Speaks the Nightbird

by Robert R. McCammon

  Paine flinched a little at the sight of the six glass cups and the ebony blisters they had drawn, but he came around to Matthew’s side of the bed for a view of the magistrate’s face. “Good evening,” he said, with as much of a smile as he could summon. “I see…Dr. Shields is taking care of you. How are you feeling?”

  “I have felt…much superior,” Woodward said.

  “I’m sure.” Paine’s smile faltered. “I wanted to tell you…that I approve heartily of your decree, sir. Also that your efforts—and the efforts of your clerk, of course—have been nothing short of commendable.”

  “My thanks,” Woodward replied, his eyes heavy-lidded.

  “Might I get you anything?”

  “You might leave,” Shields said. “You’re taxing him.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I don’t wish to do any harm.”

  “No harm.” Woodward gasped for a breath, a green crust around his nostrils. “I appreciate…your taking…time and effort…to come and see me.”

  “I also wanted to tell you, sir, that the stake has been cut. I understand Mr. Bidwell hasn’t yet decided where the execution shall take place, but the likelihood is in one of the unused fields on Industry Street.”

  “Yes.” Woodward swallowed thickly. “That would do.”

  Shields grasped the first blister cup and popped it free. Woodward winced and bit his lower lip. “I think you should depart now,” the doctor said to Paine. “Unless you’d like to give a hand in this procedure?”

  “Uh…yes, I’d best be going.” Paine, for all his manly experiences, appeared to Matthew to be a little green around the gills. “Magistrate, I’ll look in on you at a later time.” He glanced at Matthew with a pained expression of commiseration and took a step toward the door.

  “Mr. Paine?” Woodward whispered. “Please…may I ask you something?”

  “Yes, surely.” Paine returned to the bedside and stood close, leaning toward the magistrate, the better to hear him clearly.

  Shields removed the second blister cup. Again Woodward winced, and now his eyes were wet. He said, “We share…a commonality.”

  “We do, sir?”

  “Your wife. Died of fits, I understand. I wanted you to know…my son…perished of fits…suffered by the plague. Was your wife…also plague-stricken?”

  Dr. Shields’s hand had seized the third blister cup, but had not yet removed it.

  Nicholas Paine stared into Woodward’s face. Matthew saw a pulse beating at Paine’s temple. “I fear you’re mistaken, sir,” Paine said, in a strangely hollow voice. “I have never been married.”

  “Dr. Shields told me,” Woodward went on, with an effort. “I know…such things are difficult to speak of. Believe me, I do know.”

  “Dr. Shields,” Paine repeated, “told you.”

  “Yes. That she suffered fits until she died. And that…possibly it was the plague.”

  Shields removed the third cup and placed it almost noiselessly into his bag.

  Paine licked his lower lip. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I fear Dr. Shields is just as mistaken as—” He chose that instant to look into the doctor’s face, and Matthew was a witness to what next occurred.

  Something passed between Paine and Shields. It was something intangible, yet absolutely horrific. For the briefest of seconds Matthew saw the doctor’s eyes blaze with a hatred that defied all reason and logic, and Paine actually drew back as if from a threatening physical presence. Matthew also realized that he’d witnessed very little direct communication between Dr. Shields and Paine. It dawned on Matthew that it was the doctor who preferred to keep his distance from Paine, yet the feeling had been so well disguised that Paine might not even have been aware of a void between them.

  However, now an ugly animosity was clearly revealed if only for that fleeting second. Paine perhaps recognized it for the first time, and his mouth opened as if he might exclaim or protest against it. Yet in the next heartbeat Paine’s face froze as tightly as the doctor’s and whatever he might have said remained unborn.

  Shields held the dark bond between them for only a second or two longer, and then he very calmly returned his attention to his patient. He removed the fourth blister cup, and into the bag it went.

  Matthew looked questioningly at Paine, but the other man had blanched and would not meet his gaze. Matthew realized a piece of information had been delivered from Dr. Shields to Paine in that brief hateful glare, and whatever it was had almost buckled Paine’s knees.

  “My wife,” Paine’s voice was choked with emotion. “My wife.”

  “My son…died,” Woodward said, oblivious to the drama. “Fits. From the plague. Pardon my asking you…but I wished you to know…you were not alone in your grief.”

  “Grief,” Paine repeated. Shadows lay in his eye sockets, and his face appeared to have become more gaunt and aged by five years in as many seconds. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Grief.”

  Dr. Shields pulled the fifth blister cup free, none too gently, and Woodward winced.

  “I should…tell you about my wife,” Paine offered, his face turned toward the window. “She did perish from fits. But not caused by the plague. No.” He shook his head. “Hunger was the killer. Hunger…and crushing despair. We were very young, you see. Very poor. We had a baby girl who was sick, as well. And I was sick in the mind…and very desperate.”

  No one spoke. Even the magistrate, in his cloudy realm on the edge of delirium, realized Paine had dropped his mask of sturdy self-control and was revealing heart’s blood and fractured bones.

  “I think I understand this,” Paine said, though that strange remark itself was a puzzle to Matthew. “I am…quite overcome…but I must tell you…all of you…that I never intended…the result of what happened. As I said, I was young…I was brash, and I was frightened. My wife and my child needed food and medicine. I had nothing…but an ability I had learned from hunting cruel and violent men.” He was silent for a time, during which Dr. Shields stared intently at the sixth blister cup but made no attempt at removing it.

  “I did not fire the first shot,” Paine went on, his voice tired and heavy. “I was first struck myself. In the leg. But you must know that already. Something I had been taught by the older men…during my career at sea…was that once a weapon—pistol or rapier—was aimed at you, you fired or slashed back with grievous intent. That was our creed, and it served to keep us—most of us—among the living. It was a natural reaction, learned by watching other men die wallowing in their own blood. That was why I could not—could not—spare Quentin Summers in our duel. How can a man be taught the ways of a wolf and then live among sheep? Especially…when there is hunger and need involved…and the specter of death knocking at the door.”

  Matthew’s curiosity had ignited from a flame to a bonfire and he yearned to ask Paine exactly what he was talking about, but something of the moment seemed almost sacred in its self-revelation, in its picture of a proud man giving up his pride to the overwhelming desire for confession and—perhaps—sanctuary from past misdeeds. Therefore he felt it small of himself to speak and break this spell of soul-broaching.

  Paine walked to the window and looked out over the lantern-spangled town. On Industry Street, two fires some distance apart marked the camps of Exodus Jerusalem and the newly arrived maskers. Through the warm night wafted the faint sound of laughter and the trilling of a recorder from Van Gundy’s tavern. “My compliments,” Paine said, his face still averted. “I presume my wound left a trail. Is that what you followed?”

  Dr. Shields at last freed the ebony flesh under the sixth blister cup. He put the implement into his bag, followed by the sassafras root. Then, slowly and methodically, he began to close the bag by its buttons and loops.

  “Are you not going to answer me?” Paine asked. “Or is this a torture by silence?”

  “I think,” the doctor said with grit in his voice, “that the time has come for you to depart.”

  “Depart? What game are you playing at?” />
  “No game. I assure you…no game.” Shields pressed a finger to one of the six horrid black swellings that protruded from Woodward’s back. “Ah, yes. Quite firm now. We have drawn the stagnant blood upward from the organs, you see?” He glanced at Matthew, then away. “This procedure has a cleansing effect, and we should see some improvement in the magistrate’s condition by morning.”

  “And if not?” Matthew had to ask.

  “If not…then there is the next step.”

  “Which is?”

  “Again applying the cups,” Shields said, “and then bleeding the blisters.” Matthew instantly regretted his inquiry. The thought of those swellings being burst by a lancet was almost too much to consider.

  Shields lowered the magistrate’s gown. “You should endeavor to sleep on your stomach tonight, Isaac. I know your position is less than comfortable, but I’m afraid it’s necessary.”

  “I shall endure it,” Woodward rasped, drifting even now toward sleep again.

  “Good. I’ll have Mrs. Nettles send a servant with a cold compress for your fever. In the morning we shall—”

  “Shields, what do you want of me?” Paine interrupted, this time daring to face the other man. Moisture glistened on Paine’s forehead and cheeks.

  The doctor lifted his eyebrows. “I’ve already told you, sir. I wish you to depart.”

  “Are you going to hold this over my head for the rest of my life?”

  Shields did not answer, but stared fixedly through his spectacle lenses at his antagonist. So damning was this wordless accusation that Paine was forced at length to drop his gaze to the floorboards. Then, abruptly, Paine turned toward the door and slinked out in the manner of the wolf he had proclaimed himself to be—yet, however, a wolf whose tail had been shorn off by an unexpected blade.

  In the wake of Paine’s departure, Dr. Shields let free a breath he’d been hoarding. “Well,” he said, and behind the lenses his magnified eyes appeared stunned by the rapid turn of events. He blinked slowly several times, as if clearing his mind as well as his vision. “What was I saying? Oh…in the morning we shall administer a colonic and apply fresh plasters. Then we shall proceed as necessary.” He took a handkerchief from inside his jacket and mopped his brow. “Is it hot in here to you?”

  “No, sir,” Matthew said. “The temperature seems very regular.” He now saw his opportunity. “May I ask what your exchange with Mr. Paine concerned?”

  “I will have Mrs. Nettles look in on the magistrate from time to time tonight,” the doctor said. “You might keep yourself aware, also. I will be ready to come if any emergency presents itself.” He placed a reassuring hand on Woodward’s shoulder. “I’m going to leave now, Isaac, just rest and be of good spirits. Tomorrow we might have you up and walking for some exercise.” From the magistrate there was no reply, because he had already fallen asleep.

  “Good night,” Shields said to Matthew and, taking his bag with him, he left the bedchamber.

  Matthew was after him like a shot. “One moment, sir!” he called in the hallway, but to be such a small-framed man Dr. Shields suddenly had the stride of a racehorse. Just before the doctor reached the stairs, Matthew said, “If you refuse to tell me, I shall find out on my own.”

  This statement caused an immediate reaction. Dr. Shields halted in his tracks, spun around with furious speed, and advanced on Matthew as if to strike the clerk a blow. By the Mars-orange glow of the hallway’s lantern, Shields’s face was a hellish, sweating rictus with bared and clenched teeth, his eyes drawn into narrow slits that made him appear a stranger to the man Matthew had seen only seconds before. To compound this transformation, Shields gripped the front of Matthew’s shirt with one hand and forced his back solidly and painfully into the wall.

  “You listen!” Shields hissed. His hand tightened, twisting the fabric it clenched. “You do not—I repeat, do not—have the right to interfere in my business. What transpired between Paine and myself tonight will remain just that: between him and me. No one else. Certainly not you. Do you understand me, boy?” Shields gave Matthew a violent shake to underscore his vehemence. “Answer!”

  In spite of the fact that he towered over the doctor, Matthew was stricken with fright. “Yes, sir,” Matthew said. “I do understand.”

  “You’d better, or by God you’ll wish you had!” Shields held Matthew pressed up against the wall for a few seconds longer—an eternity to Matthew—and then the doctor’s hand left his shirt. Without a further word, Shields walked away and descended the stairs.

  Matthew was left severely confused and no less severely scared. The doctor might have been a brother to Will Shawcombe, for all that rough treatment. As he straightened his shirt and tried to steady his nerves, Matthew realized something truly treacherous was going on between Shields and Paine; indeed, the violence induced from Shields spoke volumes about the doctor’s mental state. What had all that been, about wounds and weapons and Paine’s deceased wife? I presume my wound left a trail, Paine had said. Is that what you followed?

  Whatever the problem was, it had to do with Paine’s past—which seemed more infamous now than ever. But Matthew was faced with so many puzzles to untangle concerning Rachel’s plight—and such a short time to untangle them—that this new situation seemed more of a sideshow than a compelling attraction. He didn’t believe the strife between the two men had anything to do with Rachel, whereas, for instance, Gwinett Linch’s voice singing in the darkness of the Hamilton house while Satan laid an ultimatum at the feet of Violet Adams most certainly did.

  Therefore, though he might fervently desire to know more about the relationship he’d witnessed tonight, he felt pressed by time to keep his focus on proving Rachel’s innocence and let old griefs fall by the wayside. For now, at least.

  He looked in once more on the magistrate and waited for the servant girl to come with the cold compress. Matthew thanked her, bade her go, and himself applied the compress—a water-soaked cotton cloth, to be accurate—to the sleeping man’s face and on the back of his neck where the fever seemed most heated. Afterward, Matthew went downstairs and found Mrs. Nettles closing the shutters for the night. He asked if he might have a pot of tea and some biscuits, and was soon thereafter in possession of a tray with both. He took the moment to inquire of Mrs. Nettles what she knew about the ratcatcher, but she could supply nothing other than the facts that Linch kept to himself, and though he was sorely needed he was something of a pariah because of the nature of his craft. Matthew also asked—in a most casual way—if Mrs. Nettles had ever detected a tension between Dr. Shields and Nicholas Paine, or knew of anything that might be a cause of trouble in their dealings with each other.

  Mrs. Nettles answered that she knew of no trouble, but that she was aware of a certain chill emanating from the good doctor regarding Mr. Paine. By contrast, she said, Dr. Shields acted warmly toward Mr. Winston and Mr. Bidwell, but it was apparent to her that the doctor would rather not share the same room in which Mr. Paine was present. It was nothing so dramatic that anyone else might notice, but in her opinion Dr. Shields had a marked distaste for the man.

  “Thank you,” Matthew said. “Oh…one more thing. Who arrived first in Fount Royal? Mr. Paine or the doctor?”

  “Mr. Paine did,” she replied. “It was…oh, more’n a month or two a’fore Dr. Shields came.” She knew there must be a valid reason for these questions. “Does this concern Rachel Howarth?”

  “No, I don’t believe so. It’s only an observation I needed verified.”

  “Oh, I swan it’s more’n that!” She offered him a sly smile. “You canna’ leave a thread undone, can ya?”

  “I might find employment as a weaver of rugs, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Ha!” She gave a rough bark of a laugh. “Yes, I ’spect you might!” However, her smile vanished and her countenance darkened until she had reached her customary grim composure. “It’s all up for Madam Howarth then, is that the basket?”

  “The lid has not yet
been closed,” Matthew said.

  “Meanin’ what?”

  “Meaning that the execution flame has not yet been lighted…and that I have some reading to do. Excuse me and good night.” Matthew took his tray of tea and biscuits upstairs to his room, where he poured himself a cup and sat down next to the open window, his lantern burning on its sill. For the third time he took the documents from their protective box and began reading through them, starting at the beginning.

  By now he might have recited the testimony by heart. Still he felt—or, rather, ardently hoped—that something in the thicket of words might leap out at him like a directional signpost, signaling the next step in his exploration. He drank from his cup of tea and chewed on a biscuit. Bidwell had taken his own repast at Van Gundy’s tavern, as Matthew had discovered from Dr. Shields, who had earlier seen Bidwell hoisting a tankard with Winston and several other men in a general air of merry celebration.

  He finished—for the third time—Jeremiah Buckner’s account and paused to rub his eyes. He felt in need of a tankard himself, yet strong drink would weaken his resolve and blur his sight. Oh, for a night of pure sleep untouched by the thought of Rachel afire on the stake!

  Or even a night untouched by the thought of Rachel. Period.

  He recalled what the magistrate had said: Helping her. Finding the truth. Being of service. Whatever and however you choose to phrase it…Rachel Howarth is your nightbird, Matthew. Perhaps the magistrate was right, but not in the sinister way he had meant it.

  Matthew closed his eyes for a moment to rest them. Then he opened them, drank some more tea to fortify himself, and continued his reading. Now he was venturing into the testimony of Elias Garrick, and the man’s recollection of the night he had awakened and—Wait, he thought. That was odd.

  He read again over the section he had just digested. That night I was feelin’ poorly, and I waked up to go outside and spew what was makin’ me ill. It was silent. Every thin’ was silent, like the whole world was afeared to breathe.