Little did he know, Matthew thought. Anyone could handle a sword if they were six-foot-three and constructed like a warship. And a pistol could be aimed by any idiot, so what was the point?
You’re more a ghost than a man.
Strong words from a weak mind, Matthew thought. Well, damn him! Ordering people around like a sandpit general! Damn him to blazes!
Matthew lay on his bed and closed his eyes, but even so his fit of anger would not be stilled. Gone out there all that way, just to be tricked. Tried to make a fool out of me. But they didn’t do a very good job of that, did they? No siree! It takes a smarter pair than those two to make a fool of Matthew Corbett! Now this “training” business, trying to test my mettle! Trying to make me do something I’ve never done before and likely can never do. Sword- fighting and fist-fighting and acting like a common lout! If I’d wanted to spend my life wallowing in violence I could’ve stayed an orphan with the harbor gangs!
He had a clear vision of Katherine Herrald, seated behind her desk. Fixing him with those keen blue eyes like lamps shining underwater.
Many times you will fail, she said. That is the nature of the world, and the truth of life. But when you find your horse again, will you go back, or will you go forward?
And then she lifted her hand from the desk, made a fist, and knocked down upon the wood. Once…twice…a third time…
“Matthew? Matthew?”
He sat up with a start, realizing how dramatically the light had faded.
Again came three knocks. “Matthew? Open up, please!”
It was Hiram Stokely’s voice. He was up on the ladder, knocking at the underside of the trapdoor. “Matthew?”
“Yes sir! Just a minute!” Matthew got his feet on the floor and rubbed his eyes. He was feeling much better now, but what time was it? His watch was in his coat pocket. By the fading light he thought it must be near five o’clock. He pulled open the trapdoor and looked down into Stokely’s face.
“Sorry to bother you,” Stokely apologized, “but you have a visitor.”
“A visitor?” Then Stokely moved aside for Matthew to see and there standing at the foot of the ladder was someone he’d never expected.
“’lo, Matthew,” said John Five. He must’ve just come from the blacksmith’s shop, for though he wore an ordinary white shirt, brown breeches, and boots his face was still ruddy from the furnace fire. “Can I climb up?”
“Yes. Of course. Come on.” Matthew held the trapdoor open as Stokely descended and John Five climbed the ladder. When John was up in the room, Matthew eased the trapdoor shut and went about lighting a couple of candles.
“Nice place,” John said, gazing around. “All those books. I should have known.”
“Pardon me.” Matthew spent a minute washing his face at the waterbasin. He retrieved his watch from his coat and saw that it was indeed almost ten minutes after five. He wound the watch and held it to his ear to hear the ticking.
“Oh, that’s a fine thing! I didn’t know you made that kind of money!”
“It was a gift. It is nice, isn’t it?”
“Somethin’ I’ll likely never have. Can I hold it?”
Matthew gave it to him and prepared a dish of shaving soap while John Five listened to the watch at his remaining ear.
“Ticks pretty, huh?” John Five asked.
“It does.”
John set the watch down on the bedside table and sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”
“Yarrow oil. I have a sore shoulder.”
“Oh. I could’ve used that, many a time.”
Matthew applied the soap to his stubble and began to shave with his straight-razor. He could see John Five standing behind him in the small round mirror over the basin. John kept looking around the room, his brow knit. Something was coming, but Matthew had no idea what it was.
John cleared his throat. “Take you to supper.”
Matthew turned around. “I’m sorry?”
“Supper. I’ll take you to supper. My coin.”
Matthew continued his shaving, scraping his chin clean, but he watched John Five in the mirror. “What’s this about, John?”
A shrug was the first reply. John walked over and peered out the window onto the Broad Way. “Doesn’t fit you, holdin’ a grudge,” he said. “You know what I’m talkin’ at.”
“I know you’re referring to our disagreement over a certain course of action. But I want you to know as well that I’ve thought a lot about what you’ve said. About Nathan and all the rest of it.” Matthew paused with the razor at his upper lip. “Even though I wish things might be different, I know they can’t be. So I’m doing my best to let that go, John. I really am.”
“Does that mean you don’t hold a grudge?”
Matthew finished the lip before he answered. “It does.”
“Whew!” said John Five, with visible relief. “Thank God for that!”
Now Matthew was really curious. He washed the blade off and put it aside. “If your visit is just to discern if I hold a grudge against you, I can promise I don’t. But I’d say that’s not exactly why you’re here. Is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
Matthew began to wipe his face with a clean cloth. When it was obvious John Five was not going to advance without prodding, Matthew said, “I’d like to hear it, if you’d like to tell me.”
John nodded. He rubbed his hand over his mouth and stared at the floor, all signs that Matthew took to be the steadying of nerves. Matthew had never seen John Five so jittery, and this alone doubled his curiosity.
“Take you to supper,” John said. “I can tell you about it there. Say the Thorn Bush, at seven?”
“The Thorn Bush? Not my favorite place.”
“Food’s good and cheap there. And they let me run a bill.”
“Why not just tell me about it now?”
“Because,” John said, “I eat supper every Thursday evenin’ at five-thirty with Constance and Reverend Wade. Tonight, especially, I wouldn’t be wantin’ to not show up.”
“And why is tonight so special, then?”
John drew in a long breath and slowly let it out. “Because,” he said quietly, “it’s the reverend I need to talk to you about. Constance thinks…she thinks…” He hesitated; it was something he couldn’t quite force himself to spit out.
“Thinks what?” Matthew urged, just as quietly.
John lifted his gaze to Matthew’s. His eyes looked sunken and haunted. “Constance thinks her father is losin’ his mind.”
The sentence hung between them. Outside, a woman-Mrs. Swaye, from two houses down-was calling for her little boy Giddy to come to supper. A dog barked and a wagon creaked as it was pulled past the window.
“More than that,” John continued. “Things she can’t understand. I’ve got to go, Matthew. I’ve got to go sit at that table and know what Constance is thinkin’, and I’ve got to look in Reverend Wade’s face and wonder what I’m seein’. Please meet me at the Thorn Bush at seven. You’ve got to eat somewhere, don’t you?”
Matthew had planned to eat with the Stokelys, but this put a new coat of paint on the fence. The rough- edged Thorn Bush was certainly not the place Matthew would have chosen, though he realized John Five probably wished to go there for one reason other than his credit, which was more easily obtained at the Thorn Bush than at any other tavern in town: you could be faceless in there, if you pleased. The gambling tables and roaming prostitutes focused all attention upon themselves. And it was surely not an establishment into which Reverend Wade nor any of the minister’s friends might wander.
“All right,” he said. “If you wish, seven o’clock at the Thorn Bush.”
“Thank you, Matthew.” John started to clap Matthew on the right shoulder, but he saw the slick shine of the yarrow oil and stayed his hand. “I’ll see you there,” he said, and Matthew lifted the trapdoor to let him descend the
