“Yes!” Matthew was relieved to hear the word spoken almost as if by a native of New York.
“Are you what all the noise is about?”
“I am. My friend’s been hurt. Can you help me find him?”
“Is he here?”
“Yes, but where I don’t know.”
“Hm,” the man said. His black eyebrows lifted. “Hurt how?”
“Stabbed. In the back.”
“Your hands.” The Indian motioned with his stick. “They don’t look too good.”
“It’s my friend I’m worried about,” Matthew replied.
“Then, he must be a true friend, because I would imagine you are in some pain. What happened?”
“Never mind that. I just want to know where he is. His name’s Hudson Greathouse.”
“All right.” The Indian nodded. “If he’s here, he’ll be with the medicine sisters.”
“Take me there.”
“No,” came the reply, “I will not. The medicine sisters don’t like to be bothered when they’re working,” he explained to his visitor’s look of dismay. “It’s best to leave them alone. Do you have a name?”
“Matthew Corbett.”
“Do you wish to come into my house and have some tea, Matthew Corbett?”
“Tea?”
“A nasty habit I picked up in London,” said the Indian. He tossed the stick back to the ground and pulled the deerskin aside. “Come in. It’s poor manners to refuse a formal invitation.” He waited as Matthew tried to decide what kind of bizarre dream he was having, and how soon he might awaken from it. Matthew was beginning to be aware of all the pain that was flooding in upon him, from rope-burned hands and stone-slashed feet. His bruised left shoulder felt like a dead weight. Among these sensations was an overwhelming weariness, coupled with a forlorn grief. If not for him, Greathouse would not be dying, or already dead. If not for him, Slaughter would not have been set loose, and this might have been the worst of it. But he had to lay that aside now and put his attention on the moment, for that was how he had to survive what was ahead.
“Thank you,” Matthew said, and he walked into the Indian’s shelter.
Inside, the small bits of wood in the central firepit burned low. Arranged around the dwelling were items of everyday life: a sleeping pallet, a wooden rack holding blankets, animal skins and some items of clothing, a few wooden bowls and clay drinking cups, a bark water pail and other necessities. Matthew took note of several spears, two bows and a quiver of arrows leaning against a wall. The man would have to be a hunter, certainly, or he could not survive. But why was he living alone here, with no evidence of a wife and children?
Matthew’s question was answered, in a way, when the Indian sat down cross-legged before the fire, poured some black liquid from a wooden pot into two small clay cups, and asked in a quiet voice, “You’re not afraid of insanity, are you?”
“Pardon?”
“Insanity,” said the Indian. “I am insane.”
“No,” Matthew answered, if a bit warily. “I’m not afraid.”
“Ah, that’s good, then.” One of the cups was offered, and Matthew accepted it. “Everyone else here is afraid. That’s why I’m an…” He paused, his high forehead creasing as he searched for a word. “Outcast,” he went on. “Or nearly so. It won’t be very long before I am, because I’m getting worse. Go ahead, drink. As they say in your land, cheer up.” He lifted the cup in semblance of a toast, then put it to his lips and downed the liquid.
Matthew also drank, but before he got more than a swallow down his throat he thought his knees might give way, for though it was certainly English tea it was the strongest, most bitter brew he’d ever dared to imbibe. He thought there must be some fishheads and bear balls in this drink. He coughed and sputtered, his eyes shot forth tears, and he held the offending cup almost at arm’s-length.
“No sugar, I’m sorry,” said the Indian. “Isn’t it suitable?”
Matthew coughed again, explosively. Still, for all the bitter taste, he felt a little charge course through his veins, as if one ingredient of this particular tea might be gunpowder. He said hoarsely, “It’s all right.”
“I trade for it at the post in Belvedere.” The Indian poured another cup and drank from it. “Is it what you recall from your land?”
“I was born here,” Matthew said, when he could trust his tongue again.
“Ah. So I was. We might as well be brothers, shouldn’t we?”
Matthew didn’t know how to respond to that, so he took another small sip of the furniture polish. “What’s your name?” he asked.
The Indian spoke something that sounded like a ghostly wind blowing through a winter forest. “In your language,” he said, “that would be Walker In Two Worlds.”
“You speak English very well.”
“Thank you. It’s not an easy tongue to learn. I still have difficulties. But I’m the best speaker here, and that is why I’m allowed to stay.” He smiled tightly, which on his drawn and haunted face resembled a grimace. “I became insane in London. You see?”
Matthew didn’t, but he chose not to press the point. He bent down and put the cup beside the fire. Not too close, though, for fear of explosion. “I need to find my friend.”
“You need something on those hands. You won’t be able to use them tomorrow.”
“My friend,” Matthew repeated. “If he dies…” He let go of the sentence.
But the stern black eyes of Walker In Two Worlds were fixed upon him, and would not let him go free so easily. “If he dies, what?”
“If he dies,” Matthew answered, “I’m to blame.”
“Are you? How?”
“We were taking a prisoner from Westerwicke to New York. A very dangerous man, named Slaughter. Because of me…something I did…or didn’t do…Slaughter hurt my friend and got away.” Matthew ran a hand through his hair, barely feeling the twinge of raw flesh. “He’s a killer. There’s no telling what he’ll do out there.”
Walker In Two Worlds nodded, his face now devoid of expression. “Tell me, then. Who do you grieve for most? Yourself, for your mistake; your friend, for his injury; or the others?”
“The others? What others?”
“The innocent others,” Walker said, “you fear this man Slaughter is going to kill.”
And there it was. The central truth, the essence of Matthew’s anguish, perceived by a man who in New York might be called a savage. For Matthew had realized, on the way from Fort Laurens to the village, that Greathouse’s death would be only the first of many at the hands of Slaughter. He cursed his stupidity and greed; he cursed his smallness, and his vanity. He cursed the black leather bag, with its red wax seal of an octopus, and he cursed the gold that had shone so brightly in his eyes that day at the Chapel estate. He felt as if he’d stepped into a trap that had been set out for him just as surely as if Professor Fell had planned it so. Such traps, he thought, were easy enough to step into, but hell was paid to get out.
He realized, also, that he was going to have to settle his own debt with Satan, if he was ever to get out of this.
He found himself staring at Walker’s hunting tools: the sharp-tipped spears, the bows and the quiver of arrows.
“Are you a good hunter?” Matthew asked.
“I keep myself fed, and I…what is the word…contribute my part.”
Matthew nodded. Then he swung his gaze back to meet Walker’s. “Have you ever hunted a man?”
“A man,” Walker repeated, tonelessly.
“Have you? Or, to the point…could you?”
Walker looked into the small flickering fire. “It is not could that matters, but would. I could, but I would not. And you could not, for before the sun rises again your pain will make you forget that idea.”
“My hands are all right.”
“I was talking about your legs. I saw that you limped as you came in.”
“My feet are cut a little bit, but that’s no matter.”
Aga
in the tight smile that was a grimace distorted the Indian’s face. “Oh, you Englishmen! Forever fighting everything around you, even your own spirits and vessels. You don’t know when to cut the rope before it strangles you, or how to avoid the quicksand pool that lies in plain sight. You seek to bend everything to your way, even if it destroys you. To win, even if winning leads to your death. Haven’t you had enough death for one day, Matthew Corbett?”
“I’m not dead. And I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.”
“Neither do I. But I suspect the man you wish to hunt would not wish to be captured, and has grown a killer’s eye in the back of his head. Besides that, you don’t even know what direction he’s gone.”
“That’s why I need you,” Matthew said. “Someone who can follow tracks.”
Walker put a hand to his face and shook his head, as if this were such a ridiculous idea he didn’t want to shame Matthew by revealing his expression of either mirth or derision.
Matthew felt his own resolve start to flag, yet he had to make another effort. “I have to get him back. Do you understand that? God knows what he’ll do out there, and whatever blood he spills will be on my soul. Are you listening?”
“Listening,” Walker said behind his hand, “but not hearing very well.”
“Then hear this. I have money. Not with me, but I can get it for you. Gold coins. Eighty pounds worth. If you help me find Slaughter and bring him back, you can have it all.”
Walker said nothing for awhile. Then he grunted and lowered his hand. He looked up at Matthew with narrowed eyes, as one might regard the most foolish of fools. “Eighty pounds,” he said. “That would be quite a lot of money, would it not? It would make me the richest insane man in this village. What should I spend it on, then? Let me think. I’ll buy the moon, and bring her down to earth so she might sing me to sleep at night. No, no; I should buy the sun, so that I should always have a warm-hearted brother to light my way. Or…I might buy the wind, or the water, or the earth underfoot. I might buy a whole new self, and wear English clothes as I parade up and down the streets of your great town. No, I have it! I shall buy time itself, the river of days and nights, and I shall command it to carry me backwards in my canoe until I reach the moment I was taken from my people across the dark divide to your land and became insane. Ah! Now we have an agreement, Matthew Corbett, if you might promise me that eighty pounds of gold will return me to sanity, and how I used to think, and what I used to know was true. Because that is all I desire in this world, and without sanity there is one walk I can never make, and that is upon the Sky Road when I die. So…did you bring the paper and quill to sign this agreement, or shall it be written on the smoke?” He held a palm toward the firepit, and the smoke there swirled between his fingers as it rose upward toward the roof hole.
Matthew had no reply, and at length Walker again turned his attention to the small tongues of flame, as if they might speak to him the reassurance for which he yearned to hear. But Matthew was not done yet. Walker’s mention of “time” had reminded him that he had one more card to play.
He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and brought out the leather holder that secured his silver watch. As he opened it, bits of glass fell out. He saw that the watch had been broken, probably in his fall to the ground, and if not damaged at that point then surely by immersion in the well water. The time had stopped at ten-oh-seven.
“This is broken,” Matthew said, as Walker looked on, “but the silver should be worth something. I can give it to you now, and the gold later, if you’ll help me.”
Walker held his palm out. Matthew put the watch in it. Walker drew it to himself, and stared silently at the watch’s immobile hands.
With an acid hint of irony in his voice, Walker said, “I would never have believed it, but time does stop for the Englishman.”
A cryptic remark, Matthew thought, that seemed to hold some meaning for the Indian, but was otherwise impenetrable.
A few seconds after that, there came the tap-tapping noise of what Matthew reasoned must be the stick being struck against the side of Walker’s dwelling. He heard a voice call out, and then Walker stood up and went to the entrance, where he pulled the skin aside and spoke for a moment with what Matthew saw was an elderly man whose deeply-seamed face was almost covered with time-faded tattoos. Walker listened intently, nodded and then said to Matthew, “Your friend has died.”
Sixteen
IN fact,” Walker continued, as Matthew’s heart seemed to cease beating, “your friend has died twice. Both times the medicine sisters have been able to sing his soul into returning to his body, but they think it would understand better if you were to speak to it in your own language. They say he’s a very strong man, though, which is a good thing. Go with Old Dry Ashes, he’ll take you there.”
Matthew passed by Walker, who withdrew with the watch clasped in his hand, and went out into the gray light. Old Dry Ashes turned and began walking at a brisk pace that challenged the ability of Matthew’s aching legs. Again a group of children followed along, chattering and laughing at the pale, wobbling scarecrow, while their dogs ran around in circles and every so often aimed an indignant bark in Matthew’s direction.
The journey this time was mercifully short. Old Dry Ashes led Matthew to a structure that was twice as large as Walker’s dwelling. It also was emitting smoke from a hole at the center of its roof, and its walls were covered with deerskins marked with red, blue and yellow designs that appeared, to Matthew’s limited comprehension, to be stick-figure depictions of human beings, animals and fantastic shapes with multiple arms, legs and eyes that might represent denizens of the spirit world. He thought this place, the domain of the medicine sisters, must be the village’s hospital, if indeed any connection could be made to the English world. Strips of leather decorated with feathers, beads and carved totems marked the entry, and set above it—ominously so—was a human skull missing its lower jaw, perhaps to mark the fact that the medicine sisters lost patients just as did doctors in New York, and they wished not to be spoken badly of by the departed in their afterlife. Or, that bones were only bones, and all flesh no matter how proud, how beautiful, or how strong, was destined to fail.
Old Dry Ashes stopped before the entry and motioned Matthew in. With the most mixed emotions of dread and propensity he’d ever experienced, Matthew parted the leather curtains and went inside.
Once more the dimness of light within at first limited his vision. Then, gradually, he made out the figures of two women, both of sturdy size, with long silver hair and dressed in deerskins decorated with beads, brightly-hued feathers, and totems. Their faces were painted, one yellow with red around the eyes, the second half-blue and half-green. They both held round wooden rattles with, presumably, dried beans or corn inside. An essence of some kind had been applied to the central firepit, for the crackling flames showed colors of blue and purple. The sweet, musky smell of burning spices was all but overpowering. Clay pots and jars stood about, in a variety of sizes. And hanging in what appeared to be a hammock sewn from beaverskins was a figure tightly wrapped in white cloth, like a babe in swaddling.
Only Greathouse’s head was visible. His eyes were closed, his sweat-damp face gray except for daubs of red and yellow that had been applied to chin and forehead. The two medicine sisters were keening and chanting in low voices as Matthew approached, and did not pause in their vocal utterings to the spirits when Matthew stepped between them.
Matthew thought Greathouse looked eighty years old. It seemed that the flesh was starting to tighten around the skull. Matthew felt a start of alarm because he couldn’t tell if Greathouse was breathing or not. Then one of the medicine sisters took a drink from liquid in a red cup, sprayed it between her teeth onto Greathouse’s face, and Matthew saw him flinch, if almost imperceptibly.
“Hudson,” Matthew said, as the medicine sisters chanted and shook their rattles through the musky-scented smoke.
Greathouse’s eyes fluttered and opened. Blood-sh
ot and dark-hollowed, they searched for a face to go with the voice.
“I’m here,” Matthew said, and touched the man’s swaddled shoulder.
“Matthew?” It was a weary whisper; the voice of a man who was saving his strength to fight for his life.
“Yes.”
“Where the…hell are we?”
“An Indian village. Not far from Fort Laurens.”
Greathouse made a noise of either pain or interest, it was hard to tell which. “How’d we get here?”
“They brought us.”
“I can’t move.” He frowned, obviously disturbed by his lack of freedom. “Why…can’t I move?”
“You’re all wrapped up. Don’t try to move. I imagine they’ve put something on your wounds, and you don’t want to—”
“Shit, what a mess,” Greathouse said, squeezing his eyes shut again. “That box. Damned box. What was in it?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a long moment in which Greathouse didn’t speak. Matthew was aware that the medicine sisters had withdrawn to the other side of their shelter, probably to give him the opp-ortunity to convince Greathouse’s spirit not to fly away from the body.
“Well,” Greathouse whispered, his eyes opening again, “I was a…prince of fools…wasn’t I?”
“How could you have known?”
A small tide of anger rippled over the man’s face. “I am…paid to know. It’s my job.” He winced as fresh pain hit him, and let the anger go in order to lessen his torment. “In the well. I remember that. You wouldn’t…let me go under.”
“That’s right,” Matthew said. “I’m not going to let you go under here, either. I forbid you to die.”
“Oh…do you?”
“Yes, I do. I forbid you to die because my education is not yet complete, and when you’re up on your feet again and we’re back in New York I intend to continue my lessons in sword-fighting and, as you put it, the art of combat. So you’re not to die, do you hear me?”
Greathouse gave a grunt that might have been a muffled laugh. “Who died,” he said, “and made you…king?”