Speaks the Nightbird

Bidwell watched Matthew try to keep his shoulders from rubbing the seatback as the carriage creaked along Peace Street. Try as he might, Bidwell couldn't wipe the smirk of satisfaction off his face. 'I hope you're cured of your malady!'

Matthew had to bite at the offered hook. 'What malady might that be?'

'The sickness of sticking your nose in places it doesn't belong. You got off very lightly.'

'I suppose I did.'

'I know you did! I've seen Green whip a man before. He did hold back. If he hadn't, you'd be bleeding and blubbering right now.' He shrugged. 'But Green doesn't care much for Hazelton, so there you have it. Magistrate, might I hope you'll pass sentence today?'

'Not today,' came the hoarse reply. 'I must study the records.'

Bidwell scowled. 'I don't for the life of me see what you have to study!'

'It's a matter of being fair,' Woodward said.

'Being fair?' Bidwell gave a harsh laugh. 'Yes, this is why the world's in its current shape!'

Matthew couldn't remain quiet. 'Meaning what, sir?'

'Meaning that some men mistake hesitation for fairness, and thus the Devil runs rampant over the heads of good Christians!' Bidwell's eyes had a rapier glint and dared Matthew to disagree. 'This world will be burnt to a cinder in another fifty years, the way Evil is allowed to prosper! We'll be barricading our doors and windows against Satan's soldiers! But we'll be fair about it, won't we, and therefore we'll leave a battering ram on our doorsteps!'

Matthew said, 'You must have attended one of Preacher Jerusalem's speeches.'

'Pah!' Bidwell waved a hand at him in disgust. 'What do you know of the world? Much less than you think! Well, here's a laugh on you, clerk: your theory about Alan Johnstone is just as crippled as he is! He came to the house last night and showed us his knee!'

'He did?' Matthew looked to Woodward for confirmation.

The magistrate nodded and scratched a fresh mosquito bite on his gray-grizzled chin. 'I saw the knee at close quarters. It would be impossible for Johnstone to be the man who stole your gold coin.'

'Oh.' Matthew's brow knitted. His pride had taken a blow, especially following Nicholas Paine's reasonable explanation of his career as a pirate-hunter and how he came to roll his tobacco in the Spanish fashion. Now Matthew felt himself adrift at sea. He said, 'Well ...' but then he stopped, because there was nothing to be said.

'If I were half as smart as you think yourself to be,' Bidwell said, 'I could build ships in my sleep!'

Matthew didn't respond to this taunt, preferring instead to concentrate on keeping his injured shoulders from making contact with the seatback. At last Goode drew the carriage up in front of the mansion and Matthew was the first to step down. He then aided the magistrate, and in doing so discovered that Woodward was warm and clammy with fever. He also for the first time caught sight of the crusted wounds behind Woodward's left ear. 'You've been bled.'

'Twice. My throat is still pained, but my breathing is somewhat better.'

'Ben's due to bleed him a third time this evening,' Bidwell said as he descended from the carriage. 'Before then, might I suggest that the magistrate attend to his studying?'

'I plan on it,' Woodward said. 'Matthew, Dr. Shields would have something to ease your discomfort. Do you wish to see him?'

'Uh . . . beg pardon, suh,' Goode spoke up from the driver's seat. 'I have an ointment to cool the sting some, if he cares to use it.'

'That would be helpful.' Matthew reasoned that a slave would indeed have an able remedy for a whip burn. 'Thank you.'

'Yes suh. I'll fetch it to the house directly I barn the carriage. Or if you please you can ride along with me.'

'Goode, he doesn't care to visit the slave quarters!' Bidwell said sharply. 'He'll wait for you in the house!'

'One moment.' Matthew's hackles had risen at the idea of Bidwell telling him what he cared to do or not to do. 'I'll come along.'

'You don't want to go down there, boy! The place smells!'

'I am not so fragrant myself,' Matthew reminded him, and then he climbed back up into the carriage. 'I would like a warm bath after breakfast. Is that possible?'

'I'll arrange it for you,' Bidwell agreed. 'Do what you please, but if you go down there you'll regret it.'

'Thank you for your consideration. Magistrate, might I suggest you return to bed as soon as convenient? You do need your rest. All right, Goode, I'm ready.'

'Yes suh.' Goode flicked the reins, said a quiet, 'Giddup,' and the team started off again.

Peace Street continued past Bidwell's mansion to the stable and the slave quarters, which occupied the plot of land between Fount Royal and the tidewater swamp. It interested Matthew that Bidwell had referred to the quarters as being 'down there' but in fact the street never varied in its elevation. The stable itself was of handsome construction and had been freshly whitewashed, but in contrast the ramshackle, unpainted houses of the servants had an impermanent quality.

Peace Street passed through the village of shacks and ended, Matthew saw, in a sandy path that led across a belt of pines and moss-draped oaks to the watchman's tower. Up at the tower's summit, a man sat under a thatched roof facing out to sea, his feet resting on the railing. A more boring task, Matthew could not imagine. Yet in these times of pirate raids and with the Spanish territory so close, he understood the need for caution. Beyond the tower, the bit of land that Matthew was able to see—if indeed it could be called something so solid—looked to be waist-high grass that surely hid a morass of mud and swamp ponds.

Smoke hung low over the house chimneys. A strutting rooster, his hens in close attendance, flapped out of the carriage's way as Goode steered the team toward the stable, beside which was a split-rail fence that served as a corral for a half-dozen fine-looking horses. Presently Goode reined the team in at a water trough and dismounted. Matthew followed. 'My house be there, suh,' Goode said, as he aimed a finger at a structure that was neither better nor worse than the other shacks around it, but might have fit within Bidwell's banquet room with space to spare.

On the short walk, Matthew noted several small plots of cornstalks, beans, and turnips between the houses. A Negro a few years younger than Goode was busy chopping firewood, and he paused in his labor to stare as Goode led Matthew past. A lean woman with a blue scarf wrapped around her head had emerged from her house to scatter some dried corn for her chickens, and she too stared in open amazement.

'They got to looksee,' Goode said, with a slight smile. 'You doan' come here so much.'

By you Matthew realized he meant the English, or possibly the larger meaning of white skins in general. From around a corner peeked a young girl, whom Matthew recognized as one of the house servants. As soon as their eyes met, she pulled herself out of view again. Goode stopped in front of his own door. 'Suh, you can wait here as you please. I'll fetch the balm.' He lifted the latch. 'But you can step in, as you please.' He pushed the door open and called into the house, 'Visitah, May!' He started across the threshold but then paused; his ebony, fathomless eyes stared into Matthew's face, and Matthew could tell the old man was trying to make a decision of sorts. 'What is it?' Matthew asked.

Goode seemed to have made up his mind; Matthew saw it, in a tightening of the jaw. 'Suh? Would you favor me by steppin' inside?'

'Is something wrong?'

'No suh.' He offered no further explanation, but stood waiting for Matthew to enter. Matthew decided there was more to this than hospitality. Therefore he walked into the house, and Goode entered behind him and shut the door.

'Who is that?' asked the heavyset woman who stood at the hearth. She had been stirring the contents of a cooking-pot that was placed in the hot ashes, but now the revolutions of the wooden spoon had ceased. Her eyes were deep-set and wary, her face crisscrossed with lines, under a coarse brown cloth scalp-wrapping.

'This be Mastuh Matthew Corbett,' Goode said. 'Mastuh Corbett, this be my wife May.'

'Pleased to meet you,' Matthew said, but the old woman didn't respond. She looked him head to toe, made a