Part 29 (1/2)

Matthew opened the watch and offered it to the light. ”It's eight-twenty.”

”Well, maybe I can't afford a fancy watch like that-and Lord only knows how you got it-but I don't need one to know my duty. You're drunk and it's a good walk to the gaol. 'Bout a ten-or twelve-minute walk if I know my streets.”

”I'm not drunk. I was attacked.”

”Oh, were you, now? Who attacked you?” Nack gave a chortle. ”The f.u.c.kin' Masker?”

”Maybe it was him, I don't know.”

Nack thrust the lantern into Matthew's face. ”So why aren't you dead?”

Matthew couldn't supply an answer.

”Let's go,” said Nack, and pressed the billyclub's tip up against Matthew's throat.

Matthew stiffened his legs so he would not be moved. ”I'm not going to the gaol,” he said. ”I'm going home, because I'm not in violation of the decree.” Home being a windowless Dutch dairy or not, he planned on waking up in the morning a free man.

”You're resistin' arrest, is that it?”

”I'm telling you what I'm going to do and advising that you go about your business.”

”Is that so?”

”Let's just forget this, shall we? And thank you for your help.”

Nack wore a crooked grin. ”I think you need to be knocked down a peg.” He lifted the club and Matthew realized the man meant to brain him.

But if Nack thought that Matthew was drunk and incapable of defense, the brutish constable was presently and unpleasantly surprised, for Matthew s.h.i.+fted the paper-wrapped object to his left hand and used his right fist to protest violently against Nack's mouth. The sound was like a fat codfish being smacked with an oar. Nack staggered, his eyes wide, and the billyclub cleaved empty air where Matthew had stepped aside.

Nack had perhaps three seconds of stunned immobility. Then the constable's face took on the enraged snarl of an animal-a maddened muskrat, perhaps-and he came in again, once more lifting the club. Matthew stood firm. Something that Hudson Greathouse had said during their first fencing lesson came to him very clearly: you must take dominance of the action from your opponent. Matthew figured that applied to fist-fighting as well as rapiers. He took a step in to block the blow with his left forearm and let fly with his right fist into Nack's nose. There was a wet-sounding pop. The constable fell back, almost skidding on his bootheels. He coughed and snorted and blood spurted from both nostrils, and then he cupped a hand over his wounded snout as the tears of pain flooded out of his eyes.

Matthew showed Nack his fist, c.o.c.ked for another greeting. ”Do you wish some more, sir?”

Nack just made a mewling noise. Matthew waited for another attack, which tonight would be the third he'd endured. Then Nack lowered his head, turned around, and walked swiftly back the way he'd come, taking the left onto King Street and carrying the lantern's light with him.

Good riddance! Matthew almost shouted at the man's back, but now with the light gone he didn't feel so brave. Whether Nack would go running to find another constable, Matthew didn't know nor did he particularly care. He picked up his bag, looked behind him to make sure no one was sweeping in on him again to lock an iron arm around his throat, and began walking at his own rapid pace toward Grigsby's house.

Never had Matthew been so glad to see a light, even if it was just the punched-tin lantern sitting on the ground beside the outbuilding's door. The cord with the key hung on the doorhandle, as promised. Matthew unlocked the door, went down three steps with the lantern, and found himself in a s.p.a.ce about half that of the garret. The hard-packed dirt on the ground was the color of cinnamon. The walls were plastered and painted, suitably, a cream color. An uncomfortable-looking deerskin cot had been set up for him. Well, it was better than the dirt. Or was it? To the credit of Grigsby's hospitality, though, Matthew saw that he'd been supplied a small round table on which sat a waterbowl, a few matches, and a tinderbox. On the floor next to the cot was a chamberpot. He would have to share the s.p.a.ce with a stack of wooden boxes, some buckets, an a.s.sortment of press parts, a shovel, axe, and other implements and unknown items wrapped up with canvas. Because the floor was so low and there were air-vents in the bricks just below the roof, the place was comfortably cool. For one night, it would do. The only problem, he realized soon enough, was that there was no latch on this side of the door. It would stay closed, but of course would not be locked. He would have to figure out how to somehow secure it.

Matthew then turned his attention to the object that had been so roughly gifted to him. He opened the wax seal and the paper unfolded to reveal a small black notebook with gold leaf ornamentation on the cover. His heart gave a kick that Brutus might have envied. He'd never seen the gold leaf design up close before. It was a square of scrollwork, too elegant for its owner.

Eben Ausley's missing notebook. Here in his hands. Given to him by whom?

The Masker?

Matthew sat down on the cot, pulled the table near, and put the lantern on top of it with the lid open to afford the most light. I have something for you, the m.u.f.fled voice had whispered.

It was incredible, Matthew thought. Yet here it was. For whatever reason, the Masker had to have taken the notebook from Ausley's body, and for whatever reason delivered it by means of an arm around the throat. But no blade to the throat. Why not?

I have marked a page. Pay heed to it.

Matthew saw that a page was dog-eared toward the last third of the book. He opened it to that leaf, noting the brown stain that ran along the top of the book and had stuck some of the pages together, for there was evidence a blade had been used to cut them apart. He held the dog-eared page to the light, and saw written by Ausley's crimped hand and lead pencil a strange listing.

After that page followed a few blank pages. Matthew went back to the first page and skimmed through what he soon realized was evidence of Ausley's disordered mind. Matthew had been not far wrong in a.s.suming that the headmaster was as addicted to his note-taking as to his gambling, for scrawled down were amounts paid for food and drink for his charges, amounts due from various charities and the churches, notes on the weather, listings-of course-of winnings and losings at the tavern tables, notes on the playing styles of different gamblers, and-yes-even jottings on what the man had been eating for lunch and supper and the ease or difficulty of his bowel movements. It was a combination ledger book and personal journal. Matthew found his own name several times in such listings as Corbett the b.a.s.t.a.r.d follows me again d.a.m.n his eyes and Corbett again the s.h.i.+t something must be done. Dark stains on some of the pages may have been patches of Ausley's blood or spilled wine from a boisterous night at the tables.

Matthew returned to the dog-eared page and once more read over the series of names and numbers.

The Masker had said Eben Ausley was- ”Was what?” Matthew asked quietly, of the lantern's flame.

Though he wished to read the notebook carefully from beginning to end, he was being overcome by weariness. It made no sense to him whatsoever, that the Masker should give him this book. Should mark a page for him. Should refrain from cutting his throat, for wasn't murder the Masker's motive?

Murder, he thought. Murder. Yes, but for a purpose.

It does not serve his purpose to murder me, Matthew realized. It serves his purpose for me to understand this page he has marked.

My G.o.d, Matthew thought. The Masker wants me to help him.

Do what?

He couldn't think about this anymore tonight. He closed the notebook and put it atop the table. Then he got up and set the lantern on the first step, where the opening door would knock it over and give him at least a warning. It was the best he could do. He decided against extinguis.h.i.+ng the candle; let it go out on its own.

He took off his shoes, stretched out on the deerskin, and quickly fell away into sleep. But the last image in his mind was not the skulking Masker nor the silent Queen of Bedlam nor Reverend Wade weeping in the night nor any number of things that might have been; it was Berry Grigsby's face across the table in the Trot, golden and freckled in the lamplight, her eyes penetrating his and her voice asking, as if in challenge, What might I be hiding from?

Twenty-Nine.

It was an eerie morning to which Matthew awakened, for when he came up from sleep he wasn't certain that the events of yesterday hadn't been just a wretched dream. Therefore when he found himself on the deerskin cot in the dim light that filtered through the air-vents, with Eben Ausley's notebook on the table, his body stiff and sore from being yanked off his feet by the Masker's arm and the memory of the pottery's destruction still cras.h.i.+ng in his mind, he squeezed his eyes shut again for a while and lay still as if to avoid life itself until he felt strong enough to receive it.

Oh, his back hurt! He got up, wondering how the Indians could bear it. His first task was to get a match aflame and light the lamp. The candle had burned down to almost nothing, yet there remained a small stub and a bit of wick that sputtered but finally accepted the fire. He felt the same as that wick. Then, in the meager illumination, Matthew picked up the notebook to make sure it was real. He turned again to the dog-eared page, held it nearer the light, and examined the names and numbers penciled there.

Matthew a.s.sumed they were the names of orphans. The Two beside the Jacob would mean he was the second Jacob in the group but his surname was unknown; the same as John Five. The lines of numbers were a mystery. And then there were the other markings: Rejct, Chapel, and what might have been dates. The ninth of May, twentieth and twenty-eighth of June. The last entry bearing no notation or date. He looked at the word Rejct.

Reject? Why had Ausley not simply added the second e? Or was it a shorthand for Rejected?

The word Chapel next drew his attention. He knew the orphanage did have a chapel. Just a small room with a few benches in it, really. In Matthew's time there, the churchmen occasionally came to make sure the orphans were following the righteous path. Otherwise the chapel would have been just another chilly chamber for bunks.

Matthew had a sense of unease about that word. Was he looking at a record of Ausley's more recent ”punishments”? And had that b.a.s.t.a.r.d committed his sickening deeds in the chapel, of all places?

But the notation Rejected did not fit, in that context. If that was really the word, then Rejected for what? And by whom? Why also was there no notation next to the last name?

He reasoned that he would have to put together a time span for this notebook. When Ausley filled up one, he likely went right to the next. The notebook might have been his fifth or fifteenth. Just going by the dates on the list, this particular volume of Ausley's great deeds would have been started around the second week of May.

The wick began to spit again. Matthew decided it was time to rejoin the world. His stomach was also making itself heard, calling for breakfast. When he checked his watch, he was shocked to see the time was nearly eight o'clock. He'd been more weary than he'd realized, as he usually woke around six. He spent a moment splas.h.i.+ng cool water in his face, but there was neither soap nor towel. After getting some breakfast he intended to visit the barber for a shave and bath, for he had both the grit of travel and the dust of disaster in his pores.

He took a clean-clean being a relative term-light blue s.h.i.+rt from his bag and put it on, along with a pair of fresh stockings. The two pair of breeches in the bag were about as grimy as the pair he'd slept in, so he made no change in that regard. Then he put Ausley's notebook into the bag under the breeches and the bag under the cot. He walked out into a brilliant suns.h.i.+ne that at first blinded him; it was darker than he'd thought in the Dutch dairy, which was of course the purpose. He locked the door behind him.

Marmaduke Grigsby answered his knock and invited him in, and soon Matthew was sitting at the table in Grigsby's kitchen as the printmaster cut slices of salted bacon for him and broke two eggs into a pan over the hearth's small fire. A cup of strong dark tea tore away the last cobwebs in Matthew's mind.