Book: Speaks the Nightbird 4 страница

" Run? " Woodward looked at him incredulously. " You might ask if I could crawl! "

" Whatever you can do, you'd best do it, " Matthew said. " I think we should get into the woods, first thing. "

" What about the horses and the wagon? We're not just going to leave them here! "

" There's no time. I expect they'll be after us in a few minutes. If they come at us with an axe or a musket—"

" Say no more. " With an effort, Woodward began slogging toward the woods across the road from the tavern. Matthew followed close at his side, watchful in case he staggered.

The lightning flashed, thunder clapped, and rain fell upon their heads. Before they reached the forest, Matthew looked back at the tavern but saw no one yet following. He hoped Shawcombe had lost—at least for the moment—the desire to rouse himself and come out in this storm; he doubted if the old man and woman were very self-motivated without him. Probably Shawcombe was too busy dealing with his own pain to inflict it on anyone else. Matthew thought about going back for the horses, but he'd never saddled and bridled a mount in his life and the situation was volatile. No, he decided, it was best to head into the forest and follow the road in the direction they'd been going.

" We left everything, " Woodward said disconsolately as their feet sank into the quagmire of mud and pine needles at the forest's edge. " Everything! My clothes, my wigs, my judicial robes! Dear Christ, mywaistcoat! That animal has my waistcoat! "

" Yes, sir, " Matthew answered. " But he doesn't have your life. "

" And a sorry thing that will be, from this day forward! Ahh-hhh, that man almost made me a soprano! " He peered into the utter darkness that lay ahead. " Where are we going? "

" Fount Royal. "

" What? " The magistrate faltered. " Has that man's madness impressed you? "

" Fount Royal is at the end of the road, " Matthew said. " If we keep walking, we might be there in a few hours. " An optimistic appraisal, he thought. This swampy earth and the pelting rain would slow them considerably, but it would also hinder their pursuers. " We can return here with their militia and retrieve our belongings. I think it's our only choice. "

Woodward was silent. It was indeed their only choice. And if he could get his waistcoat back—and see Shawcombe kicking at the end of a noose—it would be worth a few hours of this vile indignity. He could not help thinking that once a man fell into the pit of disfavor with God, the hole was bottomless. He had no shoes, his balls were bruised and aching, his head was naked to the world, and his nightshirt was sopping and covered with mud. But at least they did both have their lives, which was more than he could say of Thymon Kingsbury. Execution is not one of my duties, he'd told Shawcombe. Well, that just might have to be amended.

He would come back here and get that waistcoat if it was the last thing he did on this earth.

Matthew was moving a little faster than the magistrate, and he paused to wait for Woodward. In time, the night and the storm swallowed them up.

four

AT LAST THE AFTERNOON SUN had cleaved a path through the clouds and shone now on the drenched earth. The weather had warmed considerably, compared to the chill of the night before. This was more like the usual May, though the clouds—dark gray and swollen with more ghastly rain—were still looming, slowly converging together from all points of the compass to overtake the sun again.

" Go on, " said the heavyset, lavishly bewigged man who stood at a second-floor window of his house, overlooking the vista. " I am listening. "

The second man in the room—which was a study lined with shelves and leather-bound books, a gold-and-red Persian rug on the pinewood floor—sat on a bench before a desk of African mahogany, a ledger book open in his lap. He was the visitor here, however, as the bewigged man had recently lifted his 220-pound bulk from his own chair, which stood on the other side of the desk facing the bench. The visitor cleared his throat and placed a finger upon a line written in the ledger. " The cotton plants have again failed to take root, " he said. " Likewise the tobacco seedlings. " He hesitated before he delivered the next blow. " I regret to say that two-thirds of the apple trees have been blighted. "

" Two-thirds? " said the man at the window, without turning away from the view. His wig, a majesty of white curls, flowed down around the shoulders of his dark blue, brass-buttoned suit. He wore white ruffles at his sleeves, white stockings on his thick calves, and polished black shoes with silver buckles.

" Yes, sir. The same is true of the plum trees, and about half of the pears. At present the blackcherries have been spared, but it is Goode's opinion that a parasite of some kind may have laid eggs in all the fruit trees. The pecans and the chestnuts are so far unblemished, but the fields have been washed to the extent that many of their roots are now aboveground and vulnerable to harm. " The speaker halted in his recitation of agricultural maladies and pushed his spectacles up a little further on his nose. He was a man of medium height and stature, also of medium age and appearance. He had light brown hair, a lofty forehead, and pale blue eyes, and he bore the air of a wearied accountant. His clothes, in contrast to the other man's finery, consisted of a plain white shirt, brown cloth waistcoat, and tan trousers.

" Continue, Edward, " the man at the window urged quietly. " I am up to the hearing. "

" Yes, sir. " The speaker, Edward Winston, returned his attention to the items quilled in the ledgerbook. " Goode has made a suggestion regarding the fruit trees that he felt important for me to pass to you. " Again, he paused.

" And that suggestion is? "

Winston lifted his hand and slowly ran two fingers across his mouth before he went on. The man at the window waited, his broad back held straight and rigid. Winston said, " Goode suggests they be burned. "

" How many trees? Only those afflicted, yes? "

" No, sir. All. "

There was a long silence. The man at the window pulled in his breath and let it slowly out, and when he did so his shoulders lost their square set and began to sag. " All, " he repeated.

" Goode believes that burning is the only way to kill the parasite. He says it will do no good in the long run to destroy only the trees presently showing ill. Furthermore, he believes that the site of the fruit orchards should be moved and the earth itself cleansed with seawater and ashes. "

The man at the window made a soft noise that had some pain in it. When he spoke, his voice was weak. " How many trees are to be burned, then? "

Winston consulted his ledger. " Eighty-four apple, fifty-two plum, seventy-eight blackcherry, forty-four pear. "

" And so we start over yet again, is that it? "

" I fear it is, sir. As I always say, it's better to be safe than sorry. "

" Damn, " the man at the window whispered. He placed his hands on the sill and stared down through red-rimmed hazel eyes at his endangered dream and creation. " Is she cursing us, Edward? "

" I don't know, sir, " answered Winston, in all candor.

Robert Bidwell, the man at the window, was forty-seven years old and scarred with the marks of suffering. His deeply lined face was strained, his forehead furrowed, more lines bracketing his thin-lipped mouth and cutting across his chin. Many of those markings had afflicted him in the past five years, since the day he had been presented with official papers deeding him 990 acres on the coast of the Carolina colony. But this was his dream, and there before him, under the ochre sunlight that slanted through the ominously building clouds, lay his creation.

He'd christened it Fount Royal. The reason for the name was twofold: one, to thank King William and Queen Mary for their fount of faith in his abilities as a leader and manager; and two, as a geographic waypoint for future commerce. Some sixty yards from the front gate of Bidwell's house—which was the sole two-story structure in the community—was the fount itself: an oblong-shaped spring of fresh, cold aquamarine-colored water that covered an expanse of nearly three acres. Bidwell had learned from a surveyor who'd been mapping the area several years ago and who'd also plumbed the spring that it was more than forty feet deep. The fount was of vital importance to the settlement; in this country of salt marshes and stagnant black ponds, the spring meant that fresh water would always be in abundance.

Bulrushes grew in the spring's shallows, and hardy wildflow-ers that had endured the intemperate chill grew in clumps on the grassy banks. As the spring was the center of Fount Royal, all streets—their muddy surfaces made firmer by sand and crushed oyster shells—radiated from it. The streets were four in number, and had been named by Bidwell: Truth ran to the east, Industry to the west, Harmony to the north, and Peace to the south. Along those streets were the whitewashed clapboard houses, red barns, fenced pastures, lean-to sheds, and workshops that made up the settlement.

The blacksmith toiled at his furnace on Industry Street; on Truth Street stood the schoolhouse, across from the general store; Harmony Street was host to three churchhouses: Anglican, Lutheran, and Presbyterian; the cemetery on Harmony Street was not large, but was unfortunately well-planted; Peace Street led past the slave quarters and Bidwell's own stable to the forest that stood just short of the tidewater swamp and beyond that the sea; Industry Street continued to the orchards and farmland where Bidwell hoped someday to see bounties of apples, pears, cotton, corn, beans, and tobacco; on Truth Street also stood the gaol, where she was kept, and near it the building that served as a meeting-house; the surgeon-barber was located on Harmony Street, next to Van Gundy's Publick Tavern; and a number of other small enterprises, scattered about the fledgling town in hopes that Bidwell's dream of a southernmost city might come to fruition.

Of the 990 acres Bidwell had purchased, little more than two hundred were actually built upon, tilled, or used as pasture. A wall made of logs, their uptilted ends shaved and honed by axes into sharpened points, had been constructed around the entire settlement, orchards and all, as protection against Indians. The only way in or out—notwithstanding the seacoast, though a watchtower built in the forest there was occupied day and night by a musket-armed militiaman—was through the main gate that opened onto Harmony Street. A watchtower also stood beside the gate, allowing its militiaman a view of anyone approaching on the road.

So far in the existence of Fount Royal, the Indian element had offered no trouble; in fact, they'd been invisible, and Bidwell might have questioned whether there were indeed redskins within a hundred miles, if Solomon Stiles hadn't discovered strange symbols painted on the trunk of a pinetree during a hunting expedition. Stiles, a trapper and hunter of some regard, had explained to Bidwell that the Indians were marking the wilderness beyond the tree as territory not to be trespassed upon. Bid-well had decided not to press the issue, though by the royal deed all that land belonged to him. No, best to let the redskins alone until it was time to smoke them out.

Looking down upon the current decrepit condition of his dream hurt Bidwell's eyes. There were too many empty houses, too many gardens gone to weed, too many broken fences. Un-tended pigs lay about in the muck and dogs wandered, snapping and surly. In the past month five hard-built structures—all deserted at the time—had been reduced to piles of ash by midnight fires, and a burnt smell still tainted the air. Bidwell was aware of whom the residents blamed for these fires. If not her hand directly, then the hands—or claws, as the case might be—of the infernal beasts and imps she invoked. Fire was their language, and they were making their statements very clear.

His dream was dying. She was killing it. Though the bars of her cell and the thick walls of the gaol confined her body, her spirit—her phantasm—escaped to dance and cavort with her unholy lover, to plot more wreckage and woe to Bidwell's dream. To banish such a hydra into the judgment of the wilderness was not enough; she had plainly said she would not go, that no power on earth could make her leave her home. If Bidwell hadn't been a lawful man, he might have had her hanged at the beginning and been done with it. Now it was a matter for the court, and God help the judge who must sit in attendance.

No, he thought grimly. God help Fount Royal.

" Edward, " BidweU said, " what is our present population? "

" The exact figure? Or an estimate? "

" An estimate will do. "

" One hundred or thereabouts, " Winston offered. " But that will change before the week is done. Dorcas Chester is ill onto death. "

" Yes, I know. This damp will fill up our cemetery ere long. "

" Speaking of the cemetery. . . Alice Barrow has taken to bed as well. "

" Alice Barrow? " Bidwell turned from the window to face the other man. " Is she ailing? "

" I had cause to visit John Swaine this morning, " Winston said. " According to Cass Swaine, Alice Barrow has told several persons that she's been suffering dreams of the Dark Man. The dreams have so terrified her that she will not leave her bed. "

Bidwell gave an exasperated snort. " And so she's spreading them about like rancid butter on scones, is that it? "

" It seems to be. Madam Swaine tells me the dreams have to do with the cemetery. More than that, she was too fearful herself to say. "

" Good Christ! " Bidwell said, the color rising in his jowls. " Mason Barrow is a sensible man! Can't he control his wife's tongue? " He took two strides to the desk and slapped a hand down upon its surface. " This is the kind of stupidity that's destroying my town, Edward! Our town, I mean! But by God, it'll be ruins in six months if these tongues don't cease wagging! "

" I didn't mean to upset you, sir, " Winston said. " I'm only recounting what I thought you should know. "

" Look out there! " Bidwell waved toward the window, where the rain-swollen clouds were beginning to seal off the sunlight once again. " Empty houses and empty fields! Last May we had more than three hundred people! Three hundred! And now you say we're down to one hundred? "

" Or thereabouts, " Winston corrected.

" Yes, and how many will Alice Barrow's tongue send running? Damn it, I cannot stand by waiting for a judge to arrive from Charles Town! What can I do about this, Edward? "

Winston's face was damp with perspiration, due to the room's humid nature. He pushed his spectacles up on his nose. " You have no choice but to wait, sir. The legal system must be obeyed. "

" And what legal system does the Dark Man obey? " Bidwell planted both hands on the desk and leaned toward Winston, his own face sweating and florid. " What rules and regulations constrain his mistress? Damn my eyes, I can't watch my investment in this land be destroyed by some spectral bastard who shits doom in people's dreams! I did not build a shipping business by sitting on my bum quaking like a milksop maid. " This last had been said through gritted teeth. " Come along or not as you please, Edward! I'm off to silence Alice Barrow's prattling! " He stalked toward the door without waiting for his town manager, who hurriedly closed his ledger and stood up to follow, like a pug after a barrel-chested bulldog.

They descended what to the ordinary citizens of Fount Royal was a wonder to behold: a staircase. It was without a railing, however, as the master carpenter who had overseen the construction of the stairs had died of the bloody flux before its completion. The walls of Bidwell's mansion were decorated with English pastoral paintings and tapestries, which upon close inspection would reveal the treacheries of mildew. Water stains marred many of the whitewashed ceilings, and rat droppings lay in darkened niches. As Bidwell and Winston came down the stairs, their boots loudly clomping, they became the focus of Bidwell's housekeeper, who was always alert to her master's movements. Emma Nettles was a broad-shouldered, heavyset woman in her mid-thirties whose hatchet-nosed and square-chinned face might've scared a redskin warrior into the arms of Jesus. She stood at the foot of the stairs, her ample body clad in her customary black cassock, a stiff white cap enforcing the regimented lie of her oiled and severely combed brown hair.

" May I he'p you, sir? " she asked, her voice carrying a distinct Scottish burr. In her formidable shadow stood one of the servant girls.

" I'm away to business, " Bidwell replied curtly, plucking from a rack on the wall a navy blue tricorn hat, one of several in a variety of colors to match his costumes. He pushed the hat down on his head, which was no simplicity due to the height of his wig. " I shall have toss 'em boys and jonakin for my supper, " he told her. " Mind the house. " He strode past her and the servant girl toward the front door, with Winston in pursuit.

" As I always do, sir, " the madam Nettles said quietly an instant after the door had closed behind the two men, her flesh-hooded eyes as dark as her demeanor.

Bidwell paused only long enough to unlatch the ornate white-painted iron gate—six feet tall and shipped at great expense from Boston—that separated his mansion from the rest of Fount Royal, then continued along Peace Street at a pace that tested Winston's younger and slimmer legs. The two men passed the spring, where Cecilia Semmes was filling a bucket full of water; she started to offer a greeting to Bidwell, but she saw his expression of angry resolve and thought it best to keep her tongue sheltered.

The last of the miserly sunlight was obscured by clouds even as Bidwell and Winston strode past the community's brass sundial, set atop a wooden pedestal at the conjunction of Peace, Harmony, Industry, and Truth streets. Tom Bridges, guiding his oxcart to his farmhouse and pasture on Industry, called a good afternoon to Bidwell, but the creator of Fount Royal did not break stride nor acknowledge the courtesy. " Afternoon to you, Tom! " Winston replied, after which he had to conserve his wind for keeping up with his employer as Bidwell took a turn onto the easterly path of Truth.

Two pigs occupied a large mud puddle in the midst of the street, one of them snorting with glee as he rooted deeper into the mire while a mongrel dog blotched with mange stood nearby barking his indignation. David Cutter, Hiram Abercrombie, and Arthur Dawson stood not far from the pigs and puddle, smoking their clay pipes and engrossed in what appeared to be stern conversation. " Good day, gentlemen! " Bidwell said as he passed them, and Cutter removed his pipe from his mouth and called out, " Bidwell! When's that judge gettin' here? "

" In due time, sir, in due time! " Winston answered, still walking.

" I'm talkin' to the string puller, not the puppet! " Cutter fired back. " We're gettin' tired a' waitin' for this thing to be resolved! You ask me, they ain't gonna never send us a judge! "

" We have the assurances of their councilmen, sir! " Winston said; his cheeks were stinging from the insult.

" Damn their assurances! " Dawson spoke up. He was a spindly red-haired man who served as Fount Royal's shoemaker. " They might assure us the rain will cease, too, but what of it? "

" Keep walking, Edward, " Bidwell urged sotto voce.

" We've had a gutful of this dawdlin'! " Cutter said. " She needs to be hanged and done with it! "

Abercrombie, a farmer who'd been one of the first settlers to respond to Bidwell's broadsheets advertising the creation of Fount Royal, threw in his two shillings: " The sooner she hangs, the safer we'll all sleep! God save us from bein' burnt up in our beds! "

" Yes, yes, " Bidwell muttered, lifting a hand into the air as a gesture of dismissal. His stride had quickened, sweat gleaming on his face and darkening the cloth at his armpits. Behind him, Winston was breathing hard; the air's sullen dampness had misted his spectacles. With his next step, his right foot sank into a pile of moldering horse apples that Bidwell had just deftly avoided.

" If they send us anybody, " Cutter shouted as a last riposte, " it'll be a lunatic they plucked from the asylum up there! "

" That man speaks knowingly of asylums, " Bidwell said, to no one in particular. They passed the schoolhouse and next to it Schoolmaster Johnstone's house. A pasture where a small herd of cattle grazed stood next to Lindstrom's farmhouse and barn, and then there was the meeting-house with a flagpole before it from which drooped the British colors. Just a little further on, and Bidwell's pace hastened even faster; there loomed the rough and windowless hardwood walls of the gaol, its single entrance door secured with a chain and iron lock. In front of the gaol was a pillory where miscreants who thieved, blasphemed, or otherwise incurred the wrath of the town council found themselves bound and sometimes pelted with the same substance that currently weighted Winston's right boot.

Past the gaol, a number of houses with barns, gardens, and small fieldplots occupied the last portion of Truth Street. Some of the houses were empty, and one of them had dwindled to a charred shell. Weeds and thorns had overtaken the forlorn gardens, the fields now more frightful swamp than fruitful earth. Bidwell walked to the door of a house almost at the very end of the street and knocked solidly while Winston stood nearby, blotting the sweat from his face with a shirtsleeve.

Presently the door was opened a crack and the grizzled, sunken-eyed face of a man who needed sleep peered out. " Good afternoon to you, Mason, " Bidwell said. " I've come to see your wife. "

Mason Barrow knew full well why the master of Fount Royal was at his door; he drew it open and stepped back, his black-haired head slumped like that of a dog about to be whipped. Bid-well and Winston entered the house, which seemed the size of a wig box compared to the mansion they'd recently left. The two Barrow children—eight-year-old Melissa and six-year-old Preston—were also in the front room, the older watching from behind a table and the younger clinging to his father's trouser leg. Bidwell was not an ungracious man; he removed his hat, first thing. " She's to bed, I understand. "

" Yes sir. Sick to the soul, she is. "

" I shall have to speak to her. "

" Yes sir. " Barrow nodded numbly. Bidwell noted that the two children also looked in need of sleep, as well as in need of a good hot meal. " As you please. " Barrow motioned toward the room at the rear of the house.

" Very well. Edward, come with me. " Bidwell walked to the open door of the other room and looked in. Alice Barrow was lying in the bed there, a wrinkled sheet pulled up to her chin. Her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling, her sallow face gleaming with sweat. The room's single window was shuttered, but the light was strong because seven tallows were aflame, as well as a clay bowl full of pine knots. Bidwell knew it was a remarkable extravagance for a farmer such as Mason Barrow, whose children must be suffering due to this surplus of illumination. As Bidwell stepped across the threshold, a loose plank squeaked underfoot and the woman looked at him; her eyes widened, she sucked in her breath as if she'd been struck, and shrank away from him deeper into the confines of the bed.

Bidwell immediately halted where he stood. " Good afternoon, madam, " he said. " May I have a word with you? "

" Where's my husband? " the woman cried out. " Mason! Where's he gone? "

" I'm here! " Barrow replied, standing behind the other two men. " All's well, there's naught to fear. "

" Don't let me sleep, Mason! Promise me you won't! "

" I promise, " he said, with a quick glance at Bidwell.

" What's all this nonsense? " Bidwell asked him. " The woman's feared to sleep? "

" Yes, sir. She fears fallin' asleep and seein'—"

" Don't speak it! " Alice Barrow's voice rose again, tremulous and pleading. " If you love me, don't speak it! "

The little girl began to cry, the little boy still clinging to his father's leg. Barrow looked directly into Bidwell's face. " She's in a bad way, sir. She ain't slept for the past two nights. Cain't abide the dark, not even the day shadows. "

" This is how it begins, " Winston said quietly.

" Rein yourself! " Bidwell snapped at him. He produced a lace-rimmed handkerchief from a pocket of his jacket and wiped beads of sweat from his cheeks and forehead. " Be that as it may, Barrow, I must speak to her. Madam? May I enter? "

" No! " she answered, the damp sheet drawn up to her terror-stricken eyes. " Go away! "

" Thank you. " Bidwell walked to her bedside and stood there, looking down at her with both hands gripping his hat. Winston followed behind him, but Mason Barrow remained in the other room to comfort the crying little girl. " Madam, " Bidwell said, " you must desist in your spreading of tales about these dreams. I know you've told Cass Swaine. I would ask—"

" I told Cass 'cause she's my friend! " the woman said behind her sheet. " I told others of my friends too! And why shouldn't I? They should know whatIknow, if they value their lives! "

" And what is it that makes your knowledge so valuable, madam? "

She pushed the sheet away and stared defiantly up at him, her eyes wet and scared but her chin thrust toward him like a weapon. " That whoever lives in this town is sure to die. "

" That, I fear, is only worth a shilling. All who live in any town are sure to die. "

" Not by his hand! Not by fire and the torments of Hell! Oh, he told me! He showed me! He walked me through the graveyard, and he showed me them names on the markers! " The veins in her neck strained, her brown hair lank and wet. She said in an agonized whisper, " He showed me Cass Swaine's marker! And John's too! And he showed me the names of my children! " Her voice cracked, the tears coursing down her cheeks. " My own children, laid dead in the ground! Oh, sweet Jesus! " She gave a terrible, wrenching moan and pulled the sheet up to her face again, her eyes squeezed shut.

With all the candle flames, the pine knot smoke, and the humidity seeping in, the room was a hotbox. Bidwell felt as if drawing a breath was too much effort. He heard the rumble of distant thunder, another storm approaching. A response to Alice Barrow's phantasms was in order, but for the life of him Bidwell couldn't find one. There was no doubt a great Evil had seized upon the town, and had grown in both murky day and blackest night like poisonous mushrooms. This Evil had invaded the dreams of the citizens of Fount Royal and driven them to frenzies. Bidwell knew that Winston was correct: this indeed was how it began.

" Courage, " he offered, but it sounded so very weak.

She opened her eyes; they had become swollen and near-scarlet. " Courage? " she repeated, incredulously. " Courage again' him? He showed me a graveyard full of markers! You couldn't take a step without fallin' over a grave! It was a silent town. Everybody gone... or dead. He told me. Standin' right at my side, and I could hear him breathin' in my ear. " She nodded, her eyes staring straight through Bidwell. " Those who stay here will perish and burn in Hell's fires. That's what he said, right in my ear. Burn in Hell's fires, forever and a day. It was a silent town. Silent. He said Shhhhhhhh, Alice. He said Shhhhhhhh, listen to my voice. Look upon this, he said, and know what I am. " She blinked, some of the focus returning to her eyes, but she still appeared dazed and disjointed. " I did look, " she said, " and I do know. "

" I understand, " Bidwell told her, trying to sound as calm and rational as a man at the bitter end of his rope possibly could, " but we must be responsible, and not so eager to spread fear among our fellows. "

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