With all the effort of will he could summon, Matthew shouted, 'No!' into Linch's face. Linch blinked. His hand faltered, for perhaps a fraction of a second.
It was enough.
Matthew turned and fled from the house. Fled, though his eyes felt bloodshot and swollen. Fled though his legs were heavy and his throat as dry as shifting sand. Fled with silence thundering in his ears, and his lungs gasping for breath that had seemed stolen away from him only a few seconds before.
He fled along Industry Street, the warm sunlight thawing the freeze that had tightened his muscles and bones. He dared not look back. Dared not look back. Dared not.
But as he ran, putting precious distance between himself and that soft trap he had nearly been snared by, he realized the enormity and strange power of the force that Linch wielded. Such a thing was unnatural... monstrous... such a thing was shifting sand... shifting... sorcery and must be silent silent of the very Devil himself.
It was in his head. He couldn't get it out, and that further terrified him because the contamination of his mind—his most dependable resource—was utterly unthinkable.
He ran and ran, sweat on his face, and his lungs heaving.
thirty-two
MATTHEW SAT, shivering in the sunlight, in the grass beside the spring.
It had been a half hour since he'd fled Linch's house, and still he suffered the effects of their encounter. He felt tired and sluggish, yet frightened to the very core of his being. Matthew thought—and thinking seemed more of an effort than ever in his life—that Linch had done to his mind what he had done to Linch's dwelling: entered it without permission, poked about, and left a little smear of mud to betray his presence.
Linch had without a doubt been the winner of their duel.
But—also without a doubt—Matthew now knew Linch was the owner of the shadowy hand that could reach into the human mind and create whatever fiction it pleased. Matthew considered himself intelligent and alert; if he had been so affected by the ratcatcher's trancing ability, how simple a task it must have been to overwhelm the more rustic and less mentally agile Buckner, Garrick, and the other targets. And indeed Matthew suspected that the persons in whose minds Linch had planted the scenes of depravity had been carefully chosen because of their receptivity to such manipulation. Linch had obviously had a great deal of experience at this bizarre craft, and most surely he could recognize certain signals that indicated whether a person was a likely candidate for manipulation. Matthew thought that in his own case, Linch had been probing his line of mental defense and had been unsuccessful in breaking the barrier. Linch would probably have never even attempted such a thing if the man hadn't been desperate.
Matthew offered his face to the sun, trying to burn out the last vestiges of shifting sand from the storehouse of memory.
Linch, Matthew believed, had underestimated Violet Adams. The child was more intelligent than her timidity let her appear. Matthew believed that the house in which she described seeing Satan and the white-haired imp was not the Hamilton house, but the house of her own mind. And back there in the dark room was the memory of Linch trancing her. Surely the man had not actually sung that song as he'd done the work, but perhaps the recollection of the event had been locked away from her and so the song—which Violet had heard when Linch had come ratcatching at her house—was an alternate key.
The question was: where and when had Violet been entranced? Matthew thought that if Buckner and Garrick could remember correctly, they might supply the fact that Linch had also come ratcatching—or simply spreading poisoned bait as a 'precaution'—to their own houses. Matthew could envision Linch asking either man to step out to the barn to look at evidence of rodent infestation, and then—once away from the sight of wives or other relatives—turning upon them the full power of this strange weapon that both erased reality and constructed a lifelike fiction. What was particularly amazing to Matthew was the fact that the effects of this power might be delayed some length of time; that is, Linch had given some mental command that the fiction not be immediately recollected, but instead recalled several nights later. And the memory of being entranced was erased from the mind altogether... except in the case of Violet Adams, whose mind had begun to sing to her in Linch's voice.
It was the damnedest thing he'd ever heard of. Surely it was some form of sorcery! But it was real and it was here and it was the reason Rachel was going to be burned on Monday morning.
And what could he do about it?
Nothing, it seemed. Oh, he could go to Bidwell and plead his case, but he knew what the result of that would be. Bidwell might arrange shackles for him and put him in a cushioned room where he would be no danger to others or himself. Matthew would fear even mentioning such a theory to the magistrate; even if Woodward were able to hear and respond, he would believe Matthew to be so severely bewitched that the stress might sink him into his grave.
The ratcatcher, it seemed, had done much more than winning a duel. Linch had demonstrated that the war was over and declared himself its absolute and cunning victor.
Matthew drew his knees up to his chin and stared out over the blue water. He had to ask the question that seemed to him the most basic query in existence yet also the most complex: Why?
For what reason would Linch put forth such an effort to paint Rachel as a witch? And why, indeed, was a man of his vile nature even in Fount Royal? Had he murdered Reverend Grove and Daniel Howarth? If Rachel was only a pawn in this strange game—if, for the sake of conjecture, Bidwell was the real target—then why go to such extremes to destroy Fount Royal? Was it possible Linch had been sent from Charles Town to do these dark deeds?
It seemed to Matthew that the jealous watchdogs in Charles Town might encourage the burning of a few empty houses, but they wouldn't stoop so low as to subsidize murder. Then again, who could say what reigned in a man's heart? It would not be the first time that gold coins were spent on a spill of crimson blood.
Matthew narrowed his eyes slightly, watching the surface of the spring ripple with a passing breeze.
Gold coins. Yes. Gold coins. Gold and silver, that is. Of the Spanish stamp.
Taking shape in Matthew's mind was a theory worth chewing on.
Say that, even though he'd found nothing last night, there was indeed a fortune of pirate coins down at the bottom of the fount. Say that somehow Linch—whoever he really was—had learned of its presence, possibly months or even years before he'd arrived on the scene. When Linch got here, he discovered a town surrounding the treasure vault. What, then, could he do to get the coins for himself and himself alone?
The answer: he could create a witch and cause Fount Royal to wither and die.
Perhaps Linch had gone swimming on more than one occasion, late at night, and discovered... Oh, Matthew thought, and the realization was like a punch... discovered not only gold and silver coins... but a sapphire brooch.
What if there was not just coinage in that treasure vault, but also jewelry? Or loose gemstones? If indeed Linch had brought that brooch up from the depths, then the ratcatcher was aware of how necessary it was to clear the town away before a real attempt at salvage could be undertaken.
Yes, Matthew thought. Yes. It was definitely a reason to kill two men and create a witch. But wait... Was it not in Linch's best interest that Rachel not be burned? With the removal of the 'witch, ' Fount Royal would likely start to grow healthy again. So what was he going to do to make sure the town's decline continued? Create a second witch? That seemed to Matthew to be a task requiring a great deal of risk and months of planning. No, Rachel had been the perfect 'witch, ' and the more reasonable action would be to somehow capitalize on her death.
Perhaps... with another murder? And who might find himself throat-slashed by the vengeance of 'Satan' in a dimly lit room or hallway some evening hence?
Matthew suspected that this time Linch would go for Fount Royal's jugular. Would it be Dr. Shields lying in a pool of blood? Schoolmaster Johnstone? Edward Winston? No. Those three men, though vital, were replaceable in the future of Fount Royal.
The next victim would be Bidwell himself.
Matthew stood up, his flesh in chillbumps. Near him a woman was dipping two buckets while conversing with a man who was filling a keg. Their faces, though lined by their lives of difficult labor, were free from concern; in them was the statement that all was right with Fount Royal... or soon to be right, with the execution of the
