Speaks the Nightbird

A few minutes after the doctor had gone, the house's red-glowing roof collapsed. Sparks shot to the heavens and spun 'round and 'round in the whirlwinds. Bidwell had ceased giving orders; now he just stood back, his arms hanging at his sides. One of the firemen threw a final bucket of water, but then he retreated from the conflagration and suddenly the entire front wall buckled and caved in.

'It's the Devil, speakin' to us!' a man shouted. Matthew saw Bidwell's head snap around, the dark-circled eyes hunting the shouter like a hawk after a rodent. 'It's Satan hisself, tellin' us to leave this damn town 'fore we all burn up!'

Someone else—a woman with reddish hair and a gaunt, long-chinned face—took up the cry. 'Neal Callaway's right!' she hollered. 'Satan's warnin' us to get out!'

'Stop that!' Bidwell's voice made the thunder sound meek. 'I won't hear such talk!'

'Hear it or don't, as you please!' another man yelled, standing a few feet to Matthew's left. 'I've had enough! I'm takin' my wife and children out of here before we all end up in caskets!'

'No, you're not!' Bidwell fired back. He was silhouetted by the flames and looked the part of a demon himself. 'Cutter, don't be a fool!'

'It's a fool who stays when the Devil wants him gone!' Cutter shouted. 'First light, my Nora and me are packin' up!' He surveyed the crowd, his eyes glittering with fire. 'Anybody with sense oughta do the same! This town ain't worth livin' in no more, 'cause that bitch and her master want it!'

That statement caused a ripple of reactions: many shouting their accord, a few—a very few—trying to holler him silent. Bid-well spread his arms, a patronly gesture. 'Listen to me!' he yelled. 'The magistrate's going to start the hearings this very day! I promise to you, by my very soul, that the witch shall be dealt with and out of our lives before much longer!' Matthew said nothing, but he thought that Bidwell had just placed his soul in jeopardy.

'One day's too long for me!' Cutter was playing the crowd now, like an actor upon a stage. 'No, sir! First light, we're gettin' out 'fore our skins are burnt off or the plague gets us!'

'Hush, hush!' Bidwell shouted anew, trying to quash that evil word. 'There's no plague here!'

'You dig up them bodies fresh buried in the graveyard!' a woman near shrieked.

'You ask 'em what kilt 'em, 'cause that doctor a'yours sure did 'em no good!'

WHILE THIS UGLY SCENE was unfolding and Bidwell fought for control of the crowd, Isaac Woodward had awakened in a cold sweat. His throat, however, was aflame. He lay in bed on his back, staring up through the insect net at the ceiling; the net had not prevented at least one new intruder from leaving a welt on his grizzled cheek. The particulars of his nightmare—that common, cruel visitor—remained in his mind like the details of a woodcut. He saw small fingers clenched around the bars of an iron bed, and he heard a soft and terrible gasping. Ann, his voice had spoken. Dear God, he's . . .

A light! A strange light was in the room.

Woodward was aware of it now. It was not part of the nightmare, and he thought he had passed the purple edge of sleep into full reality again. But the strange light was indeed real; it was a leaping, writhing luminescence ruddy-orange in hue. He looked at the window and realized the light was coming between the shutters. The morning sun—would that there would be a morning sun!—never appeared so drunk before. And now he could smell it, and he thought that this was what might have awakened him: the bitter scent of smoke.

Still somewhat hazed in the mind, Woodward got up out of bed and opened the shutter. And there was the view of a house afire, down along Truth Street. Dangerously close to the gaol, he thought; but it looked to be on the opposite side of the street. In the phantasmagoric light he could see a crowd of onlookers, and the swirling wind brought him the crackle of the flames and the noise of shouts that sounded raised in more anger than alarm. He didn't know how long this had been going on, but it seemed his sleeping must have been a little death. He lit his lamp with its sulphur match and left the room, going across the hall to Matthew's door.

Just as he lifted his hand to knock, he heard a soft click from within.

The latch, he realized. Matthew must have either locked or unlocked the door.

He knocked. 'Matthew! There's a fire outside, did you know?' There was no response.

'Matthew? Open, please!' Still, nothing. 'Are you feeling well?' A fine question for him to ask, he thought; his voice sounded like sawblades and bloody bones.

Matthew did not speak, nor did he open the door. Woodward placed his hand on the knob and started to turn it, but he hesitated. This was so unlike Matthew, but then again . . . the young man was going to a cage shortly, so who could predict what his emotions and actions might be? But why would he not even speak through the door?

'Matthew, I'm going downstairs. Do you know if Bidwell's up?' Woodward waited, and then said with some exasperation, 'I do think you should at least answer my question, don't you?'

But no answer was forthcoming.

'As you please!' Woodward turned away and stalked along the corridor toward the staircase. That was so strange and rude for Matthew, he thought. The young man was if nothing always courteous. But he was probably brooding in there, mad at the world. Woodward stopped. Well, he decided, I shall pound on that door until he opens it! I shall pound it down, because if his frame of mind is dark he'll be no use to me when the first witness arrives! He started to turn again to retrace his steps.

A hand reached out from behind him and viciously swept the lamp from Woodward's grasp. The candle was extinguished. A shoulder hit the magistrate's body and shoved him aside, and he shouted and stumbled and went down upon the floor. Then the figure was past him, the sound of footsteps running down the stairs in the dark. Though stunned, Woodward knew what he was dealing with. 'Help!' he hollered. 'Thief! Thief!'

AT THE FIRE, Matthew decided it was time to return to Bidwell's mansion. The shouts and accusations were still being flung about and Bidwell had been reduced to a croaking hoarseness attempting to answer all the discord. A further incentive to vacate the scene was the fact that Matthew had spied Seth Hazelton—bandage still strapped to his face—standing in the throng watching the commotion. It flashed through Matthew's mind—his wicked, wicked mind—to run over to the blacksmith's barn and find the other sack that must be hidden somewhere in there. But he dashed that idea for the sake of his skin and turned to leave the area.

He collided with a man who'd been standing right behind him. ''Ere, 'ere!' the man bawled, his accent reeking of London's backstreets. 'Watch yer clumsy self.'

'I'm sorry.' Matthew's next impression was that the accent was not the only thing that reeked. He wrinkled up his nose and drew back, getting a good look at the man.

He was a short, fatbellied toad; at least, that was Matthew's first thought. The man's skin was even a toadish shade of gray,

but Matthew realized it was the color of grime. This dirty citizen was perhaps in his early forties, with tousled brown hair from which was rising a bald dome at the crown. His face was round, with a beard that had streaks of gray running through it. He wore a loose-fitting garment that looked like nothing so much as rags sewn together by a drunken seamstress. The man was repellent to Matthew's sensibilities, but one feature snared his attention: the grimy toad had eyes so clear gray as to be nearing the white shade of ice on a January morning, and yet their centers seemed to be as fiery as any smith's furnace. Those compelling eyes were lodged beneath matted tufts of brows that appeared in need of brushing. Suddenly the nostrils of the man's wide, rather coarsely shaped nose flared and he looked down at the ground.

'Don't move,' he said; it carried the force of a shouted command, and yet it was not a shout. He lifted his right arm. In it was a long wooden stick. The arm plunged down, and then he grinned a mouthful of yellow teeth and raised the business end of the stick up to Matthew's face.

Impaled upon a blade was a black rat, kicking in its agony. 'They like to be near people,' the man said.

Matthew looked down, and now he saw dark scurrying shapes running hither and yon between the shoes and boots— and bare feet, in some cases—of the assembly.

'Think they can get 'em some crumbs, a crowd like this.' The man was wearing deerskin gloves stained with the fluids of previous executions. With his free hand he adroitly unfastened the leather strap of a long brown seedbag that hung from his belt, and he pushed the stick's blade and the writhing rat into it. Then he reached down into the bag and Matthew saw his hand give a sickening twist before the blade was withdrawn minus its victim. The