“There were some, I recall, who up and bolted.” Greathouse settled himself in his chair. “What say, Matthew? Still in the game?”
It was time for Matthew to ask an indelicate question, but one that must be posed. “How much money am I to be paid?”
“Ah!” Greathouse grinned. He lifted his glass in a toast. “That’s the spirit!”
“To be negotiated,” said Mrs. Herrald. “You can be sure it’s more money than you’ve ever seen, and will continue to be improved as your experience and training improves.”
“Training? What training?”
“Had to be a catch,” Greathouse said.
“Your training from junior to full associate, which may take some time,” came the reply. “You won’t be given anything you can’t handle, that I promise.” Matthew didn’t like the sound of that training part, yet he assumed it probably had to do with learning a new language or improving his processes of logic and deduction by further reading. Still, his hesitation made Greathouse say, “You know what the dockmen say in London, Matthew? ‘Don’t sweat over the small crates, and everything’s a small crate.’”
“I would say some crates are not as small as others, but I echo the sentiment…I suppose,” said Mrs. Herrald with a slight smile. “We need you, Matthew. You’ll be well-paid and well-challenged. Probably well-travelled too, before long. Certainly well-educated in the complexities of life, and of the criminal mind. Have I frightened you off?”
“No, madam,” Matthew answered quickly and firmly. “Not in the least.”
“That’s what I wished to hear.” She looked out the window and saw a flash of lightning in the distance, toward town. “I don’t think you should try the road this time of night, and in this weather. If you’d care to stay, you can sleep in the downstairs bedroom. Get an early start at sunup, if you like.”
Matthew thought that would be the wisest course, and thanked Mrs. Herrald for her hospitality. As the night moved on, Greathouse brought a chessboard and pieces from another room, set it up on the table, and had a game with Matthew as he downed a second brimful glass of wine. Matthew assumed Greathouse would be an easy victim with all that liquor in his brain, but the man caused grievous difficulty with his knights before Matthew shredded him with a queen-and-bishop combination.
After a second game in which Matthew showed no mercy from the beginning and coldly cut Greathouse to pieces left and right until the swordsman’s king was trapped in a corner like a miserable rat, Greathouse yawned and stretched his huge self until his backbone cracked. Then he said goodnight and retired to the carriage-house, where he resided.
Mrs. Herrald had already gone to bed during the second chess game, so Matthew went into the small but comfortable bedroom downstairs, took off his clothes, and put on a nightshirt she’d laid out for him. He washed his face in a waterbowl, cleaned his teeth with a brush and peppermint dental powder left for his convenience, blew out his candle, and went to bed as the distant lightning flashed and flared over Manhattan.
There was much to think about. To deeply ponder and consider. Matthew spent about three minutes thinking about Mrs. Herrald’s “sermon” at the table before the weariness crashed over him and he was out as quickly and absolutely as his candle.
Thus it was with some confusion and grogginess that he came back to his senses with someone pulling at him and a lantern in his face. The rain was still falling from the dark, hitting the bedroom’s window. He sat up, squinting in what seemed like noonday’s sun thrown in his eyes.
“Up and dressed,” said Hudson Greathouse, standing over him. His voice was all business and as sober as Sunday. “Your training starts now.”
Twelve
Matthew was urged by Hudson Greathouse through the drizzling rain toward the brown stone carriage-house, where illumination showed at the windows. He doubted he’d been allowed to slumber for more than two hours, and he was dog-tired and heavy-limbed. He walked before the light of Greathouse’s lantern through the open doorway, finding himself standing on a dirt floor with eight more lanterns set about in a large circle.
Greathouse closed the door and, to Matthew’s unease, dropped the bolt across it. There was no carriage in the place, but a set of steps led up to a second level and what must have been Greathouse’s living area. Greathouse set the lamp he was carrying on a wallhook, and it was then that Matthew saw the glint of yellow light on the grips and handguards of four swords in scabbards also resting horizontally on hooks. That wasn’t all of the man’s arsenal. On display along with the swords were two pistols, three daggers, and-of all things-an oversized slingshot.
“Mrs. Herrald tells me you know nothing about swords or pistols. Correct?”
“Yes sir. I mean…correct.” Matthew had been about to yawn before he’d seen the weapons, but now he was as fully awake as a healthy jolt of fear could make a person.
“You’ve never held a sword, then?”
“No. Well…” He had briefly picked up a sword in a gaol cell in Fount Royal, but it was more to get rid of it than use it and so he didn’t think that incident counted for much. “When I was a boy…I mean, a very young boy…I was running with a gang at the harbor. Not a real gang, I mean. But just…you know…boys. Orphans, like I was.”
“There’s a point to this?”
“Yes sir. We used to fight each other with sticks and pretend they were swords. You know. Mock wars.”
“Ever kill anyone with a pretend sword?” Greathouse approached him, looming over Matthew like a giant and getting larger still, if just in Matthew’s sensibility, as his shadow was thrown across the wall.
“No sir.”
“Ever kill anyone with anything?”
“No sir.”
“Can you fight? Use your fists?”
“I’m…sure I remember fighting with the gang. But it was a long time ago, and I really was a different person. I’ve changed since then.”
“You should have kept that part of yourself.” Greathouse stopped before him and sized him up from toe to head as if for the first time. Washed with lanternlight, the man’s face was haughty and dismissive. It occurred to Matthew that either Greathouse had tremendous recuperative abilities over the effects of alcohol or he could simply drink a keg down and keep going.
“You’re spindly,” Greathouse said, and began to walk in a circle around him. “You look weak as water and pale as a moonbeam. Don’t you ever get outside in the daylight and work?”
“My work is…predominantly mental, sir.”
“That’s the trouble with young people these days. They sit on their mental and call it work. Well, you think you’re so smart, don’t you? So clever at chess. I think you’ve let yourself go to rot. You’re more a ghost than a man. How’d you get that scar on your head? Fall down and hit it on a damned chessboard?”
“No sir,” Matthew said. “I…got it in a fight with a bear.”
Greathouse stopped his circling.
“If I may ask,” Matthew ventured, “how did you get your scar?”
Greathouse paused. Then at last he said, “Broken teacup. Thrown by my third wife.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t ask the questions,” the man snarled. “I ask the questions, do you understand?”
“Yes sir.”
Greathouse continued his circling, around and around. Then he stopped directly in front of Matthew. “If you want to see a scar, take a gander at this.” He unbuttoned his ruffled shirt and displayed a truly ugly brown scar that began just beneath the left collarbone and crossed to the center of the chest. “Dagger strike, fifth of March, 1677. He was going for my heart, but I caught his wrist in time. An assassin, dressed in monk’s robes. And here.” He pulled the shirt off his right shoulder to show a dark purple crater. “Musket ball, twenty-second of June, 1684. Knocked my arm out of the socket. I was lucky there, no bones broken. The ball went through the woman who was standing in front of me at the time. Look here, then.” He angled his body so Matthew could see a third gruesome
