She started forward. One step at first—a cautious step—and then the others came faster, for she saw her time was running out, and Matthew was being put into the boat and in another moment one of the men was going to cast off the lines and then the oars would be put into their locks and…
“Matthew!” she called to him, before this terrible journey could begin. And louder stilclass="underline" “Matthew!”
The giant, still on the dock’s planks, whirled toward her. Matthew stood up, his face ashen beneath the bruises. The other two men lifted their lanterns to catch her with their dirty light.
“Go back!” Matthew shouted. He nearly choked on the two words. “Go back!”
“Ah!” Sirki’s voice was soft and smooth. He smiled; he was already moving to cross the forty paces between them. “Miss Beryl Grigsby, isn’t it?”
“Berry!” Matthew couldn’t communicate his fear for her loudly enough: “Run!”
“No need for that,” said Sirki, as he came forward upon her with the sleek swiftness of a cobra. She backed away a few steps, but she realized as soon as she turned to run the giant would be at her back. “No need,” he repeated. “We’re friends here, you see.”
“Matthew! What’s going on?”
Sirki kept himself between them, a huge obstacle. “Matthew,” he answered as he steadily advanced, “is about to take a sea voyage. It is his own decision.” He came up within arm’s length. His smile broadened, but in it there was no joy. “I think you might also enjoy a sea voyage, miss. Is that correct?”
“I’ll scream,” she said, for it seemed the thing to say with the blood beating in her cheeks.
“Croydon?” Sirki spoke over his shoulder, but kept his eyes on Berry. “If this young woman screams, I want you to strike Matthew as hard as you can across the face. Do you understand?”
“Gladly!” Croydon said, and he meant it.
“He’s bluffing!” Matthew called out. He heard the weariness in his voice; his strength was departing him once more, and he knew that in his present state of disrepair there was nothing he could do to help her.
“I understand,” said Sirki, close now upon Berry. She could smell the sandalwood incense from his clothing. The lantern light gleamed off the pearl-and-turquoise ornament that secured his turban. His voice was a soft murmur, as if heard through the veil of sleep. “You wish no harm to come to your friend. And he is your friend, yes?”
“Berry! Get away!” Matthew urged her, with the last of his strength. Croydon clamped a hand on his shoulder that said Shut your mouth.
“Your friend,” Sirki repeated. “You know, I have the gift of seeing to the heart of matters. The heart,” he said, for emphasis. “You wouldn’t be here unless you were concerned for him, would you? And such concern should not be taken lightly. I would like for you to join us on our journey, miss. Walk before me to the boat, would you please?”
“I’m going for a constable,” she told him.
But she did not move, and neither did the giant.
He stared into her eyes, his mouth wearing a little amused half-smile.
“Walk before me to the boat,” he repeated. “I would appreciate your compliance.”
Berry caught a movement to her right. She looked to the west along Wall Street, and saw at the intersection of Wall and Smith streets the green-glassed lantern of a passing constable.
“I promise,” said Sirki in a cool, even tone, “to return you and Matthew safely here after his job is done. But if you cry for help or run, I will kill you before the cry leaves your lips and before you take two steps. I will deposit your corpse in the sea, where it shall never be found.” He waited, silently, for her to make her decision.
Matthew was listening also. He couldn’t help her, and he damned himself for it.
Berry watched the lantern’s green glimmer pass away. The cry was so near to bursting free…yet she knew this man standing before her would do exactly as he said, and there was no point in meeting her death this night. She turned her gaze back upon him. “What job does Matthew have to do?” Her voice was shaky, yet she was holding herself together with all the willpower she could muster.
“What he does,” Sirki answered. “Solving a problem. Will you walk before me to the boat, please? This cold can be doing you no good.”
She had an instant of thinking she might smash him in the face with the lantern. But he reached out and grasped her wrist, as if reading her thought as soon as it was born, and with a strangely gentle touch he led her out along the pier to the skiff where Matthew was pushed back down to a sitting position by Croydon’s rough hand.
“Squibbs,” said Sirki when Berry had been gotten aboard and situated, “cast off our lines, please.” It was done, and Squibbs stepped back onto the boat. Lanterns were placed on hooks at bow and stern. Two sets of oars went into their locks. Croydon and Squibbs went to work, rowing out into the dark, while Sirki took a seat between Matthew and Berry.
“Where are you taking us?” she asked the giant, and now her willpower was showing cracks and her voice did indeed tremble.
“First, the place you call Oyster Island. We’ll give a signal from there to the ship. Then…outward bound.” When he smiled, the diamonds in his front teeth glittered.
“Why?” Matthew whispered huskily. The question was directed at Berry, who did not answer. Therefore he asked again, from the bruised lips in his battered face. “Why?”
She couldn’t answer, for she knew he didn’t really wish to hear why a woman—any woman—would leave her safe abode in the cold midnight and undertake a journey at the side of a man she desired more than anything in the world. If she might be able to keep him safe…or keep him alive…then that was her own job, worth doing. Hang New York, she thought. Hang the world of safe abodes and warm beds. Hang the past, and what used to be. The future lay ahead for both of them, and though it was for now a forbidding place of dark water and uncertain destiny, Berry Grigsby felt more vital and more needed in this moment than ever before in her life.
The oars shifted water. The skiff moved steadily toward the black shape of Oyster Island, and Matthew Corbett the problem-solver could not for the life of him solve the problem of how to get Berry out of this.
Eleven
THE skiff’s bottom scraped rocks. “Out,” said Sirki, and at this command Croydon and Squibbs—two obedient seadogs—fairly leapt from the boat into the icy knee-deep water and dragged the skiff onto shore.
“Gentleman and lady?” Sirki made an expansive gesture with one arm and gave a bow, whether in mockery or with serious intent Matthew couldn’t tell. “We’ll be here only a short while,” the giant explained as he lifted his lantern to shine upon their faces. “I regret the cold and the circumstances. Step out, please, and do mind your footing on the stones.”
So land was reached with a stumble from Berry and a muttered curse from Matthew that would have gained approval at the roughest tavern in New York. Matthew caught her elbow and guided her onward over rocks, loose gravel and the ubiquitous pieces of oyster shells that crunched underfoot.
Standing amid the dead weeds and wild grass of shore, Sirki busied himself opening a leather pouch, from which he removed squares of red-tinted glass. He deftly removed the clear glass insets of his lantern and, shielding the candle’s guttering wick with his formidable body, he then slid the red glass squares into place. “Watch them,” he told the two mongrels, and then he strode off in the direction of the watchtower, which perhaps was only a hundred yards or so distant through the woods.