“Would you direct me southward?” Matthew asked the barkeep, who gave him directions as far as the Oak And Eight tavern on Pinchin Street. “Thank you,” he replied, and he left the barkeep and the serving-girl an extra coin. Then he took his lantern outside, pulled his cloak tighter because the night had gotten colder, situated his tricorn a little more westward, and began striding south.
He had been correct about this area coming more to life as the night moved on, for now though the fog had lifted and the chill wind had picked up figures were walking on the street in numbers that would have been New York at midday. There seemed to be four taverns on every block, and all of them doing a brisk business. A body came flying out the door of one of them as Matthew approached, and this was followed by a heavy-set black-bearded brute in a leather apron coming out to dump a bucket of foul unmentionables upon the man’s head, much to the amusement of the throng who seemed to materialize from the air in search of such tragic comedies.
The street curved to the left and downward, sinking toward the Thames. Matthew walked at a brisk pace, his head on a swivel. A rider on a horse came galloping past with two more in pursuit, what appeared to be a chase with violent ramifications. Matthew smelled the ashes of burned buildings and had to sidestep many times to keep his shoes out of a nasty mire. From somewhere or another a woman was screaming and then the screaming became a high-pitched, nearly hysterical laugh. Up ahead, out in the gloom, there came a pistol shot.
The first thing Matthew was going to do would be to ask the man behind the golden mask why in the world he’d had to make this trek into such badlands. Then again, one did not ask too many impertinent questions of a phantom who had already murdered six men and had a saber eager for new blood.
He walked through an area where the painted wagtails marched back and forth like soldiers of a determined army, flagging down coaches by dropping part of their garments to reveal their gifts or actually trying to seize the horses’ bits. But it was apparent that the coaches would not be here if they weren’t bringing customers, and so the wanton troops did not have to wage their campaigns too ardently. In this area the wooden houses seemed to all be crooked and leaned one upon the other, as if their roofs might slide off at any minute like the top layers of rotten cakes. In the light of pink lamps Matthew was nearly lifted off his feet in the arms of fervent females and carried into one or another of the houses while their pimps, armed with stout clubs and hatchets, looked on approvingly and called out prices and practices for male consideration, though Matthew noted a few genteel-looking ladies emerging from some of those coaches. He got out of there with his clothes and his skin still on, but he thought he would be forever haunted by the sight of little girls aged eight and ten, all dressed up and decorated like gaudy candies, who hung back in the doorways while the big bawds launched themselves like fireships.
In another few minutes he was treated to the sight of a mob of men shouting around a sunken pit, and glancing in he wished he had not, for in the windblown torchlight a chained bear was fighting two snarling dogs, and the bear itself had scarred holes where its eyes had been removed. He put his head down and hurried past.
When he got back to New York, he decided, he would kiss every plank of the wharf and by God he would find Lord Cornbury and kiss that horsey face too, for on that day everything would be beautiful.
A cry to his left pierced his reverie.
Matthew dared to look in that direction. He was passing an alley. A thrust of the lantern revealed three men beating a slight figure—a young boy, it looked to be—that had tried to crawl into a mound of crates. One of the men’s eyes flashed scarlet as he looked toward the offending lamp, and Matthew saw that his face was marked with streaks of red and black warpaint. One of the others had the boy’s legs and was dragging him out, and just in that second Matthew had a quick look at the young face and saw that both eyes were already blackened. Then the three fell upon the boy and began to pound away with their fists like workmen intent on any task that called for full concentration.
Matthew went on.
It was not his business.
He had somewhere to be.
This was a city where you were on your own, and God help you.
He wasn’t strong enough to take on three fierce ruffians.
Shit.
He stopped.
The boy cried out again, a high bleat of pain. Matthew could hear the sound of blows connecting.
Why? he asked the fates. And though there was no answer from them, his own reply was Because you are here, and you are not yet so far a citizen of London as to keep walking.
He returned to the alley. The boy was fighting wildly but only gaining a little time. All three of the men—young men, they appeared to be—wore the warpaint on their faces. One of them sported a headband complete with a spiky patch of feathers. That individual fell down across the boy’s back, planted a knee on the spine, and began to pull the boy’s head upward by the chin as if to break the neck.
“That will do,” said Matthew.
Instantly the three figures froze. The boy continued to fight, clawing to get to the dubious safety of the crates.
“Away with you!” growled the man who’d looked into Matthew’s light. “You don’t want none of this!”
“I don’t like what I’m seeing. Three against one, and a young boy too. You should be ashamed.”
“Fuckface,” came the gruff voice of the one with the Indian headband, “you move on or we’ll cut your balls off and feed ’em to you.” He let go of the boy’s chin. His hand moved toward his fringed deerskin jacket and returned with the shine of a knife.
Matthew had seen, to his right, a jumble of flame-blackened boards. He drew out one that bore a couple of twisted iron nails toward the end that would meet flesh. He was frightened of this confrontation, for sure, and later—if possible—he might think himself stupid for having stuck a sharp nose in, but after all the misery and corruption he had seen in this city he could not be a part of it.
“Let him up,” he said.
“Carve him a grin, Black Wolf,” said the feathered gent, who remained with his knee pressed down on the boy’s struggling form.
The one who Matthew had first seen pulled a knife as long as Matthew’s forearm. The second one also brought out a blade.
Matthew stood his ground. “Black Wolf?” He nearly laughed, but he was too tight inside. “Do you apes fancy yourselves real Indians?” He readied himself to throw the lantern into a warpainted face and follow that with a nailboard blow; then, his hand would go to his own dagger, which unfortunately was of a pitiful size in this circumstance.
Black Wolf slinked forward, the league-long knife making little circles in the air.
One more step, Matthew thought, and then the lantern would fly. Come on, you—
A monstrous stormwave hit him from behind, coupled with a bellow of voices, and for an instant he was back on the Wanderer fighting the whole of the roiling Atlantic. He tried to twist around to use the board, but a club struck him on the shoulder and the makeshift weapon dropped away. He had a fleeting second to recognize that in the blur of faces he was seeing, all of them had blackened eyes. Then a fist caught him on the jaw, another one hit him high on the chest and took his breath, he was thrown to the ground and was aware of his attackers attacking those who had been about to attack him. Blades gleamed, fists flew, cries of rage and pain spewed out, bodies tumbled, the boy had gotten up and was fighting like a fiend, and Matthew struggled for air and tried to get to his feet.
He had made it to his knees when flesh smacked flesh in the riotous melee and a body fell upon him, and in the confusion he saw a boot coming but he could not get his head out of its path.
And so, ingloriously but completely…to sleep.
Three
Enemies Old and New
Sixteen
LET me make sure I have heard you correctly. You just said Matthew Corbett has been sentenced to Newgate Prison?”
&nb
sp; “Not sentenced,” Gardner Lillehorne answered, with but a slight quaver in his voice. “Sent there for containment.”
Berry Grigsby did not wait for Hudson to speak again. She had been silent during Lillehorne’s recitation of Matthew’s appearance before the judge and his subsequent banishment to Newgate, but now she found her face burning and her tongue wanting to burst through her clenched teeth. Even she knew the horrors of that prison, and this was more than she could bear. “How could you do it?” she asked, with a flame in her voice that nearly set fire to Lillehorne’s pale blue suit. “You stood there and let this so-called judge send Matthew into that hellpit? Oh my Christ! How long has he been there?”
“A few days, only,” came the weak response. Lillehorne had his desk between himself, Hudson Greathouse and the red-faced girl, and he gripped both hands to the desk’s edge as if he might have to heft it up and use it as a shield against feminine fury. “But…listen…I tried my best to help him. I swear I did. It’s just…well, he antagonized Judge Archer. It was a horrible scene.”
“As horrible as a few days—and nights—in Newgate? I doubt that very much!” Berry had come to the end of her patience. She was weary to her bones but ready to fight to their marrow. The travellers had finally arrived in London this morning, about an hour ago, had found rooms at the Soames Inn just off Fleet Street, and had come directly to the office of the assistant to the head constable as soon as they could get directions and hail a carriage. Berry’s coppery-red hair was a wild tangle of multiple birds-nests, her eyes were hot coals in a florid face, and her mouth was ready to bite off the head of a blue-suited snake coiled up behind a desk with a stupid simpering half-grin on his face.
“He must be let out at once!” Berry said, her voice rising to dangerous heights. “I swear to holy God and Mother Mary I’ll spend the rest of my days seeing you in that damned hole if you don’t get him—”
“Out?” said Lillehorne, with admirable calm in the face of this heated whirlwind. “I was about to tell you. He is already out.”
Those four words brought for a few seconds a sudden silence to this storm, but it was only the pause before a bigger blow.
“Christ’s blood!” Hudson thundered, himself on the edge of going berserk. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
It was a moment—a precious moment, in which the assistant to the high constable evaluated his past life and determined he would like to live at least several more hours—before Lillehorne spoke again. His voice broke when he began, so he had to start over. “There is a problem,” he said. “I was just about to walk over to the court of sessions, it’s only across the courtyard.” He stood up; even his bones were trembling in the presence of the man and the woman who had come from New York to find Corbett and burst past his clerk into this office like human hurricanes, and surely in the next few minutes he would have to hang on to his skin. “Would you accompany me?”
“What’s the problem, then?” Hudson fired at him.
“Please. Just go with me, and all will be explained.” Which, Lillehorne thought, might be one of the biggest lies ever to leave his crimped lips.
Hudson and Berry left the office with Lillehorne, they descended a staircase to the courtyard and strode along one of its precise geometric paths under a low gray sky. They entered the massive courthouse and presently found themselves standing before the young straw-haired clerk named Steven, in an office with filing cabinets, bookshelves and on the white walls portraits of famous dead men.
“I know, I know,” said the young man as soon as he saw Lillehorne. He lifted a hand to remove his square-lensed spectacles. His eyes appeared dazed and beneath them were purple hollows. “How this has happened…I have no idea.”
“What’s happened?” Hudson nearly shouted. And then, restraining himself, he said, “I’m Hudson Greathouse and this is Berry Grigsby. We’ve come all the way from New York to find Matthew Corbett, and now we’re told he was sent to Newgate Prison. When was the trial?”
“There was no trial, sir,” said a voice from the doorway, and there appeared a slim but decidedly solid-looking man with blonde hair tied in a queue by a black ribbon, his apparel a dark blue suit with gleaming silver buttons, a gray waistcoat and white stockings. His aristocratic face was unsmiling. “I was on my way here when the power of your voice almost blew me back to my office. You might lower your volume so as not to blast the pigeons off the roof.”
“Judge William Atherton Archer,” said Lillehorne to his two New York acquaintances, and then he retreated a step as if wishing to merge into the wall behind him before this war truly began.
“Oh, so you’re the one!” Hudson brought up a wolfish grin that in its history had caused many men to count their moments. “The judge,” and he let that word drool out, “who sent my friend to Newgate. As I asked this clerk, when was the trial?”
Archer approached Hudson. When he got within the range of which any other man would stop, he kept coming two steps nearer, until he was looking up at the larger figure as a bulldog might stare up the nostrils of a bull. “And as I have already said, there was no trial. Sir,” he added, his expression impassive. “Do they still understand English in the colonies?”
“Yes, and they understand stupidity too, of which London judges need to be educated.”
Lillehorne gave a noise that sounded as if a great pain had issued deep in his bowels.
The clerk seemed to rouse himself and think it best to intercede. “Judge Archer, these two are asking about—”
“I know why they’re here!” The words were snapped at the clerk, but the intense dark blue eyes were still fully focused on Greathouse. “I heard the introductions. My ears are still ringing. Yes, I sent Corbett to Newgate. Without trial. That will come later, when he’s found.” A fly buzzed between himself and the other man’s face. Archer quickly brushed it away. “Look what you’ve let in here, Lillehorne!” It was said with the burning eyes still fixed upon Hudson’s fiery orbs. “A little flitting nuisance to add even more joy to my day!”
Near tears, Berry spoke up. “All we want to do is find Matthew!”
“Then you share my desire. Mr. Jessley, tell the tale.”
The clerk lowered his head. He took a deep breath. The fly circled his head and landed on his right cheek. He brushed it away with nerveless fingers and began. “Late yesterday afternoon…I received a messenger from the constable’s office. It was nearly time to close up and go home…all the judges had already gone, and I was on my own. The messenger brought a document. Judge Archer has already seen it.”
“A document on official parchment, bearing the official seal. It’s in my office right now,” Archer added. “Go on, Mr. Jessley.”
“The document,” said Steven, “requested an immediate transfer of the prisoner Matthew Corbett from Newgate Prison to Houndsditch prison, in Whitechapel. The way it was—is—worded…left no doubt that immediate meant just as it said. And…the devil of it…was that not only was it scribed on official parchment with the proper seal, but it bore three signatures: those of Master Constable Patterson, Assistant to the master Lillehorne, and—”
“My own,” the judge said tartly. “A forgery, of course, but very well forged.”
“Very well forged,” Steven agreed. “As was Sir Patterson’s and Mr. Lillehorne’s. I know I should have waited until morning, to ask you about it,” he said, addressing Archer, “but—”
The young man’s countenance was distraught, his blue eyes without their spectacles watery-looking and fixed on the judge. The fly came in toward his face again, and suddenly his hand streaked out and snatched the thing in midair seemingly without even looking at it. “I thought I’d been given a direct order,” he said, and all in the room heard a small crunch as the clerk’s fingers ended the life of a London pest. As if in a trance, he wiped a small smear across the front of his starched white shirt. “I’m sorry, sir. I have made a grave error.”
Archer released a long breath that he m
ust have been holding for several seconds. He moved past Hudson and Berry, and he walked around the clerk’s desk and laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Steady up,” he said quietly. “An error was made, yes, but with that document in hand, how would you know the order was not genuine?”
“All right, we’ve gotten that part,” said Hudson. “So Matthew is currently in Houndsditch prison, is that correct?”
“Lillehorne?” Archer prompted. Some of the acid had returned. “Since these are your people, you should do the honors.”
Lillehorne wore a pained expression, as if that disturbance in his bowels had risen to his throat. “We have had…a problem here recently. The last several months, as I understand it, though it predates my presence. So…I…have to tell you…that—”
“That a maniac who calls himself Albion,” Archer interrupted, “waylaid the prison coach last night, assaulted the driver and one of the two guards Mr. Jessley had assigned to take Corbett to Houndsditch, rousted your man out and disappeared with him. This after garbled and insane reports came out of Newgate saying that Albion had materialized inside the prison and made a threatening gesture toward Corbett.”
Neither Hudson nor Berry could speak. Hudson thought he heard a little whuff of air that might have been from either one of them trying to find words, but no words were produced.
“So…no, Corbett is not in Houndsditch,” Archer went on. He gave the clerk a pat on the shoulder, and Steven nodded a thank you for the gift of stability and put his spectacles back on. Hudson found himself staring, dumbly, at the little smear of fly guts on the young man’s shirt. “It is unknown where Corbett currently is,” said Archer, as he came back around the desk. “Or…and I have to say this…whether he is dead or alive. Since his first appearance in May Albion has murdered six men by the sword. I have myself interviewed one of the guards this morning. Albion’s sword was put to work on the other’s nose and neck, and I’d say both those men got off very lightly. Though…a mystery…Albion demanded that a cloak, a tricorn, a lantern and two money purses be handed over to Corbett, and the guard swears Albion spoke kindly to him, offering him help, which indicates…I don’t know what.”