“Good. Not fearful of a little comb, then are you?”
Muldoon regarded the teeth as if peering into the maw of an unknown animal. “No,” he answered Matthew, his eyes aflame…yet his voice was more smoke than fire.
“Can someone count to three and start us off?” Matthew asked the assembly. No one came forth, and Matthew figured the throng was quite disappointed that they weren’t going to either see a sword or pistol fight at dawn or a New York problem-solver’s behind as he ran for the packet boat dock. “Mr. Prisskitt?” Matthew offered. “Count to three, please?”
“Well…I…”
“I’ll do it!” said the young woman who was not quite now so beautiful. She actually wore the hint of a wicked smile, which proved that beauty was indeed skin-deep. “One…two…three!”
Matthew put comb to hair and began to smoothly glide it through. Magnus Muldoon put comb to hair and made another legion of fleas jump and a flight of flies grumble and buzz. In another moment, as Matthew continued to effortlessly guide the comb through his own hair, the Magnus Man found the going as tough as fighting upsteam through a barricade of beaver dams. His comb got hung up on one tangled and matted mess after another. When Matthew was finished, Muldoon was yet struggling and tearing out hair in the process. The bearded beast had to drop his tricorn and take hold of the comb with both hands, as if he were swinging the heaviest axe ever made. But he was no quitter, that was for sure, and though the bear-greased black sprigs clogged in the comb’s teeth and the fleas jumped and the flies swirled and tears came to the eyes of Magnus Muldoon, still the hands wrenched and tore and the mouth grimaced with pain. He was hardly halfway to his crown, where the worst of his wilderness grew. The comb ripped, snagged and clogged with bear grease. Muldoon gritted his teeth and kept tearing. Suddenly rivulets of blood began to trickle through the man’s hair down his forehead, along his cheeks and into his beard.
“Stop!” said Matthew, alarmed at this flowing of red rivers. “There’s no need for this!”
But Muldoon wasn’t listening. He continued ripping his scalp to pieces, tearing out hunks of hair with what had become a true instrument of pain.
“Muldoon! Stop it, you fool!” urged Sedgeworth Prisskitt, standing in front of his daughter. She had her hand up over her mouth, as if about to release all the stuffed victuals with which she was stuffed. Her eyes were no longer angry; now they just looked a little sick.
The madman would not stop. Matthew realized this was indeed a duel, and Magnus Muldoon was taking it as seriously as the New York dandy had not. Matthew was about to implore him to cease the struggle, as more blood ran over Muldoon’s face, but then the comb clogged with its ugly mess of hair, grease and God-knew-what-all became well and truly stuck nearly to the man’s crown, and try as he might with his beastly strength Muldoon could not move the comb a shilling’s width through his unfortunate tangle. He staggered back and forth and struggled with it—God’s breath, did he struggle! Matthew thought with equality of horror and awe—but as the blood trickled down Muldoon’s forehead and cheeks and the comb refused to budge it was clear the duel had but one winner.
At last, with a whuff! of released breath that indicated even the Magnus Man had come to the end of his determination, the loser of this contest released his hold on the comb, which yet was held fast by the aptly-named locks. Someone in the watching throng—a woman, or perhaps a highly-excitable man—gave out a laugh in the upper register that cut across the room like a razor across a throat. Matthew saw Muldoon wince, saw his face tighten beneath the crimson streamers of blood that streaked his face as surely as if the sword of Damocles had fallen upon his head. Then Muldoon reached into his black coat, pulled a long knife from a leather sheath at his waist, and took two steps toward Matthew.
Matthew did not retreat. His legs wished to—and almost did—but it seemed to him the wrong thing to do, so he did not.
Muldoon stared into Matthew’s eyes while he used the knife to cut the wooden comb free. Then he gave the quite unusable and disgusting instrument to Matthew’s hand. He sheathed the knife, picked up his tricorn hat, and gazed around at the gathered throng who seemed to be waiting for the next act to what was yet this unknown tragedy or comedy.
“You lot,” said the bloodied man, with a painful half-smile. “Thinkin’ you’re so high God has to reach up to you to wipe your tails with a pinecone, and you lookin’ down haughty on me. Oh, you bagful of snakes and dirty sinners! Laughin’ and laughin’…when there ain’t nothin’ funny at all.”
Maybe someone further back in the room did give out an unfortunate and muffled chuckle, but mostly silence of the stony kind met this assertion.
“And you,” Muldoon said to Pandora Prisskitt. “The loveliest vision I ever did see, or hope to see. You walk through my dreams. When everythin’ seems dark out in the woods…you’re the candle I hold tight to. I want for better things. Does that make me so bad?”
“You know what you’ve done!” Sedgeworth’s voice was tight and strained. “You’ve killed three of my daughter’s suitors, run a dozen more of them out of town and nearly ruined her life! Why don’t you leave us both alone and keep to your own kind?”
“What kind would that be?” came the reply. “The animals of the field?” Again he directed his gaze toward the lovely one. “I thought…when I first seen you on the front street that summer morn…and I recall it, down to the minute…that if I could only walk at your side, and hold your hand, and have the favor of God’s blessin’ to look upon your face…that everythin’ could change for me, and I would give you a life worth livin’. And a love you would never have known, straight from my heart. But…I kinda see you now. I kinda see…how you brung this fella all the way from New York, for me to kill…just ’cause you have to go to these fancy dances. That ain’t right, Pandora.” He let that hang in the air, as much as the sword hung in the air above the festivity. “Ain’t right, to use a person that way.” He faced Matthew. “My apologies to you, sir. I’ll make apologies for her, too.”
“You don’t need to speak for my daughter!” said the father, getting more enraged by the minute. “How dare you! Speak for yourself! Or…let the world look at you and smell you, and that tells the story well enough!”
Magnus Muldoon opened his mouth perhaps to fire an angry volley at Father Prisskitt, but suddenly it appeared to Matthew that all the salt went out of him and all that was left was sad clay. “I reckon you’re right,” said the man. He nodded. “Reckon you are.” His eyes found the loveliest vision, who stared at him with the warmth of a blizzard. “Pandora,” he said, and the sound was like a heart breaking. “I know I done wrong…but I thought…maybe…with you at my side…I could be better than I was. Am,” he corrected. “I would’ve given you love,” he told her. “I would’ve held you like the finest cup in the world, and poured myself into you. Is wishin’ that so wrong?”
“It is hideous,” Father Prisskitt answered, and in it Matthew heard the hiss of the snake. “And if it did not make me so sick I would laugh myself to the floor.”
“Get out of our sight!” the daughter nearly shouted, her face contorted and eyes glittering and not nearly so lovely as Matthew had thought at the evening’s beginning. “Get out of this world, you black-bearded monster!”
With that, Muldoon straightened his boulder-like shoulders. He cast his gaze around the ballroom, at the grinning faces in the guttering light. He let his gaze fall upon Matthew Corbett, who felt the weight of the moment.
“You bested me,” said Muldoon. “I ought to hate your guts…but I don’t. I’m just gonna leave you here with ’em, all these fine ladies and gentlemen, and I’m gonna say…enjoy what you’ve earned.” He gave Matthew a slight bow, and then turning around he walked across the boards and exited the event by the way he’d come, through the filmy curtain and into the garden where no weed dared grow.
In another few seconds Matthew found himself the hero of the moment. So many hands whacked him on the back—and so
me as hard as enmity—he feared he’d be bruised all the way to his lungs. Sedgeworth Prisskitt came up and clapped him on the back and said something unintelligible, because Matthew had ceased to listen to him. Fine ladies drifted up like pastel smoke to rub against his shadow. Highwigs puffing powder marched up and the chunky faces beneath them said how steadfast he was, and how cunning. And then Pandora Prisskitt came forward, radiant even in her darkness, and took his arm with the pride of ownership.
“You are so smart,” she gushed, “and so brave too!”
The musicians were starting to take their places again, and allow a few notes to issue forth as invitations to more dancing. “Thank you for your compliments and your company,” said Matthew, to Pandora’s puzzled expression as he dislodged her hand from his arm. “I shall have to take my leave now, as I’m feeling a little ill.”
“Oh?” Sedgeworth had heard this, and came forward. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing very much,” Matthew replied. “Just a bit close in here for me. The air…seems oppressive.”
“I’m sure a walk around the garden will help! Pandora, go with him!”
But Pandora was very intelligent, and she knew and pulled back. Matthew gave both father and daughter the smile of a gentleman who has done his duty. “I shall indeed walk around the garden on my way to the inn. It seems to me that there are several fellows here who might like a dance with your very gracious and understanding daughter. Oh…would you take this, please?” And so saying, he placed the comb matted with Muldoon’s bloody hair into Sedgeworth’s palm. Then he offered a bow to the lady and glanced up one more time at the sword of Damocles to count himself lucky. He left the room by the garden exit to walk beneath the star-strewn sky over Front Street, ruminate on how quickly life could turn comedy into tragedy and vice versa, and consider that he might appear to be one of the chosen elites who occupied the ballroom yet he in truth he had been there on a task and in depth he was more an outsider than ever before. And tonight, after having escaped either death or humiliation and seeing the reality of things, Matthew was very much more than content with his position.
Four
It was a fine morning to walk along Front Street in the warm sunshine, which if Matthew knew anything about Charles Town in the summer—and he certainly did from past experience as clerk to Magistrate Woodward here in his younger days—the warmth of the sun would turn to wretched heat as the day wore on and the shadows grew small. By noon the smell of the swamp would ooze over the town’s stone walls and permeate the little shops selling coffees and teas and bon-bons for the genteel, and the odor of decaying fish afloat and abloat against the wharf would violate even the most sweetly-scented fragrance of a garden’s roses or the perfumes sold to dab behind a lady’s ear or upon a gentleman’s cravat. In other words, at high noon it was time to get out the silk fans and employ the nosegays, so Matthew walked the street early and wisely before such aromas could embellish the air.
Besides, last night he’d gotten a strong enough whiff of this place. He had slept on a goosedown mattress in a comfortable bed in an inn owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Carrington, both agreeable people who were curious about New York and asked many questions concerning the life and manners there, and he had supped this morning on orange muffins with cinnamon butter followed by spiced ginger tea, and he appeared to be composed and content…and yet this was an illusion. For as he strolled along Front Street in his neat gray suit, his pale blue shirt and his gray tricorn with a dark blue band, even as he peaceably passed the shops and seemed to be at peace with all under God’s eye, he was at war with himself.
He had come to this situation of internal combat sometime before dawn, just when the town’s roosters began to crow. One part of himself wished to directly return to New York upon the next packet boat leaving port, and the other part…
…perhaps not so quickly.
He strolled on, from tree-shade to tree-shade. The scene—or rather, the sense—of last night’s festivity would not leave him. Several well-dressed gentlemen and ladies who passed him nodded in greeting. He wondered if they had been present at the ball, and if they still thought him such the hero for besting Magnus Muldoon with a comb. But the part of it that particularly galled Matthew was the truth of something the bearded mountain had said: I kinda see you now. I kinda see how you brung this fella all the way from New York, for me to kill just ’cause you have to go to these fancy dances. That ain’t right, Pandora. Ain’t right, to use a person that way.
And Pandora’s less-than-musical reply: Get out of this world, you black-bearded monster!
It was an ugly picture, Matthew thought as he walked. Made more ugly by the superficial beauty of the queenly Lady Prisskitt, which had beguiled him so completely and might nearly have crowned him as the king of his own coffin.
He walked a distance further, mindful of other people strolling on the street and the passage of carriages, the horses clip-clopping along. In a moment he stopped to gaze into the window of a tailor’s shop that displayed some shirts and suits in light summer hues. He was thinking…thinking…thinking that thinking was often his undoing…but it seemed to him that Pandora Prisskitt should not get away completely free from causing the deaths of three men—however those deaths had been delivered by the hand of a man who loved her valiantly and in vain. Also, Matthew disliked the fact of being used, intended to be either the fourth corpse or another frightened fool running for his life. And there was also the issue of Magnus Muldoon, a sad and heavy-hearted soul who seemed to think himself more Lancelot than Luckless Lout.
So…the question being, in his state of internal war…should he board the next packet boat heading north…or should he stay for a few more days, and stir up the muddy waters of love?
A face appeared in the window.
Rather, it was the reflection of a face in the glass. A woman in a pale green hat and gown the same color had come to stand just behind his right shoulder, and when she spoke Matthew felt both a punch to his stomach and a thrill course up his spine.
“Matthew? Matthew Corbett? Is that you?”
He turned toward her, for he already knew. He brought up a smile, but his face felt too tight to hold it steady.
She was both the same and of course very different, as he also was. Here is the witch, he recalled her saying in the foul gaol of the fledgling town of Fount Royal, as she defiantly threw off her dirty cloak of sackcloth to reveal the woman beneath. He remembered the moment of her nudity quite clearly, and in truth he had carried that moment and opened it like a locket for a peek inside from time to time. His cheeks reddened a few degrees, which he hoped she attributed to the external temperature.
“Hello, Rachel,” he answered, and he took Rachel Howarth’s offered hand and almost kissed it, but decorum prevailed.
She had been weathered in her twenty-eight years, primarily by her ordeal of being accused of witchcraft in that nasty situation and her months facing the stake and the flames, but she was still very youthful and indeed as beautiful as Matthew remembered. Her heart-shaped face with a small cleft in the chin was framed by the fall of her long, thick midnight-black hair. Her eyes were pale amber-brown, verging on a fascinating golden hue, and her skin color was near mahogany as bespoke her Portuguese heritage. She was altogether twice as beautiful, Matthew thought, as Pandora Prisskitt considered herself thrice to be. And Matthew knew Rachel’s soul as well, which was also a dwelling of beauty.
But also, he knew where the so-called “devil’s marks” were on her naked body, and these little dark marks and flecks that appeared on everyone’s flesh had almost sent her skin flaming. He had been her champion and had saved her from that imprisonment and from that fire, and the last he had seen of her was when he had left her to claim her own future in Fount Royal, and to find his own in the greater town of New York.
“I am amazed!” she said, with a smile that might have been described as giddy. She appeared to be about to throw herself into his arms, yet she was restrain
ing her forward motion. “Matthew! What are you doing here?”
“On business from New York,” he replied, in a steadfast tone. “I’m a problem-solver now.”
“Oh? People pay you to solve their problems?”
“Yes, that’s about it.”
“If so, then,” she said, “I owe you quite the chestful of gold coins. I cannot believe I am seeing you! Just out here, in the broad daylight!”
“I was in attendance last night at the Sword of Damocles Ball.”
Rachel made a face as if the midday odors had come early. “Oh, with those people? Surely you haven’t become—”
“One of them? If I gather your meaning correctly, I hope not. I was hired as an escort for one of the local ladies. The story is a bit complicated, but I survived the sword.” And conquered with the comb, he thought. “But you…what are you doing here?” Did he feel his heart flutter just a bit, under her golden gaze? He had fought a bear to save her life, and bore the scar for that. Perhaps there was another scar that ran a bit deeper?
“Well, I…” She suddenly looked to her left. “David! You must meet this young man!”
Matthew followed her line of sight. A tall gent in a tan-colored suit and a darker brown tricorn was coming across the street. He paused to allow a carriage to pass by, and then he continued onward. He was smiling and healthy-looking and appeared to be in his early thirties. He walked with a purposeful stride, a man of energy and means.
“This is David, my husband,” Rachel told the young problem-solver from New York. “I am Rachel Stevenson now.” She smiled again, a little awkwardly, as if she could hardly believe this herself. “A doctor’s wife!”
“Ah,” said Matthew, whose hand extended almost of its own accord toward the approaching master of this beautiful woman’s heart. He said, with his own smile fixed in place, “I am Matthew Corbett, sir, and I am very pleased to meet you.”
They shook hands. The doctor had a grip that might put someone’s hand in need of a doctor. “David Stevenson.” He had a sharp-featured, handsome face and very blue eyes, which now blinked with sudden recognition. “Oh! You are the one!” And so saying, he rushed upon Matthew and hugged him and clapped Matthew upon the back with such fervor that a half-digested orange muffin nearly popped out. Then the good doctor Stevenson seized Matthew by both shoulders and grinned in his face with the power of the Carolina sun and said, “I thank God you were born, sir! I thank God that you did not give up on Rachel, when others might have. And I see the scar, and I know what you did for the woman I love. I should bow down on my knees before you!”
The River of Souls Page 4