Freedom of the Mask Read online

  Good riddance to him, she had thought many times as she brushed her hair before the mirror in preparation to move on with her interests. Good riddance to him, by Mother Mary’s grace.

  But now…now that not only she but the whole of New York was rid of him…the grace of Mother Mary did not seem so kind.

  Ashton came toward her smiling. He did have a nice smile, but he didn’t wear it enough. Still, he wore it more with her than with anyone. And another way she had affected him: he did not share her affinity for colors that smote the eye, but by his own methods he was trying to appreciate life as she did. Today he wore a cravat that was a lighter brown than his suit, and was decorated with small black squares.

  “My!” he said as he reached her. “You look lovely today!” This was a variation of what he said every time they met, and she replied as always in some variation, “Thank you, you’re so sweet.” Then he sat down at the table, and she found it very hard to look into his eyes because she knew she was going to have to kill him a little bit today, and this would be as sad for her as it was for him, and this was why she had dressed in mourning.

  Ashton ordered a tea from the serving-girl. Coffee was not his taste of choice, though he did like the place and he wished Robert Deverick to do well in business since the young man had shown such ambition and drive after the unfortunate murder of his father last year, an affair in which both Berry and Matthew had gotten tangled up in and nearly lost their eyeballs to hawk talons.

  They spoke for a few moments about her teaching, and the progress of the students at the school. She went on at some length concerning several of the most promising pupils, and one boy who vowed he would one day be governor of the colony. They stayed away from the topic of Ashton’s work, unless there was something particular interesting that he wished to share, and also stayed away from that topic of the day that both had foremost in mind.

  Ashton’s tea came. He lifted the cup, the handle broke off in his hand and his lap was dowsed in oolong tea lightly flavored with lemon. Fortunately the tea was not so hot as to scald anything important, so after a little discreet mopping up and with fresh tea in a new cup in hand, Ashton shook his head and smiled wryly. “It seems to never fail!” he said. “Whenever I’m with you, I have the strangest of accidents! Breaking my shoe heel, or stepping into a puddle of mud that seemed only dust a moment before, and last week when that chair broke under me at Sally Almond’s! I sincerely hope my bad luck doesn’t rub off on you!”

  “Ah,” said Berry after a moment’s silent reflection, “we should talk about luck, Ashton.”

  The way she’d spoken his name instantly made his smile fade, for she had heard it in her voice the same as he had: it announced a change coming, but as yet he didn’t understand what it might be. He put his cup aside, and he waited with the patience of a coroner dissecting the dead.

  “The bad luck,” she said, with a soft smile of her own, “is unfortunately all mine to give to others. I have been—or thought myself—afflicted with bad luck all my life. You’re being kind in ascribing it to your own ill fortune, but the truth is—and you must know it to be so by now—I am…how would you put this…a human black cat, crossing the paths of dozens of unsuspecting pedestrians every day.”

  “Oh, that’s nonsense! Really! Who in the world has put this into your pretty head?”

  “My own observations,” she replied. “And…maybe…my father and mother did point it out to me on occasion.”

  “Well, that’s ridiculous! They should be ashamed of such a thing!”

  “Please,” she went on, with a motion of her hand to still his agitation, “hear me out.” She sipped at her coffee, putting together what she was going to say; she had rehearsed this, but still it was difficult because she did like Ashton, he was good company, and she knew he presumed, as she had said to Sir Corbett back in April, I thought we were something.

  “I believe,” Berry said, “that what I have always suspected was my bad luck was—is—in actuality a…well…a road map, of sorts. A set of directions. A course to be followed. And if I fail to follow that course…I will be calamity for whoever I marry.”

  “What? Berry, you’re making no sense!”

  “I have not gotten to the sensible part yet,” she answered. “Now…this is difficult for me to express, Ashton, but you must believe it’s true. I have had a few beaus…a few interested young men, back in England. Within days they were afflicted with various tribulations: a broken leg here, thrown from a horse there…and poor Munfrey did have such a bruised bottom he couldn’t take a chair for a week, a chance meeting with poison ivy, a badger loose in the house—”

  “Oh, you’re making that up!” Ashton said.

  “No, I am not.” When it was clear to him from her intense response and her steady gaze that all these things—and many more—had actually happened, she continued: “You must know that I…have had an interest in Matthew.”

  “Ah yes. The topic of the day. Not your interest in him, of course, but the fact that he’s been kidnapped and is on his way to England, according to Hudson Greathouse.” And Ashton need not elaborate that this was the talk of the town, the tale having been carried far and wide by the regulars at the Trot Then Gallop after Greathouse’s return from Charles Town three days ago.

  “I tested Matthew,” she said. “Because of my interest in him, and what I thought at the time was his interest in me. So…I tested him, to see if my bad luck would strike at him.”

  “You tested him? How?”

  “I sat drawing in my sketchpad at the end of the worst pier I could find, because I didn’t wish to be bothered by anyone. He came to speak to me. Instead of going to him, I made him walk the length of the pier out to where I sat. The boards were rotten and full of holes…any step could have sent Matthew through them and down into the mud. Oh, it wouldn’t have been a long drop, he wouldn’t have broken anything. I suppose. I kept drawing, but I was waiting to hear him shout when he fell.” She lowered her eyes because she instantly had a pang of regret for saying that, for it sounded cruel but it had been the only way to know. “Suddenly,” she said, “he was there beside me. He had made it, all that way. I was…well, I was amazed. Because…I have always believed that when I found the one who was right for me…call it Fate, or the will of God, or whatever you please…I would be good luck for him, instead of bad.” She took the last sip of her coffee, pushed the cup aside and lifted her gaze to his again. “Do you see what I mean?”

  It was a moment before Ashton could answer. He blinked several times behind his spectacles, as if stunned by this revelation. “You’re saying…that because Matthew didn’t fall through the rotten boards of an old pier, you believe him to be the one Fate has decreed to be your groom?”

  There was no use in hesitation or denial. She said, “Yes. And besides that, in spite of his…spite…I am in love with him. I just cannot let that go.”

  “Hm,” he said, and nothing more for awhile. Berry noted that the sounds of the town seemed far away now, as if she and Ashton were on a different plain. Ashton cleared his throat. “You mean to say,” he ventured, “that you have been good luck for Matthew, regardless of all the scrapes he’s been in, and now he’s been kidnapped by a murderous ruffian and is on his way to England?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “How so?”

  She gave him a slight smile. “He’s still alive,” she answered.

  “You hope.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I hope. But more than that. When Mr. Greathouse leaves for England on the Bonny Chance in two days’ time, I’m going with him.”

  “No! You can’t mean it!” When she didn’t respond, Ashton knew she absolutely did mean it, and knowing her as he did she certainly already had her ticket and was packed. He fumbled for words. “I…well…I don’t quite…listen here, what does Greathouse say about this?”

  “He has been resistant.” That was an understatement, but she had her own money and she could do as she pleased. This mor
ning she had contacted one of the new arrivals, who had applied for a position at the school, to take over her duties. “My grandfather is resistant as well, but both are beginning to see the light.”

  “Really? Please enlighten me exactly why you wish to go on this…very wild and, I’m sure, dangerous endeavor. Which may be entirely fruitless, I suppose you know.”

  “It may well be,” she admitted. “Mr. Greathouse and I may never find him. But…I do love him, Ashton. Why? I know what he is and what he can be. I was bitterly hurt by him last April, and I think that trip to Pendulum Island affected him in a way he can’t even understand. He played his part there too well. But knowing that he’s in trouble…no matter what, I have to try to help him. If I do nothing but stay here…I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I certainly wouldn’t be any good for the students. I have to feel I’m doing something.”

  “Travelling across the Atlantic, in storm season? You and Greathouse are both risking your necks on a very slim possibility that Matthew is still alive…and certainly he may not be in the passage of time it’s going to take to reach England.” Ashton realized that, having gone this far in her plan, Berry was not going to change her mind and surely Greathouse wouldn’t either. His next question was delivered in a quieter voice: “How will you ever find him?”

  “Let’s hope,” she said, “his luck holds.”

  “His luck,” Ashton said, in a quieter voice still. He removed his spectacles and, finding nothing with which to polish the lenses, took off his cravat and used that. He was flubbergasted and flabbercapped. This sunny day had turned as dark as a bad dream. He put his spectacles back on, the lenses newly polished, the better to see her more clearly. “Well,” he sighed, “I trust that Greathouse will watch over you. The Lord and the Kingdom of Heaven also.” He looked across the table into her face, was determined to burn every lovely feature and every freckle into his memory. He would never tell her that on this day he had planned to ask her to marry him, and in his pocket was a golden ring adorned with two hands clasping a heart between them. “My hope,” said the eccentric coroner of New York, whose attic quarters and collection of bones would have to serve him as true companions a bit longer, “is that someday I meet a kind and beautiful woman who will cross an ocean to find me, if I ever become lost.”

  “Thank you,” said Berry, and she put her hand upon his.

  “Go find Matthew and bring him back,” Ashton told her, and then there was nothing more to be said.

  Five

  THE breaking of dawn, a red slash across a cloudy sky, roosters crowing to greet the uncertain sun, dogs barking to quiet the roosters, and ships straining at their moorings at the Great Dock, where the Bonny Chance was readying to take aboard the last of its cargo, secure all passengers and provisions, and be ferried out by a number of longboats and strong oarsmen to catch the favorable tide and the rising wind.

  The ship was captained by a tam-wearing, pipe-puffing Scotsman named McClendon, who kept company with a small brindle-colored terrier and who had perhaps the loudest holler Hudson Greathouse had ever heard. Greathouse stood on the deck, well out of the way of the stowing and hauling, as McClendon shouted orders to his crew and silenced roosters and dogs across the island and far to the yellow-flecked hills of New Jersey. Greathouse had come aboard an hour before when the starshine was just fading and the little iridescent stripers jumped away from the early morning fishermen’s nets. He had lugged his trunk up the gangplank and into his quarters, which made Matthew’s dairyhouse seem a mansion and was as expensive as a pair of new boots with golden heels, but he wished the privacy. Madam Herrald had paid for this uncommon luxury. She and Minx Cutter had gone to dinner last night at Sally Almond’s with himself and Abby Donovan. Though Abby professed true and enduring love for Hudson and said she would be anxiously waiting his return, he doubted such a vivacious creature of lusty appetites would spend too much time watching the candle-clock burn down these many nights ahead. So be it, he’d decided. He was not one to have a rope tied around him, let him not be the one to tie ropes around anyone else.

  Word had spread about this journey. It seemed their dinner table last night was a veritable monument to the impact Matthew had had upon the citizens of this town, so many came to wish Hudson well and express their hopes that young Corbett would be found and returned. Sally herself was the first to offer her promise to pray for success in this venture, and to prove her merit she treated the whole table to a free repast. Then came the sugar merchant Solomon Tully, the very well-to-do pottery merchants Hiram and Patience Stokely, Chief Prosecutor James Bynes, Dr. Artemis Vanderbrocken, the laundress and queen of local gossip Widow Sherwyn, Robert Deverick, Gilliam Vincent the rather prissy proprietor of the Dock House Inn and last but not least the buxom blonde force of nature Polly Blossom, whose eminence as the madam of New York’s best dollyhouse did not diminish her financial standing and so commanded the respect of all who sought to better their positions by hard work and shrewdity.

  Hudson had been getting along better with Minx Cutter lately, though he still had trouble fully trusting her motives. Still, she seemed to have completed to satisfaction that task of finding the stolen scorpion brooch in Boston back in June. At least she hadn’t stolen it herself and fled back to Professor Fell. Yet. But…a funny thing…she seemed changed after that trip to Boston. Something about her…different…darker, perhaps. At any rate she hadn’t gone into the particulars of this adventure with either himself or Katherine Herrald. To their inquiries the answer had been simply, Job done. And with the handsome fee paid by the Sutton family for the scorpion’s return, no further questions need be asked.

  In a way, Hudson was glad for the presence of Minx Cutter. He understood that Madam Herrald had plans to send her out on future assignments that needed the special touch of a woman who could slice a throat as easily as Hudson might carve a peach; the world was certainly rough, and getting rougher. Madam Herrald herself was interested in putting her own problem-solving talents to work, so woe to the villains, charlatans, flamboozlers, thieves, and killers in fact or in threat who roamed the colonies in Hudson’s absence. He wished he could someday read of their exploits while he was away…and, of course, he ardently hoped both Lady Cutter and Katherine managed to keep their own throats unsliced and their hearts unstilled by the wicked blades they would surely have to outwit.

  The time to sail was fast approaching.

  As the dawn strengthened, here came the rest of the passengers—about twenty of them, it appeared, a couple of families and a few lone individuals, a number of black slaves and white servants carrying the trunks and various items of luggage. The pipers, jugglers, fiddlers, beggars and dancers had arrived on the wharf to cajole money from the throng of well-wishers, relatives and others who always enjoyed seeing the big ships off. Among the arrivals Hudson saw the bright yellow gown of Berry Grigsby and a yellow hat upon her red tresses. She was pulling a large trunk and Marmaduke was behind her, struggling at trying to hold up the trunk’s other end. As much as Hudson did not want the girl along on this trip, he couldn’t stop her; she paid her own way, and she was content to live for the duration of the voyage down in the hold where most of the others would be, their attempts at privacy maintained by sheets on clotheslines serving as flimsy boundaries that would very soon be sodden with mold. But he had to admire her pluck, and he thought Matthew was lucky to have someone who cared enough about him to endure the indignities of the hold.

  He decided the gentlemanly thing to do was to go and help her. He pushed down the gangplank against the current of passengers and servants and was nearly to Berry’s side when a strapping young man with a cherubic face and curly blonde hair stepped in and with stately grace lifted the entire trunk upon one muscled shoulder. Berry thanked Matthew’s friend John Five, who as a blacksmith had no trouble with such items, for coming to her aid while Marmaduke wiped his own furrowed brow with a handkerchief and let out a whoosh of wind that might have set the Bonny Chance in motion.


  Then Hudson realized that standing in this crowd he was amid everyone who likely had ever had any dealings with Matthew Corbett. There were Effrem Owles and his bride-to-be Opal Blackerby, Effrem’s father Benjamin, Felix Sudbury, Madam Kenneday the baker, Israel Brandier the silversmith, the hulking Mother Munthunk and her two hapless sons Darwin and Davy, the constable Giles Wintergarten, Mary Belovaire the landlady of his own boarding house, Jacob Wingate the wig shop owner, Tobias Winekoop the stablemaster, Sally Almond up at an early hour, all the regulars from the Trot Then Gallop plus those from the Blue Bee and the Laughing Cat, Trinity church’s reverend William Wade, his daughter Constance who was John Five’s wife, a dolly from the Blossom house who Hudson knew went by the name of Missy Jones, and so many other faces and names he thought New York had coughed and thrown them out of their beds whether they’d liked it or not.

  In this swirl of people and shatter of noise, someone tugged hard at Hudson’s sleeve. He turned to look down into the life-weathered face of old Hooper Gillespie, whose wild white hair stood up from his head in bursts of cowlicks and thick cottony whorls that had rarely known a brush.

  Old Hooper had lost a few more of his remaining teeth recently, which made his usually near undecipherable voice even more of a mystery. But today he said four words that he must’ve spent some time rehearsing to his satisfaction, for above a pair of determined eyes his pinched mouth spoke with the eloquence of an Oxford linguist.

  “Bring the boy home,” he said.

  And then he was gone, swept away into the crowd.