’em all the time a’-workin’ their mischiefs and bad intents. And you know they come up alongside me a night back first a’ June and robbed me, robbed all my passengers right there pretty as you please. Next time I’m feared if we don’t have no coin or drink to scold ’em off with they’re gonna run somebody clean through, ’cause their leader, that young fella thinks he’s the like of Kidd his-self, well he carries a rapier sword and I tell you I don’t like havin’ a blade so near my throat on a night the Devil wouldn’t be out there on that damn river. What do ye say?”
Lord Cornbury said nothing, for the longest spell. His eyes had gotten very large, which did nothing for his beauty. Finally, he asked of the audience, “Can anyone here translate that into proper English?”
“Oh, Mr. Gillespie’s prattling on, sir,” said Cornbury’s new favorite middleman, the high constable. “He’s mentioning a problem with some river trash that I am planning to clean up very soon indeed. It’s nothing you need think about.”
“What’d he say?” Gillespie asked the man sitting next to him.
“Sit down, Hooper!” commanded Lillehorne, with an imperial wave of that cane. “The governor doesn’t have time for your little situations.”
Afterward, Matthew wondered why he did it. He thought it was because of those two words. Little situations. To Gardner Lillehorne, everything that did not pertain to himself was a little situation. The robbers that used the river as their highway was a little situation, though they’d been at it for almost a year. The murder of Julius Godwin was a little situation, according to how much effort Lillehorne had put into it. So, too-and it seemed that all wickedness, sloth, and corruption came back to this point-the crimes of Eben Ausley surely would have been a little situation to the constable, whom Matthew had seen gaming with the headmaster on many occasions.
Well, it was time to make a big display of a little situation, Matthew thought.
He stood up, steeled himself in an instant, and when Lord Cornbury looked at him with those painted eyes he said, “I’d like to ask that some measure of attention be given to the problem of the constables, sir. The problem being that, as the town has increased in population and unfortunately so has the incidence of criminal behavior, the number and efficiency of the constables has not kept pace.”
“Please identify yourself,” Cornbury requested.
“His name’s Corbett, sir. He’s a clerk for one of the town’s-”
“Matthew Corbett,” came the steadfast and rather loud reply, as Matthew was determined not to be shot down by the high constable’s crooked musket. “I am clerk for Magistrate-”
“-magistrates, Nathaniel Powers,” Lillehorne kept talking, speaking directly to the governor, his own voice getting louder, “and I am well aware of this-”
“-Nathaniel Powers, sir,” continued Matthew, battling the war of tangled voices, and then suddenly he was swept by a storm of images from his little situation with Magistrate Woodward at Fount Royal in the Carolina colony, where he had fought as a champion for the life of the accused witch Rachel Howarth. He remembered skeletons in a muddy pit, and the vile killer who’d tried to murder them in the middle of the night; he remembered the evil smell of the gaol and the beautiful naked woman dropping her cloak and saying defiantly Here is the witch; he recalled the fires that burned across Fount Royal, set by a diabolical hand; he saw in that storm the mob surging toward the gaolhouse doors, the shouting for the death at the stake of a woman whom Matthew had come to believe was innocently embroiled in a plot demonic far beyond even the ravings of that mad Reverend Exodus Jerusalem; he saw the lifeforce of Isaac Woodward waning, even as Matthew risked everything for-as the magistrate had put it-his “nightbird”; he saw all these scenes and more awhirl in his mind, and as he turned his face upon High Constable Lillehorne he knew one thing certain about himself: he had earned the right to speak as a man.
“-problem, fear not. We have on hand a score of good men, loyal citizens who nightly heed their civic du-”
“Sir!” Matthew said; it hadn’t been a shout, but it was as startling as a pistol report in the chamber, for no one dared raise a voice against Lillehorne. Instantly the place could have been a tomb, and Matthew thought he’d indeed put the first shovel to his grave.
Lillehorne stopped speaking.
“I hold the floor,” Matthew said, the heat rising in his face. He saw Eben Ausley give a mean little smile and then hide it behind the hand that cupped his chin. Later for him, Matthew thought. Today for me.
“What did you say?” Lillehorne came forward, a slow step at a time. This was a man who could glide. His narrow black eyes in the long pallid face were fixed upon his enemy with almost delicious anticipation.
“I hold the floor. I have the right to speak freely.” He looked at Cornbury. “Do I not?”
“Um…yes. Yes, of course you do, son.”
Ugh, Matthew thought. Son? He stood sideways to the high constable, not prepared to fully turn his back on the man. Beside him, Magistrate Powers said sotto voce, “Give your best.”
“Please,” Lord Cornbury urged, evidently feeling quite the benignant ruler now. “Do speak freely.”
“Thank you, sir.” One more uneasy glance at Lillehorne, who’d stayed his forward progress, and then Matthew gave all his attention to the man in the dress. “I wished to point out that we-our town-suffered a murder two weeks ago, and that-”
“Just one murder?” Cornbury interrupted, with a lopsided grin. “Mind you, I just made a sea voyage from a city where a dozen murders a night is commonplace, so bless your stars.”
Some laughter ensued from this, notably Lillehorne’s chortle and a repugnant noseblow guffaw from none other than Ausley. Matthew kept his face expressionless and continued. “I do bless my stars, sir, but I’d rather look to the constables for protection.”
Now Solomon Tully and the magistrate laughed, and across the aisle Effrem Owles gave a little gleeful yelp.
“Well.” The governor’s smile was not so hideous, or perhaps Matthew was getting accustomed to the face. “Do go on.”
“I’m aware of London’s mortality rate.” The Gazette made sure of that, with all its grisly descriptions of throat-cuttings, decapitations, strangulations, and poisonings of men, women, and children. “Also of the fact that London has an advanced force of civic organization.”
“Not too well organized, unfortunately,” Cornbury said, with a shrug.
“But think of how many murders there might be a night, without that organization. And add to that all the other criminal acts that occur between dusk and dawn. I’m proposing, sir, that we as a community take London’s model into example and do something now to stem criminal violence before it becomes…shall we say… rooted.”
“We don’t have any criminal violence here!” shouted someone from the back. “That’s just hog’s breath, is all!”
Matthew didn’t look around; he knew it was one of those so-called score of good men defending his woe- begotten honor. Other shouts and hollers burbled around, and he waited until they quieted. “My point,” he said calmly, “is that we need organization before we have a problem. When we’re chasing the cart it might be too late.”
“You have suggestions, I assume?”
“Lord Governor!” Lillehorne, from the sound of the anguish in his voice, had been holding his breath while this discourse-this affront to his authority-was taking place. “The clerk is free to write his suggestions and give them to my clerk, just as any man or woman in this room or this town or this colony can do. I don’t see the need for this public laundering!”
Was there any point in reminding Lillehorne of the letters already written and obviously rejected or discarded outright? Matthew didn’t think so. “I do have a few suggestions,” he said, still speaking directly to Cornbury. “May I state them, for the public record?” He nodded toward the scribes with quills poised over parchment paper at the aldermen’s table.
“You may.”
Matthew thought he heard a hissing sound from behind him. Lillehorne was not having a good day, and it was likely to get worse. “The constables,” Matthew began, “need to meet at a common place before their rounds begin. They should sign their names in a ledger, indicating what time they arrive for duty. They should also sign out, and so receive permission from a higher authority before they go back to their homes. They should sign an oath not to drink on duty. And, to be honest, the drunkards among them should be culled and sent packing.”
“Really?” Cornbury adjusted his hat, as the peacock feathers had begun to droop over into his eyes.
