Robert McCammon - Speaks the Nightbird

Be that as it may, he had to add his own water to the deluge. And a bit more as well, from the weight of his bowels. Damned if he wouldn't have to go out in that weather and squat down like a beast. Might try to hold it, but some things could not be constrained. He would relieve himself in the woods behind the barn like a civilized man while the rats did their business on the floor beside the bed. Next trip-God forbid-he would remember to pack a chamberpot.

He got out of the torture apparatus that passed as a bed. The tavern was quiet; it was a slim hour, to be sure. Distant thunder rumbled, the storm still lingering over the Carolina colony like a black-winged vulture. Matthew worked his feet into his shoes. He didn't have a heavy coat of his own, so over his flannel nightshirt he donned the magistrate's fearnaught, which was still damp from Woodward's recent trek behind the barn. The magistrate's boots, standing beside the bed, were clotted with mud and would bear the administrations of a coarse hog's bristle brush to clean. Matthew didn't want to take the single candle, as the weather would quickly extinguish it and the wall-dwellers might become emboldened by the dark. He would carry a covered lantern from the other room, he decided, and hope it threw enough illumination to avoid what Woodward had told him was "an unholy mess" out there. He might check on the horses, too, while he was so near the barn.

He placed his hand on the door latch and started to lift it when he heard the magistrate cease snoring and quietly moan. Glancing at the man, he saw Woodward's face wince and contort under the freckled dome of his bald head. Matthew paused, watching in the dim and flickering light. Woodward's mouth opened, his eyelids fluttering. "Oh," the magistrate whispered, very clearly. His voice, though a whisper, was wracked with what Matthew could only describe as a pure and terrible agony. "Ohhhhh," Woodward spoke, in his cage of nightmares. "He's hurting Ann." He drew a pained breath. "Hurting he's hurting oh God Ann… hurting …" He said something more, a jumble of a few words mingled with another low awful moan. His hands were gripping at the front of his nightshirt, his head pressed back into the straw. His mouth released a faint sound that might have been the memory of a cry, and then slowly his body relaxed and the snoring swelled up once again.

This was not something new to Matthew. Many nights the magistrate walked in a dark field of pain, but what its source was he refused to talk about. Matthew had asked him once, five years ago, what the trouble had been, and Woodward's response had been a rebuke that Matthew's task was learning the trade of judicial clerking, and if he did not care to learn that trade, he could always find a home again at the orphans' refuge. The message- delivered with uncharacteristic vinegar-had been clear: whatever haunted the magistrate by night was not to be touched upon.

It had something to do with his wife in London, Matthew believed. Ann must be her name, though Woodward never mentioned that name in his waking hours and never volunteered any information about the woman. In fact, though Matthew had been in the company of Isaac Woodward since turning fifteen years old, he knew very little about the man's past life in England. This much he did know: Woodward had been a lawyer of some fame and had found success in the financial field as well, but what had caused his reversal of fortune and why he had left London for the rough-hewn colonies remained mysteries. At least Matthew understood from his readings and from what Woodward said about London that it was a great city; he'd never set foot there, or in England either, for he'd been born aboard a ship on the Atlantic nineteen days out of Portsmouth.

Matthew quietly lifted the latch and left the room. In the darkened chamber beyond, small flames still gnawed at black bits of wood in the hearth, though the largest of the coals had been banked for the night. Bitter smoke lingered in the air. Hanging from hooks next to the fireplace were two lanterns, both made of hammered tin with small nail-holes punched in the metal for the light to pass through. One of the lanterns had a burnt candle stuck on its inner spike, so that was the illuminator Matthew chose. He found a pine twig on the floor, touched it alight in the remains of the fire, and transferred the flame to the candle's wick.

"What are you about? Eh?"

The voice, cutting the silence as it did, almost lifted Matthew out of his shoes. He twisted around and the lantern's meager but spreading light fell upon Will Shawcombe, who was sitting at one of the tables with a tankard before him and a black-scorched clay pipe clenched in his teeth.

"You up prowlin', boy?" Shawcombe's eyes were deep sunken and the skin of his face was daubed dirty yellow in the candlelight. A curl of smoke oozed from his mouth.

"I… have to go out," Matthew replied, still unnerved.

Shawcombe drew slowly on his pipe. "Well," he said, "mind your legs, then. Awful sloppy out there."

Matthew nodded. He started to turn toward the door, but Shawcombe spoke up again: "Your master wouldn't want to part with that fine waistc't, would he?"

"No, he wouldn't." Though he knew Shawcombe was baiting him, he couldn't let it go past. "Mr. Woodward is not my master."

"He ain't, huh? Well then, how come he tells you what you can do and what you cain't? Seems to me he's the master and you're the slave."

"Mr. Woodward looks out for my interest."

"Uh huh." Shawcombe tilted his head back and fired a dart of smoke at the ceiling. "Makes you cart the baggage, then he won't even let you dip your wick? All that shit about wolves and how you ought to be guarded. And you a twenty-year-old man! I'll bet he makes you scrape the mud off his boots, don't he?"

"I'm his clerk," Matthew said pointedly. "Not his valet."

"Does he clean his own boots, or do you?"

Matthew paused. The truth was that he did clean the magistrate's boots, but it was a task he did without complaint. Some things over the years-such as organizing the judicial paperwork, keeping their living quarters in order, darning the clothes, packing the trunks, and arranging sundry other small affairs-had fallen to Matthew simply because he was much more efficient at taking care of details.

"I knew you did it," Shawcombe went on. "Man like that's got blue blood in his veins. He don't want to get them hands too dirty, does he? Yeah, like I said, he's the master and you're the slave."

"You can believe what you like."

"I believe what I see," Shawcombe said. "Come over here, lemme show you somethin'. You bein' a slave and all, you might well want to have a look." Before Matthew could decline and go on his way, Shawcombe lifted his right fist and opened it. "Here's somethin' you ain't never seen before and ain't like to see again."

The lantern's light sparked off the surface of a gold coin. "Here!" Shawcombe offered it to Matthew. "I'll even let you hold it."

Against his better judgment-and the urge to pee pressing on his bladder-Matthew approached the man and took the coin from him. He held it close to the lantern and inspected the engraving. It was a well-worn piece, much of the lettering rubbed off, but at its center was a cross that separated the figures of two lions and two castles. Matthew could make out the faint letters Charles II and Dei Grat around the coin's rim.

"Know what that is?" Shawcombe prodded.

"Charles the Second is the King of Spain," Matthew said. "So this must be Spanish."

"That's right. Spanish. You know what that means, don't you?"

"It means a Spaniard was recently here?"

"Close. I got this from a dead redskin's pouch. Now what's a redskin doin' with a Spanish gold piece?" He didn't wait for Matthew to venture a guess. "Means there's a damn Spanish spy 'round here somewhere. Stirrin' up some trouble with the Indians, most like. You know them Spaniards are sittin' down there in the Florida country, not seventy leagues from here. They got spies all in the colonies, spreadin' the word that any black crow who flies from his master and gets to the Florida country can be a free man. You ever heard such a thing? Them Spaniards are promisin' the same thing to criminals, murderers, every like of John Bad-seed."