The Queen of Bedlam (4 page)

Matthew crossed over the bricked floor to stand near the young man at his bellows labor. He waited until finally John Five sensed him there and turned to look over his shoulder. Matthew nodded; John returned the nod, his cherubic face ruddy in the heat and his eyes pale blue beneath thick blond brows, and then he returned to what he was doing without a word, since speaking was useless so long as the hammers did the talking.

At last John knew Matthew would not be denied; Matthew saw it, in the slump of the younger man’s shoulders. That alone gave him an indication of how their meeting must go, but he had to pursue it. John Five ceased the bellows work, waved his arm in the air to get Master Ross to see, and then held up five fingers to ask for that much time. Master Ross gave a curt nod, with a stern glance at Matthew that said Some of us have work to do and laid in again on the hammer-and-tongs.

Outside, in the smoky sunlight, John Five wiped his sparkling forehead with a cloth and said, “How are you, Matthew?”

“Well, thank you. And you?”

“Well also.” John was not as tall as Matthew, but had the wide shoulders and thick forearms of a man born to command iron. He was four years Matthew’s junior, yet far from being a youth. In the King Street almshouse-then known as the Sainted John Home for Boys, before it was expanded to include two more buildings for orphaned girls and adult paupers-he had been the fifth John of thirty-six boys, thus his identity. John Five had one ear; the left had been hacked off. Across his chin was a deep scar that pulled the right corner of his mouth down into a perpetual sadness. John Five remembered a father and mother and a cabin in a wilderness clearing, perhaps an idealized memory. He recalled two infant siblings, both brothers he believed. He recalled the logs of a fort, and a man in a tricorn with goldleaf trimming talking to his father and showing him the shaft of a broken arrow. His memory could pull up the shrill sound of a woman screaming and blurred figures bursting through the window shutters and the door. He saw the glint of firelight on an upraised hatchet. Then the candle of his mind went out.

One thing he remembered quite clearly-and this he told Matthew and some of the others, one night at the orphanage-was a thin rail of a man with black teeth, tipping a bottle to his mouth and telling him to Dance, dance, you little shit! Dance for our supper! And smile or I’ll carve one in that fuckin’ face!

John Five recalled dancing in a tavern, and seeing his small shadow thrown on the wall. The thin man took coins from the customers and put them in a brown pot. He remembered the man drunk and swearing on a nasty bed in a little room somewhere. He remembered crawling under the bed to sleep, and two other men breaking into the room and beating the drunk man to death with cudgels. And he remembered thinking, as the man’s brains flew upon the walls and the blood flowed over the floor, that he had never really liked to dance.

Soon after that, a travelling parson had brought the nine-year-old John to the orphanage and left him in the care of the demanding but fair-minded Headmaster Staunton, but when Staunton had left two years later to answer the call of a dream bidding him to take God’s salvation to the Indian tribes, the position had been filled by Eben Ausley, newly arrived with commission in hand from jolly old England.

Standing with John Five alongside Master Ross’ blacksmith shop, as the town began to speed itself into the rhythms of another day of trade and citizens passed by in their own currents of life like so many fish in the rivers, Matthew looked down at his shoes and measured his words carefully. “When we spoke last, you said you’d consider my request.” He looked up into the younger man’s eyes, which he could read like any book in his collection. Yet he had to go on. “Have you?”

“I have,” John answered.

“And?”

John gave a pained expression. He stared at the knuckles of his hands, which he closed into fists and began to work together as if fighting a private battle. And Matthew knew this was entirely true. Still, Matthew had to persist: “You and I both know what needs to be done.” There was no response, so Matthew plowed deeper. “He thinks he’s gotten away with everything. He thinks no one cares. Oh yes, I saw him last night. He crowed like a madman, about how I hadn’t gone to the magistrate because I have nothing. And you know the high constable is one of his gaming friends. So I have to have proof, John. I have to have someone who’ll speak up.”

“Someone,” John said, with just a trace of bitterness.

“Myles Newell and his wife moved to Boston,” Matthew reminded him. “He was willing, and close to it, but now that he’s gone it’s up to you.”

John remained silent, still pressing his fists together, his eyes shadowed.

“Nathan Spencer hanged himself last month,” Matthew said. “Twenty years old, and he still couldn’t put it to rest.”

“I know very well about Nathan. I was at the funeral too. And I’ve thought about him, many days. He used to come here and talk, just like you do. But tell me this, Matthew,” and here John Five peered into his friend’s face with eyes that were at once racked with anguish and as hot as the forge, “was it Nathan who couldn’t put it to rest…or was it you?”

“It was both of us,” Matthew said, truthfully.

John gave a quiet grunt and looked away again. “I’m sorry about Nathan. He was tryin’ very hard to move on. But you wouldn’t let him, would you?”

“I had no idea he was planning to kill himself.”

“Maybe he wasn’t, until you kept pesterin’ him. Did you ever think about that?”

In truth, Matthew had. It was something, though, that he’d forced away from himself; he couldn’t bear to admit to the shaving mirror that his pleadings with Nathan to make witness against Eben Ausley in front of Magistrate Powers and Chief Prosecutor James Bynes would result in a rope thrown over the rafters of the young man’s garret.

“Nathan wasn’t well,” John Five went on. “In the head. He was weak. You should have known that, you bein’ such the scholar.”

“I can’t bring him back, and neither can you,” Matthew said, with more spice than he’d meant; it sounded too much like the curt dismissal of responsibility. “We have to go on, from where we-”

“We?” John scowled, an expression of menace not to be taken lightly. “What is this we? I haven’t said I wanted anythin’ to do with this. I’ve just listened to you talk, that’s all. For the sake that you’re such a high-collar now, and I have to say you’re a fine smooth talker, Matthew. But talkin’ can only go so far.”

Matthew, as was his wont, took the initiative. “I agree. It is time for action.”

“You mean time to put my neck in a noose too, don’t you?”

“No, I do not.”

“Well, that’s what would happen. I don’t mean hangin’ myself. No, I’d never do that. But I mean ruinin’ my life. And for what?” John Five drew a long breath and shook his head. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter and almost disconsolate. “Ausley’s right. No one cares. No one will believe anythin’ that’s said again’ him. He has too many friends. From what you’ve told me, he’s lost too much money at them gamin’ tables to go behind bars, or be banished from the town. His debtors wouldn’t stand for it. So even if I spoke out-even if anyone spoke out-I’d be called a madman, or devil-possessed, or…who knows what would happen to me.”

“If you’re afraid for your life, I can tell you that Magistrate Powers will-”

“You talk and talk,” John Five said, and stepped forward upon Matthew with a grimness that made the elder man think their friendship-an orphans’ comraderie, as it were-was about to end with a broken jaw. “But you don’t listen,” John went on, though he checked his progress. He gazed toward the street, at the gents and ladies passing, at a horse-cart trundling by, at some children chasing each other and laughing as if all the world was a merriment. “I’ve asked Constance to be my wife. We’re to be joined in September.”

Constance Wade, Matthew knew, had been John’s love for nearly a year. He never thought John would get up the nerve to ask her, since she was the daughter of that stern-faced, black-garbed preacher William Wade, the man of whom it was said birds hushed singing when he cast the unblinking eye of God at them. Of course Matthew was happy for John Five, for Constance was certainly a fair maid and had a quick and lively mind, but he knew also what this meant.

John didn’t speak for a moment, and Matthew likewise held his tongue in check. Then John said, “Phillip Covey. Have you asked him?”

“I have. He steadfastly refuses.”

“Nicholas Robertson? John Galt?”

“Both I’ve asked, several times. Both have refused.”

“Then why me, Matthew? Why keep comin’ to me?”

“Because of what you’ve gone through. Not only from Ausley, but before. The Indian raid. The man who took you around and made you dance in the taverns. All that being knocked down, all that darkness and trouble. I thought you’d want to stand up and make sure that Ausley’s put away where he ought to be.” There was no response from John Five to this; the younger man’s face was emotionless. Matthew said firmly, “I thought you’d want to see justice done.”

Now, to Matthew’s surprise, a hint of emotion did return to John’s face, but it was the faintest trace of a knowing smile-or a slyness of knowledge, to be exact. “Justice done? Is that really it? Or do you just want to make me dance again?”

Matthew started to answer, to protest John’s point, but before he could the younger man said quietly, “Please hear me, Matthew, and make true of it. Ausley never touched you, did he? You were of an age he thought…older than he cared to bother, isn’t that right? So you heard things at night-cryin’ maybe, a scream or two-and that was all. Maybe you rolled over on your cot and you had a bad dream. Maybe you wished you could do somethin’, but you couldn’t. Maybe you just felt small and weak. But if anyone was to want to do somethin’ about Ausley now, Matthew, it would be me, and Covey, and Robertson, and Galt. We don’t. We just want to go on with our lives.” John paused to let that sink in. “Now you talk about justice bein’ done, and that’s a fine sentiment. But justice can’t always see clear, isn’t that the sayin’?”

“Nearly.”

“Near enough, I guess. If I-or any of the others-got up on the stand and swore again’ Ausley, there’s no for certain he’d get more than ol’ Grooder’s gettin’ right now. No, he wouldn’t even get that. He’d talk his way out of it. Or buy his way out, with that high constable in his pocket. And look what would become of me, Matthew, to admit to such a thing. I’m to be married in September. Do you think the Reverend Wade would say I was good enough for his daughter, if he was to know?”

“I think he and Constance might both appreciate your courage.”

“Ha!” John had almost laughed in Matthew’s face. His eyes looked scorched. “I don’t have that much courage.”

“So you’re just dismissing it.” Matthew felt sweat on his forehead and on the back of his neck. John Five had been his last hope. “Just dismissing it, for all time.”

“Yes,” came the reply without hesitation. “Because I’ve got a life to live, Matthew. I’m sorry for all them others, but I can’t help ’em. All I can do is help myself. Is that such a sin?”

Matthew was struck dumb. He’d feared that John Five would say no in this way-and indeed the tenor of their meetings had never indicated compliance, but hearing it outright was a major blow. Thoughts were spinning through his mind like whirlagigs. If there was no way to entreat any of Ausley’s earlier victims to speak out-and no way to get into the almshouse to gain the testimonies of new victims-then the Headmaster from Hell had indeed won the battle and the war. Which meant Matthew, for all his belief in the power and fairness of justice, was simply a piece of sounding brass without structure or composition. One reason he’d come to New York after leaving Fount Royal was to plan this attack and see it to the finish, and now-

“Life’s not easy for anyone,” John Five said. “You and me, we ought to know that better than most. But I think sometimes you’ve got to let bad things go, so you can move on. Just thinkin’ about it, over and over again, and keepin’ it in your head…it’s no good.”

“Yes,” Matthew agreed, though he didn’t know why. He’d heard himself speak as if from a vast distance.

“You ought to find somethin’ better than this to hold on to,” John said, not unkindly. “Somethin’ with a future to it.”

“A future,” Matthew echoed. “Yes. Possibly you’re right.” Inwardly, he was thinking he had failed himself and failed the others at the orphanage and failed even the memory of Magistrate Woodward. He could hear the magistrate, speaking from his deathbed: I have always been proud of you. Always. I knew from the first. When I saw you at the almshouse. The way you carried yourself. Something different and indefinable. But special. You will make your mark. Somewhere. You will make a profound difference to someone…just by being alive.

“Matthew?”

I have always been proud of you.

“Matthew?”

He realized John Five had said something he’d not caught. He came back to the moment like a swimmer gliding up through dark and dirty water. “What?”

“I asked if you would be goin’ to the social on Friday night.”

“Social?” He thought he’d seen an announcement about it, plastered up on a wall here and there. “What social?”

“At the church. Friday night. You know, Elizabeth Martin has got quite the eye for you.”

Matthew nodded vacantly. “The shoemaker’s daughter. Didn’t she just turn fourteen?”