“Thank you!” Now it was Effrem’s turn to clap Matthew on the shoulder. “My God, isn’t it splendid?”
“Isn’t what splendid?”
Effrem looked at Matthew as if he had just arrived from another world. “To be alive!” he said, with a broad and giddy grin. “She’s waiting for me, and we’re going to Deverick’s place for coffee. See you soon at the Trot?” He had already started walking in the opposite direction.
“Soon,” Matthew promised, with a smile that was neither so broad nor so giddy but quite as meaningful, and then the two friends who thought it was so very splendid to be alive continued on their separate paths.
Thirty-Four
AS they waited at the table in Sally Almond’s tavern for the person who was coming, Matthew scanned the blackboard upon which was chalked the evening’s specialities. Two fish dishes, one chicken, one beef and one pork. One of the fish dishes interested him, but he decided to drink his glass of red wine and think about it before ordering.
“To all present,” said Hudson, lifting his own glass.
He was answered by Matthew raising his glass, and by Minx Cutter raising hers. They drank, and then they listened to the strolling musician play her mandore and sing “Go No More A-Rushing” in a sultry alto voice.
There was no rushing to be done this night. It was the last week of May, which had prompted someone to request the song, its first line being “Go no more a-rushing, maids in May.” A rain shower had passed through this morning, but the earth needed its blessing. Everything was normal in New York, which meant anything could be expected at any time, from a group of Indians stalking along the Broad Way to a hog wagon breaking down and the hogs leading a merry chase along the length of Wall Street. Matthew had shaved. He had purchased a new suit from Effrem. It was cream-colored with a dark brown waistcoat. He had on new brown boots and a new, crisp white shirt. He was dressed his best in honor of the person who would be joining them, she’d said in her letter, at half past seven. According to the tavern’s clock, she would arrive in eight minutes.
“Another toast?” asked Hudson, this time with a glint of mischief in his eyes. He waited for the glasses to be raised. “To those who have tasted the grapes of crime, and found them bitter.”
Minx drank. “But sometimes,” she said as she put her glass down, “the most bitter grapes make the sweetest wine.”
“Ah ha! But yet…sweet wine can poison, the same as bitter.”
“True, but what may be sweet to me may be bitter to you.”
“Yes, and what you may drink of poison may be pleasure to me.”
“Gentleman and lady?” Matthew said. “Shut up.” They ceased their verbal joustings as if suddenly remembering he was sitting between them. Minx shifted in her chair. Her face was placid. She showed no emotion but surely she was nervous, Matthew thought. This was a momentous night for Lady Cutter. This was the night she had bought with her aid to Matthew on Pendulum Island. This was, truly, the first night of the rest of her life. The clock ticked on, and Matthew noted that Minx glanced at the progress of its hands and drank without waiting for a toast. “Very well, Mr. Corbett,” Lord Cornbury had said that morning in April, two days after Matthew had arrived home. “Begin, please.” And thus Matthew had begun, telling the green-gowned governor, the purple-suited High Constable, and the regular-clothed Chief Prosecutor everything there was to tell, from start to finish. He of course had to mention Mrs. Sutch’s sausages as background, and Prosecutor Bynes had had to excuse himself and rush from the office for it seemed he and his wife had been great partakers of that particular meat product. Matthew had told his listeners about the false Mallorys, Sirki, the bombs being set off in his name, the abduction of Berry, the voyage to Pendulum Island, the Cymbeline works…all of it.
And everything also that he knew of Professor Fell, and the fact that the professor had escaped on a vessel called Temple’s Revenge and a letter might be sent to the authorities in London to begin a search for that ship.
When he was finished Matthew asked for a glass of water, and to his credit Lillehorne went out and returned a short time later with a glass and a pitcher full of water freshly-drawn from the nearest well. Then Lillehorne had sat down in the corner seat he’d occupied and he and Lord Cornbury had stared at each other seemingly for a minute, neither one moving, as if to ask each other if they believed what they’d heard.
“Thank you, Mr. Corbett,” the ladyish Lord had said at last. He didn’t seem to want to lift his green-shaded gaze from his desk. “You may go now.”
Matthew had stood up. “You might at least send a letter requesting that Frederick Nash be investigated. Also the money changer Andrew Halverston.”
“Yes. Noted, thank you.”
“I would think this is of vital importance, gentlemen.” He used that word lightly. “There is a warehouse somewhere in London that may still be stocked with the Cymbeline. The professor may yet intend to sell that powder to a foreign army…or, it might just be sparked into an explosion that would level the buildings around it and kill many—”
“Noted,” Cornbury had interrupted. “Thank you for your presence and your time, and you are free to go.”
Matthew had looked to Lillehorne for some kind of support. The High Constable had repeated it: “Free to go.”
Berry had been waiting for him outside the governor’s mansion, beneath a shady oak, in case they had also needed her testimony. “Didn’t they believe you?” she asked as they walked toward the Broad Way. Today she was a festival of colors, a veritable walking bouquet of April flowers from her pink stockings to her darker violet gown to her red throat ribbon to her white straw hat to the puff of yellow buds that adorned it.
“I think they believed me, all right. I just think they’re overwhelmed. They don’t know what to do with the information.” He gave her a wry glance. “I don’t think they want to get themselves involved.”
Berry frowned. “But…that seems against the spirit of the town!”
“I agree. They have the facts. What they do with them now is their business.” He stepped back for a passing team of oxen pulling a lumber wagon, also bound for the Broad Way. The carriages and wagons were thick up there, in the area of Trinity Church. So much traffic, some kind of regulation was soon to be needed. Just yesterday there had been an afternoon squabble between a man hauling a wagon full of tar barrels and a street hawker pushing a variety of wigs in a cart. In the ensuing collision, it was determined that tar and wigs did not mix. And neither did tar clean up very easily from the street.
“Where are you off to?” Matthew asked her as they strolled.
“I’m with you.”
“Yes. Well…I’m on my way to see Minx Cutter. I’ve gotten her settled into a room at Anna Hilton’s boarding house. You know, over on Garden Street.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I’m watching over her,” Matthew said, and instantly knew this was the wrong thing to say. “Tending to her, I mean.” Wrong again. “Making sure she stays in town.”
“Where would she go?”
“I don’t know, but I want to make certain she doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Why?”
“Someone is coming,” Matthew said, “who I think would like to meet her. In fact, it is essential that they meet.”
“Who are you talking about?”
In Sally Almond’s tavern on this May evening, the clock was two minutes away from seven-thirty. Matthew turned himself to watch the door.