Not knowing about Slaughter’s attempt to steal a horse and his subsequent jaunt through the woods, Tom had kept to the road. Just before dawn he’d slept about two more hours, but he’d never needed much sleep anyway. Then, further on and as the day progressed, he’d sighted tracks coming out of the forest. One traveller wearing boots, two wearing moccasins.
They led him to a house he’d stopped at before, on his journey north. Where the family had been kind to him, and fed both him and James. Where the girl named Lark was so very pretty, and so kind as well, and where the boy, Aaron, had shown him a bright variety of colored marbles in a small white clay jar. He and Aaron had spent more than an hour shooting marbles, and it had amazed Tom that there was still a boy to be found somewhere inside him, because by this time he’d already killed a man in self defense down in the Virginia colony.
He had gone into the house, he’d told Matthew. He had not shed a tear, he’d said, since his father had died; he was done crying, he’d said. But these murders, of these innocent and kind people, had shaken him to his soul. Of course he knew who’d done it. And he’d found himself looking at Aaron’s marbles scattered across the table, and picking up four or five in his hand, and thinking that if he ever needed anything to keep him going, to push him on when he was tired or hurting or hungry, all he had to do was touch these in his pocket and think of that day a good family had let him be young again.
But he was not young anymore.
He had taken some food from the kitchen table and a knife from a drawer. He didn’t think they would mind. He had found the broken boards in the back of the barn. Had found the tracks going up the hill. Had followed four travellers who were following one, deeper into the forest. But he was still weak, he’d told Matthew. Still in pain from his injuries. He was going to kill Slaughter, yes, and he didn’t want Matthew or Walker to stop him, or stand in his way. That would be a problem. He figured he was going to have one chance to kill Slaughter. Just one. He would know it when it came.
Gunshots and shouts in the night had given him direction. The next morning he’d sighted Matthew and Walker on the trail, had seen that the Indian was badly hurt, and had ducked down when he knew Walker had gotten a glimpse of him.
There was nothing he could have done at the ravine, where Matthew went over the fallen tree. Tom had watched Lark and her mother jump, but he had also seen the arrow go into Slaughter. Then, at the watermill, Tom had seen Slaughter getting the better of Matthew, had seen Matthew’s face about to go into the gears, and the only thing he could do to help was to throw a handful of marbles. He’d hidden when Slaughter had gone rampaging through the woods, and had thought Matthew was swept over the waterfall.
Tom had followed Slaughter into Hoornbeck, had watched him come out of the doctor’s house freshly-stitched and go to the Peartree Inn. Tom had hidden all night where he could see the place, and waited for Slaughter to emerge. Early in the morning, Slaughter had come out with another man carrying some boxes, set them in the back of a wagon and headed off. Tom had had to find a horse to steal, in a hurry.
Not far from Philadelphia, Tom had pulled his horse off the road as he’d watched the wagon pull off ahead. Slaughter and the other man sat talking, and then they had gotten down and Slaughter had clapped him on the back as they’d walked into the woods on the side of the road. In a few minutes, Slaughter had returned, climbed up on the wagon and continued on his way alone. Tom had found the corpse in the brush, the throat cut, and had also discovered a few coins in the dead man’s pocket, enough to buy him food and drink for the next few days if he couldn’t beg or steal anything.
In time, Tom had shadowed Slaughter to a hog farm north of a town called Nicholsburg. He was amazed there to see Matthew appear, and creep into the cellar. The hulking man who had brought a coffin in the back of his wagon and hauled a dead body out of it was clearly up to no good. Matthew hadn’t come back out, but it appeared no one had found him yet because the coffin-robber emerged lugging a damp and nasty-looking bag just as easy as you please. So Tom figured the pickaxe in the back of the wagon could be put to some use, and Matthew would have a chance to do whatever he was doing and get out with his skin on.
Slaughter had ridden away. Tom had followed, still waiting for his one chance to strike.
A black suit. A black horse. A black night. Tom had lost Slaughter at a crossroads. Had gone a distance in all directions, but the man was gone. Not lost, but gone.
“You came back and decided to follow me? All that way?” Matthew had asked. “Why?”
“’Cause,” Tom had answered, with a shrug. “I knew that if you were alive, you’d keep tryin’.”
Now, as Lillehorne and Nack followed Matthew to the wagon, Matthew said, “I’ll tell you the whole story later. I want to talk to Hudson first.”
“Well then, who’s this?” They had reached the wagon, and Lillehorne was motioning at Tom. “I send you after a killer and you bring back a boy?”
“Tom helped me. I couldn’t have done it without him.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Lillehorne sneered. “Tom who?”
“Bond,” said the boy.
“Where are your parents?”
“Got a grandpa in Aberdeen.”
“No one else?” He waited, but Tom just gave him a blank stare. “What are we supposed to do with him?” Lillehorne asked Matthew. “Add him to the orphanage roll?”
“No, sir,” Tom said. “Not an orphanage.” He climbed down and took his duffel bag from the back. “Say you found the next ship leavin’ for England?”
“Put your bag down,” Matthew told him. “We’ve come a long way. There’s no hurry for that.”
“Got a long way yet to go,” Tom answered. “You know I’m one to keep movin’.”
“I should say so.” Matthew thought he ought to try again, since he wanted to at least buy Tom a good meal at the Trot and introduce him to the regulars there, but he knew it would be a waste of breath. When this boy made up his mind to do something, it was done. “Wharf nine. The Golden Eye, leaving on the next tide. I hope you don’t mind that Slaughter’s boots are lying on the deck.” He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat for some of the money Powers had given him. “Here. I want you to—”
“No charity,” Tom interrupted. “I’ll work my way over, if they’re hirin’.” He aimed his intense gray eyes along the row of masted vessels, and he gave the faintest hint of a smile as if he sensed the opportunity for a grand adventure. “Figure I ought to learn somethin’ about ships, anyway.” He held out his hand. “So long.”
Matthew shook it. The boy’s grip was as hard as his grit. “Good luck.”
Tom swung the duffel bag over his shoulder and moved on. True to his nature, he never looked back.
Thirty-Three
THE truth,” said Greathouse, as he ruminated over his third cup of wine, “is that we failed.” He frowned, rethinking his statement. “No,” he amended. “I failed. As the one with the most experience—I won’t say the most sense—I should have known he was going to try something. I just didn’t know…it was going to be so effective.” He took another drink, and then he grinned across the table at Matthew. “Did I tell you they named me Gray Wolf?”
“Several times.” At this point in the evening, Matthew could not bring himself to tell his supper companion that he’d already known it.
“Well then, there you are,” Greathouse said, though Matthew wasn’t exactly sure where they were in this conversation. One minute they were talking about Slaughter, the next about the great one’s experiences in the Seneca village. It seemed to Matthew as if Greathouse had actually enjoyed his time there, once it was sure he’d returned from the wilderness beyond.
They were sitting in the Trot Then Gallop, on Crown Street. This being Matthew’s first night back, his meal and drinks were on the house courtesy of the tavernmaster, Felix Sudbury. Many people had come forward to wish him welcome home, including Effrem Owles and his father Benjamin, Solomon Tully, R
obert Deverick and Israel Brandier. Matthew had been polite, but firm in his refusal to say anything more than that the criminal he and Greathouse had been sent after was dead. Case closed. Savin’ it for the Earwig, huh? Israel had asked, but Matthew said there would be no more of those outlandish tales in Marmaduke’s broadsheet and he offered to vow on a Bible if they didn’t believe him.
As the night progressed, the interest in knowing Matthew’s business waned, since he remained steadfastly not talking, and the other patrons drifted away from him to their own concerns. Matthew had noted, however, that he’d gotten some sidelong glances from people who thought they had known him very well up to this evening, and perhaps were wondering what had changed about him in his month’s journey.
One thing different, among many, was that he now believed in ghosts more than ever, since he’d seen both Walker In Two Worlds and Lark Lindsay on the street this afternoon. Several times, in fact.
Even now, as he sat with Greathouse and drank his own third cup of wine, he was sure someone was sitting at the table behind him and to his right. If he turned his head just a fraction he could make out from the corner of his eye an Indian with black facepaint and an arrangement of feathers dyed dark green and indigo tied to his scalplock with leather cords. Of course when he looked fully in that direction Walker was not there, but now in the corner of his other eye a lovely, serene blonde girl was standing over by the table where Effrem Owles and Robert Deverick were playing chess.
He had brought them back with him, he thought. How long they wished to stay—how long they would stay—he didn’t know. But they were friends of his, just as much as any of the others, and they were welcome.
“What do you keep looking at?” Greathouse asked.
“Shadows,” Matthew said, and let it go at that.
When he had gone to the Grigsby house today, after Tom had boarded the Golden Eye, Matthew had knocked at the door and Berry had answered it. They had just stared at each other for a few seconds, he taking her in like sunlight after thinking he would likely die in the dark, and she seemingly frozen with his name on her lips. And then just as she’d cried out, “Matthew!” and reached for him her grandfather had let forth a bellow from behind her and shouldered her aside to throw his arms around Matthew in a crushing embrace.
“My boy! My boy!” Marmaduke had shouted, his large blue eyes ashine in the frames of his spectacles and his heavy white eyebrows twitching on the moon-round face. “We feared you were dead! Good God, boy! Come in here and tell us the whole story!”
The whole story was what Matthew was determined not to tell, even as Marmaduke pushed a platter of honey-drizzled biscuits and a mug of mimbo upon him at the kitchen table. Berry sat beside him, very close, and Matthew could not help but notice and be gratified by the fact that she kept placing her hand upon his arm or shoulder and rubbing there as if to make certain he was real and would not fade away like a dream upon awakening.
“Tell! Tell!” Marmy insisted, as his right hand seemed to grip an invisible quill and prepared to scribe upon the table.
“No,” Matthew had said, after he’d eaten two of the biscuits and put down half the sugared rum. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“But you must! Your readers are clamoring!”
“My business depends on privacy. There’ll be no more of those stories.”
“Nonsense! I’ve made you into a celebrity!”
“The price for that is too high,” Matthew had answered. “From now on, I’m just an ordinary fellow who works for a living.”
Marmaduke had snatched away the platter of biscuits, but then he’d seemed to take note of Berry’s hand upon Matthew’s arm. He’d pushed the biscuits forward again, and sighed. “Ah, well. I’m running low on ink, anyway. But”—and here he’d lifted a finger of triumph—“there’s yet the tale of Gray Wolf to be told, isn’t there?”
Matthew had shrugged. If Greathouse wanted to go down that particularly twisty road, it was his own horse-and-wagon. More like ass-and-cart, to be truthful.
Berry had put on a yellow cloak and walked with Matthew for a while, north along the waterfront. He didn’t speak and she didn’t speak for the longest time, as the breeze blew about them and the sunlight shimmered off the river. He stopped for a few minutes to watch a ship, its sails unfurled, gliding toward the blue expanse of the sea past Oyster Island, and then he turned away.
“Can you talk about it?” she’d asked, her voice quiet and careful.
“Not yet. Later. Maybe.”
“I’ll be there when you want to. If you want to.”
“Thank you.” A few more steps in silence, and then he’d decided to speak what he’d been thinking ever since he’d walked into the Lindsays’ kitchen: “I need help with something.”
“Yes?”
“I need help…with a question,” he’d said. “A mystery. Even more than the monster’s tooth, in McCaggers’ attic. It’s about God. Why does God…allow such evil in this world? If God is supposed to watch over…over every little bird. Why?”
Berry didn’t reply for awhile. Then she said, “I suppose you’d have to ask a reverend.”
“No. That’s not good enough. What would a reverend know that I don’t? The right words and verses? The names of the saints and the sinners? Yes, all those, but not the answer.” He’d stopped abruptly, and looked deeply into her expressive dark blue eyes. “Why doesn’t God strike down evil? Why doesn’t He destroy it, before it takes root?”
Again, she was reluctant to answer. She lowered her head, looking at the ground, and then lifted her eyes to his again. “Maybe He expects us to take care of the garden.”
Matthew considered something that had winnowed itself into his brain. It was He Runs Fast, saying through the interpreter He wish spirits make sense. Matthew hadn’t understood that at first, but then it seemed to become a quiet cry at the passing of his son. A cry for understanding, and the peace of acceptance. Matthew too wished that God’s ways made sense, or that he could understand what sense they did make. He knew he could batter his brain against that unknown and unknowable door between the trials of Earth and the truth of Heaven every day for the rest of his life, and it would not bring him any closer to an answer.
It was the ultimate mystery, more ancient than a monster’s tooth.
He wish spirits make sense.
“So do I,” Matthew had said. And then he was aware that Berry’s hand was in his, and he was holding onto it like a gift given him to protect.
Now, in the Trot, Matthew drank his wine and contemplated the fact that Greathouse, for all his show of bravado, had entered the tavern about an hour before on the support of a cane. The hollows under his eyes were still dark, his face drawn and more deeply lined. Gray Wolf had wrestled with Death in the wilderness beyond and returned grinning, yes, but not without leaving something behind. Matthew thought that if anyone could make a full recovery to health after being stabbed in the back four times, it would be the great one, but only time would tell.
Which was one reason Matthew was not ready to share with Greathouse the letter he’d found in Mrs. Sutch’s safebox, and was now in his coat pocket. To venture into that area at all would be detrimental to Greathouse’s recovery, for who would wish to know he’d eaten sausages spiced with human flesh? And with such relish, as well?
“I spoke to Berry this afternoon,” Matthew said. “About Zed. She tells me they’ve devised a common language, based on drawings.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And that he really is a highly intelligent man, she says. He knows he’s a long way from home, but not how far. She says he sits up on the roof of City Hall at night looking at the stars.”
“The stars? Why is that?”
“They’re the same stars he’s always seen,” Matthew related. “I suppose there’s a comfort in that.”
“Yes,” Greathouse agreed, and turned his cup between his hands. “Listen,” he said after a moment of silence. “We failed this job. I
failed it. I’m not proud of being stupid. The doctors and the Quakers and Lord Cornbury and that Constable Drake expected us to bring Slaughter in alive. Obviously, my plan to buy Zed and set him free got the better of my judgment. Things are as they are. But I’m a professional and in this situation I did not act as one, and for that I’m profoundly sorry.”
“No need for that.”
“There is,” said Greathouse, with a little of the old fire. “I want you to know that if I’d been on my feet and in my right mind I would never have let you go after him. Never. I would have called it quits right then and there, and been done with it. You took a tremendous risk, Matthew. God knows you’re lucky to be alive.”
“True,” Matthew said.
“I won’t ask you about it, and you don’t have to tell me. But I want you to know…that going after Slaughter was a braver thing than I have ever done in my life. And hell, just look at you! You’re still a moonbeam!” He drank down the last of his wine. “Maybe a little tougher around the edges,” he admitted, “but a moonbeam all the same.”
“And still in need of a bodyguard?”
“In need of a keeper. If Mrs. Herrald knew about this, she’d—” He stopped and shook his head.
“She’d what?” Matthew prodded.
“She’d say that I was a damned fool,” Greathouse replied, “but she’d know she made a good choice in you. Just so you stay alive to secure her investment for a few more months.”
Matthew distinctly remembered Mrs. Herrald telling him that the job of a problem solver meant thinking quickly in dangerous situations, sometimes taking your life in your hands or trusting your life to the hands of someone else. But he chose not to remind Greathouse of that.
Mister Slaughter Page 42
