Woodward was listening to the creak of the wheels when another sound intruded. The signal bell at the front gate's watch-tower began to ring. 'Hold, Goode!' Bidwell commanded, and he looked toward the tower as Goode reined in the horses. 'Someone's approaching, it seems.' He frowned. 'I can't think of anyone we're expecting, though. Goode, take us to the gate!'
'Yes sir,' the servant answered, and he maneuvered the team around to change direction.
On this afternoon, Malcolm Jennings was again atop the watchtower. A group of citizens had already assembled to see who the visitor might be. As Jennings saw Bidwell's carriage stop on the street below, he leaned over the railing and shouted, 'A covered wagon, Mr. Bidwell! Young man at the reins!'
Bidwell scratched his chin. 'Well, who could it be? Not the maskers; it's way too early yet for them.' He motioned toward a rawboned pipesmoker who wore a straw hat. 'Swaine, open the gate! You there, Hollis: help him with the timber!'
The two men Bidwell had spoken to drew the latching log from its position of security and pulled the gate open. When the gate was drawn wide, the covered wagon Jennings had announced rumbled across the threshold, hauled by two horses—a piebald and a roan—that appeared but several ragged breaths away from the pastepot. The wagon's driver reined in the team as soon as the vehicle had cleared the entrance, and he surveyed the onlookers from beneath a battered brown monmouth cap. His gaze settled on the nearest citizen, which was John Swaine. 'Fount Royal?' he inquired.
'That it is,' Swaine answered. Bidwell was about to direct a question of his own about who the young man might be, when suddenly the wagon's canvas was whipped open with the speed of revelation and another man emerged from the interior. This man, who wore a black suit and a black tricorn hat, stood on the seat plank next to the driver, his hands on his hips, and scanned the vista from left to right with the narrowed eyes of an arrogant emperor.
'At last!' The thunder of his voice made the horses jump. 'The Devil's own town!'
This statement, delivered so loudly and imperially, sent a terror through Bidwell. Instantly he stood up in the carriage, his face flushed. 'Sir! Who might you be?'
The dark eyes of this new arrival, which were hooded with flesh in a long-jawed, gaunt face that seemed a virtual patchwork quilt of deep lines and wrinkles, fixed upon Bidwell. 'Who might thee be?'
'My name is Robert Bidwell. I am the founder of Fount Royal, as well as its mayor.'
'Mine condolences, then, in thy time of tribulation.' He removed his hat, displaying a shockpate of white hair that was much too unruly to be a wig. 'I am known by the name God hast given me: Exodus Jerusalem. I have come many a league to this place, sir.'
'For what reason?'
'Need thou ask? I am brought here by the might of God, to do God's bidding.' He returned the tricorn to his head, his show of manners finished. 'God hast compelled me to this town, to smite thy witch dead and do battle with demons infernal!' Bid-well felt weak in the knees. He had realized, as had Woodward, that the gates had been opened to allow the entrance of a travelling preacher, and this one sounded steeped in the blood of vengeance.
'We have the situation in hand, Mr. . . . uh . . . Jerusalem. Well in hand,' Bidwell said. 'This is Magistrate Woodward, from Charles Town.' He pointed a finger at his companion. 'The witch's trial is already under way.'
'Trial?' Jerusalem had snarled it. He looked across the faces of the assembled citizens. 'Dost thou not know the woman is a witch?'
'We know it!' shouted Arthur Dawson. 'We know she's cursed our town, too!' This brought up a chorus of angry and frustrated voices, which Woodward noted made the preacher smile as if he were hearing the sweet refrains of chamber music.
'Then of what need is a trial?' Jerusalem asked, his voice becoming something akin to a bludgeoning instrument. 'She is in thy gaol, is she not? But whilst she lives, who may say what evil she performs?'
'One moment!' Bidwell hollered, motioning with both arms for the onlookers to settle themselves. 'The witch will be dealt with, by the power of the law!'
'Foolish man!' Jerusalem, a human cannon, blasted at the top of his leathered lungs. 'There is no power greater than the law of God! Dost thou deny that God's law is greater than the law of fallen Adam?'
'No, I do not deny it! But—'
'Then shall thou depend upon the law of fallen Adam, knowing it to be tainted by the Devil himself?'
'No! I mean ... we have to do this thing the correct way!'
'And allowing evil to live in thy town for one more minute is, in thy opinion, the correct way?' Jerusalem grinned tightly and shook his head. 'Thyself hath been blighted, sir, along with thy town!' Again his attention went to the assembly, which was growing larger and more restless. 'I say God is the truest and purest of lawgivers, and what doth God say in regards to witchcraft? Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!'
'That's right!' George Bartow shouted. 'God says to kill a witch!'
'God doth not say tarry, nor wait upon the tainted law of humankind!' Jerusalem plowed on. 'And any man who serveth such folly is doomed himself to the brimstone pit!'
'He's rousting them!' Bidwell said to the magistrate, and then he called out, 'Wait, citizens! Listen to—' but he was hollered silent.
'The time of God's judgment,' Jerusalem announced, 'is not tomorrow, nor is it the day after! The time is now!' He reached back into the wagon, and his hand emerged clamped to the grip of an axe. 'I shall rid thee of thy witch, and afterward we shall pray for God's blessing upon thy homes and families! Who amongst thee will lead me to mine enemy?'
At the sight of the axe, Woodward's heart had started pounding and he was now on his feet. He gave a shout of 'No! I won't have such a—' blasphemy against the court, he was going to say, but his tormented voice collapsed and he was left speechless. A half dozen men yelled that they would lead the preacher to the gaolhouse, and suddenly the crowd—which had grown to twenty-five or more—-seemed to Woodward to have been seized by a raging fit of bloodlust. Jerusalem climbed down from the wagon, axe in hand, and surrounded by a veritable phalanx of human hounds he stalked down Harmony Street in the direction of the gaol, his long thin legs carrying him with the speed of a predatory spider.
'They won't get in, the fools!' Bidwell snorted. 'I have the keys!'
Woodward managed to croak, 'An axe may serve as a key!' He saw it, then, in Bidwell's face: a smug complacency, perhaps, or the realization that Jerusalem's blade might end the witch's life much quicker than the flames of the law. Whatever it was, Bid-well had made his decision on the side of the mob. 'Stop them!' Woodward demanded, sweat glistening on his cheeks.
'I tried, sir,' came the reply. 'You witnessed that I tried.'
Woodward thrust his face toward Bidwell's. 'If the woman's killed I'll charge every man in that crowd with murder!'
'A difficult charge to prosecute, I would think.' Bidwell sat down. He glanced toward the preacher's wagon, where a dark-haired woman of slim build and middle years had emerged from the interior to speak with the young driver. 'I fear it's out of my hands now.'
'But not out of mine!' Woodward climbed down from the carriage, his blood aboil. Before he could take out after the preacher and the pack, he was stopped by a voice that said, 'Magistrate, suh?' He looked up at Goode.
The Negro was offering a thin lash that usually sat in a leather pouch next to the driver's seat. 'Protection 'gain the wild beasts, suh,' he said.
Woodward accepted the lash, fired a glance of disgust at Bid-well, and then—aware that time was of the essence—turned and ran after Preacher Jerusalem and the mob as fast as his suffering bones would allow.
The voracious stride of Jerusalem's legs had already taken him halfway down Harmony Street. Along the way he had attracted more moths to his bonfire. By the time he made the turn onto Truth Street, the crowd trailing him had swelled to forty-six men, women, and children, four dogs, and a small pig that was scurrying about to avoid being trampled. Chickens fluttered and squawked, feathers flying, as the mass of shouting humanity and barking mongrels passed in their vengeful parade, and at the forefront Exodus Jerusalem—his sharp-boned chin thrust forward like the prow of a warship—brandished his axe as if it were a glorious torch.
Within the gaol, Matthew and Rachel heard the oncoming mob. He stood up from his bench and rushed to the
