“Oh Christ,” Madam Chillany breathed beside Matthew. “He’s in one of his states.”
Assured that the floor would hold him, Gentry released his death-grip on the bannister and approached the table, in a circuitous sort of way. He walked as if he were dancing to an unheard tune. Matthew thought Gentry’s steps would be appreciated by Gilliam Vincent.
Mack said, “Come on and sit your arse down—”
“Ya stumblin’ arsehole!” Jack supplied, and the two brothers laughed as if they were the very kings of wit.
The devilishly-handsome though nearly-incapacitated Gentry just gave a feeble smile, a comma of dark brown hair sweat-stuck to his forehead. His remarkable green eyes were not so luminous; tonight they were darkened and bloodshot. Matthew watched as Gentry searched for his place at the table, and no one helped him. Matthew thought that whatever freight the doctor was carrying, the castle of Professor Fell must weigh most heavily upon him for he had surely drunk or inhaled something potent to deaden his nerves.
“You’re next to me,” Matthew spoke up, and Gentry narrowed his eyes to focus and came staggering around the table to claim his place.
“Thank you, M—” Gentry caught himself and smiled dazedly. “My friend,” he said, as he lowered himself into the chair.
Sirki emerged from the door at the far end of the room, presumably to make sure everyone had arrived, and then he went away again without a word to the guests. Matthew noted the East Indian giant was wearing black robes and a black turban tonight, and for some reason that fact sent a disturbance rippling slowly through him like a wave about to shatter itself against a rock.
In a few minutes the feast began to arrive, brought in by a squadron of servants. The theme—no surprise here to Matthew—was nautical. Seafood stew was served in clay bowls shaped like boats. Platters of clams wafted steam up through the candlelight. A glass bowl contained bits of raw fish mingled with onions and small red peppers that nearly seared Matthew’s tongue off at first taste. Puff pastries filled with crabmeat and a white wine cream sauce came piled on a blue plate and were quickly gobbled down by the Thackers before anyone else could get their fair share. Then came whole fish grilled, baked and steamed. A swordfish laid out on a wooden slab still had its beak and eyeballs. The pink tentacles of an octopus dripped puddles of butter. The wine flowed and the guests consumed. Matthew watched Mother Deare watching everyone else. From time to time someone gave a grunt as they ate something particularly pleasing to them, but otherwise there was no conversation.
Then Jonathan Gentry, his face and suit jacket smeared with oil and butter, withdrew from a pocket a small bottle of green liquid and poured it into his wine. He drank it down with relish, after which he began trying to carve a piece of mackerel with the edge of a spoon.
“What are you drinking?” Aria asked him, with notes of both wariness and disgust in her voice. “Something of your own making, I presume?”
“My own making,” he said, and nodded. “Yes, my own.” He smiled at nothing, his eyes heavy-lidded. “I am a doctor, you know. I am a physician. And a very able one, in fact.” He turned the heavy lids toward Matthew. “You tell her.”
“Leave Mr. Spade alone,” came Aria’s quiet command, emphasizing the name.
“What’s he saying?” Mother Deare asked, interrupting her consumption of tentacles.
“He’s sayin’ he’s a fuckin’ asshole,” said Jack Thacker, and he grinned drunkenly at Fancy, who had eaten half of a boatbowl of seafood stew before she had again left the room on her silent voyage.
“I’m saying I am a doctor. A healer,” Gentry replied, with as much dignity as a grease-smeared drug fiend could muster. “That is who I am. And this,” here he held up the bottle, which still contained a few drops of green, “is the medicine I have given myself tonight. I call it…” He paused, seemingly searching for what he called it. “Ah, yes. Juice of Absence.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Mack muttered in his wine, and then he took hold of Fancy’s hair and began to gnaw on her throat. Not to be outdone, Jack attacked the other side of her neck.
“Oh dear me,” said Pons, who had been fed his entire meal and had his mouth and chin wiped by his special Toy.
“Juice of Absence,” Gentry repeated, his face slack. His eyes appeared to be sliding inward. “It removes one. Takes him away. It eases the mind and deadens the nerves. It causes one to leave this realm of unhappy discord, and enter another more pleasant. Yes, it is of my own making.” He stared blankly at Aria. “Somewhat like my life, isn’t it?”
“A disgusting mess, you mean?” she asked, her brows uplifted.
Gentry nodded. Suddenly there was nothing handsome about him at all. He just looked to Matthew like a pitiful man trying to hold onto something that had perhaps slipped his grip many years before. Down the table, Pons was being fed by Toy, Mother Deare was carefully watching Gentry, the Thackers were feasting on Fancy’s throat, and Minx was sipping her wine in stiff-backed silence. Up the table, Smythe was tearing into a piece of swordfish, Wilson ate small bites of the raw fish concoction and kept pushing his glasses up because the peppers were making his face glisten with sweat, and Sabroso leaned back in his chair and drank not from a glass but from a fresh bottle of red wine that he had uncorked with his teeth.
But Gentry in a way sat alone, and Matthew found he could no longer look at the man.
Instead Matthew stared across at the Thackers, and seeing the suffering expression on Fancy’s beautiful and tortured face as the two brutes ravished her he felt the words come up from his soul to his throat and he was powerless to secure them from leaving his mouth.
He said, “Stop that.”
They continued on, unhearing.
“You two!” Matthew said, louder, with the flush of righteous anger and redhot peppers in his cheeks. “I said…” And again, louder stilclass="underline" “Stop that!”
This time they heard. Their mouths left the Indian girl’s throat, leaving red suction marks and grease trails. Their glittering eyes in the foxlike faces found him, and yet they grinned stupidly as if they had never in their lives heard anyone give them a command and really mean it.
“Nathan?” Aria’s voice was very small and very tight. “I think—”
“Hush,” he told her, and she hushed. He focused his attention on the girl, who just that quickly had begun to leave the room once more. There was something he had to find out, and it had to be now. “I saw you sitting on the rock today. I thought…that’s a pretty girl, who sits alone.”
There was no response whatsoever. Her face was downcast, her disarrayed hair hanging in her eyes.
“A pretty girl shouldn’t sit alone,” Matthew continued. He felt sweat gathering at his temples. It was hard to avoid the deadly stares of the Thacker brothers; their silence seemed equally as deadly. “You know,” Matthew said with an air of desperation, “coming from New York’s winter to this island, I feel like a walker in two worlds.”
Again…nothing.
Mack’s mouth opened: “What shit are ya goin’ on about—”
“—boyo?” Jack finished, and he started to rise threateningly from his chair.
It was wrong, Matthew thought. Something was wrong. What was it? Think! he told himself. She didn’t respond to the name Walker In Two Worlds. Why not? If she was the same girl who’d crossed the Atlantic on the ship with he and Nimble Climber, then…why not?
“I think your head needs fixin’,” said Mack Thacker, who likewise started to slide from his chair.
“Straightenin’ out,” said the brother with the gray wisp in his hair, his teeth clenched and his fists the same. “Gentlemen! Please restrain yourselves!” Mother Deare’s voice was a shade shrill.