Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  “Please, Doctor,” said Elizabeth. Her countenance had darkened. “Don’t.”

  “Oh, but I must,” Firebaugh answered. “It is my duty, to explain to this young fool that sitting before him in these close quarters is a far superior killer to the ones who now are likely coming after him with blood in their eyes. Mr. Corbett, haven’t you heard of the Spitalfields Murderess?”

  “Please,” Elizabeth repeated.

  “The Spitalfields Murderess,” said Firebaugh, who spoke with an expression of sadistic delight. “Otherwise known as RakeHell Lizzie or her Christian name, Elizabeth Mulloy. Yes, here she is, right before you.” He frowned at Matthew’s blank stare. “Don’t you read Lord Puffery’s Pin? It was a featured story for almost four months!”

  “I’m not a regular reader of that publication.”

  “Well, you missed it then! All the gory details of how a young woman who has been victimized for years by unscrupulous and conniving—and brutal, I would say—men finally toppled over the edge from disturbance into madness. And forming her leather gloves with the extended razors—as she is actually and has been a very talented seamstress—she began to go out at night into the heart of Spitalfields to lure men into alleyways from which they did not return. Am I giving you fair enough credit, dear Elizabeth?”

  “I want you,” she said evenly, “to stop talking.”

  “But Mr. Corbett should know one more important thing, should he not? That you and I have a long history, before Samson Lash took you away from me. Oh, yes. Truth be told.” Firebaugh offered a chilling smile to Matthew. “You see, I told a little lie when I explained how Samson Lash and I connected with each other. He came to Highcliff hospital not to have a boil lanced, but to have a conference concerning placing his insane wife in the asylum I directed there. And lo and behold…in those halls of bedlam he met an angel.”

  “I think that should be enough,” Elizabeth said, but her voice was weak because she knew it would not be enough.

  “Met her that day when he came to my office,” Firebaugh went on. “After the treatment she had become good with figures and I let her do some accounting. The work seemed to calm her, and by all means I intended to keep her calm…because, as you no doubt know, she can be a trifle active.” Firebaugh paused for a moment, as the fine landship of a coach sailed along the snowy road on the western side of London and the sound of the horses’ hooves were like muffled drumbeats against the frozen earth. His eyes narrowed. “Just a moment. Matthew Corbett. I am familiar with that name, from somewhere. I can’t quite place it. Oh…a favor, please. Would you remove your finger from the trigger of that pistol? If we happened to hit a bump, my usefulness to you might come to a sudden end.”

  Matthew did as Firebaugh asked. He lowered the gun but kept it in his lap. Of course the doctor was right; the gun was simply a hollow threat. Matthew drew the ivory-handled dagger that had belonged to Albion out of his jacket, pretended to inspect the blade so Firebaugh could get a good look at it, and then set it at his side. Such a dagger was a better threat, for a cut could be delivered whereas a bullet could not be.

  “Oh look, Lizzie,” said Firebaugh in a silken voice, “he’s brought a nice sharp toy for you to play with.”

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” she said. “You’re trying to awaken it.”

  Matthew definitely did not like this avenue of conversation. He thought he probably should put the blade back into his jacket, but before he could do so he felt the coach begin to slow…slower…slower yet…and the coach stopped.

  “Stay still,” he told both of them. He drew aside the white linen curtain at the porthole on his left and was greeted by the sight of snow falling upon a stark gray tableau of shops on some street it appeared the dawn had not yet awakened.

  The doors on the right opened. Julian peered in, his gun in hand. His face had taken on a blue cast and he was shivering. Snow frosted the cloak and the tricorn he had taken from Bogen’s body. Found in a buttoned pocket within the cloak were four crowns, sixteen shillings and a few pence, a goodly amount but quite a comedown from a satchel full of gold bars.

  “I’m freezing out here,” he managed to say to Matthew, though his tongue was thickened by the cold. “Need a heavier coat and a woolen cap. Gloves, too. We’re stopped alongside a goods shop. I’m breaking in. Need anything?”

  “I could use a coat, sir,” said the doctor. “Winter stockings for my legs as well, and while you’re at it find me a jug of some nice hot cider.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, shithead.”

  “Oh, but you should be. Corbett tells me I’m needed to prepare a potion of some kind at the end of this delightful journey. How can I do so, if I have frozen to death on the trip?”

  Julian’s blue-lipped mouth set into a grim line, which told Matthew that he was thinking exactly what Matthew had considered: the doctor had them over a barrel of sorts, and he must be protected—if not downright coddled—to get him to Fell’s village in working order.

  Julian gave not a glance to Elizabeth. He closed the doors. Matthew watched through the porthole as Julian approached one of the shopfronts, swung with the butt of his pistol and broke the glass. Another swing, and more shattering of the display window followed. Then all was silent but the soft shrilling of the wind around the coach, as obviously Julian had gotten into the shop.

  Suddenly Firebaugh moved.

  It was so fast and unexpected that he had burst the doors open and was halfway out of the coach before Matthew could react. Matthew reached out to grab the nightgown but the man in it had already leaped from the coach and was running through the snow. Matthew let out a “Hey!” as if that would stop the doctor’s flight. He had an instant of quandry: leave Elizabeth and the book? Leave the dagger lying on the seat?

  “Julian!” he shouted, but Julian was inside the shop looting the goods which was exactly what Firebaugh had been waiting for. Matthew had to make a split-second decision. With the pistol in one hand he caught up the dagger and jumped out in pursuit. His boots sank into the crust, but that same crust was hobbling Firebaugh. Still, the man was running as if his ass were aflame. The nightgown flew around his thin body like a distress flag. Matthew had a quick sense of the street being deserted, the morning’s light hardly the glow of a few candles against the clouds. Firebaugh was running for an alley up the way. Suddenly he slipped and fell, got up and ran on and then Matthew’s feet slipped out from under him and he also went down. Firebaugh was about ten yards from the alley. If he got into it and into the maze of streets beyond, he—

  —might have escaped, but for Julian coming in at an angle across Matthew and hitting Firebaugh with his body like a four-horse team.

  Firebaugh gave a squalling sound as he fell. As Matthew reached them Julian was standing over the doctor with his free hand gripping the front of Firebaugh’s nightgown and the pistol at his forehead.

  “Go ahead,” said Firebaugh. Snow whitened his red beard and his eyebrows. He grinned. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  Julian shot a glance at Matthew. He let go of Firebaugh and said to Matthew, “Hold this.” He offered the pistol, and at the same time he took the dagger from Matthew’s hand.

  Then without hesitation he grasped hold of Firebaugh’s left ear and drove the dagger through it.

  Firebaugh’s scream echoed up and down the street. Dogs started barking from somewhere near.

  Julian tore upward with the blade. Though the dagger was not so useful in cutting as it was in sticking, it still took away a large part of the upper half of Firebaugh’s ear. The man screamed and thrashed and threw blood upon the snow. Then Julian grabbed the front of the doctor’s nightgown again, pulled the man’s horror-stricken face up close to his and said in a voice matter-of-fact and without emotion, “You will not try to run again. You have another ear and a nose. Understand?”

  Firebaugh nodded. But Julian wasn’t fin
ished. He sliced a thin groove with the dagger across the doctor’s forehead and through his right eyebrow. “That,” said the bad man to Firebaugh’s sobbing, “is so you really do understand.”

  “Yes yes I do I swear it!”

  Julian caught Matthew giving him a look that said he’d gone a slice too far. “I’ll start anew and afresh tomorrow,” Julian said. “So shut up.”

  And with that, fresh terror leaped into Matthew’s heart and as he turned to run back to the coach, Julian shouted “The woman!” It was not so much losing Elizabeth as a dubious hostage that sped his legs, but the idea that she might have taken the book. Still, the doors on the righthand side of the coach remained open and neither he nor Julian had seen her emerge; and yet of course she might have slipped out the other side, and gone.

  When he peered into the coach he found that the Spitalfields Murderess had pushed aside the heavy coat and opened the breakfast basket where it lay on the floor between the seats. She was eating a biscuit and a slice of ham.

  Her eyebrows went up. “Caught him, I’m guessing.”

  Matthew nodded. The red leatherbound book remained exactly where it had been when he’d sprang out after Firebaugh. In another moment Julian arrived with the doctor in tow. He shoved the whimpering and bloody man into the coach. Firebaugh curled up on a seat and clasped one hand to the wreckage of his ear and the other to his sliced face.

  “Here.” Julian gave Matthew back the blade and retrieved his own gun. “There are two people watching us from a window and three others have come out to stand across the street. I’m going back in and grab what I can.” He registered Elizabeth sitting quietly and eating her ham and biscuit. “Better not try anything,” he warned her, but Matthew thought it was just to hear himself say it. Then he closed the coach’s doors and went about his looting in earnest.

  “The smell of blood,” said Elizabeth. “Thick in here.”

  The way she said that made his stomach give a twinge. She kept unhurriedly eating her food. When she was done, she brushed the crumbs from her sea-green gloves and said, “You should put that dagger away.”

  Did any man on earth obey a suggestion as quickly? The dagger, which Julian had been thoughful enough to wipe clean in the snow, went into Matthew’s jacket and out of sight.

  “Monsters!” Firebaugh groaned. “You both are—oh my Jesus!” He tried to sit up and nearly tumbled down between the seats. In his blood-smeared face his widened eyes were fixed upon Matthew. “You!” he wheezed. “Matthew Corbett! Oh my Jesus…the Monster of Plymouth! In the Pin! I knew I recognized your—” He gave a groan and clutched at the remnant of his ear, after which he huddled himself up on the seat and seemed to go into a delirious daze of muttering and shivering.

  “He’s gone ’round the bend,” said Matthew, unwilling to answer any questions concerning the murderous and quite false reputation bestowed upon him by Lord Puffery’s Pin.

  “Interesting you should say that, since he made a living off those who had—as you put it—gone ’round the bend. I should hope he recovers enough not to wet himself, or otherwise.”

  “Ho there!” a man called. “You in the coach! Is someone hurt?”

  People would be gathering in the aftermath of Firebaugh’s scream. Matthew peered out the porthole on the right side and saw four men standing on the other side of the street. If they had seen Julian robbing the goods store, they had not yet taken action…but then again, unless one of them owned the shop it was unlikely they would.

  “Anyone hurt in there?” the man called again.

  Then Julian’s voice replied, “Hold where you are, gentlemen.” It was spoken with a measure of threat.

  “No trouble, sir! We want no trouble!”

  “Be mindful of that.” The doors opened and Julian, who had made sure the gathering Samaritans had seen the weapon of a Philistine, threw into the coach two horse blankets, a quilted red-and-yellow plaid banyan robe and a blue woolen cap. He himself had found a pair of deerskin gloves and a brown woolen cap to wear on his bald head under his tricorn. “I’ll take that coat, madam,” he told Elizabeth. “You can warm yourself under a blanket.” He glanced at Matthew’s disapproving expression. “They only had children’s coats in there. Must’ve sold out the others before this snow. Your coat, please.” He gave the men across the street another view of the four-barrelled widow-maker. “A wagon’s coming,” he said, taking the polar bear coat that Elizabeth offered. “It’s time to go.” He closed the doors once again and in another moment he was heard to flick the reins and call out, “Giddap!” He had to do this twice more to get the team moving, for evidently they were used to the regular driver’s voice and hand on the reins.

  The coach, frosty at its joints, creaked forward. Elizabeth pulled one of the blankets up to her neck. Matthew put on the blue cap and got under the second blanket. When Firebaugh recovered, he could put the banyan on over his nightshirt and his bare legs would have to do without winter stockings.

  Matthew set the book beside him and placed the pistol on top of it. It seemed that the Spitalfields Murderess and his Broodie sister was in no hurry to leave the company. He took a biscuit and a slice of ham from the basket and chewed on them. By this time Julian had urged the team to a canter again, and they were obviously strong horses but they weren’t going to last too many hours in these conditions. At any rate, Lash’s second coach would be facing the same difficulties though that team likely had a driver with more skill than Julian.

  He finished off the food before he asked Elizabeth the question he’d been holding. “Why didn’t you run?”

  “I don’t like the cold,” she said.

  “A flimsy reason. Any one of those men gathered out there would’ve helped you.”

  “Help from men is what I do not wish. Anyway, I didn’t care to be mauled by your associate. And there’s another reason that you probably should take into consideration.”

  “What might that be?”

  “I am staying with you,” she said, “in order to uphold my vow of loyalty to another Broodie. But when Samson catches you, I won’t be able to save your life. I am staying with you—and I will not attempt an escape—so that I might plead to Samson that you deserve a quick death.”

  “Oh, well I’m relieved to hear that,” Matthew said with a twist of his mouth.

  “I’m absolutely serious.” Her calm, level gaze said she was. “He will kill you. He has to, not just for taking me and the book but for destroying the plans. Your associate—Julian—will likely wind up back in the pit with RakeHell Lizzie. You, on the other hand, will receive a bullet to the head if I’m successful.”

  “If I had a cup of ale,” said Matthew, “I would offer a toast for your success.”

  “Make humor if you please, but this is the best I can do for you. I would say I’m sorry, if there were any other way.”

  “Don’t be sorry on my account. I plan on getting to Fell’s village alive, with the doctor and the book…and you as well, because you’re right about Julian doing you harm if you tried to run. That would put me in a very difficult spot.”

  She nodded, watching him thoughtfully. “If you were in my place, would you have done for me what I’ve done for you?”

  It was a good question, and one that Matthew could not honestly answer in the affirmative. Opening the door in the passageway was a real act of Broodie sisterhood that might have cost her her life, and might yet if Lash figured out the connection. “I appreciate all that you’ve done,” he said. “And especially that you didn’t kill me.”

  “Kill me…monsters…both of them…monsters,” Firebaugh muttered in his stupor. His eyes opened and he sat up as if not realizing where he was. Then fresh pain hit him, he made a sobbing noise and curled himself up once more. Matthew tossed the banyan robe over him, and moving in slow increments the pitiful doctor drew it around his body like a shroud, even though its plaid was s
o gaudy it wouldn’t be suited for a Scottish funeral.

  “What’s all this about the Monster of Plymouth?” Elizabeth asked, as she took another biscuit from the breakfast offerings.

  “No idea. I think he has the wrong Matthew Corbett in mind. I’m sure there are several in London.”

  “True,” she answered, eating her biscuit with small little bites. “For a man who seems so…shall I say…unimposing, you made quick work of that bodyguard. And you sure don’t seem the type who would run with the Broodies. When I saw that tattoo on your hand it was nearly the shock of my life.”

  “It was nearly the end of mine,” said Matthew.

  Elizabeth was quiet for a while. She finished her biscuit and ate a few slices of apple. She looked out the porthole at the passing snowscape, for by this time they had left the confines of London and were moving through the small villages that stood just to the west of the great city.

  “Are you afraid of me?” she suddenly asked.

  “Yes,” Matthew said. No use to mince words on that question.

  “I can feel it. I could always feel fear. I thought I felt it in the parlor, but I reasoned it was the tension of the group. I presume it was coming from you and your associate.”

  “From me, most certainly.” He gave her a wan smile which she did not return.

  “You’re fearful in the presence of the Spitalfields Murderess?”

  “I’m most concerned that RakeHell Lizzie not make a return appearance.”

  “Ah,” she said, with a nod. “That one. I hate her and I love her. She is my worst enemy and my greatest friend. She is—”

  “A different part of you?” Matthew asked.