“Imagining murders and plots?” Matthew interrupted, in a tone descrescendo.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Greathouse continued, as if the question had never been spoken, “but I do believe someone is trying to…further affect you. For whatever reason, I don’t know. I believe you know, but you’re not going to tell me, are you?”
Matthew said nothing; he, too, had begun to watch sunlight crawl across the wall, and with it the waning afternoon.
“I can help,” said Greathouse. “I will help. I swear it.”
It was close. So very close. Matthew felt it behind his clenched teeth, wanting to get out. Therefore he clenched his teeth just the harder, which further pained the bruises on his face.
After a while, Greathouse removed his hand from Matthew’s shoulder.
He stood up from his chair. “I’d better be getting along. Having dinner tonight with Abby. I’ve never known a woman who enjoys meat so much.” He took his coat and tricorn from their wallpegs. Slowly, he shrugged into the coat and positioned the tricorn just so upon his head, as if to give Matthew more time. He grasped his walking-stick and put its tip on the planks before him in preparation of his first troubled step. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning. Agreeable?”
“Not necessary,” Matthew said, “but appreciated.” He offered Hudson as much of a genuine smile as he could muster. “Thank you. And I hope you also enjoy your banquet. But do tell McCaggers he won’t find the heads.”
Greathouse nodded. He strode a few paces away and then stopped once more. In the row of five narrow beds across from Matthew lay the elderly Edde van Evers, a onetime Dutch frigate captain now frail and dying of perhaps too much landsickness. To Matthew’s left, in the last bed in the room, was Gideon Bloomensord, a farmer laid low when he had fallen down a rocky embankment and broken both legs. This morning the body of Martin Brinker had been removed from the bed directly to Matthew’s right and bound in shroud wrappings for deposit in the cemetery, the patient having not responded well to Dr. Quail Polliver’s leech treatment. Of the three remaining patients Matthew was certainly the most alert, as the first was heading silently for his last voyage and the other was raving in fevered pain that the opium had not yet diminished.
“I’ll be back first thing,” Greathouse repeated, as possibly a draught of medicine to himself at leaving Matthew between creeping death and inescapable agony. Then he pulled his coat collar up around his neck and went through the hallway toward the front door and—most likely—the warm and welcoming embrace of womanflesh.
Matthew rested his head against the pillow and closed his eyes. He was very tired. The two attendants, the two-hundred-pound Mrs. Sifford and the ninety-pound Mr. Dupee, would be coming around soon to offer up some kind of soup, for better or for worse. The sunlight moved, and moved some more. The afternoon dimmed and darkened into blue evening, and in the glow of lanterns hanging from their pegs Edde van Evers breathed heavily as if inhaling the salt air of seven seas, Gideon Bloomensord gasped in his opium-induced slumber, and Matthew Corbett slept uneasily with the taste of lukewarm codfish soup still in his mouth.
He tossed and turned a bit, expecting to be roused by Hudson Greathouse first thing in the morning, or—before that—by Gardner Lillehorne with more questions.
Therefore when he was shaken awake by the pain of his bruises and sore muscles he was quite surprised to see night still hard black against the windows. One might further say he was shocked to see standing over his bed, washed in the golden lamplight, a giant from East India.
The diamonds in the front teeth sparkled. “Matthew?” said Sirki in his soft and easy lilt. “It’s time now, please.”
“Time?” Matthew sat up, which caused him further pain but there was no avoiding it. The hospital was silent. Either Van Evers had passed onto the leeward side of this world or he was sleeping like a newborn, and Bloomensord had also sunken into perfect peace. “Time for what?”
“Your decision,” said Sirki, his brown face pleasantly composed. “Which will be destroyed next? Tobias Winekoop’s stable, with all those beautiful and noble horses? Or the boarding house run by Madam Belovaire, with its boarders now fast asleep? Most of them, that is.” He gave a small, polite smile. “Your decision, please. And don’t concern yourself about me. I am content to wait.”
Ten
GET out of here,” Matthew answered. His heart had seemingly tied itself into a Gordian Knot. “I’ll call for help.”
“You might,” Sirki answered back, with a brief nod of his turbanned head. “But you will find that no help arrives. And yet…I do have help.”
As if emerging from the giant’s body, two men came forward from behind him to stand at the foot of Matthew’s bed. Matthew instantly recognized the pair of scoundrels who’d lighted the fuses in the house of the so-called Mallorys. One of them carried a rolled-up item with wooden rods protruding from it. A stretcher, Matthew realized.
“We have come to carry you in comfort to your appointed destination,” said Sirki. “Unless you had rather witness another example of our new gunpowder?”
“With me unable to walk, my name written on a wall will make no sense.”
“Ah!” Sirki aimed a long forefinger toward the ceiling. “But did it ever make sense, young sir? I believe by now that your compatriots in this town—even your closest friends, perhaps—have begun to doubt your word and your sanity. It may make sense to no one, yet either a stable or a boarding house will burn to the ground this night…if you refuse this hospitable invitation.” Whether he’d intended the near-pun or not was unknown, since his face remained expressionless. But the dark eyes beneath the thick, arched black brows were intense and watchful, and they were aimed upon Matthew like musket barrels.
Matthew may have shivered. He wasn’t sure, but it was cold in here and the blanket was thin. “How did you get in?”
One of the men, the very same who’d thrown his lantern at Matthew’s head, gave a little chuckle. Prideful, Matthew thought. “Lockpicking is Croydon’s claim to art,” Sirki said. “A low claim, but there it is anyway. As for the two unfortunates who spend the night here watching over their charges, the fat woman and the thin man are both sleeping soundly.”
“You’ve killed them?”
“Not at all! Unless a gift of tea from India could be considered deathly. I had occasion to speak to Dr. Polliver this afternoon. I offered up this gift as a token of friendship. Also the tea has healing powers I thought he might care to try. Possibly he’s sleeping very soundly in his bed at home.”
Drugged tea, Matthew thought. Of course. Fell’s people relied on drugs to move their mountains.
“The professor,” said Sirki, “wants you. He needs you, really. Because you seem to…um…get results, shall we say. And you’ve impressed him, Matthew. So now I shall tell you that it is time for your choice. One of three. Yourself, the stable or the boarding house. And yourself shall be returned here after this business is completed, whereas the others…sadly beyond the point of return. We have the key to your house, taken from Dr. Polliver’s safebox. Croydon will go to your miniature abode and remove whatever clothing you might need. You will be taken to a waiting boat, to be rowed out to meet the larger vessel. All we require you to do at the moment is roll onto this stretcher.”