empty?'
Johnstone's mouth opened. No sound emerged, but a silver thread of saliva broke over his lower lip and fell like the undoing of a spider's web.
Carefully, Matthew took a backward step. The blade's tip slid from his neck. 'Your problem, sir, ' he said as he pressed his fingers to the small wound, 'is that your friends and associates seem to have short spans of life. If I were to accompany you in a wagon, my own life span would be dramatically reduced. So: I dislike the idea of dying—greatly dislike it—but since I shall certainly die somewhere if I follow your wishes, it would be better to die here. That way, at least, the sterling gentlemen in this room may rush you and end this hopeless fantasy of escape you have seized upon. But actually, I don't think anyone would mind if you were to run for it.
Just go. Out the front door. I swear I'll be silent. Of course, Mr. Bidwell, Mr. Green—or even Mrs. Nettles, whom I see there in the doorway—might shout a warning to the axemen. Let me think.' He frowned. 'Two axes, versus a knife and one bullet. Yes, you might get past them. Then you could go to... well, where would you go, Mr. Johnstone? You see, that's the thorny part: where would you go?'
Johnstone said nothing. He still pointed both the pistol and knife, but his eyes had blurred like a frost on the fount in midwinter.
'Oh!' Matthew nodded for emphasis. 'Through the forest, why don't you? The Indians will grant you safe passage, I'm sure. But you see my condition? I unfortunately met a bear and was nearly killed. Then again, you do have a knife and a single bullet. But... oh... what shall you do for food? Well, you have the knife and bullet. Best take matches, and a lamp. Best go to your house and pack for your trip, and we'll be waiting at the gate to give you a fine farewell. Run along, now!'
Johnstone did not move.
'Oh, my, ' Matthew said quietly. He looked from the pistol to the blade and back again. 'All dressed up, and nowhere to go.'
'I'm... not... 'Johnstone shook his head from side to side, in the manner of a gravely wounded animal. 'I'm not... done. Not done.'
'Hm, ' Matthew said. 'Picture the theatre, sir. The applause has been given, the bows taken. The audience has gone home. The stagelamps are ever so slowly extinguished. They gave a beautiful dream of light, didn't they? The sets are dismantled, the costumes folded and retired. Someone comes to sweep the stage, and even yesterday's dust is carried away.' He listened to the harsh rising and falling of Johnstone's chest.
'The play, ' Matthew said, 'is over.' An anxious silence reigned, and none dared challenge it.
At last Matthew decided a move had to be made. He had seen that the knife's cutting edge had small teeth, which would have severed arteries and vocal cords with one or two swift, unexpected slashes. Especially if one came up behind the victim, clasped a hand over the mouth, and pulled the head back to better offer the throat. Perhaps this wasn't the original cane Johnstone had first brought with him to Fount Royal, but one he'd had made in either Charles Town or England after he'd determined how the murders were to be done.
Matthew held out his hand, risking a blade stab. 'Would you give me the pistol, please?' Johnstone's face looked soft and swollen by raging inner pressures. He seemed not to realize Matthew had spoken, but was simply staring into space.
'Sir?' Matthew prompted. 'You won't be needing the pistol.'
'Uh, ' Johnstone said. 'Uh.' His mouth opened, closed, and opened again. The gasping of an air-drowning fish. Then, in a heartbeat, the consciousness and fury leapt into Johnstone's eyes once more and he backed away two steps, nearly meeting the wall. Behind him was the fanciful map of Fount Royal, with its elegant streets and rows of houses, quiltwork farms, immense orchards, precise naval yard and piers, and at the town's center the life-giving spring.
Johnstone said, 'No. I shall not.'
'Listen to me!' Bidwell urged. 'There's no point to this! Matthew's right, there's nowhere for you to go!'
'I shall not, ' Johnstone repeated. 'Shall not. Return to prison. No. Never.'
'Unfortunately, ' Matthew said, 'you have no choice in the matter.'
'Finally!' Johnstone smiled, but it was a terrible, skull-like grimace. 'Finally, you speak a misstatement! So you're not as smart as you think, are you?'
'Pardon me?'
'A misstatement, ' he repeated, his voice thickened. 'Tell me: though I... know my script was flawed... did I at least play an adequate role?'
'You did, sir. Especially the night the schoolhouse burned. I was taken with your grief.'
Johnstone gave a deep, bitter chuckling that might have briefly wandered into the territory of tears. 'That was the only time I wasn't acting, boy! It killed my soul to see the schoolhouse burn!'
'What? It really mattered so much to you?'
'You don't know. You see... I actually enjoyed being a teacher. It was like acting, in a way. But... there was greater worth in it, and the audience was always appreciative, I told myself... if I couldn't find any more of the treasure than what I'd discovered... I could stay here, and I could be Alan Johnstone the schoolmaster. For the rest of my days.' He stared at the pistol in his hand. 'Not long after that, I brought the ruby ring up. And it set me aflame again... about why I was really here.' He lifted his face and looked at Matthew. He stared at Winston, Dr. Shields, and Bidwell all in turn.
'Please put aside the pistol, ' Matthew said. 'I think it's time.'
'Time. Yes, ' Johnstone repeated, nodding. 'It is time. I can't go back to prison. Do you understand that?'
'Sir?' Matthew now realized with a surge of alarm what the man intended. 'There's no need!'
'My need.' Johnstone dropped the knife to the floor and put his foot on it. 'You were correct about something, Matthew: if I was given the pistol...' He paused, beginning to waver on his feet as if he might pass out. 'Someone had to die.'
Suddenly Johnstone turned the weapon toward his face, which brought a gasp of shock from Bidwell. 'I do have a choice, you see, ' Johnstone said, the sweat glistening on his cheeks in the red-cast candlelight. 'And damn you all to Hell, where I shall be waiting with eager arms.
'And now, ' he said, with a slight tilting forward of his head, 'exit the actor.'
He opened his mouth, slid the pistol's barrel into it, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and pulled the trigger.
There was a loud metallic clack as the wheel-lock mechanism was engaged. A shower of sparks flew, hissing like little comets, into Johnstone's face.
The pistol, however, failed to fire.
Johnstone opened his eyes, displaying an expression of such terror that Matthew hoped never to witness its like again. He withdrew the gun from his mouth. Something inside the weapon was making a chirrupy cricket sound. Tendrils of blue smoke spun through the air around Johnstone's face, as he looked into the gun's barrel. Another spark jumped, bright as a gold coin.
Crack! went the pistol, like a mallet striking a board.
Johnstone's head rocked back. The eyes were wide open, wet, and brimming with shock. Matthew saw blood and reddish-gray clumps of matter clinging to the wall behind Johnstone's skull. The map of Bidwell's Fount Royal had in an instant become gore-drenched and brain-spattered.
Johnstone fell, his knees folding. At the end, an instant before he hit the floor, he might have been giving a final, arrogant bow.
And then his head hit the planks, and from that gruesome hole in the back of it, directly opposite the only slightly tidier hole in his forehead, streamed the physical matter of the thes-pian's memories, schemes, acting ability, intelligence, pride, fear of prison, desires, evil, and...
Yes, even his affinity for teaching. Even that, now only so much liquid.
forty-three
IN THE DISTANCE a dog barked. It was a forlorn, searching sound. Matthew looked over the darkened town from the window of the magistrate's room, thinking that even the dogs knew Fount Royal was lost.
