The Queen of Bedlam Page 5

  He sat motionless, the quill poised over paper, his precise lettering spread out before him, and suddenly the quiet thrump of the pendulum clock in the corner seemed brutally loud.

  Neither did Powers speak. He continued to stare at Matthew, seeing the flash of dismay—fright, even—that surfaced on the younger man’s face and then sank away again as false composure took its place. At length Powers folded his hands together and had the decency to avert his eyes. “I think,” he said, “that when Isaac sent you to me he considered you’d stay here only a short while. A year, at the most. Possibly he believed your wage would be better. I think he meant for you to go to England and attend school. And you still can, Matthew, you still can; but I have to tell you, the climate at those universities is not kind to a young man without pedigree, and the fact that you were born here and raised in an orphanage…I’m not sure your application wouldn’t be passed over a dozen times, even with my letter as to your character and abilities.” He frowned. “Even with the letters of every magistrate in the colony. There are too many formidable families with money who wish their sons to become lawyers. Not magistrates for America, you understand, but lawyers for England. The private practice always pays so much better than the public welfare.”

  Matthew found his voice, albeit choked. “What am I going to do, then?”

  Powers didn’t reply, but he was obviously deep in thought; his eyes were distant, his mind turning something over and over to examine it from all angles.

  Matthew waited, feeling like he ought to excuse himself to go home and spend the last of his remaining pocket-money on a few tankards full of the Old Admiral’s ale, but of what use was a drunken escape from reality?

  “You could still go to England,” the magistrate finally said. “You might pay a captain a small amount and work on the ship. I might help you in that regard. You might find employ with a law office in London, and after a period of time someone there with more political currency than I possess might offer to champion you to a university of merit. If you really wanted to, that is.”

  “Of course I’d want to! Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because…there might be something better for you,” Powers answered.

  “Better?” Matthew asked incredulously. “What could be better than that?” He remembered his place: “I mean…sir.”

  “A future. Beyond the hog thieves and the ruffians fighting in the streets. Look at the cases we’ve heard together, Matthew. Did any of them stand out, particularly?”

  Matthew hesitated, thinking. In truth, the majority of cases had involved small thefts or various petty acts of criminality such as vandalism and slander. The only two real cases that had intrigued him and gotten his mind working had been the murder of the blue beggar, the first year he’d come to work in New York, and the matter of the deadly scarecrow on the Crispin farm last October. Everything else, it seemed to him now, had been an exercise in sleepwalking.

  “As I thought,” Powers went on. “Nothing much to report except the usual humdrum details of human malfeasance, carelessness, or stupidity, yes?”

  “But…it’s those things that are usual in any pursuit of justice.”

  “Rightly so, and that is the nature of public work. I’m just asking you, Matthew, if you really wish to give your life to those—how shall I put it—mundanities?”

  “It’s suited you well enough, hasn’t it, sir?”

  The magistrate smiled faintly and held up his frayed sleeve cuff. “Let’s not speak of suits, shall we? But yes, I’ve been happy in my chosen profession. Well…pleased is the proper word, I suppose. But satisfied or challenged? Of those I’m not so sure. You see, I didn’t volunteer for this position, Matthew. In the course of my work in London I made some judgments which unfortunately secured me some influential enemies. The next thing I knew, I was pushed out of a position and the only avenue open to my family and myself was a sea route to either Barbados or New York. So I’ve done the best I could, considering the situation, but now…” He trailed off.

  Matthew had had the feeling that there was more to this line of thought than met the ear. He prodded, “Yes, sir?”

  The magistrate scratched his chin and paused, constructing his next comment. Then he stood up and walked to the window, where he leaned against the casement to look down upon the street. Matthew swivelled around to follow his progress.

  “I’m leaving my position at the end of September,” Powers said. “And leaving New York, as well. That’s what I’m speaking to Magistrate Dawes about today…though he doesn’t know it yet. You’re the first I’ve told.”

  “Leaving?” Matthew had received no inkling of this, and his first thought was that the man’s health demanded a change. “Are you ill, sir?”

  “No, not ill. In fact, since I made up my mind I’ve been feeling very perky lately. And I only did decide in the last few days, Matthew. It’s not something I’ve been keeping from you.” He turned from the window to give the younger man his full attention, the sunlight spilling across his shoulders and head. “You’ve heard me mention my elder brother Durham?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “He’s a botanist, I believe I’ve told you? And that he manages a tobacco plantation for Lord Kent in the Carolina colony?”

  Matthew nodded.

  “Durham has asked me to help him, as he wishes to concentrate only on the botanical aspects. Lord Kent keeps buying more land, and the place has gotten so large everything else is overwhelming him. It would be legal work—contracts with suppliers and such—and also managerial in nature. Not to mention three times the money I’m currently making.”

  “Oh,” Matthew said.

  “Judith is certainly well for it,” the magistrate continued. “The social harridans here have never exactly welcomed her with open arms. But there’s a town beginning to thrive near the plantation, and Durham has great expectations for it. I haven’t mentioned this to the boys yet. I expect Roger may travel with us, but Warren will likely stay, his job being so important. Abigail of course has her own family and I shall miss the grandchildren, but my mind is settled.”

  “I see,” was Matthew’s response. His shoulders slumped. He wondered if this was the personal calamity Cecily had smelled on him this morning. All in all, he ought to go do some drinking and then back to bed.

  “That’s not all I have to tell you,” Powers said, and the bright tone of his voice instantly made Matthew sit up straight, whether expecting more bad news or not he wasn’t sure. “Don’t think I’m going to leave here and not find something of interest for you. Do you wish to clerk for another magistrate?”

  What are my choices? Matthew asked himself, but didn’t speak it.

  “If you do, that’s simple enough. Either Dawes or Mackfinay would take you on today, if they could. But I want you to know where I’ve been this morning.”

  “Sir?” Now Matthew was totally lost.

  “Where I’ve been,” the magistrate repeated, as if conversing with an imbecile. “Or, more importantly, who I’ve met. I received a messenger at home yesterday evening, asking if I would meet with a Mrs. Katherine Herrald at the Dock House Inn. It seems we share some enemies, to the extent that she wished to speak with me. I went this morning, and…though I regretted that I could not be of assistance to her, I told her I knew someone who might be, and that I’d have you meet her at one o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Me?” Matthew truly thought the magistrate had lost a few coins from his treasury. “Why?”

  “Because…” Powers stopped and seemed to think better of it. “Just because, and that’s all I’m going to say. We have our interview with the widow Muckleroy at ten o’clock, yes? So you’ll have time for a good lunch and then off to the Dock House with you.”

  “Sir…I’d really like to know what this is about. I mean, I appreciate any help you might give me, but…who is Mrs. Katherine Herrald?”

  “A businesswoman,” came the reply, “with a very intriguing plan. Now hush with the
questions and contain yourself. Finish that transcript by noon and I’ll take you to Sally Almond’s, but only if you’ll order the lamb’s broth and biscuits.” So saying, he returned to his desk and began to prepare his notes for the widow’s questioning, while Matthew stared at his back and wondered what kind of insanity had infected the town today.

  “Sir?” he tried again, but Powers waved an impatient hand at him and thus signalled the absolute end of any further discussion of the mysterious Mrs. Herrald.

  At length Matthew had to put his curiosity aside, for nothing more would be forthcoming. He dipped his quill into the inkpot and put it to paper once again, as indeed he did need to finish the transcript and the Tuesday special at Sally Almond’s tavern was not to be missed.

  four

  AS THE TIME APPROACHED for the arrival of Lord Cornbury, the meeting room in City Hall became first crowded, then packed, and then overflowing with citizens. Matthew, who had secured a seat on the third row pew with Magistrate Powers to his left and the sugar merchant Solomon Tully to his right, watched this infusion of human beings with great interest. Along the aisle of butter-yellow pinewood strode both the illustrious and infamous personages of New York, all bathed in the golden afternoon light that streamed through the tall multi-paned windows as if the place were rival to Trinity in its beatific acceptance of the good, the bad, and the unfortunately featured.

  Here came strutting the prime businessmen of the town, their boots clattering on the boards as they pushed through the rabble; here came sauntering the shop-owners and warehouse masters, eager to find places behind the business leaders; here came shoving the lawyers and doctors demonstrating that they too sought the sunlight of recognition; here were the mill owners and tavernkeepers, the sea captains and craftsmen, the sweepers and menders and bakers, the shoemakers and tailors and barbers, those who pushed and those who were pushed, in a tide of humanity that surged from the street and were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in the pews and in the aisle, and behind them a massed knot of people jammed up in the doors and out upon the cobblestones where no one could move so much as Ebenezer Grooder in his pillory. And all these personages, it appeared to Matthew, had gone home after lunch to pull from closets and chests their finest bits of peacock feathers to stand out from their fellow peacocks in a riot of color, fancy breeches, lace-collared and cuffed shirts, waistcoats of every hue from sea-green to drunkard’s purple, rolled-brim tricorns of not only stolid black but also red, blue, and a particularly eye-inflaming yellow, embroidered coats and stockings, thick-soled chopine shoes that made men of medium height tall and tall men nearly topple, elaborate walking-sticks of ash, ebony, and chestnut capped with gold and silver grips, and all the rest of the fevered fashion that supposedly illuminated the signature of a gentleman.

  It was a true carnival. With all the hollering of greetings, hail-fellows, and laughter meant to be heard in Philadelphia, the meeting room was quickly devolving into a Saturday eve tavern scene, made only more common by the number of pipes being smoked and not just a few of those fist-thick black Cuban cigars that had recently arrived from the Indies. In a short while smoke was billowing through the streams of sunlight and the slaves stationed around with large cloth fans to cool the air were having a hard time of it.

  “How do they look?” Solomon Tully asked, and when both Matthew and Powers gave him their attention he grinned widely to show his bright white set of choppers.

  “Very nice,” the magistrate said. “And I presume they cost a small fortune?”

  “Of course! Would they be worth a damn if they hadn’t?” Tully was a stout and gregarious citizen in his early fifties, his face hard-lined but chubby-cheeked and ruddy with health. He, too, was a clothes-horse today, dressed in a pale blue suit and tricorn and a waistcoat striped dark blue and green, the chain of his London-bought watch gleaming from a prominent pocket.

  “I suppose not,” Powers replied, for the sake of conversation though he and Matthew knew full well that Mr. Tully—as friendly as he was and as charitable to the public welfare—would soon move from conversation to braggadocio.

  “Only the best, is what I say!” Tully went on, as expected. “I said, give me the finest, cost be damned, and that’s what I got. The ivory’s direct from Africa, and the springs and gears were made in Zurich.”

  “I see,” said the magistrate. His eyes were beginning to water, with all the smoke.

  “They surely look expensive,” Matthew offered. “Rich, I should say.” He had to admit that they helped strengthen Mr. Tully’s face, which had begun to recede in the mouth area due to an unfortunate set of decayed God-given dentals. Tully had only returned from England two days ago with his new equipment, and was justly proud of the compliments that had lately set him beaming.

  “Rich is right!” Tully grinned more broadly still. Matthew thought he heard a spring twang. “And you can be sure they’re of first-rate quality, young man. Why do anything if not first-rate, eh? Well, they’re fixed in there all right, too. Want to look?” He started to tilt his head and stretch his mouth wider for Matthew’s inspection, but fortunately at that moment one of the few women to arrive for the occasion came along the aisle in a parting of men like the miracle of the Red Sea and Tully turned around to see what the sudden lack of uproar was about.

  Madam Polly Blossom was, like the Red Sea, a force of nature. She was a tall and handsome blond woman aged thirty-something, with a square no-nonsense jaw and clear blue eyes that saw all the way through a man to his wallet. She carried at her side a rolled-up parasol and she wore a bright yellow bonnet fastened below her chin with blue ribbons. Her silvery-blue mantua gown was covered, as was her custom, with embroidered flowers in hues of bold and subdued greens, lemon-yellow, and pink. She was ever the elegant-looking lady, Matthew thought, save for the black boots with metal filagree at the toes. He’d heard she could give a drunken customer a kick to the buttocks that would land him on Richmond island without need of a ferryboat.

  As the pipes puffed and the gallery keenly watched this new entertainment, Polly Blossom strode along to the second row on the right side and stopped there to stare down upon the gentlemen who occupied that pew. All faces there were averted and no one spoke. Still the lady Blossom waited, and though Matthew couldn’t see her face from this angle, he was certain her beauty had somewhat hardened. At last the young Robert Deverick, all of eighteen and perhaps wishing to show that courtesy was still in fashion to ladies of all situations, stood up from his seat. Abruptly the elder Pennford Deverick grasped his son’s arm and shot him a scowl that were it a pistol had blown his son’s brains out. This caused a current of whispers to go flying about the room and culminate in a few wicked chuckles. The young man, fresh-faced and scrubbed and wearing a pinstriped black suit and waistcoat in echo of his wealthy father’s attire, looked torn for a moment between individual chivalry and family solidarity, but when Deverick hissed “Sit down,” the decision was made. The youth turned his eyes away from Madam Blossom and, his cheeks inflamed with red coals, sank back down into his seat and his father’s control.

  But instantly a new hero arose upon the stage of this play. The master of the Trot Then Gallop, the stout and gray-bearded Felix Sudbury in his old brown suit, stood up from the fourth row and graciously motioned that the lady in need could find refuge where he’d been sitting between the silversmith Israel Brandier and the tailor’s son Effrem Owles, who was one of Matthew’s friends and who played a wicked game of chess on Thursday nights at the Gallop. Some gallant gadfly began to applaud as Sudbury gave up his place and the lady slid in, and then several others clapped and guffawed until Pennford Deverick swept his gray-eyed gaze around like a battle frigate positioning a cannon broadside and everyone shut up.

  “There’s a sight, eh?” Solomon Tully dug an elbow into Matthew’s ribs as the noise of conversation swelled once more and the linen fans flapped against the roiling smoke. “Madam Blossom coming in here like she owned the damned place and seating herself right
in front of the Reverend Wade! Did you ever see such?”

  Matthew saw that, indeed, the madam of Manhattan—who probably could own the building, with all the money he’d heard she and her doves were making—was sitting directly in front of the slim, austere, black-suited, and tricorned William Wade, who stared solemnly ahead as if through the lady’s skull. Another note of interest, he saw, was that John Five—dressed in a plain gray suit for the occasion—was seated to the right of his father-in-law-to-be. Whatever might be said about Reverend Wade’s rather grim personality, let it never be said that he wasn’t fair-minded, Matthew thought. It was quite a feat for the minister to give his daughter over to marriage with a man whose past was largely a blank, and what wasn’t blanked were memories of brutal violence. Matthew considered that the reverend was giving John Five a chance, and perhaps that was the most Christian gift.

  Someone else caught his eye. Matthew’s stomach clenched. Three rows behind John Five and Reverend Wade sat Eben Ausley, dressed up like a watermelon in a green suit and a vivid red velvet waistcoat. For this important day he was wearing a white wig with rolled curls that spilled down over his shoulders in emulation of formal judicial style. He had chosen to seat himself amid a contingent of young attorneys, among them the law associates Joplin Pollard, Andrew Kippering, and Bryan Fitzgerald, as if sending a message to Matthew and all those concerned that he was well-protected by the stupidity of the law. He did not deign to glance at Matthew, but smiled falsely and kept up a conversation with the aged but greatly respected Dutch physician Dr. Artemis Vanderbrocken, who sat on the pew in front of him.