Speaks the Nightbird

not? And what does it matter?'

'He was alone,' Matthew said evenly. 'His clerk had taken ill the night before.' He watched the candle's flame, a black thread of smoke rising from its orange blade. 'But then, I don't suppose it really matters.'

'No, it don't.' Shawcombe darted a dark glance at Woodward. 'He's got an itch to ask them questions, don't he?'

'He's an inquisitive young man,' Woodward said. 'And very bright, as well.'

'Uh huh.' Shawcombe's gaze turned on Matthew again, and Matthew had the distinct and highly unsettling sensation of facing the ugly barrel of a primed and cocked blunderbuss. 'Best take care somebody don't put out your lamp.' Shawcombe held the penetrating stare for a few seconds, and then he started in on the food Matthew had pushed aside.

The two travellers excused themselves from the table when Shawcombe announced that Abner was going to play the fiddle for their 'entertainment.' Woodward had tried mightily to restrain his bodily functions, but now nature was shouting at him and he was obliged to put on his coat, take a lantern, and venture out into the weather.

Alone in the room, rain pattering from the roof and a single candle guttering, Matthew heard Abner's fiddle begin to skreech. It appeared they would be serenaded whether they liked it or not. To make matters worse, Shawcombe began to clap and holler in dubious counterpoint. A rat scuttled in a corner of the room, obviously as disturbed as was Matthew.

He sat down on the straw mattress and wondered how he would ever find sleep tonight, though he was exhausted from the trip. With rats in the room and two more caterwauling out by the hearth, it was likely to be a hard go. He decided he would create and solve some mathematics problems, in Latin of course. That usually helped him relax in difficult situations.

I don't suppose it really matters, he'd told Shawcombe in regard to Magistrate Kingsbury's travelling alone. But it seemed to Matthew that it did matter. To travel alone was exceptional and—as Shawcombe had correctly stated—foolhardy. Magistrate Kingsbury had been drunk every time Matthew had seen the man, and perhaps the liquor had enfeebled his brain. But Shawcombe had assumed that Kingsbury was alone. He had not asked Was he alone or Who was travelling with him. No, he'd made the statement: Man travellin' alone . . .

The fiddling's volume was reaching dreadful heights. Matthew sighed and shook his head at the indignity of the situation. At least, however, they had a roof over them for the night. Whether the roof held up all night was another question.

He could still smell the girl's scent.

It came upon him like an ambush. The scent of her was still there, whether in his nostrils or in his mind he wasn't sure. Care for a toss?

Yes, Matthew thought. Math problems. She's ripe as a fig puddin'. And definitely in Latin.

The fiddle moaned and shrieked and Shawcombe began to stomp the floor. Matthew stared at the door, the girl's scent summoning him.

His mouth was dry. His stomach seemed to be tied up in an impossible knot. Yes, he thought, sleep tonight was going to be a hard go.

A very, very hard go.

 three

MATTHEW'S EYES OPENED with a start. The light had dwindled to murky yellow, the candle having burned itself to a shrunken stub. Beside him on the harsh straw, Woodward was snoring noisily, mouth half ajar and chin flesh quivering. It took Matthew a few seconds to realize that there was a wetness on his left cheek. Then another drop of rainwater fell from the sodden ceiling onto his face and he abruptly sat up with a curse clenched behind his teeth.

The sudden movement made a rodent—a very large one, from the sound—squeal in alarm and scurry with a scrabbling of claws back into its nest in the wall. The noise of rain falling from the ceiling onto the floor was a veritable tenpence symphony. Matthew thought the time for building an ark was close at hand. Perhaps Abner was right about it being the end of the world; the year 1700 might never be marked on a calendar.

Be that as it may, he had to add his own water to the deluge. And a bit more as well, from the weight of his bowels. Damned if he wouldn't have to go out in that weather and squat down like a beast. Might try to hold it, but some things could not be constrained. He would relieve himself in the woods behind the barn like a civilized man while the rats did their business on the floor beside the bed. Next trip—God forbid—he would remember to pack a chamberpot.

He got out of the torture apparatus that passed as a bed. The tavern was quiet; it was a slim hour, to be sure. Distant thunder rumbled, the storm still lingering over the Carolina colony like a black-winged vulture. Matthew worked his feet into his shoes. He didn't have a heavy coat of his own, so over his flannel nightshirt he donned the magistrate's fearnaught, which was still damp from Woodward's recent trek behind the barn. The magistrate's boots, standing beside the bed, were clotted with mud and would bear the administrations of a coarse hog's bristle brush to clean. Matthew didn't want to take the single candle, as the weather would quickly extinguish it and the wall-dwellers might become emboldened by the dark. He would carry a covered lantern from the other room, he decided, and hope it threw enough illumination to avoid what Woodward had told him was 'an unholy mess' out there. He might check on the horses, too, while he was so near the barn.

He placed his hand on the door latch and started to lift it when he heard the magistrate cease snoring and quietly moan. Glancing at the man, he saw Woodward's face wince and contort under the freckled dome of his bald head. Matthew paused, watching in the dim and flickering light. Woodward's mouth opened, his eyelids fluttering. 'Oh,' the magistrate whispered, very clearly. His voice, though a whisper, was wracked with what Matthew could only describe as a pure and terrible agony. 'Ohhhhh,' Woodward spoke, in his cage of nightmares. 'He's hurting Ann.' He drew a pained breath. 'Hurting he's hurting oh God Ann . . . hurting ...' He said something more, a jumble of a few words mingled with another low awful moan. His hands were gripping at the front of his nightshirt, his head pressed back into the straw. His mouth released a faint sound that might have been the memory of a cry, and then slowly his body relaxed and the snoring swelled up once again.

This was not something new to Matthew. Many nights the magistrate walked in a dark field of pain, but what its source was he refused to talk about. Matthew had asked him once, five years ago, what the trouble had been, and Woodward's response had been a rebuke that Matthew's task was learning the trade of judicial clerking, and if he did not care to learn that trade, he could always find a home again at the orphans' refuge. The message— delivered with uncharacteristic vinegar—had been clear: whatever haunted the magistrate by night was not to be touched upon.

It had something to do with his wife in London, Matthew believed. Ann must be her name, though Woodward never mentioned that name in his waking hours and never volunteered any information about the woman. In fact, though Matthew had been in the company of Isaac Woodward since turning fifteen years old, he knew very little about the man's past life in England. This much he did know: Woodward had been a lawyer of some fame and had found success in the financial field as well, but what had caused his reversal of fortune and why he had left London for the rough-hewn colonies remained mysteries. At least Matthew understood from his readings and from what Woodward said about London that it was a great city; he'd never set foot there, or in England either, for he'd been born aboard a ship on the Atlantic nineteen days out of Portsmouth.

Matthew quietly lifted the latch and left the room. In the darkened chamber beyond, small flames still gnawed at black bits of wood in the hearth, though the largest of the coals had been banked for the night. Bitter smoke lingered in the air. Hanging from hooks next to the fireplace were two lanterns, both made of hammered tin with small nail-holes punched in the metal for the light to pass through. One of the lanterns had a burnt candle stuck on its inner spike, so that was the illuminator Matthew chose. He found a pine twig on the floor, touched it alight in the remains of the fire, and transferred the flame to the candle's wick.

'What are you about? Eh?'

The voice, cutting the silence as it did, almost lifted Matthew out of his shoes. He twisted around and the lantern's meager but spreading light fell upon Will Shawcombe, who was sitting at one of the tables with a tankard before him and a black-scorched clay pipe clenched in his teeth.