Speaks the Nightbird

by Robert R. McCammon

  “You have no choice, sir. As I said, this will do you no—”

  “Bidwell!” Johnstone snapped. “Get a wagon ready! Now! Green, take the pistol by the barrel. Come over here…slowly…and give it to me.”

  “Gentlemen,” Matthew said, “I would suggest doing neither.”

  “I have a knife at your throat. Do you feel it?” He gave a little jab. “There? Would you like a sharper taste?”

  “Mr. Green,” Matthew said, staring into the wild eyes of the fox. “Take a position, please, and aim your pistol at Mr. Johnstone’s head.”

  “Christ, boy!” Bidwell shouted. “No! Green, he’s crazy!”

  “No further play at heroics,” Johnstone said tightly. “You’ve strutted your feathers, you’ve shown your cock, and you have blasted me with a cannon. So spare yourself, because I’m going out that door! No power on earth will ever send me back to a goddamned prison!”

  “I understand your rush to avoid judgment, sir. But there are the two men with axes waiting just outside the front door.”

  “What two men? You’re lying!”

  “You see the lantern on the windowsill? Mr. Bidwell placed it there as a signal to tell the two men to take their positions.”

  “Name them!”

  “Hiram Abercrombie is one,” Bidwell answered. “Malcolm Jennings is the other.”

  “Well, neither of those fools could hit a horse in the head with an axe! Green, I said give me the pistol!”

  “Stay where you are, Mr. Green,” Matthew said.

  “Matthew!” Winston spoke up. “Don’t be foolish!”

  “A pistol in this man’s hand will mean someone’s death.” Matthew kept his eyes directed into Johnstone’s. Bloodhound and fox were now locked together in a duel of wills. “One bullet, one death, I assure you.”

  “The pistol! I won’t ask again before I start cutting!”

  “Oh, is this the instrument?” Matthew asked. “The very one? Something you bought in Charles Town, I presume?”

  “Damn you, you talk too fucking much!” Johnstone pushed the blade’s tip into the side of Matthew’s neck. The pain almost sent Matthew to his knees, and it did bring tears to his eyes and make him clench his teeth. In fact, his whole body clenched. But he was damned if he’d cry out or otherwise display agony. The blade had entered only a fraction of an inch, deep enough to cause warm blood to well out and trickle down his neck, but it had not nicked an artery. Matthew knew Johnstone was simply raising the stakes in their game.

  “Would you like a little more of it?” Johnstone asked.

  Bidwell had positioned himself to one side of the men, and therefore saw the blood. “For God’s sake!” he brayed. “Green! Give him the pistol!”

  Before Matthew could protest, he heard Green’s clumping boots behind him and the pistol’s grip was offered to Johnstone. The weapon was instantly snatched into Johnstone’s hand, but the blade remained exactly where it was, blood-deep and drinking.

  “The wagon, Bidwell!” Johnstone demanded, now aiming the pistol at Matthew’s midsection. “Get it ready!”

  “Yes, do get it ready.” Matthew was speaking with an effort. It wasn’t every day he talked with a knife blade in his neck. “And while you’re at it, fix the wheels so they’ll fall off two hours or so down the road. Why don’t you take a single horse, Johnstone? That way it can step into a rut in the dark, throw you, and break your neck and be done with it. Oh…wait! Why don’t you simply go through the swamp? I know some lovely suckpits that would be glad to take your boots.”

  “Shut up! I want a wagon! I want a wagon, because you’re going with me!”

  “Oh ho!” With an even greater effort, Matthew forced himself to grin. “Sir, you’re an excellent comedian after all!”

  “You think this is funny?” Johnstone’s face was contorted with rage. He blew spittle. “Shall you laugh harder through the slit in your throat or the hole in your gut?”

  “The real question is: shall you laugh, when your intended hostage is on the floor and your pistol is empty?”

  Johnstone’s mouth opened. No sound emerged, but a silver thread of saliva broke over his lower lip and fell like the undoing of a spider’s web.

  Carefully, Matthew took a backward step. The blade’s tip slid from his neck. “Your problem, sir,” he said as he pressed his fingers to the small wound, “is that your friends and associates seem to have short spans of life. If I were to accompany you in a wagon, my own life span would be dramatically reduced. So: I dislike the idea of dying—greatly dislike it—but since I shall certainly die somewhere if I follow your wishes, it would be better to die here. That way, at least, the sterling gentlemen in this room may rush you and end this hopeless fantasy of escape you have seized upon. But actually, I don’t think anyone would mind if you were to run for it. Just go. Out the front door. I swear I’ll be silent. Of course, Mr. Bidwell, Mr. Green—or even Mrs. Nettles, whom I see there in the doorway—might shout a warning to the axemen. Let me think.” He frowned. “Two axes, versus a knife and one bullet. Yes, you might get past them. Then you could go to…well, where would you go, Mr. Johnstone? You see, that’s the thorny part: where would you go?”

  Johnstone said nothing. He still pointed both the pistol and knife, but his eyes had blurred like a frost on the fount in midwinter.

  “Oh!” Matthew nodded for emphasis. “Through the forest, why don’t you? The Indians will grant you safe passage, I’m sure. But you see my condition? I unfortunately met a bear and was nearly killed. Then again, you do have a knife and a single bullet. But…oh…what shall you do for food? Well, you have the knife and bullet. Best take matches, and a lamp. Best go to your house and pack for your trip, and we’ll be waiting at the gate to give you a fine farewell. Run along, now!”

  Johnstone did not move.

  “Oh, my,” Matthew said quietly. He looked from the pistol to the blade and back again. “All dressed up, and nowhere to go.”

  “I’m…not…” Johnstone shook his head from side to side, in the manner of a gravely wounded animal. “I’m not…done. Not done.”

  “Hm,” Matthew said. “Picture the theatre, sir. The applause has been given, the bows taken. The audience has gone home. The stagelamps are ever so slowly extinguished. They gave a beautiful dream of light, didn’t they? The sets are dismantled, the costumes folded and retired. Someone comes to sweep the stage, and even yesterday’s dust is carried away.” He listened to the harsh rising and falling of Johnstone’s chest.

  “The play,” Matthew said, “is over.” An anxious silence reigned, and none dared challenge it.

  At last Matthew decided a move had to be made. He had seen that the knife’s cutting edge had small teeth, which would have severed arteries and vocal cords with one or two swift, unexpected slashes. Especially if one came up behind the victim, clasped a hand over the mouth, and pulled the head back to better offer the throat. Perhaps this wasn’t the original cane Johnstone had first brought with him to Fount Royal, but one he’d had made in either Charles Town or England after he’d determined how the murders were to be done.

  Matthew held out his hand, risking a blade stab. “Would you give me the pistol, please?” Johnstone’s face looked soft and swollen by raging inner pressures. He seemed not to realize Matthew had spoken, but was simply staring into space.

  “Sir?” Matthew prompted. “You won’t be needing the pistol.”

  “Uh,” Johnstone said. “Uh.” His mouth opened, closed, and opened again. The gasping of an air-drowning fish. Then, in a heartbeat, the consciousness and fury leapt into Johnstone’s eyes once more and he backed away two steps, nearly meeting the wall. Behind him was the fanciful map of Fount Royal, with its elegant streets and rows of houses, quiltwork farms, immense orchards, precise naval yard and piers, and at the town’s center the life-giving spring.

  Johnstone said, “No. I shall not.”

  “Listen to me!” Bidwell urged. “There’s no point to this! Matthew’s right, the
re’s nowhere for you to go!”

  “I shall not,” Johnstone repeated. “Shall not. Return to prison. No. Never.”

  “Unfortunately,” Matthew said, “you have no choice in the matter.”

  “Finally!” Johnstone smiled, but it was a terrible, skull-like grimace. “Finally, you speak a misstatement! So you’re not as smart as you think, are you?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “A misstatement,” he repeated, his voice thickened. “Tell me: though I…know my script was flawed…did I at least play an adequate role?”

  “You did, sir. Especially the night the schoolhouse burned. I was taken with your grief.”

  Johnstone gave a deep, bitter chuckling that might have briefly wandered into the territory of tears. “That was the only time I wasn’t acting, boy! It killed my soul to see the schoolhouse burn!”

  “What? It really mattered so much to you?”

  “You don’t know. You see…I actually enjoyed being a teacher. It was like acting, in a way. But…there was greater worth in it, and the audience was always appreciative, I told myself…if I couldn’t find any more of the treasure than what I’d discovered…I could stay here, and I could be Alan Johnstone the schoolmaster. For the rest of my days.” He stared at the pistol in his hand. “Not long after that, I brought the ruby ring up. And it set me aflame again…about why I was really here.” He lifted his face and looked at Matthew. He stared at Winston, Dr. Shields, and Bidwell all in turn.

  “Please put aside the pistol,” Matthew said. “I think it’s time.”

  “Time. Yes,” Johnstone repeated, nodding. “It is time. I can’t go back to prison. Do you understand that?”

  “Sir?” Matthew now realized with a surge of alarm what the man intended. “There’s no need!”

  “My need.” Johnstone dropped the knife to the floor and put his foot on it. “You were correct about something, Matthew: if I was given the pistol…” He paused, beginning to waver on his feet as if he might pass out. “Someone had to die.”

  Suddenly Johnstone turned the weapon toward his face, which brought a gasp of shock from Bidwell. “I do have a choice, you see,” Johnstone said, the sweat glistening on his cheeks in the red-cast candlelight. “And damn you all to Hell, where I shall be waiting with eager arms.

  “And now,” he said, with a slight tilting forward of his head, “exit the actor.”

  He opened his mouth, slid the pistol’s barrel into it, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and pulled the trigger.

  There was a loud metallic clack as the wheel-lock mechanism was engaged. A shower of sparks flew, hissing like little comets, into Johnstone’s face.

  The pistol, however, failed to fire.

  Johnstone opened his eyes, displaying an expression of such terror that Matthew hoped never to witness its like again. He withdrew the gun from his mouth. Something inside the weapon was making a chirrupy cricket sound. Tendrils of blue smoke spun through the air around Johnstone’s face, as he looked into the gun’s barrel. Another spark jumped, bright as a gold coin.

  Crack! went the pistol, like a mallet striking a board.

  Johnstone’s head rocked back. The eyes were wide open, wet, and brimming with shock. Matthew saw blood and reddish-gray clumps of matter clinging to the wall behind Johnstone’s skull. The map of Bidwell’s Fount Royal had in an instant become gore-drenched and brain-spattered.

  Johnstone fell, his knees folding. At the end, an instant before he hit the floor, he might have been giving a final, arrogant bow.

  And then his head hit the planks, and from that gruesome hole in the back of it, directly opposite the only slightly tidier hole in his forehead, streamed the physical matter of the thespian’s memories, schemes, acting ability, intelligence, pride, fear of prison, desires, evil, and…

  Yes, even his affinity for teaching. Even that, now only so much liquid.

  forty-three

  IN THE DISTANCE a dog barked. It was a forlorn, searching sound. Matthew looked over the darkened town from the window of the magistrate’s room, thinking that even the dogs knew Fount Royal was lost.

  Five hours had passed since the suicide of Alan Johnstone. Matthew had spent most of that time right here, sitting in a chair by Woodward’s bed and reading the Bible in a solemn circle of lamplight. Not any particular chapter, just bits and pieces of comforting wisdom. Actually, he read most of the passages without seeing them, and had to read them again to glean their illumination. It was a sturdy book, and it felt good between his hands.

  The magistrate was dying. Shields had said the man might not last until morning, so it was best that Matthew stay close. Bidwell and Winston were in the parlor, talking over the recent events like survivors of a soul-shaping battle. The doctor himself was sleeping in Matthew’s room, and Mrs. Nettles was up at this midnight hour making tea, polishing silver, and doing odds and ends in the kitchen. She had told Matthew she ought to do some small labors she’d been putting off for a while, but Matthew knew she was standing the deathwatch too. Little wonder Mrs. Nettles couldn’t sleep, though, as it had been her task to mop up all the blood in the library, though Mr. Green had volunteered to put the brains and skull pieces in a burlap bag and dispose of them.

  Rachel was downstairs, sleeping—he supposed—in Mrs. Nettles’s room. She had come to the library after the sound of the shot, and had asked to see the face of the man who’d murdered Daniel. It was not Matthew’s place to deny her. Though Matthew had previously explained to her how the murders were done, by whom, for what reason, and all the rest of it, Rachel yet had to see Johnstone for herself.

  She had walked past Winston, Dr. Shields, and Bidwell without a glance. She had ignored Hiram Abercrombie and Malcolm Jennings, who’d rushed in at the shot, armed with their axes. Certainly she’d passed Green as if the red-bearded, gap-toothed giant was invisible. She had stood over the dead man, staring down into his open, sightless eyes. Matthew had watched her as she contemplated Johnstone’s departure. At last, she had said very quietly, “I suppose…I should rant and rave that I spent so many days in a cell…and he has fled. But…” She had looked into Matthew’s face, tears in her eyes now that it was over and she could allow them. “Someone that evil…that wretched…was locked in a cage of his own making, every day of his life, wasn’t he?”

  “He was,” Matthew had said. “Even when he knew he’d found the key to escape it, all he did was move to a deeper dungeon.”

  Green had retrieved the pistol, which had belonged to Nicholas Paine. It occurred to Matthew that all the men he and the magistrate had met that first night of their arrival were accounted for in this room. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Green,” Matthew had said. “You were invaluable.”

  “My pleasure, sir. Anythin’ to help you.” Green had taken to fawning at Matthew, as if the clerk had a giant’s stature. “I still can’t believe such a blow as you gave me!” He’d massaged his jaw at the memory of it. “I saw you cock the fist back, and then…my Lord, the stars!” He’d grunted and looked at Rachel. “It took a right champion to lay me out, I’ll swear it did!”

  “Um…yes.” Matthew cast a quick glance at Mrs. Nettles, who stood nearby listening to this exchange, her face an unrevealing sculpture of granite. “Well, one never knows from where one will draw the necessary strength. Does one?”

  Matthew had watched as Jennings and Abercrombie had lifted the corpse, placed it facedown on a ladder to prevent any further leakage, and then covered a sheet over the deceased. Its destination, Bidwell told Matthew, was the barn down in the slave quarters. Tomorrow, Bidwell said, the corpse—“foul bastard” were the exact words he used—would be taken into the swamp and dumped in a mudhole where the crows and vultures might applaud his performance.

  To end up, Matthew realized, like the dead men in the muck at Shawcombe’s tavern. Well: dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and mud to mud.

  It was now the impending fact of another death that concerned him. Matthew had learned from Dr. Shields that the s
timulating potion had finally reached the limit of its usefulness. Woodward’s body had simply given out, and nothing could reverse the process. Matthew didn’t beat a grudge against the doctor; Shields had done the best he could do, given the limited medicines at hand. Perhaps the bleeding had been excessive, or perhaps it had been a grievous error to make the magistrate attend his duties while so sick, or perhaps something else was done or not done…but today Matthew had come to accept the hard, cold truth.

  Just as seasons and centuries must turn, so too must men—the bad and the good, equal in their frailty of flesh—pass away from this earth.

  He heard a nightbird singing.

  Out there. Out in one of the trees that stood around the pond. It was a noontime song, and presently it was joined by a second. For their kind, Matthew mused, night was not a time of sad longing, loneliness, and fear. For them the night was but a further opportunity to sing.

  And such a sweetness in it, to hear these notes trilled as the land slept, as the stars hummed in the immense velvet black. Such a sweetness, to realize that even at this darkest hour there was yet joy to be known.

  “Matthew.”

  He heard the feeble gasp and immediately turned toward the bed.

  It was very hard now to look upon the magistrate. To know what he had been, and to see what he had become in the space of six days. Time could be a ruthless and hungry beast. It had consumed the magistrate down to bones and angles.

  “Yes, sir, I’m here.” Matthew pulled his chair nearer the bed, and also moved the lantern closer. He sat down, leaning toward the skeletal figure. “I’m right here.”

  “Ah. Yes. I see you.” Woodward’s eyes had shrunken and retreated. They had changed from their once energetic shade of ice-blue to a dull yellowish gray, the color of the fog and rain he had journeyed through to reach this town. Indeed, the only color about the magistrate that was not a shade of gray was the ruddy hue of the splotches on his scalp. Those jealous imperfections had maintained their dignity, even as the rest of Woodward’s body had fallen to ruin.