Mister Slaughter (53 page)

"My compliments," he allowed. "I said . . . you were worthy. But Matthew . . . you never could have bested me. Not alone."

Matthew nodded. As Slaughter had told him in the watermill,
It would take two of you to polish me off.

But he'd been wrong. It had taken three.

Now, though, it appeared he was well and truly polished.

"You have . . . aided . . . my ambition," Slaughter said. "My title. Where I'm going . . . they'll make me
royalty
."

Lifting his chin, he took an unsteady step toward the door. Then another, dragging his injured leg. Matthew followed behind him, as he staggered onward. At the threshold, Slaughter fell to the ground on his knees. The knot of men backed up to give him room to die. Powers had a musket, Doyle had his pistol, the groom also brandished a gun, and the others all carried either wooden clubs or other implements of violence. At the back of the group, Mrs. Allen held a large rolling-pin.

Tyranthus Slaughter gasped and forced himself up. He lurched forward again, his fists clenched. Suddenly he lifted his right fist and cocked it back, as if about to hurl a thunderbolt of evil into their midst. Before him the crowd shrank away, their faces taut with fear that even their guns and clubs and rolling-pin could not overcome.

Slaughter took two more steps toward them, his fist upraised and trembling, and the crowd retreated two.

And then Slaughter began to laugh, that deep slow sound of a funeral bell.

Matthew watched as Slaughter opened his fist, and the handful of dust he was holding streamed away between his fingers.

When his hand was empty, the funeral bell ceased its tolling.

Slaughter pitched forward, and lay stretched out upon the earth.

On a bright, breezy afternoon in the middle of November, a flat-bottomed ferry barge from Weehawken tied ropes at Van Dam's shipyard, and discharged its passengers onto the wharf after an hour's trip across the Hudson.

A wagon pulled by a team of horses rumbled off the boat and onto the boards. Its driver then steered the horses into the town's traffic along King Street and turned to the right on the busy Broad Way, while the boy sitting next to him took in the sights, smells and sounds of New York.

The wagon was passing the intersection of Beaver Street and the Broad Way, heading south toward the Great Dock. Three men engaged in conversation in front of a tallow chandler's shop fronting the Way paused in their snide remarks concerning the bilious green of Lord Cornbury's new hat and took view of the wagon. One of them, a little barrel-chested gent standing at the center, caught his breath. He said, with a smudge of disgust, "Choke a duck! Corbett's back!"

With that, Dippen Nack took to his heels in the direction of City Hall.

Matthew heard several people shout to him from the sidewalks, but he paid them no mind. As much as he was glad to be back—as much as he'd thought he would
never
be back—the place seemed foreign, in a way. Different. As alien as Walker's village had seemed, at first. Had there been this many houses and buildings when he and Greathouse had left, more than a month ago? This many people, carts and wagons? This much clatter and bustle? He wondered if part of Walker had not returned with him, and he was seeing New York through an altered vision; he wondered if he would ever see it the same way again, or feel he truly belonged here among citizens who had not witnessed such vicious murder, violence and evil, or who had not killed a woman with an axe and fired a bullet into a man's body.

He had returned home, but not as he'd left. For better or for worse, he had blood on his hands. As did the boy beside him, but if Tom suffered any qualms about his part in the death of Tyranthus Slaughter, he kept them locked up in the ironclad vault of his soul. The most he'd professed about it to Matthew was that he viewed it as an execution, and lawful or not it was done so it wasn't worth speaking of any more.

But Matthew was sure Lillehorne was going to have a lot to say about it.

"Matthew! Hey, there!" Running up alongside the wagon was his friend, the blacksmith's apprentice John Five, newly wed in September to Constance Wade, now the happy Mrs. Five.

"Hello, John," Matthew answered, but he kept the team moving.

"Where've you
been
?"

"Working."

"You all right?"

"I'll
be
all right," Matthew said.

"Folks were wonderin'. When your partner came back last week, and you didn't. I've heard what he's been tellin', about the redskins. Some were sayin' you'd had it."

"Almost did," Matthew said. "But I gave it back."

"You up to comin' to supper one night?"

"I am. Give me a few days."

"Okay." John reached up and slapped Matthew's leg. "Welcome home."

Not much further along, a well-dressed middle-aged woman with an exuberant, sharp-nosed face waved at him with her handkerchief and stepped forward. "Oh, Mr. Corbett!" she called. "So good to see you! Will we be reading any more of your adventures in the next
Earwig
?"

"No madam," he told Mrs. Iris Garrow, wife of Stephen Garrow the Duke Street horn merchant. "Definitely not."

"But surely you won't
deprive
us!"

"Some things are best left to the imagination," he said, for he'd decided that the spicy element of sausages once sold at Sally Almond's to patrons just such as Mrs. Garrow need not be revealed. He knew that High Constable Farraday in Philadelphia felt the same about keeping the lid on the grisly box, for there was not enough water, wine, ale or hard cider in the colonies to wash that taste out of people's mouths.

"Are you somebody
special '
round here?" Tom asked.

"Just a citizen," Matthew said, as they left Mrs. Garrow behind. "The same as anyone."

It was no surprise to Matthew that Hudson Greathouse had returned to New York, because he'd already known it to be true. After Nathaniel Powers had given him and Tom this wagon and some money to get back on, Matthew had turned off the Philadelphia Pike on the very same road by which Slaughter had directed his captors to Fort Laurens. Tom had remained silent as they'd passed the New Unity cemetery and Reverend Burton's cabin. On reaching the treacherous slope that led down to the ruins of the fort and beyond it the Seneca village, Matthew had seen that the wagon afforded him and Greathouse by High Constable Lillehorne was gone.

Matthew and Tom had left their wagon at the top of the hill and walked the rest of the way. Passing through Fort Laurens onto the path to the village, their progress was soon accompanied by the noise of cawing crows and barking dogs from the depths of the woods. When the first feathered brave finally showed himself, Matthew called out, "English!"

Again, there was a merry circus among the tribe as Matthew and Tom were escorted in, but after Matthew stuck out his chest and hollered, "English!" a few more times he was taken to a forbidding-looking, solemn man who at least could understand a little of the language and speak it enough to be understood in turn.

From what Matthew could gather, Greathouse had regained enough health to walk out on his own two legs, with the help of a hickory stick. In the time he'd been there, he had earned respect from the medicine sisters because, if Matthew comprehended this correctly, he had wrestled with Death in the wilderness beyond and returned grinning like a wolf. It seemed, from what the solemn Indian was able to make clear, that Gray Wolf had sat before the fire with the elders and drank a cup of rattlesnake blood with them, which much impressed everyone. Also, he was quite the good singer, which Matthew would never have guessed.

The Indians had previously brought in the two old nags that had pulled the wagon, intending—from what Matthew could gather—to kill them and use them as food for the dogs, but prevailing wisdom had dictated that the dogs should not suffer such an indignity. So they were allowed to graze and serve as playthings for the children until the day came that Gray Wolf was ready to leave. Then the horses were taken back up the hill, the wagon was pushed to the top and turned in the direction of the English world, and Gray Wolf set off for his home.

Matthew would have been interested to see how Gray Wolf had talked himself across the Raritan river ferry, having no money, but maybe he'd offered a song for his passage.

Before he'd left, Matthew had turned around and found that He Runs Fast had come out of the crowd. He Runs Fast spoke to the interpreter, and the question directed back to Matthew was: "Where son?"

"The Sky Road," Matthew said.

The interpreter didn't understand this. Matthew tried again: "Tell him . . . his son did a great deed, his son was a true son, and now his son has gone to walk with the spirits."

The message was relayed and an answer given. "You say dead?" asked the brave, speaking for He Runs Fast.

"Dead, yes."

He Runs Fast had been silent for a moment, staring at the ground. Then he spoke quietly, and the interpreter said, "He wish spirits make sense." But after saying that to the interpreter, He Runs Fast had turned away, and had broken into a trot in the direction of the lake.

Matthew's wagon had reached the Great Dock, where it appeared another merry circus was in progress, with a number of ships being loaded and unloaded. Crates and barrels were being carted up and down gangplanks, dock workers rushed around to the orders of their supervisors hollering through the sawed-off horns of bulls to amplify their voices, ropes were being coiled up, chains rattled, horses stamped nervously at their wagons and as usual the higglers were shouting to sell their roasted chestnuts, hot cider and corncakes.

"Always like this?" Tom asked.

"Pretty much." Matthew halted the team. "I'll be right back. I have to find the next ship leaving for England." He set the brake and got down, then went around to the rear of the wagon. In the back were two duffel bags that Powers had afforded them, holding a supply of clean clothes for their return trip to New York, and a smaller brown canvas bag.

Carrying the canvas bag, he walked along the dock until he saw a hook-nosed, bewigged man in a light gray suit who was marking in an account book with a pencil. He didn't know the individual, but reasoned he was one of the dock managers. He approached, got the man's attention from the confusion of commerce, and inquired about the ship he sought.

The man turned a page. "The
Golden Eye
. Care to sign up?"

"No, thank you. Where is it?"

"Two down, wharf nine. Leaving on the next tide. It'd be a grand adventure."

"Thank you all the same."

Matthew set off for wharf number nine, the numerals painted in white on the pilings. He was almost there when he heard the quick clack-clack-clacking of shoes on the timbers behind him, nearly running, and before he felt the black cane with its silver lion's-head tap his shoulder none too gently he heard the sharp voice say, "Corbett! What the
devil
is this?"

Matthew stopped and turned to face Gardner Lillehorne, who wore a sea-blue suit, a tricorn the same aquatic hue, and a waistcoat striped blue-and-ebony. Behind him smirked Dippin Nack, who was always eager to watch Matthew receive a verbal thrashing.

"Where is the
prisoner
?" Lillehorne demanded. On the narrow, pallid face his carefully-trimmed mustache and goatee seemed to bristle.

"Thank you, sir," Matthew answered calmly, "for your appreciation of my return. I can tell you that it was an iffy proposition."

"All right, all right! I'm gratified you've returned! Now where's Slaughter?"

"And speak up!" Nack added, to which Lillehorne shot him a warning glance.

"I'm actually very glad you're here, to witness the transfer." Matthew motioned toward the ship on its moorings at wharf number nine. "I understand," he said, "that the
Golden Eye
is the next vessel sailing for England. Come with me, won't you?" He started for it, and heard the clack of Lillehorne's boots following.

"What game are you playing at, Corbett? Don't you realize that John Drake, the Crown's constable, has been staying at the Dock House Inn for nearly three
weeks
? And who do you think is shouldering that cost? New York, that's who!"

Matthew waited for a couple of men to pass lugging a huge trunk, and then he went up the gangplank. Lillehorne was right behind him. Matthew stopped at the end of the plank. He opened the canvas bag, uptilted it, and upon the deck fell two polished black boots, somewhat scuffed in their tumble down a roof.

Lillehorne looked at the boots and then, incredulously, at Matthew. "Are you absolutely
mad
?"

"I seem to remember, sir, that you said in our office, 'I want the prisoner's boots on the next ship leaving for England, and good riddance to him'. Isn't that what you said?"

"I don't know! I don't remember! But if I said that, I meant for him to be
in
the boots! And these could be any boots you found between here and . . . wherever you went. Now I know what happened to Greathouse, and I regret that but it was his own greedy fault."

"Greedy!" Nack crowed, standing behind Lillehorne.

"Drake's come to take the prisoner into custody!" Lillehorne plowed on. "
Where
is the prisoner?"

"Tyranthus Slaughter is buried on the grounds of Lord Kent's tobacco plantation in the Carolina colony," Matthew said. "If you wish to know the details, I suggest you visit Nathaniel Powers, or ride to Philadelphia for a meeting with High Constable Abram Farraday. Or Drake can go, I don't care. All I care is that Slaughter's boots are on the next ship leaving for England, which was your stated requirement." Matthew glared holes through the high constable. "And good riddance."

"Sirs!" came a bellow from the deck. "Either move your asses out of the way or start loadin' freight!"

The suggestion of physical labor put naked fear on the faces of Lillehorne and Nack, but Matthew was already descending the gangplank. He strode back along the dock toward his wagon.