Speaks the Nightbird Read online

  “May I ask a question?” Matthew decided to say before his companion could respond. “How far is Fount Royal?”

  “Fount Royal? Oh, young master, that’s a two, three hour ride on a good road. The weather bein’ such, I’d venture it’d take you double that. And dark’s comin’ on. I wouldn’t care to meet Jack One Eye or a red savage without a torch and a musket.” Shawcombe focused his attention once more on the older traveller. “So you’ll be stayin’ the night then?”

  “Yes, of course,” Woodward began to unbutton his heavy coat. “We’d be fools to continue on in the dark.”

  “I suspect you have luggage in need of cartin’?” His smile slipped off as his head turned. “Abner! Get your arse up and fetch their belongin’s! Girl, you go too!”

  The girl had been standing motionlessly with her back against a wall, her face downcast and her bare arms crossed over her chest. She made no sound, but walked at Shawcombe’s drumbeat toward the door, her feet and legs clad in knee-high deerskin boots. “Ain’t fit for a pig out there!” Abner complained, holding firm to his chair.

  “No, but it’s just right for a hog like you!” Shawcombe countered, and daggers shot from his eyes again. “Now get up and get to it!” Muttering under his beard, Abner pulled himself to his feet and limped after the girl as if his very legs were stricken by some crippling disease.

  Matthew had wanted to ask Shawcombe who “Jack One Eye” was, but he hated the thought of that girl and the old man—the girl, especially—struggling with the heavy trunks. “I should help.” He started toward the door, but Shawcombe gripped his arm.

  “No need. Those two sops sit ’round here too long, they get lazy. Let ’em stir a bone for their supper.”

  Matthew paused, staring into the other man’s eyes. He saw something in them—ignorance, pettiness, pure cruelty perhaps—that sickened him. He had seen this man before—with different faces, of course—and he knew him to be a bully who revelled in power over the weak of body and feeble of mind. He saw also a glint of what might have been recognition of his perceptions, which meant Shawcombe might be more intelligent than Matthew had surmised. Shawcombe was smiling slightly, a twist of the mouth. Slowly but forcefully, Matthew began to pull his arm away from Shawcombe’s hand. The tavern-keeper, still smiling, would not release him. “I said,” Matthew repeated, “that I should help them.”

  Shawcombe didn’t surrender his grip. Now at last Woodward, who had been shrugging out of his coat, realized some small drama was being played out before him. “Yes,” he said, “they will need help with the trunks, I think.”

  “Yessir, as you say.” Shawcombe’s hand instantly left the young man’s arm. “I’d go m’self, but my back ain’t no good. Used to lift them heavy bales, port a’ Thames, but I can’t do it no—”

  Matthew gave a grunt and turned away, walking out the door into the last blue light and what was now blessedly fresh air. The old man had hold of Woodward’s wig box, while the girl was around behind the wagon trying to hoist one of the trunks up on her back. “Here,” Matthew said, slogging through the mud to her. “Let me help you.” He took hold of one of the leather handles, and when he did the girl skittered away from him as if he were a leper. Her end of the trunk smacked down into the muck. She stood there in the rain, her shoulders hunched over and the lank hair covering her face.

  “Ha!” Abner chortled. In this clearer light, his skin was as dull gray as wet parchment. “Ain’t no use you talkin’ to her, she don’t say nothin’ to nobody. She’s one step out of Bedlam, what she is.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Abner was silent, his scabby brow furrowing. “Girl,” he answered. He laughed again as if this were the most foolish thing any man had ever been asked, and then he carried the wig box inside.

  Matthew watched the girl for a moment. She was beginning to shiver from the chill, but yet she made no sound nor lifted her gaze from the mud that lay between them. He was going to have to heft the trunk—and the second one as well, most likely—in by himself, unless he could get Abner to help. He looked up through the treetops. The rain, strengthening now, pelted his face. There was no use in standing here, shoes buried in the mire, and bewailing his position in this world; it had been worse, and could yet be. As for the girl, who knew her story? Who even gave a spit? No one; why then should he? He started dragging the trunk through the mud, but he stopped before he reached the porch.

  “Go inside,” he told the girl. “I’ll bring the other things.”

  She didn’t move. He suspected she’d remain exactly where she was, until Shawcombe’s voice whipped her.

  It was not his concern. Matthew pulled the trunk up to the porch, but before he hauled it across the threshold he looked again at the girl and saw she had tilted her head back, her arms outflung, her eyes closed and her mouth open to catch the rain. He thought that perhaps—even in her madness—it was her way of cleansing Shawcombe’s smell off her skin.

  two

  MOST INCONVENIENT,” Isaac Woodward said, just after Matthew had looked under the straw-mattressed pallet of a bed and found there to be no chamberpot. “An oversight, I’m sure.”

  Matthew shook his head with dismay. “I thought we were getting a decent room. We’d have been better served in the barn.”

  “We won’t perish from one night here.” Woodward motioned with a lift of his chin toward the single shuttered window, which was being pelted by another heavy downpour. “I dare say we would perish, if we had to continue out in that weather. So just be thankful, Matthew.” He turned his attention back to what he was doing: getting dressed for dinner. He’d opened his trunk and taken from it a clean white linen shirt, fresh stockings, and a pair of pale gray breeches, which he’d laid carefully across the bed so as not to snag the material. Matthew’s trunk was open as well, a clean outfit at the ready. It was one of Woodward’s requirements that, wherever they were and whatever the circumstances, they dress like civilized men for the dinner hour. Matthew often saw no point in this—dressing like cardinals, sometimes for a pauper’s meal—but he understood that Woodward found it vitally important for his sense of well-being.

  Woodward had removed a wigstand from his trunk, and had placed it upon a small table which, along with the bed and a pinewood chair, comprised the room’s furnishings. On the wig-stand Woodward had set one of his three hairpieces, this one dyed a passable shade of brown with curling ringlets that fell about the shoulders. By the smoky candlelight from the hammered-metal lantern that hung on a wallhook above the table, Woodward examined his bald pate in a silver-edged hand mirror that had made the journey with him from England. His white scalp was blotched by a dozen or more ruddy age spots, which to his taste was a thoroughly disagreeable sight. Around his ears was a fragile fringe of gray hair. He studied the age spots as he stood in his white undergarments, his fleshy belly overhanging the cinched waistband, his legs pale and thin as an egret’s. He gave a quiet sigh. “The years,” he said, “are unkind. Every time I look in this mirror, I see something new to lament. Guard your youth, Matthew. It’s a precious commodity.”

  “Yes, sir.” It had been said without much expression. This topic of conversation was not unfamiliar to Matthew, as Woodward often waxed poetic on the tribulations of aging. Matthew busied himself by shrugging into a fresh white shirt.

  “I was handsome,” Woodward wandered on. “Really I was.” He angled the mirror, looking at the age spots. “Handsome and vain. Now just vain, I suppose.” His eyes narrowed slightly. There were more blotches this time than the last time he’d counted them. Yes, he was sure of it. More reminders of his mortality, of his time leaking away as water through a punctured bucket. He abruptly turned the mirror aside.

  “I do go on, don’t I?” he asked, and he gave Matthew a hint of a smile. “No need to answer. There’ll be no self-incrimination here tonight. Ah! My pride!” He reached into his trunk and brought out—very carefully and with great admiration—a waistcoat. But by no means an ordinar
y one. This waistcoat was the dark brown color of rich French chocolate, with the finest of black silk linings. Decorating the waistcoat, and glinting now in the candlelight as Woodward held it between his hands, were thin stripes woven with golden threads. Two small and discreet pockets were likewise outlined with woven gold, and the waistcoat’s five buttons were formed of pure ivory—a rather dirty yellow now, after all the years of use, but ivory just the same. It was a magnificent garment, a relic from Woodward’s past. He had come to breadcrumbs and briars on several occasions, facing a bare larder and an even barer pocketbook, but though this garment would procure a pretty sum in the Charles Town marketplace he had never entertained a notion of selling it. It was, after all, a link to his life as a gentleman of means, and many times he’d fallen asleep with it draped over his chest, as if it might impart dreams of happier years in London.

  Thunder boomed overhead. Matthew saw that a leak had begun, over in the corner; water was trickling down the raw logs into a puddle on the floor. He had noted as well the number of rat droppings around the room and surmised that the rodents here might be even larger than their urban cousins. He decided he would ask Shawcombe for an extra candle, and if he slept at all it would be sitting up with the lantern close at hand.

  As Matthew dressed in a pair of dark blue trousers and a black coat over his shirt, Woodward pulled on his stockings, the gray breeches—a tight squeeze around the midsection—and then his white blouse. He thrust his legs into his boots, which had been scraped of mud as much as possible, and then put on and buttoned up his prized waistcoat. The wig went on, was straightened and steadied with the aid of the hand mirror. Woodward checked his face for stubble, as he had shaved with the benefit of a bowl of rainwater Shawcombe had brought in for their washing. The last piece of apparel to go on was a beige jacket—much wrinkled but a sturdy traveller. Matthew ran a brush through the cropped and unruly spikes of his black hair, and then they were ready to be received by their host.

  “Come in and set y’selves!” Shawcombe brayed as Woodward and Matthew came into the main room. If anything, the smoke from the hearth seemed thicker and more sourly pungent. A few candles were set about, and Maude and the girl were at work over a pot that bubbled and steamed on a hook above the red coals. Shawcombe was on his feet with a wooden tankard of rum in one hand, motioning them to a table; his balance, or lack of same, indicated the liquor was finding its target. He blinked and let out a low whistle that rose in volume. “Lord fuck the King, is that gold you’re wearin’?” Before Woodward could draw back, Shawcombe’s dirty hand had snaked out and fondled the glittering waistcoat. “Ah, that’s a fine piece of cloth there! Maude, look at this! He’s wearin’ gold, have you ever seen the like?”

  The old woman, revealed by the firelight to have a face like a mask of cracked clay under her long white hair, peered back over her shoulder and made a noise that could have been either mangled English or a wheeze. Then she focused again on her cooking, stirring the pot and snapping what sounded like orders or criticism at the girl.

  “You two look the birds!” Shawcombe said, grinning widely. His mouth appeared to Matthew like a wet-edged cutlass wound. “The gold bird and the black bird! Ain’t you the sights!” He scraped back a chair from the nearest table. “Come on, sit down and rest your feathers some!”

  Woodward, whose dignity had been affronted by this performance, pulled out his own chair and lowered himself into it with as much grace as he could muster. Matthew remained standing and, looking Shawcombe directly in the face, said, “A chamberpot.”

  “Huh?” The grin stayed, crooked, on Shawcombe’s mouth.

  “A chamberpot,” the younger man repeated firmly. “Our room lacks one.”

  “Chamberpot.” Shawcombe took a swig from the tankard, a rivulet of rum dribbling down his chin. His grin had vanished. The pupils of his eyes had become dark pinpoints. “Chamber fuckin’ pot, huh? Well, what do you think the woods are for? You want to shit and piss, you go out there. Wipe your arse with some leaves. Now sit down, your supper’s ’bout ready.”

  Matthew remained standing. His heart had begun beating harder. He could feel the raw tension in the air between them, as nasty as the pinewood smoke. The veins in Shawcombe’s thick neck were bulging, gorged with blood. There was a defiant, churlish expression on his face that invited Matthew to strike him, and once that strike was delivered the response would be triplefold in its violence. The moment stretched, Shawcombe waiting to see what Matthew’s next move would be.

  “Come, come,” Woodward said quietly. He grasped Matthew’s sleeve. “Sit down.”

  “I think we deserve a chamberpot,” Matthew insisted, still locking his gaze with the tavern-keeper’s. “At the very least a bucket.”

  “Young master”—and now Shawcombe’s voice drooled false sentiment—“you should understand where you are. This ain’t no royal palace, and you ain’t in no civilized country out here. Maybe you squat over a fancy chamberpot in Charles Town, but here we squat out behind the barn and that’s how things is. Anyway, you wouldn’t want the girl to have to clean up behind you, would you?” His eyebrows lifted. “Wouldn’t be the gentlemanly thing.”

  Matthew didn’t answer. Woodward tugged at his sleeve, knowing this particular skirmish wasn’t worth fighting. “We’ll make do, Mr. Shawcombe,” Woodward said, as Matthew reluctantly surrendered and sat down. “What may we look forward to supping on this evening?”

  Bang! went a noise as loud as a pistol shot, and both men jumped in their chairs. They looked toward the hearth, at the source of the sound, and saw the old woman holding a hefty mallet in one hand. “Eyegots at ’am bigun!” she rasped, and proudly raised her other hand, two fingers of which pinched the long tail of a large, crushed black rat that twitched in its death throes.

  “Well, toss the bastard!” Shawcombe told her. Both Woodward and Matthew expected her to throw the rat into the cookpot, but she shambled over to a window, unlatched the shutter, and out went the dying rodent into the stormy dark.

  The door opened. A wet rat of another breed came in trailing a blue flag of curses. Uncle Abner was soaked, his clothes and white beard dripping, his boots clotted with mud. “End ’a the damn world, what it is!” he pronounced, as he slammed the door and bolted it. “Gonna wash us away, d’rectly!”

  “You feed and water them horses?” Shawcombe had previously commanded Abner to take the travellers’ horses and wagon to shelter in the barn, as well as tend to the three other sway-backed steeds.

  “I reckon I did.”

  “You bed ’em down all right? If you left them nags standin’ in the rain again, I’ll whip your arse!”

  “They’re in the damn barn, and you can kiss my pickle if you’re doubtin’ me!”

  “Watch that smart mouth, ’fore I sew it up! Go on and get these gents some rum!”

  “I ain’t doin’ nothin’!” the old man squalled. “I’m so wet I’m near swimmin’ in my skin!”

  “I believe I’d prefer ale,” Woodward said, remembering how his earlier taste of Shawcombe’s rum had almost burned his tongue to a cinder. “Or tea, if you have it.”

  “Myself the same,” Matthew spoke up.

  “You heard the gentlemen!” Shawcombe hollered at his hapless uncle. “Go on and fetch ’em some ale! Best in the house! Move, I said!” He took a threatening two steps toward the old man, lifting his tankard as if he were about to crown Abner’s skull with it, in the process sloshing the foul-smelling liquor onto his guests. Matthew shot a dark glance at Woodward, but the older man just shook his head at the base comedy of the situation. Abner’s soaked spirit collapsed before his nephew’s ire and he scurried off to the storage pantry, but not without leaving a vile, half-sobbed oath lingering in his wake.

  “Some people don’t know who’s the master of this house!” Shawcombe pulled a chair over and sat without invitation at their table. “You should pity me, gents! Everywhere I look, I have to rest my eyes on a halfwit!”

  An
d a halfwit behind his eyes too, Matthew thought.

  Woodward shifted in his chair. “I’m sure running a tavern is a troublesome business.”

  “That’s God’s own truth! Get a few travellers through here, but not many. Do some tradin’ with the trappers and the redskins. ’Course, I only been here three, four months.”

  “You built this place yourself?” Matthew asked. He had noted a half-dozen sparkles of water dripping from the shoddy roof.

  “Yep. Every log and board, done it all.”

  “Your bad back allowed you to cut and haul the logs?”

  “My bad back?” Shawcombe frowned. “What’re you goin’ on about?”

  “Your bad back that you injured lifting the heavy bales. Didn’t you say you worked on the river Thames? I thought your injury prevented you from carrying anything like…oh…a trunk or two.”

  Shawcombe’s face had become a chunk of stone. A few seconds passed and then his tongue flicked out and licked his lower lip. He smiled, but there was a hardness in it. “Oh,” he said slowly, “my back. Well…I did have a partner. He was the one did the cuttin’ and haulin’. We hired a few redskins too, paid ’em in glass beads. What I meant to say is…my back’s in pain more when it’s wet out. Some days I’m fit as a fiddle.”

  “What happened to your partner?” Woodward inquired.

  “Took sick,” came the quick response. His stare was still fixed on Matthew. “Fever. Poor soul had to give it up, go back to Charles Town.”

  “He didn’t go to Fount Royal?” Matthew plowed on. His bloodhound’s instinct had been alerted, and in the air hung the definite smell of deceit. “There’s a doctor in Fount Royal, isn’t there?”