Robert McCammon - Speaks the Nightbird

"Maude! What're you sittin' there for? Get these gentlemen draughts of rum!" This command had been hurled at another woman in the room, sitting near the old man. A chair scraped back across the raw plank floor, a cough came up followed by another that ended in a hacking gasp, and then Maude-a skinny white-haired wraith in clothes that resembled burlap bags stitched together-dragged herself muttering and clucking out of the room and through a doorway beyond the hearth. "Christ save our arses!" Shawcombe hollered in her miserable wake. "You'd think we never seen a breathin' human before in need of food or drink! This here's a tavern, or ain't you heard?" His mood rapidly changed once more as he regarded Woodward with a hopeful expression. "You'll be stayin' the night with us, won't you, sirrah? There's a room right comfortable back there, won't cost you but a few pence. Got a bed with a good soft mattress, ease your back from that long trip."

"May I ask a question?" Matthew decided to say before his companion could respond. "How far is Fount Royal?"

"Fount Royal? Oh, young master, that's a two, three hour ride on a good road. The weather bein' such, I'd venture it'd take you double that. And dark's comin' on. I wouldn't care to meet Jack One Eye or a red savage without a torch and a musket." Shawcombe focused his attention once more on the older traveler. "So you'll be stayin' the night then?"

"Yes, of course," Woodward began to unbutton his heavy coat. "We'd be fools to continue on in the dark."

"I suspect you have luggage in need of cartin'?" His smile slipped off as his head turned. "Abner! Get your arse up and fetch their belongin's! Girl, you go too!"

The girl had been standing motionlessly with her back against a wall, her face downcast and her bare arms crossed over her chest. She made no sound, but walked at Shawcombe's drumbeat toward the door, her feet and legs clad in knee-high deerskin boots. "Ain't fit for a pig out there!" Abner complained, holding firm to his chair.

"No, but it's just right for a hog like you!" Shawcombe countered, and daggers shot from his eyes again. "Now get up and get to it!" Muttering under his beard, Abner pulled himself to his feet and limped after the girl as if his very legs were stricken by some crippling disease.

Matthew had wanted to ask Shawcombe who "Jack One Eye" was, but he hated the thought of that girl and the old man-the girl, especially-struggling with the heavy trunks. "I should help." He started toward the door, but Shawcombe gripped his arm.

"No need. Those two sops sit 'round here too long, they get lazy. Let 'em stir a bone for their supper."

Matthew paused, staring into the other man's eyes. He saw something in them-ignorance, pettiness, pure cruelty perhaps-that sickened him. He had seen this man before-with different faces, of course-and he knew him to be a bully who reveled in power over the weak of body and feeble of mind. He saw also a glint of what might have been recognition of his perceptions, which meant Shawcombe might be more intelligent than Matthew had surmised. Shawcombe was smiling slightly, a twist of the mouth. Slowly but forcefully, Matthew began to pull his arm away from Shawcombe's hand. The tavern-keeper, still smiling, would not release him. "I said," Matthew repeated, "that I should help them."

Shawcombe didn't surrender his grip. Now at last Woodward, who had been shrugging out of his coat, realized some small drama was being played out before him. "Yes," he said, "they will need help with the trunks, I think."

"Yessir, as you say." Shawcombe's hand instantly left the young man's arm. "I'd go m'self, but my back ain't no good. Used to lift them heavy bales, port a' Thames, but I can't do it no-"

Matthew gave a grunt and turned away, walking out the door into the last blue light and what was now blessedly fresh air. The old man had hold of Woodward's wig box, while the girl was around behind the wagon trying to hoist one of the trunks up on her back. "Here," Matthew said, slogging through the mud to her. "Let me help you." He took hold of one of the leather handles, and when he did the girl skittered away from him as if he were a leper. Her end of the trunk smacked down into the muck. She stood there in the rain, her shoulders hunched over and the lank hair covering her face.

"Ha!" Abner chortled. In this clearer light, his skin was as dull gray as wet parchment. "Ain't no use you talkin' to her, she don't say nothin' to nobody. She's one step out of Bedlam, what she is."

"What's her name?"

Abner was silent, his scabby brow furrowing. "Girl," he answered. He laughed again as if this were the most foolish thing any man had ever been asked, and then he carried the wig box inside.

Matthew watched the girl for a moment. She was beginning to shiver from the chill, but yet she made no sound nor lifted her gaze from the mud that lay between them. He was going to have to heft the trunk-and the second one as well, most likely-in by himself, unless he could get Abner to help. He looked up through the treetops. The rain, strengthening now, pelted his face. There was no use in standing here, shoes buried in the mire, and bewailing his position in this world; it had been worse, and could yet be. As for the girl, who knew her story? Who even gave a spit? No one; why then should he? He started dragging the trunk through the mud, but he stopped before he reached the porch.

"Go inside," he told the girl. "I'll bring the other things."

She didn't move. He suspected she'd remain exactly where she was, until Shawcombe's voice whipped her.

It was not his concern. Matthew pulled the trunk up to the porch, but before he hauled it across the threshold he looked again at the girl and saw she had tilted her head back, her arms outflung, her eyes closed and her mouth open to catch the rain. He thought that perhaps-even in her madness-it was her way of cleansing Shawcombe's smell off her skin.

Two

“Most inconvenient," Isaac Woodward said, just after Matthew had looked under the straw-mattressed pallet of a bed and found there to be no chamberpot. "An oversight, I'm sure."

Matthew shook his head with dismay. "I thought we were getting a decent room. We'd have been better served in the barn."

"We won't perish from one night here." Woodward motioned with a lift of his chin toward the single shuttered window, which was being pelted by another heavy downpour. "I dare say we would perish, if we had to continue out in that weather. So just be thankful, Matthew." He turned his attention back to what he was doing: getting dressed for dinner. He'd opened his trunk and taken from it a clean white linen shirt, fresh stockings, and a pair of pale gray breeches, which he'd laid carefully across the bed so as not to snag the material. Matthew's trunk was open as well, a clean outfit at the ready. It was one of Woodward's requirements that, wherever they were and whatever the circumstances, they dress like civilized men for the dinner hour. Matthew often saw no point in this-dressing like cardinals, sometimes for a pauper's meal-but he understood that Woodward found it vitally important for his sense of well-being.

Woodward had removed a wigstand from his trunk, and had placed it upon a small table which, along with the bed and a pinewood chair, comprised the room's furnishings. On the wig-stand Woodward had set one of his three hairpieces, this one dyed a passable shade of brown with curling ringlets that fell about the shoulders. By the smoky candlelight from the hammered-metal lantern that hung on a wallhook above the table, Woodward examined his bald pate in a silver-edged hand mirror that had made the journey with him from England. His white scalp was blotched by a dozen or more ruddy age spots, which to his taste was a thoroughly disagreeable sight. Around his ears was a fragile fringe of gray hair. He studied the age spots as he stood in his white undergarments, his fleshy belly overhanging the cinched waistband, his legs pale and thin as an egret's. He gave a quiet sigh. "The years," he said, "are unkind. Every time I look in this mirror, I see something new to lament. Guard your youth, Matthew. It's a precious commodity."