Freedom of the Mask

by Robert R. McCammon

  “We know three things,” Hudson said as the horse clopped along, heedless of the driver’s occasional whipstrikes. “Count Dahlgren is dead, Matthew has been held to account for it, and Matthew survives, wherever he might be. Look, we need to get our chins out of the mud. Matthew is alive. That’s all I need to know to make me want to have a good dinner and a cup of the best wine a poor traveller can afford. How about you?”

  “I could eat a horse with the skin still on it,” she said, “and break open a bottle with my teeth to get at the wine. But…his not being here…there something about that I just don’t like.”

  “Well, maybe that gaol is crowded and they put him somewhere else. We’ll find out in the morning, but until then there’s no use worrying ourselves to a pity. I’m already gray enough, thank you.”

  She looked at him, at the earnest and caring expression on his tired, hollow-eyed face, and gave him as much of a sunny smile as she could pry from behind her own dark clouds. He had been like this all through the voyage: always positive when she needed him to be, always a strong shoulder to lean on, always a gentleman and certainly always a loyal and unswerving friend to Matthew. Indeed, whatever Matthew had been through and whatever faced him now, he was lucky to have such a pillar of fortitude at his back. Her smile faded, though, as she pondered an imponderable. “I have two things to ask you,” she said. “The first…do you think he actually did murder the man?”

  Hudson scratched his bearded chin. If he didn’t have a legion of lice in there, he would dance a jig and piss a pickle. “Murder,” he repeated solemnly. “That can be one man’s opinion. It appears Matthew may have aided Dahlgren’s departure from this earth, but I’m not ready to call him a murderer.” This was a quicksandy area, so Hudson pressed on. “Your second question?”

  “One I’ve wished to ask you for some weeks now,” she told him, and yet the question was—unlike the emergence of the twins—a difficult birth. At last she brought it to air. “Matthew was very unkind to me the last time we spoke. It was so unlike him. I thought…his experience on that damned island—excuse my tongue—caused him to lose his senses for awhile. But…nevertheless, he said to me some terrible and hurtful things. Is it that…he has feelings for Minx Cutter, and wishes me out of his sight?”

  “Lord, no!” came the immediate response. “I don’t know about you, but being in the same room with Minx Cutter makes me want to be wearing a suit of armor…or at least an armored codpiece. No, I don’t think it’s that at all.”

  “What, then? Can you say?”

  “I can guess,” said Hudson. He had to spend a few seconds in formulation of this guess, for he realized she was hanging on his words. “If I were Matthew,” he ventured, “I’d be trying to run you off, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t you understand it? Of course Matthew cares for you. He’d be a fool if he didn’t and that boy is no fool. His reasons are plain. The closer he allows you to come to him, the more in danger you are from those who wish him harm. Speaking particularly now of Professor Fell.” He paused for emphasis, and she got that because she nodded. “We know that even at a distance,” he went on, “the professor can loose the devil’s own Hell against his enemies. After Matthew was a part of blowing up that gunpowder supply and was responsible for destroying the whole—as you put it—damn island, Fell will be coming after him with every weapon he can bring to bear. Matthew doesn’t want you to be one of them.”

  “Me? A weapon?”

  “If Fell’s people got hold of you, yes…a weapon with which to attack Matthew. And no telling what would be done to you before he could meet Fell’s demands. Minx Cutter plays her part of being tough and unconcerned, but I believe she wishes for a second face on the back of her head to watch out for the professor’s vengeance. It’s coming. She knows it, I know it, and Matthew knows it. Therefore Matthew wants to keep you at a distance, though by now that’s likely a futile plan.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I won’t give up on him.”

  “Of course you won’t. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you most probably turned down a marriage proposal from Ashton McCaggers, and left New York on this journey with a crude, rude wild man you hardly know.” Hudson offered the faintest spirit of a sly smile. “I won’t ask you if I’m correct about McCaggers, but I know I’m correct about the other part.”

  “No, you’re not. I find you anything but crude, rude and wild.”

  “My dear old Mam always taught me to be on my best behavior with a school teacher,” he said. He glanced out the window into a torrent of driving rain. “Ah, here’s the harbor! As wet above the sea as below. The dock’s cleared out a bit.” He reached up and rapped with his knuckles on the driver’s viewslit. “If you wish an extra pence you can help us with our trunks,” he told the man. “Then direct us to an inn, and not one where we have to share rooms with wharf rats, either.”

  “Yes sir, very good.”

  Berry didn’t mind the rain or the discomfort of sopping-wet hair, clothes and skin. Her worried expression was due to her feeling—call it a woman’s intuition—that wherever he was, even in the hands of the law, Matthew was still in terrible danger and there was nothing she nor Hudson could do about it. But tomorrow was tomorrow, and if Heaven must be moved to find him she would search out a lever big enough to reach from Earth to the Plain Of Paradise. Of this she made a solemn vow to herself.

  “Ready?” Hudson asked before opening the door.

  She nodded.

  He said, “Chin—”

  Eight

  —uP,” spoke the prisoner with the mane of filth-matted white hair and one eye covered with a gray film. “Ya look like you’re already climbin’ the thirteen.”

  “Pardon?” It had been the first time this man had addressed him in the four days of being in the cell, and Matthew had a sluggish moment of not understanding. “The thirteen what?”

  “Thirteen what, he asks!” White Hair elbowed the second prisoner, Broken Nose, in the ribs. “He don’t know nothin’, do he?”

  “Thirteen steps to the gallows!” growled Broken Nose. “Where ya been all ya life?”

  “As far away from the hangman as I could get,” said Matthew.

  “Ha! Ain’t we all been!” White Hair grinned, showing a mouthful of green disaster. “Caught up with us now though, ain’t it? But I say chin up, ’cause you could be like that poor feller!” He jerked a misshapen thumb in the direction of the aged gent who lay shivering in a heap on the floor, which was what the decrepit individual did except for eating lightly and defecating heavily. “He’s gave the game to God!” said White Hair. “Won’t be long ’fore they carries him out to the beetle yard!” He focused his working eye on Matthew. “What’re you in for?”

  “Someone’s mistake.”

  Those two words might have been the most comical ever spoken in London, the way White Hair and Broken Nose howled with laughter while their nostrils shot goo and their three eyes leaked tears of hilarity.

  “I presume that’s what everyone says,” Matthew amended, his own face as straight as a plowman’s path.

  “Honest now!” said White Hair when he could again speak. He wiped his nose on a sleeve that was black with such dried tidbits. “What’d ya do?”

  “It is claimed,” Matthew answered with great dignity, “that I committed murder.”

  Instantly the two men were nearly at his feet.

  “Ya killed a constable?” asked Broken Nose.

  “A preacher?” prodded White Hair. “I’ve always wanted to kill me one a’them!”

  “Neither. It is claimed I killed a Prussian count.”

  Their faces sagged, if they could sag anymore than the usual. “Ahhhhh, that ain’t nothin’!” White Hair made an expression of disgust, which on its own was a murderous sight. “Them foreign counts is a bob a bag, ain’t worth wipin’ the blade for.”

  “And him bein’ Prussian!” Broken Nose added. “’Tain’t nobody likes them pigsucke
rs! You’ll be out of here ’fore the wrens fly on St. Stephen’s Day!”

  “I hope long before that.”

  “Well, them things has to go through what they call ‘the proper channels’,” said Broken Nose, with a philosophical air. “Hey, y’know we thought you was a pigeon, that’s why we wasn’t speakin’ to ya.”

  “A pigeon?”

  “Sure and it’s the truth!” said White Hair. “A pigeon. Y’know. Somebody brought in from outside, dressed up to look like they belongs here. See, they ain’t found the money I…um…helped myself to from the Widow Hamm’s house after the poor old bitch fell down them steps and busted her head wide open. Lord, that was a sight! How was I to know she was gonna come a cropper ’gainst that boot brick? I ain’t no fortune teller!”

  “They ain’t got my money neither!” said Broken Nose. “And damned if they’ll find it. That old skinflint was robbin’ me and everybody else worked in the shop, I’m just the one had guts enough to knock his brains out and take what was mine. ’Course, I took everybody else’s money too, but they was all the yellowest of cowards!”

  “So,” White Hair continued, “they are known to send pigeons in here to find out where the money’s stashed. Then they go and take it for themselves. But you been in here long enough, none of ’em stay more than two days. Who would if they didn’t have to, even for the money? We figured we might be right when they took you out awhile ago, but then when they brung you back and that guard give you such a shove…naw, you ain’t no pigeon. You’re a regular fella.”

  “But I still ain’t talkin’ about where I stashed my loot,” said Broken Nose adamantly. “I’m gettin’ out of here, one way or ’nother. Knowin’ that’s waitin’ for me…keeps me wakin’ up to see the sunshine.”

  Matthew grunted. The only way sunshine could get into this place would be if someone could smuggle it here in a bottle. The clammy walls were mottled with brown, black, and green lichens, the floor laid with cold flagstones likely quarried by Roman slaves, the iron bars absolute in their rigidity, the only light—and blessed they were to have any at all—was the meager glow of a single candle stuck to a brown clay plate on a small ledge above Broken Nose’s foul-smelling bunk. Matthew’s own bunk smelled terribly foul as well; one fear he had was that when he got out of here he would find his sense of smell totally destroyed.

  Down the corridor a man screamed as if his heart had been burst with a blade. Someone else laughed brokenly, a haunted hollow sound, and another voice further away began to speak curses at a slow, methodical pace as if reciting a schoolboy’s lesson.

  “You seem a smart lad,” said Broken Nose, who paid no heed to this commotion and likely didn’t even hear such anymore. “Know why it’s thirteen steps to the gallows?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Let me lighten ya. Each step eight inches. Gives ya a height total of eight feet, six inches. What they call in their profession an ‘acceptable drop’. Enough to break the neck clean…usual, that is. Don’t pay to be tall if you’re to be hanged. Height of eight feet, six inches also leaves ’nough room to handle the corpse, get a cart underneath it and cut it loose. That’s why thirteen steps. Now you’re smarter than ya was a minute ago.”

  “Thank you,” said Matthew, a little uneasily. “I don’t plan on ever needing that knowledge, but thank you.”

  “Hey now!” By the light of the candle White Hair looked as if he’d just had an epiphany. “Can you read, boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gimme me the paper!” White Hair said to his companion. “The ass-wiper, right over there!” He took hold of the darkly-stained small yellow broadsheet, which appeared only to be stuck together with unmentionables, and held it out toward Matthew. “Here. Would you read this to me? Please?”

  “Uh,” Matthew said, “I’m not sure I really want to—”

  “I’m beggin’. Please. My dear Betsy used to read it to me, twice a week. Oh, it’s all dried, ain’t nothin’ to fear.”

  “It’s not that I fear anything, it’s just that…well…what is it?”

  “Lord Puffery’s Pin. Ain’t you never heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “That boy must be from the moon!” said Broken Nose. “Everybody knows the Pin!”

  “Comes out twice a week,” White Hair explained. “When the guards finish readin’ ’em they bring ’em in sometimes for us to…y’know…clean ourselves with. But looky here, this one’s hardly a week old!”

  “It’s a news sheet, I gather?”

  “Oh, more than that! If it wasn’t for the Pin you’d never know what was goin’ on in London! It’s like…like…”

  “Balm for the soul,” said Broken Nose.

  “Yep, that!” The offensive sheet was held out closer to Matthew, who realized that despite the foulness of the paper it might not do to get on the wrong side of these two cellmates. “You bein’ able to read,” White Hair went on, with a desperate note in his voice, “that’s kinda like a Godsend. I’m—the both of us—we’re starvin’ for the news. You see?”

  “No, I can’t see. Very well, at least.” Matthew decided there were worse things in the world than handling a news sheet laden with a week’s crust of manure. Or perhaps not, but the issue was diplomacy. It was a good way to make himself valuable to these two, as they both seemed to be as anxious as children awaiting the most delicious tray of sweetmeats. He reached out, grimaced only a little, and took the sheet in one hand. “Bring the candle closer, if you will,” he said, and no quicker expressed than done.

  “Start at the top,” said White Hair, his single eye gleaming. “My Betsy always started at the top.”

  Matthew began to read the headline there. “Lady Everlust Gives Birth To Two-Headed—” He looked up in amazement. “What is this?”

  “I knew Lady Everlust was gonna birth a freak!” White Hair said excitedly to his companion. “The way she was paradin’ herself around, drinkin’ gin by the barrel and spreadin’ her legs for every man Jack! I knew it! Go on, was it a boy or a girl?”

  Matthew read a little further into the so-called article. “Gave birth Thursday last,” he reported, “to a two-headed child, one head that of a boy and one head that of a girl, with the sexual organs of—oh, really!” He couldn’t bear to read on. “This is absurd!”

  “It’s God’s judgment on Lady Everlust, is what it is,” said Broken Nose. “You ain’t been followin’ the story, you don’t know. That is one mean, wicked, hateful woman! So go on, what’s the freak’s sex?”

  “Both,” said Matthew, and the two men hollered with glee so loudly the sad sack on the floor shifted and put his hands to his ears.

  “Next story!” White Hair urged. “Don’t leave us hangin’!”

  “Great Ape Escapes From Zoo, Rampages Through House of Lords…listen, do you really be—”

  “Plucked their wigs off one by one, I’ll bet! Can’t you see it?” howled Broken Nose. “I’d ’a opened up that floorboard and given a pound of my money to see…I mean…that would’ve been worth payin’ to see!”

  “Next! Go on, go on!”

  “Famed Italian Opera Star Still Missing, Feared Kidnapped.”

  “Oh yeah.” White Hair nodded. “Happened a couple of weeks ago. Lady was supposed to sing first for the Earl of Canterbury, then gonna do a singin’ at the Castle Oak Theater. Pity, that. I heard she’s a looker. Some knave’s got her knocked up by now. Go on, the candle’s burnin’.”

  “Albion Attacks Again, Murder Done In Crescent Alley.”

  “That bastard!” seethed Broken Nose. “Does it say who he killed?”

  Matthew had to read around a piece of what appeared to be oatmeal that had made its way from north to south. “Benjamin Greer, I think the name is.”

  “Not Benny Greer!” Broken Nose sat up as straight as if an iron rod had been introduced into his nether regions. “I know a Benny Greer, but it can’t be the same one. Must be dozens of Benjamin Greers in London. Right?”

  �
�What else does it say?” White Hair prompted, without answering the other.

  “This is a little difficult to read, as it has done its job a bit too well, but…” Matthew angled the sheet toward the candlelight and tried his best to make out the murky printing. “Benjamin Greer, aged twenty-five or thereabouts…address unknown…recently released from St. Peter’s—”

  “God A’mighty! Benny!” gasped Broken Nose. “He was in here not a month ago! Does it say how Albion did it? Slashed throat, I’m guessin’. That’s how he kills ’em all.”

  “Yes,” Matthew saw in the article. “A cut throat, done after midnight in Crescent Alley. No one to claim the body, it seems.” He looked up at the two prisoners, who had become very subdued. “Who is Albion?”

  “Jesus save you, you must not be from around here.” White Hair was staring at the floor, his interest in the Pin suddenly punctured. “Albion’s the talk of London. Bastard’s in the Pin all the time, killin’ somebody or ’nother. Benny…damn, he was a good feller. Ran with them Black-Eyed Broodies over in Whitechapel, and maybe he did some things that weren’t so upstandin’, but…hell…he had a good heart.”

  “Let out of here hardly a month past,” the other man added. “And dead by Albion’s blade. Ain’t right. Makes ya wonder what this world is comin’ to.”

  Matthew was glad to put the sheet aside. In his opinion most of the articles seemed to be fashioned from the same substance that blighted the paper. “Albion,” he repeated. “This person has killed many others?”

  “Many,” said Broken Nose. “There and then gone, he is. A phantomine if there ever was one.”

  “Phantom,” White Hair corrected. “That’s the proper word.” He looked to Matthew for assurance. “Ain’t it?”