MATTHEW was not himself today. On this thirteenth morn of sailing aboard the Nightflyer, he was restless and irritable and felt he would soon jump from his skin if harbor was not presently reached. Of course, reaching harbor would offer its own set of pressures. He pitied the crews and passengers of ships bound from England to the colonies. But he did have an escape from this constant roll of ship upon sea and vista of sun’s glare off dark blue water. He was becoming Nathan Spade.
Madam Chillany had told him, very coldly, the same afternoon of the day that Berry and Zed had been released from their cages: I assume you’re proud of yourself, that you won the little skirmish? But there are real battles ahead of you, Matthew, and I hope you are up to fighting them so valiantly for you might be fighting for your life. I would suggest you pick up that parchment you so carelessly tossed aside and read the entire document. It was prepared for you by Professor Fell, so it’s not to be taken lightly. Consign the life and times of Nathan Spade to your memory, dear one. Become him, if you value your neck…and, by reason of association, the necks of your lady friend and the black crow. We will be making harbor toward the end of another week. By that time, you should be Nathan Spade. Mark this advice well, won’t you?
I shall, Matthew had replied. I do hope you enjoy your new quarters, and thank you for your hospitality to Miss Grigsby.
There had been a definite chill in the air when that woman left his door.
Why he had to become Nathan Spade, he had no idea. But it seemed the right thing to do, since Aria Chillany was so insistent upon his no longer being Matthew Corbett when they docked. And as for her statement that Some of the personages you are going to meet knew Lyra Sutch…well, long live Nathan Spade.
Whether Nathan Spade had ever really lived or not was a question Matthew considered, and then decided upon not asking Madam Chillany, as such a creature in this world further darkened his view of God’s control over Evil on this side of Heaven. As Matthew walked the deck on this thirteenth morn, with the sun out in full force and Berry walking at his side refreshed and well-fed and free of shipboard mold, he speculated with an uneasy mind upon the life and times of Master Spade.
From one murder to the next, Nathan Spade travelled as if on a mission of discovery to reach the wretched bottom of the human soul. It seemed that Spade had become very proficient at murder, having hired himself out to a gang of London thugs called the Last Chancers, and having killed—and pray to God this was Professor Fell’s attempt at fiction—eight men by the age of twenty. And an additional two on his twentieth birthday, seemingly for the sport of it. He was called ‘The Pepper Kid’ for his method of throwing a handful of ground pepper into the eyes of his victims before he either slashed open their stomachs or their throats with a hooked blade, depending on how fast or how slowly he wished them to die. Then he became a jayhawk of the most sterling quality, and secured for the Last Chancers the gin-sodden wenches they desired to fill the rooms of their house of ill-repute on Blue Anchor Road in Southwark. He fulfilled this role to the best of any bastard’s dark ambitions, having impressed upon the Last Chancers the fact that little girls and virgins always sold well in any economic climate, and that there were always little girls lost or thrown out upon the London streets, and there were always doctors ready for an amount of cash to restore with needle and stitches the pride of a wholesome virgin.
“I wish you wouldn’t tell me these things,” Berry said, as they walked the deck and Matthew recited this particular element of Nathan Spade’s charm. Then she corrected herself: “But I do want to know. Why do they need you to pretend to be him? And what does this Professor Fell want with you?”
Matthew had had no choice but to tell her everything, as he knew it to be. He saw her daily, during these outings, but had seen Zed only a few times as Zed was usually working belowdecks. Matthew had decided that keeping Berry in the dark was no longer a noble endeavor, but was in fact an act of cruelty. “As I said,” he told her, “he wants me to work for him. To solve some unknown problem. But I do trust his word to return us to New York after we’re done.”
“And why should you trust his word?”
Matthew looked at her. He noted she was getting sun on her face. Her freckles were emphasized by her freshened coloring. In the last few days the sun had made the weather as warm as April in New York. They were nearing the Bermuda islands and Matthew reasoned they couldn’t be more than a few days out. “I have to,” he replied. “Though I’ve…shall we say…disturbed his plans on more than one occasion, I believe he considers me to be…” He hesitated, pondering the end of that thought. “Of worth to him,” he finished.
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell someone, Matthew! About the Mallorys! I mean…Doctor Gentry and that woman.” She spoke the word with supreme disdain. “You could have told Hudson! Why didn’t you?”
“For the same reason I didn’t tell you,” he reminded her. “I want no one dead on my behalf. If Hudson had interfered with this, they might have killed him. Because it wasn’t he they wanted. The same with you. And, of course…here you are, and look what’s happened. Now not only do they have me, they have Zed to be held as a sword over your head and you to be held as a sword over mine.”
“As you’ve said,” she answered with a quick flash of blue-eyed anger, “many times before.”
“And I’ll say it many times hence before I’m done.” His anger was not so flashy, but mayhaps burned deeper. Still, there was no use in hitting her over the head with her own obstinacy, for he shared that same particular quality and it had certainly hit him over the head a few times.
They walked a distance further, completing one circuit of the deck and watching their step for coiled ropes and the numerous seamen scrubbing the wetted planks with holystones, before Matthew said, “All right, then. Continuing on about Master Spade, if you wish to hear anymore.”
Berry hesitated only briefly. Her gentle sensibilities were no match for the power of her curiosity. “Go on.”
Matthew did. Nathan Spade—if this indeed had been a living person—had evidently done a robust job as a jayhawk and thus at the age of twenty-two he had graduated to running the Blue Anchor bordello for the Last Chancers. Clock forward six months, and the Pepper Kid was put in charge also of a second Southwark whorehouse on Long Lane. And then at the age of twenty-four, his reputation both for discovering new talent and putting knives in the bellies of competitors was such that he was contacted by a certain Doctor Jonathan Gentry on behalf of a certain professor who wished to know if the aforementioned Master Spade might wish to come up in the world? Namely by managing a new house nearly in the shadow of Parliament, where men of good breeding and excellent funds mixed and mingled with the women of bad breeding who were determined to remove some of those funds from the overstuffed pockets? And suffice it to say, the women should be beautiful and rather ruthless in gaining information from their sex-stunned or love-struck lotharios, the better to share that information with Nathan Spade on its progress to Doctor Gentry and the professor’s ear.
So be it.
The Pepper Kid had arrived in his own personal land of Milk and Honey. Now he no longer needed the pepper nor the knives, for he had the professor’s killers to do that work if needed, and these days he wore expensive Italian suits and strolled the halls of diplomacy as an equal among the other moneyed and well-placed scoundrels.