“I am who I am. And who I will ever be.” He frowned, impatient at his own heartless lies. “I have to get along to see Minx now. Would you excuse me? I’d rather walk alone than be entangled in a ridiculous discussion like this.”
“Oh, would you?” She nodded. Her cheeks were very red and the freckles looked like bits of pepper. But deep in her eyes—and this wounded his soul to see—was a hurt that he thought he would rather tear his own orbs out than have to gaze upon. “All right then, Matthew. All right. I thought we were friends. I thought…we were something, I don’t know what.”
“I don’t know what either,” he answered, like the bastard of the world.
“I can’t…I don’t understand…why…”
“Oh,” he said, “stop your prattling.”
“I came to help you, if you needed me. That’s all I ever wanted, Matthew! To help you! Can’t you see that?”
“That’s the point I’m trying to make.” He drew a breath, for this next thing might be the killer. “I was wrong to have confided in you on the ship that night. It was weak, and I regret it. Because the fact is, I have never needed you. I didn’t yesterday, I don’t today and I will not tomorrow.”
And this time, he saw the little death in her eyes. It killed him, most of all.
“Fine,” Berry said. And again, as the ice closed in: “Fine. Good day to you, then.” She sounded a bit choked, and she quickly cleared her throat. Then she turned and began walking quickly away, and six strides in her departure she turned again toward him and there were tears on her face and she said in a voice near collapse, “We are done.”
It was good that she got quickly away, for Matthew got himself going in the opposite direction, not toward Garden Street at all, and he staggered like a drunk though he had only put down the water, and everything seemed blurred and terribly wrong, and his heart ached and his eyes felt as if they were bleeding. A few steps and he broke the heel off his right boot, which made him limp even more drunkenly. And also like a drunk he found himself sitting under a tree in the Trinity cemetery, surrounded by those who had already known their share of life, love and loss, and he sat there for a time wishing some ghost would whisper to him about strength and fortitude and the will to keep going and similar such bullshit but no ghost spoke and so therefore he wiped his eyes, roused himself and went on his way and he thought that somewhere in Heaven or Hell one spirit applauded him and that spirit’s name had been Nathan. Who now was long deceased, for all the good love had done him.
Before he left that village of the dead he had the overwhelming urge to call out for her, as if she could hear him. To call out and say he was sorry, that he was a liar and hadn’t meant any of it but that he was frightened for her and frightened of Professor Fell for her. So it all came down to fear. But he didn’t call out, for it would have been for nothing and anyway the dice had been thrown. We are done. Three words he would take with him when they rolled him over into his own bed in this very same village of silent sleepers.
“Yes,” said Matthew, as he watched the door of Sally Almond’s tavern at seven-twenty-nine by the clock. “By all means, another bottle.”
“You’ve been drinking a lot lately, I notice.” Greathouse poured the last of the red wine into Matthew’s glass and held up the empty soldier for the waitress. “Why is that?”
“Thirsty,” Matthew answered.
There was a small tick of metal from the clock as the minute hand moved. And just that soon, the door opened and in walked Katherine Herrald.
She was now, as she had been in October, a trim figure who drew attention and admiration. She was about fifty years old, with sharp features and penetrating blue eyes. She was straight-backed and elegant and there was nothing aged or infirm about her. Her dark gray hair, under a fashionable cocked riding-hat a rich brown hue, was streaked with pure white at the temples and at a pronounced widow’s peak. She wore a dark brown dress ornamented with leather buttons and cinched with a wide leather belt. Around her throat was a scarf nearly the same color as the Stokelys’ Indian-blood-colored pottery. She wore brown leather gloves. She came across the tavern directly to their table, as Matthew and Hudson stood up to greet her. She was their employer, her dead husband the originator of the Herrald Agency and himself murdered by Tyranthus Slaughter on orders of Professor Fell. Back in October she’d told Matthew she was going to England and then would be returning in May. So here she was, and when she’d arrived yesterday morning she’d sent a letter to them from the Dock House Inn, announcing her presence. Matthew had written back: I have someone you need to meet. Her name is Minx Cutter, and she was once an associate of Professor Fell.
“Hello, Miss Cutter,” said Mrs. Herrald, offering her hand. Minx took it. “I’m interested in hearing about you. Interested as well in hearing your story, Matthew. Your letter skimped on details. After I have a glass of wine and determine what I’d like to eat, I want to know everything.” She sat across from him, the better to read his expressions.
Matthew nodded. He was thinking that in two hours or so, after his story and Minx’s had been told, Mrs. Herrald was going to aim her eyes at the princess of blades and say, “You seem to have taken a few wrong steps in your progress through life, Miss Cutter. Yet here you are now, on a straighter path. It took great courage for you to know I was coming, and to know my history with the professor, and to sit at the table with me. I have a feeling you are never lacking for courage. I must ask: are you at all interested, Miss Cutter, in the process of discovery? For if you are—and if you are interested in continuing along your current path and possibly righting other wrongs—then…you and I should talk a little further.”
Before that, though, there was food to be ordered. Sally Almond herself came over to take their requests.
Matthew had been thinking. About predators, in particular. About the sea of life, and the creatures that roamed it. About the dangerous currents his business—now his calling—put him into. It was, really, sink or swim. He still had so much hurt in his heart for Berry. Yet he felt he had to leave her to protect her, to move forward, to prepare for his next meeting with Professor Fell. It would be upon him, likely sooner than he thought.
The next thing on his ticket, however, was to respond to the latest letter from a certain Mr. Sedgeworth Prisskitt of Charles Town who was asking for a courier to escort his daughter Pandora to the annual Sword of Damocles Ball, held in Charles Town in late June. He wondered why a father would have to pay for an escort for his daughter. Was she that ugly? He wondered also what sort of events the trip might offer, for with a name like Pandora…surely there was a box somewhere that once opened, out escaped…
…what?
It remained to be seen.
But the matter of predators was still on his mind. The matter of terrible and evil things gliding in the dark, perhaps circling him even now.
He was famished. Such thoughts would hold until after dinner and wine.
Matthew studied the blackboard for a moment and then told Sally what he would like.
She replied that it was freshly-caught, was excellent, and that forthwith she would bring him the platter of roasted shark.
Robert R. McCammon, The Providence Rider
(Series: # )
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