Speaks the Nightbird

ours. Shawcombe took our luggage and his pigs and chickens, but he left behind the lanterns. I'd say a good lantern is as valuable as a hen, wouldn't you?'

'Hey, hey! Looky what I done found!' came a happy cry from the front room. Paine hurried to see what the discovery was, followed by the magistrate and Matthew.

Jennings, who'd uncovered a burlap sack in which to deposit his booty, was holding a wooden tankard. His lips were wet, his eyes shiny. 'Rum!' he said. 'This was a-settin' right on that table over there! Might be a bottle 'round somewhere. We oughta hunt it down a'fore we—'

'One moment,' Matthew said, and he approached the man and took the tankard from him. Without another word, Matthew held the tankard over the nearest table and upended it.

'Great God, boy!' Jennings squalled as the drink poured out. 'Are you era—' Plink!

A gold coin had fallen from the bottom of the murky brown liquid. Matthew picked it up and looked closely at it, but he already knew what it was. 'It's a Spanish piece,' he said. 'Shawcombe told me he got it off a dead Indian. I saw him drop it in that tankard.'

'Let me see that!' Paine reached out for it, and Matthew gave it up. Paine walked closer to a window, the better to inspect the coin's details. Tyler stood behind him, looking at the coin over Paine's shoulder. 'You're right, it is Spanish,' the militia captain said. 'You say Shawcombe got it from a dead Indian?'

'That's what he claimed.'

'Strange. Why would an Indian be in possession of Spanish gold?'

'Shawcombe believed there was—' Matthew suddenly stopped. A Spanish spy hereabouts, he had been meaning to say. But he had the mental image of Paine lighting his cigar at the banquet last night. Smoking in the Spanish style. Who had taught Paine to take his tobacco in that fashion?

Matthew recalled, as well, something else that Shawcombe had said about this Spanish spy: Hell, he might even be livin' in Fount Royal, an Englishman turned blackcoat!

'Believed what?' Paine's voice was quiet and controlled; his fist had closed around the gold piece.

'He . . . said ...' Matthew hesitated, thinking furiously. He couldn't make out the expression on Paine's face, as the steamy light held Paine in silhouette. 'He . . . believed the Indians might have found pirate's gold,' Matthew finished, lamely.

'Pirate's gold?' Jennings had sniffed a new intoxication. 'Where? 'Round here?'

'Steady, Malcolm,' Paine warned. 'One coin does not make a fortune. We've had no squall with pirates, nor do we wish to.' He cocked his head to one side and Matthew could tell his brain-wheels were turning. 'Shawcombe was wrong,' he said. 'No black-flagger in his right mind would bury his loot in redskin wilderness. They hide their gold where they can easily get to it, but it would be a poor pirate whose winnings could be found and unearthed by savages.'

'I imagine so,' Matthew said, unwilling to dig his grave of deceit any deeper.

'Still . . . how else would an Indian get hold of this? Unless there was a shipwreck, and somehow this washed up. Intriguing, wouldn't you say, Magistrate?'

'Another possibility,' Woodward ventured, 'that a Spaniard gave it to the Indian, down in the Florida country.'

'No, the redskins around here wouldn't travel that far. The tribes in the Florida country would make sure to part the scalps from their skulls.'

'Stranger still,' Matthew spoke up, wanting to divert this line of discourse, 'is the fact that Shawcombe left that coin in the tankard.'

'He must'a been in an almighty hurry to get out,' Jennings said.

'But he took the time to gather up our luggage and his pigs and chickens? I think not.' Matthew swept his gaze around the room. Nothing was disturbed; no tables overthrown, no blood nor evidence of violence. The hearth was still warm, the cooking kettles still in the ashes. There was no hint of what had happened to Shawcombe or the others. Matthew found himself thinking about the girl; what had become of her, as well? 'I don't know,' he said, thinking aloud. 'But I do know Shawcombe would never have left that coin. Under ordinary circumstances, I mean.'

Paine gave a soft grunt. He worked the coin with his fingers for a few seconds, and then he held it out to Matthew. 'This is yours, I suppose. It's most likely all the revenge you'll have from Shawcombe.'

'Revenge is not our aim, sir,' Woodward said curtly. 'Justice is. And I must say that justice has been cheated this day.'

'Well, I don't think Shawcombe's going to return here.' Paine bent down and picked up the burnt stub of a candle from the floor. 'I would offer to stay the night and keep watch, but I don't care to be eaten alive.' He looked uneasily around at the room's shadowy corners, from which some agitated squeaking could still be heard. 'This is a place only Linch could abide.'

'Who?' the magistrate asked.

'Gwinett Linch. Our ratcatcher in Fount Royal. Even he might wake up with his legs chewed off in this damn hovel.' Paine tossed the candlestub into one of the dark corners. Something large scuttled for safety. 'I saw tack and harness in the barn. Duncan, you and I can hitch our horses to the magistrate's wagon and let them take it back. Is that agreeable to you, Magistrate?'

'Absolutely.'

'All right, then. I say we quit this place.' Paine and Tyler went outside to discharge their pistols into the air, because the firing mechanisms, once wound, were as dangerous as coiled vipers. Tyler's pistol fired immediately, but Paine's threw sparks and went off only after a sputtering delay.

Within a half hour, the horses were harnessed to the recovered wagon and Woodward was at the reins, following the first wagon on the swampy trail back to Fount Royal. Matthew occupied the uncomfortable plank beside the magistrate, while Paine and Tyler rode with Malcolm Jennings; he looked back at Shawcombe's tavern before they left it from sight, imagining what the place would be like in a few days—or, forbid the thought, a few weeks—of uninterrupted rodent dominion. The image of the young girl, who had seemed to be only a bystander to her master's crimes, again came to him, and he couldn't help but wonder why God could be so cruel. But she was gone to her fate—as they all were—and there was nothing more to be done. With that thought he turned his gaze from the past and aimed it toward the future.

Matthew and Woodward were alone together for the first time since their arrival at Fount Royal, as their walk from Bidwell's mansion to the public stable this morning had been escorted by a young black servant boy on Mrs. Nettles's command. It was, therefore, the first opportunity Matthew had to make remarks about their dinner companions of the night before without the ears of strangers between them.

But it was the magistrate who first grasped the chance to speak freely. 'What do you make of Paine, Matthew?'

'He seems to know his work.'

'Yes, he does. He seems also to know the work of. . . That term he used: a 'black-flagger' . . . Interesting.'

'How so?'

'In New York some years ago ... 1 believe it was 1693 or thereabouts ... I sat at the docket on a case involving a man who had come up on charges of piracy. I recall the case because he was a learned man, a timber merchant who'd lost his business to creditors. His wife and two children had died by the plague. He was not at all the kind of man you might expect would turn to that life. I remember ... he referred to his compatriots as 'black- flaggers.' I'd never heard that term before.' Woodward glanced up at the sky, making judgment on how long it might be before the thick gray clouds let loose another torrent. 'I'd never heard the term since, until Paine spoke it.' He returned his attention to the road ahead. 'Evidently, it's a term used with respect and more than a little pride. As one member of a society speaking about another.'

'Are you suggesting that Paine—'

'I'm suggesting nothing,' Woodward interrupted. 'I'm only saying that it's of interest, that's all.' He paused to emphasize his position. Then he said, casually, 'I should like to know more about Mr. Paine's background. Just for interest's sake, of course.'

'What happened to the timber merchant?'