Part 49 (1/2)

”We'll find out,” came Matthew's answer, as he looked up and saw the hawks coming down.

Berry realized what he was doing. The hawks were almost upon them, shrieking as they came.

”Oh, sh-!” she started to say, but then she dropped down as he had done, leaned forward, and with a m.u.f.fled groan applied her own gra.s.sy brown mask.

The large hawk darted in first, its talons extended. Matthew stood his ground, his eyes half-slitted. He was ready to dodge if his stratagem turned out to be a stinking failure.

The bird's wings spread. It was about to strike. Matthew caught the red gleam of the predator's eyes. He tensed, his heart hammering.

A few feet from Matthew's face, the hawk suddenly pulled its claws in and accelerated. He felt the wind of its pa.s.sage as it streaked by with a blur of wings. The second hawk skimmed over Matthew's head but its talons had also retracted. Berry got up off the ground, the blood on her face covered by muddy dung. They saw the two hawks make a ragged searching circle above them and then, in the manner of any practical killer, call off the hunt. The birds flew back toward the vineyard, in the direction of their aerie.

If the boys were watching the hawks to lead them, this might offer some time. But very little. ”The gatehouse,” Matthew said, and together the two dirty crows flew along the road toward the only way out.

There was no one around the house. Dragonflies flitted over the lily pond, which enticed Matthew and Berry to wash their faces yet they both knew there was no time to pause. They kept running past the pond, both of them sweating and their lungs afire. A hundred yards farther on, and there stood the white gatehouse with its multi-paned windows. The gate itself was secured by an iron rod. Matthew tried the gatehouse's door and it swung open. Inside there was a small desk, a chair, and on the wall some clothes pegs. A brown coat hung from one of the pegs, and from another dangled a canteen with a leather strap. Matthew judged how best to break the nearest window. His mind felt sludgy. The upper lid of his left eye was swollen and his lips felt shredded. He said to Berry, ”Put your back against mine and stand firm.”

In that position he put his foot through the window, careful not to break out all the gla.s.s at the bottom. Then, after the explosion of breakage that he thought surely must bring the deathpack running, he said, ”Guide me!” and Berry directed him as he twisted his body and leaned backward to rub the cords against the edges of gla.s.s.

He worked with haste but not without pain, for gla.s.s cut skin as well as rope. If he sliced an artery, all was for naught. He did cut himself but it wasn't bad enough to stop. He just gritted his teeth, s.h.i.+fted his position, and kept sawing.

”That's it!” Berry said. ”You've got it!”

Not yet. d.a.m.n these cords, they were as strong as Hudson Greathouse's breath.

What are you going to do, moonbeam?

”I'll show you what I'm going to d.a.m.ned do,” he said, and Berry asked, ”What?” but he shook his head and concentrated on the cutting. Something foul crept into Berry's mouth and she spat violently.

”Keep watch!” he told her, but he thought-hoped-the boys were still searching the woods for them. His shoulders were about to burst from their sockets. Was anything happening? This was like trying to get through the Gordian Knot with a b.u.t.terknife. Ow, that was skin! Come on, come on! d.a.m.n the pain, keep cutting!

He wrenched at his bonds. Nothing yet. Then he felt the pressure lessen just a fraction and he sawed with a maniacal fury. He imagined he heard the cords part with a quick pop, but whether he'd actually heard that or not, suddenly his wrists were coming unbound and he fought them free. The blood roared back into his hands as the cords fell away. He immediately went to work on Berry's ropes, though his fingers were still mostly long lengths of dead meat.

When Berry's hands were free, she gave a deep sob and began to cry but Matthew caught her filthy, beautiful face by the chin. ”Stop that. No time.” She stopped. He reached for the canteen, uncorked it, and poured some liquid into his palm but it was not water. Rum, he thought as he took a taste. There had to be some reward for the gate-watcher. He drank a swallow that burned his mind crystal clear and pa.s.sed it to Berry, who in spite of a glob of horse s.h.i.+t on the canteen's mouth also took a drink. Matthew restrained himself from going through the coat and the desk drawers. He said urgently, ”Come on,” and led Berry to the gate. The iron rod was not so heavy that one older boy couldn't pull it free from the wooden guides on which it rested. He pulled the gate open.

”Stay off the road,” he told her, as he stared into her eyes. ”Just keep going, no matter what. I'll be along as soon as I can.”

”You're coming too,” she said; a statement.

”Not yet. I'm going back for the notebook.”

”Matthew! You're mad! They'll-”

”Shut,” he ordered. ”Don't waste time.” He pushed her out with his new-found and much-appreciated hands.

”You can't go back! If they-”

”I'm leaving the gate open. If they see it they'll think we're both out. That's why I say you've got to stay off the road, because they'll send riders. Go!”

She hesitated, but only for a few seconds. Then she went, fast as a hare before a hawk.

But sometimes the hares did escape, Matthew thought as he returned to the gatehouse. Especially a hare who did the unexpected. He took a longer drink of rum and saw stars. Going through the coat and the desk drawers, he found nothing useful. Like one of those multiple-barreled death-dealing pistols Ashton McCaggers had told him were being developed in Prussia. He had the feeling he'd been born fifty years too early for this particular occupation. Still, here he was.

If Chapel destroyed that notebook-and he would, as soon as he thought Matthew and Berry had escaped-then all Matthew had to show Gardner Lillehorne was a madman in a cellar.

Get in quickly, break that office door open, and get out quickly. Would someone be guarding the house? Or were they all at the game? What about the women who'd cooked their feast? He could stand here and second-and-third-guess himself to death. He started to take a last drink of courage, but instead he spat some s.h.i.+t out of his mouth and ran toward his fate.

Forty-Eight.

Before Matthew ventured into the manse he was compelled to kneel beside the lily pond and drink. Then he thrust his face into the water, for his makeup was drawing flies. He got as much of the mess off as he could. His fingers found the wounds of beak-jab and talon-sc.r.a.pe, his left eye was on its way to swelling shut, and there was a gash on his right cheek that felt so deep the bone must have a clawmark on it. A pretty little scar to go with his collection, he thought. At this rate he'd have to wear his own mask to be presentable in public.

But he had his vision and he wasn't dead, nor was he severely wounded enough to wish to die. He had his hands back, and that was a blessing. Quick in and quick out, and pray to G.o.d they didn't put a boy on the gate before he was done.

It was deadly dangerous to be out here in the open. He heard shouting off in the distance, to the right. They were combing the woods, but it wouldn't be long before they did discover the gate. At any second he expected someone to come running along the road, knife in hand, to take up position on the front steps. He got himself up, his heart pounding so hard it shook his body, climbed the steps, and tried the door. It had not been locked by Chapel or Evans on the way to the game, and Matthew walked into the house. He shut the door behind him. The place was silent. He hurried through the corridor to the dining-room, his senses questing for movement or sound, and there stood before the door that separated him from Chapel's office and the last remaining notebook.

Of course he'd seen it locked, but out of the habit of humans to not trust their eyes Matthew tried the handle. Locked then, locked now.

Now what?

Nothing to be done but the way of the brute. Matthew set himself and kicked the door as hard as he could manage. Then once again, when it wouldn't budge. It seemed colonial oak was equally as strong as the English variety. The thing wasn't opening so easily, and in the bargain the noise would awaken the eyeless failures in Chapel's cemetery.

Matthew desperately looked around. The tall bra.s.s candelabras that shed so much light upon the glittering silverware. Their bases looked st.u.r.dy enough. He picked one up and found his muscles straining under the weight. This is what a moonbeam can do, he thought. Sir Lancelot he was not, but he backed up nearly the length of the room and held the candelabra's base as a medieval knight might have hefted a jousting lance. If the door didn't give this time, his ribs were going to be caved in.

He set off running. Hit the door under the handle with his makes.h.i.+ft lance and had an instant of feeling impaled upon it. Was that his ribs, making such a cracking sound?

No. It was the door, which burst open and crashed against the wall behind it. The battered thing hung limply on a single hinge. He had felt similarly unhinged after his drugged escapade with Lady LeClaire, who he remembered was a sleeping not-so-beauty at the top of the stairs.

Someone began to clap their hands together.

Matthew caught his breath and spun around, the candelabra still in his arms.

”A wonderful example of how to wreck a perfectly good door, sir,” said Simon Chapel. Beside him and behind a few paces stood Count Dahlgren, his face devoid of emotion but the green eyes glittering. ”What do you think you're doing, otherwise?”

Matthew couldn't get his tongue working.

”Oh,” Chapel said, with a quick mirthless smile. ”I see. Returning for the notebook, is that it? Surely. You have nothing without it, correct? Even Mr. Nack knew that.” His topaz eyes behind the square lenses ticked right and left. ”Your ladyfriend? Where is she?”

”Gone,” Matthew said. ”Out the gate.”

Chapel's mouth may have twisted just a fraction. ”Out the gate?” He composed himself, like any ambitious son of a poor tinker would. ”Well, it's a long way to town, isn't it? A long way also to the nearest farm. We'll find her.” He looked Matthew over from dirty shoetips to top of his touseled and claw-ripped hair. ”Maybe you ought to go to that village in Wales, Matthew. I'm sure the professor would find some use for an escape artist of your caliber. And you got out of the cords, too! Fascinating. But some of the boys are just out front and their knives are very hungry, so you can tell me how you gave my birds the shake while we-”

He was interrupted, quite firmly, by a shouting and hollering outside the house that even Matthew could tell was not rough-housing boys eager for a killing. There was some panic in the voices that went up and up like the hawks fleeing bitter earth. ”What is that?” Chapel said to Count Dahlgren, and he was answered not by the Prussian but by the crack of a pistol shot.

”Sir! Sir!” It was Lawrence Evans, shouting from the doorway. ”Someone's gotten in!” The voice was high and thin, squeezed by fear. ”Riders!”

Chapel s.h.i.+vered. In an instant his face went pallid, as if he were freezing to death.

”Mr. Chapel!” Evans squawled, and now could be heard through the open door and along the corridor a small thunder of horse hooves, more panicked shouting, and a second pistol shot that made the master of the house shake in his shoes as if his little world had suddenly been knocked out of the sky by one of Increase Mather's comets.