The Queen of Bedlam

by Robert R. McCammon

  “Indeed,” Matthew said, though this was news to him.

  “I can’t keep up with her. And she certainly doesn’t want me tagging along. So I thought you might introduce her to some people more her age. Pave the way for her, so to speak.”

  Matthew was slow in answering, as he was still taking in the I’d like you to move into the dairyhouse. “If you haven’t already noticed,” he said, “I’m not at the center of the social whirl. The last time I looked, clerks were not being invited to join the Young New Yorkers, the Bombasters, or the Cavaliers.” Naming three of the social clubs that held dances and parties throughout the year. “I am not one for loud gatherings and so-called merriment.”

  “Yes, I know that. You’re steady and dependable, and that’s why I want you to be an example for Berry.”

  “You mean her guardian.”

  “Well, you might learn something from each other,” Grigsby suggested, with a twitch of his eyebrows. “She to be more responsible, and you to be more…merry-making.”

  “Move into the dairyhouse?” Matthew decided to steer toward a firmer shore. “It’s a dungeon in there!”

  “It’s a cool, cosy summerhouse. Think of it that way.”

  “Summerhouses usually have floors and at least one window. There’s not even a latch on the other side of the door. I could be murdered in my sleep.”

  “A latch is no problem. I could easily have one put on the door.” Grigsby then pounced on Matthew’s silence. “You can live there free of charge, as long as you please. Eat your meals here, if you like. And I also could use your help with the printing, so I’d pay you a shilling or two per job.”

  “I already have a job. Hopefully it will turn into a profession.” He saw that Grigsby was all ears. “Do you know that notice I had you place? For the Herrald Agency? I’ve joined them.”

  “That’s well and good, but what do they do?”

  For the next while, Matthew explained to the printmaster his meeting with Katherine Herrald and the agency’s purpose. “She thinks I can be of service, and I’m eager to get started. I understand she and her associate, Mr. Greathouse, are close to renting office space.”

  “Problem solving?” Grigsby shrugged. “I suppose it might go over. Especially if the agency hired out to City Hall to help with criminal cases. I’m not sure what Bynes or Lillehorne would think of it, but there’s the possibility.” He cast a sharp eye at Matthew. “Ah ha! You’re working on finding the Masker, aren’t you? Has the city already given that over?”

  “No. I am working on finding the Masker for Mrs. Deverick, though. As a private concern. I’m waiting for her to respond to some questions I sent her in a letter. The agency has some other things going on, as well.” He dared not mention the Queen of Bedlam, for he wished that to remain his own business. Neither did he want to speak the name of Professor Fell. “So you see, I do have a future.” He quickly corrected himself. “A job, I mean.”

  “I never doubted that you had a future.” Grigsby finished his tea before he spoke again. “I still would like for you to move into the dairyhouse and keep watch…I mean keep company with Berry. Whatever you wish to do with the dairyhouse as far as making it more comfortable, I am at your service. And I do have some money saved up to work with.”

  “I appreciate the gesture, but I expect I can find a room somewhere. That’s not to say I wouldn’t be willing to help you with the print jobs, if time allows it.”

  “Very kind of you, very kind.” Grigsby stared at a pineknot on the table. “But you know, Matthew, it would be difficult for me to refrain from printing a certain item concerning Magistrate Powers if you weren’t…say…living on the premises.”

  Matthew’s mouth fell open. “Tell me,” he said quietly, “that you didn’t just stoop to what I think you stooped to.”

  “What did I stoop to?”

  “You know what! Marmy, I can’t nursemaid your granddaughter! And I’ll bet she’d brain you on the skull with that frying pan if she even knew you were suggesting it!” Little good the frying pan would do, he thought.

  “Then she ought not to know, for the sake of my skull.”

  “She ought to find her own way here! She doesn’t need my help! I’d say she can take care of herself well enough, bad luck or not.”

  “Possibly true. But I’m not asking you to nursemaid her or watch her every move. I’m simply asking you to show her around. Introduce her to people. Take her to dinner a time or two. Listen…before you decide anything, will you at least go talk to her? Try to get to know her a little better? I hate the idea that you and she got off on the wrong foot.” He watched Matthew scowl. “You being one of my favorite people, and she being another. Just go and talk to her for a little while. Would you do that for an old addlepated grandpa?”

  “Addlepated is right,” Matthew said. Then he drew in a long breath and let it out and figured he could at least speak to the confounded girl before he went on his way. Grigsby wouldn’t print the item about Magistrate Powers; he was bluffing. Wasn’t he? Matthew pushed his chair back and stood up. “Where did you say she went?” he asked glumly.

  “Up Queen Street. Looking for—”

  “A place to catch the morning light, yes, I know.” He started for the door and then turned back. “Marmy, if she bites my head off I’m not going to have anything more to do with her. Is that agreed?”

  The printmaster regarded him over the lenses. “I’ll go ahead and get the locksmith to work. Does that suit you?”

  Matthew left the house before he said words no gentleman should utter. Since he was going walking, he decided he ought to take his bag of dirty clothes to the widow Sherwyn, so he went back into the dairyhouse—was the place even smaller than it had been last night?—and retrieved the bag from beneath his cot. The notebook was problematic. He didn’t wish to leave it lying about if the locksmith did come today, nor did he wish to be carrying it around town. He lifted one of the shrouds of canvas and found of all things a burlap-covered archery target, well-punctured. Some of the hay stuffing was boiling out. He widened a rip, slid the notebook down into the target, and covered it over once more with the canvas. Then he noted something leaning in the corner alongside the shovel and axe: a rapier with what appeared to be an ivory grip. There was no scabbard. The blade was splotched with rust. Matthew wondered how the sword and the target had gotten in here, but he had places to go and things to do. With the bag in tow, he left the dairyhouse and locked the door behind him.

  It took him almost twenty minutes and a walk of well over a mile before he found Berry Grigsby. She had gone north along Queen Street past the hubbub and clatter of shipyards and wharfs until she’d found a pier to her liking. The place was shaded with overhanging trees, and the river washed around house-sized boulders that had been set here by the hand of God. She was sitting out about fifty feet from shore at the very end of her chosen pier, her straw hat on her head and in her lap a pad of sketching paper. She was wearing what looked to be a dress sewn together from patches of a dozen different eye-startling costumes, in colors of peach, lavender, pale blue, and lemon yellow. He didn’t know if he’d be talking to a girl or a fruit bowl.

  He bit his lip and called, “Hello!”

  Berry looked around at him, waved, and then continued her drawing. She seemed to be concentrating on her view of a green and rolling pasture across the river in Breuckelen. Gulls were swooping over the water, following the white sails of a small packet boat making its way south.

  “May I come out?” Matthew called.

  “As you wish,” she answered, without pause in her creative labor.

  Matthew thought it was a lost cause, but he started out along the pier. It took him only three steps to realize Berry had chosen a wharf that must have been used by the first fur trader to have ever skinned a beaver in New Amsterdam. The thing had been battered by the prows of many long-forgotten boats and spaces gaped between the weather-beaten planks. He stopped, thinking that one misstep or the breaking o
f a worm-eaten board beneath his feet could give him a bath and douse his clothes at the same time. Then he felt her eyes on him, and he knew he had to go the distance. Besides, the girl had made it, hadn’t she? But why the devil had she chosen this old broken-down pier, of all places?

  He kept walking. Every creak and groan sent a shudder up his spine. At one place there was a hole the size of an anvil. He saw dark water below, and he almost stopped and turned around but he was more than halfway to where the girl sat, crosslegged Indian style, and he felt somehow that this was a mission of honor. Or a dare. Whichever, he edged around the hole with its jagged boards and eased forward, step after nervous step.

  When he reached Berry, he must have breathed a sigh of relief because she angled her face up at him from under the straw hat and he caught the brief glimpse of a mischievous smile. “Nice morning for a walk, isn’t it, Mr. Corbett?”

  “Invigorating.” He felt a bit damp under his arms. She returned to her drawing and Matthew saw she was pencilling a very pleasant scene of the pasture and rolling hills. Beside her was a small box, open to display an assortment of different-hued crayons.

  “I don’t think I’ve caught it yet,” Berry said.

  “Caught what?”

  “The spirit of the place,” she replied. “All that energy.”

  “Energy?”

  “Forces of nature. Here, this one I’ve finished.” She flipped up her sketch to display the sheet of paper below it, and Matthew thought his eyes might bleed. This previous work, the same scene as the present one, had been attacked with vivid emerald green, pale grass green, streaks of yellow, and splotches of fiery orange and red. It looked to him more like the interior of a blacksmith’s forge than a sunny pastoral view. It was an act of war against Mother Nature, he thought as he looked out across the river to make sure he was seeing what she did. Obviously, he did not. He wondered what the good, witch-fearing folk of Fount Royal would have thought about this picture and the artist who’d created it. Thank God bad taste in art wasn’t a sign of demonic possession, or Berry would have been hanged by her blue stockings. I wouldn’t show that to anyone, he almost said, but he bit his tongue so hard the blood almost bloomed.

  “This is the rough work, of course,” she said. “I’ll put it to canvas when I get it right.”

  He had to open his mouth. “You know, I don’t see any red or orange over there. Only green. Oh! Was that the sun coming up?”

  She let the new drawing fall back to cover the first, as if saying he wasn’t intelligent enough to view it. Her sketching continued. “I’m not trying to capture what is, Mr. Corbett,” she said, with some frost. “I’m trying to capture the essence of the place. You don’t see any red or orange, which is my interpretation of the creative fire of the earth, because you’re only looking at the pasture.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “That’s what I see. A pasture. Is there something I’m missing?”

  “Only the element at work beneath the pasture. The surge of life and fire from the heart of the earth. Almost like…well, a cooking fire, I suppose. Or—”

  “A blacksmith’s forge?”

  “Ah!” Berry smiled up at him. “Now you’ve got it.”

  Matthew thought she should never mention phrases like the heart of the earth unless she wished to leave town under tar and feathers en route to Bedlam herself, but decorum prevented putting the thought to voice. “I suppose that’s the modern art style from London?” he asked.

  “Heavens, no! Everything’s gray and gloomy on the canvases over there. You’d think the artists washed their brushes with tears. And the portraits! Why is it that everyone wishes to be viewed by history as tight-assed fops? The women even more than the men!”

  Matthew had to recover his wits after this scandalous outburst. “Well,” he ventured, “possibly because they are tight-assed fops?”

  Berry looked up at him and this time allowed the sun to catch her face. Her blue eyes, clear as diamonds and potentially as cutting, appraised him with a genuine interest for a few seconds, and then she lowered her head and the sketching pencil scratched on.

  Matthew cleared his throat. “May I ask why you chose this particular pier? I think it might collapse at any moment.”

  “It might,” she agreed. “I didn’t believe anyone else would be foolish enough to walk on it and disturb me while I’m working.”

  “Pardon the disturbance.” He gave a slight bow. “I’ll leave you now to the furnace.”

  He had just turned to retrace his path over the rickety structure when Berry said, very calmly and matter-of-factly, “I know what my grandfather is asking of you. Oh, he doesn’t know that I know, but he disregards my…call it…intuition. He wants you to watch me, doesn’t he? Keep me out of trouble?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What, then? Exactly?” Berry put down her pencil and turned around to give him her full attention.

  “He’s asked me to squire you around a bit. Help you get settled.” He was beginning to be annoyed by her sly little smile. “New York may not be London, but there are pitfalls here. Your grandfather simply wishes you not to step into one.”

  “I see.” She nodded and angled her head to the side. The sun gleamed on the red curls that fell over her shoulder. “You should know, Mr. Corbett, that you’re being foxed. Before I left England, my father received a letter from Grandda telling him not to worry, for my grandfather was making a vow to find me a husband. You, sir, seem to be the candidate for groom.”

  Matthew smiled broadly at the nonsense of that last sentence, but when Berry’s face remained steadfastly serious he felt his smile collapse. “That’s ridiculous!”

  “I’m glad we’re of a single mind on the subject.”

  “I don’t plan on being married to anyone, anytime soon.”

  “And before I marry I plan on making a living from my art.”

  An impoverished spinster for life, Matthew thought. “But your teaching is important to you also, isn’t it?”

  “It is. I think I have value as a teacher, and I do like children. But art is my true calling.”

  More like a yodel at midnight, he thought, but he kept a straight face. “Listen, I assure you I’ll put your grandfather on the straight road about this. He’s been hounding me about moving into the dairyhouse, and now I know why.”

  Berry stood up. Her height almost put her eye-to-eye with Matthew. “Don’t be so rash, Mr. Corbett,” she said silkily. “If Grandda puts all his eggs in your basket, he won’t be trying to foist me off on a succession of boring imbeciles whose idea of a plum future is an easy chair and an easy maid. So if you were to play along, it would be to my favor.”

  “Really? And what favor would I get out of it? A dirt floor and a dungeon?”

  “I’m not saying you would have to…as you put it…squire me around very long. A month, possibly. If that. Just long enough for me to impress my will upon my grandfather.” She blinked and thought better of that last statement. “I mean, impress to my grandfather how important my freedom is. And the fact that I can find my own young man, in my own time.”

  “A month?” That word left a sour taste in Matthew’s mouth. “I’d be just as comfortable in the gaol. At least the cells have windows.”

  “Think about it, at least. Will you? I’d be in your debt.”

  Matthew didn’t wish to give it a moment’s further thought, but here was the point of the pickle: if he did consent to stay in the dairyhouse and at least pretend to serve as Berry’s squire or guardian or whatever the blazing hell Grigsby intended, he could keep that item about Magistrate Powers from turning up in a future Earwig. One month? He could stand it. Maybe.

  “I’ll think about it,” he agreed.

  “Thank you. Well, I believe I’m done for the morning.” Berry knelt down and began to put away her crayons. “May I walk back with you?” It was obvious now that she was warming to him, as this business of the New York groom had been overcome.

  “I’m not goi
ng all the way back to Grigsby’s, but you’re welcome to accompany me.” So saying, he cast an uneasy eye along the fifty feet of rotten pier and fervently hoped Berry’s bad luck would not sink them both.

  They made it over, though not without Matthew thinking more than once that the next step would take him into the river. Berry gave a laugh when they reached solid ground, as if what was for Matthew an ordeal was for her an adventure. He had the impression that her problem might not be bad luck, but unfortunate choices. Still, she did have a nice laugh.

  On their walk back along Queen Street, Berry asked if Matthew had ever been to London and he said regrettably not, but that he hoped to go before long. She then proceeded for the next while to entertain him with descriptions of some of the sights and streets of London that were clearly remembered by the eye of the artist, so richly were they fashioned. He found it interesting that Berry described several book stores she used to visit, and one book seller in particular who sold coffee and chocolate at a counter right in the shop. After her telling of it, Matthew felt he could smell the fresh paper of the books and the wafting aroma of the hot black coffee on a rainy London afternoon.

  They were nearly back to Grigsby’s house when, with Berry talking about her life in the Great City and Matthew listening as if walking the cobblestones at her side, there came the sound of horse hooves and jingling traces behind them. A high-pitched bell was rung, and they stepped aside as a double-horse carriage approached. As it slowed, Matthew saw in the seats behind the driver Joplin Pollard and Mrs. Deverick, he jaunty in a beige suit, waistcoat, and tricorn and she again grim in black gown and hat, her face pallid beneath white powder. The leather top of the carriage had been put up to throw shade over the passengers.

  “Ah! Corbett!” said the lawyer. “Mrs. Deverick and I were just on our way to the printmaster’s house. We’ve been trying to find you.”