“Don’t flatter yourself. I mean to say that I can’t quite get the sense of you. Your manner of speaking…the way you present yourself…” She frowned and shook her head. “It isn’t what one would expect, after hearing about you.”
Matthew said with a shrug, “Possibly if I heard about your exploits in forgery, I’d never expect you to have been a child of the circus. Meaning that there are many sides to a person. Yes?”
“Yes,” she agreed, in a careful voice, “but even so…I think you are a puzzle with many pieces, and not all of them seem to fit.”
With that, Matthew felt the best course of action was silence lest he reveal another piece of his puzzle not meant for Minx’s sharp eyes and senses. She turned her horse to follow the trail again, and now she gave Esmerelda’s sides a kick and the animal took off at a brisk trot. Matthew likewise urged Athena forward and in another moment caught up behind the black mare’s flowing tail.
Presently they emerged from the forest trail onto another road. A horse-drawn wagon was trundling past, carrying a load of various brightly-colored fruits. Minx turned her mount in the direction the wagon was travelling, and left the fruit-vendor in her dust. Matthew urged Athena to speed but this time was unable to catch Lady Cutter. Soon, however, their progress was slowed by a sign on the roadside whose green-painted letters read: Welcome To Templeton.
Stood the village as quaint as a Quaker’s bonnet and as tidy as a Presbyterian’s soul. The small houses were all painted white with green trim. There were white picket fences and shade trees aplenty. The street led past a number of shops: a bakery, a wigmaker, an apothecary, a shoemaker, a general goods store and the like. People were out and about on this sunny morning. Most of them were the cream-colored locals in their vivid hues and straw hats, yet there were a few whites in their more restrained English or European clothing. On the right, behind a dark green iron gate and fence, stood a two-story yellow-bricked structure that Matthew took note of: The Templeton Inn, read a small sign above the front door. There appeared to be a tiled courtyard with a small circular pond at its center. Curtained windows looked down upon the street, and doors opened onto green wrought-iron balconies. Matthew wondered if Berry and Zed had been taken yet from the ship. This would be their final destination for a while. It seemed to be a pleasant enough prison. He figured the guards would not be too very obtrusive, but then again this was Fell’s kingdom so who was going to complain?
The street continued past a farmers’ market that was doing a brisk business in the sale of fruits and vegetables. On the left, further along, was a stable and on the right a series of corrals holding cattle and hogs. Here the air glistened with dust and smelled like New York in midsummer. Then after a few more unremarkable houses the village of Templeton passed away and the forest again took hold on either side. Minx and Esmerelda kept going, and Matthew and Athena kept following.
“Shouldn’t we turn around?” Matthew asked presently, as the sun was warming toward noon and the sweat had begun to prickle his neck.
“I want to show you something,” Minx answered. “It’s not far.”
Indeed it wasn’t. Minx guided Matthew to the edge of a cliff with the glittering expanse of the sea spread out below. “Wait,” Minx told him, as he scanned the rolling waves. “Ah!” she said suddenly, and pointed. “There they are!”
A geyser of water marked the surfacing of a number of whales. They rolled about each other like children at play. They flapped their tails and created their own foamy surf. They dove down and rose up again, breaking the sea into shards of rainbow glass. Matthew looked at Minx and saw she was smiling as she watched the cavorting of the leviathans, and he thought that the circus might be very far from the girl but the girl was never very far from the circus.
Something else caught his eye. It was the fort situated up on the northern point of Pendulum Island. There were several buildings within the cannon-guarded walls, and a pall of gray smoke hung over the area. A little fluttering of smoke rose from a chimney on a squat building to the far right.
“What’s that?” Matthew asked. He nodded toward it.
Minx’s smile went away. “The professor’s property.”
“I know that. But…a fort, yes?”
“His concern, not ours,” she replied. The air had become frosty on this sunny noon. She urged Esmerelda away from the cliffside, and the moment of watching whales at play had passed. Matthew followed back to the main road, feeling he had stepped on something that stuck to his bootsole. The fort was lost to sight by another dense thicket, but presently the two riders crossed in front of a secondary road that cut through the forest toward what Matthew presumed was the very place he’d just seen. He noted the ruts of wagon wheels in the dirt. The road to the fort had seen many comings and goings. And there on either side of the road was to him an interesting element to this new puzzle of Pendulum Island: hanging from leather cords on two poles were two human skulls painted with vivid stripes of color.
There was no need to ask Minx what that meant. Matthew knew. It was a warning of death, made cheerful by the stripings but no less serious. In fact, Matthew thought, there was a twisted sense of humor on display here. The entire message seemed to be: No Entry Without Permission, Or You Will Wear Your Bright Colors To Your Grave. He wondered if there were any guards nearby, watching the road, to enforce that particular threat. He decided that there probably were, hidden in the foliage somewhere. He didn’t care to test his question.
Not today, at least.
For it seemed to Matthew that a cannon-guarded, walled fort on the island owned by Professor Fell must hold something the emperor of crime did not care to be viewed by the inhabitants of his drowsy dreamworld.
Well, Matthew thought, there was always tomorrow. By now he was used to kicking over ordinary rocks and finding extraordinary horrors scuttling from underneath them in a desperate search for the protective dark. He reined Athena in and sat for a moment staring down the road that sat between two poles and two skulls. He marked that this place was about four miles from the professor’s castle, by the route they’d taken. Within him his sense of curiosity and desire for discovery began to vibrate; he was attuned to a question that needed to be answered.
Minx said firmly, “Come along. We shouldn’t linger here.”
Indeed not, Matthew thought as he got Athena moving again. For he had the sure sensation that they were being watched from somewhere in the trees, and even the guests at this strange conference of criminals could find their skulls separated from their necks by following that particular road into the unknown.
But, of course, following the unknown road was part of his business. His nature, also.
Another time, he promised himself.
And he knew that, whatever dangers and intrigues he might face at this bizarre dinner planned for tonight, his promises were for keeping.
Eighteen
CAUTION doubled. And redoubled. A bell was being rung by a servant who walked along the hallway. It was time for dinner. Time for Matthew to slip into the skin of Nathan Spade and button himself up in it, just as now he buttoned his shirt. When he was done, he slipped into the coat of his forest-green suit and also buttoned that up. It seemed he could not have enough security, nor buttons enough. One popped off as he was wrestling it. The bell called him to hurry. He appraised his look in the mirror. His face had become darkened by the sun, which made the bear-claw scar on his forehead stand out as a pinker line. Also more on the pinkish side was the newer and smaller mark under his left eye, put there by his adventure in the exploding house on Nassau Street. His hair was brushed, his teeth were cleaned, he was freshly-shaved and he was ready for the moment. Yet…there was something about himself that was a recent arrival, he thought. It was a steely glint in his eyes that had not been there before…what? The last gasp of Tyranthus Slaughter? It was the glint of a sword ready to parry another, or quickly strike if need be. It was the steel of survival, forged from his experiences to the point of standing here before this mirror.