Matthew was tempted, but he feared that even drunk and unsteady the blacksmith would seize him before he reached the door. Better to just lie right here and wait for the man to leave.
Hazelton said nothing and did not move for what seemed a full minute. Finally the blacksmith lifted the jug to his lips and drank, and then upon reaching the bottom he reared back and flung the jug against the wall nearly square above Matthew’s head. The jug whacked into the boards and fell, broken into five or six pieces, and the startled horses whinnied and jumped in their stalls.
“The hell with it!” Hazelton shouted. He turned around and made his way out of the barn, leaving the door open.
Now Matthew was faced with a dangerous choice: should he get out while he could, risking the fact that Hazelton might be waiting for him out there just beyond the doorway, or should he lie just as he was? He decided it was best to remain in his prone position for a while longer, and indeed he took the opportunity to bury himself more completely in the straw.
Within a minute or two, Hazelton returned carrying a lighted lantern, though the glass was so dirty it hardly counted as illumination. The lantern was not so fearsome to Matthew as the short-handled hatchet Hazelton gripped in his right hand.
Matthew took a deep breath and let it out, trying to flatten himself even further under his covering of straw and horse apples. Hazelton started staggering around the barn, probing with the dim light, the hatchet held ready for a brain-cleaving blow. He gave the nearest strawpile a kick that might have broken Matthew’s ribs. Then, muttering and cursing, Hazelton stomped the straw for good measure. He paused and lifted the lantern. Through the mask of hay that covered his face, Matthew saw the blacksmith’s eyes glitter in the foul light and knew Hazelton was looking directly at his hiding place.
Don’t move! Matthew cautioned himself. For God’s sake, be still!
And the sake of his own skull, he might have added.
Hazelton came toward Matthew’s refuge, his heavy boots crushing down. Matthew realized with a start of terror that the man was going to step on him momentarily, and he braced himself to burst out of the straw. If he came up hollering and shrieking, he reasoned he might scare Hazelton into a retreat or at least might cause him to miss with the first swing of the hatchet.
He was ready. Two more steps, and the blacksmith would be upon him.
Then: crack!
Hazelton stopped his advance, the straw up around his knees. He reached down with his free hand, searching. Matthew knew what the noise had been. The lantern’s glass had broken, the lantern lying perhaps eight inches from the fingertips of Matthew’s right hand. Reflexively, Matthew closed his hand into a fist.
The blacksmith discovered what he’d stepped on. He held the lamp by its handle, lifting it up for inspection. There was a long, dreadful silence. Matthew clenched his teeth and waited, his endurance stretched to its boundary.
At last Hazelton grunted. “Lucy, I found that damn lantern!” he said. “Was a good one, too! Hell’s sufferin’ bells!” He tossed it aside with a contemptuous gesture, and Matthew realized the man thought in his tipsied state that it was a lamp he had previously misplaced. If he’d been coherent enough to touch the pieces of broken glass, Hazelton might have found they were still warm. But the blacksmith thereafter turned and crunched back through the straw to the barn’s bare earth, leaving Matthew to contemplate how near he’d come to disaster.
But—as was said—a miss was as good as a mile. Matthew began breathing easier, though he would not take a full breath until Hazelton had gone. Then another thought struck him, and it might well have been a hatchet to the head: if Hazelton went out and locked the door, he’d be trapped in here. It might be sunrise or later before Hazelton came to the barn again, and then Matthew would be forced to face him anyway! Better run for it while he was able, Matthew decided. But there was the problem of the straw. That which protected him would also hinder his flight.
Now, however, his attention was drawn to the blacksmith once more. Hazelton had hung the lantern up on a wallpeg beside the far stall, and he was speaking to the horse he seemed to favor. “My fine Lucy!” he said, his voice slurred. “My fine, beautiful girl! You love me, don’t you? Yes, I know you do!” The blacksmith began to murmur and whisper to his horse, and though Matthew couldn’t hear the words he was beginning to think this affection was rather more than that of a man for his mount.
Hazelton came back into sight. He thunked the hatchet’s blade into the wall next to the door, and then he pulled the door shut. When he turned again, moisture glistened on his face; and his eyes—directed toward Lucy—seemed to have sunken into dark purple hollows.
“My good lady,” Hazelton said, with a smile that could only be described as lecherous. A cold chill crept up Matthew’s spine. He had an inkling now of what the blacksmith intended to do.
Hazelton went into Lucy’s stall. “Good Lucy,” he said. “My good and lovely Lucy. Come on! Easy, easy!”
Carefully, Matthew lifted his head to follow the blacksmith’s movements. The light was dim and his view was restricted, but he could make out Hazelton turning the horse around in her stall so her hindquarters faced the door. Then Hazelton, still speaking quietly though drunkenly to Lucy, eased her forward and guided her head and neck into a wooden collar-like apparatus that was meant to hold horses still as they were being shod. He latched the collar shut, and thus the horse was securely held. “Good girl,” he said. “That’s my lovely lady!” He went to a corner of the stall and began to dig into a pile of hay provided for Lucy to eat. Matthew saw him reach down for something and pull it out. Whether it was the grainsack or not, Matthew couldn’t tell, but he presumed it was at least what might have been secreted inside the sack.
Hazelton came out of the stall carrying what appeared to be an elaborate harness made out of smoothed cow’s hide. The blacksmith staggered and almost fell under its bulk, but it seemed that his fevered intent had given him strength. The harness had iron rings attached to both ends: the two circles Matthew had felt through the burlap. Hazelton fixed one of the rings around a peg on the wall, and the second ring was fixed to a peg on a nearby beam so that the harness was stretched to its full width at the entrance to Lucy’s stall.
Matthew realized what Hazelton had devised. He recalled Gwinett Linch saying about the smithy: He’s an inventor, once he puts his mind to a task. It was not Hazelton’s mind, however, that was about to be put to work.
At the center of the harness-like creation was a seat formed of leather lattice. The pegs had been placed so the iron rings could stretch the harness and lift the seat up until whoever sat in it would be several feet off the ground and positioned just under Lucy’s tail.
“Good Lucy,” Hazelton crooned, as he dropped his breeches and pulled them off over his boots. “My good and beautiful girl.” His bum naked and his spike raised, Hazelton brought over a small barrel that appeared to be empty, from the ease with which he handled it. He stepped up onto the barrel, swung his behind into the leather seat and lifted the horse’s tail, which had begun flopping back and forth in what might have been eager anticipation.
“Ahhhhh!” Hazelton had eased his member into Lucy’s channel. “There’s a sweet girl!” His fleshy hips began to buck back and forth, his eyes closed and his face florid.
Matthew remembered something Mrs. Nettles had said, concerning the blacksmith’s deceased wife: I happ’n to know that he treated Sophie like a three-legged horse ’fore she died. It was very clear, from the noises of passion he was making, that Hazelton much preferred horses of the four-legged variety.
Matthew also knew now why Hazelton had so desired this apparatus of strange pleasure not to be discovered. In most of the colonies the sodomizing of animals was punishable by hanging; in a few, it was punishable by being drawn and quartered. It was a rare crime, but quite morally heinous. In fact, two years ago Woodward had sentenced to hanging a laborer who had committed buggery with a chicken, a pig, and a mare. By
law, the animals were also put to death and buried in the same grave with their human offender.
Matthew ceased watching this loathsome spectacle and stared instead at the ground beneath him. He could not, however, voluntarily cease from hearing Hazelton’s exhortations of passion for his equine paramour.
At last—an interminable time—the barnyard lothario groaned and shuddered, indicating the climax of his copulation. Lucy, too, gave a snort but hers seemed to be more relief that her stud was done. Hazelton lay forward against the horse’s hind and began to speak to Lucy with such lover’s familiarity that Matthew blushed to the roots of his hair. Such speech would be indecent between a man and his maid, but was absolutely shameless between a man and his mare. Obviously, the blacksmith had banged one too many horseshoes over a red-hot forge.
Hazelton didn’t try to remove himself from the harness. His voice was becoming quieter and more slurred. Shortly thereafter, he stopped speaking entirely and began to offer a snore and whistle to his object of affection.
Just as Matthew had recognized an opportunity to enter the barn, now he recognized an opportunity to depart it. He began to slowly push himself out of the straw, mindful that he not suffer a cut from the lantern’s broken glass. Hazelton’s snoring continued at its regularity and volume, and Lucy seemed content to stand there with her master in repose against her hindquarters. Matthew eased up to a crouch, and then to a standing position. It occurred to him that even if Hazelton awakened and saw him, he couldn’t free himself at once from the harness and would be quite reluctant to give chase. But Matthew wasn’t above giving Hazelton something to think about, so he picked up the man’s dirty breeches and took them with him when he walked unhurriedly to the door, pushed it open, and left the site of such immoral crime. In this case, he pitied not Hazelton but poor Lucy.
Matthew saw that the flames over on Truth Street had died down. He reckoned he’d entered the barn an hour or so ago, and thus most of the schoolhouse had by now been consumed. There would be much conjecture tomorrow about Satan’s fiery hand. Matthew didn’t doubt that daylight would see another wagon or two leaving Fount Royal.
He laid Hazelton’s breeches out in the middle of Industry Street, after which he was glad to rinse his hands in a nearby horse trough. Then he set off on the walk to Bidwell’s mansion, his curiosity concerning the hidden grainsack well and truly quenched.
As the hour was so late and the excitement of the fire worn off, the streets were deserted. Matthew saw a couple of houses where the lanterns were still lit—probably illuminating talk between husband and wife of when to quit the Satan-burnt town—but otherwise Fount Royal had settled again to sleep. He saw one elderly man sitting on a doorstep smoking a long clay pipe, a white dog sprawled beside him, and as Matthew neared him the old man said simply, “Weather’s breakin’.”
“Yes, sir,” Matthew answered, keeping his stride. He looked up at the vast expanse of sky and saw now that the clouds had further dwindled, exposing a multitude of sparkling stars. The scythe of a pumpkin-colored moon had appeared. The air was still damp and cool, but the soft breeze carried the odor of pinewoods rather than stagnant swamp. Matthew thought that if the weather broke and held, the magistrate’s health would surely benefit.
He’d decided not to inform Woodward of the blacksmith’s activities. It might be his duty to report such a crime—which would surely lead to Hazelton’s dance on the gallows—but the magistrate didn’t need any further complications. Besides, the loss of a blacksmith would be a hard blow to Fount Royal. Matthew thought that sooner or later someone might discover Hazelton’s bizarre interest and make an issue of it, but for his part he would keep his mouth shut.
Before he proceeded to the mansion and therefore to bed, Matthew approached the spring and stood beside an oak tree on its grassy bank. A chorus of frogs thrummed in the darkness, and a number of somethings—turtles, he presumed—plopped into the water off to his right. He saw the reflection of stars and moon on the surface, over which spread slow ripples.
How was it that turtles had Spanish gold and silver coins—as well as silverware and pottery shards—in their bellies? Matthew sat down on his haunches, plucked up some grass, and stared out across the ebon pond.
I have a gift for thee, Satan had said in his dream.
He thought of the coins spilling from the turtle’s guts. He thought of Goode showing him what he’d found, and saying, It’s a thing needs answerin’.
It surely is, Matthew told himself. From where might the turtles have gotten such coins? They’d swallowed them, of course. Most likely the limit of their world was this spring, and so…
Oh, Matthew thought. Oh!
The suspicion went off like a cannon blast inside his head. He realized he should have heard such a blast as soon as Goode had shown him the coins, but there had been too many other questions crowding his mind. Now, though, here in the quiet dark, the idea was thunderous in its impact.
Goode had found Spanish gold and silver coins within the bellies of turtles that lived in the spring…because there were Spanish gold and silver coins within the spring.
Abruptly, Matthew stood up. He placed a hand on the trunk of the oak tree beside him, if only to steady his thoughts. This suspicion—like the tearing open of a turtle in his dream—was full of glittering possibilities.
One gold and one silver piece, one pottery shard, and one silver spoon did not make a treasure hoard…but who might say what was lying down in the mud at the very bottom of Fount Royal’s center of existence?
He recalled with a jolt of the senses something that Nicholas Paine had said, back at Shawcombe’s tavern, upon viewing the original gold piece: No black-flagger in his right mind would bury his loot in redskin wilderness. They hide their gold where they can easily get to it, but it would be a poor pirate whose winnings could be found and unearthed by savages.
Unearthed? But what about sunken to the bottom of a freshwater spring?
His brain had caught fire. Bidwell had decided to build Fount Royal around the spring, as it would be—among other considerations—convenient as a source of fresh water for merchant ships arriving from the Indies.
But what was fresh water for merchants was also fresh water for those flying a blacker flag, was it not? And was it not possible that the spring had been discovered and used for such a purpose long before Bidwell had even set eyes on it? If that were true, the spring would make an excellent vault in which to deposit—as Paine had put it—“winnings.”
This was all, however, the wildest possible conjecture. Still…how else to explain the coins in the turtles’ bellies? The turtles, searching for food down at the bottom of the spring, may have scooped up the coins from the mud or else been attracted by their shine. The same might be true of the spoon and the pottery shard. The question remained: what else could be down there, secreted away for safekeeping?
But how to explain an Indian’s possession of Spanish gold? If indeed there had been pirate treasure in the spring, had the Indians found and raised it before Fount Royal was born? If so, they’d missed a few trinkets. He would have to sleep on these questions, and pursue them—quietly—in the morning. Bidwell might know something, but he would have to be carefully approached.
Matthew paused a little longer, staring out at the pond that seemed now to contain a further enigma. Nothing could be answered tonight, so it was time to get to bed though sleep might be nigh impossible.
He continued on his way along Peace Street toward the mansion, which was dark. He had no idea what the hour was, though it must be long past midnight. And with the next step he took he suddenly stopped and froze, looking straight ahead.
A figure in a tricorn hat and dark cloak was striding briskly past the mansion, in the direction of the slaves’ quarters. It took no more than five or six seconds for the figure to disappear from view. Matthew hadn’t seen if the man was carrying an unlit lantern or not, but he knew who it was. The fox was on the prowl, he thought. Going to what des
tination, and for what purpose?
This indeed was a night of opportunities, though this one Matthew realized might be far more treacherous than the blacksmith’s hatchet.
His mouth was dry, his blood racing. He looked around but saw no other person out on the street. The embers of the school house still glowed a faint red, and the breeze blew a whirl of sparks into the sky.
He would have to go. He knew it. But he would have to hurry, to find the fox before he got away into the swamp. The fox would be wary around the watchman’s tower, and so too would Matthew have to be because he couldn’t depend on the fact that the watchman was asleep.
A little dagger of fear stabbed Matthew in the chest. Whoever that midnight prowler was, he was likely to be dangerous if he realized he was being followed. There was the chance that, out in the swamp, anything could happen, and all of it bad.
But there was no time for dawdling. Fear would have to be conquered. The fox was moving fast, and so must Matthew.
twenty-four
MATTHEW COULD HEAR the tempestuous sound of the sea. Breakers were hitting islands or exposed sandbars some distance away from the swamp that he was now negotiating with great difficulty. Ahead of him and almost at the limit of his perception was the midnight traveller—a dark, moving blotch within further darkness—who would have been totally lost to him had it not been for the faint orange moonlight, and even that meager illumination was jealously guarded by the streams of moving clouds.
The man had come this way before, that was a certainty. And more than once. His pace was swift and sure-footed, even without benefit of a lantern. Matthew was up to the task of following through the waist-high grasses and across the muck that pulled at his shoes, but it was a tough and laborious journey.