Speaks the Nightbird

that Woodward should be abed, under the care of a physician. And certainly he shouldn't be spending any time in this rank gaol, but his pride and sense of duty dictated that he see this trial through without delay. Matthew had never known the magistrate to be so fragile of voice and spirit, and it frightened him.

'The magistrate,' Rachel suddenly said, 'is very sick, isn't he?'

'I fear he is.'

'You've been serving him a long time?'

'Five years. I was a child when I met him. He has given me great opportunity to make something of myself.' Rachel nodded. 'May I be forward?' she asked. 'As you please.'

'When he looks at you,' she said, 'it is a father looking at a son.'

'I'm his clerk, nothing more,' Matthew answered curtly. He clasped his hands together, his head bent down. There was a hollow pain in the vicinity of his heart.

'Nothing more,' he said again.

 sixteen

NEAR FOUR-THIRTY on Monday morning, the lamps were lit in Robert Bidwell's mansion. Soon afterward a negress servant girl emerged from the house into the drizzling rain and quickly walked to the home of Dr. Shields on Harmony Street. Hers was an errand of urgency, and she wasted no time in ringing the bell at the doctor's door. Within fifteen minutes—long enough for Dr. Shields to dress himself and gather the necessary implements into his carrying case—the doctor was hurrying through the rain, his tricorn hat pulled low over his eyes and water dripping from the curled brim.

He was admitted to Bidwell's house by Mrs. Nettles. Bidwell was in the parlor, still wearing his silk nightclothes, an expression of deep concern on his face. 'Thank God!' Bidwell said when Shields crossed the threshold. 'Upstairs! Hurry!'

Mrs. Nettles climbed the stairs with the speed of a mountain goat, all but carrying the diminutive doctor in the wake of her black skirt. Before Shields reached the magistrate's closed door, he could hear the man gasping for air. 'A pan of hot water and a cloth!' he commanded Mrs. Nettles, who relayed the order to a servant girl. Then Mrs. Nettles opened the door and Shields entered the chamber, where three lamps had been lit around the bed. Instantly Shields picked up one of them and shone the candlelight onto Woodward's face. What he saw made him flinch, if only imperceptibly.

The magistrate's face was the yellowish-gray hue of old parchment. Darker hollows had formed beneath his eyes, which were glassy and wet with the labor of breathing. But by no means was the effort going well; crusted mucus had all but sealed his nostrils, and a foam of saliva had gathered in the corners of his gaping mouth and glistened on his chin. His hands gripped the sodden sheet that lay around him, beads of sweat standing on his cheeks and forehead.

'Be calm,' was the first thing that Dr. Shields could think to say. 'It's going to be all right.'

Woodward trembled, his eyes wild. He reached up and caught the sleeve of Shields's coat. 'Can't breathe,' he gasped. 'Help me.'

'I shall. Mrs. Nettles, will you hold this lamp?' He gave it to her and quickly shrugged out of his coat. He took his tricorn off as well, and put his leather carrying case atop a stool next to the bed.

'I heard him cry out.' Bidwell had entered the room, and stood near the door. 'Wasn't but a little while ago. I had the girl go fetch you as soon as I realized he was so ill.'

Shields had removed a small blue bottle and a spoon from the case. He shook the bottle well and then proceeded to pour some oily dark brown liquid from it onto the spoon. 'You did the proper thing. Magistrate, drink this please.' He poured the liquid into Woodward's mouth, then loaded up the spoon again and repeated the dose. The magistrate, who was just on the edge of panic, could neither taste nor smell anything but he was aware of the thick fluid sliding down his tortured throat.

His chest hitched as he fought to find air, his fingers once more entwined in the sheets. 'Am I . . . am I dying?'

'No! Of course not! Lie easy now. Mrs. Nettles, might I have that lamp, please?' He took it from her and held the light toward Woodward's mouth. 'Open as wide as you can, magistrate.'

Woodward did, the effort making a tear run from each eye.

Shields held the lamp as close as possible to the magistrate's face and peered down into the man's throat.

First of all, there was the smell. Shields knew the sickly sweet odor of pestilence, and here it was on the magistrate's breath. The candlelight showed him what he had already expected to find, yet much worse: the interior of Woodward's throat was red—blood-red, the red of seething caverns in the infernal landscape of Hell. Down in the folds of crimson flesh, which had swollen to such a degree as to almost completely close together over the esophagus, were ugly yellow blisters of pus and yellow streaks where previous blisters had burst. It was like viewing a platter of raw meat that had become infested with vermin, and Shields knew the pain of such a condition must be absolutely horrendous.

'Mrs. Nettles,' he said, his voice tight, 'please go and hurry the hot water. Also fetch me a drinking cup with two hands of salt in it.'

'Yes sir.' Mrs. Nettles left the room.

'Easy, there,' Shields said, as the magistrate began to groan with the effort of breathing. 'We shall have your air passages cleared directly.' He clasped his free hand to Woodward's shoulder to give him some measure of comfort.

'Ben?' Bidwell came to the bedside. 'He will live, won't he?'

'Yes, yes!' Shields had seen the magistrate's watery eyes tick toward Bidwell. 'This is a serious condition, but treatable. No need to be concerned with mortality here.' He looked at Bidwell over the rims of his spectacles. 'The magistrate will be abed for quite some time, however.'

'What do you mean, 'quite some time'? Exactly how long?'

'I can't say. A week, perhaps. Two weeks.' He shrugged. 'It depends on the strength of the patient.'

'Two weeks?' Bidwell had spoken it in a tone of horrified amazement. 'Are you saying he can't continue the trial for two weeks?'

'I am, yes. Please keep your voice down; it does no good to heighten the magistrate's discomfort.'

'He can't stay in bed! He has to finish the trial and have Rachel Howarth burned and done with!'

'Impossible, Robert. I doubt he's able to sit upright in a chair, much less pose questions to witnesses.'

Bidwell pushed his face toward the doctor's, whorls of red flaring in his cheeks. 'Then make him able!'

Woodward—though his throat was afire, his lungs starved for air, and his very bones and tendons ached as if stretched on a medieval torture wheel—was not oblivious to the words being spoken about him, even if the pressure in his ears muffled the voices. 'I can do my job!' he roused himself to whisper.

'I will suspect delirium has set in if you repeat such a declaration,' Shields told him sternly. 'You just lie there and quiet yourself.'

Bidwell grasped the doctor's arm. 'Come here a moment.' He guided Shields over to a far corner of the room and stood with his back toward the magistrate. Bidwell pitched his voice low, but he might have been shouting for the force of it: 'Ben, listen to me! We can't afford to let him lie in bed for two weeks! Not even one week! Did you know that Winston told me we lost three more families after that house burning the other night? One of them was the Reynolds clan, and you know Franklin had vowed he wouldn't let a witch run him off his farm! Well, Meredith talked him into going and now it's empty over there! He was the last tobacco planter! Do you realize what that means?'

'I do,' Shields said, 'but that does not alter the fact that Magistrate Woodward is gravely ill.'

'We are scraping bottom, and our sails are near collapse. In two more weeks, we may have a ghost town! And who will come to live here, with those bastards in Charles Town spreading tales of the witch far and wide?'

'My sentiments are with you, Robert, but—'

'Give him something,' Bidwell said.

'Pardon me?'