The Queen Of Bedlam Part 48

Chapel laughed softly. The bell stopped, which made Matthew's guts churn like a barrel of fresh-caught cod. "Being disposed of," the man replied. "As any commodity might be used up and thrown away. That's what all human beings are, really, when you get down to things. Correct?"

"If I said yes, would I and the girl live?"

Again that soft laugh.

"So that's what all this is about?" Matthew saw at the end of the road the vineyard and the arrangement of buildings all constructed from chalkwhite stone. One of the buildings had a small belltower. "Creating commodities for use by Professor Fell?"

"Yes, and for use by anyone willing to pay. Come on, Matthew! Surely you understand how important it is for the...how shall I phrase it...?"

"Criminal underworld?" Matthew supplied.

"Brotherhood," said Chapel, "and sisterhood, also, to replenish itself. We are commodities, too. All our talents make us valuable to different degrees and different worths. Take Billy Hodges, for instance. As I said, he did some wonderful work for us and became an instructor in the screever's art. See that building off to the left, there? Beside the one with the belltower? That would be our primary cla.s.sroom. Billy taught his pupils in there. Some of them advanced to take other positions in the colonies, where they are waiting for certain signals. Some have been sent to England to work. The same as with all our cla.s.ses: the art of self-defense, the study of finance, the techniques of human management, the art of communication...and on and on until you get to the more defined studies of a.s.sa.s.sination, arson, blackmail, theft, extortion, cardsharping, dipping, forgery, and-"

"Poisoning?" Matthew interrupted. "How to concoct drugs to kill five innocent people in a Philadelphia tavern?"

"Oh, those five people were unfortunate byproducts of the contract. Someone had to drink that wine. We couldn't exactly ruin Swanscott and his business if no one was poisoned, could we?"

"Lovely."

"Necessary. Don't you see that this is a business? Really, Matthew! This is a business with a great future. It's been sailing along in England and Europe for many, many generations. Now, with the new world opening up and all its potential ahead, we'd be pretty foolish not to want to get in the door too, wouldn't we?" He sighed, because he knew he wasn't making much of an impression. "As for the poisoning, you might be interested to know that when Mr. Nack committed his acts of revenge, only Mr. Deverick had any idea why he might be getting his throat cut." He slid a sidelong glance at Matthew to gauge his interest, then went ahead anyway when Matthew showed none. "Ausley only supplied the human commodities, without knowing their exact use. As for G.o.dwin, the doctor was involved with a young wh.o.r.e in London after his wife died. We found out her name was Susan. He fawned over her, and she used him as her ponce. Made a real fool out of him, as the tale goes. I suppose he'd do anything to stay around her, for that is the illusion we call love. Me, I would have ripped her gutless and thrown her out a window. But G.o.dwin must have thought himself a n.o.ble soul who would someday wean his sweetheart off the throbbing c.o.c.ks of other men and lead her to a better life. Until she got herself knocked up and he killed both his sweet Susan and the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d on the abortion table. An accident, I'm sure. But you know, he was always drawn to the doves. A sad episode in an otherwise exemplary life. However, we thrive on such episodes. They make our business so much simpler. Therefore when we approached the good doctor about making a small batch of poison for us-out of belladonna he purchased at the Smith Street Apothecary, by the way-he was at first very reluctant until we brought all that up about Susan. Could we prove it? Witnesses could be found and letters written, we said." Chapel gave a broad wink. "We have ladies with great imagination and not a little experience. But G.o.dwin was a weak nut. Guilt-ridden and pliable, so not much pressure had to be applied. We were going to kill him ourselves, if he tried to approach the high constable. We would have found someone else. A commodity. You see?"

"A tragedy," Matthew replied.

"A business. Like any other, except..." Chapel thought about it. "It made me, a poor but ambitious tinker's son, very wealthy."

The boys suddenly rushed ahead. Ominously so, Matthew thought. They disappeared around the corner of the belltower building.

"Ah, the ragged schools give us such dedicated pupils," Chapel said, with a hint of wicked delight. "Now listen, do as I say. Run a little bit to get them excited, then lie down. Tell the girl, if she's in any state to hear you. But you won't be able to run very far, anyway."

"What'll you do to us afterward? Throw our bodies in the river?"

"Certainly not. Billy jumped off that cliff over there," and here Chapel motioned in the direction of the Hudson, "before he could be stopped. He was half-blind, as it was. Couldn't see where he was running to or from. Ordinarily, we would have buried him back in the woods where we bury all our mistakes and failures. Which are unfortunately many, as we have very exacting standards, the same as any university. Out of all the candidates sold to us by Ausley, we only pa.s.s through about six a year. Now this Ausley situation is a problem. We're going to have to find a replacement for him and get our own representative heading up the girls' orphanage, so we have a lot of work to do the next few months."

Matthew's mind had latched on to something Chapel had just said. "Half-blind? What do you mean, Billy was half-blind?"

"Oh, his eyes were all torn up. The birds, you know."

"The birds?"

"That's right. My hawks." And then they turned the corner and there around a large canopy-shaded aviary the pack of boys were waiting. Three of the biggest ones had hooded brown-and-white birds of prey perched on their leather gloves and forearm-guards.

Berry made a sound as if she'd taken a blow to the stomach. Her knees buckled, but the gentlemanly Count shoved her forward with s.a.d.i.s.tic relish.

"You are one b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Matthew said to Chapel, his teeth gritted so hard they were about to break. Chapel shrugged, as if this were a compliment.

"Young men!" Lawrence Evans had picked up a basket and was pa.s.sing it around. "Arm yourselves, please. Watch the blades, we don't want any accidents."

The boys, who Matthew noted had removed their colored badges so all were equal in this endeavor, were reaching in and coming up with knives. There was a disturbing variety of blades: short, long, hooked up or down, wide, thin, stubby, elegantly evil. The boys walked around sticking and stabbing the air, some delivering a brutal twist, some slashing as if trying to destroy the last vestiges of childhood before they stepped across the threshold of no return.

They all appeared to have done this before, though several-including the light-fingered Silas-looked just a bit green around the gills. But they too hacked and sliced the air with abandon.

"Your version of the professor's gauntlet," Matthew said to Chapel; or more correctly, heard himself say, as his face and mouth seemed numbed by frost.

"Correct. My version, utilizing a long-cherished hobby. Mr. Greathouse has been schooling you well. He'll be out here soon enough himself, you can mark that." He waited for Dahlgren to shove Berry into earshot, though she still looked too dazed to comprehend their fate. "Mr. Edgar? Where's Mr. Edgar?"

"Here, sir," said a large, stocky young man with close-cropped dark brown hair. He came forward out of the building's shadow cradling a small lamb in the crook of a meaty arm, and in the other hand a wooden bucket that held of all things a paintbrush. Edgar had a slight limp and a pock-marked face, his eyes also dark brown and obviously nervous for he was blinking rapidly. When he reached Chapel, he glanced up and said almost shyly, "h.e.l.lo, Matthew."

Matthew was struck dumb for a few seconds. Then his mouth moved and he said, "h.e.l.lo, Jerrod."

"I heard you might be coming out. How've you been?"

"Fine, thank you. And you?"

"I'm all right." Jerrod Edgar nodded. His dull eyes did not show the most intelligence in the world, but Matthew had known him as a decent fellow in 1694, when Matthew was fifteen and Jerrod twelve. Jerrod had unfortunately been the target of some of Ausley's most frequent and intense attentions, and Matthew had watched him withdraw into himself and pull all his shame and anger into the sh.e.l.l with him. Then Jerrod had stolen a burning-gla.s.s that Ausley lit his pipe with during one of the punishment sessions, and afterward he was always setting fire to either leaves or donated prayer book pages or gra.s.shoppers or his own plucked-out hair. When another boy had tried to steal it, the boy had left the orphanage for the King Street hospital folded up in a cart and obviously died there, as he'd never returned. "I guess I'm doin' all right," Jerrod repeated, as he gave the lamb to Simon Chapel.

"May I ask what you're doing here?"

"I don't know. Just playin' with fire, mostly. It's what I like."

"Knife, please," Chapel said, to no one in particular.

Matthew saw that the other boys were settling down. They had stopped swinging their blades. Their muscles were warmed up, and they were saving their energy. Matthew looked back into Jerrod's disturbed but fathomless eyes. "Jerrod?" he said quietly.

"Yes, Matthew?"

"Are you going to kill me?"

Evans had brought a hooked knife to his master. Matthew realized it was the exact kind of slaughterhouse implement Kirby had used so well. Chapel stroked the lamb a few times and said, "There, there," to its pitiful call for its mother. Then he drew the head up and back with one hand while the blade in the other sliced the white throat from ear to ear. The bright red blood burst out and flooded into the bucket that Evans had taken from Jerrod and now held steady beneath the torrent.

"Yes, Matthew," said Jerrod. "I suppose I am."

"You don't have to," Matthew told him.

Jerrod c.o.c.ked his head, listening to the blood spilling into the bucket. The three hawks began to shiver with excitement and clench their claws on the leather gloves, scoring deep grooves even deeper. "I do," Jerrod answered. "If I want to stay, I mean. They're good to me here, Matthew. I'm somebody."

"You always were somebody."

"Naw." Jerrod's mouth smiled, but his eyes did not. "I was never n.o.body, out there."

Then he looked at Matthew a moment longer, as the convulsing lamb emptied and the bucket filled up and the hawks stirred and made little eerie skreeling noises, and finally Jerrod went over to the basket on the ground to get himself a knife.

Matthew started to go over to stand beside Berry, to say-exactly what, pray tell?-something to her to get her mind focused, but suddenly Evans grasped his upper arm and a b.l.o.o.d.y paintbrush that smelled of old Dutch copper duits was being liberally applied to his face: forehead, cheeks, around the eyes, circling the mouth, down the chin, and done.

One of the hawks, the largest of the birds and perhaps the one that had torn the cardinal to shreds over Matthew's head in the garden that day, twitched its hooded head back and forth and made a soft, high keening noise.

"They're trained to go for the color," Chapel explained, in all earnest seriousness. "Many hundreds of blood-soaked field mice and hares have gallantly given their lives. They smell the odor too, of course, which helps them home onto you, but their eyesight is simply magnificent." He had deposited the lamb's carca.s.s into a black box with a lid on it that he now closed, so as not to give the birds a confusing signal. Lawrence Evans walked over, carrying the gore-bucket to paint Berry's face with the brush. She looked at him as if he were mad, tried to kick him and then strike his head with her own, but had to relent when again Count Dahlgren seized her hair, shoved a fist against her spine, and threatened to break her back before the game even began.

"You'll be given a running start." Chapel walked a few paces away to a horse trough to wash his hands. The boys were striding back and forth, also eager to hunt. No one was laughing and whenever someone spoke the voice was tight and clipped. "To the first row of vines," Chapel continued, motioning toward the sunny field some seventy yards away. "Then I'll signal the handlers to release their birds. It'll take them a few seconds to reach you. They'll see your face as just another b.l.o.o.d.y little animal, though perhaps a more difficult challenge. They seem to particularly like the eyes. At my discretion, I'll then send the boys. Everyone gets some exercise, everyone gets some experience. Everyone forges a bond to his brother. Do you see?"

Matthew was watching Berry shudder as the brush left her face bloodied in the same pattern as his own. The rings around the eyes were the worst. Billy Hodges had leaped to his death not only to escape the blades, but to escape the beaks and claws. "If we're going to die anyway, why should we run?"

"Well, there's no way you can get off the estate because of the wall all around, that's true, but in several instances we've had young men who've fled from the vineyard into the woods and hidden there for a day or so. Sometimes the birds do get tired and distracted and they turn away. We have had to go into the woods on hunting expeditions. Very bothersome, but again it's experience. Now: are you sure you want to stand there and die without resistance? Of course I would recommend that you not try to get into the woods, as it would simply prolong your inevitable deaths, but if you're interested in perhaps spending a last night communing with your Maker before you go, or hanging on to life as we know it to be, then you will give us a good display, won't you?"

Matthew looked at the group of young killers. Nineteen had never seemed so many. Had a few ghosts of previous failures slipped in among them, to rectify their failings? Movement at an upper window of one of the buildings caught his attention. Someone had just pulled a curtain aside and was peering out. An indistinct face. One of the instructors, perhaps? Was that their living quarters?

"Oh...one last thing. Mr. Hastings!" To Chapel's summons came a burly, thick-shouldered boy of about seventeen, who carried a knife with a long slim blade. "Clear his pockets, please," Chapel directed. Hastings came up with some coins and the silver watch, which Chapel immediately took charge of. "I'll give you a little time to ready yourselves," he told Matthew, as he wound his new possession.

Matthew walked to Berry's side. She was trembling and tears had rolled down through her bloodmask, yet her eyes were no longer scorched blue blanks. She was hanging on.

"Listen to me," he said, looking her square in the face. "We have two choices." One of the hawks loudly skreeled. He felt his own nerve quickly ebbing. "We can fall on the ground and wait for them to kill us, or we can run. The hawks are going to be after us first, then the boys. We can cut across the vineyard and try to reach the woods. That way." His gaze ticked to the right. "We might get there. If we can find a place to hide-"

"Where?" Berry asked, with welcome fury in her voice. "Hide where?"

"If we can find a place to hide," he continued, "long enough to get these ropes off." How that was to be done without a knife he didn't offer. "We might be able to climb the wall."

"Ready, Matthew? Miss? Ready, young men?" Chapel called. A few of the boys crouched down, Indian-style, with one knee to the ground.

"Keep going," Matthew said. "Don't fall." He feared he was losing her, as she blinked heavily and wavered on her feet. "Berry, listen!" He heard a raw edge of panic. His arms gave a final convulsive wrench against the cords, which would not be loosened. "Just keep going, do you-"

"Time!" Chapel shouted, and instantly the boys began to shout with voices as sharp as their blades.

Berry set out like a deer, even as Matthew said, "-hear me?" Then he followed right on her heels and immediately tripped over his own feet and fell to his knees to a chorus of frenzied laughter. He hauled himself up, cursing under his breath, and caught up with her. She was running faster and more nimbly than he would have expected, her hair flowing back and her face grim as the grave beneath the blood. He kept pace with her, and though she staggered once and crashed against his side neither of them fell this time but kept going onto the vineyard itself.

As they neared the first vine row, Matthew realized the true vintage on these few acres of h.e.l.l was the wine of corruption. The field was overgrown with weeds and the gray clumps of grapes were rotten and shriveled. A sickly-sweet odor akin to graveyard decay wafted in the sun. He felt the urge to look back but dared not. He cried out, "This way!" and ran along the row toward the green line of forest perhaps another hundred yards distant. A gnarled root caught at his right foot and he pitched forward, out of control for a few seconds before he righted himself. Berry was close beside him, her hair whipping into his face.

A shadow pa.s.sed over them, followed by a second and a third.

The boys were silent, waiting.

Eighty more yards to the woods, Matthew judged it to be. They were still running at full speed. A giddy spark of hope flared in his heart that they would make the forest. He glanced back to see if the boys were coming yet, and the hawk that was swooping down right on top of him spread its wings wide and struck.

Forty-Seven.

Matthew threw himself aside as the hawk sailed past his right shoulder, its talons grasping at empty air. A second bird of prey came in from the opposite direction, this one moving in a blur, and almost before he could register that it was right there in his face he felt a searing pain across his left cheek and knew he'd been hit.

The third hawk came down almost lazily and grazed Berry's forehead. She gave a wounded cry but her stride never slowed. She kept her head down as another hawk sped by with a high shrill shriek and began to turn a slow circle for its next pa.s.s.

Sixty yards to the forest. Suddenly Matthew had feathers in his face and talons jabbing for his eyes. He hunched his shoulders up and head down and felt the sharp claws rip furrows across his left shoulder. There was no time to waste; he had to keep moving, just as Berry was not letting the next attack-even so close as it came to taking out her own left eye-make her lose her speed and determination to live.

Two birds pa.s.sed close over Matthew's head, one from the right and one from behind. A third darted in, again shrieking, and this time slammed into the left side of Berry's face. As it flew on she stumbled and fell to one knee. Matthew stood over her shouting, "Get away! Get away!" as another hawk skimmed her head. She got up, breathing raggedly, and then Matthew looked back and saw the boys coming.

Sunlight glinted off their knives. Three of the smaller and faster boys were already halfway to the first vine row. He saw Simon Chapel watching, standing between Lawrence Evans and Count Dahlgren. Four other adults Matthew did not recognize-three men in suits and tricorn hats and a woman under a dark blue parasol-stood with them. The instructors had emerged to watch their pupils in action. The desire to live caught flame within him. If they could get their wrists free...

Berry was up and moving again, still heading toward the forest. Just above her left eye what was lamb's blood and what her own was difficult to tell. Matthew ran after her. A hawk flashed by his face with a noise like bacon sizzling in a pan. An instant later, a pair of talons were scrabbling at his forehead and the fresh pain told him he was going to be cut to pieces out here in the open. A red haze shimmered before his eyes. If he fell or was overcome, he was most certainly dead. The hawk's shriek pierced his ears, but he ducked his head down before further damage could be done.

Forty yards to go, and with every stride the forest neared.

Matthew could imagine what the hawks must have done to Billy Hodges. Three on him at once; it had been a cutting party before the boys had even- The largest hawk was suddenly upon him. From which direction it had come, he had no clue. It was just there, its wings outstretched as if to enfold him. His instinctive turning of his head and squeezing his eyes shut probably saved him from being blinded, as the claws caught at the front of his coat and the hooked beak, intending to pierce his left lamp, tore flesh a half-inch beside it. The bird's talons ripped shreds of cloth from his suit and through slitted eyes Matthew saw a flurry of beating wings and a blur of red-spark eyes and flashing beak. He was. .h.i.t again on the cheek just under the right eye, a pain like a burn, and then what felt like a broomstick clobbered him across the back of the head and talons were caught in his hair. He heard himself cry out with pain and abject terror and he did the only thing he could do: he crashed himself headlong into the grapevines with the strength of the d.a.m.ned. As he rolled on the earth, he realized the large hawk was still clutched to his coat and the beak was trying to hook an eye. Matthew desperately twisted his head back and forth, his shoulders hunched and his eyes tightly sealed against the onslaught. Then the bird gave a sudden human-like grunt and near-squeal, and Matthew opened his eyes to see the hawk whirling away on the toe of Berry's shoe.

"Get up!" she shouted. She thrust her foot under his armpit and he got his legs beneath him and stood up. The world spun and the sun burned down but the air had one less predator, for a hawk lay at the base of the grapevines twitching on a broken wing.

Berry ran and Matthew followed. Twenty yards to go. He glanced back and saw sweat glistening on the three faces of the fastest boys, who were about fifty yards behind. Beyond them came the other sixteen.

The pursued were nearly to the woods, which offered no safety but a modic.u.m of cover from overhead attack, when one of the birds swooped down on Berry again with a fierce show of nature's will at work. The creature struck at her forehead, which caused Berry to scream and double over to protect her face but she kept staggering forward. Matthew saw the hawk get tangled in Berry's hair and almost lift her off the ground as it fought itself free. Then it was loose and sailing up into the blue once more, and as Matthew dodged the attentions of the second hawk and it shrieked its indignation the forest took them in.

Yet in the sun-dappled glade there could be no pause, for the shouting of the boys was coming ever nearer. Here the going was rougher, over ancient tree roots and sharp-edged rocks. Matthew thought one of those edges might serve to sever a rope, but there was no time to find out with nineteen killers breathing down their necks.

"This way!" Matthew shouted, and he tore off at an angle to the right between two ma.s.sive oaks. Berry followed right behind. He had no clear sense of where he was heading, other than to get as much distance between them and the knives as possible. He looked up and saw the two hawks trailing them above the green treetops. All the boys had to do was look to the hawks to mark the progress of their soon-to-be-victims.

There was a gully ahead. Matthew ran along its edge, his eyes searching for any sign of the estate's wall. But how to climb the d.a.m.ned thing, even if it was anywhere near? He ducked under low branches, Berry at his heels, and suddenly one of the hawks flashed past his face. He kept going, into a dense thicket where vines and thorns clutched at his suit. Another hawk came zooming down through the branches and skreeled so loud it was a sure call to the young killers. Matthew realized that even if he and Berry found a place to hide, the hawks would either attack or give them away. There was no stopping.

He heard crashing through the woods over on their left, but he couldn't yet see anyone. Then a d.a.m.ned hawk went screaming over his head and he felt its talons go through his hair like razors.

Suddenly the forest thinned and parted and Matthew and Berry emerged onto the road that led from the vineyard to the main house. As he stood for a second thinking what direction they ought to go, the two hawks flew in almost side-by-side and left Berry staggering from another gash across the cheek. The hawks went up and started circling for a renewed attack. Matthew looked toward the vineyard, then in the direction of the house. He was aware of shouting in the woods behind them and the shadows of the hawks on the road. It came to him that Chapel had asked Lawrence Evans a question: Who's on the gate today?

Enoch Speck, sir, was the answer.

On the way out, tell Mr. Speck he may join in the game after he locks up tight.

The gate, Matthew thought. It was unguarded.

The gatehouse had windows.

Gla.s.s.

"Come on!" he told Berry, whose face-like his own-was well-marked under the lamb's blood. He began running at full speed toward the house, his knees starting to go wobbly. He could hear her breathing harshly behind him, or was that his own breath? The road curved to the right. A glance back. The pack hadn't yet come out of the woods. Then around the curve, the hawks flew at them again and once more the largest chose Matthew as a target. It came down like the devil's own fury, the beak stabbing for his eyes. He thought he'd been struck again, or at least grazed, but everything was hurting now from chin to hairline and as he ducked his face down he knew it was just a matter of time-and seconds, at that-before a beak or claw rendered him if not completely blind then one-eyed. The hawks climbed, trailing their eerie cries.

Matthew took three more strides and then saw on the road before him the mounds of fresh horse manure he'd stepped into. When he abruptly stopped, Berry slammed into his back.

He had very clearly remembered the taunting voice of Eben Ausley.

You might even scare the carrion birds away with that face, Corbett!

The hawks were circling. Their shadows, growing larger.

"What are you doing?" Berry asked through gashed and swollen lips, her eyes bright blue against the glistening red.

They're trained to go for the color, Chapel had said.

"Trust me," Matthew said, and heard his own mangled voice. He dropped to his knees, pressed his lips together, and squeezed his eyes shut. He pushed his face into the pile. When he struggled up again, his face was freighted with a mask of manure.

"You have gone mad," said Berry, who was backing away from him.