Speaks the Nightbird

lengths to put you here. And if his aim is to destroy Fount Royal, why doesn't he just burn the whole town in one night instead of an empty house here and there? I don't think Satan would care if a house was empty before it burned, do you? And what are these tricks of bringing the three demons out to parade them as if in a stageplay? Why would you appear to Jeremiah Buckner and invite him to view a scene that would certainly send you to the stake?' He waited for a response but there was none. 'Buckner may have sworn truth on the Bible, yes. He may believe that what he saw was the truth. But my question is: what is it that two men—and a little girl—may see that appears to be true but is in reality a cunning fiction? It must be more than a dream, because certainly Violet Adams was not dreaming when she walked into that house in the afternoon. Who would create such a fiction, and how could it possibly be disguised as the truth?'

'I can't see how any man could do it,' Rachel said.

'I can't either, but I believe it has somehow been done. My task is to find out first of all how. Then to find out the why of it. I hope from those two answers will come the third: who.'

'And if you can't find them? What then?'

'Then . . .' Matthew paused, knowing the reply but unwilling to give it, 'that bridge is best crossed when it is reached.'

Rachel was silent. Even the few rats that had returned to the walls after Linch's massacre had stilled themselves. Matthew lay down again, trying to get his thoughts in order. The sound of thunder was louder; its power seemed to shake the very earth to its deepest foundations.

'Matthew?' Rachel said.

'Yes?'

'Would you . . . would you hold my hand?'

'Pardon?' He wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly.

'Would you hold my hand?' she asked again. 'Just for a moment. I don't like the thunder.'

'Oh.' His heart was beating harder. Though he knew full well that the magistrate would look askance on such a thing, it seemed wrong to deny her a small comfort. 'All right,' he said, and he stood up. When he went to the bars that separated them, he couldn't find her.

'I'm here.' She was sitting on the floor.

Matthew sat down as well. Her hand slipped between the bars, groping, and touched his shoulder. He said, 'Here,' and grasped her hand with his. At the intertwining of their fingers, Matthew felt a shock of heat that was first intense and then softened as it seemed to course slowly up his forearm. His heart was drumming; he was surprised she couldn't hear it, as surely a military march was being played next to her ear. It had occurred to him that his might be the last hand ever offered her.

The thunder again announced itself, and again the earth gave a tremble. Matthew felt Rachel's grip tighten. He couldn't help but think that in seven days she would be dead. She would be bones and ashes, nothing left of her voice or her touch or her compelling presence. Her beautiful tawny eyes would be burnt blind, her ebony hair sheared by the flames.

In seven days.

'Would you lie with me?' Rachel asked. 'What?'

'Would you lie down with me?' Her voice sounded very weary, as if now that the trial had ended her strength of spirit had been all but overwhelmed by the evidence arrayed against her. 'I think I might sleep, if you were to hold my hand.'

'Yes,' he answered, and he eased down onto his back with his hand still gripping hers. She also reclined alongside the bars, so near to him that he felt the heat of her body even through the coarse and dirty sackcloth.

The thunder spoke, closer still and more powerful. Rachel's hand squeezed his, almost to the point of pain. He said nothing, as the sound of his heartbeat made speech impossible.

For a while the thunder was a raging young bully above Fount Royal, but at last it began to move away toward the sea and became aged and muttering in its decrease. The hands of the two prisoners remained bound together, even as sleep took them in different paths. Matthew awakened once, and listened in the quiet dark. His mind was groggy, but he thought he'd heard a sound that might have been a hushed sobbing.

If the sound had been real or not, it was not repeated. He squeezed Rachel's hand. She gave an answering pressure.

That was all.

twenty

MATTHEW EMERGED FROM SLEEP before the first rooster crowed. He found his hand still embracing Rachel's. When Matthew gently tried to work his hand free, Rachel's eyes opened and she sat up in the gray gloom with bits of straw in her hair.

The morning of mixed blessings had arrived; his lashing and his freedom were both soon to be delivered. Rachel made no statement to him, but retreated to the other side of her cage for an illusion of privacy with her waste bucket. Matthew moved to the far side of his own cell and spent a moment splashing cold water upon his face, then he too reached for the necessary bucket. Such an arrangement had horrified him when he'd first entered the gaol, but now it was something to be done and over with as quickly as possible.

He ate a piece of stale bread that he'd saved from last night, and then he sat on his bench, his head lowered, waiting for the sound of the door opening.

It wasn't a long wait. Hannibal Green entered the gaol carrying a lantern. Behind him was the magistrate, bundled in coat and scarf, the bitter reek of liniment around him and his face more chalky now than gray, with dark purplish hollows beneath his swollen eyes. Woodward's ghastly appearance frightened Matthew more than the expectation of the lashes, and the magistrate moved with a slow, painful step.

'It's time.' Green unlocked Matthew's cell. 'Out with you.' Matthew stood up. He was afraid, but there was no use in delay. He walked out of the cell.

'Matthew?' Rachel was standing at the bars. He gave her his full attention. 'No matter what happens to me,' she said quietly, the lantern's light reflecting in her amber eyes, 'I wish to thank you for listening.' He nodded. Green gave him a prod in the ribs to move him along. 'Have courage,' she said.

'And you,' he replied. He wanted to remember her in that moment; she was beautiful and proud, and there was nothing in her face that betrayed the fact she faced a hideous death. She lingered, staring into his eyes, and then she turned away and went back to her bench, where she eased down and shrouded herself in the sackcloth gown once more.

'Move on!' Green rumbled.

Woodward grasped Matthew's shoulder, in almost a paternal gesture, and led him out of the gaol. At the doorway, Matthew resisted the desire to look back again at Rachel, for even though he felt he was abandoning her, he knew as well that, once free, he could better work for her benefit.

It occurred to him, as he walked out into the misty, meager light of morning, that he had accepted—to the best of his ability—the unfamiliar role of champion.

Green closed the gaol's door. 'Over there,' he said, and he took hold of Matthew's left arm and pulled him rather roughly away from Woodward, directing him toward the pillory that stood in front of the gaolhouse.

'Is there need for that, sir?' Woodward's voice, though still weak, was somewhat more able than the previous day.

Green didn't bother to answer. As he was being led to be pilloried, Matthew saw that the novelty of a lashing had brought a dozen or so citizens out of their homes to be entertained. Among them were Seth Hazelton, whose grinning face was still swaddled by a dirty bandage, and Lucretia Vaughan, who had brought along a basket of breads and teacakes that she was in the process of selling to the assembly. Sitting in his carriage nearby was the master of Fount Royal himself, come to make sure justice was done, while Goode sat up front slowly whittling on a piece of wood.

'Tear his back open, Green!' Hazelton urged. 'Split it like he done split my face!'

Green used a key from his ring to unlatch the top half of the pillory, which he then lifted up. 'Take your shirt off,' he told Matthew. As Matthew did Green's bidding, he saw with a sick jolt to his stomach that coiled around a