caught the faint aroma of clove-scented cologne.
But then again, Ausley’s realm was only a block to the east, where the iron fence and gate stood around the building of leprous-colored walls on the corner of King and Smith. Whenever Matthew walked so near to that place, his skin crawled and his nostrils flared, so perhaps Ausley’s reek emanated from the yellow bricks here, or from the very air as it moved past the shuttered windows and darkened doors.
“Um…Matthew,” Grigsby said, as he looked at the little flickering flame from the tallowcandle lamp on the cornerpost. “Please don’t think me cowardly in my elder age, but…would you mind walking with me a little further on?” He correctly read Matthew’s hesitation to leave his own straight route home. “I do have something important to ask of you.”
Matthew wasn’t certain what was important enough to get killed for, on an early morning when New York seemed not quite the familiar town it had been yesterday, but he did think that whoever the Masker was, the murder of Mr. Deverick might have been to him as much an aid to sated sleep as a hot toddy. “All right,” he agreed.
Soon they were walking past the almshouse. Grigsby didn’t speak, perhaps in deference to Matthew’s history there, though of course he knew nothing of Ausley’s nocturnal punishments to his charges. Matthew looked neither right nor left, but kept his gaze fixed upon the middle distance. What had been one orphanage building in Matthew’s time had now expanded to become three buildings, though still known collectively as the “almshouse.” The eldest and largest still housed the boys of the streets, the castoffs of broken families, the victims of violence both by Indian and colonist hands, those who were sometimes nameless and bore no recollection of a past nor hope for a happy future. The second building kept orphaned girls and was watched over by a Madam Patterson and her staff, who’d come from England sponsored by Trinity Church for the purpose. The third building, the most recently constructed but still ugly for its gray brick and black slate roof, was under the jurisdiction of the chief prosecutor and contained those debtors and impoverished miscreants whose actions were not exactly criminal but who would be expected to work the blemishes off their records by physical labor on behalf of the town. This building, with its low squat structure and barred windows, had lately become better known as the “poorhouse” and was guaranteed to give a shiver down the spine of every working man and woman whose coins could not equal their credit when the bills came due.
Matthew allowed himself to look at the boys’ orphanage building before they passed. It was completely dark and oppressive in its stillness, its wretched weight of bricks and mortar, its hidden secrets. And yet…and yet…did the faint shine of candlelight move past a bolted shutter? Was Ausley on the move in there, crossing from room to room, listening to the breathing of the young and defenseless? Did he pause by a particular cot in a chamber and cast the dirty light down upon a sleeping face? And did his older “lieutenants,” recruited to keep violent order among those who had known only brutality and suffering, turn their eyes away from that light and settle again into their own night’s refuge?
That kind of thinking led nowhere. Without witnesses, there was nothing. Yet still in the future someone might emerge from that place willing to reveal their torments to the law, and on that day Matthew might still see Ausley hauled away in the back of a wagon.
They continued past more houses and business establishments, but in this area of town with the almshouse at their back and the harbor ahead of them by two long blocks there was a gray cast to the air even on the sunniest day, and night seemed darker still. Not far distant, to their right, was a slave cemetery; on their left was a paupers’ field, the occupants identified-as much as possible-with painted names written on small wooden crosses. A Dutch farmer named Dircksen still worked two acres of corn just east of the paupers’ graveyard, and his sturdy white brick farmhouse looked as if it might last the ages.
“My granddaughter is arriving soon,” said Grigsby.
“Sir?” Matthew wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
“Beryl. My granddaughter. She’s arriving…well, she should have been here three weeks ago. I’ve asked Reverend Wade to put up a prayer for me, on her behalf. More than one, actually. But of course everyone knows how errant those ship schedules can be.”
“Yes, of course.”
“They might have lost the wind for a time. They might have had problems with a sail, or a rudder. Everyone knows how difficult those voyages can be.”
“Yes, very difficult,” Matthew said.
“I expect her any day now. Which is what I wished to ask you.”
“Sir?”
“Well, it connects to what I wished to ask you. Beryl is very headstrong. Very much like her father. Full of life and energy and…really, too much for an elder statesman like myself to handle.”
“I didn’t know you had a granddaughter.”
“Oh, yes. I have a second son, also, and two grandsons. They saw me off at the wharf, when I left to make my name in the colony. They’re all fine and settled. But Beryl…she needs guidance, Matthew. She needs…how shall I say this?…watching.”
“Watching? You mean, supervision?”
“Yes, but…she also has a great appetite for…adventure, I suppose is the word.”
Matthew was silent. They were getting close to Grigsby’s house amid the grouping of houses and nautical wares establishments ahead.
“She’s just turned nineteen. A difficult age, wouldn’t you say?” Grigsby continued when Matthew advanced no comment. “She did have a position, though. For eight weeks she was a school teacher in Marylebone, before the school burned down.”
“Pardon?”
“No one was injured, thankfully. But Beryl has now found herself adrift. I don’t mean that literally, of course. She assured me the ship she booked passage on has made the crossing six times, so I should think the captain knows the way. Wouldn’t you?”
“I would,” Matthew said.
“But it’s her temperament I really worry about, Matthew. She wants to find a position here, and at my urging-and due to that very flattering article on Mrs. Brown’s bakery in the last sheet-headmaster Brown has offered to give her a chance at the school. First she’ll have to prove her ability and her seriousness to the task. So: are you up to it?”
Matthew was taken aback by the question and certainly didn’t know what Grigsby was talking about. He smelled apples on the breeze. There was an orchard on a hill nearby, and a house whose elderly Dutch family refined the most wonderful cider in town. “Up to what?” he asked.
“Up to squiring Beryl about. You know. Ensuring she doesn’t get into any trouble before the headmaster has a chance to make up his mind.”
“Me? No, I don’t think I’m suited for it.”
Grigsby stopped walking and looked at him with such amazement that Matthew had to stop as well. “Don’t think you’re suited for it? Lord, boy! You’re the only one I can think of who is suited for it! You’re serious, no- nonsense, and down-to-earth. You’re reliable and trustworthy. You don’t get drunk and you don’t go chasing every skirt you see.”
Matthew gave a slight frown. “I didn’t know I was so boring.”
“No, I mean what I say. Your influence would be very good for Beryl. A steadying hand, from someone nearer her own age. Someone to set an example for her. You see?”
“An example? Of absolute crushing boredom? Come on, I have to get home.” He started walking in the direction of Grigsby’s house again, and the printmaster quickly caught up with him. Or, to be more accurate, quickly caught up with the circle of lantern light.
“Think about it, won’t you? Just to squire her around a bit, introduce her to some trustworthy people, make her feel comfortable here?”
“I would think that was the grandfather’s job.”
“It is! Yes of course it is! But sometimes, for all his good efforts, a grandfather is only an old fool.”
“Your house,” said Matthew, as they approached it. Grigsby’s abode, flanked on one side by an anchorsmith’s workshop and on the other by a roper’s establishment, was just beyond the apple orchard and faced the East River. The house was made of simple white brick but had been personalized by Grigsby with a bright green door and
