his wealthy father’s attire, looked torn for a moment between individual chivalry and family solidarity, but when Deverick hissed “Sit down,” the decision was made. The youth turned his eyes away from Madam Blossom and, his cheeks inflamed with red coals, sank back down into his seat and his father’s control.
But instantly a new hero arose upon the stage of this play. The master of the Trot Then Gallop, the stout and gray-bearded Felix Sudbury in his old brown suit, stood up from the fourth row and graciously motioned that the lady in need could find refuge where he’d been sitting between the silversmith Israel Brandier and the tailor’s son Effrem Owles, who was one of Matthew’s friends and who played a wicked game of chess on Thursday nights at the Gallop. Some gallant gadfly began to applaud as Sudbury gave up his place and the lady slid in, and then several others clapped and guffawed until Pennford Deverick swept his gray-eyed gaze around like a battle frigate positioning a cannon broadside and everyone shut up.
“There’s a sight, eh?” Solomon Tully dug an elbow into Matthew’s ribs as the noise of conversation swelled once more and the linen fans flapped against the roiling smoke. “Madam Blossom coming in here like she owned the damned place and seating herself right in front of the Reverend Wade! Did you ever see such?”
Matthew saw that, indeed, the madam of Manhattan-who probably could own the building, with all the money he’d heard she and her doves were making-was sitting directly in front of the slim, austere, black-suited, and tricorned William Wade, who stared solemnly ahead as if through the lady’s skull. Another note of interest, he saw, was that John Five-dressed in a plain gray suit for the occasion-was seated to the right of his father-in-law-to-be. Whatever might be said about Reverend Wade’s rather grim personality, let it never be said that he wasn’t fair- minded, Matthew thought. It was quite a feat for the minister to give his daughter over to marriage with a man whose past was largely a blank, and what wasn’t blanked were memories of brutal violence. Matthew considered that the reverend was giving John Five a chance, and perhaps that was the most Christian gift.
Someone else caught his eye. Matthew’s stomach clenched. Three rows behind John Five and Reverend Wade sat Eben Ausley, dressed up like a watermelon in a green suit and a vivid red velvet waistcoat. For this important day he was wearing a white wig with rolled curls that spilled down over his shoulders in emulation of formal judicial style. He had chosen to seat himself amid a contingent of young attorneys, among them the law associates Joplin Pollard, Andrew Kippering, and Bryan Fitzgerald, as if sending a message to Matthew and all those concerned that he was well-protected by the stupidity of the law. He did not deign to glance at Matthew, but smiled falsely and kept up a conversation with the aged but greatly respected Dutch physician Dr. Artemis Vanderbrocken, who sat on the pew in front of him.
“Pardon me, pardon me,” said someone who stepped into Matthew’s line-of-sight and leaned over the pew toward Magistrate Powers. “Sir, may I have a moment?”
“Oh. Yes, Marmaduke, what is it?”
“I was wondering, sir,” said Marmaduke Grigsby, who wore spectacles on his moon-round face and had a single tuft of white hair sticking up like a little plume atop his otherwise-barren scalp. His eyes were large and blue and above them his heavy white eyebrows jumped and twitched, a clear sign to Matthew that the printmaster of New York was nervous in the magistrate’s presence. “If you’d come to any further conclusions about the Masker?”
“Keep your voice down about that, please,” the magistrate warned, though it was hardly necessary amid the returned hullabaloo.
“Yes sir, of course. But…do you have any further conclusions?”
“One conclusion. That Julius Godwin was murdered by a maniac.”
“Yes sir.” The way that Grigsby smiled, all lips and no teeth, told Matthew the questions were not to be turned aside so quickly. “But do you believe this presumed maniac has left our fair town?”
“Well, I can’t say if-” Powers abruptly stopped, as if he’d bitten his tongue. “Now listen, Marmy. Is this more grist for that rag of yours?”
“Broadsheet, sir,” Grigsby corrected. “An humble broadsheet dedicated to the welfare of the people.”
“Oh, I saw that yesterday!” Now Solomon Tully showed an interest. “The Bedbug, is it?”
“For the last issue, Mr. Tully. I’m toying with calling it the Earwig next time. You know, something that bores in deeply and refuses to let loose.”
“You mean there’s going to be another one?” the magistrate asked sharply.
“Yes sir, absolutely. If my ink supply holds out, I mean. I’m hoping Matthew will help me set the type, just as he did the last time.”
“He what?” Powers glared at Matthew. “How many occupations do you have?”
“It was an afternoon’s work, that’s all,” Matthew said, rather meekly.
“Yes, and how many slips of the quill happened the next day because of it?”
“Oh, Matthew could work us both into our graves,” Grigsby said, with another smile. It faltered under the magistrate’s cool inspection. “Uh…I mean, sir, that he is a very industrious young-”
“Never mind that. Grigsby, do you know the kind of fear you’ve put into people? I ought to put you out there in the stocks for inciting a public terror.”
“This lot doesn’t look very terrified, sir,” said the printmaster, holding his ground. He was sixty-two years old, short and rotund and stuffed into a cheap and ill-fitting suit the color of brown street mud-or to be more charitable, the good earth after a noble rain. Nothing about Grigsby seemed to fit together. His hands were too large for his arms, which were too small for his shoulders, which were too bulky for his chest, which caved in above the swell of his belly, and on down to his too-big-buckled shoes at the end of beanpole legs. His face was constructed with the same unfortunate proportions, and appeared at various times and in various lights to be all slab of a creased forehead, then overpowered by a massive nose shot through with red veins (for he did so love his nightly rum) and at its southern boundary made heavy by a low-hanging chin pierced by a cleft the size of a grapeshot. His formidable forehead was of special note, for he’d displayed to Matthew his ability to crack walnuts upon it with the heel of his hand. When he walked he seemed to be staggering left and right as if in battle with the very gravity of the world. Snowy hairs sprouted from the curls of his ears and the holes of his nose. His teeth had such spaces between them one might get a bath if he was full-bore on his esses. He had nervous tics that could be alarming to the uninitiated: the aforementioned twitching of the eyebrows, a sudden rolling of the eyes as if demons were playing bouncy-ball in his skull, and a truly wicked jest from God that caused him to uncontrollably break wind with a noise like the deepest note of a bass Chinese gong.
Yet, when Marmaduke Grigsby the printmaster decided to stand his ground this almost-misshapen creature became a man of self-assured grace. Matthew saw this transformation happen now, as Grigsby coolly looked down through his spectacles at Magistrate Powers. It was as if the printmaster was not complete until faced with a challenge, and then the strange physical combination of left-over parts from a giant and a dwarf were molded under pressure into the essence of a statesman.
“It is my task to inform, sir,” said Grigsby, in a voice neither soft nor harsh but, as Hiram Stokely would say about a fine piece of pottery, well baked. “Just as it is the right of the citizens to be informed.”
The magistrate had not gotten to be a magistrate by sitting on his opinions. “Do you really think you’re informing the citizens? By making up this…this damned Masker business?”
“I saw Dr. Godwin’s body, sir. And I was not the only one who remarked upon that bit of cutting. Ashton McCaggers also speculated the same. In fact, it was he who mentioned it first.”
“McCaggers is nearly a fool, the way he carries on!”
“That may be so,” Grigsby said, “but as coroner he does have the authority to examine the dead for the benefit of High Constable Lillehorne. I trust you believe he’s fit for that task?”
“Is all this bound for your next broadsheet? If so, I think you’d best direct your questions to the high constable.” Powers frowned at his own remarks, for he was not a man suited to show a foul temper. “Marmy,” he said, in a more conciliatory tone, “it’s not the broadsheet that bothers me. Of course we’ll have a proper newspaper here sooner or later, and perhaps you’re the man to publish it, but I don’t approve of this appeal to the low senses. Most of us thought we were leaving that behind in London with the Gazette. I can’t tell you the harm an ill-reported or speculative story might do to the industry of this town.”
It never hurt London, Matthew almost said, but he did think silence was the wisest course. He read the Gazette religiously when copies arrived by ship.
“I reported only the facts of Dr. Godwin’s murder, sir,” Grigsby parried. “As far as we know, I mean.”
“No, you made up this ‘Masker’ thing. And perhaps it did come from McCaggers, but the young man didn’t set it in type, you did. That kind of presumption and fear-mongering belongs in the realm of fantasy. And I might add
