell me?”

  She shook her head, looking at him with saddened compassion. “I’m sorry, but I canna’.”

  “No one can,” he said wearily. “No one, except myself. The saying may be that no man is an island…but I feel very much like at least a solitary dominion. Rachel will be led to the stake within thirty hours. I know she is innocent, yet I can do nothing to free her. Therefore…what am I to do, except devise outlandish schemes to teach the Florida country?”

  “You are ta forget her,” Mrs. Nettles said. “You are ta go on about your own life, and let the dead be dead.”

  “That is the sensible response. But part of me will die on Monday morning too. The part that believes in justice. When that dies, Mrs. Nettles, I shall never be worth a damn again.”

  “You’ll recover. Ever’one goes on, as they must.”

  “Everyone goes on,” he repeated, with a taint of bitter mockery. “Oh, yes. They go on. With crippled spirits and broken ideals, they do go on. And with the passage of years they forget what crippled and broke them. They accept it grandly as they grow older, as if crippling and breaking were gifts from a king. Then those same hopeful spirits and large ideals in younger souls are viewed as stupid, and petty…and things to be crippled and broken, because everyone does go on.” He looked into the woman’s eyes. “Tell me. What is the point of life, if truth is not worth standing up for? If justice is a hollow shell? If beauty and grace are burnt to ashes, and evil rejoices in the flames? Shall I weep on that day, and lose my mind, or join the rejoicing and lose my soul? Shall I sit in my room? Should I go for a long walk, but where might I go so as not to smell the smoke? Should I just go on, Mrs. Nettles, like everyone else?”

  “I think,” she said grimly, “that you do nae have a choice.” He had no response for this, which by its iron truth crushed him.

  Mrs. Nettles sighed, her face downcast and her shadow thrown huge by the lamplight. “Go ta bed, sir,” she said. “There’s nae any more can be done.”

  He nodded, retrieved his dark lantern, and took the first two steps to the door, then hesitated. “You know…I really thought, for a brief while at least, that I might be able to do it. That I might be able, if I dared hard enough.”

  “Ta do what, sir?”

  “To be Rachel’s champion,” he said wistfully. “And when Solomon Stiles told me about the two slaves who’d escaped—the brother and sister—and that they’d nearly reached the Florida country…I thought…it is possible. But it’s not, is it? And it never was. Well. I do need to get to bed, don’t I?” He felt as if he could sleep for a year, and awaken bearded and forgetful of time. “Good night. Of rather…good morning.”

  “The brother and sister?” Mrs. Nettles said, with a perplexed expression. “You mean…the two slaves who ran away…oh, I s’pose it must’a been the verra first year.”

  “That’s right. Stiles told me it was the first year.”

  “Those two got near ta the Florida country? Mr. Corbett, they were but children!”

  “Children?”

  “Yes sir. Oakley Reeves and his sister, Dulcine. I recall they ran away after their mother died. She was a cook. The boy was all of thirteen, sir, and the girl no older’n twelve.”

  “What? But…Stiles told me they were put in irons. I assumed they were adults!”

  “Oh, they were held in irons, even though the boy was lamed. They were both put on a wagon and taken away. I knew they’d run a piece, but I had nae an idea they’d gotten so far.”

  “Children,” Matthew repeated. He blinked, stunned by this revelation. “My God. If two children could make it that distance…” He took the lantern from her hand and again studied the French explorer’s map, this time with a silent intensity that spoke volumes.

  “They were desperate,” Mrs. Nettles said.

  “No mote so than I.”

  “They cared nae if they lived or died.”

  “I care that Rachel lives. And myself as well.”

  “I’m sure they had someone helpin’ ’em. An older slave, gatherin’ what they needed.”

  “Yes,” Matthew said. “They probably did.” He turned toward her, his eyes glittering with fierce resolve. “Would you perform such a function for me, Mrs. Nettles?”

  “Nae, I wouldn’t!” she answered. “I’m dead set against it!”

  “All right, then. Would you betray me if I myself gathered the necessary items? Some of them would be matches and a flint, a knife, clothing and shoes both for myself and Rachel, and a supply of food. I would have to take those items from the household.”

  Mrs. Nettles did not reply. She scowled, her froggishly green face nothing short of fearsome.

  “I ask only of you what you once asked of me,” he said.

  “The Lord my witness, I canna’ bear ta see ye go on such a folly and lose your young life. And what of the magistrate? Would you abandon him?”

  “I thank the same Lord who is your witness that Magistrate Woodward is on the path to recovery. There is nothing I can do to speed his progress.”

  “But leavin’ him like this can ruin it. Have you thought on that?”

  “I have. It is a bitter choice to have to make, between the magistrate and Rachel. But that’s where I find myself. I intend on writing a letter to him, explaining everything. I must hope that he reads that letter and fully understands my reasoning. If not…then not. But I hope—I believe—the magistrate will.”

  “Your time. It’s awful wee.”

  “Everything would have to be gathered and readied within twenty-four hours. I want to get her out of there and be gone long before sunrise.”

  “This is daft!” she said. “How do ye plan on gettin’ that key from Green? He won’t likely open up the door and let you march in and out!”

  “I’ll have to give that some thought.”

  “And how will you go, then? Right through the front gate?”

  “No,” Matthew said. “Through the swamp, the same as the slaves.”

  “Ha! If ye make five miles, you’ll have the luck of Angus McCoody!”

  “I have no idea who that might be, but I presume it’s some personage of fortune in your native land. If it’s a blessing, I accept it.” He had put his own darkened lantern on the desk and was measuring with the fingers of his free hand the distances involved. “I must have a compass,” he decided. “I’ll never find the way without one.” A thought came to him. “I would wager Paine owned a compass. I don’t think he would mind if I searched his house. Alas, Mrs. Nettles, I shall also have to free this map from its prison.”

  “Don’t tell me such a thing. I don’t care ta know.”

  “Well, I’ll leave it alone for the time being. There’s no point in advertising my intentions.”

  “They’ll be after you,” she said. “Most likely Mr. Stiles, leadin’ the way. They’ll hunt ye down quick enough.”

  “Why should they? Rachel and I have no value to Bidwell. In fact, he may be more pleased to see the last of me than of her. I think he’ll send Stiles out to make a quick search, but it will be only rudimentary.”

  “I say you’re mistaken. Mr. Bidwell wants ever’one here ta see her burn.”

  “I doubt there will be many remaining to watch the display.” Matthew removed the candle from his lantern and lit it with hers. Then he returned the lamp to her hand. “After I get Rachel there—to a place of safety, a town or fort or some such—and come back, I’ll explain everything to him.”

  “Hold.” Mrs. Nettl
es regarded him now as if his bell was severely cracked. “What’re you sayin’? Come back?”

  “That’s correct. I’m taking Rachel to the Florida country, but I don’t intend to stay. If I can follow the map and compass there, I can follow them back.”

  “You young fool! They won’t let you come back! No, sirrah! Once those Spaniards get their claws on you—an English citizen—they’ll ship you right quick ta their own damned land! Oh, they’ll treat Rachel fair enough, her bein’ a Portuguese, but you they’ll parade through their streets like a dancin’ monkey!”

  “Not if they don’t get their claws—as you put it—on me. I said I would take Rachel to some town or fort, but I didn’t say I myself would enter it. Oh…one more thing I need to find: a stick, line, and hook I might use for fishing.”

  “You’re a city boy,” she said, shaking het head. “What do ye know of fishin’? Well, that wilderness will cure your insanity soon enough. God help you and that poor woman, and bless your bones when they’re a-layin’ in a beast’s lair chewed ta the marra!”

  “A delightful image to sleep upon, Mrs. Nettles. And now I must leave your company, as my day will surely be full.” He took his lantern and went to the door, treading lightly.

  “A moment,” she said. She stared at the floor, a muscle working in her jaw. “If ye haven’t yet considered this…you mi’ think to fetch some clothes and the like from her house. All her belonging are still in there, I believe. If you’re wantin’ an extra pair a’ boots…I mi’ can he’p you with that.”

  “Any help would be greatly appreciated.”

  She looked up sharply at him. “Sleep on this, and think on it again with a clear mind. Hear me?”

  “I do. And thank you.”

  “You ought ta curse me, and thank me only if I put a pan ta the side of your head!”

  “That makes me think of breakfast. Would you awaken me promptly at six o’clock? And grant me an extra helping of bacon?”

  “Yes,” she said glumly. “Sir.”

  Matthew left the room and went to his own. He got into bed, extinguished the lantern, and lay on his back in the dark. He heard Mrs. Nettles go along the hallway to Bidwell’s room and quietly open the door. There was a period of quiet, during which Matthew could envision the woman lifting her light to check on her sleeping—and near-mad—master. Then he heard her walk back along the hall and descend the stairs, after which all was silent again.