The Queen Of Bedlam Part 13

I think you've let yourself go to rot, Hudson Greathouse had said.

Little did he know, Matthew thought. Anyone could handle a sword if they were six-foot-three and constructed like a wars.h.i.+p. And a pistol could be aimed by any idiot, so what was the point?

You're more a ghost than a man.

Strong words from a weak mind, Matthew thought. Well, d.a.m.n him! Ordering people around like a sandpit general! d.a.m.n him to blazes!

Matthew lay on his bed and closed his eyes, but even so his fit of anger would not be stilled. Gone out there all that way, just to be tricked. Tried to make a fool out of me. But they didn't do a very good job of that, did they? No siree! It takes a smarter pair than those two to make a fool of Matthew Corbett! Now this "training" business, trying to test my mettle! Trying to make me do something I've never done before and likely can never do. Sword-fighting and fist-fighting and acting like a common lout! If I'd wanted to spend my life wallowing in violence I could've stayed an orphan with the harbor gangs!

He had a clear vision of Katherine Herrald, seated behind her desk. Fixing him with those keen blue eyes like lamps s.h.i.+ning underwater.

Many times you will fail, she said. That is the nature of the world, and the truth of life. But when you find your horse again, will you go back, or will you go forward?

And then she lifted her hand from the desk, made a fist, and knocked down upon the wood. Once...twice...a third time...

"Matthew? Matthew?"

He sat up with a start, realizing how dramatically the light had faded.

Again came three knocks. "Matthew? Open up, please!"

It was Hiram Stokely's voice. He was up on the ladder, knocking at the underside of the trapdoor. "Matthew?"

"Yes sir! Just a minute!" Matthew got his feet on the floor and rubbed his eyes. He was feeling much better now, but what time was it? His watch was in his coat pocket. By the fading light he thought it must be near five o'clock. He pulled open the trapdoor and looked down into Stokely's face.

"Sorry to bother you," Stokely apologized, "but you have a visitor."

"A visitor?" Then Stokely moved aside for Matthew to see and there standing at the foot of the ladder was someone he'd never expected.

"'lo, Matthew," said John Five. He must've just come from the blacksmith's shop, for though he wore an ordinary white s.h.i.+rt, brown breeches, and boots his face was still ruddy from the furnace fire. "Can I climb up?"

"Yes. Of course. Come on." Matthew held the trapdoor open as Stokely descended and John Five climbed the ladder. When John was up in the room, Matthew eased the trapdoor shut and went about lighting a couple of candles.

"Nice place," John said, gazing around. "All those books. I should have known."

"Pardon me." Matthew spent a minute was.h.i.+ng his face at the waterbasin. He retrieved his watch from his coat and saw that it was indeed almost ten minutes after five. He wound the watch and held it to his ear to hear the ticking.

"Oh, that's a fine thing! I didn't know you made that kind of money!"

"It was a gift. It is nice, isn't it?"

"Somethin' I'll likely never have. Can I hold it?"

Matthew gave it to him and prepared a dish of shaving soap while John Five listened to the watch at his remaining ear.

"Ticks pretty, huh?" John Five asked.

"It does."

John set the watch down on the bedside table and sniffed the air. "What's that smell?"

"Yarrow oil. I have a sore shoulder."

"Oh. I could've used that, many a time."

Matthew applied the soap to his stubble and began to shave with his straight-razor. He could see John Five standing behind him in the small round mirror over the basin. John kept looking around the room, his brow knit. Something was coming, but Matthew had no idea what it was.

John cleared his throat. "Take you to supper."

Matthew turned around. "I'm sorry?"

"Supper. I'll take you to supper. My coin."

Matthew continued his shaving, sc.r.a.ping his chin clean, but he watched John Five in the mirror. "What's this about, John?"

A shrug was the first reply. John walked over and peered out the window onto the Broad Way. "Doesn't fit you, holdin' a grudge," he said. "You know what I'm talkin' at."

"I know you're referring to our disagreement over a certain course of action. But I want you to know as well that I've thought a lot about what you've said. About Nathan and all the rest of it." Matthew paused with the razor at his upper lip. "Even though I wish things might be different, I know they can't be. So I'm doing my best to let that go, John. I really am."

"Does that mean you don't hold a grudge?"

Matthew finished the lip before he answered. "It does."

"Whew!" said John Five, with visible relief. "Thank G.o.d for that!"

Now Matthew was really curious. He washed the blade off and put it aside. "If your visit is just to discern if I hold a grudge against you, I can promise I don't. But I'd say that's not exactly why you're here. Is it?"

"No, it's not."

Matthew began to wipe his face with a clean cloth. When it was obvious John Five was not going to advance without prodding, Matthew said, "I'd like to hear it, if you'd like to tell me."

John nodded. He rubbed his hand over his mouth and stared at the floor, all signs that Matthew took to be the steadying of nerves. Matthew had never seen John Five so jittery, and this alone doubled his curiosity.

"Take you to supper," John said. "I can tell you about it there. Say the Thorn Bush, at seven?"

"The Thorn Bush? Not my favorite place."

"Food's good and cheap there. And they let me run a bill."

"Why not just tell me about it now?"

"Because," John said, "I eat supper every Thursday evenin' at five-thirty with Constance and Reverend Wade. Tonight, especially, I wouldn't be wantin' to not show up."

"And why is tonight so special, then?"

John drew in a long breath and slowly let it out. "Because," he said quietly, "it's the reverend I need to talk to you about. Constance thinks...she thinks..." He hesitated; it was something he couldn't quite force himself to spit out.

"Thinks what?" Matthew urged, just as quietly.

John lifted his gaze to Matthew's. His eyes looked sunken and haunted. "Constance thinks her father is losin' his mind."

The sentence hung between them. Outside, a woman-Mrs. Swaye, from two houses down-was calling for her little boy Giddy to come to supper. A dog barked and a wagon creaked as it was pulled past the window.

"More than that," John continued. "Things she can't understand. I've got to go, Matthew. I've got to go sit at that table and know what Constance is thinkin', and I've got to look in Reverend Wade's face and wonder what I'm seein'. Please meet me at the Thorn Bush at seven. You've got to eat somewhere, don't you?"

Matthew had planned to eat with the Stokelys, but this put a new coat of paint on the fence. The rough-edged Thorn Bush was certainly not the place Matthew would have chosen, though he realized John Five probably wished to go there for one reason other than his credit, which was more easily obtained at the Thorn Bush than at any other tavern in town: you could be faceless in there, if you pleased. The gambling tables and roaming prost.i.tutes focused all attention upon themselves. And it was surely not an establishment into which Reverend Wade nor any of the minister's friends might wander.

"All right," he said. "If you wish, seven o'clock at the Thorn Bush."

"Thank you, Matthew." John started to clap Matthew on the right shoulder, but he saw the slick s.h.i.+ne of the yarrow oil and stayed his hand. "I'll see you there," he said, and Matthew lifted the trapdoor to let him descend the ladder.

After John Five was gone, Matthew pondered the startling statement he'd just heard. Losing his mind? And how was this condition revealing itself? he wondered.

We have to leave him, Wade had said to Vanderbrocken, over the dead man in the street.

Had they been travelling separately, or together? And if together, to what destination?

One step at the time, Matthew thought. First, to listen to what John Five had to say, and then to determine what it might mean.

He carefully folded his razor and put it away, thinking that the most dangerous edges often lay close at hand.

Fourteen.

John Five was waiting for Matthew outside the Thorn Bush when he got there just before seven. It was the beginning of a fine night in New York. The stars were showing, the breeze was warm, candles burned in the street-corner lamps, and a man with a b.l.o.o.d.y nose sat in front of the tavern throwing curses at everyone who pa.s.sed by.

"d.a.m.n you!" hollered the man at Matthew. "Think you've got me whipped, do you?" Obviously he was drunk as well as battered. He struggled to get to his feet, but John Five placed a boot at his shoulder and nonchalantly shoved him back down on his a.s.s.

Beyond the door with its five triangular gla.s.s panes-three of them cracked-and a depiction of thorns and leaves carved into the wood, the place was lit by dirty lanterns hanging from the ceiling beams. The smoke from a thousand pipes had turned the beams as black as printer's ink. A current haze thickened the air. The front room, where the bar was prominent, held tables where sat a dozen or so men all in various degrees of intoxication while feathered and buckled women swooped and cawed around them. Matthew had seen this picture before, during his nights of tracking Eben Ausley. He understood that the more attractive of these ladies-the better dressed and better mannered, if manners counted for anything-came from Polly Blossom's rose-colored house on Petticoat Lane, while some of the others who seemed unkempt and desperate had come over on the ferry from New Jersey.

At once four women aged probably from seventeen to forty-seven converged upon John Five and Matthew with lip-licking expressions of seduction on their painted faces so ridiculous that Matthew might have laughed had he not been a gentleman. Anyway, business was business and the compet.i.tion was fierce. Still these ladies knew who was buying and who was not; when John Five shook his head and Matthew said, "No, thank you," they turned away almost as one, shrugged their bared shoulders, and life went on.

Now the noise of men yelling came from a second room. Matthew knew the gambling fiends were in their element. A drowsy-looking barmaid carrying a pitcher of wine approached, and John Five said, "We're going all the way back. My friend wants some supper."

"Mutton pie with turnips and beef brains with boiled potatoes," she answered, reciting the evening's fare.

"May I have mutton pie with boiled potatoes?" Matthew asked, and she speared him a look that told him he might get what he wanted and then again he might not.

"Two gla.s.ses of wine," John added. "The port."

She went off to the kitchen and Matthew followed John into the gambling room, where the smoke of Virginia's finest was truly dense. The men in here at first appeared to be more shadows than flesh, either sitting at tables where cards were being slapped down or hovering over boards where dice clattered as they were thrown toward a series of painted numbers. Then another uproar went off like an explosion and someone slammed a fist against wood and yelled, "f.u.c.k it all, Hallock! Everything on the black!"

Matthew wondered if some madhouses-bedlams, as they were called-weren't more sane than this. Certainly more peaceful. The yelling died down, the cards were turned or the bones were tossed and then again the throat of h.e.l.l seemed to open to allow out a quick hot breath of chaos. Matthew thought that for some of these men winning or losing was not really the attraction; it was that chaotic instant of joy or terror, both made so pure in their intensity that all else of life paled in their shadows.

"Look here!" someone said to Matthew's left as he was going through a group of men in the gambling room. "It's Corbett, isn't it?"

Matthew looked in the direction of the voice and found himself standing alongside a dice table in the presence of the two young lawyers Joplin Pollard and Andrew Kippering. Both had ale tankards in their hands and appeared a bit woozy. Of special notice was the dark-haired and not unattractive prost.i.tute of about twenty years of age hanging on to Kippering's left arm, her ebony eyes deep-sunken and vacant as the burned-out houses on Sloat Lane.

"See, Andrew?" Pollard said, with a wide grin. "It is him. He. Whatever. The one and only, eh?"

"I am who I am, I suppose," Matthew replied.

"Good man!" Pollard hit his sore shoulder with the tankard. Worse than that, he slopped some ale on the light-blue s.h.i.+rt Matthew wore, which was the last clean s.h.i.+rt in his possession. "Always be who you are. Eh, Andrew?"

"Always," Kippering said, with a lift of his tankard and then a long drink. The prost.i.tute pressed forward and Kippering obliged her by pouring some of the stuff down her throat as well.

"And who's this, then?" When Pollard motioned toward John Five, Matthew was able to step back and avoid another spillage. "Hold a minute!" Pollard turned toward the dice table and the men who were wagering there. "I'm in on this one too, d.a.m.n it! Three s.h.i.+llings on anchor!"

Matthew saw they were playing the popular game of s.h.i.+p, Captain, and Crew, in which the shooter had five throws with a pair of dice to come up with a six, five, and four in that order, which stood for the s.h.i.+p, captain, and crew. Others could bet on any variation of success or failure. Pollard had just wagered on "anchor," which was a three to show up in the first throw.

"My friend John Five," Matthew said when Pollard had returned his attention. "John, Misters Joplin Pollard and Andrew Kippering, both of whom are attorneys."

"First throw! Crew without a s.h.i.+p and an ace!" came the call from the table, with its resulting moment of chaos. Four and one. Then the wagering began once more at the pitch of frenzy as silver coins were tossed into an iron pot.

Pollard just shrugged. "To h.e.l.l with it. John Five, did you say?"

"Yes sir." John was a bit distracted, as the prost.i.tute had begun chewing on Kippering's left ear. "I've seen you both around town."

"You're Constance Wade's beau," Kippering said, trying carefully to get his ear free.

"Yes sir, I am. May I ask how you know about that?"

"I don't think it's a secret. I was speaking to the reverend just lately and he mentioned your name, in pa.s.sing."

"Are you a friend of the family?"

"Double anchors!" cried the caller. Once more the gamblers hollered or cursed and the entire room with its whirling smoke, brays of laughter, and shouts for liquid courage made Matthew feel he was on the pitching deck of a rudderless s.h.i.+p. He had noted that the prost.i.tute's left hand was crawling down toward Kippering's crotch.

In the tumult of noise before Kippering's response to John's question, Matthew had the chance to sum up what he knew about the two attorneys. Joplin Pollard-boyish and clean-shaven, his reddish-blond hair close-cropped and his brown eyes large and sparkling with good humor-was in his early thirties and had come to the colony in 1698 to join the older and established lawyer Charles Land. Hardly a year later Land had inherited a large sum of money from a family estate in England and returned to the home country with his wife to become, as Matthew understood from Magistrate Powers, a rich art patron and dabbler in politics.

Thus Pollard-a "green gent," Powers had called him-had been forced to sink or swim in his own firm, and had hired Bryan Fitzgerald from a Boston partners.h.i.+p soon afterward. He was obviously doing well enough now, though, as attested by his taste in his fine light-gray linen suit, his ruffled royal-blue cravat and expensive black boots polished to a gloss.

Completing the trio of blazing youth was Kippering, who'd come from England two years ago with an excellent reputation as a business lawyer but who had, as the magistrate had heard from Pollard, dallied with one banker's wife too many and paid for his sins by expulsion from the gentlemen's club. It was a.s.sumed he was doing penance in the colony until he might attempt a comeback in the grander arena, but at the ripe age of twenty-eight Kippering-lean and wolfishly handsome, two days past a shave, a comma of thick black hair fallen over his forehead and his eyes so icy blue the expression from them was nearly fearsome-was obviously not ready for the embrace of a leather armchair when there were painted dollies prancing about and the wine flowed smooth and dark from tavern casks. Neither was he in a hurry to join the best-dressed list, for his plain black suit, simple white s.h.i.+rt, and scuffed black shoes had seen better years.

Kippering caught the young woman's hand before it reached his jewels and firmly but gently confined it with his own. "I've given advice to the reverend. Not anything concerning his daughter. But he felt compelled for whatever reason to inform me of the impending situation."

"You mean our marriage?"

Kippering shuddered. "Please restrain the profanity."

"This isn't a place the good reverend might approve of for his future son-in-law," said Pollard, as his mouth spread into a sly smile. "Do you think?"

"Probably not," Matthew spoke up, "but the food's good and cheap. I've eaten here many times. Besides, my friend and I are seeking privacy, which I believe can be found in the back room."