“Gentlemen, this is the magistrate’s clerk, Mr. Matthew Corbett,” Bidwell announced. He introduced Matthew to Paine and Garrick, and hands were again shaken. “I was telling the magistrate that Mr. Paine is the captain of our militia and shall be leading—”
“—the expedition to secure Mr. Shawcombe in the morning,” Paine broke in. “As it’s a lengthy trip, we shall be leaving promptly at sunrise.”
Woodward said, “It will be a pleasure to rise early for that satisfaction, sir.”
“Very well. I’ll find another man or two to take along. Will we need guns, or do you think Shawcombe’ll give up without violence?”
“Guns,” Woodward said. “Definitely guns.”
The talk turned to other matters, notably what was happening in Charles Town, and therefore Matthew—who was wearing a white shirt and tan trousers with white stockings—had the opportunity to make quick studies of Paine and Garrick. The captain of militia was a sturdy-looking man who stood perhaps five-ten. Matthew judged him to be in the vicinity of thirty years; he wore his sand-colored hair long and pulled into a queue at the back of his head, secured with a black cord. His face was well balanced by a long, slender-bridged nose and thick blond brows that settled low over his gunmetal gray eyes. Matthew surmised from Paine’s build and economy of motion that he was a no-nonsense type of man, someone who was no stranger to strenuous activity and probably an adept horseman. Paine was also no clotheshorse; his outfit consisted of a simple gray shirt, well-used leather waistcoat, dark brown trousers, gray leggings, and brown boots.
Garrick, who listened far more than he spoke, impressed Matthew as an earthy gentleman who was probably facing the dusk of his fifties. He was slim and rawboned, his gaunt-cheeked face burnt and weathered by the fierce sun of past summers. He had deeply set brown eyes, his left brow slashed and drawn upward by a small scar. His gray hair was slicked with pomade and combed straight back on his skull, and he wore cream-colored corduroy trousers, a blue shirt, and an age-buffed waistcoat that was the bright yellowish hue of some spoiled cheese Matthew once had the misfortune to inhale. Something about Garrick’s expression and manner—slow-blinking, thick and labored language when he did deem to speak—made Matthew believe that the man might be the salt of the earth but was definitely limited in his selection of spices.
A young negress servant appeared with a pewter tray upon which were goblets—real cut glass, which impressed Woodward because such treasures of luxury were rarely seen in these rough-edged colonies—brimming with red wine. Bidwell urged them all to partake, and never did wine flow down two more appreciative throats than those of the magistrate and his clerk.
The ringing of a dulcet-toned bell at the front door announced the arrival of others. Two more gentlemen were escorted into the room by Mrs. Nettles, who then took her leave to attend to business in the kitchen. Woodward and Matthew had already made the acquaintance of Edward Winston, but the man with him—who limped in his walk and supported himself on a twisted cane with an ivory handle—was a stranger.
“Our schoolmaster, Alan Johnstone,” Bidwell said, introducing them one to another. “We’re fortunate to have Master Johnstone as part of our community. He brings to us the benefit of an Oxford education.”
“Oxford?” Woodward shook the man’s hand. “I too attended Oxford.”
“Really? Which college, may I ask?” The schoolmaster’s elegant voice, though pitched low and quiet, held a power that Woodward felt sure would serve him well securing the respectful attention of students in a classroom.
“Christ Church. And you?”
“All Souls’.”
“Ah, that was a magnificent time,” Woodward said, but he rested his eyes on Bidwell because he found the schoolmaster more than a little strange in appearance. Johnstone wore a dusting of white facial powder and had plucked his eyebrows thin. “I remember many nights spent studying the bottom of ale tankards at the Chequers Inn.”
“I myself preferred the Golden Cross,” Johnstone said with a slight smile. “Their ale was a student’s delight: very strong and very cheap.”
“I see we have a true scholar among us.” Woodward returned the smile. “All Souls’ College, eh? I expect Lord Mallard will be drunk again next year.”
“In his cups, I’m sure.”
As this exchange between fellow Oxfordians had been going on, Matthew had been making his own cursory study of Alan Johnstone. The schoolmaster, slim and tall, was dressed in a dark gray suit with black striping, a white ruffled shirt and a black tri-corn. He wore a simple white wig, and from the breast pocket of his jacket protruded a white lace handkerchief. With the powder on his face—and a spot of rouge highlighting each sharp cheekbone—it was difficult to guess his age, though Matthew reasoned lie was somewhere between forty and fifty. Johnstone had a long, aristocratic nose with slightly flared nostrils, narrow dark blue eyes that were not unfriendly but rather somewhat reserved in expression, and the high forehead of an intellectual. Matthew glanced quickly down and saw that Johnstone wore polished black boots and white stockings, but that a misshapen lump on his right leg served him as a knee. When he looked up again, he found the schoolmaster staring into his face and he felt a blush spreading across his cheeks.
“As you’re interested, young man,” Johnstone said, with an uplift of his finely plucked eyebrows, “it is a defect of birth.”
“Oh…I’m sorry. I mean…I didn’t—”
“Tut tut.” Johnstone reached out and patted Matthew’s shoulder. “Observance is the mark of a good mind. Would that you hone that quality, but be a shade less direct in its application.”
“Yes, sir,” Matthew said, wishing he might sink through the floor.
“My clerk’s eyes are sometimes too large for his head,” Woodward offered, as a poultice of apology. He, too, had noted the malformed knee.
“Better too large than too small, I think,” returned the schoolmaster. “In this town at this present time, however, it would be wise to keep both eyes and head in moderation.” He sipped his wine, as Woodward nodded at Johnstone’s sagacity. “And as we are speaking of such things and it is the point of your visit here, might I ask if you’ve seen her yet?”
“No, not yet,” Bidwell answered quickly. “I thought the magistrate should like to hear the particulars before he sets sight on her.”
“Do you mean particulars, or peculiars?” Johnstone asked, which brought uneasy laughter from Winston and Paine but only a slight smile from Bidwell. “As one Oxford man to another, sir,” he said to the magistrate, “I should not wish to be in your shoes.”
“If you were in my shoes, sir,” Woodward said, enjoying this joust with the schoolmaster’s wit, “you would not be an Oxford man. You would be a candidate for the noose.”
Johnstone’s eyes widened a fraction. “Pardon me?”
“My shoes are in the custody of a murderer,” Woodward explained, and then proceeded to paint in detail the events at Shawcombe’s tavern. The judge had realized that such a tale of near-tragedy was as sure a draw to an audience as was a candle-flame to inquisitive moths, and so began to bellows the flame for all it was worth. Matthew was intrigued to find that in this go-round of the tale, the judge was certain from the beginning that Shawcombe was “a scoundrel of evil intent,” and that he’d made up his mind to guard his back ere Shawcombe sank a blade into it.
As the clay of history was being reshaped, the doorbell again rang and presently Mrs. Nettles reappeared escorting another guest to the gathering. This gentleman was a slight, small-boned man who brought to Matthew’s mind the image of a bantam owl perched atop a barn’s beam. His face was truly owlish, with a pale pursed mouth and a hooked nose, his large pallid blue eyes swimming behind round-lensed spectacles and arched brown brows set high on his furrowed dome. He wore a plain black suit, blue shirt with ruffled cuffs, and high-topped boots. His long brown hair—streaked with gray at the temples—overhung his shoulders, his head crowned by an ebon tricorn.
&n
bsp; “Dr. Benjamin Shields, our surgeon,” Bidwell announced. “How goes it, Ben?”
“An unfortunate day, I fear,” the doctor said, in a voice very much larger than himself. “Forgive my tardiness. I just came from the Chester house.”
“What is Madam Chester’s condition?” Winston asked.
“Lifeless.” Shields removed his tricorn and handed it to Mrs. Nettles, who stood behind him like a dark wall. “Sad to say, she passed not an hour ago. It’s this swamp air! It clogs the lungs and thickens the blood. If we don’t have some relief soon, Robert, our shovels will see much new work. Hello!” He strode forward and offered his hand to Woodward. “You’re the magistrate we’ve been waiting for. Thank God you’ve finally come!”
“As I understand it from the council in Charles Town,” Woodward said after he’d shaken the doctor’s hand, which he noticed was more than a little cold and clammy, “I am actually the third magistrate involved in this situation. The first perished by the plague back in March, before he could leave the city, and the second…well, Magistrate Kingsbury’s fate was unknown until last night. This is my clerk, Matthew Corbett.”
“A pleasure, young man.” The doctor shook Matthew’s hand. “Sir,” he said, addressing Woodward again, “I care not if you are the third, thirteenth, or thirty-third magistrate involved! We just want this situation resolved, and the sooner the better.” He punctuated his statement with a fiery glare over the rims of his spectacles, then he sniffed the air of the aroma that had been creeping into the room. “Ah, roasted meat! What’s on the table tonight, Robert?”
“Toss ’em boys in peppercorn sauce,” Bidwell said, with less vitality than a few moments previously; he was pained by the death of Dorcas Chester, a grandly aged lady whose husband Timothy was Fount Royal’s tailor. Indeed, the cloth of things was unravelling. The doctor’s remark about the work of shovels also made Bidwell think—uncomfortably so—of Alice Barrow’s dreams.
“Dinner will be a’table presently,” Mrs. Nettles told them, and then she left the room, carrying the doctor’s tricorn.
Shields walked to the fireplace and warmed his hands. “A pity about Madam Chester,” he said, before anyone else could venture off into new territory. “She was a fine woman. Magistrate, have you had much of a chance to inspect our town?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Best hurry. At this rate of mortality, Fount Royal will have to soon be renamed Grave Common.”
“Ben!” Bidwell said, rather more sharply than he’d intended. “I don’t think there’s any purpose in such language, do you?”
“Probably not.” Shields rubbed his hands together, intent on removing from them the chill of Dorcas Chester’s flesh. “Unfortunately, though, there’s much truth in it. Oh, the magistrate will find out these things for himself soon enough; we may as well speed his knowledge.” He looked at the schoolmaster, who stood nearby. “Alan, are you finished with that?” Without waiting for a response, he plucked the half-full wineglass from Johnstone’s hand and took a hearty swallow. Then he fixed his baleful gaze full upon Isaac Woodward. “I didn’t become a doctor to bury my patients, but lately I should wear an undertaker’s shingle. Two last week. The little Richardson child, bless his soul, was one of them. Now Dorcas Chester. Who shall I be sending off next week?”
“This does no good,” Bidwell said firmly. “I urge you to restrain yourself.”
“Restrain myself.” The doctor nodded and gazed into the glass’s shallow pond of red wine. “Robert, I’ve restrained myself too long. I have grown weary of restraining myself.”
“The weather is to blame,” Winston spoke up. “Surely these rains will pass soon, and then we’ll—”
“It’s not just the weather!” Shields interrupted, with a defiant uplift of his sharp-boned chin. “It’s the spirit of this place now. It’s the darkness here.” He drank again, finishing off the glass. “A darkness at noon the same as at midnight,” he said, his lips wet. “These sicknesses are spreading. Sick of spirit, sick of body. They’re linked, gentlemen. One regulates the other. I saw how Madam Chester’s sickness of spirit robbed her body of health. I saw it, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do. Now Timothy’s spirit has been blighted with the contagion. How long will it be before I’m attending his demise?”
“Pardon me, sir,” Garrick said, before Bidwell could deliver a rebuke. “When you say the sickness is spreadin’…do you mean…” He hesitated, as he fit together exactly what he desired to say. “Do you mean we’re facin’ the plague?”
“Careful, Benjamin,” the schoolmaster cautioned in a quiet voice.
“No, that’s not what he means!” Bidwell said heatedly. “The doctor’s distraught about Madam Chester’s passing, that’s all! Tell him you’re not speaking of plague, Ben.”
The doctor paused and Matthew thought he was about to announce that plague indeed had come to Fount Royal. But instead, Shields released his breath in a long weary sigh and said, “No, I’m not speaking of plague. At least, not plague caused by any physical power.”
“What the good doctor means, I believe,” said Johnstone to Garrick, “is that the town’s current spiritual…um…vulnerability is affecting the physical health of us all.”
“You mean the witch is makin’ us sick,” Garrick said, thick-tongued.
Bidwell decided it was time to stop these floodwaters, ere the dam break when Garrick—who was a proficient farmer but whose intellect in less earthy things was lacking—repeated these musings around the community. “Let us look to the future and not to the past, gentlemen! Elias, our deliverance is at hand in the magistrate. We should put our trust in the Lord and the law, and forbid ourselves of these destructive ramblings.”
Garrick looked to Johnstone for translation. “He means not to worry,” the schoolmaster said. “And I’m of the same opinion. The magistrate will resolve our difficulties.”
“You put great faith in me, sirs.” Woodward felt both puffed and burdened by these attentions. “I hope I meet your expectations.”
“You’d better.” Shields had put aside the empty glass. “The fate of this settlement is in your hands.”
“Gentlemen?” Mrs. Nettles loomed in the doorway. “Dinner’s a’table.”
The banquet room, toward the rear of the house next to the kitchen, was a marvel of dark-timbered walls, hanging tapestries, and a fieldstone fireplace as wide as a wagon. Above the hearth was the mounted head of a magnificent stag, and displayed on both sides of it was a collection of muskets and pistols. Neither Woodward nor Matthew had expected to find a mansion out here on the coastal swampland, but a room like this—which might have served as the centerpiece in a British castle—rendered them both speechless. Above a huge rectangular table was an equally huge candlelit chandelier supported from the ceiling by thick nautical chains, and upon the floor was a carpet as red as beef-blood. The groaning board was covered with platters of food, principal among them the roasted toss ’em boys still asizzle in their juices.
“Magistrate, you sit here beside me,” Bidwell directed; it was clear to Matthew that Bidwell relished his position of power, and that he was obviously a man of uncommon wealth. Bidwell had the places already chosen for his guests, and Matthew found himself seated on a pewlike bench between Garrick and Dr. Shields. Another young negress servant girl came through a doorway from the kitchen bringing wooden tankards of what proved to be—when Woodward tried a tentative sip, remembering the bite of the Indian ale—cold water recently drawn from the spring.
“Shall we have a prayer of thanks?” Bidwell asked before the first blade pierced the roasted and peppercorn-spiced chicken. “Master Johnstone, would you do the honors?”
“Surely.” Johnstone and the others bowed their heads, and the schoolmaster gave a prayer that appreciated the bounties of the table, praised God for His wisdom in bringing the magistrate safely to Fount Royal, and asked for an abatement to the rains if that was indeed in God’s divine plan. While Johnstone was praying
, however, the muffled sound of thunder heralded the approach of another storm, and Johnstone’s “Amen” sounded to Matthew as if the schoolmaster had spoken it through clenched teeth.
“Let us sup,” Bidwell announced.
Knives flashed in the candlelight, spearing roasted toss ’em boys—a title rarely used in these modern days except by sportsmen who recalled the gambler’s game of setting dogs upon chickens to bet upon which dog would “toss” the greatest number. A moment of spirited jabbing by Bidwell’s guests was followed by tearing the meat from its bones with teeth and fingers. Hunks of the heavy, coarse-grained jonakin bread that tasted of burnt corn and could sit in a belly like a church brick found use in sopping up the greasy juices. Platters of steaming beans and boiled potatoes were there for the taking, and a servant girl brought a communal, beautifully worked silver tankard full of spiced rum with which to wash everything down the gullet.
Rain began to drum steadily on the roof. Soon it was apparent to Matthew that the banquet had drawn a number of unwelcome guests: large, buzzing horseflies and—more bothersome—mosquitoes that hummed past the ears and inflicted itching welts. In a lull of the idle conversation—which was interrupted quite frequently by the slapping at an offensive fly or mosquito—Bidwell took a drink from the rum tankard and passed it to the magistrate. Then Bidwell cleared his throat, and Woodward knew it was time to get to the heart of the matter.
“I should ask you what you know of the situation here, sir,” Bidwell said, with chicken grease gleaming on his chin.
“I know only what the council told me. In essence, that you have in your gaol a woman accused of witchcraft.”
Bidwell nodded; he picked up a bone from his plate and sucked on it. “Her name is Rachel Howarth. She’s a mixed breed, English and Portuguese. In January, her husband Daniel was found dead in a field with his throat cut.”
“His head almost severed from the neck,” the doctor added.
“And there were other wounds on the body,” Bidwell went on. “Made by the teeth or claws of a beast. On his face, his arms, his hands.” He returned the naked bone to his plate and picked up another that still held a bit of meat. “Whatever killed him…was ferocious, to say the least. But his was not the first death in such a fashion.”