The Queen of Bedlam (3 page)

And tomorrow? To be so impetuous as to once more haunt the dark outside the King Street orphanage, waiting for Ausley to appear on his jaunt to the gambling dens and so spy on him in hopes of…what, exactly? Or to stay home in his small room and embrace cold fact, that Ausley was right: he had absolutely nothing, and was unlikely to get anything at this pace. But to give up…to give up…was abandoning them all. Abandoning the reason for his solemn rage, abandoning the quest that he felt set him apart from every other citizen of this town. It gave him a purpose. Without it, who would he be?

He would be a magistrate’s clerk and a pottery sweeper, he thought as he went along the silent Broad Way. Only a young man who held sway over a quill and a broom, and whose mind was tormented by the vision of injustice to the innocent. It was what had made him stand up against Magistrate Woodward-his mentor and almost father, truth be told-to proclaim Rachel Howarth innocent of witchcraft in the town of Fount Royal three years ago. Had that decision helped to carry the ailing magistrate to his death? Possibly so. It was another torment, like the hot strike of a bullwhip ever endlessly repeating, that lay upon Matthew’s soul in every hour lit by sun or candle.

He came upon a horse trough at Trinity Church, where Wall Street met the Broad Way. Here the sturdy Dutch cobblestones ended and the streets were plain hard-packed English earth. As Matthew leaned down into the trough and began to wash his face with dirty water, he almost felt like weeping. Yet to weep took too much energy, and he had none of that to spare.

But tomorrow was tomorrow, was it not? A new beginning, as they said? What a day might change, who could ever know? Yet some things would never change in himself, and of this he was certain: he must bring Eben Ausley to justice somehow, for those crimes of wanton evil and brutality against the innocent. Somehow, he must; or he feared that if he did not, he would be consumed by this quest, by its futility, and he would wither into slack-jawed acceptance of what could never in his mind be acceptable.

At last he was suitable to proceed home, yet still a ragamuffin’s nightmare. He still had his cap, that was a good thing. He still had his life, that was another. And so he straightened his shoulders and counted his blessings and went on his way through the midnight town, one young man alone.

Two

On this bright morning, neither of Matthew’s breakfast hosts knew of his tribulations of the night before; therefore they merrily jaylarked about the day with no regard to his headache and sour stomach. He kept these injuries to himself, as Hiram Stokely and his wife, Patience, went about the sunny kitchen in their small white house behind the pottery shop.

Matthew’s plate was filled with corncakes and a slice of salted ham that on any other day he would have considered a delight but today was a little too discomfited to properly appreciate. They were good and kind people, and he’d been fortunate to find a room over the shop. His responsibility to them was to clean the place and help with the throwing and kiln, as much as his limited talents allowed. They had two sons, one a merchant sea captain and the other an accountant in London, and it seemed to Matthew that they liked having the company at mealtimes.

The third member present of the Stokely family, however, definitely found something peculiar with Matthew this morn. At first Matthew had thought it was the salted ham that made Cecily, the pet pig, nose about him to the point of aggravation. Considering he was putting knife and fork to one of her relations, he could well fathom her displeasure, yet she was surely by now used to these cannibals who’d taken her in. Surely she knew that after two years of this coddled life she wasn’t destined for the plate, for she was a smart piece of pork. But the way she snorted and pushed and carried on this day made Matthew wonder if he’d gotten all the horse manure out of his hair. He’d almost scrubbed his skin off with sandalwood soap in the washbasin last night, but perhaps Cecily’s talented snout could find some lingering stink.

“Cecily!” said Hiram, after a particularly hard push from the rotund lass to Matthew’s right kneecap. “What’s the matter with you today?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” was Matthew’s response, though he presumed Cecily was reminded of rolling in the sty by some aroma he was emitting, even though he wore freshly cleaned trousers, shirt, and stockings.

“She’s nervous, is what.” Patience, a large stocky woman with gray hair pinned up under a blue cotton mob cap, looked up from her hearth, where she was using a bellows to fan the biscuit-pan fire. “Something’s got her gristle.”

Hiram, who was just as physically sturdy as his wife, with white hair and beard and pale brown eyes the color of the clay he worked so diligently, took a drink from his mug of tea. He watched Cecily make a circle in the kitchen before she went back under the table to give out a snort and push Matthew’s knee again. “She was like this a morning or two before the fire, you remember? She can tell when there’s trouble about to happen, is what I believe.”

“I didn’t realize she was such the fortune-teller.” Matthew scooted his chair back from the table to make room for Cecily. Unfortunately, the lady continued to shove her snout at him.

“Well, she likes you.” Hiram gave him a quick, joshing smile. “Maybe she’s trying to tell you something, eh?”

A day late, Matthew thought.

“I recall,” Patience said quietly, as she went back to her work, “when Dr. Godwin came to visit us last. To get his plates. Do you remember, Hiram?”

“Dr. Godwin?” Hiram’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Hm,” he said.

“What about Dr. Godwin?” Matthew asked, sensing something that perhaps he ought to know.

“It’s not important.” Hiram drank from his mug again and began to eat the last piece of corncake on his platter.

“I imagine it is,” Matthew insisted. “If you brought it up at all, it must be.”

Hiram shrugged. “Well, it’s just…Cecily, that’s all.”

“Yes? And Cecily had what to do with Dr. Godwin?”

“She acted like this that day, when he came to get his plates.”

“That day?” Matthew knew exactly what the man meant, but he had to ask it: “You mean the day he was murdered?”

“It’s nothing, really,” Hiram said, though he squirmed in his chair. He figured he ought to be used to Matthew’s ravenous questions and particularly the penetrating expression the young man gave when he knew he’d been thrown a hook. “I don’t know if it was that day, exactly, or some other day. And thank you, Patience, for bringing this subject to light.”

“I was thinking out loud,” she said, rather apologetically. “I meant no harm in the saying.”

“Will you stop that?” Matthew, his nerves on edge, stood up to get away from Cecily. The knees of his trousers were sopping with sow spit. “I’d better go; I’ve got an errand before work.”

“The biscuits are almost done,” Patience said. “Sit down, the magistrate will-”

“I’m sorry, no. Thank you for the breakfast. I presume I’ll see both of you at Lord Cornbury’s address?”

“We’ll be there.” Hiram stood up as well. “Matthew, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a pig, playing with you.”

“I know it doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t say it did. And I reject the idea that there’s any connection between Dr. Godwin and myself. I mean…in terms of being murdered.” Dear Lord, he thought. Do I have fever? “I shall see you this afternoon,” he said, and dodged Cecily making another snorting circle around him as he got out through the door and walked along the fieldstone path that led to the street.

Ridiculous! he told himself as he strode southward. To let a pig’s so-called premonitions cloud his mind, as if he really believed in such a thing. Well, some did, of course. Some said animals could foretell changing weather and such before the human breed, but to foretell murder…that smacked of dabbling in witchcraft, didn’t it? As if he held any stock in that, either!

On this fine morning it seemed the entire population of New York was out and about on the public ways. They meandered, squatted, scurried, and barked all around him, and those were just the cats, goats, chickens, and dogs. The town was becoming a veritable menagerie, as on some of those vessels arriving from England. The three-month journey had killed half the people and left their livestock to enjoy the greener pastures of North America.

The Stokelys’ pottery shop was one of the last structures of the town proper. Just north beyond their door lay the High Road, which led across rolling fields and hills crowned with thick green woodland to the distant town of Boston. The sun shimmered in gold flakes on the waters of the East and Hudson rivers, and as Matthew followed the Broad Way over a hilltop he took in the panoramic view of New York he saw every morning on his way to work.

Haze from cooking hearths and blacksmith fires hung above the yellow-tiled roofs of scores of houses, shops, and sundry buildings spread before him. On the streets moved the industrious citizens, either on foot or by horse and ox-cart. The higglers were out, selling baskets and rope and all kinds of middling merchandise from their street-corner wagons. So too on the move was the ragand-bone man, scooping up the night’s animal manure into his bucket-like cart for sale at the farmers’ market. Matthew knew where the man might find a right treasure of a pile over near Sloat Lane.

Three white-sailed skiffs advanced before the breeze along the East River. A larger sailing ship, piloted out of the harbor by two long rowers, was leaving the Great Dock to a small gathering of well-wishers and a ringing of bells at the wharfside. The area of the piers was of course a center of business and was like a beehive even before dawn, with its assemblage of canvasers, anchorsmiths, codmen, pulleymakers, riggers, tarboys, shipwrights, treenail makers, and all such cast of seaplay characters. Then, looking to the shops and buildings to the right of the docks, one peered into the domain of the warehousers and merchandisers who held sway over goods either leaving the town or coming in, which gave occupations to packers, tollers, tally-clerks, stevedores, tide waiters, scriveners, out-criers, and perchemears. At the center of town stood the stone structures of the Custom House, the mayor’s home, and the newly built City Hall, which had been constructed to bring together in one place the offices of those townsmen who oversaw the day-today politics and essentials of New York, such as the ward officers, the department of records, the legal staff, the high constable, and the chief prosecutor. Basically, as Matthew thought, they were there to keep rival businessmen from killing one another, for this might be the new world but the old savage sensibilities of London had also made the Atlantic crossing.

Matthew walked downhill into the town, his pace brisk and his destination deliberate. By the dint of repetition and the sundial that stood before Madam Kenneday’s bakery, he knew he had half-an-hour until Magistrate Powers arrived at the office. Before Matthew put a quill to paper this morning he was determined to light a fire under a pair of blacksmith boots.

For all of its cattle corrals, stables, skinning shops, warehouses, and rough taverns, New York was a pretty town. The Dutch pioneers had left their mark in the distinctive narrow facades, high stepped-gable roofs, and their penchant for weathervanes, decorative chimneys, and simple but geometrically precise gardens. All the structures south of Wall Street bore the Dutch signature, while the houses and buildings north of that demarcation were of the typically four-square English variety. Matthew had gotten into a conversation about that subject a few nights ago at the Gallop; it would be seen in the future, he contended, that the Dutch were of a pastoral mind and so strived to beautify their surroundings with gardens and parks, but the English were eager to jam their boxes onto every available space in the name of commerce. One just had to cross Wall Street to see the difference between London and Amsterdam. Of course he’d not been to either of those cities, but he had his collection of books and he was always interested in the stories of travelers. Plus he was always armed with an opinion, which made him either the hero or goat of these conversant evenings at the Gallop.

It was true, he mused as he ventured along the Broad Way toward the steeple of Trinity Church, that New York was becoming…well, how would one put it? Cosmopolitan, perhaps? That its presence and future was beginning to be noticed around the world? Or so it seemed. On any day one might see walking the cobblestones brightly robed visitors from India, or Belgian financiers the picture of serious intent in dark suits and black tricorns, or even Dutch merchants in gilt waistcoats and elaborate wigs puffing powder at each stride, indicating that enemies could meet quite profitably at the counting table. Found planning the trade of coin over wine and codfish at the alehouses day or night might be Cuban sugar merchants from Barbados, Jewish gemstone traders from Brazil, or German tobacco buyers from Stockholm. Indigo dye suppliers from Charles Town or ambassadors from numerous businesses in Philadelphia and Boston regularly visited. A sight not uncommon was that of Sint Sink, Iroquois, and Mohican Indians bringing into the town cartloads of deer, beaver, and bear skins and causing a right hullabaloo among people and dogs alike. Of course slave ships arrived at dock from Africa or the West Indies, and those slaves who weren’t purchased for duty here were sent off for auction to other localities like Long Island. Perhaps one New York household in every five held a slave; though the slaves were forbidden by town decree to gather beyond two in number, there were alarming reports from dockside merchants of night-roaming gangs of slaves who, perhaps continuing to fight old tribal feuds, attacked one another over perceived territories.

Matthew wondered, as he walked, if becoming cosmopolitan meant an eventual emulation of the sprawl, debasement, and utter calamity of London. The tales he’d heard of that pandemetro chilled his blood-everything from the twelve-year-old prostitutes to the freak-show circuses and the joy of the mob at the hangman’s theater. Possibly, with that latter revulsion, he was remembering how near Rachel Howarth had come to being burned alive in Fount Royal, and how the merry crowd would have howled as the ashes flew up. He wondered what would be the future of New York, in a hundred years. He wondered if fate and human nature decreed that every Bethlehem become in time a Bedlam.

As he crossed Wall Street before Trinity Church and the black iron fence around the church cemetery, he gave a glance at the trough in which he’d cleaned himself of his night’s misfortune. The Dutch fortress wall that had stood here, made of logs twelve feet tall, had been constructed to guard that avenue of attack from the British before the settlement changed hands some thirty-eight years ago. It occurred to Matthew that New York no longer faced an adversary from without, as barring severe epidemic or some unforeseen catastrophe the place was securely fixed. He thought that the next threat to the survival of this town might well come from within, and bear from the consequences of forgetting the perils of human greed.

On his left, also on Wall Street, was the yellow stone City Hall and the town gaol, before which a notorious pickpocket named Ebenezer Grooder was on public view, confined to the pillory. A basket of rotten apples lay within reach of any citizen who wished to apply further justice. Matthew continued south, entering the smoke-hazed realm of stables, warehouses, and blacksmitheries.

It was one of those establishments, whose affixed sign read simply Ross, Smith, that was the aim of his arrow. He went into the open barn door of the place, into the dim light where hammers rang on iron and orange flames seethed in the black-bricked forge. A thick-set young man with curly blond hair was at work on the bellows cord, making the fire flare and spit. Beyond him, the elder master Marco Ross and the second apprentice were hammering out the vital commodity of horseshoes on their respective anvils. The noise was a kind of rough music, as one hammerblow was pitched higher than the other. All the smiths wore leather aprons to protect their clothes from flying shards of red-hot metal, and the heat and strenuous activity already at this early hour made the men sweat through the backs of their shirts. Cart-wheels, plows, and other bits of farm implements were arranged in wait for inspection, showing that Master Ross was at no sorrow for work.