Speaks The Nightbird Part 1

Speaks the Nightbird.

By Robert McCammon.

One.

Came the time when the two travelers knew night would catch them, and shelter must be found. It had been a joyful day for frogs and mudhens. For the human breed, however, the low gray clouds and chill rain coiled chains around the soul. By the calendar the month of May should by all rights and predictions be charitable if not merry, but this May had entered like a grim-lipped miser pinching out candles in church.

Waterfalls streamed through the thick branches that interlocked forty feet above the road. The leaves of ancient oaks and elms, and the needles of the lofty pines, were more ebon than green, the huge trunks bearded with moss and blotched by brown lumps of fungus the size of a blacksmith's fist. To say that there was a road beneath those branches would be taking liberties with language: it was a canchre-colored mudhole emerging from the mist and disappearing into the mist.

"Steady, steady," said the wagon's driver to the pair of laboring nags as they pulled southward, breath steaming and skinny flanks trembling against the weight of wooden wheels through slop. He had a small stinger of a whip close at hand, but he declined to use it. The horses, which along with the wagon had been afforded him from the munic.i.p.al stable of Charles Town, were doing all they could. Beneath the wagon's soaked brown burlap canopy, and behind the raw pinewood plank that occasionally fired splinters into the travelers' rear ends, were two unmatched trunks, a valise, and a wig box, all four pieces of luggage bearing scars and gouges that betrayed lives of undignified s.h.i.+pment.

Thunder rumbled overhead. The horses struggled to lift their hooves in the muck. "Get up, there," the driver said, with not a smudge of enthusiasm. He gave the reins a half-hearted flick, his hands protected by a pair of gray cloth gloves, then he sat without further comment as raindrops fell from the furled edges of his black, mud-spattered tricorn hat and added more soggy bulk to his raven's-hue fearnaught coat.

"Shall I take them, sir?"

The driver glanced at his fellow sufferer, who was offering to hold the reins. By no idylls of the imagination could the two be called bookends; the driver was fifty-five years of age, the pa.s.senger fresh of twenty. The older man was big-boned and had a heavy-jowled and ruddy face, with thick and bristling gray eyebrows set like ramparts over deeply cast ice-blue eyes that were as congenial as newly primed cannon barrels. His nose-as a polite Englishman might say-was well-dimensioned. A forthright Dutchman might say its owner had bloodhound in his lineage. The driver's chin was also a st.u.r.dy piece of sculpture, a square bulwark scored with a cleft that could have sheltered a small musket ball. Usually his face was sc.r.a.ped clean by scrupulous pa.s.ses of the razor, but today the salt-and-pepper beard was making an appearance.

"Yes," he said. "Thank you." He pa.s.sed the reins over, one of the many times they'd exchanged this duty in the past hours, and worked some feeling back into his fingers.

The younger man's lean, long-jawed face had courted more candle glow than sunlight. He was thin but not frail, rather sinewy like a tough garden vine. He wore square-toed shoes, white stockings, olive-green breeches, and a short, tight-fitting brown jacket made of cheap kerseymere over a plain white linen s.h.i.+rt. The knees of his breeches and the elbows of his jacket had been patched at least as often as the older man's clothing. On his head was a dun-colored woolen cap, pulled down over finely textured black hair that had recently been cropped close to the scalp to combat an infestation of lice in Charles Town. Everything about the younger man-nose, chin, cheekbones, elbows, knees-conveyed the impression of sharp angles. His eyes were gray, flecked with dark blue, the colors of smoke at twilight. He did not urge on the horses nor spank them with the reins; he only intended to guide. He was if anything a stoic. He understood the value of stoicism, for already in his life he'd endured such trials as might break someone who did not.

As he worked his hands, the older man mused that if he saw fifty-six after this ordeal then he should put aside his vocation and become a Samaritan in thanks to G.o.d. He was not cut from the crude frontier cloth. He considered himself a man of taste and refinement, an urban denizen ill-suited to pierce this wilderness. He appreciated clean brickwork and painted fences, the pleasing symmetry of manicured hedges, and the solid regularity of the lamplighter's rounds. He was a civilized man. Rain was down his neck and in his boots, the light was fading, and he had but a single rusty saber in the wagon with which to protect their belongings and their scalps. The village of Fount Royal lay at the end of this mudtrack, but that was cold comfort. His task at that place would not be a gentle one.

But now a touch of mercy! The rain was tapering off, the sound of thunder more distant than before. The older man thought that the worst of the storm must be moving over the ocean, which they'd glimpsed as a frothy gray plain through brief breaks in the forest. Still, a nasty drizzle continued to sting their faces. The hanging folds of mist had curtained the treelimbs, giving the forest a phantasmagoric pall. The wind had stilled, the air thick with a swampy green smell.

"Carolina spring," the older man muttered, his husky voice carrying the melodic accent of well-bred English generations. "There'll be many new flowers in the graveyard come summer."

The younger man didn't answer, but inwardly he was thinking that they might perish on this road, that a stroke of evil could befall them and they'd vanish from the face of the earth just as Magistrate Kingsbury had vanished on this same journey not two weeks ago. The fact that wild Indians haunted these woods, along with all manner of savage animals, was not lost on his imagination. Even with its lice and plague deaths, Charles Town looked like paradise compared to this dripping green h.e.l.l. The settlers of Fount Royal must be insane to stake their lives and fortunes on such a territory, he'd decided.

But what now was Charles Town had itself been wilderness twenty years ago. Now it was a city and a thriving port, so who could say what Fount Royal might become? Still, he knew that for every Charles Town there were dozens of other settlements that had been devoured by misfortunes. Such too might be the eventual fate of Fount Royal, but at present it was the physical reality of someone's hard-worked dream, and the problem there must be tended to like any problem of a civilized society. But the question remained: why had Magistrate Kingsbury, en route from Charles Town to Fount Royal on this same-and only-road, never reached his destination? The older man had supplied a number of answers to the younger's inquiry-that Kingsbury had run afoul of Indians or highwaymen, that his wagon had broken down and he'd been set upon by beasts. But though the older man had the nose resembling a bloodhound's, it was the younger man who had the bloodhound's instinct. Any lingering scent of a question was strong enough to keep him pondering in pale candle glow long after the older man had retired and was snoring in his bedchamber.

"What's that?"

A gray-gloved finger pointed toward the mist ahead. In a moment the younger man saw what his companion had spied: the pitch of a roof off to the right side of the road. It was the same dark green and wet black as the woods, and might be as ruined a place as the trading post at which they'd expected to rest the horses and break bread in early afternoon, but instead had found only charred timbers and collapse. But there on the roof before them was a pretty sight: a stone chimney flying a flag of white smoke. The mist moved, and the rough-hewn lines of a log cabin took shape.

"Shelter!" said the older man, with exultant relief. "G.o.d's grace on us, Matthew!"

It was a fairly new structure, which explained why it hadn't been marked on the map. The nearer they got, the stronger was the smell of freshly axed pinelogs. Matthew noted, perhaps ungraciously, that the cabin's builder had not been the most skilled nor neatest of craftsmen. Copious amounts of red mud had been used to seal the cracks and c.h.i.n.ks in crooked walls. The chimney was more mud than stones, spitting smoke through its fissures. The roof sat at a precarious angle, like a tilted cap on the head of a blowzy drunk. The cabin was unadorned by any paint or decoration, and the small narrow windows were all sealed by plain plankboard shutters. Behind the cabin was an even more slovenly looking structure that must be a barn, beside which stood three swaybacked horses in a fenced enclosure. A half-dozen pigs snorted and grumbled in the nasty mire of a second pen nearby. A red rooster strutted about, followed by a number of wet hens and their muddy chicks.

A stake had been driven into the ground beside a hitching rail. Nailed to the stake was a green pinewood placard with the words 'Tavern Ye Trade' scrawled on it in thick egg-white paint.

"A tavern too!" the older man said, taking the reins from Matthew as if his hands could speed them to that hitching rail any faster. "We'll get a hot meal tonight after all!"

One of the horses back by the barn began nickering, and suddenly a shutter opened and an indistinct face peered out. "h.e.l.lo!" the older man called. "We're in need of shel-"

The shutter slammed closed.

"-ter," he finished. Then, as the horses made their last slog to the rail, "Whoa! Hold up!" He watched the shutter. "Inhospitable for a tavern-keeper. Well, here we are and here we'll stay. Right, Matthew?"

"Yes, sir." It was said with less than firm conviction.

The older man climbed down from his seat. His boots sank into the mud up to his ankles. He tied the reins to the hitching post as Matthew eased himself down. Even losing two inches to the mud, Matthew was taller than his companion; he stood ten inches over five feet, an exceptionally tall young man, whereas his companion was a more normal height at five feet seven inches.

A bolt was thrown. The cabin's door opened with dramatic flourish. "Good day, good day!" said the man who stood on the threshold. He wore a stained buckskin jacket over a brown s.h.i.+rt, gray-striped breeches and gaudy yellow stockings that showed above calf-high boots. He was smiling broadly, displaying peglike teeth in a face as round as a chestnut. "Come in and warm y'selves!"

"I'm not certain about it being a good day, but we will surely enjoy a fire."

Matthew and the older man scaled two steps to the porch. The tavern-keeper stepped back and held open the door for their entry. Before they reached him, both wished the pungence of the pinewood was stronger, so as to mask the appalling smell of their host's unwashed body and dirty clothes. "Girl!" he hollered to someone inside the tavern, just as Matthew's left ear got in the path of his pewter-melting voice. "Put another log on that fire and move y'self quick!"

The door closed at their backs and gone was the light. It was so gloomy in the place that neither of the two travelers could see anything but the red glimmer of fitful flames. Not all the smoke was leaving through the chimney; a duke's portion of it had made its home in the room, and hung in greasy gray layers. Matthew had the sensation of other shapes moving around them, but his eyes were blurred by smoke. He felt a knotty hand press against his back. "Go on, go on!" the tavern-keeper urged. "Get the chill out!"

They shuffled closer to the hearth. Matthew banged into a table's edge. Someone-a m.u.f.fled voice-spoke, someone else laughed and the laugh became a hacking cough. "d.a.m.n ye, mind your manners!" the tavern-keeper snapped. "We got gentlemen among us!"

The older man had to cough several times too, to relieve his lungs of the tart smoke. He stood at the flickering edge of the firelight and peeled off his wet gloves, his eyes stinging. "We've been travelling all day," he said. "From Charles Town. We thought we'd see red faces ere we saw white."

"Yessir, the red demons are thick 'round here. But you never see 'em 'less they wants to be saw. I'm Will Shawcombe. This is my tavern and tradin' post."

The older man was aware that a hand had been offered to him through the haze. He took it, and felt a palm as hard as a Quaker's saddle. "My name is Isaac Woodward," he replied. "This is Matthew Corbett." He nodded toward his companion, who was busy rubbing warmth into his fingers.

"From Charles Town, do y'say?" Shawcombe's grip was still clamped to the other man's hand. "And how are things there?"

"Livable." Woodward pulled his hand away and couldn't help but wonder how many times he would have to scrub it before all the reek was gone. "But the air's been troublesome there these past few weeks. We've had hot and cold humours that test the spirit."

"Rain won't quit 'round these parts," Shawcombe said. "Steam one mornin', s.h.i.+ver the next."

"End a' the world, most like," someone else-that m.u.f.fled voice-spoke up. "Ain't right to wear blankets this time a' year. Devil's beatin' his wife, what he is."

"Hush up!" Shawcombe's small dark eyes cut toward the speaker. "You don't know nothin'!"

"I read the Bible, I know the Lord's word! End a' time and all unclean things, what it is!"

"I'll strop you, you keep that up!" Shawcombe's face, by the flickering red firelight, had become a visage of barely bridled rage. Woodward had noted that the tavern-keeper was a squat, burly man maybe five-foot-six, with wide powerful shoulders and a chest like an ale keg. Shawcombe had an unruly thatch of brown hair streaked with gray and a short, grizzled gray beard, and he looked like a man not to be trifled with. His accent-a coa.r.s.e lowborn English yawp-told Woodward the man was not far removed from the docks on the river Thames.

Woodward glanced in the direction of the Bible-reader, as did Matthew, and made out through the drifting smoke a gnarled and white-bearded figure sitting at one of several crudely fas.h.i.+oned tables set about the room. The old man's eyes caught red light, glittering like new-blown coals. "If you been at that rum again, I'll hide you!" Shawcombe promised. The old man started to open his mouth for a reply but had enough elder wisdom not to let the words escape. When Woodward looked at the tavern-keeper again, Shawcombe was smiling sheepishly and the brief display of anger had pa.s.sed. "My uncle Abner," Shawcombe said, in a conspiratorial whisper. "His brain pot's sprung a leak."

A new figure emerged through the murk into the firelight, brus.h.i.+ng between Woodward and Matthew to the edge of a large hearth rimmed with black-scorched stones. This person-slim, slight, barely over five feet tall-wore a patched moss-green woolen s.h.i.+ft and had long dark brown hair. A chunk of pinewood and an armload of cones and needles were tossed into the flames. Matthew found himself looking at the pallid, long-chinned profile of a young girl, her unkempt hair hanging in her face. She paid him no attention, but moved quickly away again. The gloom swallowed her up.

"Maude! What're you sittin' there for? Get these gentlemen draughts of rum!" This command had been hurled at another woman in the room, sitting near the old man. A chair sc.r.a.ped back across the raw plank floor, a cough came up followed by another that ended in a hacking gasp, and then Maude-a skinny white-haired wraith in clothes that resembled burlap bags st.i.tched together-dragged herself muttering and clucking out of the room and through a doorway beyond the hearth. "Christ save our a.r.s.es!" Shawcombe hollered in her miserable wake. "You'd think we never seen a breathin' human before in need of food or drink! This here's a tavern, or ain't you heard?" His mood rapidly changed once more as he regarded Woodward with a hopeful expression. "You'll be stayin' the night with us, won't you, sirrah? There's a room right comfortable back there, won't cost you but a few pence. Got a bed with a good soft mattress, ease your back from that long trip."

"May I ask a question?" Matthew decided to say before his companion could respond. "How far is Fount Royal?"

"Fount Royal? Oh, young master, that's a two, three hour ride on a good road. The weather bein' such, I'd venture it'd take you double that. And dark's comin' on. I wouldn't care to meet Jack One Eye or a red savage without a torch and a musket." Shawcombe focused his attention once more on the older traveler. "So you'll be stayin' the night then?"

"Yes, of course," Woodward began to unb.u.t.ton his heavy coat. "We'd be fools to continue on in the dark."

"I suspect you have luggage in need of cartin'?" His smile slipped off as his head turned. "Abner! Get your a.r.s.e up and fetch their belongin's! Girl, you go too!"

The girl had been standing motionlessly with her back against a wall, her face downcast and her bare arms crossed over her chest. She made no sound, but walked at Shawcombe's drumbeat toward the door, her feet and legs clad in knee-high deerskin boots. "Ain't fit for a pig out there!" Abner complained, holding firm to his chair.

"No, but it's just right for a hog like you!" Shawcombe countered, and daggers shot from his eyes again. "Now get up and get to it!" Muttering under his beard, Abner pulled himself to his feet and limped after the girl as if his very legs were stricken by some crippling disease.

Matthew had wanted to ask Shawcombe who "Jack One Eye" was, but he hated the thought of that girl and the old man-the girl, especially-struggling with the heavy trunks. "I should help." He started toward the door, but Shawcombe gripped his arm.

"No need. Those two sops sit 'round here too long, they get lazy. Let 'em stir a bone for their supper."

Matthew paused, staring into the other man's eyes. He saw something in them-ignorance, pettiness, pure cruelty perhaps-that sickened him. He had seen this man before-with different faces, of course-and he knew him to be a bully who reveled in power over the weak of body and feeble of mind. He saw also a glint of what might have been recognition of his perceptions, which meant Shawcombe might be more intelligent than Matthew had surmised. Shawcombe was smiling slightly, a twist of the mouth. Slowly but forcefully, Matthew began to pull his arm away from Shawcombe's hand. The tavern-keeper, still smiling, would not release him. "I said," Matthew repeated, "that I should help them."

Shawcombe didn't surrender his grip. Now at last Woodward, who had been shrugging out of his coat, realized some small drama was being played out before him. "Yes," he said, "they will need help with the trunks, I think."

"Yessir, as you say." Shawcombe's hand instantly left the young man's arm. "I'd go m'self, but my back ain't no good. Used to lift them heavy bales, port a' Thames, but I can't do it no-"

Matthew gave a grunt and turned away, walking out the door into the last blue light and what was now blessedly fresh air. The old man had hold of Woodward's wig box, while the girl was around behind the wagon trying to hoist one of the trunks up on her back. "Here," Matthew said, slogging through the mud to her. "Let me help you." He took hold of one of the leather handles, and when he did the girl skittered away from him as if he were a leper. Her end of the trunk smacked down into the muck. She stood there in the rain, her shoulders hunched over and the lank hair covering her face.

"Ha!" Abner chortled. In this clearer light, his skin was as dull gray as wet parchment. "Ain't no use you talkin' to her, she don't say nothin' to n.o.body. She's one step out of Bedlam, what she is."

"What's her name?"

Abner was silent, his scabby brow furrowing. "Girl," he answered. He laughed again as if this were the most foolish thing any man had ever been asked, and then he carried the wig box inside.

Matthew watched the girl for a moment. She was beginning to s.h.i.+ver from the chill, but yet she made no sound nor lifted her gaze from the mud that lay between them. He was going to have to heft the trunk-and the second one as well, most likely-in by himself, unless he could get Abner to help. He looked up through the treetops. The rain, strengthening now, pelted his face. There was no use in standing here, shoes buried in the mire, and bewailing his position in this world; it had been worse, and could yet be. As for the girl, who knew her story? Who even gave a spit? No one; why then should he? He started dragging the trunk through the mud, but he stopped before he reached the porch.

"Go inside," he told the girl. "I'll bring the other things."

She didn't move. He suspected she'd remain exactly where she was, until Shawcombe's voice whipped her.

It was not his concern. Matthew pulled the trunk up to the porch, but before he hauled it across the threshold he looked again at the girl and saw she had tilted her head back, her arms outflung, her eyes closed and her mouth open to catch the rain. He thought that perhaps-even in her madness-it was her way of cleansing Shawcombe's smell off her skin.

Two.

"Most inconvenient," Isaac Woodward said, just after Matthew had looked under the straw-mattressed pallet of a bed and found there to be no chamberpot. "An oversight, I'm sure."

Matthew shook his head with dismay. "I thought we were getting a decent room. We'd have been better served in the barn."

"We won't perish from one night here." Woodward motioned with a lift of his chin toward the single shuttered window, which was being pelted by another heavy downpour. "I dare say we would perish, if we had to continue out in that weather. So just be thankful, Matthew." He turned his attention back to what he was doing: getting dressed for dinner. He'd opened his trunk and taken from it a clean white linen s.h.i.+rt, fresh stockings, and a pair of pale gray breeches, which he'd laid carefully across the bed so as not to snag the material. Matthew's trunk was open as well, a clean outfit at the ready. It was one of Woodward's requirements that, wherever they were and whatever the circ.u.mstances, they dress like civilized men for the dinner hour. Matthew often saw no point in this-dressing like cardinals, sometimes for a pauper's meal-but he understood that Woodward found it vitally important for his sense of well-being.

Woodward had removed a wigstand from his trunk, and had placed it upon a small table which, along with the bed and a pinewood chair, comprised the room's furnis.h.i.+ngs. On the wig-stand Woodward had set one of his three hairpieces, this one dyed a pa.s.sable shade of brown with curling ringlets that fell about the shoulders. By the smoky candlelight from the hammered-metal lantern that hung on a wallhook above the table, Woodward examined his bald pate in a silver-edged hand mirror that had made the journey with him from England. His white scalp was blotched by a dozen or more ruddy age spots, which to his taste was a thoroughly disagreeable sight. Around his ears was a fragile fringe of gray hair. He studied the age spots as he stood in his white undergarments, his fleshy belly overhanging the cinched waistband, his legs pale and thin as an egret's. He gave a quiet sigh. "The years," he said, "are unkind. Every time I look in this mirror, I see something new to lament. Guard your youth, Matthew. It's a precious commodity."

"Yes, sir." It had been said without much expression. This topic of conversation was not unfamiliar to Matthew, as Woodward often waxed poetic on the tribulations of aging. Matthew busied himself by shrugging into a fresh white s.h.i.+rt.

"I was handsome," Woodward wandered on. "Really I was." He angled the mirror, looking at the age spots. "Handsome and vain. Now just vain, I suppose." His eyes narrowed slightly. There were more blotches this time than the last time he'd counted them. Yes, he was sure of it. More reminders of his mortality, of his time leaking away as water through a punctured bucket. He abruptly turned the mirror aside.

"I do go on, don't I?" he asked, and he gave Matthew a hint of a smile. "No need to answer. There'll be no self-incrimination here tonight. Ah! My pride!" He reached into his trunk and brought out-very carefully and with great admiration-a waistcoat. But by no means an ordinary one. This waistcoat was the dark brown color of rich French chocolate, with the finest of black silk linings. Decorating the waistcoat, and glinting now in the candlelight as Woodward held it between his hands, were thin stripes woven with golden threads. Two small and discreet pockets were likewise outlined with woven gold, and the waistcoat's five b.u.t.tons were formed of pure ivory-a rather dirty yellow now, after all the years of use, but ivory just the same. It was a magnificent garment, a relic from Woodward's past. He had come to breadcrumbs and briars on several occasions, facing a bare larder and an even barer pocketbook, but though this garment would procure a pretty sum in the Charles Town marketplace he had never entertained a notion of selling it. It was, after all, a link to his life as a gentleman of means, and many times he'd fallen asleep with it draped over his chest, as if it might impart dreams of happier years in London.

Thunder boomed overhead. Matthew saw that a leak had begun, over in the corner; water was trickling down the raw logs into a puddle on the floor. He had noted as well the number of rat droppings around the room and surmised that the rodents here might be even larger than their urban cousins. He decided he would ask Shawcombe for an extra candle, and if he slept at all it would be sitting up with the lantern close at hand.

As Matthew dressed in a pair of dark blue trousers and a black coat over his s.h.i.+rt, Woodward pulled on his stockings, the gray breeches-a tight squeeze around the midsection-and then his white blouse. He thrust his legs into his boots, which had been sc.r.a.ped of mud as much as possible, and then put on and b.u.t.toned up his prized waistcoat. The wig went on, was straightened and steadied with the aid of the hand mirror. Woodward checked his face for stubble, as he had shaved with the benefit of a bowl of rainwater Shawcombe had brought in for their was.h.i.+ng. The last piece of apparel to go on was a beige jacket-much wrinkled but a st.u.r.dy traveler. Matthew ran a brush through the cropped and unruly spikes of his black hair, and then they were ready to be received by their host.

"Come in and set y'selves!" Shawcombe brayed as Woodward and Matthew came into the main room. If anything, the smoke from the hearth seemed thicker and more sourly pungent. A few candles were set about, and Maude and the girl were at work over a pot that bubbled and steamed on a hook above the red coals. Shawcombe was on his feet with a wooden tankard of rum in one hand, motioning them to a table; his balance, or lack of same, indicated the liquor was finding its target. He blinked and let out a low whistle that rose in volume. "Lord f.u.c.k the King, is that gold you're wearin'?" Before Woodward could draw back, Shawcombe's dirty hand had snaked out and fondled the glittering waistcoat. "Ah, that's a fine piece of cloth there! Maude, look at this! He's wearin' gold, have you ever seen the like?"

The old woman, revealed by the firelight to have a face like a mask of cracked clay under her long white hair, peered back over her shoulder and made a noise that could have been either mangled English or a wheeze. Then she focused again on her cooking, stirring the pot and snapping what sounded like orders or criticism at the girl.

"You two look the birds!" Shawcombe said, grinning widely. His mouth appeared to Matthew like a wet-edged cutla.s.s wound. "The gold bird and the black bird! Ain't you the sights!" He sc.r.a.ped back a chair from the nearest table. "Come on, sit down and rest your feathers some!"

Woodward, whose dignity had been affronted by this performance, pulled out his own chair and lowered himself into it with as much grace as he could muster. Matthew remained standing and, looking Shawcombe directly in the face, said, "A chamberpot."

"Huh?" The grin stayed, crooked, on Shawcombe's mouth.

"A chamberpot," the younger man repeated firmly. "Our room lacks one."

"Chamberpot." Shawcombe took a swig from the tankard, a rivulet of rum dribbling down his chin. His grin had vanished. The pupils of his eyes had become dark pinpoints. "Chamber f.u.c.kin' pot, huh? Well, what do you think the woods are for? You want to s.h.i.+t and p.i.s.s, you go out there. Wipe your a.r.s.e with some leaves. Now sit down, your supper's 'bout ready."

Matthew remained standing. His heart had begun beating harder. He could feel the raw tension in the air between them, as nasty as the pinewood smoke. The veins in Shawcombe's thick neck were bulging, gorged with blood. There was a defiant, churlish expression on his face that invited Matthew to strike him, and once that strike was delivered the response would be triplefold in its violence. The moment stretched, Shawcombe waiting to see what Matthew's next move would be.

"Come, come," Woodward said quietly. He grasped Matthew's sleeve. "Sit down."

"I think we deserve a chamberpot," Matthew insisted, still locking his gaze with the tavern-keeper's. "At the very least a bucket."

"Young master"-and now Shawcombe's voice drooled false sentiment-"you should understand where you are. This ain't no royal palace, and you ain't in no civilized country out here. Maybe you squat over a fancy chamberpot in Charles Town, but here we squat out behind the barn and that's how things is. Anyway, you wouldn't want the girl to have to clean up behind you, would you?" His eyebrows lifted. "Wouldn't be the gentlemanly thing."

Matthew didn't answer. Woodward tugged at his sleeve, knowing this particular skirmish wasn't worth fighting. "We'll make do, Mr. Shawcombe," Woodward said, as Matthew reluctantly surrendered and sat down. "What may we look forward to supping on this evening?"

Bang! went a noise as loud as a pistol shot, and both men jumped in their chairs. They looked toward the hearth, at the source of the sound, and saw the old woman holding a hefty mallet in one hand. "Eyegots at 'am bigun!" she rasped, and proudly raised her other hand, two fingers of which pinched the long tail of a large, crushed black rat that twitched in its death throes. went a noise as loud as a pistol shot, and both men jumped in their chairs. They looked toward the hearth, at the source of the sound, and saw the old woman holding a hefty mallet in one hand. "Eyegots at 'am bigun!" she rasped, and proudly raised her other hand, two fingers of which pinched the long tail of a large, crushed black rat that twitched in its death throes.

"Well, toss the b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Shawcombe told her. Both Woodward and Matthew expected her to throw the rat into the cookpot, but she shambled over to a window, unlatched the shutter, and out went the dying rodent into the stormy dark.

The door opened. A wet rat of another breed came in trailing a blue flag of curses. Uncle Abner was soaked, his clothes and white beard dripping, his boots clotted with mud. "End 'a the d.a.m.n world, what it is!" he p.r.o.nounced, as he slammed the door and bolted it. "Gonna wash us away, d'rectly!"

"You feed and water them horses?" Shawcombe had previously commanded Abner to take the travelers' horses and wagon to shelter in the barn, as well as tend to the three other sway-backed steeds.

"I reckon I did."

"You bed 'em down all right? If you left them nags standin' in the rain again, I'll whip your a.r.s.e!"

"They're in the d.a.m.n barn, and you can kiss my pickle if you're doubtin' me!"

"Watch that smart mouth, 'fore I sew it up! Go on and get these gents some rum!"