“Good luck to you!” Tom called. The last sight Matthew had of him was Tom walking up the steps to rejoin Reverend Burton in the cabin, and James following right behind. They set off into a murky fog that lay close upon the ground. Just past two more abandoned cabins, the muddy track took the curve to the southwest that Slaughter had foretold. The forest thickened again on either side. Rain dripped from the trees, and the birds were quiet. The wind was still, which was a blessing since all three travellers were soaked and already chilled. Further on, another track split off to the left at a more southerly course, which Matthew presumed must be the route to Belvedere. Greathouse kept to the path they were on, which might be termed a “road” as much as belladonna might be termed a “spice”. Soon the horses’ hooves and the wagon’s wheels were freighted with black mud, slowing their progress even more, and the road began to take a perceptible degree of ascent.
“This is a damnable track,” Greathouse said sourly, as if Matthew were to blame.
“Sirs?” Slaughter spoke up. “Might I ask what you’ll spend your money on?”
Neither Matthew nor Greathouse were in any mood for conversation. Slaughter adjusted his chains, sat up as best he could manage, and lifted his face to the stinging drizzle. “I’m going to buy myself a shave and a proper bath, first off. Then a new suit. Something very respectable,” he said. “A new hat, too. Somewhat like yours, Matthew. I like that style. Then on to buy my ship’s passage. Get myself out of here as soon as I’m able. Oh, you can have these colonies, gentlemen, and piss on them! Who in their right mind would want all this…this emptiness? Tell me, Mr. Greathouse, don’t you miss London?”
No reply was offered.
“I do. Not saying I’m going to stay in London. I don’t wish to trade one gaol for another. No, I shall make only a brief stop in London, to get my bearings. Then, I think I shall go to Europe. Any country where there’s not a war, as my soldiering days are behind me.” He shook his head back and forth, flinging water. “I shall endeavor to find a country,” he went on, “where I might buy a title. Lord Slaughter, or Baron Slaughter, or Marquis de Slaughter. It can be done, I have no doubt. In this day and age, with money as it is, it doesn’t pay to be a commoner.”
The horses pulled onward and upward, as the road continued to ascend. There was no abatement of the steady rain, which dripped from Matthew’s tricorn and ran down Greathouse’s face from his soggy cap. Matthew felt sure at least two miles had passed since they’d started their uphill climb; the horses were laboring, and the wagon’s wheels alternately seemed to stick and then slide.
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you.”
Matthew looked into Slaughter’s face. The prisoner stared impassively at him, his head cocked slightly to one side.
“I would,” Slaughter said, before Matthew could form an answer. “I mean, if I were in your position. I’d get the money in my hands, and then I’d kill you. You being me, of course.” He gave a thin smile. “Really. What’s five pounds, when you’re looking at fifty or more? And me, I’m just a…what did you call me, Mr. Greathouse? Oh yes. A common criminal.”
“We’re not going to kill you,” Matthew replied.
“But you’re not going to let me go, are you? You’re not going to do as you promised. I can tell. Yes, I see it in your eyes, Matthew. So, if you don’t let me go and you don’t kill me, how are you going to explain to your keepers about the money? I mean, when we reach New York I must tell them that you’ve gotten hold of my treasure, for what reason should I not? And then they’re going to want a piece of it, aren’t they? A sizeable piece, I would think. Yes, I know about greed, all right.”
“Shut up,” Greathouse said over his shoulder. They were coming to what appeared to be, thankfully, the top of this rather steep incline.
“I think it’s a problem for both of you,” Slaughter continued, undaunted. “And for me as well. Are you willing to split the money with men who dared not even dirty their breeches to come fetch me? You two doing all the work, for a measly five pounds? It’s a crying shame, gentlemen.”
“Matthew,” Greathouse said grimly, “if he speaks again I want you to put the barrel of that pistol in his mouth.”
“Now you know the young man is not going to do that. I do know pistols, sir, as well as I know razors. What if it went off and blew the brains out the back of my head? Good-bye, money. One dead Slaughter, but not a penny for Greathouse and Corbett. No, the reasonable thing to do, sir, is to assure me that you will let me go after I show you to the safebox, and then…if you’re not a liar, young man…I would much appreciate it if indeed you did allow me to go on my way. I shall think of you kindly, when I’m sitting on silk pillows in Europe.”
“Just do all us a favor, and keep your damned mouth—” And then Greathouse’s own mouth stopped making noise, for they’d crested the hill and there before them was a curving decline with thick woods on the right. On the left was a dropoff that fell into a forested gorge with wisps of fog at its bottom fifty feet below.
“Oh dear,” said Slaughter, peering over the wagon’s side. “I did forget about this dangerous descent.”
Greathouse held steady on the reins, which was unnecessary because the horses locked their legs up and one of the beasts gave a tremulous whinny that sounded like it meant Don’t make me go down there.
They sat in the rain, saying nothing. Greathouse’s shoulders were hunched forward, water dripping from his chin. Matthew wiped his eyes, his other hand on the gun he held protectively beneath his sopping-wet cloak. Slaughter gave a long, low sigh and at last said, “Fort Laurens is a little more than a mile from here. What’s your pleasure, sirs?”
When Greathouse’s voice came, it was as tight as an Iroquois’ bowstring. “Giddup,” he said, and flicked the reins. The horses didn’t move. Greathouse flicked the reins again, with some temper behind it this time, and one of the horses started off, pulling along with it the animal that had put up a protest. The wagon rolled forward, as rivulets of mud coursed down before them.
“Keep an eye to that dropoff,” Greathouse told Matthew, which was breath wasted because Matthew was already measuring the distance between wheel and disaster. The horses’ hooves were plowing into the mud, for true, but there was always the danger of the wagon slipsliding to the side sinister. If Greathouse couldn’t get them straightened out in time they could plunge over the embankment and down where the forest and fog might hide bones for a hundred years.
They’d descended about another sixty yards when it was apparent the road, tortured by time and weather, was getting narrower. “It’s close over here,” Matthew said. “Two feet at the most.” With a start, he realized he’d not directed his attention to Slaughter for several minutes, and he had the mental image of Slaughter rising up with a burst of speed and strength and heaving him over to his death; when he looked at the prisoner, however, Slaughter had not moved an inch, and the man’s eyes were closed against the drizzle.
They kept going down, through the slippery muck. Matthew uneasily watched the left edge of the road continue to constrict, where previous rainstorms had sheared large sections of the earth away. The horses nickered and jerked their heads, and Greathouse glanced to the left to see for himself how much space separated the wheels from going off the edge. It was less than ten inches, too tight for his comfort, and in another moment he pulled back on the reins and said, “Whoa!”
Slaughter’s eyes opened.
Greathouse set the brake. He turned around, wiped the water from his eyes with his cloak, and stared gloomily at their prisoner.
“What are we going to do?” Matthew asked.
“I don’t like this damned road. I don’t want to take the team too far down it, in case it’s washed out further along.” He looked back the way they’d come. “No room to turn around. Going to be one devil of a job backing this wagon up.”
“I repeat my question.”
“I heard you the first time.” Greathouse shot a glance at
him that could curdle the blood. “The only thing we can do, if we’re intending to get to that fort, is to walk.”
“Good suggestion,” said Slaughter.
He hardly had time to draw a breath after the last word, for suddenly Hudson Greathouse was off his seat and upon him, and when Greathouse meant to be upon somebody they were well and truly a fixed target. Greathouse grasped shirtfront with one hand and patchwork beard with the other and brought his face down into Slaughter’s with eyes like hellfire lamps.
“Don’t speak,” Greathouse hissed. “Don’t do any damned thing I don’t like.” His voice trembled, not from fear but from loss of control, which Matthew had realized was paramount to his nature.
Slaughter obeyed; his face was expressionless, betraying nothing.
It took a minute for Greathouse to compose himself, but still he kept hold of the prisoner’s shirt and beard. “Yes, we’re going to walk. Yes, I’m going to have to unlock your irons. But you want that, don’t you? Is that what you’d hoped would happen, all along?”
Slaughter said not a word, honoring Greathouse’s first command.
“I’d warrant it’s still over a mile,” Matthew said, looking down the long descent.
“You be quiet, too. Just let me think.”
A bad sign, Matthew thought. The man of action, reduced to thinking.
“How heavy’s the safebox?” was the next question directed at Slaughter. When the prisoner didn’t reply, Greathouse twisted his beard. “Now you can speak.”
No discomfort registered in Slaughter’s eyes. Matthew thought he must have a supreme mental control over pain. “One man can carry it.”
“All right, then. But you’d better know that I’ll have the pistol on you all the way there, and by God if you do something—anything—I don’t like I’ll blow your kneecap off. Do you understand that?”
“I hear what you’re saying, sir. But why should I do anything you don’t like, as I wish to be quits with you two even more than you wish to see my backside.”
Greathouse held him for a few seconds more, to emphasize who had power over whom, and then let him go. He reached for the key in his pocket and unlocked the manacles and leg irons, even as Matthew watched with the growing anxiety of a job ill-done.
Slaughter rubbed his wrists. “If you please, sir,” he said in a silken voice, “would you throw that key over the drop?”
Greathouse shook his head, the key clenched in his fist.
“Ah, here’s the problem, then, and I knew we must come to it.” A faint, maddening half-smile surfaced on Slaughter’s mouth. “It’s a matter of trust, isn’t it? I’m trusting you—the both of you—to do as you’ve promised, even though you were let off so lightly by that simpleton of a pastor. Why should I take you to the safebox, unless there’s at least—at least—a display from you that I shall not end up in irons again once you have the treasure?” He gave a passing scowl of irritation when Greathouse didn’t respond, and diverted his attention to Matthew. “Tell him, young sir, that I’m not going anywhere if he doesn’t throw the key over.”
“We’ll be sitting here for a long time then, won’t we?” Greathouse said.
“Yes,” replied Slaughter. “We will be.”
The two men stared at each other, neither one moving. Suddenly, in a blur of motion, Greathouse reached out to grasp Slaughter’s beard again; yet, before the hand could get there, Slaughter intercepted it with his own, the dirty fingers with their sharp ragged nails seizing Greathouse’s wrist with remarkable and—for Matthew—unsettling strength.
Slaughter said, quite calmly, “You forget yourself, sir. We are no longer captors and prisoner. We are now partners.”
“The hell you say!”
“The hell,” came the answer, “I do say.” He freed Greathouse’s wrist, with an air of annoyance. “If I’m to walk you down to the fort, I want an assurance that I will not be walked back up and returned to those irons. You vowed you’d release me, and not kill me. I take you at your word. Now show me I can trust you by throwing the key over.”
Greathouse looked to Matthew for guidance, and for the first time Matthew saw in the other man’s eyes an expression of helplessness. It was a terrible thing to witness, this chink in a knight’s armor. Yet Matthew knew his own tarnished tin had gotten them into this predicament.
“Damn it,” Greathouse said, to the world. He took a long breath, let it out between gritted teeth, and then he reared his arm back to throw.
“On second thought!” Slaughter held his hand out, palm up, before Greathouse. “I should like to cast it myself.” His eyes were heavy-lidded. “And, by the by, I do believe you moved the key to your other hand just before your last attempt at beard-twisting. I think it’s in your coat pocket by now, there on the left side.”
Greathouse lowered his head. When he looked up again, he was wearing a bemused—if petulant—smile. “As you said back at the hospital, never blame the wind for wishing to blow.”
“True enough. However, I’ve polished off several men who tried to blow their wind in my direction. The key, please?” He wriggled his repugnant fingers.
“I suppose you’ll want the gun next?” Greathouse took the key from his coat pocket on the left side and dropped it into Slaughter’s palm.
“Not necessary. I trust you not to shoot me, at least until you have the safebox. Besides, wet weather is no friend to gunpowder.” Slaughter threw the key over; there was a faint metallic tink as it hit a treetrunk far below. Then, rid of this obstacle to the life of a titled scoundrel, he grinned like a king. “Now! Shall we be off, gentlemen?” Disregarding Matthew, who had brought the pistol’s barrel out from beneath his cloak as a presentment of threat, Slaughter got down off the wagon. His feet pressed into the mud, and he began to walk jauntily along the treacherous road into the valley of Fort Laurens.
Greathouse started to get down as well.
Matthew felt a pressure in his throat, as if he were being throttled. It was his confession, he realized. His confession, all balled up word tangled with word. He reached out and grasped the other man’s sleeve. “Hudson,” he said, sounding near choked.
Greathouse looked at him, the thick gray eyebrows ascending.
“Listen,” Matthew went on. “We don’t have to go down there. There’s something I need to—”
“Coming, sirs?” Slaughter called, waiting twenty yards further along.
“Easy, easy.” Greathouse’s voice was muted. “I can handle him, Matthew. Don’t worry. The key to the irons is still in my pocket. He threw the key to my room at the boarding house.” Greathouse angled his face toward Slaughter. “We’re coming!” he replied, and he clambered off the wagon to the mucky earth.
Matthew watched him follow Slaughter along the descending track. Wet weather is no friend to gunpowder. True enough. The pistol he was holding might be useless, if the time came to pull that trigger. He wished Greathouse had brought a sword; those worked well enough, shine or rain. He had to get out of the wagon and face what was ahead, had to push his guilt into his guts where his courage used to be. Had he actually begun believing those air-woven tales of his own stellar celebrity in the Earwig? Had he fallen so far, since summer?
Greathouse stopped to wait for him, and just beyond Greathouse also stopped Slaughter, who was if anything a well-mannered killer.
When Matthew’s boots pushed into the mud, he half-expected the earth to open up for him, and for him to slide down and down into the thick dark where a new winter’s fireplace had been lit for his comfort in Hell.
He walked on, carrying his invisible irons that made prisoners of even the richest men.
Thirteen
WALKING only a few yards behind Greathouse, Matthew twice almost spoke out about Professor Fell’s money, but both times an inner voice interrupted to say You heard him, didn’t you? He said, Don’t worry. The great one has spoken, and the great one will bash your head in if you tell him now, at this sorry moment, that there already exists eno
ugh money to buy Zed’s freedom. So do yourself a favor, and keep your mouth shut.
The mean little drizzle was still coming down. They were walking through tendrils of fog, which didn’t help Matthew’s state of mind. The tendrils slowly shifted around them, as if drawing them deeper, and Matthew was made to think of the red wax octopus on the paper seal, and its eight tentacles stretched out to seize the world.
Through the fog at the bottom of the road there appeared a dark green wall about fifteen feet in height, splotched here and there with colors of wine red and pale yellow. At first Matthew thought it was just a particularly dense section of the forest, but a dozen yards closer and he could see individual black treetrunks, sharpened by axes at the top, and the spider’s web of vines and creepers that had reached out from the wilderness to lay claim to the remains of Fort Laurens. It was a dead place, and utterly silent. The road curved slightly to the left, and entered the fort through the jagged, black-burnt opening where the main gate must have stood. Something suddenly crashed through the woods on their right, a heavy dark shape that caused even Slaughter to stop in his muddy tracks, but whatever it was—stag or wild boar, perhaps—it kept going into the thick underbrush and disappeared.
“Give me the gun,” Greathouse said, and Matthew was relieved to hand it over. Just ahead of them, Slaughter had started on again, but Greathouse called to him, “Wait!” and the barefoot beast of barbershop butchery obeyed as meekly as a lamb.
It was apparent, as they neared the fort, that fire had done a nasty turn on the Dutchmen. Large sections of the treetrunk wall had burned away, the ravages of flame still to be seen beneath the mesh of nature even after three decades. What must have been a guardhouse, up on the right front corner, was a mass of tangled timbers held together by black vines, its witch’s hat of a roof fallen down and overhanging the wall at an angle that defied gravity. Matthew noted gunports here and there, wide enough for the snouts of blunderbuss shotguns to deliver loads of gravel, nails, or glass as well as lead balls. It was clear, however, that the Indian hatchet and the bowstring had decided this particular battle, and he wondered how many hundreds of arrowheads would still be found in the logs. Or, indeed, how many skeletons might lie beyond the broken walls.