The Queen of Bedlam (29 page)

“Yes,” Matthew said, though he didn’t bend over to look too closely. One thing he did note, however. “The left hand. The thumb’s missing.”

“First joint only. Looks like an old injury because the bone’s grown smooth.” Greathouse dared to touch it, and then his hand went toward one of the stab wounds. At first Matthew thought the man was going to probe one of those purple fissures with his fingers, which would have been the last straw on this hayload, but Greathouse’s hand made a circle in the air. “I see four wounds, but I’m not going to turn him over to find out if your Mr. McCaggers was accurate in his count.” He pulled his hand back and looked up at Matthew. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if hazed by thick and pungent smoke. “I want to tell you,” he said, “that I’ve seen something like this before. I can’t be for certain, and I ought not to speculate, but-”

Matthew gave a cry and stepped back, his eyes the size of one of Stokely’s platters. He thought it must be the shimmer of heat, or the noxious vapors rising from the grave, but he imagined that the corpse had just given a quick tremble.

“What is it?” Instantly Greathouse was on his feet. “What’s wrong with you?”

“He moved,” Matthew whispered.

“He moved?” Greathouse looked back at the corpse to make sure, but a corpse was a corpse. “Are you mad? He’s as dead as King James!”

They both stared at the body, and therefore they both saw the body give another fleeting tremble as if awakening from its Thanatostic slumber. The movement, Matthew realized in his dumbstruck terror, was more of a vibration than an action of muscle and sinew, which in the case of this unfortunate had turned to calf’s-foot jelly.

Greathouse stepped nearer the grave. Matthew did not, but he heard what Greathouse did: a thin, faint chittering noise that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

Even as Greathouse realized what it must be and quickly reached for his shovel, the pale amber-colored roaches boiled from the cavity of the dead man’s nose and out of the open mouth like an indignant army. They rushed back and forth in a frenzy over the eyeless face and more began to stream out of the knife wounds like yellow drops of blood. Matthew thought it must have been a jarring of the body or the unwelcome heat of the sun that had disturbed them from their dank banquet hall, and now he knew what had burrowed all those holes in the winding-sheet.

Greathouse began throwing the dirt back in like a man who has seen the devil’s horns pushing up from the inferno. There was no time nor need for niceties, as the soul that had departed from this husk at the bottom of the hole had to be in a better place. Matthew came forward to help, and together he and Greathouse first covered over the face with its mask of swarming insects and then shoveled dirt upon the body until it was seen no more. When the grave was a mound again, Greathouse threw aside his shovel and without a word walked down the hillside to the river. He got on his knees where earth met water and splashed his face while Matthew sat on a boulder above and let the sun steam away the cold sweat that had burst up from his pores.

When Greathouse came back up the hill, he looked to Matthew to have aged five years in a matter of moments. His eyes were dark-shadowed, his jaw slack, even his gait tired and heavy. He stopped between Matthew and the grave, sliding a sideways glance at the dirt mound to make sure nothing was crawling out. At last he gave an almost imperceptible shudder and sat down on a rock a few feet to Matthew’s left. “You did well,” he said.

“As did you,” Matthew answered.

“I’d have liked to have gone through the pockets.”

“Really?”

“No,” Greathouse said. “Not really. Anyway, I’d bet my horse he was picked clean before his wrists were tied.”

“I’m sure either Zed or Lillehorne inspected the clothes,” Matthew said. “As much as was possible, I mean.”

“Most likely,” Greathouse agreed. He looked up at the crows, which had left the tree and were again circling. They cawed sharply a few times, like robbers cursing at being robbed.

Matthew also watched them go ’round. The sky seemed more starkly white now than pure blue, and the river tinged with gray. The afternoon heat had become oppressive. Across the river the breeze blew through the forest and bent trees to its will, yet where the two men sat they neither heard the noise of the wind nor felt it, for on this bank the air was thick and motionless, still holding the smell of death.

Greathouse said, “I have seen two bodies like that before. Both in England. I can’t be sure, of course, that what I’m about to tell you has come to pass. I could speculate that the man might have been killed by highwaymen for his money, or murdered by the enraged occupants of a tavern for cheating at cards, or some such reason that would not explain why he was bound.” He rubbed his knuckles and stared off across the river. “I think…this may have been done by someone whom Mrs. Herrald and I know very well.”

“You know who did this?”

“I believe I know who may have been the…what would be the right word? The originator of this method of operation. Meaning that he might not be physically present himself, but those who follow him may be close at hand.”

“If you know,” Matthew said, “you should go straight to the high constable.”

“Well, there’s the problem. I don’t know for certain. And even if I went to Lillehorne, I doubt there’s much he could do.” Greathouse turned his gaze toward Matthew. “Have you ever heard of someone called Professor Fell?”

“No. Should I have?”

Greathouse shook his head. “You wouldn’t have, except if Nathaniel-Magistrate Powers, that is-happened to mention this individual.”

Matthew frowned, completely lost. “What does the magistrate have to do with this?”

“Nathaniel is in New York because of Professor Fell,” came the reply. “He took his family out of England to guard their lives. He left a well-established and lucrative legal career in London, because the word had gotten to him that Professor Fell was angry at a prosecution case Nathaniel was making against one of his associates. No one makes Professor Fell angry and lives very long. Unless you put an ocean in between…and even then…” He trailed off.

“So you’re saying this Professor Fell person is a criminal?”

“A criminal,” Greathouse repeated quietly, with a bitter smile that quickly slipped away. “London is a collection of huts. The Thames is a stream. Queen Anne is a lady with a nice chair. Yes, Professor Fell is a criminal. No one knows his first name. No one knows really if ‘he’ is a man or woman, or if ‘he’ ever was a professor at any school or university. No one has ever given an age for him or a description, but I’ll tell you this: you saw the workings of his mind, when you looked upon that body in the grave.”

Greathouse was silent and Matthew was silent, waiting.

“There is an underworld you can’t imagine. Not even the Gazette frames it accurately.” Greathouse’s eyes were dark; he stared at nothing, yet seemed to be seeing something that stirred fear and revulsion even in his heart of oak. “In England and in Europe. It’s existed for…who can say how long. We know the names of the most vile elements. Gentleman Jackie Blue. The Thacker Brothers. Augustus Pons. Madam Chillany. They’re in the business of counterfeiting, forgery, theft of both state and private papers, blackmail, kidnapping, arson, murder for hire, and whatever else offers them a profit. For many years they’ve fought over territory. Over countries, as if fighting for the seats at a dinner table nearest the roast beef platter. Their gang wars have been brutal and bloody and have gotten them nowhere. But in the last fifteen years, all that began to change. Professor Fell emerged-from where we don’t know-and has through guile, intelligence, and not a small amount of head-chopping-united the gangs into a criminal parliament.”

Still Matthew made no response. He was focused solely on taking in what Greathouse had to say.

“How exactly Fell gained the leadership role, we don’t know. We have had our informants, but the information is unreliable. More than one songbird disappeared from a cage thought to be perfectly secure. The first ended up stuffed into a trunk on a ship bound for Aberdeen. The second-a woman-was found wrapped in burlap and weighed with stones in the Cherwell River. An unfortunate swimmer came upon her, a month or so after she’d vanished. You already know in what condition both corpses were found.”

“Multiple stab wounds,” Matthew reasoned. “Made by different blades.”

“The man had been stabbed twenty-six times, the woman twenty-two. Then both their skulls were bashed in. The cords remained around their wrists, tied behind them. They were meant to be discovered, after a certain amount of time, as a show of power. We have a theory.”

When Greathouse didn’t immediately continue, Matthew prodded, “I’d like to hear it.”

“Mrs. Herrald came up with it, actually. Judging from the fact that both victims were stabbed front and back, but no knife wounds were struck below the waist. She thinks Fell punishes the offenders or the disobedient by running them through a gauntlet, where everyone present gets a stab, so to speak. Maybe there’s even a trial of some kind, before the spectacle begins. The guilty person-guilty for violating the code of silence or behavior-is made to run this gauntlet until they’re nearly dead, and then their skulls are broken. I’d say that’s a powerful method to secure loyalty, wouldn’t you?”

Matthew said nothing.

“Or maybe there’s no gauntlet,” Greathouse said. “Maybe they just throw the victims into a room and the others set on them like wild dogs. But it’s the cords, you see. Only the wrists are tied, not the ankles. The victims are meant to run, or stagger as the case may be. They are meant to know there is no escape, and that death will be a slow and painful process no matter how many times they run back and forth through the blades.” Greathouse wore a sickened expression, as if he were imagining a torch-lit dungeon where firelight glinted off the knives and a shadow ran pleading for life amid other shadows pledged to murder. “We think there have been others, of course, but their bodies have either not been discovered yet or have been destroyed. Or it may be that by now Fell is on the cusp of creating what we think he desires: a criminal empire that spans the continents. All the smaller sharks-deadly enough in their own oceans-have gathered around the big shark, and so they have swum even here, up this river to wherever our young man in the grave was murdered for…what? An act of disobedience? A refusal to bow at the proper moment, or to polish the boots of someone his senior? Who can say? He may have been an example. A lesson of the day, for a minor infraction.” Greathouse ran the back of his hand across his mouth and sat slumped over, his shoulders sagging. He didn’t speak for a while, as the crows cawed ever more faintly in the sky. At last he said, “I need to get out of here,” and stood up.

On their way back through the orchard, carrying their dirt-smeared shovels with them, Matthew asked, “But you can’t be sure about this, can you? You can’t be sure that Fell is here. As you said, the man may have been killed by highwaymen.”

“Yes, I did say that. And you’re right, I can’t be sure. Not absolutely sure, anyway. I’m just telling you what I’m thinking: this is the professor’s method of vengeance, and whether he is here or not, someone very near is applying his…shall we say…teachings.”

Before they reached the farmhouse, Greathouse stopped at the orchard’s edge and caught Matthew’s sleeve. “Don’t mention that name to anyone, not just yet. This is between us, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve been expecting him or his compatriots to come to the colonies, sooner or later. That’s one of the reasons Mrs. Herrald decided to make a permanent office in New York. I suppose I should’ve been prepared for it, but I wasn’t.” Greathouse’s expression had changed since leaving the graveside. A few minutes before, he’d appeared almost pole-axed by this development, but now Matthew saw the color was back in his face and his eyes had that fierce old-bastardy look to them again. He was, in spite of himself, pleased to see the return. “On Monday morning I’ll come to town and have a look at the property maps at City Hall,” Greathouse declared. “We’ll find out who owns the land up north of Van Hullig. I agree that the body might have been carried from the other side of the river, but we’ve got to start somewhere.”

They used the soap and bucket of water Ormond offered to wash as best as possible the odor of human decay from their hands and faces, but the main use of the soap was to get its sharp green scent of pine oil up the nostrils. Greathouse thanked the farmer for his help and gave him a few small coins in appreciation. Before they mounted their horses, Greathouse opened his saddlebag, brought out his brown bottle of brandy, uncorked it, and offered the first drink to Matthew, who took down a swallow that on any other day would have set fire to his insides but on this afternoon just managed to make him feel not quite so cold. Greathouse quaffed a healthy swig, also perhaps to burn away some demons, and then swung himself up into the saddle.

The ride back to Mrs. Herrald’s was done in silence. Matthew found himself actually using the reins and his knees more confidently, and though Buck gave an occasional whicker of indignation the horse seemed to appreciate the fact that his rider had taken firmer command. Matthew had figured that nothing could be worse today than what he’d already been through, not even a buck from Buck, so the devil with this horse thinking he was the master.

Matthew did note one thing, and tucked it away. From time to time Greathouse glanced back along the road they travelled, his eyes dark and darting, as if making sure that through the glare of afternoon sunlight and swirl of dust a creature to be feared was not even now bearing down on them, like a hydra of many heads, arms, and knives.