The Queen of Bedlam (37 page)

“Matthew, I want you to meet Beryl. Now that she’s presentable, I mean.” Grigsby came on like a four-horse coach while the girl lagged behind. It occurred to Matthew that possibly she didn’t care to be supervised any more than he wished to be her supervisor. “Come, come!” Grigsby urged the girl, who kept her face cast down in the shadow of that hat as she obeyed and walked up to stand alongside the old trumpeter. Matthew almost instinctively took a step back, but his manners did hold him steady.

He was surprised to see how tall she was, as he’d expected a female gnome in the mold of her grandfather. Yet she was only two inches shorter than himself, which was a rare height for a woman. Well, Grigsby’s loins have begat a giantess, Matthew thought; and a nervous giantess too, for she held her hands clasped together and shifted her weight from foot to foot as if late for a pressing appointment with a chamberpot.

“Matthew Corbett, please meet a rested and recovered Beryl Grigsby. Oh.” The old man gave a smile and a wink. “She’s informed me that she’s no longer called ‘Beryl.’ It’s Berry now. These youngsters!”

“How do you do, Miss Grigsby,” Matthew said to the shadowed face, and he caught a quick, reluctant “How do you do, Mr. Corbett,” in return and-horrors!-a glimpse of a smile from a pretty-enough mouth but within it a gap between the front teeth that shivered his timbers. “Well,” Matthew said, “very nice to meet you and I hope you have a successful stay in our fair town. Good day to you both.” With a polite but firm smile to Grigsby, Matthew turned and began walking-quickly, quickly-up the hill toward the pottery shop.

“Uh…oh, Matthew! Please wait a moment, won’t you?”

Matthew certainly did not wait. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Grigsby had seized the girl’s hand and was coming after him. The devil of this was that Matthew was well aware of the printmaster’s powers of persuasion. If he let Grigsby set a hook, he’d have this blowsy girl harpooned to his hip before he could say Jack Robinson. He kept going, feeling as if he were in a foot race and wouldn’t be safe until he was up behind his blessed trapdoor.

“We have a question to put to you, Matthew!” Grigsby said, unwilling to take no answer for an answer. “Rather, Berry does! Please, Matthew, just give us a moment!”

Matthew was almost knocked off his feet by a pair of dogs that, chasing each other with wild abandon, squirted out between two houses and darted across the Broad Way. He had time to see that the chaser, a dusty yellow dog with as near a grin as an animal might conjure, was wearing a rope collar and trailed a long length of rope behind itself, having broken loose from a recent confinement. Up ahead was the pottery, and also coming south along the Broad Way was a farmer sitting up on a one-horse wagon, behind which was being towed the biggest bull Matthew had ever seen. He realized in another few seconds that his entry into the pottery was going to be blocked by the bullwagon until it creaked past, and so he gave himself up to his fate and turned to meet the Grigsbys just as the old inkspotter nearly fell upon him.

“My Lord!” Grigsby’s forehead sparkled with sweat and his eyes were huge behind his spectacles. “What’s the hurry?”

“I’ve had a long, hard day. My hurry is to get home, have supper, and go to an early bed.”

“Understandable, of course, but your plan may coincide with our question. Would you care to dine with us this evening?”

Matthew still had not gotten a good look at the face beneath the hat, though he caught a glimpse of curly red hair. He focused his attention on Grigsby. “I’m sorry, Marmy. Some other time, really.”

“Whoa, whoa!” the farmer called to his horse, and he lowered his wagon-brake almost exactly in front of the pottery’s display window. He clambered down as Matthew glared at him. Behind the wagon, the bull stomped and snorted. “Watch him!” the farmer cautioned. “Brutus has got a bad temper!”

“Thank you, sir,” Matthew shot back. Then, as the farmer tended to drawing tighter the thick rope that tethered Brutus from nose ring to the wagon before they got further into town, Matthew turned again to Grigsby. “Not this evening, but some other time. Honestly.”

“You do look beat. What were you up to today?”

“I was-” out of town, he began to say, but thought better of it lest his trip to visit the Queen of Bedlam become broadsheet fodder. “Just busy.”

Grigsby started to speak again, but what he was going to say would have to wait.

For what occurred next happened very fast, starting with the black blur that Matthew realized was a cat streaking under the wagon from the other side of the Broad Way.

Following the feline almost at equal speed was one of the pair of rowdy dogs. Barking with bloodlust, it darted nearly under the horse’s hooves, which made the horse jump in its traces and jerk the wagon two inches forward even against the brake. This motion was enough to trap beneath the right rear wheel the trailing rope of the second dog that came racing after its companion, and suddenly the animal was barking and snarling and tangled up in rope under the bulk of Brutus the bull.

“Oh,” Matthew thought he heard Berry say, or perhaps this was the noise of breath from the farmer’s lungs as the man was knocked through the air like a watermelon when Brutus bucked up off all four legs. The entire rear of the wagon lifted from the ground and the yellow dog shot free and scurried for its miserable life. Brutus, however, was not willing to forgive or forget such an affront so easily, for as the wagon crashed down the bull violently twisted his head and suddenly the plank of wood that secured the metal hook to which Brutus’ nose-ring rope was attached splintered and tore away.

“Great God!” the printmaster hollered, as he backed into Matthew and almost laid both of them low. The bull had done some injury to himself and was bleeding from the nostrils. He began to jump and spin like a monstrous top only mere feet away from where Matthew, Grigsby, and the girl had squeezed themselves together as if to make the thinnest possible target, yet they were all frozen with fear at the sight of a rawhide mountain in the process of earthquake. The ground trembled, the horse screamed and dragged at the wagon, and the farmer was crabbing across the street with his right leg bent oddly at the knee. Brutus leaped and spun and the rope with its attached splintered plank and metal hook shrieked over Matthew’s head.

When Brutus slammed down again and the dust welled up from his hooves, he suddenly stiffened and lowered his head as if to charge. Matthew had an instant to see the reflection of the bull’s face in the pottery’s window glass, and then Brutus gave an enraged bellow and the glass was no more for in a tremendous shatter and crash the bull went right through it and much of the pottery’s front wall.

“Get out! Get out!” Matthew shouted toward the gaping hole by which Brutus had just entered the pottery, but in all this hellation of noise it would have been impossible for anyone to hear. The sounds of destruction within were cataclysmic, as if Armageddon had come to New York with the intent of breaking every cup, platter, and candle holder shaped by the hand of Hiram Stokely. The door, which was hanging by a hinge, abruptly burst from its single restraint. Scrambling out of the doomed shop came Stokely, his face white as a pearl beneath his snowy beard, followed at his heels by Cecily, who Matthew thought might have given a greyhound a run for the money.

The disaster was summoning a crowd from the nearby shops and houses. Someone grabbed the frantic horse’s reins and several other samaritans rushed to aid the hapless farmer. Matthew was in no mood to help anybody; he was wincing at every crash that issued through the hole and pile of debris where the window had been, and now he clearly heard the snapping of a timber like a bone breaking. Brutus had just hit one of the support posts that held up the garret floor. He saw the roof tremble. Shingles popped up like jack-in-the-boxes.

Patience Stokely came running from their house on the other side of the shop, wringing her hands with terror. She saw her husband and flung her arms about him, at the same time burying her face against his shoulder as if she couldn’t bear to witness the onrushing future. Hiram was either stoic or in shock, it was hard to say which, and Cecily just circled ’round and ’round as if trying to bite her tail.

Dust was rolling out of the pottery from a hundred chinks where treenails had exploded from their joints. Still Matthew heard the noise of destruction as Brutus’ fury continued. Somewhere in that cacophony he heard a second timber break. Another support post, he realized, and as he watched the roof tremble again like an old man in a nightmare it dawned on him that one man’s ceiling was another man’s floor.

With another series of explosive crashes, silence fell. Some foolhardy soul tried to look through the hole at the innards of the place but was forced back by the dust.

The silence stretched. Little tinkles of falling glass sounded like sweet music notes, but the concert had been atrocious.

Then suddenly through the ragged aperture came Brutus, a ghostly gray. He pushed himself out like a dog as men shouted and women screamed and surged back to give the beast of the Broad Way room. Brutus stood on the street looking around as if wondering what all the fuss was about, while a few supremely brave or awesomely stupid men crept up on either side and were successful in seizing the nose-ring rope. Brutus gave them what might have been a shrug of his massive shoulders and small glittering pieces of pottery slid off his flanks.

Matthew breathed a sigh of relief. The Stokelys were safe, and that was the important thing.

“Thank God that’s over!” said Marmaduke Grigsby, at Matthew’s side.

There was a noise like a behemoth’s belch, followed by the ominous noise of a hundred boards breaking. The roof seemed to lift upward and hang there for a few seconds, and then as Matthew watched in horror the roof collapsed like a flattened cake. From within the building came the tumult of the gods and a wave of wind and dust that in a matter of seconds had sent a London fog rolling down the Broad Way and turned every man, woman, child, and animal in the throng into a gray-daubed scarecrow.

Matthew was half-blinded. People were staggering around, coughing and hacking. Matthew felt tears in his eyes and thought this would surely make the first story of the next Earwig. It wasn’t every day that an entire building was knocked to the ground by a rampaging bull. He made his way through the murk toward the hole where the window had been, and he was able to see all the way up to the crooked beams of the roof, for no longer was there a ceiling nor garret floor. Amid the wreckage spread before him he could make out a few items that made his throat clutch: here a broken bed, there the pieces of a clothes chest…and, yes, over there what remained of a bookcase that used to have burned underneath the bottom shelf the name and date of Rodrigo de Pallares, Octubre 1690.

He backed away from this sickening scene, and when he turned around he saw through the drifting pall the girl watching him.

She had either removed her hat or lost it, and the long curly tresses of red hair that had been caught up underneath now spilled in waves over her shoulders. Though she was as dusty as everyone else, still she seemed oblivious to this discomfort. She said nothing, but perhaps she saw the hurt in his eyes for she too had a wounded look as if sharing the pain he felt at the destruction of his home. She had a finely chiseled nose and a firm jaw that on a smaller girl with more delicate features might have been too wide or too strong, but she was neither small nor delicate. She simply looked at him, sadly, as the dust floated around and between them. Matthew took a step forward and felt terribly light-headed. He sat down-or rather, sank down-upon the street, and that was when he realized that he was the object of a second female’s attention.

Cecily was sitting on her haunches nearby, regarding him with a slightly tilted head. Her ears twitched. Was there a shine in those piggy little eyes? Could a pig smile, and in so smiling say I told you, didn’t I?

“Yes,” Matthew answered, recalling all those knee-bumps and snout-shoves. “You did.”

The disaster had at last arrived, as Cecily had predicted. He listened to the last few notes of falling glass and popping treenails, and then he drew his knees up to his chin and sat there staring at nothing until Hiram Stokely came to clasp his arm and help him to his feet.

Twenty-Eight

Two hours after the destruction of Stokely’s pottery, Matthew sat drinking his third glass of wine at a table in the Trot Then Gallop with a half-finished platter of whitefish before him. Sitting with him at the table were Marmaduke Grigsby and Berry, who had taken him to dine and joined both in his tribulations and his drinking. A pewter cup that had been set at mid-table, put there by Felix Sudbury to garner donations from the Trot’s regulars, held in total three shillings, six groats, and fourteen duits, which was not a bad haul. Sudbury had been kind enough to give Matthew his dinner and drink free this evening, and of course the consolation helped but did not lift Matthew’s mood from the basement.

He was shamed by his distress, for though he’d lost his living quarters the Stokelys had lost their livelihood. Going through all that wreckage, with Patience sobbing quietly at Hiram’s side, had been a torment of grief. Almost everything except the odd cup or plate had been shattered, and all of Matthew’s furniture broken to bits. He’d been able to salvage some clothes and he’d found his small leather pouch of savings which totaled about a pound and three shillings, all of which now sat on the floor beside him in a canvas bag Patience had brought him from the house. A few of his cherished books had survived, but he would gather those up later. It had heartened him to hear Hiram vow to take his own savings and rebuild the pottery as soon as was possible, and he had no doubt that within a month the building would start rising again from the shards.

But it had been a damnable thing. The whitefish didn’t go down very well and the wine wasn’t strong enough to put him to sleep. The problem being, where to sleep?

“It was my fault, you know.”

Matthew looked across the table into Berry’s face. She had scrubbed the dust off in a bucket of water, and by the glow of the table’s lamp Matthew could see the fine scattering of freckles across her sunburned cheeks and the bridge of her nose. The red hair shone with copper highlights and a curl hung down across her forehead over one unplucked eyebrow. She had clear, expressive eyes the exact shade of deep blue as her grandfather’s, and they did not melt from Matthew’s gaze. He had already judged her as more an earthy milkmaid than an erudite teacher. He could see her pitching hay in a barn, or plucking corn off the stalks. She was a pretty girl, yes, if you didn’t care for the dainty type. Out to make her way in the world, a little adventurous, a little wild, probably a lot foolish. And then there were those gap-spaced front teeth, which she hadn’t shown since that first quick smile from under the hat, but he knew they were there and he’d been waiting for them to pop out. What else about her resembled her grandfather? He would not like to think.

“Your fault?” he answered, and he took another drink of wine. “How?”

“My bad luck. Hasn’t he told you?” This was punctuated by a nod of her head toward Marmaduke.

“Oh, nonsense,” Grigsby replied with a scowl. “Accidents happen.”

“They do, but they happen to me all the time. Even to other people, if I’m anywhere nearby.” She reached for her own glass of wine and took down a swig that Matthew thought Greathouse would have approved of. “Like what happened to the preacher, on the Sarah Embry.”

“Don’t start that again,” Grigsby said, or rather pleaded. “I’ve told you what the other passengers have verified. It was an accident, and if anyone was to blame it was the captain himself.”

“That’s not true. I dropped the soap. If not for that, the preacher wouldn’t have gone over.”

“All right.” Matthew was weary and heartsick, but never let it be said that a good argument couldn’t revive the spirit. “Suppose you do have bad luck. Suppose you carry it around and spread it out like fairy dust. Suppose your just being on the spot caused that bull to go mad, but of course we’ll have to forget about the cat and the dogs. Also about the bull seeing his reflection in the glass window. I don’t know the particulars of any other incidents, but it seems to me that you would rather see happenstance as bad luck because…” He shrugged.

“Because what?” she challenged, and Matthew thought he may have gone a red hair too far.

“Because,” he said, rising to the bait, “happenstance is dull. It is the everyday order of things that sometimes explodes in unfortunate chaos or accidents, but to say that you have bad luck that causes these things elevates you above the crowd into the realm of…” Again, he felt he was treading near quicksand that had a bit of volcanic activity going on underneath it, so he shut his mouth.

“Let’s all have another drink,” Grigsby suggested, giddily.

“The realm of what?” came back the question.

Matthew leveled his gaze at her and let her have it. “The realm, miss, of rare air where resides those who require a special mixture of self-pity and magic powers, both of which are sure magnets of attention.”

Berry did not reply. Were her cheeks reddening, or was that the sunburn? Matthew thought he saw her eyes gleam, in the way that light had leaped off the rapier blade Greathouse had swung at him. He realized he was sitting across the table from a girl who relished a good tangle.

“Be nice, be nice,” Grigsby muttered in his wine.

“I can assure you, sir,” said Berry, and there came a little glimpse of the gap as she gave a fleeting smile, “that I have neither self-pity nor powers of magic. I’m simply telling you what I know to be true. All my life I have been plagued by-or caused others to be plagued by-incidents of bad luck. How many to count? Ten, twenty, thirty? One is enough, believe me. Fires, coach accidents, broken bones, near drownings, and in the case of the preacher a sure drowning…all the above and more. I take the incident today as part of my spread of ‘fairy dust,’ as you so eloquently put it. By the way, you still have a lot of fairy dust in your hair.”

“Unfortunately I have not been able to bathe today. I regret the inconvenience to your sensibilities.”

“Children,” Grigsby said, “I’m glad we’re all getting along so well, but it might do to consider the hard earth of reality for a moment. Where are you going to sleep tonight, Matthew?”

A good question, but Matthew shrugged to mask his uncertainty. “I’m sure I’ll find a place. A boarding house, I suppose. Or maybe Mr. Sudbury would let me sleep in the back for just the one night.”

“The time to clear streets is getting near. It wouldn’t do to be walking from house to house after eight-thirty. Unless, of course, you wanted to sleep in the gaol.” Grigsby drank down the rest of his wine and pushed his glass aside. “Listen, Matthew, I have an idea.”

Matthew listened, though he was wary of Grigsby’s ideas. Berry also seemed to be giving her grandfather her full attention as he worked himself up to speak.

“I’d offer my house, but with Beryl…uh…Berry there now, I think you’d find it somewhat restrictive. I do suggest a second option, though. The Dutch dairy, beside my house.”

The brick outbuilding where Grigsby kept printing supplies and press parts. Matthew knew that as a former “cool house” where milk and other perishables had once been stored, it would certainly be a nice change of temperature from his garret, but there was at least one problem. “Doesn’t it have a dirt floor?”

“Nothing a throw rug couldn’t fix,” said Grigsby.

“Last call, gentlemen! Last call!” shouted Mr. Sudbury, with a pull on the bell that hung over the bar. “Closing in ten minutes!”

“I don’t know.” Matthew avoided looking at Berry, though he could feel her eyes on him. “It would be awfully small, wouldn’t it?”

“How much room do you need? Berry and I could clear some space for you, and I have a cot you might use. As you say, just for one night. Or however long you wish, as my guest.”

Ah, Matthew thought. Here’s the catch. Putting him in close proximity to Berry, so that he might be talked into beginning his duties as a supervisor. “No windows in the place,” he said. “I’m used to a view.”

“What are you going to look out at, in the dark? Come, Matthew! It’s just serving as a storeroom now. Plenty of space for a cot, and I could probably find a small writing desk for you as well, if you’d need that. A lantern to brighten the place, and it’s home for a night.”

Matthew drank some more wine and considered it. He was terribly tired, and didn’t care where he slept tonight as long as it was clean. “No mice, are there?”

“None. It’s as secure as a fort. Lock on the door and the key’s in my bureau.”

He nodded and then cast a swift glance at Berry. “What do you say about it?”

“I say, do as you please. Unless you fear another stroke of my bad luck.”

“What, doesn’t it ever run out?”

“Not that I’ve noticed.”

“I don’t believe in bad luck.”

“But surely, sir,” she said with false sweetness, “you believe in good luck? Why should you not believe that a person might be born under a dark cloud?”

“I think your dark cloud is self-made,” Matthew answered, and again he saw the warning glint in her eyes. He kept going nevertheless. “But perhaps it’s not attention you’re seeking after all. Perhaps it’s a dark cloud to hide under.”

“To hide under?” Her mouth gave a slight twist. “What might I be hiding from?”

“The issue at hand,” interjected Grigsby, which was fine for Matthew because he didn’t wish to fence with the girl any further, “is not dark clouds but where to spend a dark night. What say you, Matthew?”

“I don’t say.” If Berry had indeed been born under a dark cloud, she had the knack of raining all over other people as well. Matthew realized he’d finished his third glass of wine yet he thirsted for a little more numbheadedness.

“Well, Berry and I ought to be going. Come, granddaughter.” Grigsby and the girl stood up from the table, and she walked on out of the tavern without a backward glance. “Forgive her, Matthew. She’s on edge. You understand. That with the ship and all. Can you blame her?”

“Her luck may be questionable, but her bad manners are unfortunately not.”

“I do think she feels she had something to do with the disaster. Her mere presence, I suppose. But don’t concern yourself, she’ll warm up to you very soon.”

Matthew frowned. “Why should I care if she warms up to me or not?”

“Just a neighborly comment, that’s all. Now listen, I meant what I said about the lodgings. Would that suit you?”

“I haven’t decided, but thank you anyway.”

“If you do decide in the positive, I’ll leave a lantern for you next to the door and on the door a cord with the key. All right?”

Matthew was going to reply with a shrug, for Berry’s petulance was catching, but instead he sighed and said, “All right. I’m going to have another drink first.”

“Mind the decree,” Grigsby cautioned, and then he also left the Trot.

Matthew asked Sudbury for another half-glass of wine and drank it while he set up a chess problem on one of the boards and played it out. Sudbury announced closing time, as it was eight o’clock, and finally Matthew picked up his bag of dusty belongings, thanked Sudbury for his kind hospitality, and left the man a shilling from his donation cup. He was the last customer out, and heard the door being bolted behind him.

It was a warm and pleasant night. Matthew turned right onto Crown Street and then took the corner south onto Smith Street. He was planning on walking a circle, to turn left onto Wall Street and then back up Queen Street along the waterfront to Grigsby’s house. He needed some air and some time to think. A bit of wooziness softened his vision, but he was all right, mostly. The street-corner lamps were lit, stars sparkled in the sky, and far to the east, over the Atlantic, a distant thunderstorm flickered. Matthew passed a few people rushing to get indoors before the decree began at eight-thirty, but he kept his pace unhurried as he walked along Wall Street. His mind was not on Brutus the bull nor the destruction of the pottery, but instead on the mysterious lady at the asylum.

A trip to Philadelphia was indeed in his future, but if Primm would offer up no information, then how was the Queen of Bedlam to be identified? By stopping every citizen of that town on the streets and describing the woman? Greathouse was right; it was an impossible task. But then, how?

That girl was maddening. Bad luck and a dark cloud. Ridiculous.

Back to the problem of identifying the woman. He felt now as if he’d overplayed his hand with Greathouse. You being the chief investigator on this, Greathouse had said. Did the man mean for Matthew to go to Philadelphia alone, and this basically his first case for the agency? That was a fine initiation, wasn’t it?

And the girl needed a lesson in manners, too. But there was something else in her eyes behind that flash of anger, Matthew thought. Perhaps it’s a dark cloud to hide under. Was there more truth to that than he’d realized?

He came to the corner of Wall Street and stopped in the glow of the lamp there to check his watch. Almost quarter after eight. He still had time, for Grigsby’s house was just two blocks north up the harbor street. He took a moment to rewind the watch and then started off again, his mind moving between the mad lady and the maddening girl.

Once more lightning flashed, far at sea. The dark shapes of ships stood on his right, their spars and masts towering overhead. The commingled smells of tar, pine, and dockwater drifted to him. He was about midway between Wall Street and King Street, his mind fixed now on the demands of a six-day journey to Philadelphia-three days there and three back-when he heard a crunch behind him.