provided the names of the two men who came to dig up the grave. Hudson Greathouse and-lo and behold-his associate Matthew Corbett. How about those apples?”
Sour, Matthew thought.
“Be sure we’ll deal with Mr. Greathouse in due time. First you. Goodbye, sir.” Pollard withdrew from the coach and shut the door. “Drive on!” he called up, as Bromfield reached across Matthew to draw the second canvas sunshade down with a definitive snap.
A whip was applied and the coach began to roll. In the yellow-tinged cabin, Matthew was sweating. He heard the workaday sounds of New York passing as the coach trundled north on the Broad Way. His eyes kept going to the knife in Jeremy’s hand. It looked very eager.
He had to figure a way out of this. Unfortunately, there was no way out. He reached up to take off Berry’s hat and at the same time the knife flicked toward him like a rattlesnake’s tongue and Bromfield clasped an iron hand to his shoulder. Then the two rapscallions realized what he was doing and allowed him to de-hat. He put it on his lap, thinking that if he were a real hero pressed from the mold of Hudson Greathouse he would wait for a particularly vicious pothole, flick the straw topper into the boy’s eyes, seize the knife, and plunge it into the largest target, which would be Bromfield’s chest. Of course, getting through that leather waistcoat and the notebook tucked behind it might prove an ill adventure. He decided there was only one Hudson Greathouse, and no place for a hero in this coach.
They were moving faster now, turning onto the Post Road and leaving the town behind. The whip was striking left and right and the four horses were hauling ass.
A nice village in Wales, Pollard had said. Just the place for Berry and I to spend our old age, Matthew thought. If we live long enough to have one.
We, he realized. He had not thought of anyone that way, in conjunction with him, since the incident with Rachel Howarth at Fount Royal. He imagined he’d loved Rachel, when instead he’d wished to be her champion. Love was something he wasn’t sure he yet understood. He knew desire, and the need for companionship…but love? No. He was far too busy for even the idea of it.
Now, however, he looked to be facing a long period of-at the best-retirement. He wished suddenly that he’d been a little less serious and a lot more…how did Marmaduke put it…merry-making. Less chess, perhaps, and more dancing. Or, at the very least, more appreciation of the pretty girls in New York, and yes there were quite a few. It was interesting how a knife pointed at you could direct one’s mind to things that a few weeks ago seemed frivolous and now seemed only sadly lost.
But wait, he told himself firmly. Just wait. He was still alive, and Berry was still alive. Hopefully. There might come a time, and unfortunately very soon, for wailing and lamentations. Now was not that time. He had to remain calm, focused, and ready to act if the situation presented itself.
The coach hit a pothole the depth of his misery and bounced. Matthew’s moment to swat Jeremy’s face with his topper passed. No heroes in this coach. But wasn’t it heroic enough just to hold the nerves together, as they strained and screamed under his skin?
What are you going to do, moonbeam?
The boy had lowered his blade to the seat beside him. Bromfield’s head leaned back, his eyes half-closed as the coach rocked.
“Hey,” Matthew said to Jeremy. Instantly Bromfield’s eyes opened fully and he sat up.
The boy stared blankly at Matthew.
“How old are you?” Matthew asked.
Jeremy glanced at Bromfield, who shrugged, and then back to his questioner. “Fifteen.”
“I left the orphanage when I was fifteen. I was an orphan too, you know.”
“Is that so?”
“What’s your specialty?”
“My what?”
“Your talent,” Matthew said. “What got you out of the orphanage and into Chapel’s school?”
“Ain’t a school. It’s…” Jeremy frowned, calling up a word. Obviously, quick wit was not his ticket. “It’s a university.”
“I’m sure you’ll go far upon graduation. What’s your talent?”
The boy picked up his knife and looked almost lovingly at the blade. “I can throw this,” he said with a full measure of pride, “and hit a fella square in the back from twenty paces. Killed me an Injun kid one time, stealin’ from my papa’s chickencoop. Got him in the back and then I cut his red damn throat and took me his scalp, too.”
“Laudable. You were how old when this happened?”
“Eleven, I reckon. Then them Injuns came and dragged my papa off. They tied me to a fuckin’ tree and torched the house down. That’s how I got left on my own.”
Matthew nodded. A fledgling assassin, perhaps? A killer able to strike at long distance from the shadows? It occurred to him that Ausley had possessed the talent of recognizing the inherent ability-call it the seed of evil, either inborn or created from any of life’s more brutal circumstances-in some of his charges, and Chapel refined that raw substance into a valuable commodity. “What does Mr. Chapel offer you, in return for your loyalty to this… university?”
“Good food,” the boy replied. “A bed. Nobody fuckin’ with me. And I get all the pussy I can handle.”
Ah, Matthew thought. So Charity LeClaire was also a valuable commodity. “Have you killed anyone else since you were eleven?”
“That’s enough,” Bromfield warned. “Shut up and keep shut.”
The voice was harsh enough to tell Matthew he should pursue this no further if he cared to keep his teeth. Matthew settled against the backrest. He watched as Jeremy continued to admire the knife as if it were his declaration of power in a world that ground young men into pulp beneath ten-league boots.
At last-and much too soon-Matthew felt the coach slowing. He heard the whipman ring his signal bell and there was a pause as the gate was opened. Then the coach rolled forward, gained speed once more, and a hundred yards later came the cry, “Whoa! Whoa!”
The coach creaked to a halt, the door on Matthew’s right was opened and Lawrence Evans, well-dressed and immaculately groomed, stood there in the bright spill of afternoon light. But he was certainly not alone, for around him and peering into the coach was a crowd of young faces of every description and, as Chapel had said, a variety of ages between twelve and eighteen, with possibly two or three a few years elder. Nineteen of them, according to Evans. Maybe so, but to Matthew it seemed there were enough to fight an English brigade.
Bromfield got out first and then Matthew, followed by Jeremy and his knife. The boys instantly began to hoot, cat-call, and snicker, until Evans said crisply, “That is enough. Show respect, even to the enemy. Make way, now.”
As the whip cracked and the coach was driven away toward the vineyard, Matthew was escorted into the manse. Quickly, though, he noted that the university’s “students” were all dressed more or less the same, in white shirts and black or brown breeches with cream-colored stockings. Notable also were paper badges that they worn pinned to their shirts in crayoned colors of crimson and royal blue and in different shapes of square, triangle, circle and-glimpsed only briefly and belonging to the oldest boys-a combination of blue circle within a red triangle within a blue square. Medals of some kind? he wondered. A way to distinguish between “years” for the students, as a real university would classify first year, second year, and so on? He was through the door and the door was closed behind him as one of the boys shouted, “You’ll get what’s comin’!”
He dreaded to think.
He was escorted-rather roughly by Bromfield with a hand to the nape of his neck-past the staircase and into the tapestry-draped corridor. Further back, the huge dining room with its fan-shaped arrays of swords had been recently the site of a late and obviously recently interrupted luncheon feast, for platters full of chicken bones sat amid the gleaming silver trays, salt and pepper bowls, and the other implements that Chapel felt created a gentleman’s table. Matthew felt a bit of satisfaction, thinking that his arrival might have propelled Chapel up from his repast.
The door to the left of the room was open. Within it a staircase curved upward. Light glowed through a long, narrow window. “Up, please,” Evans said as he ascended first. A shove almost knocked Matthew up the stairs before he could take the initial riser. The stairs rose to an office with circular windows overlooking the garden like
