Cardinal Black

by Robert McCammon

  Matthew said, “Absolutely not,” and unless Samson Lash still lived and could stride the many miles with his face nearly torn off its skull and Cardinal Black could fly through the night in his raven’s-wing coat, he believed his statement to be true. “And for your help in this matter,” Matthew said, as he felt the weariness closing in around him and trying to drag him under, “you will be paid handsomely, I assure it.” And thank God for the fact that Julian still possessed Bogen’s four crowns and most of the shillings, which would never be put to a greater or more welcome purchase.

  Within the Flying Dragon, Julian swigged down one mug of hot apple cider and then he and Matthew tied Firebaugh to the wooden bedframe of the room the criminal was consigned to. The cravat was left in his mouth and any needs he had for food, drink or evacuation delayed until after Varney had finished tending to the team. Julian warned him forcibly that any mess upon the featherbed would earn him dire regret. Then Julian staggered to his own room, collapsed on the bed, got himself into as much a comfortable position as possible, and immediately fell asleep, leaving Matthew to explain to Ann Varney that they were travelling with no baggage because their cases had been left behind in their haste to escape the criminal’s accomplices.

  It was the best story he could concoct, but he knew at once that Ann Varney was not so rural a spirit as to fail to have some sophistication in the aromatic tales of travellers, and this one did not pass her smell test. But there was naught she could do except demand that her husband throw the trio out upon the road at this wee hour, which she evidently decided against. However, as she prepared a pot of turnip soup while her husband attended to the horses she gave Matthew a show of producing a small pistol from a drawer and keeping it close at hand in her kitchen.

  Matthew didn’t blame her. Who would? The story’s rope had to be fashioned with some stronger fiber, otherwise the nearest sheriff might be summoned, and in any event he had important business with the doctor.

  As the woman worked in the kitchen, Matthew entered Firebaugh’s room with a cup of the hot cider and took a chair beside the bed. Firebaugh’s eyes were closed. Matthew turned the lamp’s wick up and prodded the doctor in the side. Firebaugh jerked awake and pulled his knees up to his chin in an effort to make himself a smaller target for violence.

  “I just want you to listen to me for a minute,” said Matthew. He took a drink of the cider, which had to rank among the most delicious liquids he had ever put down his gullet, or maybe it was just part of the joy of still being among the living. “You’re a man without a country right now. You know that, don’t you?”

  From the doctor there was no response, just the sullen glaring of a caged animal.

  “Where you’re being taken,” Matthew went on, “may well be your finest dream. Professor Fell needs a chemist. I have no doubt he is willing to pay you anything you ask. The village isn’t the worst place on earth, and I believe—hear me now, don’t try to blank me out—that if you perform your duties to his expectation, you will have the solitude you require, all the research materials you could ever wish for, and—” He paused, but he had to say the next part. “And all the test subjects you might want. The whole place is an experiment in chemistry. What would be better for you? A long sea voyage to some foreign country where the intrigues might get you killed before you even settled in? Well, there would be nothing to keep you from journeying to London or wherever you’d like, once you proved your worth to the professor. You would not be a prisoner there, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  There was still no response from the doctor, but had a fraction of the angry glare in his eyes softened?

  “All I want from you is the application of an antidote to the drug that is killing the senses of the woman I love,” Matthew said. “That’s what this has all been about. The formula for that antidote is somewhere in the book. I have as much faith in you as Lash did. Do you understand that? I have faith that you can concoct and apply that antidote, and that will finish the business between you and me. But it will only begin the business between you and the professor, if that is what you wish.” As he spoke these words he couldn’t believe he was hearing himself. Matthew Corbett…speaking on behalf of Professor Fell…building up that damned village…offering its trapped inhabitants up as chemical experiments, which of course they already were. And Matthew had made a promise to the kidnapped Italian opera star Madam Alicia Candoleri that he would somehow free everyone from Y Beautiful Bedd.

  He imagined how Julian might grin from ear-to-ear if he could hear all this.

  Welcome to the club, Julian might say. We are always in need of another bad man.

  In essence, Matthew realized, he was sitting here talking to Lazarus Firebaugh as a member of Professor Fell’s organization.

  He took a deeper drink of the cider, because the taste in his mouth was terribly bitter.

  “Just consider these things,” Matthew continued. “Money…freedom…solitude…research…and respect from the professor. He needs you, Doctor. I need you. But all I ask at the moment is that when our innkeeper comes through that door and I remove the gag from your mouth, you go along with the story we have invented for our passage.”

  Did Firebaugh’s eyes glaze over? Did a muscle twitch behind his red beard? It was difficult to tell.

  In a few minutes, as Matthew finished off his drink, the door opened and Varney peered in. “Ann said you might be here. Is…um…everything in order?”

  “Yes.” It was apparent Ann had been telling her husband that these men were not to be trusted. Well, some men had to be trusted whether you wished it or not. Matthew stood up and pulled the cravat out of Firebaugh’s mouth. “Tell Mr. Varney exactly what you have done, Sir Cunning,” he said, “and why you are on your way to stand before the docket in Bristol.”

  Firebaugh didn’t reply.

  The moment stretched.

  Firebaugh gave a short, harsh laugh.

  “Spill it, sir,” Matthew said. “Then we can get you a bowl of soup, a cup of cider, a chamberpot and a night’s rest. I’ll even sleep on the floor in here on guard, so that your bindings might be loosened. But only a bit, I will assure our gracious innkeeper, because our culprit here has three murders in his history. Isn’t that right?”

  Firebaugh laughed again; the laugh turned into a grunt, and then became a heavy sign of resignation.

  “Three you know about,” the doctor said, with a curl of his lip.

  thirty-one.

  On the early afternoon of Christmas Eve, Matthew chose a slim volume from the shelf of books in the parlor of the Flying Dragon. The title did not matter, nor did the subject of the book itself. He paused for a moment to watch flurries of snow sweep past the window that looked out upon the road, and then he walked into the kitchen where Edmond Varney and Ann were at work preparing the evening’s holiday feast, which included the pheasant Varney had shot that morning on the moors.

  “Some help, please,” said Matthew to his hosts. He held up the book. “Firebaugh wishes to do a little reading and he’s without his spectacles. Do you have anything that might suit?”

  “Say no more.” Varney reached up into a cabinet and brought down a small canvas bag. He unlaced it and opened it wide to show Matthew its contents: an assortment of keys, two pocketwatches, three small knives, a compass, a little black book, and four pair of spectacles.

  “People leave things here all the time,” he explained. “Wonder we don’t find a head or two in a closet someday.” Ann jabbed him in the side with a hefty elbow; it was an unwise remark, with a killer of three Bristol men in the house. “Take your pick,” Varney said, regaining his composure as well as his balance.

  “I’ll let him decide.” Matthew took all the spectacles. “Thank you very much.”

  “Supper at six o’clock,” said the woman of the house. Her face darkened. “Do you think he’ll be up to eating anything? Some beef b
roth, perhaps?”

  “I’ll ask. Again, thank you.” Matthew left the kitchen with the book and the spectacles in hand. He walked past the room where Julian had been in bed for the two days since they’d arrived. He went into Firebaugh’s room. The doctor was sitting in a chair with his banyan robe on, his feet up on an ottoman and the red leatherbound book of potions in his lap. In case the innkeeper or his wife happened to look in—which they certainly were not going to—Firebaugh kept the ropes loosely about his wrists and the other end tied to the bedpost. Matthew closed the door behind him. “Four pair for you to try.”

  “Ah.” The first pair brought a wince and a comment of, “This person was born of a bat.” The second: “Not too bad.” The third and fourth did not suit, so the second pair went on the doctor’s face and he opened the book of potions. Matthew put the book he’d selected as a decoy aside on a table.

  “Quite a chemist, was this Jonathan Gentry,” said Firebaugh as he turned through the forty or so pages of the book. “Some of these are devilishly intricate. What became of him?”

  Matthew had known this question was coming sooner or later. “He passed away. Thus his place was taken by a chemist named Gustav Ribbenhoff. He was unfortunately dispatched on orders from Cardinal Black.”

  Firebaugh gazed at him over the rims of his spectacles. “I hope I don’t see a pattern developing. That of a short life for the professor’s chemists.”

  Matthew offered a faint smile but could go no further in his assurances.

  The first full day of their arrival all three of them had slept like the dead, Matthew keeping his vow to sleep on a pad at the foot of the murderer’s bed, and with Julian’s pistol at the ready to further comfort their hosts though the gun was not loaded. On the second day, yesterday, Firebaugh had told Matthew he wanted to start re-reading the book of potions so he might be as best informed as possible when they reached Fell’s village, but his mind was still somewhat fogged and it needed to wait for another day.

  The reason they had not left the Flying Dragon was that on the previous morning Julian had begun throwing up blood. Varney had taken a horse to Whistler Green, the nearest village six miles to the west, and returned with a thin but wiry and white-bearded doctor named Adam Clark following him in a buggy. Clark had gone in to see Julian, with Matthew standing at the bedside, and at once the assembly—including Varney and his wife—could see that the pallid and sweating man in the bed was not only in extreme pain but had sustained life-threatening injuries.

  “Four broken ribs on the left side,” said Clark once the examination was done and they were in the parlor. “Internal injuries as well. It’s possible the sharp edges of the breaks have caused further wounds. Terrible bruises. What hit the poor man? And you also…that’s the mark of a bullet crease on your cheek, is it not? And you too are not wanting for bruises.”

  “They are constables on official business,” Varney explained before Matthew could speak. “They have captured the murderer of three men and are transporting him to Bristol for trial. Obviously it was a violent encounter.”

  “Oh?” The doctor’s white eyebrows went up. “Well, then…it seems your man nearly has committed a fourth murder. And I have to say…” His voice quietened. “There may yet be another charge.”

  That statement sent a shrill of alarm through Matthew. “What? No! Julian needs rest, that’s all.”

  “I can bind the ribs tightly so the pain is lessened, but it will not magically disappear and that process in itself will be painful…to say the least. I have some laudanum in my bag that will soothe him and help him sleep, though I am not particularly a great advocate of that drug. Still, it does work. As for the internals, that is a different story altogether. It may be that excreting the corrupted blood will help, but then again…to speed the process I may need to apply cupping and the lancet.”

  “What?” Again Matthew felt a shiver. “Oh my God! I know what bleeding does to a patient, doctor, and I’m not at all sure it’s for the positive.”

  “Young man, I have no other suggestions. His fever is running high and his heartbeat is labored. Ordinarily broken ribs will heal themselves in a matter of perhaps two months, but here we have further complications. Your associate could very well die in that bed, and it could be quickly if infection takes hold.”

  “No bleeding,” said Matthew. He put a hand to his forehead, recalling the death of his mentor and great friend Magistrate Isaac Woodward some years ago. The—to Matthew’s mind—hideous process of cupping and cutting had in his opinion worsened the magistrate’s illness and likely killed him. “Please,” Matthew said to the doctor. “No bleeding. Not yet, at least.”

  “Very well, I’ll wait on that. But by your opinion, which is not mine. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  Laudanum was given, the binding was done, and thankfully Julian slept. Matthew left him alone, because there was nothing else to be done. Clark had left a small bottle of the drug with precise instructions on how much to use if Julian should awaken wracked with pain, and then the doctor had spent a few moments cleaning Matthew’s cheek wound with a stinging red solution, had covered it with a plaster bandage, asked for five shillings in payment, and when the coins were paid wished the house a merry Christmas and went on his way.

  “Devilishly clever, some of these,” said Firebaugh as he continued through the book, stopping at certain formulas that he found intriguing. “Some of them simple enough, though. Just depending on the strength of the botanicals.”

  Matthew had to ask the question: “Do you think you can help Berry?”

  “Honestly, I can’t say until I’ve seen her. There are three formulas in here that might have been the one Ribbenhoff used. I’ll have to examine the subject, and that’s all I can say.”

  Subject instead of patient, Matthew thought. That was Firebaugh, all right, the doctor with the bedside manner suiting an automaton. But it was the best he could do, and that was that.

  Matthew left Firebaugh with his reading and quietly slipped into Julian’s room.

  The figure in the bed was gray-faced. His eyes were closed and Matthew could hear the soft wheeze of his breathing. Matthew was about to retreat when Julian’s eyes opened and he asked in his quietly tortured voice, “What day is it?”

  “The twenty-fourth.”

  “Time?”

  “About two o’clock.”

  “Has that doctor gone?”

  “He was here yesterday,” Matthew said.

  “Laced me up,” said Julian. “Tighter than a tick’s asshole. Damn, I can hardly breathe.”

  “Are you in any pain?”

  Julian looked at him as one would peer cockeyed at a madman. “Ha,” he said.

  “Do you want some laudanum? The doctor left a—”

  “No. Hell, no.” He moved slightly under his blanket and winced. Then he managed a harsh little laugh. “I’m not good for very much right now, am I?”

  “Neither am I. Last night I slept maybe two hours. I had a dream that Lash and Black were chasing me in a landship that actually was a ship. It was pulled by giant seahorses and bristled with cannons.”

  “Did they catch you?”

  “No. They were about to, and I was on the ground watching them float nearer and nearer…and then they melted away.”

  “Maybe you need the laudanum to clear your brain,” Julian said.

  Matthew pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down. Julian’s face was damp with sweat and dark circles ringed his eyes. Matthew imagined he could feel the heat of Julian’s fever.

  “I was asked,” he said, “by the missus if you’d care for some beef broth.”

  “I would care for a side of beef, but I’d just throw it up like I did the breakfast. Damn that Lash! He got me good, Matthew. That giant-sized boot…I can still feel it knock my ribs in, damn him.” Julian blinked and brought a han
d up out of the covers to wipe his forehead. “What day is it?” he asked. “Feels like it should be August by now.”

  “Christmas Day tomorrow,” Matthew said. “You’ve got to get well enough for us to finish our task. We don’t have very far to go now.”

  “Two days travel, at least. I won’t be up to that for a while.”

  “But you will be.”

  “Remains to be seen. Is Firebaugh behaving himself?”

  “We’ve come to an understanding,” Matthew said.

  “Good for you. Smack him in the head if he gives you any trouble. Then kick him in the nuts for me.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Julian was silent for a few moments. He shifted again and once more winced with the pain. “You may…may have to go on without me. Have you considered that?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re a damned fool. Time’s wasting.”

  “There’s time. We have the book and the chemist, and we have a coach. There’s time.”

  Matthew heard the bell ring at the front door. A visitor? Clark making another call, perhaps?

  Julian suddenly tried to sit up, but he made a noise of pain and settled back against his pillow. “Can’t even sit up in bed!” he said. “Pitiful!”

  “I wouldn’t be moving those ribs around like that, if I were you.”

  “Pah!” was the answer. Then Julian was silent again, staring up at the ceiling, until finally he asked, “Am I going to die, Matthew?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Matthew replied. “I think you’re too bad to die in bed laced up tighter than a tick’s asshole. I think you have a long life ahead of you and when you die—many years from now—it will be because you’ve raced the moon one too many times, or glared too often into the sun, or walked too close to some or another cliff of destruction. But for you to die in bed? No, that’s not your fate, Julian. You won’t go quietly into the night. It’s not your style. You have too many more razor edges to climb upon. So yes…in the long run, as you told Greta Autrey…everyone dies, and it’s the truth. But for the here and now…no, you will not die.”