Part 48 (1/2)

Chapel laughed softly. The bell stopped, which made Matthew's guts churn like a barrel of fresh-caught cod. ”Being disposed of,” the man replied. ”As any commodity might be used up and thrown away. That's what all human beings are, really, when you get down to things. Correct?”

”If I said yes, would I and the girl live?”

Again that soft laugh.

”So that's what all this is about?” Matthew saw at the end of the road the vineyard and the arrangement of buildings all constructed from chalkwhite stone. One of the buildings had a small belltower. ”Creating commodities for use by Professor Fell?”

”Yes, and for use by anyone willing to pay. Come on, Matthew! Surely you understand how important it is for the...how shall I phrase it...?”

”Criminal underworld?” Matthew supplied.

”Brotherhood,” said Chapel, ”and sisterhood, also, to replenish itself. We are commodities, too. All our talents make us valuable to different degrees and different worths. Take Billy Hodges, for instance. As I said, he did some wonderful work for us and became an instructor in the screever's art. See that building off to the left, there? Beside the one with the belltower? That would be our primary cla.s.sroom. Billy taught his pupils in there. Some of them advanced to take other positions in the colonies, where they are waiting for certain signals. Some have been sent to England to work. The same as with all our cla.s.ses: the art of self-defense, the study of finance, the techniques of human management, the art of communication...and on and on until you get to the more defined studies of a.s.sa.s.sination, arson, blackmail, theft, extortion, cardsharping, dipping, forgery, and-”

”Poisoning?” Matthew interrupted. ”How to concoct drugs to kill five innocent people in a Philadelphia tavern?”

”Oh, those five people were unfortunate byproducts of the contract. Someone had to drink that wine. We couldn't exactly ruin Swanscott and his business if no one was poisoned, could we?”

”Lovely.”

”Necessary. Don't you see that this is a business? Really, Matthew! This is a business with a great future. It's been sailing along in England and Europe for many, many generations. Now, with the new world opening up and all its potential ahead, we'd be pretty foolish not to want to get in the door too, wouldn't we?” He sighed, because he knew he wasn't making much of an impression. ”As for the poisoning, you might be interested to know that when Mr. Nack committed his acts of revenge, only Mr. Deverick had any idea why he might be getting his throat cut.” He slid a sidelong glance at Matthew to gauge his interest, then went ahead anyway when Matthew showed none. ”Ausley only supplied the human commodities, without knowing their exact use. As for G.o.dwin, the doctor was involved with a young wh.o.r.e in London after his wife died. We found out her name was Susan. He fawned over her, and she used him as her ponce. Made a real fool out of him, as the tale goes. I suppose he'd do anything to stay around her, for that is the illusion we call love. Me, I would have ripped her gutless and thrown her out a window. But G.o.dwin must have thought himself a n.o.ble soul who would someday wean his sweetheart off the throbbing c.o.c.ks of other men and lead her to a better life. Until she got herself knocked up and he killed both his sweet Susan and the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d on the abortion table. An accident, I'm sure. But you know, he was always drawn to the doves. A sad episode in an otherwise exemplary life. However, we thrive on such episodes. They make our business so much simpler. Therefore when we approached the good doctor about making a small batch of poison for us-out of belladonna he purchased at the Smith Street Apothecary, by the way-he was at first very reluctant until we brought all that up about Susan. Could we prove it? Witnesses could be found and letters written, we said.” Chapel gave a broad wink. ”We have ladies with great imagination and not a little experience. But G.o.dwin was a weak nut. Guilt-ridden and pliable, so not much pressure had to be applied. We were going to kill him ourselves, if he tried to approach the high constable. We would have found someone else. A commodity. You see?”

”A tragedy,” Matthew replied.

”A business. Like any other, except...” Chapel thought about it. ”It made me, a poor but ambitious tinker's son, very wealthy.”

The boys suddenly rushed ahead. Ominously so, Matthew thought. They disappeared around the corner of the belltower building.

”Ah, the ragged schools give us such dedicated pupils,” Chapel said, with a hint of wicked delight. ”Now listen, do as I say. Run a little bit to get them excited, then lie down. Tell the girl, if she's in any state to hear you. But you won't be able to run very far, anyway.”

”What'll you do to us afterward? Throw our bodies in the river?”

”Certainly not. Billy jumped off that cliff over there,” and here Chapel motioned in the direction of the Hudson, ”before he could be stopped. He was half-blind, as it was. Couldn't see where he was running to or from. Ordinarily, we would have buried him back in the woods where we bury all our mistakes and failures. Which are unfortunately many, as we have very exacting standards, the same as any university. Out of all the candidates sold to us by Ausley, we only pa.s.s through about six a year. Now this Ausley situation is a problem. We're going to have to find a replacement for him and get our own representative heading up the girls' orphanage, so we have a lot of work to do the next few months.”

Matthew's mind had latched on to something Chapel had just said. ”Half-blind? What do you mean, Billy was half-blind?”

”Oh, his eyes were all torn up. The birds, you know.”

”The birds?”

”That's right. My hawks.” And then they turned the corner and there around a large canopy-shaded aviary the pack of boys were waiting. Three of the biggest ones had hooded brown-and-white birds of prey perched on their leather gloves and forearm-guards.

Berry made a sound as if she'd taken a blow to the stomach. Her knees buckled, but the gentlemanly Count shoved her forward with s.a.d.i.s.tic relish.

”You are one b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” Matthew said to Chapel, his teeth gritted so hard they were about to break. Chapel shrugged, as if this were a compliment.

”Young men!” Lawrence Evans had picked up a basket and was pa.s.sing it around. ”Arm yourselves, please. Watch the blades, we don't want any accidents.”

The boys, who Matthew noted had removed their colored badges so all were equal in this endeavor, were reaching in and coming up with knives. There was a disturbing variety of blades: short, long, hooked up or down, wide, thin, stubby, elegantly evil. The boys walked around sticking and stabbing the air, some delivering a brutal twist, some slas.h.i.+ng as if trying to destroy the last vestiges of childhood before they stepped across the threshold of no return.

They all appeared to have done this before, though several-including the light-fingered Silas-looked just a bit green around the gills. But they too hacked and sliced the air with abandon.

”Your version of the professor's gauntlet,” Matthew said to Chapel; or more correctly, heard himself say, as his face and mouth seemed numbed by frost.

”Correct. My version, utilizing a long-cherished hobby. Mr. Greathouse has been schooling you well. He'll be out here soon enough himself, you can mark that.” He waited for Dahlgren to shove Berry into earshot, though she still looked too dazed to comprehend their fate. ”Mr. Edgar? Where's Mr. Edgar?”

”Here, sir,” said a large, stocky young man with close-cropped dark brown hair. He came forward out of the building's shadow cradling a small lamb in the crook of a meaty arm, and in the other hand a wooden bucket that held of all things a paintbrush. Edgar had a slight limp and a pock-marked face, his eyes also dark brown and obviously nervous for he was blinking rapidly. When he reached Chapel, he glanced up and said almost shyly, ”h.e.l.lo, Matthew.”

Matthew was struck dumb for a few seconds. Then his mouth moved and he said, ”h.e.l.lo, Jerrod.”

”I heard you might be coming out. How've you been?”

”Fine, thank you. And you?”

”I'm all right.” Jerrod Edgar nodded. His dull eyes did not show the most intelligence in the world, but Matthew had known him as a decent fellow in 1694, when Matthew was fifteen and Jerrod twelve. Jerrod had unfortunately been the target of some of Ausley's most frequent and intense attentions, and Matthew had watched him withdraw into himself and pull all his shame and anger into the sh.e.l.l with him. Then Jerrod had stolen a burning-gla.s.s that Ausley lit his pipe with during one of the punishment sessions, and afterward he was always setting fire to either leaves or donated prayer book pages or gra.s.shoppers or his own plucked-out hair. When another boy had tried to steal it, the boy had left the orphanage for the King Street hospital folded up in a cart and obviously died there, as he'd never returned. ”I guess I'm doin' all right,” Jerrod repeated, as he gave the lamb to Simon Chapel.

”May I ask what you're doing here?”

”I don't know. Just playin' with fire, mostly. It's what I like.”

”Knife, please,” Chapel said, to no one in particular.

Matthew saw that the other boys were settling down. They had stopped swinging their blades. Their muscles were warmed up, and they were saving their energy. Matthew looked back into Jerrod's disturbed but fathomless eyes. ”Jerrod?” he said quietly.

”Yes, Matthew?”

”Are you going to kill me?”

Evans had brought a hooked knife to his master. Matthew realized it was the exact kind of slaughterhouse implement Kirby had used so well. Chapel stroked the lamb a few times and said, ”There, there,” to its pitiful call for its mother. Then he drew the head up and back with one hand while the blade in the other sliced the white throat from ear to ear. The bright red blood burst out and flooded into the bucket that Evans had taken from Jerrod and now held steady beneath the torrent.

”Yes, Matthew,” said Jerrod. ”I suppose I am.”

”You don't have to,” Matthew told him.

Jerrod c.o.c.ked his head, listening to the blood spilling into the bucket. The three hawks began to s.h.i.+ver with excitement and clench their claws on the leather gloves, scoring deep grooves even deeper. ”I do,” Jerrod answered. ”If I want to stay, I mean. They're good to me here, Matthew. I'm somebody.”

”You always were somebody.”

”Naw.” Jerrod's mouth smiled, but his eyes did not. ”I was never n.o.body, out there.”

Then he looked at Matthew a moment longer, as the convulsing lamb emptied and the bucket filled up and the hawks stirred and made little eerie skreeling noises, and finally Jerrod went over to the basket on the ground to get himself a knife.

Matthew started to go over to stand beside Berry, to say-exactly what, pray tell?-something to her to get her mind focused, but suddenly Evans grasped his upper arm and a b.l.o.o.d.y paintbrush that smelled of old Dutch copper duits was being liberally applied to his face: forehead, cheeks, around the eyes, circling the mouth, down the chin, and done.

One of the hawks, the largest of the birds and perhaps the one that had torn the cardinal to shreds over Matthew's head in the garden that day, twitched its hooded head back and forth and made a soft, high keening noise.

”They're trained to go for the color,” Chapel explained, in all earnest seriousness. ”Many hundreds of blood-soaked field mice and hares have gallantly given their lives. They smell the odor too, of course, which helps them home onto you, but their eyesight is simply magnificent.” He had deposited the lamb's carca.s.s into a black box with a lid on it that he now closed, so as not to give the birds a confusing signal. Lawrence Evans walked over, carrying the gore-bucket to paint Berry's face with the brush. She looked at him as if he were mad, tried to kick him and then strike his head with her own, but had to relent when again Count Dahlgren seized her hair, shoved a fist against her spine, and threatened to break her back before the game even began.