The Providence Rider (24 page)

The Black Plague had a history too, Matthew thought.

“I’ll speak to you again,” the professor promised. He walked to the door and paused with his hand on the polished knob. “This is important to me, Matthew. It is
vital
. Find this traitor, and you may be assured of a very bright future.”

As Matthew hoped to be assured of
any
future, he chose to let that observation pass. But he had another question: “Before you entered the room, there was a small…jolt, it felt to be. A movement. What was that?”

“An earth tremor. We get them occasionally, but nothing to be alarmed about.”

“This castle is on the edge of a cliff and you say an earth tremor is nothing to be alarmed about?”

“The tremors are mild and the castle is sturdy,” said the professor. “I know, because I had it rebuilt when I claimed the island as my birthright. This is the house I was born in. My father was the governor here.”

“The governor? Of Templeton?”

“It is time for you to rest,” came the soft reply. “I wish you pleasant dreams.”

“Thank you, but aren’t you worried about running into one of your associates in the hallway? That wouldn’t do for your pretense as an automaton, would it?”

“No, it would not. That is why the vanilla cake, the sugared almonds and the wine have been treated with a potent sleep drug. I believe the others are likely resting in the comfortable patio chairs by now. I doubt that Miss Cutter will be leaving her room to wander the hallways tonight. Madam Chillany is also behind a locked door, and she won’t be coming out either.”

“But you knew I wouldn’t want any of that dubious dessert?”

“Not after the dinner, no. But just in case, Mother Deare was watching you, ready to intercede, and Sirki was going to summon you from the patio. In any case, I did not come up by the main staircase and I shall not be going down them.”

“No secret passages here?” Matthew dared ask, with a trace of improvidence.

“None,” said Professor Fell, “that you shall know about. Oh…you do realize you have wet your breeches, don’t you? Leave your suit outside the door. I’ll have it cleaned for you.” Matthew didn’t have to look. It was a little too late for the chamberpot. “Goodnight.” The cowled figure opened the door, paused only briefly to regard the corridor, and then left Matthew’s room. The door closed behind Professor Fell with nearly the same sound as the breath leaving Matthew’s lungs a few seconds later.

Matthew got his legs moving. He went out onto the balcony to listen to the waves against the rocks. Stars filled the sky in the utter black. It was majestic but also seemed desolate and dangerous. Many things whirled through his mind. He concentrated on keeping the vision of Jonathan Gentry’s yellowing face out of his brain, but it was a hard order. He knew that when he attempted sleep it would all come back upon him, and therefore he would surely end up flaming the eight tapers in the overhead chandelier as well as keeping the candelabra burning all night.

What a day this had been! He wondered how Berry and Zed had survived it, and what their present situation was. He wondered at the mysterious fort and the brightly-colored skulls that served as warnings of death. He wondered at the fate of Captain Jerrell Falco, and how he was going to deliver Fancy—if she was indeed who he thought she was—from the rude clutches of the Thacker brothers.

He wondered who Brazio Valeriani was, and what was the Cymbeline. He wondered how he was going to uncover a traitor in three days. And mostly he wondered how the hell he’d gotten into this predicament.

But the fact was…he was here. Up to his neck in a sea of predators, and him wearing a suit that smelled of blood.

I wish you pleasant dreams
, the professor had said.

Not to be had this night, Matthew thought.

But in another moment he would take off his blood-spattered suit, fold it and put it outside the door and he would stretch himself out in the bed in the room in the castle of Professor Fell, and he would seek some kind of rest because he needed a fresh mind in the morning when Sirki came to call.

He was who he was. And as Katherine Herrald had once told him regarding his position at the Herrald Agency:
We need you, Matthew. You’ll be well-paid and
well-challenged. Probably well-travelled too, before long. Certainly well-educated in the complexities of life, and of the criminal mind. Have I frightened you off?

Matthew stared into the deeper darkness, and he answered aloud as he had answered the woman in person.

“No, madam. Not in the least.”

But then again, there was always tomorrow.

Berry awakened in the light of the candle at her bedside. She lay still, listening. A dog was barking out in the town. Another answered from a different direction. She wasn’t sure it was the noise that had roused her from her troubled sleep. No, there was something else…

An object clinked against one of the windows that overlooked the courtyard. She sat up. A second object hit the glass. There was no doubt. Someone was throwing pebbles from below. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and got out of the comfortable goose-down bed, with its rose-colored canopy. She pulled her dark blue sleeping-gown a little closer about herself, and taking the candle in its pewter holder she walked toward the door that opened onto her balcony.

It had been a day she would never forget. For that matter, what day lately—since being taken from the Great Dock pier by the East Indian giant with diamonds in his front teeth—had been forgettable? But at least the ordeal in the
Nightflyer
’s brig was far behind her, though not very far from her memory. She and Zed had been removed from the ship after nightfall, put into a closed carriage and driven to this inn, where again under cover of the night they were brought in through the dark green gate. Once inside they were separated, and Berry ushered to this room by a heavy-set Scotsman with a red tuft of hair atop his dome and a red tuft of hair on his chin while two husky men with muskets took Zed away. A meal of baked fish, corncakes, some kind of green melon and black tea had arrived at her room on a tray borne by a young woman with long ebony hair and coffee-colored skin. The door had been locked from the outside when the young woman departed. Later on, she had returned with the sleeping-gown, which she lay upon the bed for Berry. Again, upon leaving she locked the door. Berry had stepped outside onto the balcony and seen by torchlight the two tough-looking men with muskets talking in the courtyard below. Another movement had caught her attention and she’d seen Zed standing on a balcony one room over from hers. Zed had not paid her a penny of attention, but had been focused on watching the musket-men.

Though her mind was concerned with thoughts of what might be happening to Matthew—and her fears, she realized, were likely much more treacherous than the reality, since Matthew was a sort of guest here—she found sleep easily enough when she donned the nightgown and slipped into bed, simply because she was exhausted. But now, with the clinking of pebbles against the glass, Berry was fully awake as she followed the candle’s glow to the balcony door.

The night was still and warm, and down in the courtyard the torches were still burning. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep. Two or three hours, possibly? But something was missing. She leaned carefully over the railing. Where were the armed guards, who looked as if they’d never skipped a meal of hog’s fat, horse meat and baby’s bones?

A shadow moved. It became a huge bearded black man, bald-headed, with massive shoulders jammed into a clean yellow shirt. He wore his baggy brown breeches and had on scuffed black boots. His tribal-scarred face peered up at Berry and he made a motion with his arms that Berry could read as if he were speaking to her.

He said,
Jump
.

“I can’t!” she whispered, before she realized he couldn’t understand. Yet it was clear he understood her facial expression, because he repeated the motion and then held his arms out.

I’ll catch you
, he promised.

“Where are the guards?” she asked, again more to herself rather than to him. Zed stared up at her for a few seconds more in the orange torchlight, and then he shook his hands back and forth at chest-level seemingly to get the blood flowing.

She thought she understood what that meant.
I took care of them
.

It was about a twelve-foot drop. Could he catch her, if she jumped? Of course. “My shoes,” she said, and started to go back for them. Zed quickly popped his palms together.

No time
, he said.

She understood that completely. But if they left the Templeton Inn, where would they go? And if they did get away, would that put Matthew in more danger, or less? She thought that Zed wasn’t as concerned with Matthew as he was with finding a boat to cast off from this island and continue on his own personal journey. She had to worry about Matthew’s safety, first and foremost, and maybe she should remain here in this velvet cage, but still…

She did not like cages, velvet or otherwise.

Zed was waiting, and the seconds were going past.

Berry thought he wished to escape this night, and in so doing escape from the confinement of the past into the freedom of the future. If he could find the local fisherman’s harbor, secure a small sailboat and possibly a net or some fishing equipment…but, how far might he get? It seemed to her that even if Zed perished at sea, without provisions or plan other than setting his face toward Africa, it was how he wanted to leave this earth. And he, too, could no longer abide the cage.

She decided she would help him find a boat and see him off, and then she would return here to wait for word from Matthew.

She climbed over the railing, careful not to snag her nightgown on the wrought iron, and she jumped.

Zed easily caught her. He set her down like a feather. Then he nodded—
Yes, we’re
in this together
—and he held up a ring of four keys. He strode to the padlock on the gate and began to test it with first one key and then another. As Zed sought to unlock the gate, Berry looked left and right and found the bodies of the guards stacked up in some shrubbery just beyond the torchlight to the left. Their muskets appeared to be broken. One of the bodies was missing its boots. Suddenly one of the bodies shuddered and a hand lifted as if to seize the air before it fell back again, indicating that they were not dead but rather in a state of enforced sleep.

It was the last key. The gate swung open. Zed plucked a torch from its place in a wooden holder. Then they were walking into the road, Berry mindful of the small shells and pebbles that made up the surface. They had a choice to make concerning direction. They had come from the left, therefore they knew the harbor for large ships that lay over that way. Zed turned to the right and started off, seeking the local harbor, and Berry followed at his bootheels.

They seemed to be the only souls stirring at this hour. Dogs barked, but none were seen. The sky was ablaze with stars and a moon nearly full. The road left the last quiet houses of Templeton and was soon taking them through wilderness tinged blue by the moonlight. From the thicket the insects of the dark sang their songs of whirs and chitters, and Zed and Berry followed the flickering torchlight deeper into the night.

Berry wished she could ask Zed a question, but she wouldn’t know how to ask it. While she’d been eating her dinner, there’d been just the slightest movement of the room. A passing tremor, there one second and gone the next. She wished she could ask Zed if he’d also felt that. But in the aftermath of the tremor, she’d realized that the walls of her room were spiderwebbed with tiny cracks. She’d meant to ask the Scotsman about it in the morning, for evidently Pendulum Island was true to its name.

The road went on, and so did the journeyers. Zed walked fast, striding forward with a purpose, and though the shells and stones were not kind to her feet Berry kept up with him. More than once she wondered what her Grandda thought of her disappearance, along with Matthew’s. Were they still being searched for, after all this time? Or had her and Matthew’s whereabouts become a mystery that could not be answered? Surely Hudson Greathouse hadn’t given up the search! Yet…still…if there was nothing to be found of them, after so many days, then…a mystery, unanswerable.

Zed suddenly stopped so quickly Berry bumped into him. It was like hitting a stone wall. She staggered back. He didn’t even seem to feel it.

“What is it?” she asked him rather sharply, for her feet were cut and now she’d bitten her lower lip when she’d plowed into his immovable mountain.

He lifted the torch higher, and she saw what the light had already revealed to him. Hanging by leather straps from two poles on either side of the road were a pair of human skulls painted with brightly-colored stripes.

Zed moved the light from one side to the other, taking stock of not only the skulls but also of the situation.

“I think we shouldn’t go any—”
Further
, Berry was about to say, but Zed was already going further ahead for this road was his choice of direction and no skulls would stop his progress.

“Wait!” she called to him. And a little louder:
“Wait!”
But he was on the move, the mountain in motion. If Berry desired the comfort of the torchlight she would have to keep up. She also got herself moving, and though she imagined her feet must be leaving bloodmarks on the road she caught up with Zed and walked just behind him but within the circle of light.

Berry thought that the wilderness on either side was as thick as Matthew’s stubborn nature, and equally impenetrable. But where was the local harbor? Surely it couldn’t be very much further! She intended to see Zed off in whatever boat he might find, with whatever fishing tackle or net, and then get herself back to the Templeton Inn. There would be some explaining to do. And would she be punished for this transgression? Would Matthew in some way be punished? She was in this soup now and she was going to have to swim through it. Zed’s freedom was worth it…she hoped.

They hadn’t gone but a few minutes more when Zed stopped again. This time Berry avoided a collision. Zed stood motionlessly in the middle of the road, his torch upraised. Off to the left a bird suddenly called stridently from the dark. Zed angled his light in that direction. His head cocked back and forth. He was listening, Berry thought. But listening for
what
?

Another bird called from the right. It was a higher-pitched sound, but equally as strident. Two notes, similar to the cawing of a crow. Zed abruptly spun around, facing Berry, and offered the torchlight past her; his eyes were centers of flame, likewise trying to pierce the dark. She turned to see what he was seeing, her spine and arms having erupted into goosebumps, but all she saw was flickering firelight, an empty road and nothing more.

In the woods on the right, a small spark jumped. A torch burst into fire.

In the woods on the left, a small spark jumped. A second torch came to life.

On the road before them, a third torch exploded into flame, and behind them a fourth awakened its scarlet eye.

Four figures approached Zed and Berry, moving in silence. Firelight jumped off at least two drawn swords. Berry felt Zed’s body coiling, the muscles bunching up in his shoulders. His black-bearded face looked from one point of the compass to another, and he reached out to pull Berry closer to him but she realized even he must know four men with torches and swords would be too many for one Ga to fight.

Not, however, that he wouldn’t try.

“Hold still,” said the one on the right as he came through the thicket. “Don’t try to run, it’ll go worse for you.”

Zed gave a quiet grunt. Berry heard it as:
And worse for you, that I
don’t
run
.

The four figures converged upon them. They were heavy-set, broadshouldered white men with faces as hard as chunks of granite. A couple of them had faint smiles on their twisted mouths, as if they knew what was coming and looked forward greatly to the experience.

“Who the hell are
you
?” one of them, a man with a hooked nose and a wicked cutlass, asked Berry as he got nearer.

“Who the hell are
you
?” she answered back, standing her ground as if her bare feet were rooted there. She lifted her chin in defiance and hoped they wouldn’t see all the fear swimming in her eyes.

“We’ll sort this out later,” said the man standing behind Zed and Berry. “Take ’em, boys!”

“This is a damned big’un,” said one of the boys, a mite nervously. “What’re them scars on his face?”

“Damned if I know or care. Just take ’em!”

The order having been given by the man who was apparently in charge, the other three came forward with torches outthrust and swords ready to slash. Zed didn’t wait for them to arrive. He sprang at them with unexpected speed, and with teeth gritted at the center of his beard he stabbed his torch into the face of the nearest man and swung flames across the head of the next, setting the unfortunate’s hair on fire. At that, the proverbial hell broke loose. Two swords came at Zed from front and back, and as Zed twisted to parry the blows with his own blazing weapon he gave Berry a mighty shove toward the woods and past the man who was trying to slap out the bonfire in his hair. She staggered into the brush and almost went down before she grabbed hold of a hanging vine. There she watched Zed battling torch against swords, doing his gallant best, but then the man with the scorched face swung a leather cudgel against the back of Zed’s skull. One swing wasn’t enough, for Zed turned to apply torch-to-face once more but a second cudgel blow hit him squarely on the left temple. Berry saw his knees sag.

It took a third blow right in the center of his forehead to drop the torch from Zed’s hand. As Zed went to his knees on the ground, one of the swordsmen started to run him through at the neck, but the other—the leader—said, “Hold that! I think he’s done!”

But not quite. Zed started to get to his feet again. The leader struck him across the base of the skull with the sword’s grip, and the eager swordsman hit Zed in the face with a balled-up fist. Berry heard the sound of Zed’s nose bursting blood. Then the man who had half a headful of ashes came at Berry, grabbing hold of her gown with one hand and putting a sword’s tip under her chin with the other.

Berry saw Zed fall. There was nothing she could do for him. It was beyond her ability to stop them if they stabbed him to death in the next few seconds. Now she had to think about herself, and about the fact that the sword’s tip was just about to pierce flesh. With a harsh cry that startled her assailant into a frozen instant, she tore free from him and ran into the thicket.