“Good mornin’ to you!” called a man who was mending a broken fence.
“Good morning,” Matthew answered.
“Your magistrate’s gonna deliver us from the witch, I hear,” the man said, straightening up from his work.
“The problem is being considered,” was all Matthew felt free to say.
“I hope he does more’n consider it! Sooner she hangs, sooner we can sleep well at night!”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be sure to pass that along to the magistrate.” He kept walking, continuing on his westward trek. He expected another response, but the man had returned to his task.
They’re ready to hang her, Mrs. Nettles had said. They’d hang her this morn, if they could.
He thought of the shape wrapped in gray sackcloth, huddled in the hay.
What she needs is a champion of truth.
He thought of the way she’d risen to her feet, the slow and sinuous movement that had started his heart beating harder.
Somebody to prove her innocent…He thought of the sackcloth coming open, and what was revealed beneath. He saw her lean taut body, her raven-black hair, her heartshaped face and strange gold-hued eyes…when ever’body else is again’ her.
He had to stop thinking. The thoughts were causing him distress. He heard the dark growl of distant thunder and realized, not without a sense of humor, that he’d grown his own lightning rod. That was a damnable thing, and to be ashamed of. The woman was, after all, a widow. But still she was a woman, and he a man; though he often wore a lightning rod at the sight of some female that might be passing by, he had devised methods of deflating the issue. Reciting by memory Bible verses in Latin, mentally working complex mathematics problems, or observing the patterns of nature; all those had sufficed at one time or another. In this instance, however, neither Deuteronomy nor geometry had the least effect. Therefore he steered himself by the foremast toward the nearest mighty oak and sat down beneath it to ease his passions in study of grass, clouds, and anything else that needed studying.
More rain, that gift of life the people of Fount Royal certainly could live without for a time, was coming. Matthew saw the charcoal-gray clouds against the lighter gray, and could smell the scent of water in the air. It would soon be above the town, and Matthew welcomed it because it would wash some of this nonsense out of him. And it was nonsense, really, to let himself be so bothered, so discomforted, by the sight of a woman’s nudity. He was the clerk—the trusted clerk—of an important magistrate, and by that office and responsibility he should be above these transgressions of thought.
He watched the storm clouds fast approaching. In a pasture nearby, the cows began lowing. A man on horseback rode past, his steed visibly nervous and fighting the bit. The smell of rain was stronger now, and the next boom of thunder was like the sound of a kettledrum being pounded. Still Matthew stayed where he was, though he’d begun to wonder about finding better shelter. Then the wind came and made the oak’s branches shiver over his head, and so he got up and started walking eastward along Industry Street.
Lightning flared across the sky. Within another moment, large drops of rain began pelting Matthew’s back. He picked up his pace, realizing he was in for a thorough soaking. The severity of the rainfall rapidly increased, as did the hard-blowing wind. Matthew had not yet reached the conjunction of streets when the bottom fell out of the bucket with a boom and crash, and the rain descended in a gray torrent that all but blinded him. In a matter of seconds he was as wet as a carp. The wind was fierce, almost shoving him headlong into the mud. He looked desperately around, rain slapping his face, and saw in the aqueous gloom the square of an open doorway. There was no time to beg invitation; lie ran toward the shelter, which proved to be a small barn, and once inside he stepped back from the windblown entrance and shook the rain from himself like one of Fount Royal’s bone-chasing mongrels.
Matthew surmised he would be captive here for a while. On a wallpeg hung a lantern, a flame aglow within its bell; Matthew realized someone had been recently here, but where that someone now was he didn’t know. There were four narrow stalls, two of them each confining a horse; both horses stared at him, and one rumbled a greeting of sorts deep in the throat. Matthew ran a hand through the stubble of his wet hair and watched the deluge at a prudent distance from the doorway.
The barn was well put together. There were a few pattering raindrops falling from the roof, but not enough to be bothersome. He looked about for a place to rest and saw a pile of hay over against the far wall; going to it, he sat down and stretched his legs out to await the storm’s finale. One of the horses nickered, as if asking him what he was doing. Matthew hoped that whoever owned this barn would not be too troubled by his presence here, but he didn’t care to drown on the way to Bidwell’s mansion. A boom of thunder and flash of lightning made the horses jump and whinny. The rain was still pouring down—if anything, harder than before—and Matthew figured that his stay here would be, unfortunately, longer than he’d planned.
A drop of rain plunked him on the top of the head. He looked up in time to receive another raindrop between his eyes. Yes, he was sitting directly beneath a leak. He moved two feet or so to the left, nearer the wall, and stretched his legs out before him again.
But then he became aware of a new discomfort. Something was pressing into his spine. He reached back, his hand winnowing into the hay, and there his fingers came into contact with a surface of rough burlap. A sack of some kind, he realized as his fingers did their exploring. A sack, buried in the hay.
He pulled his hand away from it. Whatever the sack contained, it was not his business. After all, this was private property. He should be gracious enough not to go looking through private piles of hay, shouldn’t he?
He sat there for a moment, watching the rain. Perhaps it had lessened somewhat, perhaps not. The leak that had moved him aside was still dripping. He reached back, almost unconsciously, sank his hand into the hay, and felt the sack’s surface once more. Then again withdrew his fingers. Private property, he told himself. Leave it alone.
But a question had come to him. This was indeed private property, so why had its owner felt the need to hide a burlap sack at the bottom of a haypile? And the next question, of course—what did the sack contain that merited hiding?
“It’s not my business,” he said aloud, as if saying it could convince him.
He recalled then something else that Mrs. Nettles had said: Satan does walk in Fount Royal, but Rachel Howarth’s na’ the one beside him. Things that nae want to be seen are plentiful here. And that’s God’s truth.
Matthew found himself wondering if that burlap sack held one of the things that, as Mrs. Nettles had expressed it, nae wanted to be seen.
If that was so, might it have some bearing on the case of witchcraft? And if it did, was he not bound to investigate it as a representative of Magistrate Woodward?
Perhaps so. Then again, perhaps not. He was torn between his curiosity and his respect for private property. Another moment passed, during which the frown of deliberation never left Matthew’s face. Then he made his decision: he would clear away enough hay to get a good look at the sack, and thereafter dictate his actions.
When the job was done, Matthew saw that it was simply a plain dark brown grainsack. Touching it, however, indicated that its content was not grain; his fingers made out a circular shape that seemed to be made of either wood or metal. More study was needed. He grasped the sack and, in attempting to dislodge it, quickly learned how heavy it was. His shoulders protested the effort. Now all reluctance to pierce this mystery had fled before the attack of Matthew’s desire to know; he gave the sack a mighty heave and succeeded in pulling it free about half of its length. His hands felt another circular shape, and the folds and creases of some unknown material. He got a firm grip on the thing, in preparation of dragging it out so he might inspect its other—and presumably open—end.
One of the horses suddenly gave a snort and a whuff of air. Matthew felt
the small hairs move on the back of his neck and he knew in an instant that someone else had just entered the barn.
He started to turn his head. Before he could, he heard the crunch of a boot on the earthen floor and he was grasped by two hands, one around the back of the neck and the other seizing his right arm just above the elbow. There was a garbled cry that might have been a curse with God’s name in it, and an instant after that Matthew was picked up and thrown through the air with terrifying force. He had no time to prevent a bad landing; on the journey his right shoulder grazed a wooden post and then he collided with the gate that secured one of the empty stalls. The breath was knocked from his lungs and he fell to the floor, his bones having suddenly become unjointed and less solid than as objects of pliable putty.
He was struggling to get his breath when his attacker loomed over him again, and now a hand took hold of his shirt and pulled him up and another hand clamped upon his throat. The pressure was such that Matthew feared his eyeballs would explode from their sockets. “You sneakin’ bastard, you!” the man was shouting. With a violent twisting motion the man threw Matthew once more, this time into the wall with such force that the entire barn trembled and old dust blew from the chinks. The stunned clerk felt his teeth bite into his tongue, and as he sank to the ground again in a haze of pain he tasted bitter blood.
The man came after him. “I’ll kill you, you damn sneak!” he raged, and he swung a booted foot directly at Matthew’s head. Matthew knew in a flash that if he didn’t move, his skull would be bashed in, so he scrabbled forward and at the same time threw up an arm to ward off the blow. The kick got him on the right shoulderblade, bringing a cry of pain from his bloody lips, but he kept frantically crawling and pulled his legs underneath himself before the man could get balanced to kick him again. Matthew staggered up, his knees buckled, but he forced them to hold true with sheer willpower, and then he turned to face his attacker, his back pressed against the wallboards.
By the lantern’s light he recognized the man. He’d seen this fellow in passing yesterday morning, when he and the magistrate had met Paine at the public stables behind the blacksmith’s foundry. It was indeed the blacksmith; by name, according to the sign of his business, Seth Hazelton. The smithy was a squat, round-bellied man of middle age, with a wet gray brush of hair and a coarse and dripping gray beard. His face was as rugged as weathered rock, his nose a hooked precipice. At the moment his intense blue eyes were lit with the fire of sheer, white-hot fury, and the knotty veins stood out in relief on his bull-thick neck. He paused in his onrush, as if recognizing Matthew as the magistrate’s clerk, but the respite was only for a few seconds; his face flamed anew and, bellowing a cry of mingled wrath and anguish, he hurtled forward again.
Matthew was fast when he needed to be. He gauged Hazel-ton’s swinging blow, ducked under the fist, and ran for the way out. The smithy, however, was also quick of foot when it deemed him to be so; he bounded after Matthew like a corpulent hound and caught the boy’s shoulder in a grip fashioned hard by the contest with iron. Matthew was spun around, two hands set upon his throat, he was lifted off his feet and carried backward to slam once more into the wall with a force that near shattered his spine. Then the hands began to squeeze with deadly intent.
Matthew grasped the man’s wrists and tried to unhinge those killing hands, but even as he fought he knew it was in vain. Hazel-ton’s sweating face was pressed right into his, the man’s eyes glazed from the heat of this—rather onesided—combat. The fingers were digging deep into Matthew’s throat. He couldn’t breathe, and dark motes were beginning to dance before his eyes. He was aware, strangely, that one horse was whinnying piteously and the other was kicking in its stall.
He was going to die. He knew it. In a few seconds, the darkness was going to overcome him and he would die right here by this blacksmith’s crushing hands.
This was the moment he should be rescued, he thought. This was the moment someone should come in and tear Hazelton away from him. But Matthew realized it wasn’t likely to happen. No, his fate would be interrupted by no Samaritan this sorry day.
The lantern. Where was the lantern?
On his right, still hanging from its peg. With an effort he angled his head and eyes and found the lamp several feet away. He reached for it; he had long arms, but the lantern was at the very limit of his grasp. Desperation gave him the strength to lurch the two or three extra inches. He plucked the hot lamp from its peg. Then he smashed it as hard as he could into the side of Hazelton’s face.
An edge of unsmoothed tin did its work. A cut opened across the blacksmith’s cheek from the corner of the eye to the upper lip, and crimson rivulets streamed down into his beard. Hazelton blinked as the pain hit him; there was a pause in which Matthew feared the man’s fit of rage was stronger than the desire to preserve his face, but then Hazelton let out a howl and staggered back, his hands leaving Matthew’s throat to press against the tide of blood.
Matthew sucked air into his lungs. His head swimming, he half-ran, half-stumbled toward the barn’s open doorway. The rain was still falling, but not near with its previous velocity. Matthew didn’t dare to look behind to see if the smithy was gaining on him, as that glance would surely slow him down a precious step. Then he was outside the barn. The rain hit him and the wind swirled about him, his left foot snagged a treeroot that almost sent him sprawling, but he recovered his balance and ran on into the tumult, aiming his flight in the direction of Bidwell’s mansion. Only when he’d reached the conjunction of streets did he slow his pace and look over his shoulder. If the blacksmith had followed, he had been left behind.
Still, Matthew didn’t care to tarry. He spat blood into a mud-puddle and then tilted his head back, opened his mouth to wash it with rain, and spat again. His back and shoulders felt deeply bruised, his throat savaged by Hazelton’s fingers. He would have quite a tale to tell the magistrate, and he knew he was damned lucky he was alive to tell it. He started off again, walking as fast as he could, toward Bidwell’s house.
Two questions remained in his mind: what had been in the burlap sack? And what had the blacksmith concealed that he would kill to protect?
nine
THAT’S A DAMNABLE STORY!” Bidwell said, when Matthew had finished telling it. “You mean Hazelton tried to strangle you over a grainsack?”
“Not just a grainsack.” Matthew was sitting in a comfortable chair in the mansion’s parlor, a pillow wedged behind his bruised back and a silver cup of rum on a table next to him. “There was something in it.” His throat felt swollen, and he’d already looked into a handmirror and seen the blacksmith’s blue fingermarks on his neck. “Something he didn’t want me to see.”
“Seth Hazelton has a cracked bell in his steeple.” Mrs. Nettles stood nearby, her arms crossed over her chest and her dark gaze positively frightening; it was she who had fetched the cup of rum from the kitchen. “He was odd ’fore his wife died last year. Since then, he’s become much the worse.”
“Well, thank God you weren’t killed!” Woodward was sitting in a chair across from his clerk, and he wore an expression of both profound relief and concern. “And I thank God you didn’t kill him, either, or there would surely be Hell to pay. You know you were trespassing on private property, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I understand your desire to find shelter from that storm, but what on earth prompted you to dig into the man’s hidden possessions? There was no reason for it, was there?”
“No, sir,” Matthew said grimly. “I suppose there wasn’t.”
“I tell you there wasn’t! And you say you struck him a blow to the face that brought the blood flowing?” Woodward winced at the gravity of the legal wheels that might have to turn because of this. “Was he on his feet the last you saw him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But he didn’t come out of the barn after you?”
Matthew shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He reached for the rum and downed some of
it, knowing where the magistrate was headed. His wounded tongue—which was so enlarged it seemed to fill up his mouth—had already been scorched by the liquor’s fire and was mercifully numbed.
“Then he could have fallen after you left.” Woodward lifted his gaze to Bidwell, who stood beside his chair. “The man could be lying in that barn, severely injured. I suggest we see to him immediately.”
“Hazelton’s as tough as a salt-dried buzzard,” Mrs. Nettles said. “A wee cut on the face would nae finish ’im off.”
“I’m afraid it was more than a wee…I mean, a small cut,” Matthew admitted. “His cheek suffered a nasty slice.”
“Well, what did he expect?” Mrs. Nettles thrust out her chin. “That you should let ’im choke you dead without a fight? You ask me, I say he deserved what he got!”
“Be that as it may, we must go.” Woodward stood up. He was feeling poorly himself, his raw throat paining him with every swallow. He dreaded having to leave the house and travel in the drizzling rain, but this was an extremely serious matter.
Bidwell too had recognized the solemnity of the situation. His foremost thought, however, was that the loss of the town’s blacksmith would be another crippling hardship. “Mrs. Nettles,” he said, “have Goode bring the carriage around.”