but on this afternoon just managed to make him feel not quite so cold. Greathouse quaffed a healthy swig, also perhaps to burn away some demons, and then swung himself up into the saddle.
The ride back to Mrs. Herrald’s was done in silence. Matthew found himself actually using the reins and his knees more confidently, and though Buck gave an occasional whicker of indignation the horse seemed to appreciate the fact that his rider had taken firmer command. Matthew had figured that nothing could be worse today than what he’d already been through, not even a buck from Buck, so the devil with this horse thinking he was the master.
Matthew did note one thing, and tucked it away. From time to time Greathouse glanced back along the road they travelled, his eyes dark and darting, as if making sure that through the glare of afternoon sunlight and swirl of dust a creature to be feared was not even now bearing down on them, like a hydra of many heads, arms, and knives.
There was more to this story of Professor Fell, Matthew decided as he watched Greathouse check the road at their backs. I’ve only been told a part of it. There was still some grim-and perhaps personal-secret that Greathouse kept bound up inside himself as surely as with murderer’s ropes. What that might be would have to wait for a safer hour.
Twenty-Two
“Forgiveness can be our greatest strength, yet also our greatest weakness. We all may understand, with the grace of Christ, what it means to forgive an enemy. To look in the eye someone who has deceived us, or wronged us, either in private or public, and offer a hand of compassionate forgiveness. Sometimes that takes a strength beyond the ken of man, does it not? Yet we do it, if we walk with God. We put aside the injustices others have set upon us, and we continue our forward progress on this earth. Now think well on what may be the most difficult act of forgiveness for many of us. To look in the eye of the mirror and forgive ourselves of deceits and wrongs we have accumulated over the many seasons of life. How may we truly forgive others if we cannot come to grips with the sins of our own souls? Those sins and torments brought upon ourselves by ourselves? How may we approach with a fresh soul anyone in need of deliverance, if our own souls remain injured by self-inflicted wounds?”
Reverend William Wade was speaking from his pulpit in Trinity Church on Sunday morning. It was as usual a full sanctuary, for Wade was a powerful speaker and had the rare quality of mercy over his listeners; he didn’t often speak more than two hours, which made him a favorite of the elderly who had to hold their ear-horns. Matthew sat in the fourth row of pews, alongside Hiram and Patience Stokely. Directly behind him sat Magistrate Powers, his wife, and daughter, and in front of him was Tobias Winekoop and his family. Shutters were closed at the windows to restrain the morning sun and also, according to the church elders, concentrate the attention of the congregation on Reverend Wade and not the weather or some other outside distraction, such as the cattle pen within spitting distance. The church was illuminated by candles and smelled of sawdust and weeping pine, for construction of some kind or another was always in progress. A few pigeons fluttered in the rafters, having made a nest up there after the roof was damaged by a storm the first week of May. Matthew had heard that Reverend Wade was seen at least twice putting out a platter of seeds and bread crumbs, though the elders were incensed about the pigeon droppings getting all over the pineboards and wanted to hire an Indian to bring them down with a bow-and-arrow. So far, though, no bowstring had been pulled in Trinity Church.
“Note here,” said the reverend as he surveyed his flock, “I do not speak of self-forgiveness as a golden key to unlock further sins of mind, spirit, and flesh. I do not speak of self-forgiveness as a dreamer’s potion that has the power to undo all that has gone before. Far from it. I speak of self-forgiveness as Paul writes in Second Corinthians, chapter the seventh, verses the ninth, the tenth, and the eleventh. I speak of self-forgiveness as letting go of the worldly sorrow that leads to death. Children of God, we hurt and we suffer, and that is the plight of Adam. We have been commanded from the Garden for our sins, yes, and we must come to dust as the world must turn through spring to winter, but why must we waste our moments in this life burdened with sins of the heart that we can not forgive?”
As the reverend spoke, Matthew listened with both ears but his eyes were watching John Five and Constance Wade, who sat together-at a decent distance apart, of course-on the front pew. John wore a brown suit and Constance was dressed in dark gray, both of them models of attentiveness to the message being preached. No one would know from looking at them that they feared for the sanity of the black-garbed man at the pulpit. Neither would anyone guess from regarding Matthew that this day was any different for him than any other Sabbath he’d attended church. He did not let his gaze linger on Reverend Wade with suspicion, but rather kept his expression as remote as Heaven sometimes seemed to be in the affairs of ordinary men, and wondered what wrenching sadness was hidden behind the somber face.
Last night had been another little carnival, Matthew had heard from both Magistrate Powers and Magistrate Dawes when he’d arrived at church. Fifteen more men and three women had been arrested for breaking the decree, necessitating throwing some of the previous night’s haul out of gaol to make room. A dice game at the house of Samuel Baiter on Wall Street had led to a drunken brawl in which six men had beaten each other bloody and one’s nose had nearly been bitten off. At a tick past eight-thirty, Dippen Nack had put his black billyclub up between the shoulderblades of a tall, heavy-set doxy at the corner of the Broad Way and Beaver, announced an arrest, and suddenly found himself looking into the blue-shaded eyes of Lord Cornbury, who was-according to Cornbury according to Nack according to what Dawes had heard-out for an “evening constitutional.” All in all, another night for the record books.
But, again, the decree must be having some impact beyond chaos and clownish hilarity, for the Masker had not added another stone to the cemetery.
Matthew’s dream last night had been unsettling. He’d gone to bed dreading what would spill from his mind after that exhumation on the Ormond farm, and so he was rewarded for his trepidation.
He’d been sitting at a table in a smoke-filled room-a tavern, perhaps-playing cards with a dark figure across from him. Five cards were dealt by a black-gloved hand. What the game was, Matthew didn’t know. He only knew that the stakes were high, though there was no money in evidence. There were no voices, no humpdaroo, no fiddle music, nothing but the silence of the void. Suddenly the black glove laid down not a card but a knife with a bloody blade. Matthew knew he had to reply with a card, but when he set his down it was not a card but a lantern with broken glass and a small puddle of tallow burning within. The black glove moved again across the scarred table, and there lay Eben Ausley’s missing notebook. Matthew had felt the stakes were getting higher, yet the game was still unknown. He had put down his highest card, a queen of diamonds, and found it changed to an envelope with a red wax seal. Then his opponent offered a challenge, and what lay before Matthew he couldn’t quite recognize until he picked it up, held it close, and by the guttering tallow realized it was the first joint of a man’s thumb.
He had gotten out of bed before dawn and sat at his window watching the sky lighten, trying to arrange the pieces of his dream that way and this, this way and that. But dreams being such gossamer and fleeting impressions, only Somnus knew their riddles.
In the pocket of Matthew’s coat, as he sat listening to Reverend Wade, was indeed an envelope secured not with red sealing wax but with white dripped from a common taper.
It was addressed:
Even now the widow Deverick and Robert were sitting over on the right side of the church, surrounded by a company of Golden Hill residents. It seemed to Matthew, judging from the thrust of the woman’s jaw and sidelong
