“Pardon?”
“I said…what did you call me?”
Matthew thought back. “Gardner. Your name.”
“No, sir. You are not allowed to call me by anything but High Constable Lillehorne or Mister Lillehorne. Certainly not…what you called me. How dare you! And you think because of…you know…what happened at that estate and my brief stumble that you can rise to my level?” Lillehorne’s immaculate black goatee actually twitched. “I am a public official, Corbett! You are a private citizen, not much more elevated than a clerk, if you really want to know my opinion, no matter how highly you think of yourself and this agency that will in the future be shown as a foolish and ridiculous endeavor! This is my town, Corbett! Do you hear me? It certainly doesn’t belong to you or that lout Greathouse, and if you think you can weaken my authority and throw mud in my face in front of Lord Cornbury, then I’ll vow before my honor that you’ll have a fight on your hands! Do you hear? A fight! And if you think Gardner Lillehorne has ever backed away from a fight, ever in his life, well then I’m here to look you right in the eye and tell you…”
Matthew let the high constable continue this loquacious rant, as if there were anything he might do to plug it up. He was sure Lillehorne would still be talking when he decided to listen again about five minutes from now. He was instead transfixed by the way the red feather jiggled and shook on Lillehorne’s tricorn as the man raged on, and he wondered where were the hawks when you needed them.
Fifty
The sun rose and the sun set. The moon moved across the nights, changing shape as it progressed. Tides swelled high, then fell low. The summer ended, and September had arrived.
Matthew checked his watch. It was just after nine o’clock. He would have to be getting home soon, as tomorrow morning he had a case to scribe in the record book and then in the afternoon he had two hours of sword practice with Hudson Greathouse. Not something he looked forward to, but he had learned the valuable lesson of heeding the voice of experience.
“Your move.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that.” Matthew reached out and took a drink from his cup of cider, making Effrem Owles wait that much longer. The chessboard on the table between them was an example of the decimation that could be wrought when two equal opponents decided to cast aggression to the wind. Matthew, playing white, had two knights, two rooks, and six pawns left on this pinewood battleground to defend his king and win the war, while Effrem’s black arsenal held a bishop, a knight, two rooks, and six pawns. Effrem’s king sat at d7 and Matthew’s hugged the corner at h1. Matthew drank slowly, for he didn’t like the way this game was turning out.
“The move is apparent,” Effrem said.
“All right, then.” Matthew wasn’t so sure. Effrem’s rook at h8 was going to take his pawn at h3, no matter what he did. The exposure was just too much. Well, something had to be done. He slid a rook from a1 to e1 and was rewarded by Effrem’s rook crashing down upon his hapless pawn. Now he had five.
They sat in the lamplight of the Trot Then Gallop. Matthew had joined his friend for dinner at Effrem’s invitation, had enjoyed a meal of baked fish, fried potatoes, and green beans, plus a couple of cups of the very tart and delicious cider. Nowadays he drank sparingly of the tavern liquors, particularly wine from newly tapped casks, but he had come to the conclusion that one could not truly live with the idea in mind that the next sip of anything might bring death by belladonna. Still, it was a hard idea to shake.
He moved another rook and Effrem without hesitation took a white knight with one of his own rooks at h2.
Gak! Matthew thought. Perhaps he’d overstayed his visit here tonight. He and Effrem had played two previous games. Matthew had won the first with a feint up the middle and an attack on the right, the second game had been a stalemate, and now this one was looking grim. Effrem was definitely getting better. Then again, Matthew was getting better at handling the rapier. It would be a kick in the breeches, he thought, if as he became more accomplished at swordplay he became a dunce at chessplay.
But not tonight, friend Effrem! Matthew captured the offending rook with his king and sought a way out of the trap that was being developed involving the black knight and the remaining rook. Not tonight!
There did happen to be some things on his mind that chewed at his concentration.
His health was good, that was on the plus side. All the plasters had come off except the one beside his left eye and the one under his shirt at his left shoulder. He still smelled of comfrey-and-garlic liniment, but by now everyone understood.
What gnawed at him, among other things, were the murders of Simon Chapel and Joplin Pollard.
It had happened in the King Street hospital two weeks ago. Chapel had been put in a bed there to recover from the condition of having his face very nastily rearranged. Infection had set in, and fever, and beneath his bandages Chapel had remained silent to any and all questions posed to him by High Constable Lillehorne. Likewise silent was Joplin Pollard, whose shattered knees had caused him to bite on a stick whenever Dr. Vanderbrocken or Dr. Edmonds merely touched them. If he’d lived he would have likely been wheeled in a pushcart to the hangman’s rope.
As Pollard and Chapel were the only other patients on that particular ward-the so-called “prisoners’ ward,” which was locked up tight behind two doors-and both of them depended on rather stupefying drugs to even allow them a twilight sleep, their departure must have been a relatively quiet affair. But no less sinister for its degree of quiet. They were found dead by the first of the hospital’s attendants to arrive, a young man born in New York and known for his scrupulous care of the patients. It appeared in the reports made by Ashton McCaggers that death had been administered sometime between two and three in the morning, and had come about due to a long thin blade driven through the right eye of each man, and hence into the brain. Whoever had picked the locks had left only faint scratches as a signature.
Matthew was particularly bothered about this. Not simply because Chapel and Pollard had escaped the noose and taken their knowledge of Professor Fell with them to the demonic world, but that Mr. Ripley had not been among the boys captured on the day of reckoning.
A black knight moved, getting into position for attack.
“That’s far too easy,” Matthew said, as he moved his king.
“Yes,” Effrem answered. He tapped his chin, his brown eyes magnified large behind his round-lensed spectacles. “I suppose it is.”
Other things also whispered to Matthew from the dark. The power of Professor Fell to demand loyalty might as well have caused Lawrence Evans to swallow his tongue, for all the questions he would answer. Evans sat in a cell at the gaol, ever silent. A look of sublime peace had settled upon his face. Did he think he would also be leaving the scene far before a judge read his sentence? If so, he was prepared for the voyage.
Bromfield and Carver were mules. They took orders and knew nothing. Likewise the terrified Dutch-speaking women who cooked the meals and turned out to believe they had been part of a great experiment in the process of education. Charity LeClaire, who occupied a bed in the women’s ward on King Street and waxed and waned like the moon, might have wanted to talk to avenge a sticking, but when she began feverishly babbling it was all about being plucked from a London bordello by Lawrence Evans in 1696, cleaned up and dressed up, and under the duress of drugs having to satisfy the wanton and cruel-yes, cruel, I say!-desires of what sounded to be enough young criminals-in-training to fill New York twice over. Details were copious. Matthew had noted that Lillehorne and Bynes had paid close attention to her testimony and the clerk had broken two quills. Unfortunately, though Miss LeClaire obviously had a strong constitution for someone so thoroughly skewered, she was also useless beyond her ability to titillate.
Effrem’s hand moved the second rook. He gave a shrug and sigh as he set it down, as if it didn’t matter to the game a whit. Matthew saw where it would be going in two moves, and again shifted his king.
