Speaks the Nightbird

beyond all hope of cleaning. Damn this rain and mud, damn this wild land, and damn Shawcombe and the chamberpot he should have had.

A rib cage, Matthew thought. Rain was running down his face now. It was cold, and the chill helped him organize his mind. Of course, the rib cage might've belonged to an animal. Mightn't it?

The lantern was muddy but—thank providence!—the candle was still burning. He stood up and made his way over to the broken bones. There he knelt down and shone the light upon them, trying to determine what animal they might've come from. While he was so occupied, he heard a soft slithering sound somewhere to his right. He angled the lantern toward it and in a few seconds saw that a gaping hole some four feet across had opened in the boggy ground; the slithering sound was mud sliding down its sides.

Matthew thought it might have been what had collapsed under his feet and caused him to fall, for the earth itself was rebelling against this incessant downpour. He stood up, eased to the edge of the hole, and directed the lantern's light down into it.

At first he saw what looked like a pile of sticks lying in the hole. Everything was muddy and tangled together into an indistinct mess. The longer he stared, however, the more clear came the picture.

Yes. Horribly clear.

He could make out the bones of an arm, thrown across what might've been a half-decayed, naked torso. A gray knee joint jutted up from the muck. There was a hand, the fingers shriveled to the bones, grasping upward as if in a begging gesture for help. And there was a head, too; mostly a mud-covered skull, but some of the flesh remained. Matthew, his mouth dry of saliva and his heart pounding, could see how the top of the skull had been crushed inward by a savage blow.

A hammer could've delivered such a death, he realized. A hammer or a rat-killing mallet.

Perhaps there were more corpses than one in that burial pit. Perhaps there were four or five, thrown in and entangled together. It was hard to tell how many, but there were a great number of bones. None of the bodies seemed to have been buried with their clothing.

Hey, clerk! You sure he wouldn't part with that waistc't?

Matthew felt the earth shift and slide around his feet. There was a noise like a dozen serpents hissing and, as the ground began to collapse around him, Matthew saw more human bones being pushed up to the surface like the muddy spars of ships wrecked on vicious shoals. Dazed as if locked in a nightmare, Matthew stood at the center of the sinking earth as evidence of murders revealed themselves under his shoes. Only when he was about to be sucked under into an embrace with the dead did he turn away, pulling his feet up and struggling toward the barn.

He fought his way through the rain in the direction of the tavern. The immediacy of his mission gave flight to his heels. He slipped and fell once again before he reached the door, and this time the lantern splashed into a puddle and the candle went out. Red mud covered him from head to toe. When he burst through the door, he saw that Shawcombe was no longer sitting at the table, though the tankard was still in its same position and the bitter- smelling pipe smoke yet wafted in the air. Matthew restrained the urge to shout a warning to the magistrate, and he got into the room and latched the door behind him. Woodward was still stretched out and soundly asleep.

Matthew shook the man's shoulders. 'Wake up! Do you hear me?' His voice, though pinched with fright, was strong enough to pierce the veil of the magistrate's sleep. Woodward began to rouse himself, his eyelids opening and the bleary eyes struggling to focus. 'We have to get out!' Matthew urged. 'Right now! We've got to—'

'Good God in Heaven!' Woodward croaked. He sat upright. 'What happened to you?'

'Just listen!' Matthew said. 'I found bodies out there! Skeletons, buried behind the barn! I think Shawcombe's a murderer!'

'What? Have you lost your senses?' Woodward sniffed the younger man's breath. 'It's that damn Indian ale, isn't it?'

'No, I found the bodies down in a hole! Shawcombe may have even killed Kingsbury and thrown him in there!' He saw the magistrate's expression of bewilderment. 'Listen to me! We have to leave as fast as we—'

'Gentlemen?'

It was Shawcombe. His voice beyond the door made Matthew's blood go cold. There came the rap of knuckles on the wood. 'Gentlemen, is all well?'

'I think he means to kill us tonight!' Matthew whispered to the magistrate. 'He wants your waistcoat!'

'My waistcoat,' Woodward repeated. His mouth was dry. He looked at the door and then back to Matthew's mud-splattered face. If anything was true in this insane world, it was that Matthew did not lie, nor was he servant to flights of fantasy. The shiny fear in the younger man's eyes was all too real, and Woodward's own heart began beating rapidly.

'Gents?' Now Shawcombe's mouth was close to the door. 'I heard you talkin'. Any trouble in there?'

'No trouble!' Woodward replied. He put a finger to his lips, directing Matthew to be silent. 'We're very well, thank you!'

There was a few seconds' pause. Then: 'Clerk, you left the front door open,' Shawcombe said. 'How come you to do that?'

Now came one of the most terrible decisions of Isaac Woodward's life. His saber, as rusted and blunt as it was, remained in the wagon. He had neither a dirk nor a prayer to protect them. If Shawcombe was indeed a killer, the time had arrived for him to deliver death. Woodward looked at the room's single shuttered window and made the decision: they would have to leave everything behind—trunks, wigs, clothing, all of it—to save their skins. He motioned Matthew toward the window and then he eased up out of the damp straw.

'What's got your tongue, boy?' Shawcombe demanded. His voice was turning ugly. 'I asked you a question!'

'Just a moment!' Woodward opened one of the trunks, lifted a pair of shirts, and put his hands on the golden-threaded waistcoat. He could not leave this, even with a murderer breathing down his neck. There was no time to work his feet into his boots nor grab his tricorn hat. Grasping the waistcoat, he straightened up and motioned for Matthew to unlatch the window's shutter.

Matthew did. The latch thunked out of its groove and he pushed the shutter open into the falling rain.

'They're comin' out the winda!' Uncle Abner yelled, standing just beneath it. Matthew saw he was holding a lantern in one hand and a pitchfork in the other.

Behind Woodward, there was a tremendous crash as the door burst inward. He twisted around, his face bleached of blood, as Shawcombe came across the threshold with a grin that showed his peglike teeth. Behind him, Maude carried a double candlestick that held two burning tapers, her white hair wild and her wrinkled face demonic.

'Oh, oh!' Shawcombe said mockingly. 'Looky here, Maude! They're tryin' to get gone without payin' their bill!'

'What's the meaning of this outrage?' Woodward snapped, putting on a mask of anger to hide his true emotion, which was raw and naked terror.

Shawcombe laughed and shook his head. 'Well,' he said, lifting up his right hand and inspecting the mallet with which Maude had earlier crushed the black rat, 'the meanin' of it, you bloody ass, is that you and the clerk ain't goin' nowhere tonight. 'Cept Hell, I reckon.' His eyes found the prize. 'Ahhhhh, there 'tis. Give it here.' He thrust out his grimy left hand.

Woodward looked at the dirty fingers and then at the waistcoat he held so dearly. His gaze returned to Shawcombe's greedy hand; then Woodward lifted his chin and took a long breath. 'Sir,' he said, 'you'll have to kill me to take it.'

Shawcombe laughed again, more of a piggish grunt this time. 'Oh, indeedy I'll kill you! ' His eyes narrowed slightly. 'I 'spected you'd go out like a mouse 'stead of a man, though. 'Spected you might give a squeal like that other little drunk titmouse did when I whacked him.' He abruptly swung the mallet through the air past Woodward's face, and the magistrate flinched but did not retreat. 'Gonna make me take it, huh? All-righty then, ain't no skin off my bum.'

'They'll send someone else,' Matthew spoke up. 'From Charles Town. They'll send—'

'Another fuckin' magistrate? Let 'em, then! They keep sendin' 'em, I'll keep killin' 'em!'

'They'll send the militia,' he said, which was not nearly as fearsome as it sounded and was probably untrue anyway.