Greathouse retreated. Now Matthew thought that surely it was time to head for the relative safety of the street. Yet Greathouse offered no suggestion for any of them to run for it, and instead that maddening half-smile was still stuck to his mouth.
As the swordsman came on, Zed looked at Greathouse with what Matthew thought might be a question, but whatever it might have asked it was disregarded. Dippen Nack had gotten himself standing, his billyclub lifted to apply his own brand of constable’s justice. When he took a wobbly step toward Zed he was caught at the scruff of the neck by Greathouse, who looked at him, said a firm “No,” and pushed him down into his chair as one would manage a child. Nack didn’t try to stand again, which was just as well.
Giving out a horrendous screech, the lady of the house threw a mug at Zed with the intent of braining him. Before it reached its target, Zed caught the thing one-handed. With only a second’s hesitation to take aim, Zed in turn threw the mug to smack against the swordsman’s forehead, which laid the man out as if ready to be rolled into a coffin.
“Murr! Murr!” hollered Skelly, obviously wanting to cry Murder but finding his mouth not equal to the job. Still, he skittered past Zed like a dirty crab and burst through the door onto Wall Street, shouting “Murr! Murr!” and going straight for the Cat’s Paw across the way.
Bonehead Boskins took the opportunity to act. He stepped forward, moving faster than any man his size might be expected to, and dashed the rest of his brandy directly into Zed’s eyes.
The slave made a gutteral sound of pain and staggered back, both hands up to clear his vision, and so he did not see—as Matthew and Greathouse did—the brass implement of violence that Bonehead took from a pocket and deftly slipped upon the knuckles of his right fist.
Matthew had had enough of this. “Stop it!” he shouted, and moved to stand alongside Zed, but a hand grasped his coat and yanked him back out of harm’s way.
“You just stand where you are,” Greathouse said, in that tone he had that meant argument was a dead-end street.
Seeing Zed blinded by liquor, Baiter found his courage. He lunged forward and swung at Zed’s skull, hitting him on the left cheekbone, and then gave him a kick on the right shin that made such a noise Matthew was sure the bone had cracked. Quite suddenly two black hands shot out, there was a ripping sound and Baiter had lost most of his shirt. An elbow was thrown, almost a casual movement. The stubby nose above Baiter’s gaping mouth exploded so hard blood flew up among the lanterns. Baiter gave a cry like a baby for its mother and fell down upon the floor where he crawled up grasping against Bonehead’s legs. The other man shouted, “Get away, damn it!” and kicked viciously to free himself even as Zed used Baiter’s shirt to blot the last of the burning brandy out of his eyes.
Then, as Matthew knew it must, finally came the moment when the two bald-headed bulls must collide.
Bonehead waited for no other opportunity; with Baiter kicked aside and sobbing, Bonehead advanced a step and swung his brass widowmaker at Zed’s face. The fist passed through empty air, for Zed had dodged the blow; was there one second, the next was not. A second blow had the same result. Bonehead crowded his opponent, the left arm up to deflect a strike and the right punching out with deadly purpose.
“Hit him! Hit him!” squalled the lady.
Bonehead had no lack of trying, and certainly no lack of brutal strength. What he lacked was success, for wherever the brass-knuckled fist struck, there Zed the slave was not. Faster and faster still went the blows, yet faster was Zed in dodging them. Sweat sparkled on Bonehead’s brow and the breath heaved in his chest.
Hollering with drunken glee, a throng of men obviously from the Cat’s Paw began to boil through the door, which hung half off its hinges due to Skelly’s rough exit. Zed paid them no mind, his focus entirely on avoiding a brass kiss.
“Stand still and fight, you black coward!” Bonehead shouted, the spittle spraying from his mouth and his punches becoming wilder and weaker.
Desperate, Bonehead reached out with his left hand to grasp Zed’s cravat, the better to hold him still, and no sooner had his fingers locked in silk did Zed’s right arm cock back, the fist drove out squarely into Bonehead’s jaw, and there came a solid and fearsome thunk of flesh on flesh that caused all the gleeful hollering to hush as if a religious vision had just been witnessed. Bonehead’s eyes rolled back, his knees sagged, but he yet gripped hold of Zed and his own right fist was coming up in a blow that was more impulse than aimed, for it was obvious his brain had left the party.
Zed easily dodged it, with a small movement of his head. And then, in what men would later talk about from the Great Dock to the Post Road, Zed picked Bonehead Boskins up like a sack of cornmeal, swung him around and threw him, bonehead first, through the boarded-over window where so many other, yet so much smaller, victims of altercations had passed. When Bonehead crashed through on his way to a bruising encounter with Wall Street, the entire front wall shook so hard the men gathered there feared it would collapse on them and so retreated in a shrieking mass for their lives. The rafters groaned, sawdust fell, the chains creaked as their lanterns swung back and forth, and High Constable Gardner Lillehorne stood in the shattered doorway to shout, “What in the name of seven devils is going on in here?”
“Sir! Sir!” Nack was up again, staggering on his way to the door. Matthew noted that either the constable had spilled a drink in his lap, or was past need of a chamberpot. “Tried to stop it, sir! Swear I did!” He passed close to Zed and recoiled as if fearing to share Bonehead’s method of departure.
“Oh, you shut up,” Lillehorne answered. A rather eye-startling picture of fashion in a pumpkin-colored suit and tricorn and yellow stockings above polished brown boots, he came into the room and wrinkled his nose with disgust as he took stock of the scene. “Is anyone dead here?”
“That crow was gonna kill us all!” the lady shouted. She’d taken the liberty of seizing the unfinished mugs of brandy from the table where the wharfmen had been sitting, and had one in each hand. “Look what he did to these poor souls!”
Lillehorne tapped the palm of his gloved left hand with the silver lion’s-head that adorned his black-lacquered cane. His long, pallid face with its carefully-trimmed black goatee and mustache surveyed the room, the narrow black eyes the same color as his hair, which some said was dyed liberally with India ink, and which was pulled back into a queue with a ribbon that matched his stockings.
Baiter was still mewling, clasping the ruin of his nose with both hands. The wharfmen were starting to stir, and one of them heaved forth a torrent of foul liquid that made Lillehorne gasp and press a yellow handkerchief to his pinched nostrils. George and his companion had gained consciousness but were still sitting at the table and blinking as if wondering what all the fuss was about. Two of the gentlemen were trying to revive the swordsman, whose legs began to jerk in an effort to outrun the mug that had knocked him into dreamland. At the far back of the room, the fiddler stood in a corner protecting his instrument. Out in the street, the gawkers shouted merrily as they peered through the door and the gaping aperture where Bonehead had passed through.
“Appalling,” said Lillehorne. His cold gaze dismissed Matthew, fell upon the giant slave, who stood motionlessly and with his head lowered, and then came to rest on Hudson Greathouse. “I might have known you’d be here, when I heard Skelly hollering two streets away. You’re the only one in town who could put such a fright in the old wretch that his beard flew off. Or is the slave responsible for all this mess?”
“I appreciate the compliment,” said Greathouse, still wearing his self-satisfied and thoroughly infuriating smile. “But as I’m sure you’ll find when you speak to the witnesses—the sober witnesses, that is—Mr. McCaggers’ slave was simply preventing any physical harm to come to me or himself. I think he did a very able job.”
Lillehorne again turned his attention to Zed, who stared fixedly at the floor. Outside, some of the shouts were turning nasty. Matthew heard
“grave-digger’s crow”, “black beast”, and worse, coupled with “murder” and “tar-and-feather”.
“It’s ’gainst the law!” Nack had suddenly remembered his station. “Sir! It’s ’gainst the law for a slave to be in a public tavern!”
“Put him in the gaol!” the lady hollered between drinks. “Hell, put ’em all under the gaol!”
“The gaol?” Greathouse’s brows lifted. “Oh, Gardner! Do you think that’s really such a good idea? I mean…three or four days in there—even one day—and I might be too weak to carry out my duties. And as I and I alone certainly admit arranging Mr. McCaggers’ slave to meet me here, I would thus by law be the person to suffer.”
“I think it ought to be the pillory, sir! For all of ’em!” Nack’s evil little eyes gleamed. He pressed the tip of his billyclub against Matthew’s chest. “Or the brandin’ iron!”
Lillehorne said nothing for a moment. The shouts outside were becoming uglier still. He cocked his head, looking up first at Greathouse, then at Zed and back again. The high constable was a small-boned and slender man, standing several inches shorter than Matthew, and thus was dwarfed by the larger men. Even so, his ambition in the town of New York was the size of Goliath. To be mayor, nay, even the colony’s governor someday was the bellow that fanned his flames. “Which will it be, sir?” Nack urged. “Pillory or iron?”
“The pillory may well be in use,” Lillehorne replied without looking at Nack, “by a spineless constable who has gotten himself stinking drunk while on duty and allowed this infraction of the law on his watch. And mind you cease talking about irons before you find one branding your buttocks.”
“But…sir…I mean…” Nack sputtered, his face flaming red.
“Silence.” Lillehorne waved him aside with the lion’s-head. Then he stepped toward Greathouse and almost peered up the man’s nostrils. “You hear me, sir. I’m not to be pushed, do you understand that? No matter what. Now, I don’t know what game you’ve been playing at tonight and possibly I don’t wish to know, but I don’t want it to happen again. Is that clear, sir?”
“Absolutely,” said Greathouse without hesitation.
“I demand satisfaction!” shouted the fallen swordsman, who was sitting up with a huge lump and blue bruise on his forehead.
“I’m satisfied that you’re a fool, Mr. Giddins.” Lillehorne’s voice was calm and clear and utterly frigid. “There’s a penalty of ten lashes for drawing a sword in a public place with intent to do bodily harm. Do you wish to proceed?”
Giddins said nothing, but reached out and retrieved his weapon.
The shouting in the street, which was drawing more men—certainly more drunkards and ruffians—from the other taverns, was increasing in volume and desire for justice in the form of violence. Zed kept his head down, and sweat was gathering on the back of Matthew’s neck. Even Greathouse began to glance a little uneasily at the only way out.
“What I must do galls me sometimes,” Lillehorne said. Then he looked into Matthew’s face and sneered, “Aren’t you tired of playing the young hero yet?” Without waiting for a reply, he said, “Come on, then. I’ll walk you out of here. Nack, you’ll stand guard ’til I send someone better.” He started for the door, his cane up against his shoulder.
Greathouse got his cap and cloak and followed, then behind came Zed and Matthew. At their backs spewed dirty curses from the patrons who could still speak, and Nack’s gaze shot daggers at the younger associate of the Herrald Agency.
Outside, the crowd of thirty or more men and a half-dozen drink-dazed women surged forward. “Get back! Everyone get back!” Lillehorne commanded, but even the voice of a high constable was not enough to douse the fires of this growing conflagration. Matthew knew full well that there were three things sure to draw a crowd in New York, day or night: a street hawker, a speechmaker, and the promise of a rowdy knockabout.
He saw through the crowd that Bonehead had survived his journey with but a gash on his brow and some blood trickling down his face, but he was still obviously less than fighting fit for he was careening around like a top, both fists swinging at the air. Somebody grabbed his arms to pin them, somebody else caught him around the waist, and then with a roar five other men leapt in and there was a free-for-all right there with Bonehead getting bashed and not even able to punch. A skinny old beggar held up a tambourine and began to rattle it around as he pranced back and forth, but someone with musical taste knocked it from his hand and then he began fighting and cursing like a wildman.
Still the citizens pressed in around their true quarry, which was Zed. They plucked at him and danced away. Someone came in to pull at his torn suitcoat, but Zed kept his head lowered and paid no mind. Ugly laughter—the laughter of brutes and cowards—whirled up. As he followed the slow and dangerous procession along Wall Street, Matthew suddenly noted that the wind had ceased blowing. The air was absolutely still, and smelled of the sea.
“Listen.” Greathouse had drifted back to walk alongside Matthew. His voice was tight, a rare occurrence. “In the morning. Seven-thirty at Sally Almond’s. I’ll explain everything.” He paused as he heard a bottle shatter against a wall. “If we get out of this,” he added.
“Back! All of you!” Lillehorne was shouting. “I mean it, Spraggs! Let us pass, or I swear I’ll brain you!” He lifted his cane, more for effect than anything else. The crowd was thickening, and now hands were balling into fists. “Nelson Routledge! Don’t you have anything better to do than—”
He didn’t finish what he was saying, for in the next instant no words were needed.
Zed lifted his head toward the ebony sky, and he made a noise from deep in his throat that began as the roar of a wounded bull and rose up and up, up to fearsome heights above the rooftops and chimneys, the docks and barns, the pens and stockyards and slaughterhouses. It began as the roar of a wounded bull, yes, but somewhere on its ascent it changed into the cry of a single child, alone and terrified in the dark.
The sound silenced all other noise. Afterwards, the cry could be heard rolling off across the town in one direction, across the water in the other.
All hands stilled. All fists came open, and all faces, even smirking, drink-swollen and mean-eyed, took on the tightness of shame about the mouth, for everyone in this throng knew a name for misery but had never heard it spoken with such horrible eloquence.
Zed once more lowered his head. Matthew stared at the ground. It was time for everyone to go home, to wives, husbands, lovers and children. To their own beds. Home, where they belonged.
The lightning flashed, the thunder spoke, and before the crowd began to move apart the rain fell upon them with ferocious force, as if the world had tilted on its axis and the cold sea was flooding down upon the land. Some ran for cover, others trudged slowly away with hunched shoulders and grim faces, and in a few minutes Wall Street lay empty in the deluge.
Three
VERY well, then.” Matthew folded his hands before him on the table. He’d just hung his tricorn on a hook and sat down a moment before, but Greathouse was too taken with consuming his breakfast of eight eggs, four oily and glistening sausages, and six corncakes on a huge dark red platter to have paid him much attention. “What’s the story?”
Greathouse paused in his feasting to sip from his cup of tea, which was as hot and as black as could be coaxed from the kitchen of Sally Almond’s tavern on Nassau Street.
There could be no starker contrast between this esteemed establishment and the vile hole they’d visited last night. Whereas City Hall used to be the center of town, one might say that Sally’s place—a tidy white stone building with a gray slate roof overhung by a huge oak tree—now claimed that position, as the streets and dwellings continued to grow northward. The tavern was warm and friendly and always smelled of mulling spices, smoked meats and freshly-baked pies. The floorboards were kept meticulously swept, vases of fresh flowers stood about, and the large fieldstone fireplace was put to good use at the first autumn chill. For bre
akfast, the midday meal and supper, Sally Almond’s tavern did a brisk business among locals and travellers alike, in so much that Madam Almond herself often strolled about strumming a gittern and singing in a light, airy and extremely pleasing voice.
Rain had fallen all night, but had ceased near dawn. Through a large window that overlooked the pedestrians, the passing wagons, carts and livestock on Nassau Street could be seen beams of silver sunlight piercing the clouds. Directly across the street was the yellow brick boarding house of Mary Belovaire, where Greathouse was presently living until he found, as he put it, “more suitable quarters for a bachelor”. His meaning was that Madam Belovaire, though being of a kind spirit, was wont to monitor the comings-and-goings of her lodgers, and go so far as to suggest they regularly attend church services, refrain from cursing and drinking, and generally comport themselves with great decorum as regards the opposite sex. All of which put Greathouse’s large white teeth on the grind. The latest was that Madam Belovaire had been trying to matchmake him with a number of ladies she deemed respectable and upstanding, which in Greathouse’s opinion made them as interesting as a bowlful of calf’s-foot jelly. So it was no wonder that Greathouse had taken to spending some nights working at Number Seven Stone Street, but Matthew knew the man was sleeping on a cot up there in the company of a brandy bottle.
But not to say either of them had been bored in the last few weeks. Far from it. Since the Herrald Agency had been getting such publicity in the Earwig, there’d been no lack of letters and visitors presenting problems to be solved. Matthew had come to the aid of a young man who’d fallen in love with an Indian girl and wished to prove himself worthy before her father, the chief; there’d been the bizarre and disturbing night ride, in which Matthew had determined that not all the creatures on God’s earth had been created by the hand of God; and there’d been the incident of the game of jingo and the gambler who’d had his prized horse cheated away from him by a gang of cutthroats. For Greathouse’s part, there’d been his ordeal at the House at the Edge of the World that had so nearly cost him his life, and the eerie matter of the last will and testament of Dr. Coffin.