A silence fell, but for the sounds of the fire and the rain.
Quite suddenly, Tyranthus Slaughter began to laugh.
“Shut your mouth!” Greathouse, his cheeks aflame, grabbed hold of the prisoner’s beard and twisted it.
Slaughter kept laughing, as tears of either mirth or pain glittered in his eyes.
“Shut it, I said!” Greathouse shouted. James was up on four feet, starting a low gut-growl, but Tom put his hand down on the back of the dog’s neck to hold him steady.
“Pardon me! Pardon me!” Slaughter tried to swallow his laughter and began to cough, so violently that Greathouse released him. Matthew didn’t know what to think. The madman’s wagon had lost its wheels. “Pardon me!” Slaughter repeated, as he wiped his eyes and his nose and drew in a long ragged breath of air. “It just…it just strikes me…as so funny…so ridiculous…that none of you…have a goddamned idea of—” And on the final four words his eyes cleared, his voice tightened and he reached up to rub his raw chin beneath the patchwork beard. “What real suffering is.”
“Apologize to the reverend!” Greathouse demanded, with such force the spittle foamed on his lips. “By God I’ll smash your face in if you don’t!” Already his fist was clenched and the blow about to be struck.
Slaughter stared at the upraised fist. He reached into his mouth with a forefinger and probed at an offending shred of rabbit stuck between upper teeth. “I shall apologize, sir,” he said lightly, “if the company will hear my tale of suffering.”
The fist was near being thrown. Matthew knew a bloody mess was about to erupt. “Don’t do it,” he cautioned, and Greathouse’s enraged eyes ticked toward him. The cocked fist was slowly lowered.
“Let him speak,” said Reverend Burton, his opaque gaze fixed on the space between Greathouse and the prisoner. “Go ahead, sir, but I ask you to refrain from taking our Lord’s name in vain.”
“Thank you. Might I have another cup of cider? Just to wet the old whistle?”
Burton nodded, and Tom did the pouring.
Slaughter took a long drink and swirled the liquid around in his mouth before he swallowed. Then he put the cup down before him and turned it between his fingers, with their jagged clawlike nails.
Thunder echoed in the distance. A second voice of the storm spoke, nearer still.
“There was a boy,” said Slaughter. “A hardworking young English boy. Whose drunken mother had been murdered in a tavern brawl when he was not quite ten, and her blood spattered his legs, but that is neither here nor there. This upright young boy and his father went out upon the world, and as fate would have it both of them found positions in the mining fields of Swansea. Diggers, they were. Shovel-and-pick men. Handgrubbers, down in the earth. A father and son, blackened together inside and out, black grit in their teeth and in their eyes, and all the day the ringing music of the pit, hour upon hour, for that pretty little pence in their palms. Or rather, in the father’s palm, for the boy did so wish that his father might become rich someday, and stride the world as an earl, or a duke. Someone who mattered, in the course of time. Someone he might be proud of. You see?”
No one answered. Slaughter lifted a finger. “Ah, that boy! Quite the worker, he was. He and his father, breaking rocks in that mine from sunup ’til sundown. Or was it from sundown ’til sunup? What is time, where there is only the light of the lanterns, and all seasons are damp and musty as the tomb? But then, gentlemen, came the hour of disaster!” He nodded, looking from one face to the other. “Disaster,” he repeated, letting the word hiss. “A cracking noise, small as the sound of a rat biting a bone. Followed by a rumble that built to a roar, but by then the roof was falling. Thunder is no equal to such a noise, sirs. And afterward, the cries and moans of those trapped by the rock swell up in the dark, and echo in the chambers like a cathedral of the damned. Eleven diggers had gone down, to scoop out the last of a worn-out hole. Five were killed outright. Six left alive, in various states of life. One had a tinderbox and got it lit. Two unbroken lamps were found, and some candles in a dead man’s sack. There the boy was, waiting for rescue, while his father lay a few feet away with both his legs crushed. And oh, how that man could caterwaul! It shamed the boy, really, to have to witness such indignity.”
“When they stuffed a dead man’s shirt into the father’s mouth, they were at last able to hear help coming,” Slaughter went on, as lightning streaked white beyond the shutters and thunder growled overhead. “They shouted to let the diggers know they were still alive. They had air, that was all right. And water, a flask or two. They could hold on, until the diggers got them up. And then—who can say when—there came another little crack of a rat bite and boom fell more rock and dust. A storm of it. A whirlwind. But they relit their lanterns, and held on. As the candles burned down. As the last of the beef sausage was eaten. Once more they heard the diggers coming. Coming closer, hour after hour. Or was it day after day? And then again, boom fell the rocks, and this time the man who’d lit his tinderbox fell dead, his brains burst out upon the black wall. Which left five living, if one includes the boy’s father, who by now had suffered the agony that renders a human being…somewhat less than human.”
Slaughter paused to drink again from his cup, and licked his lips when he’d finished. “They waited. The diggers were coming. They had one lantern left, and a few candles. Hope remained. Even when the father drew his last breath, and his eyes grew cold and white and the life left him like a bitter mist…hope remained. And then someone—the old soldier with the gray beard, the one from Sheffield—said Listen. He said, Listen, I don’t hear them anymore. Of course they all hollered and shouted until their lungs were raw, but the noise made more rubble fall and they were afraid to lose their lantern, and so they just sat and waited, in a little foul chamber that was filling up with the smell of the dead. They sat and waited, there in the earth, as the candles burned down one after the other and the waterflasks emptied and…oh yes…the hunger started gnawing their bellies. They became weaker, and weaker still. And finally someone said, I think they’ve left us. Left us, he said, to rot. And someone else went mad, and gibbered until he was hit over the head with a stone, and another wept in a corner and prayed to Jesus on his knees, but the boy vowed I will not die, here in this hole. I will not be left to rot, thrown away like garbage for the worms.”
“So,” Slaughter said quietly, as the low red firelight played across his face, “the boy listened when one of the others said he was once aboard a ship that was becalmed for weeks, and after the food ran out and people began to die…you had to determine how much you wanted to live. You had to determine if you could take a blade and carve yourself a meal. And then that man looked at the corpse of the boy’s father, and he held up a knife, and he said, There’s enough meat on the thighs to keep us going. We can drink from him, too. Don’t let it be, that he suffered so much for nothing.”
“And when the knife went to work,” Slaughter said, “the boy just sat and watched. He was hungry, you see, and perhaps by then half-mad himself, and the strangest, strangest thing…was that, when he ate the first strip of meat…when he put it between his teeth, and chewed out all the juice…he thought it was better than any dish he’d ever tasted in his life.”
“My God,” the reverend breathed.
“It is like pork,” Slaughter continued, staring at nothing. “But sweeter. I’ve been told. I have heard it said—just heard, mind you—that a blindfolded man given a choice of a beef tenderloin, flank of horse and buttock of human being will invariably choose the buttock, it being so richly marbled with fat. And that in the human meat can be tasted the essence of food and drink consumed by that body in happier times. There are some, I hear, who if left to their own devices would become enslaved to the taste of human, and want nothing else. And that’s not mentioning the internal organs, which supposedly have miraculous powers to regenerate the near-dead. Particularly the heart and the brain.”
“Oh!” he said brightly. “To finish my
story, sirs. When he finally crawled up out of the dark through a space only a desperate boy could have negotiated, and unfortunately but out of necessity left two of his fellow companions behind, he made his way in the course of time to the house of Samuel Dodson, who owned that particular mining company. Thereupon he put a knife to the throats of Master Dodson, his lovely wife and the three little Dodsons and polished them all off, after which the house was burned down around their heads. The end…yet just a beginning.” He finished his cup of cider, held it aloft as a tribute to the hero of his tale, and when Greathouse knocked it from his hand to the floor and James started the pistol-shot barking again Slaughter looked at his oppressor with an expression of dismay.
“What, then?” Slaughter asked. “You don’t like happy endings?”
Matthew had not eaten all of his stew; there remained a small fatty piece of brown meat at the bottom of the bowl. His stomach being rather queasy, he pushed the bowl away with a finger and sat very still, trying to decide if he was going to keep his food down or not.
“Not gonna eat that?” Tom asked, and when Matthew shook his head the boy reached across the table, took Matthew’s bowl and placed it on the floor as an added treat for James.
“Thank you for your confession,” said Reverend Burton in a raspy voice, his hands folded before him on the table. The knuckles had paled. “I regret your…troubles.”
“Oh, who said it happened to me? I’m just relating a story I heard, from someone I knew a long time ago.” Slaughter frowned. “Pastor, what kind of monster would I be if I ate my own father? Hm?”
“You’re as mad as a three-legged billygoat,” Greathouse told him, as the red slowly drained from his face. He rubbed his forehead, as if to dispel as best as he could the gory scene that Slaughter had painted, and then he turned his attention to Burton. “We appreciate your hospitality. If we can sleep in the barn tonight, we’ll be on our way first thing in the morning.”
“To Fort Laurens.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s something you ought to know, then,” Burton said, and Matthew leaned slightly forward because he’d heard something in the old man’s voice that did not bode well. “Fort Laurens has been deserted for…oh…many years before New Unity began. A dispute with the Indians, more than thirty years ago, is what they say in Belvedere. A series of raids killed most of the inhabitants and destroyed the fort. Therefore…I don’t quite understand why you two are taking a prisoner to Fort Laurens, when nothing’s there but ruins.”
Neither Matthew nor Greathouse knew what to say. But Slaughter spoke up: “They are taking me to Fort Laurens—I should say, to what remains of Fort Laurens—in order to seize money and trinkets that I’ve buried there. The agreement was that, if I take them to this bounty and give it to them, they will let me go. But here’s the thing, sir. I think they’re lying. I think that when they get their hands on the money, they’re either going to keep me in irons or, more likely, they’re going to kill me.” He paused to let that sink in, as both his escorts were too astonished to speak. “I see your Bible in the corner, sir. Would you do the godly thing and have these men vow on the Holy Book that they will do what they’ve promised?”
Twelve
MATTHEW writhed inwardly, knowing he could never put his hand on a Bible and tell a lie. To emphasize his danger, another bolt of lightning shot white beyond the shutters and thunder blasted overhead. He kept his face down, staring at a scuffed spot on the table.
Greathouse scratched the stubble on his chin, but made no other demonstration.
“Do it, pastor,” Slaughter urged, his eyes ashine and his brows twitching. “Make them swear on the book.”
Burton tapped his fingers. He cast his gaze in the direction of Slaughter’s voice but said nothing for a space of time, during which Matthew thought he’d rather be in the long dark tunnel than this candlelit room. At last the reverend said, “Obviously you feel yourself to be at the mercy of these two men, yet I assume you initiated this…um…bargain? I do not approve of any of this. Gentlemen, before God I implore you to put aside your greed and do what is right for the common good. That is, deliver the prisoner to the proper authorities in New York. The reward for that is the knowledge that you have done a righteous thing for your fellow man.”
“Make them swear!” Slaughter hissed. “Their hands on the book!”
“I will not,” came the solemn answer. “In so much as, being of limited mind, I do not understand their motivations. Yet God, being of infinite mind, does understand. The only thing I can say is, do not let greed lead you into the valley of destruction. Take this man, with all proper respect, to New York as you are charged and be done with him. Remember also, that Christ showed mercy to the poorest wreckage of life. Should you not try to do the same?”
“That’s right.” Slaughter nodded vigorously. “Mercy. Listen to the reverend, gentlemen. He talks a peach, doesn’t he?”
“I think,” Greathouse said, “that it’s time for your irons to go back on.”
Burdened by the manacles, the leg irons and the heavy ball, Slaughter sank down to the floor with his back against the wall. He closed his eyes as James sniffed the air and growled in his direction. Outside, the rain continued to fall steadily. Matthew noted that water was dripping from several places in the roof, and Tom put pots around to catch what he could. More wood was added to the fire. Reverend Burton asked Greathouse to bring the Bible over to the table and read to him from the Book of First Timothy, which Greathouse did without noticeable complaint. Tom went to work scrubbing the bowls and utensils with ashes, and Matthew silently helped him in his task.
When the work was done, Tom brought a small box from the bookcase and opened it in front of Matthew. “You play?” he asked, showing two sets of crudely-carved but useful chess pieces, one in dark wood and the other a few shades lighter. Matthew nodded, both surprised and grateful to find one of his greatest pleasures out in these forsaken woods. Tom fetched a battered chessboard from the cupboard at the back of the room, and he and Matthew sat down in the chairs before the fire, set the board and pieces up on the small table between them, and began their war.
The first game Matthew won with ease. The second was not so easy, and it appeared to Matthew that Tom was a quick student, for before this contest was over Matthew had lost his queen, his defense of his king was in jeopardy and Tom’s knights were threatening mayhem. But experience won out, and Tom nodded and turned his king over when it was certain there was no escape.
During the third game, Matthew noticed how Tom would lean down and rub or scratch the dog that lay nestled against his foot. Clearly, they had a strong connection between them, and at one point Tom picked James up and held him in his lap, and spent a moment rubbing the dog’s back while Matthew puzzled over a potential move.
“Gonna let him go?” Tom asked, quietly enough not to be heard by Greathouse, who was still involved in reading First Timothy, or Slaughter, who snored on the floor.
Matthew knew Tom wasn’t talking about the bishop that was being stalked by two rooks. “No,” he answered, just as quietly.
“Gonna kill him, then?”
“No.”
Tom waited for Matthew to make his move. Then he said, “Maybe you ought to.”
The third game ended in another win for Matthew, but not before the soldiers all across the rank and file had been decimated for their generals.
Greathouse finished his reading, Reverend Burton nodded his approval, James got down off his master’s lap and curled himself up on the little bed of straw, and Matthew reached into his waistcoat pocket and brought out a small leather drawstring pouch he’d purchased to keep his silver watch, a gift from Katherine Herrald, safe from the elements. Tom regarded him with interest as he opened the pouch and checked the time, finding it was nearly eight o’clock.
“Wake up.” Greathouse took his cap and coat from the wallpeg and gave Slaughter a none-too-gentle kick in that favorite fare of cannibals, the butt
ock. “It’s time to get to sleep.”
Burton lit another candle and put it into a punched-tin lantern for them. Matthew kept the pistol under his cloak and took charge of the lantern, and with Slaughter between them he and Greathouse said goodnight to their host and went out into the rainy dark, bound for a miserable night in the barn during which neither captor slept worth a Dutch penny but their prisoner slumbered as if on royal linens.
At first light, the rain had turned to a nasty drizzle and gray clouds seemed to be snagged in the treetops. Tom emerged from the cabin, with James at his feet, to help get the horses harnessed. Slaughter allowed himself to be pushed up into the wagon, where he lay down in the posture of a silent observer. Greathouse had retrieved his cloak and wrung it out, and now he put it around his shoulders, wet cloak against wet coat against wet shirt. He climbed up onto his seat and took the reins, while Matthew sat facing backwards again so as to keep guard over the prisoner. But, in truth, Slaughter appeared to be no menace today; his eyes were swollen from sleep and he yawned as if he might unhinge his jaws.