The Providence Rider (29 page)

He checked the shoes and the stockings, more items of distaste. He looked under the bed, under the mattress, and drew a chair over to peer on top of the bed canopy. He searched behind the chest of drawers and beneath the iron-legged stand that held the waterbasin. He exhausted all possible hiding places in the room, and then he took stock of the sheets of parchment.

Lying in plain sight, he thought. If a code was indeed written somewhere in those sheets, then why bother to hide them?

He picked up a few of the sheets and scanned them. Nothing remarkable that he could decipher. Just someone with time on his hands, scribing for the sake of something to do. He found the line of stage-direction from
Cymbeline
that Smythe had read to him from the play:
Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle; he throws a
thunderbolt
.

That was the line that had prompted the professor’s titling of the new weapon? How had Smythe described it? Oh, yes…
Cymbeline is the foundation upon which future
devices shall be constructed
.

The foundation, Matthew thought. Something basic. Something…ordinary that now was extraordinary?

Thunder and lightning, Matthew mused. The throwing of a thunderbolt by Jupiter, king of the gods. The professor would surely identify with Jupiter. And what happens when a thunderbolt hits the earth? Matthew asked himself.

Fire, of course. No, no…wait…first, before the fire…there is…

…the explosion.

Matthew walked out upon the balcony. From this vantage point he could see, far in the distance, a thin smudge of smoke that must be rising from the fort at the far end of Pendulum. The forbidden fort, where intrusion meant death. That, Matthew surmised, must be where the Cymbeline was being created.

Because he realized what Cymbeline must be. In fact, he’d already had a taste of it. A very hot and searing taste, in fact.

The foundation of future weapons was gunpowder. Professor Fell was creating a new and more potent—certainly more powerful—kind of gunpowder. The kind that could in a fairly small quantity tear a building to pieces and hurl a roof back into Jupiter’s realm. Oh yes, they were using the Cymbeline to good effect in New York, all right. Matthew nodded, watching the smoke smudge. Of course the chemicals had to be cooked. The fire kept away from the finished product. But what made it different? What ingredient made it more powerful or better in any way from the gunpowder normally created?

Matthew knew.

He recalled a certain Solomon Tully, wailing for his losses on the Great Dock.

…
there’s something wicked afoot with this constant stealing of sugar.

“Indeed there is,” said Matthew Corbett, his eyes steel-gray and his voice grim.

For sugar was the new ingredient in the professor’s formula for death. Some chemical component of sugar, cooked and introduced into the process. Professor Fell was making his Cymbeline with sugar, and it was the foundation of what the professor hoped was not only new weapons using that powder, but a source of revenue that perhaps was the greatest he’d yet known.

And here stood Matthew, seeking a traitor or two who had decided England’s security was more important than Fell’s power or money. Truly, for Matthew, it was the world turned upside down. He decided it was time to vacate these premises. He put everything back upon the desktop exactly as it had been, for he thought Smythe would have a sharp eye for such irregularities. The chair he’d used to perch upon also was returned to its exact position. Everything else looked right. But no evidence of a traitor was to be found in here today, and probably not any day. Matthew left the room, closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock. “Here!” said someone down the hallway. “What are you doing?” The voice made Matthew jump. As he turned toward it, he put the key in his pocket. Adam Wilson, the invisible man, was striding toward him.

“Spade? I asked you what you’re doing.” The voice was as slight and vapid as its owner, yet insistent in its own way. The watery blue eyes stared at Matthew behind the square-lensed spectacles. “Were you trying to get into Edgar’s room?”

Matthew recognized that the man of finances had not seen him leave Smythe’s room, but had only seen him standing at the door. Possibly it looked as if Matthew was working the doorknob. “I knocked at Smythe’s door, yes,” he said.

“It looked to me as if you were trying to get in, sir.” Wilson had small teeth that showed between the bloodless lips and came together as he spoke, as if taking small vicious bites from the air.

“I…suppose I did try the knob.” Matthew shrugged, as if to say it was his nature. “Smythe and I were having a discussion in the library earlier. I’d hoped to continue it.”

“Really?” It was spoken with either droll unconcern or a lingering touch of suspicion.

“Yes,” Matthew answered. “Really.”

“Edgar is meeting with the professor at this moment,” came the reply. The eyes narrowed. “What happened to you, sir? You are much the worse for wear.”

“You should have seen the horse after I beat it up.”

“You were thrown from a horse?”

“Regrettably, yes. Early this morning.”

“Hm.” Wilson took two backward steps to look Matthew over from head to toe. “Nothing is broken, I presume?”

“My pride,” said Matthew, with a tight smile that made his nose ache.

“Your sense of humor seems undamaged,” said Wilson, humorlessly. “I should think you would take to bed rather than seeking companionship.”

“In my line of work, those two things go together.”

“Ah.” A slight smile disturbed the small ugly mouth. “As you say.” Wilson gave a small nod of his head and shoulder-stoop to pass for a bow of respect and started to turn away.

But the problem-solver had at last detected something, and meant to hone in upon it. “Pardon me, Mr. Wilson, but…why do you refer to Mr. Smythe by his first name?”

“Because that is his name,” was the stone-faced reply.

“Of course it is, but…it indicates a certain familiarity. A friendship, I suppose. Or, as you put it…a
companionship
. I noted that at dinner last night there was a very strict air of formality in how everyone addressed everyone else. I suppose it’s an indicator of the distance we must keep from each other regarding our businesses. So why do you call him
Edgar
and not
Mr. Smythe
? Is it because…oh…you and he communicate with each other outside the realm of the professor’s view?”

“You know that would be forbidden.”

“I do know. But I also know you’re very comfortable calling him by his first name. Are you two friends in London?”

“No, we are not. But we have become friends here. Because as you must know, this is not the first of our conferences.” The eyes took on a wicked gleam behind the square lenses. “And if we’re speaking of noticing such things, Mr. Spade, I should say I heard Madam Cutter calling you
Nathan
. Does that mean, then, that you and she are…hmmmm…an
item
in London?”

“I’ve never met her before.”

“Obviously, then, you’ve made an impression. Or should I say, a new
friend
.” The upper lip curled. “Sometimes, Mr. Spade, a name…is only a name, and it conveys no darker meaning.”

“Darker meaning? Why do you put it that way?”

“Neither Edgar—Mr. Smythe, if you please—nor I are in violation of the professor’s code of conduct. Now it is true I have received some messages from Mr. Smythe, regarding the Cymbeline and money needed to store it in its London warehouse. I likewise have sent messages to him, but only through a courier designated by Professor Fell. Everything, you see, is aboveboard.”

That statement nearly caused Matthew to guffaw, but he swallowed it down. He said, “I’d hate to think of anyone here being dishonest.”

“And you would be responsive to that in some way? You would make sure Edgar and I were penalized, if indeed we were enjoying a social relationship beyond the call of our professions?”

“What are you doing together?” Matthew asked. “Going to the…” He picked up the recollection of an item from one issue of his cherished
London Gazette
. “Rakehell clubs?” Where, it was written in the broadsheet, a man might have a sumptuous eight-course dinner and enjoy fine rare wines before his bottom was blistered by a woman in riding boots and spurs and whirling a bullwhip. Matthew could imagine Smythe and Wilson at these festivities, linked possibly by their purient interests. One would be bellowing as if he had a lungful of burning coals while the other smirked in the admiration of applied pain.

“Young man,” said Wilson coldly, “it would be best for you to restrain your obvious penchant for fantasy. Save such suggestions for your whores and clients, won’t you?” He started to turn away, his face screwed up with something that was supposed to convey either anger or disgust, and then he paused.

“You look laughable with that thing on your nose,” he sniped, before he turned and stalked away to his room further along the hallway. Matthew let Wilson unlock his door and enter before he too returned to his own abode.

After the dinner bell had been rung up and down the hallway, Matthew gave the candle clock an extra fifteen minutes of burning before he put on the somewhat shrunken jacket of his gray-striped suit and prepared to join the party.

With any luck, the Thackers had remained drunk or been—and the thought was repugnant to him—ravishing Fancy all day in their double brotherhood and thus had no idea Nathan Spade had risen from his grave.

It was time now to display himself, in all his abundant life.

He had scrubbed himself and shaved. He had combed his hair. He was presentable. Except for one thing. When he peered into the mirror he thought he looked ridiculous with that thing on his nose, so he peeled off the poultice to reveal the swollen blue-black-and-tinged-with-green artistry of Jack and Mack. He still couldn’t smell anything through this heated lump of clay, but so be it. The darkness had spread under his eyes and the two lumps on his forehead had turned dark purple. He was a real peacock, he was. And ready to strut, too.

He left his room, went down the stairs and to the banquet room where last night Jonathan Gentry had lost his head.

They were all there, minus the headless doctor. They were seated in their exact same places. They were eating from bowls of what appeared to be some kind of thick red seafood stew. Toy was feeding Augustus Pons, and giggling happily. Smythe was drinking his wine from a glass and Sabroso was drinking his from a bottle, and the nearly-invisible Wilson had his face poised over his bowl as if to inhale it up his nostrils. Minx Cutter was there, sitting rigidly in her chair. Aria Chillany looked pale and wan, as if the island’s sunlight was stealing her power. Fancy’s expression was blank, as she was jammed shoulder-to-shoulder between the two brothers, who were wearing orange suits to match their hair and jamming hunks of bread into their mouths. Mother Deare was eating delicately, her red lace gloves concealing the large hands of a workwoman.

Matthew came down the stairs as if he owned every riser.

Fancy looked up at him first. Her expression did not change, though her eyes may have widened only enough for him to note. Then the others saw him, and with pieces of bread stuffed in their mouths Jack and Mack Thacker made gagging noises and their green glinting eyes in the foxlike faces became huge. Jack jumped up from the table, his chair going over to the floor behind him, while Mack only half-rose before he grasped the neck of a wine bottle either to steady himself or use as a weapon.

“What the hell is wrong with you two?” Mother Deare rasped, a rough plaid of coarseness showing through her studied lace.

“Forgive me for being late.” Matthew came around the table to his place across from Minx and next to Aria. He was gratified to see that not a trace of last night’s murder remained. He sat down and sent a smile around the table. “Good evening to all.”

The Thackers had gone as gray as wet paper. They looked at each other in wonderment, and then at Matthew with something close to fear.

“Settle yourselves, gentlemen,” said Matthew. “I won’t bite.”

“Your
face
,” Minx said. “What happened to you?”

“Small accident. I took a fall.” He reached for the steaming pot of stew that sat upon the table and spooned some into his bowl. “This looks delicious.” It would taste nearly of nothing, however, since he could not smell a single peppercorn nor fish fin, both of which were exposed as his spoon went to work.

“On the stairs?” Mother Deare asked. “Didn’t you seek attention?”

“No, I rested in my room.” He aimed his smile at the two scowling brothers. “Please, don’t stand on
my
account.”

Mack recovered first. He drew up a half-grin that had nothing to do with either humor nor his eyes. “Pick up your chair, Jack. Clumsy of you.” Mack sank back into his seat, his teeth slightly bared. From the wine bottle he took a swallow that must have emptied it by half.

“Clumsy,” Jack repeated. He sounded stunned, as if he’d been headbutted. “Damn clumsy.” He righted his chair and as he sat down offered a thin and insincere smile to Mother Deare. “Pardon the fuss. I don’t know what come over me.”

Matthew spread his napkin across his lap. “Good manners are worth gold,” he said, and regarded Mother Deare. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I surely would. Good manners gets a person into a lot of rooms…and out of a lot of scrapes,” she answered, and she gave him a nod as if she knew exactly what he meant.

“You were in your room all day?” Aria asked. She looked bleary-eyed. Though Gentry hadn’t been her shining knight and hero, his death must have unnerved her at least enough to disturb her beauty-sleep.

“Not quite all day,” Wilson spoke up, in his irritating near-whisper. “He was out and about for a short while. Wasn’t he, Mr. Smythe?”

“That he was, Mr. Wilson,” answered the barrel of gravel.

“Interested in things,” said Wilson.

“Books,” said Smythe. “He’s a very learned fellow.”

“Are these riddles?” Sabroso asked. His voice was slightly slurred. Wine spots had appeared on the jacket of his cream-colored suit.

Matthew thought that Smythe and Wilson—two brothers, perhaps, in their quest for the dirtiest hole in London to squat in and spend a few pounds for pain—were emulating the communication style of the Thackers. He said, “No riddles, I think. Just roundabouts.”

“You look like ya come into some trouble, boyo,” said Mack as he reached over to play his greasy fingers through Fancy’s hair. Almost as if they were connected by the same nerve endings, Jack reached over to do the same on the opposite side. Fancy stared at Matthew for a few seconds more, and then she continued silently—and with as much dignity as possible—eating her stew.

“Trouble,” said Jack, with a hissy giggle.

“And ya
look
like shit, too,” Mack provided.

“A turd on legs,” Jack said.

“Gentlemen?” Augustus Pons had turned his face away from Toy’s spoon. The young man kept trying to slide the spoon into Pons’s mouth, but his efforts were waved away. “At
least
,” Pons said with an air of superiority, “Mr. Spade’s current hues are somewhat restrained. He wears no
orange
.”

That brought a drunken laugh from Cesar Sabroso and a fleeting smile across Minx Cutter’s face. But no joy from the land of the Thackers.

“Shut your hole, ya fat-assed buck!” growled Jack, who leaned toward Pons with the seething glare of murder in his eyes. Matthew was quite familiar with it.

“Mind yourself!” The voice of Mother Deare was indeed motherly, if one’s mother could hammer a spike through your forehead with two words. “We are a civilized gathering, sirs! And
madams
,” she added, for the sake of inclusion. “We are all brethren here, and we should act in accord with that. Understood?” She glared at the Thackers with eyes that might cut steel. And repeated the word to their silence:
“Understood?”

Jack was the elder if one counted minutes and gray hairs, but the younger Mack seemed to be the more intelligent and diplomatic for it was he who nodded and said, “We do understand, Mother Deare.”

“Is my ass so very fat?” Pons asked Toy, with a stricken expression.

The young man frowned and offered the spoon and said, “Oh, no! It’s just
perfect
!” To which Pons gave a satisfied smile and accepted the offering.

Those at the table quietened down. Indeed, some sort of rough semblance of civility came upon the gathering. Most were silent, but for Pons and Toy who whispered to each other and an occasional winey laugh or exclamation directed into the air by Cesar Sabroso.

“But you’re feeling all right now?” Aria Chillany had come back to life. She placed her hand upon Matthew’s arm. She stared imploringly at him, the sapphire eyes wide with the just-asked question and her fingers squeezing his flesh.

“I am, yes.”

“Such a fall you must’ve taken!” She made it sound like a hero’s journey.

“Fortunately,” Matthew said with a quick tight smile, “I was able to save myself from serious injury.”

“
Very
fortunate.” Minx was regarding him over the rim of her glass. “Nathan, you seem to have somewhat of a charmed life, don’t you?”

Matthew heard Adam Wilson clear his throat down the table at the sound of the name, but he paid no heed. “Charmed? Not sure of that. But I suppose I
am
lucky.”

“The Devil’s luck,” said Mack, into his stewbowl.

“Hell wouldn’t have him,” said Jack.

“Spat him out,” Mack offered.

“
Shat
him out,” was Jack’s correction.

“You two,” said Madam Chillany, “make not an ounce of fucking sense.” She kept her hand on Matthew’s arm, and now began to do a little rubbing. Matthew noted that both Minx and Fancy took note of this action, before they pretended not to.

The dinner went on through platters of steamed clams and grilled swordsfish to its conclusion of rice pudding, sugar cookies in the shapes of various sea creatures, and offerings of sweet sherry and golden port. During this procession of edibles and potables, Aria Chillany drew herself nearer and nearer to Matthew, at one point rubbing his leg with her own while she drank her weight in wine and began to burble about that bastard Jonathan Gentry. It seemed to Matthew that Jonathan Gentry, for all his faults, might be missed by at least one person at this table, and the sudden sadness that leaped into the sapphire eyes was a pity to behold. But it didn’t stay very long, for Aria was surely a woman of the moment, and Gentry’s moment—even if it was brief and lackluster—had passed in a long sigh between bottles. Then her fingers found Matthew’s arm again and her foot taunted his ankle beneath the table, and her laughter at Pons’s gallant little attempts at joking was forced and strident and carried the note of a woman terrified of sleeping alone for fear her bedtime companion might awaken with a scream behind her teeth.

Matthew had trouble looking her in the face; in fact, he had difficulty looking at any of them, but all through the dinner he felt the eyes of Minx Cutter and Fancy upon him, one set of eyes perhaps carving him up into small pieces the easier to digest, the other set wondering what freedom would taste like in the brave new world he might present to her. At last Matthew finished a final seahorse, which he crunched noisily for the benefit of those who knew, and then excused himself from the table with a word of goodnight to Mother Deare, who seemed to rule this particular roost. It was a difficult chore getting out of Aria’s claws, and she looked at him despondently over her umpteenth glass of wine. He turned his back on her and walked away from the gathering and up the stairs.

To be joined within seconds by Minx, who grasped his arm and pressed to his side and asked quietly, “What
really
happened to you?”

“Stairs,” he answered. “Fall. Unfortunate.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

“If you lean on me any harder, I may fall down these stairs as well.” He continued his ascent and she kept beside him.

“I need you,” she said.

His eyes widened. “Pardon?”

“To go with me in the morning. I want to show you something. Back where the whales play. It’s important. Will you meet me at the stable? Say…eight o’clock?”

“Fuckin’
impossible
!” hollered Jack Thacker, and a wine glass died a shattered death upon the floor.

Matthew kept going without a backward glance, and Minx with him. They went through the corridor of sea-skeletons toward the main staircase. “I’m not sure I can get a horse,” he told her.

“Why not?”

“I’ve been a bad boy.”

She frowned. “What’re you talking about?”

“Only that I’ve offended someone here, and I may not be able to get a horse.”

“That’s more bullshit. If you need a horse, I’ll get one for you.”

“All right, then.” He stopped at the foot of the central stairs and regarded her with a neutral expression. “Yes, I’ll meet you at the stable at eight. What’s this about?”

“It’s about…” She glanced left and right, to make sure no one was near. Then she suddenly leaned into him and kissed him on the mouth. It was a long, lingering kiss, and though Matthew was amazed by this unexpected action he did not draw away.

“Well,” said Matthew when the kiss had ended and Minx was staring at him with her slightly dewy golden eyes. “May I guess it’s about…
us
?”

“Eight o’clock,” she said, and she started up the stairs without waiting for him. A few risers up, she paused and turned toward him once more. “Unless,” she added.

“Unless?” he asked.

“Unless I see you before then,” Minx held his gaze for a few seconds longer, and then she continued on her way and out of his sight into the second-floor hallway.

Matthew’s lips were burning. Now this was the damnedest thing! he thought. Who could have seen this coming? The princess of blades, attracted to
him
? He was a dull knife in this company. Still…he did have youth, and manners. He was quite simply stunned. Therefore he was doubly pole-axed when he started up the stairs and a soft feminine voice behind him said, “Nathan?”

He turned to face Fancy, who came up to stand beside him.

“I have only a minute,” she said, but calmly as was her hidden spirit. “They’ll be after me. I want you to know…when I saw you go into the water today…I knew I had to help you. I don’t know why. I just…
had
to. I don’t know who you are, or why you are here, but…I want to thank you for thinking you could help
me
.”

“I
can
help you,” he said. “If you allow it.”

The dark eyes were fixed upon him. The beautiful face—the beautiful creature from a different world—was his, for the moment. He felt it. While she gave him every iota of her attention, she belonged to him. This would change in the next few seconds; when the sound of boots clunking through the hallway came to them, it would change, but for now…

“Perhaps you can,” she said, and then they heard the boots.

Matthew had no stomach for jousting with those bastards tonight. He turned away from Fancy even as she lowered her face and turned to meet her masters, and Matthew went up the stairs two at a time sick to his heart and aching in his nose. He fished for his key to open his door but as he slid the key in, the door came ajar and that was how he knew he had a visitor this evening.