“Adam Wilson,” spoke this slight, pale and nearly invisible creature, who wore small square-lensed spectacles and had a long, somber and horse-like face. His voice was like the echo of another voice spoken in another room. He wore a baggy suit the shade of bleached-out hay, and his tight cap of hair pulled back into a painful-looking queue was nearly the same color. His pallid blue eyes refused to meet Matthew’s, but rather angled off a few inches to the side even as he offered a hand the size of a child’s. Matthew’s impression was that this man could sit in a corner without moving for a time and be forgotten by everyone else in the room, and therefore he carried around with him his own disguise.
“Edgar Smythe,” announced the next gent on the left, in a voice like a bucket of gravel being pounded by an iron mallet. It made Matthew’s eardrums throb. Smythe, the selfsame gray-bearded and gray-haired man who had climbed the stairs past Matthew this morning, looked supremely bored. He was again in his black suit, with a ruffled blue shirt. He neither rose from his chair nor offered a hand, but immediately returned his attention to a glass of red wine he was nursing like a beloved child.
Matthew noted gold-lettered placecards on the table. The one across from Smythe read Dr. Jonathan Gentry, but the seat was empty. The physician, Matthew mused, was yet upstairs healing himself. Then next to Smythe was another empty chair and the placecard for Minx Cutter, who likewise had not yet arrived. Across from Minx’s chair, the card read Nathan Spade, and next to that place Aria Chillany. Next to Minx were three empty chairs, the closest to her being for Mack Thacker, the next for Miss Fancy, and the third for Jack Thacker. This will be a lovely scene, Matthew thought grimly.
“Our daring savior!” said Augustus Pons, who sat one chair down from Aria’s place. The triple-chinned face grinned, as candlelight played on the lenses of his spectacles and gleamed upon his bald pate. “You and Miss Cutter taught those bad boys a lesson, eh?” He opened his mouth and the twig-thin young man with curly brown hair who sat between him and Madam Chillany’s chair tipped a glass of the red wine over lips that glistened like garden slugs. The young man wore a powder-blue suit and had ruddy cheeks like those of the painted cherubs gamboling above. His eyes were bright blue, and they sparkled merrily for his master.
“Thank you, Toy,” said the fat man, when the glass had been lowered and the young man had blotted Pons’s third chin with a napkin. “Mr. Spade, do sit down and tell us all about your escapades in London!”
“Keep your business to yourself, Mr. Spade,” said the white-haired woman who sat on the other side of Pons. “His mouth has been known to get people into trouble.”
“It is other people’s mouths that get me into trouble,” Pons protested, without much vehemence. “Isn’t that right, Toy?”
Toy giggled, a nasty sound.
“Come speak to me, Mr. Spade,” said Mother Deare. “Let me take your measure.” She was a broad-shouldered, thickly-set woman in a copper-colored gown with frills of red and blue lace at the neck and cuffs. Matthew thought the gown fit her as much as two pairs of silk slippers fit a drayhorse. He went to her side, as she pushed her chair back from the table and turned it to regard him with froggish brown eyes in a wide, square-chinned face. Matthew reasoned she was likely sixty years old or thereabouts, with deep lines across her forehead and radiating from the corners of her eyes. She appeared to have known a life of hard work, probably performed outside under a hot sun. She wore red lace gloves, perhaps to hide hands that had been worked to the point of broken knuckles. The cloud of her cottony hair was done up with golden pins. She smiled at him, in a motherly way. Matthew had the desire to step back a pace or two at the sight of this peg-toothed smile, but he held himself in check as he thought rudeness here would be an unforgiven sin.
“A handsome young lad,” Mother Deare decided. She had a quiet voice, yet there was some element of the bludgeon in it. “I suspect you are no stranger to the wiles of women.”
The moment of real truth had arrived. Everyone was listening. Matthew’s heart was pounding, for he thought surely this bulgeous-eyed woman was able to see through his mask. He kept his face composed and reached deep for a reply. “The wiles of women,” he said, “are my business. And in my business, the stranger the better.”
Pons gave an amused little laugh. Aria Chillany followed that one with her own. Mother Deare’s smile was unbroken, but she nodded ever so slightly. “Well said,” she told him. She motioned toward his chair. “Join us.”
Matthew took his place.
Aria sat to his right. A black servant in the sea-blue uniform and high wig emerged from a door artfully concealed in a wall at the far end of the room, bringing a basket full of various kinds of freshly-baked bread cut into slices. After he had served these to whomever desired them, he went around the table refilling wine glasses from bottles of red and white already on display. Matthew chose a glass of red, as that seemed to be the drink of choice among this bunch. When he took his first sip a thrill of terror shot through him…not at the sense that he might be taking a sip of poison, but at the fact that suddenly he was so damned comfortable in this masquerade. It astounded him, how far he had come from being a lowly law clerk, to being…what? It seemed to him that he wasn’t quite sure what he was on his way to being. And that too caused a kink of unease down where the red wine drifted.
Descending the stairs to the banquet room came Minx Cutter, wearing tan trousers, a dark blue waistcoat and a white blouse. She took her time about it, and then she seated herself directly across from Matthew as per her placecard. She nodded at Mother Deare and Pons but directed her attention to her choice of wine from the servant instead of to any of the other guests, and to his surprise Matthew felt a pang of envy toward the bottled grape.
A minute or so after Minx’s arrival, came a bellow of noise and the slamming of bootheels on the stairs and thus the Thackers arrived with Fancy held fast by either arm and pressed between them. The brothers wore identical red suits—a shock to any civilized eyeball—with black waistcoats and gray shirts. Fancy was draped in a dark green gown with a black bodice, and she wore elbow-length gloves of black cloth. She was manhandled along until she was shoved down in the chair between the Thackers, and they were laughing like hyenas and snorting like bulls all the way. Matthew noted with a certain satisfaction that Jack’s right hand was bound up with a cloth bandage. The two brothers took their places and sprawled in their chairs, and Fancy wore a blank stare on her lovely face and kept her head lowered.
Mack and Jack went after the bread and spilled as much wine as they poured. When Minx reached for the bread basket the servant had left on the table, Jack suddenly reached into his coat with his left hand, brought out a knife crusted with blood and, standing up and leaning forward, plunged it into the basket’s contents.
“There ya go,” he said sweetly to Minx. “Wanted to return what ya gave to me—”
“—so kindly,” Mack finished, and then he swigged a glass of red.
Minx’s expression remained placid. She pulled the basket toward her, removed the knife and chose a slice of bread marred by Jack’s crusty lifejuice. She ate it while staring at Matthew, after which she calmly slid the blade into her waistcoat.
The eyes of the Thackers settled on Nathan Spade.
“Hey, boyo!” Jack called. “Enjoy your coach ride?”
“Thrilling,” Matthew replied. “Thank you.”
“We wasn’t tryin’ to thrill ya,” said Mack, as he dipped bread into a bowl of brown sauce the servant had left. “We was tryin’ to—”
“—kill ya!” Jack finished, and he gave a harsh chortle. “Naw, just jokin’ there, boyo! We knew you wasn’t gonna go off the edge!”
“And how did you know that, please?” Madam Chillany had regained the fire in her eyes and the ice in her voice.
Mack answered, “Somebody as smart as he’s supposed to be, playin’ with the whores and all, he ain’t gonna go so easy as that! Naw, ma’am! ’Course, it helped him to have—”
“—a knife-thrower at his side,” said Jack, with a quick and disdainful glance at Minx. “Problem is, maybe she ain’t always gonna be at his side!”
“Maybe not.” Matthew took another drink of his wine before he spoke again. “What do you two gents have against me? You’re simply angry because I made you wait a few weeks?”
“They don’t like anyone with three attributes they don’t have,” said Mother Deare. “Good manners, good looks, and good sense. Pay them no further attention. You are feeding a fire that should be left untamped.”
“Listen to her, Spadey,” said Mack, with brown sauce on his chin.
“Yeah, she’s big enough to fight your battles for ya, ain’t she?” Jack grinned in the most sarcastic way. Then his eyes flared like flaming tinderboxes, he grabbed Fancy by the hair and kissed her mouth, Augustus Pons said, “Oh my God,” Toy squirmed in his chair, and Mack then grasped Fancy’s chin and smashed her lips with his own. After the bully-boys’ statement of ownership was done, they went back to their drinking and Fancy again lowered her head and stared at the surface of the table as if it were a new world she was fixated on either exploring or escaping to.
“Well, I don’t enjoy having to wait for anyone!” It was spoken by the hammer-crushing-gravel voice of Edgar Smythe. His face was a wrinkled mass of barely-confined anger. “Here nearly a month! After that damnable voyage from Plymouth! The seas so high I was swimming in my fucking bed! And then I get here and am told I have to wait for him before we can start our business?” A finger stabbed toward Matthew. “A damned boy?”
“Watch your words, please,” Mother Deare advised. “We are all equals here.”
“The money I bring in has no equal,” Smythe fired back, his bearded chin lifted in defiance. “You know that’s true, and so does he!”
He meaning the professor, Matthew surmised.
“Settle yourself,” Mother Deare said quietly, but the bludgeon was ready. “Have another glass of wine, breathe deeply of this exalted air, and remark to yourself how fortunate you are—as we all are—to be at this table.
“One month of waiting bothers you, Mr. Smythe? Here on this warm island? Really it does? My, my!” She touched her throat. “Such ingratitude, I would be ashamed.”
“Ingratitude my ass,” Smythe growled. He reached to refill his glass, which evidently had already been refilled several times. “I know my place here, and it’s far better than his!”
“I want to know,” spoke the soft and echoey voice of the nearly-invisible Adam Wilson, “when Matthew Corbett is going to be killed.”
Matthew had been lifting the glass to his mouth. The jolt that went through him almost caused a regrettable spillage.
“That Chapel disaster lost us all some fine young recruits,” Wilson went on. “He had a hand in that, and he caused the loss of one of my best men. I want to know when revenge will be delivered.”
Matthew was thinking furiously. Ah yes! He remembered! One of the older men captured at the Chapel estate during the Queen of Bedlam affair had been an expert on finances, and had been serving as an instructor.
Mother Deare’s voice was as steady and direct as her fierce stare: “The professor decides that, Mr. Wilson. Not you.”
“I’m only voicing my wishes, Mother Deare,” spoke the slender man, who even as he shrugged his shoulders seemed again to be vanishing away.
A clattering on the stairs announced the arrival of Jonathan Gentry, clad in a dark blue suit with a white shirt and stockings. Unfortunately he appeared to be under the influence of his own making, for his face was flushed and sparkling with sweat and the tail of his shirt was hanging out beneath his waistcoat. He came staggering down the staircase, gripping hard to the oak bannister, and at the bottom he hesitated and felt forward with one shoe as if he feared the floor was made of ice and might crack under his weight.
“Oh Christ,” Madam Chillany breathed beside Matthew. “He’s in one of his states.”
Assured that the floor would hold him, Gentry released his death-grip on the bannister and approached the table, in a circuitous sort of way. He walked as if he were dancing to an unheard tune. Matthew thought Gentry’s steps would be appreciated by Gilliam Vincent.
Mack said, “Come on and sit your arse down—”
“Ya stumblin’ arsehole!” Jack supplied, and the two brothers laughed as if they were the very kings of wit.
The devilishly-handsome though nearly-incapacitated Gentry just gave a feeble smile, a comma of dark brown hair sweat-stuck to his forehead. His remarkable green eyes were not so luminous; tonight they were darkened and bloodshot. Matthew watched as Gentry searched for his place at the table, and no one helped him. Matthew thought that whatever freight the doctor was carrying, the castle of Professor Fell must weigh most heavily upon him for he had surely drunk or inhaled something potent to deaden his nerves.
“You’re next to me,” Matthew spoke up, and Gentry narrowed his eyes to focus and came staggering around the table to claim his place.
“Thank you, M—” Gentry caught himself and smiled dazedly. “My friend,” he said, as he lowered himself into the chair.
Sirki emerged from the door at the far end of the room, presumably to make sure everyone had arrived, and then he went away again without a word to the guests. Matthew noted the East Indian giant was wearing black robes and a black turban tonight, and for some reason that fact sent a disturbance rippling slowly through him like a wave about to shatter itself against a rock.
In a few minutes the feast began to arrive, brought in by a squadron of servants. The theme—no surprise here to Matthew—was nautical. Seafood stew was served in clay bowls shaped like boats. Platters of clams wafted steam up through the candlelight. A glass bowl contained bits of raw fish mingled with onions and small red peppers that nearly seared Matthew’s tongue off at first taste. Puff pastries filled with crabmeat and a white wine cream sauce came piled on a blue plate and were quickly gobbled down by the Thackers before anyone else could get their fair share. Then came whole fish grilled, baked and steamed. A swordfish laid out on a wooden slab still had its beak and eyeballs. The pink tentacles of an octopus dripped puddles of butter. The wine flowed and the guests consumed. Matthew watched Mother Deare watching everyone else. From time to time someone gave a grunt as they ate something particularly pleasing to them, but otherwise there was no conversation.
Then Jonathan Gentry, his face and suit jacket smeared with oil and butter, withdrew from a pocket a small bottle of green liquid and poured it into his wine. He drank it down with relish, after which he began trying to carve a piece of mackerel with the edge of a spoon.
“What are you drinking?” Aria asked him, with notes of both wariness and disgust in her voice. “Something of your own making, I presume?”
“My own making,” he said, and nodded. “Yes, my own.” He smiled at nothing, his eyes heavy-lidded. “I am a doctor, you know. I am a physician. And a very able one, in fact.” He turned the heavy lids toward Matthew. “You tell her.”
“Leave Mr. Spade alone,” came Aria’s quiet command, emphasizing the name.
“What’s he saying?” Mother Deare asked, interrupting her consumption of tentacles.
“He’s sayin’ he’s a fuckin’ asshole,” said Jack Thacker, and he grinned drunkenly at Fancy, who had eaten half of a boatbowl of seafood stew before she had again left the room on her silent voyage.
“I’m saying I am a doctor. A healer,” Gentry replied, with as much dignity as a grease-smeared drug fiend could muster. “That is who I am. And this,” here he held up the bottle, which still contained a few drops of green, “is the medicine I have given myself tonight. I call it…” He paused, seemingly searching for what he called it. “Ah, yes. Juice of Absence.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Mack muttered in his wine, and then he took hold of Fancy’s hair and began to gnaw on her throat. Not to be outdone, Jack attacked the other side of her neck.
“Oh dear me,” said
Pons, who had been fed his entire meal and had his mouth and chin wiped by his special Toy.
“Juice of Absence,” Gentry repeated, his face slack. His eyes appeared to be sliding inward. “It removes one. Takes him away. It eases the mind and deadens the nerves. It causes one to leave this realm of unhappy discord, and enter another more pleasant. Yes, it is of my own making.” He stared blankly at Aria. “Somewhat like my life, isn’t it?”
“A disgusting mess, you mean?” she asked, her brows uplifted.
Gentry nodded. Suddenly there was nothing handsome about him at all. He just looked to Matthew like a pitiful man trying to hold onto something that had perhaps slipped his grip many years before. Down the table, Pons was being fed by Toy, Mother Deare was carefully watching Gentry, the Thackers were feasting on Fancy’s throat, and Minx was sipping her wine in stiff-backed silence. Up the table, Smythe was tearing into a piece of swordfish, Wilson ate small bites of the raw fish concoction and kept pushing his glasses up because the peppers were making his face glisten with sweat, and Sabroso leaned back in his chair and drank not from a glass but from a fresh bottle of red wine that he had uncorked with his teeth.
But Gentry in a way sat alone, and Matthew found he could no longer look at the man.
Instead Matthew stared across at the Thackers, and seeing the suffering expression on Fancy’s beautiful and tortured face as the two brutes ravished her he felt the words come up from his soul to his throat and he was powerless to secure them from leaving his mouth.
He said, “Stop that.”
They continued on, unhearing.
“You two!” Matthew said, louder, with the flush of righteous anger and redhot peppers in his cheeks. “I said…” And again, louder still: “Stop that!”
This time they heard. Their mouths left the Indian girl’s throat, leaving red suction marks and grease trails. Their glittering eyes in the foxlike faces found him, and yet they grinned stupidly as if they had never in their lives heard anyone give them a command and really mean it.