A grim smile moved quickly across Woodward's mouth and then was gone. 'I shall have. Plenty of time... to refrain. When my... mouth is full of dirt.'
'Don't say such as that!'
'Why not? It's true... isn't it? Matthew, what a short rope... I have been given!' He closed his eyes, breathing fitfully. Matthew would have thought he'd drifted to sleep again, but the pressure on his hand had not relaxed. Then Woodward spoke again with his eyes still closed. 'The witch, ' he whispered. 'The case... pains me. Still pains me.' His fog-colored eyes opened. 'Was I right, Matthew? Tell me. Was I right?'
Matthew answered, 'You were correct.'
'Ahhhhh, ' he said, like an exhalation of relief. 'Thank you. I needed... to heat that, from you.' He squeezed Matthew's hand more firmly. 'Listen, now. My hourglass... is broken. All my sand is running out. I will die soon.'
'Nonsense, sir!' Matthew's voice cracked and betrayed him. 'You're just tired, that's all!'
'Yes. And I shall... soon sleep... for a very long time. Please... I may be dying, but I have not... become stupid. Now... just hush... and listen to me.' He tried to sit up but his body had shut that particular door to him. 'In Manhattan, ' he said. 'Go see... Magistrate Powers. Nathaniel Powers. A very... very good man. He knows me. You tell him. He will find a place for you.'
'Please, sir. Don't do this.'
'I fear... I have no choice. The judgment has been... has been passed down... from a much higher court. Than ever I presided over. Magistrate Nathaniel Powers. In Manhattan. Yes?' Matthew was silent, the blood thrumming through his veins. 'This will be... my final command to you, ' Woodward said. 'Say yes.'
Matthew looked into the near-sightless eyes. Into the face that seemed to be aging and crumbling even as he regarded it.
Seasons, and centuries, and men. The bad and the good. Frailty of flesh.
Must pass away. Must.
A nightbird, singing outside. In the dark. Singing as at full sunlit noon.
This one word, so simple, was almost impossible to speak.
But the magistrate was waiting, and the word must be spoken. 'Yes.' His own throat felt near closing up. 'Sir.'
'That's my boy, ' Woodward whispered. His fingers released Matthew's hand. He lay staring up toward the ceiling, a half-smile playing around the corners of his mouth. 'I remember... my own father, ' he said after a moment of reflection. 'He liked to dance. I can see them... in the house... dancing before the fire. No music. But my father... humming a tune. He picked my mother up. Twirled her... and she laughed. So... there was music... after all.'
Matthew heard the nightbird, whose soft song may have reawakened this memory.
'My father, ' the magistrate said. 'Grew sick. I watched him... in bed, like this. Watched him fade. One day... I asked my mother... why Papa didn't stand up. Get out of bed. And dance a jig... to make himself feel better. I always said... always to myself... that when I was old... very old... and I lay dying. I would stand up. Dance a jig, so that... I might feel better. Matthew?'
'Yes, sir?'
'Would it... sound very strange to you... if... I said I was ready to dance?'
'No, sir, it would not.'
'I am. Ready. I am.'
'Sir?' Matthew said. 'I have something for you.' He reached down to the floor beside the bed and picked up the package he had put there this afternoon. Mrs. Nettles had found some brown wrapping paper, and decorated it with yellow twine. 'Here, sir.' He put the package into the magistrate's hands. 'Can you open it?'
'I shall try.' After a moment of struggling, however, he could not succeed in tearing the paper. 'Well, ' he frowned, 'I am... lower on sand... than I thought.'
'Allow me.' Matthew leaned toward the bed, tore the paper with his good hand, and drew what was inside out into the lamplight. The gold threads caught that light, and shone their illumination in stripes across the magistrate's face.
His hands closed into the cloth that was as brown as rich French chocolate, and he drew the waistcoat to him even as the tears ran from his dying eyes.
It was, indeed, a gift of fantastic worth.
'Where?' the magistrate whispered. 'How?'
'Shawcombe was found, ' Matthew said, and saw no need to elaborate.
Woodward pressed the waistcoat against his face, as if trying to inhale from it the fragrance of a past life. Matthew saw the magistrate smile. Who was to say that Woodward did not smell the sun shining in a garden graced by a fountain of green Italian tiles? Who was to say he did not see the candlelight that glowed golden on the face of a beautiful young woman named Ann, or hear her soprano voice on a warm Sunday afternoon? Who was to say he did not feel the small hand of his son, clutching to that of a good father?
Matthew believed he did.
'I have always been proud of you, ' Woodward said. 'Always. I knew from the first. When I saw you... at the almshouse. The way you carried yourself. Something... different... and indefinable. But special. You will make your mark. Somewhere. You will make... a profound difference to someone... just by being alive.'
'Thank you, sir, ' Matthew answered, as best he could. 'I... also... thank you for the care you have shown to me. You have ... always been temperate and fair.'
'I'm supposed to be, ' Woodward said, and managed a frail smile though his eyes were wet. 'I am a judge.' He reached out for Matthew and the boy took his hand. They sat together in silence, as beyond the window the nightbird spoke of joy seized from despair, of a new beginning reached only at an ending.
Dawn had begun to light the sky when the magistrate's body became rigid, after a difficult final hour of suffering.
'He's going, ' Dr. Shields said, the lamplight aglow in the lenses of his spectacles. Bidwell stood at the foot of the bed, and Winston just within the door. Matthew still sat holding Woodward's hand, his head bowed and the Bible in his lap.
The magistrate's speech on this last portion of his journey had become barely intelligible, when he could speak through the pain. It had been mostly murmurs of torment, as his earthly clay transfigured itself. But now, as the silence lingered, the dying man seemed to stretch his body toward some unknown portal, the golden stripes of the waistcoat he wore shining on his chest. His head pressed back against the pillow, and he spoke three unmistakable words.
'Why? Why?' he whispered, the second fainter than the first.
And the last and most faint, barely the cloud of a breath:
'Why?'
A great question had been asked, Matthew thought. The ultimate question, which might be asked only by explorers who would not return to share their knowledge of a new world.
The magistrate's body poised on the point of tension… paused... paused... and then, at last, it appeared to Matthew that an answer had been given.
And understood.
There was a soft, all but imperceptible exhalation. A sigh, perhaps, of rest.
Woodward's empty clay settled. His hand relaxed. The night was over.
forty-four
AS SOON AS MATTHEW KNOCKED on the study's door, Bid-well said, 'Come in!'
Matthew opened the door and saw Bidwell seated at his massive mahogany desk, with Winston sitting in a chair before it. The window's shutters were open, allowing in the warm breeze and early afternoon sun. 'Mrs. Nettles told me you wanted to see me.'
'Exactly. Come in, please! Draw up a chair.' He motioned toward another that was in the room. Matthew sat down, not failing to notice the empty space on the wall where the map of the Florida country had been displayed.
