Robert McCammon - Speaks the Nightbird

"Please put aside the pistol, " Matthew said. "I think it's time."

"Time. Yes, " Johnstone repeated, nodding. "It is time. I can't go back to prison. Do you understand that?"

"Sir?" Matthew now realized with a surge of alarm what the man intended. "There's no need!"

"My need." Johnstone dropped the knife to the floor and put his foot on it. "You were correct about something, Matthew: if I was given the pistol…" He paused, beginning to waver on his feet as if he might pass out. "Someone had to die."

Suddenly Johnstone turned the weapon toward his face, which brought a gasp of shock from Bidwell. "I do have a choice, you see, " Johnstone said, the sweat glistening on his cheeks in the red-cast candlelight. "And damn you all to Hell, where I shall be waiting with eager arms.

"And now, " he said, with a slight tilting forward of his head, "exit the actor."

He opened his mouth, slid the pistol's barrel into it, squeezed his eyes tightly shut, and pulled the trigger.

There was a loud metallic clack as the wheel-lock mechanism was engaged. A shower of sparks flew, hissing like little comets, into Johnstone's face.

The pistol, however, failed to fire.

Johnstone opened his eyes, displaying an expression of such terror that Matthew hoped never to witness its like again. He withdrew the gun from his mouth. Something inside the weapon was making a chirrupy cricket sound. Tendrils of blue smoke spun through the air around Johnstone's face, as he looked into the gun's barrel. Another spark jumped, bright as a gold coin.

Crack! went the pistol, like a mallet striking a board.

Johnstone's head rocked back. The eyes were wide open, wet, and brimming with shock. Matthew saw blood and reddish-gray clumps of matter clinging to the wall behind Johnstone's skull. The map of Bidwell's Fount Royal had in an instant become gore-drenched and brain-spattered.

Johnstone fell, his knees folding. At the end, an instant before he hit the floor, he might have been giving a final, arrogant bow.

And then his head hit the planks, and from that gruesome hole in the back of it, directly opposite the only slightly tidier hole in his forehead, streamed the physical matter of the thespian's memories, schemes, acting ability, intelligence, pride, fear of prison, desires, evil, and…

Yes, even his affinity for teaching. Even that, now only so much liquid.

Forty-Three

In the distance a dog barked. It was a forlorn, searching sound. Matthew looked over the darkened town from the window of the magistrate's room, thinking that even the dogs knew Fount Royal was lost.

Five hours had passed since the suicide of Alan Johnstone. Matthew had spent most of that time right here, sitting in a chair by Woodward's bed and reading the Bible in a solemn circle of lamplight. Not any particular chapter, just bits and pieces of comforting wisdom. Actually, he read most of the passages without seeing them, and had to read them again to glean their illumination. It was a sturdy book, and it felt good between his hands.

The magistrate was dying. Shields had said the man might not last until morning, so it was best that Matthew stay close. Bidwell and Winston were in the parlor, talking over the recent events like survivors of a soul-shaping battle. The doctor himself was sleeping in Matthew's room, and Mrs. Nettles was up at this midnight hour making tea, polishing silver, and doing odds and ends in the kitchen. She had told Matthew she ought to do some small labors she'd been putting off for a while, but Matthew knew she was standing the deathwatch too. Little wonder Mrs.

Nettles couldn't sleep, though, as it had been her task to mop up all the blood in the library, though Mr. Green had volunteered to put the brains and skull pieces in a burlap bag and dispose of them.

Rachel was downstairs, sleeping-he supposed-in Mrs. Nettles's room. She had come to the library after the sound of the shot, and had asked to see the face of the man who'd murdered Daniel. It was not Matthew's place to deny her. Though Matthew had previously explained to her how the murders were done, by whom, for what reason, and all the rest of it, Rachel yet had to see Johnstone for herself.

She had walked past Winston, Dr. Shields, and Bidwell without a glance. She had ignored Hiram Abercrombie and Malcolm Jennings, who'd rushed in at the shot, armed with their axes. Certainly she'd passed Green as if the red-bearded, gap-toothed giant was invisible. She had stood over the dead man, staring down into his open, sightless eyes. Matthew had watched her as she contemplated Johnstone's departure. At last, she had said very quietly, "I suppose… I should rant and rave that I spent so many days in a cell… and he has fled. But…" She had looked into Matthew's face, tears in her eyes now that it was over and she could allow them. "Someone that evil… that wretched… was locked in a cage of his own making, every day of his life, wasn't he?"

"He was, " Matthew had said. "Even when he knew he'd found the key to escape it, all he did was move to a deeper dungeon."

Green had retrieved the pistol, which had belonged to Nicholas Paine. It occurred to Matthew that all the men he and the magistrate had met that first night of their arrival were accounted for in this room. "Thank you for your help, Mr. Green, " Matthew had said. "You were invaluable."

"My pleasure, sir. Anythin' to help you." Green had taken to fawning at Matthew, as if the clerk had a giant's stature. "I still can't believe such a blow as you gave me!" He'd massaged his jaw at the memory of it. "I saw you cock the fist back, and then… my Lord, the stars!" He'd grunted and looked at Rachel. "It took a right champion to lay me out, I'll swear it did!"

"Um… yes." Matthew cast a quick glance at Mrs. Nettles, who stood nearby listening to this exchange, her face an unrevealing sculpture of granite. "Well, one never knows from where one will draw the necessary strength. Does one?"

Matthew had watched as Jennings and Abercrombie had lifted the corpse, placed it facedown on a ladder to prevent any further leakage, and then covered a sheet over the deceased. Its destination, Bidwell told Matthew, was the barn down in the slave quarters. Tomorrow, Bidwell said, the corpse-"foul bastard" were the exact words he used-would be taken into the swamp and dumped in a mudhole where the crows and vultures might applaud his performance.

To end up, Matthew realized, like the dead men in the muck at Shawcombe's tavern. Well: dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and mud to mud.

It was now the impending fact of another death that concerned him. Matthew had learned from Dr. Shields that the stimulating potion had finally reached the limit of its usefulness. Woodward's body had simply given out, and nothing could reverse the process. Matthew didn't beat a grudge against the doctor; Shields had done the best he could do, given the limited medicines at hand. Perhaps the bleeding had been excessive, or perhaps it had been a grievous error to make the magistrate attend his duties while so sick, or perhaps something else was done or not done… but today Matthew had come to accept the hard, cold truth.

Just as seasons and centuries must turn, so too must men- the bad and the good, equal in their frailty of flesh-pass away from this earth.

He heard a nightbird singing.

Out there. Out in one of the trees that stood around the pond. It was a noontime song, and presently it was joined by a second. For their kind, Matthew mused, night was not a time of sad longing, loneliness, and fear. For them the night was but a further opportunity to sing.

And such a sweetness in it, to hear these notes trilled as the land slept, as the stars hummed in the immense velvet black. Such a sweetness, to realize that even at this darkest hour there was yet joy to be known.