The Queen Of Bedlam Part 49

"We'll find out," came Matthew's answer, as he looked up and saw the hawks coming down.

Berry realized what he was doing. The hawks were almost upon them, shrieking as they came.

"Oh, sh-!" she started to say, but then she dropped down as he had done, leaned forward, and with a m.u.f.fled groan applied her own gra.s.sy brown mask.

The large hawk darted in first, its talons extended. Matthew stood his ground, his eyes half-slitted. He was ready to dodge if his stratagem turned out to be a stinking failure.

The bird's wings spread. It was about to strike. Matthew caught the red gleam of the predator's eyes. He tensed, his heart hammering.

A few feet from Matthew's face, the hawk suddenly pulled its claws in and accelerated. He felt the wind of its pa.s.sage as it streaked by with a blur of wings. The second hawk skimmed over Matthew's head but its talons had also retracted. Berry got up off the ground, the blood on her face covered by muddy dung. They saw the two hawks make a ragged searching circle above them and then, in the manner of any practical killer, call off the hunt. The birds flew back toward the vineyard, in the direction of their aerie.

If the boys were watching the hawks to lead them, this might offer some time. But very little. "The gatehouse," Matthew said, and together the two dirty crows flew along the road toward the only way out.

There was no one around the house. Dragonflies flitted over the lily pond, which enticed Matthew and Berry to wash their faces yet they both knew there was no time to pause. They kept running past the pond, both of them sweating and their lungs afire. A hundred yards farther on, and there stood the white gatehouse with its multi-paned windows. The gate itself was secured by an iron rod. Matthew tried the gatehouse's door and it swung open. Inside there was a small desk, a chair, and on the wall some clothes pegs. A brown coat hung from one of the pegs, and from another dangled a canteen with a leather strap. Matthew judged how best to break the nearest window. His mind felt sludgy. The upper lid of his left eye was swollen and his lips felt shredded. He said to Berry, "Put your back against mine and stand firm."

In that position he put his foot through the window, careful not to break out all the gla.s.s at the bottom. Then, after the explosion of breakage that he thought surely must bring the deathpack running, he said, "Guide me!" and Berry directed him as he twisted his body and leaned backward to rub the cords against the edges of gla.s.s.

He worked with haste but not without pain, for gla.s.s cut skin as well as rope. If he sliced an artery, all was for naught. He did cut himself but it wasn't bad enough to stop. He just gritted his teeth, s.h.i.+fted his position, and kept sawing.

"That's it!" Berry said. "You've got it!"

Not yet. d.a.m.n these cords, they were as strong as Hudson Greathouse's breath.

What are you going to do, moonbeam?

"I'll show you what I'm going to d.a.m.ned do," he said, and Berry asked, "What?" but he shook his head and concentrated on the cutting. Something foul crept into Berry's mouth and she spat violently.

"Keep watch!" he told her, but he thought-hoped-the boys were still searching the woods for them. His shoulders were about to burst from their sockets. Was anything happening? This was like trying to get through the Gordian Knot with a b.u.t.terknife. Ow, that was skin! Come on, come on! d.a.m.n the pain, keep cutting!

He wrenched at his bonds. Nothing yet. Then he felt the pressure lessen just a fraction and he sawed with a maniacal fury. He imagined he heard the cords part with a quick pop, but whether he'd actually heard that or not, suddenly his wrists were coming unbound and he fought them free. The blood roared back into his hands as the cords fell away. He immediately went to work on Berry's ropes, though his fingers were still mostly long lengths of dead meat.

When Berry's hands were free, she gave a deep sob and began to cry but Matthew caught her filthy, beautiful face by the chin. "Stop that. No time." She stopped. He reached for the canteen, uncorked it, and poured some liquid into his palm but it was not water. Rum, he thought as he took a taste. There had to be some reward for the gate-watcher. He drank a swallow that burned his mind crystal clear and pa.s.sed it to Berry, who in spite of a glob of horse s.h.i.+t on the canteen's mouth also took a drink. Matthew restrained himself from going through the coat and the desk drawers. He said urgently, "Come on," and led Berry to the gate. The iron rod was not so heavy that one older boy couldn't pull it free from the wooden guides on which it rested. He pulled the gate open.

"Stay off the road," he told her, as he stared into her eyes. "Just keep going, no matter what. I'll be along as soon as I can."

"You're coming too," she said; a statement.

"Not yet. I'm going back for the notebook."

"Matthew! You're mad! They'll-"

"Shut," he ordered. "Don't waste time." He pushed her out with his new-found and much-appreciated hands.

"You can't go back! If they-"

"I'm leaving the gate open. If they see it they'll think we're both out. That's why I say you've got to stay off the road, because they'll send riders. Go!"

She hesitated, but only for a few seconds. Then she went, fast as a hare before a hawk.

But sometimes the hares did escape, Matthew thought as he returned to the gatehouse. Especially a hare who did the unexpected. He took a longer drink of rum and saw stars. Going through the coat and the desk drawers, he found nothing useful. Like one of those multiple-barreled death-dealing pistols Ashton McCaggers had told him were being developed in Prussia. He had the feeling he'd been born fifty years too early for this particular occupation. Still, here he was.

If Chapel destroyed that notebook-and he would, as soon as he thought Matthew and Berry had escaped-then all Matthew had to show Gardner Lillehorne was a madman in a cellar.

Get in quickly, break that office door open, and get out quickly. Would someone be guarding the house? Or were they all at the game? What about the women who'd cooked their feast? He could stand here and second-and-third-guess himself to death. He started to take a last drink of courage, but instead he spat some s.h.i.+t out of his mouth and ran toward his fate.

Forty-Eight.

Before Matthew ventured into the manse he was compelled to kneel beside the lily pond and drink. Then he thrust his face into the water, for his makeup was drawing flies. He got as much of the mess off as he could. His fingers found the wounds of beak-jab and talon-sc.r.a.pe, his left eye was on its way to swelling shut, and there was a gash on his right cheek that felt so deep the bone must have a clawmark on it. A pretty little scar to go with his collection, he thought. At this rate he'd have to wear his own mask to be presentable in public.

But he had his vision and he wasn't dead, nor was he severely wounded enough to wish to die. He had his hands back, and that was a blessing. Quick in and quick out, and pray to G.o.d they didn't put a boy on the gate before he was done.

It was deadly dangerous to be out here in the open. He heard shouting off in the distance, to the right. They were combing the woods, but it wouldn't be long before they did discover the gate. At any second he expected someone to come running along the road, knife in hand, to take up position on the front steps. He got himself up, his heart pounding so hard it shook his body, climbed the steps, and tried the door. It had not been locked by Chapel or Evans on the way to the game, and Matthew walked into the house. He shut the door behind him. The place was silent. He hurried through the corridor to the dining-room, his senses questing for movement or sound, and there stood before the door that separated him from Chapel's office and the last remaining notebook.

Of course he'd seen it locked, but out of the habit of humans to not trust their eyes Matthew tried the handle. Locked then, locked now.

Now what?

Nothing to be done but the way of the brute. Matthew set himself and kicked the door as hard as he could manage. Then once again, when it wouldn't budge. It seemed colonial oak was equally as strong as the English variety. The thing wasn't opening so easily, and in the bargain the noise would awaken the eyeless failures in Chapel's cemetery.

Matthew desperately looked around. The tall bra.s.s candelabras that shed so much light upon the glittering silverware. Their bases looked st.u.r.dy enough. He picked one up and found his muscles straining under the weight. This is what a moonbeam can do, he thought. Sir Lancelot he was not, but he backed up nearly the length of the room and held the candelabra's base as a medieval knight might have hefted a jousting lance. If the door didn't give this time, his ribs were going to be caved in.

He set off running. Hit the door under the handle with his makes.h.i.+ft lance and had an instant of feeling impaled upon it. Was that his ribs, making such a cracking sound?

No. It was the door, which burst open and crashed against the wall behind it. The battered thing hung limply on a single hinge. He had felt similarly unhinged after his drugged escapade with Lady LeClaire, who he remembered was a sleeping not-so-beauty at the top of the stairs.

Someone began to clap their hands together.

Matthew caught his breath and spun around, the candelabra still in his arms.

"A wonderful example of how to wreck a perfectly good door, sir," said Simon Chapel. Beside him and behind a few paces stood Count Dahlgren, his face devoid of emotion but the green eyes glittering. "What do you think you're doing, otherwise?"

Matthew couldn't get his tongue working.

"Oh," Chapel said, with a quick mirthless smile. "I see. Returning for the notebook, is that it? Surely. You have nothing without it, correct? Even Mr. Nack knew that." His topaz eyes behind the square lenses ticked right and left. "Your ladyfriend? Where is she?"

"Gone," Matthew said. "Out the gate."

Chapel's mouth may have twisted just a fraction. "Out the gate?" He composed himself, like any ambitious son of a poor tinker would. "Well, it's a long way to town, isn't it? A long way also to the nearest farm. We'll find her." He looked Matthew over from dirty shoetips to top of his touseled and claw-ripped hair. "Maybe you ought to go to that village in Wales, Matthew. I'm sure the professor would find some use for an escape artist of your caliber. And you got out of the cords, too! Fascinating. But some of the boys are just out front and their knives are very hungry, so you can tell me how you gave my birds the shake while we-"

He was interrupted, quite firmly, by a shouting and hollering outside the house that even Matthew could tell was not rough-housing boys eager for a killing. There was some panic in the voices that went up and up like the hawks fleeing bitter earth. "What is that?" Chapel said to Count Dahlgren, and he was answered not by the Prussian but by the crack of a pistol shot.

"Sir! Sir!" It was Lawrence Evans, shouting from the doorway. "Someone's gotten in!" The voice was high and thin, squeezed by fear. "Riders!"

Chapel s.h.i.+vered. In an instant his face went pallid, as if he were freezing to death.

"Mr. Chapel!" Evans squawled, and now could be heard through the open door and along the corridor a small thunder of horse hooves, more panicked shouting, and a second pistol shot that made the master of the house shake in his shoes as if his little world had suddenly been knocked out of the sky by one of Increase Mather's comets.

Chapel turned like a force of nature, however wounded, and grasped the front of Dahlgren's beige coat to shove the man aside. But then he glanced back at Matthew, his face contorted and saliva glistening at the corners of his mouth. Beneath the mask of a gentleman was a mad dog. He said to Dahlgren, "Cut him to pieces."

Chapel rushed from the room along the corridor, and Dahlgren suddenly moved with the speed of quicksilver to draw a sword from one of the displays beside the fireplace.

Matthew glanced toward the doors that led out to the terrace and the garden. They were shrouded by the wine-red drapes. He thought that if he had to spend more than two seconds trying to get through the drapes and the doors, he'd be skewered in the back. Even if he made it, he would die amid the flowers.

Dahlgren was advancing. The sounds of conflict outside the house made no impression upon him; his orders had been given.

Matthew had to move. He thrust forward with the candelabra, aiming at Dahlgren's chest. The Count nimbly stepped aside, grabbed the knight's lance with one hand, and tore it out of Matthew's grip, at the same time bringing the rapier's deadly point up in a strike at Matthew's belly.

Matthew backpedalled out of range. Dahlgren followed, throwing aside the candelabra with Prussian disdain. Abruptly Matthew found himself pushed back against the other display of swords on his side of the fireplace. His hand chose a rapier before his brain could tell him it was a stupid thing to do, yet he pulled the weapon free. Instantly Dahlgren went into a combat posture, turning his body to make a thinner target and putting his free hand behind him like a rudder, knees bent but not too much, feet s.p.a.ced for balance, hand closed firmly around the sword's grip and the thumb locked down. All the d.a.m.ned things Greathouse had tried to teach, Matthew thought grimly.

He knew he had not the chance of a spit in a skillet to survive the next minute, let alone a concentrated attack. When Dahlgren realized he was facing a moonbeam, the headstone carver ought to get his chisel.

Someone was out there. Riders, Evans had said. How many? Two pistol shots and pandemonium. If rescuers had somehow arrived, he had to live long enough to be rescued.

To bluff was his only option. He emulated Dahlgren's posture. What was the b.a.s.t.a.r.d looking at? His sword? No, his eyes. Reading the fear in them? Matthew stared also into Dahlgren's eyes, which now held a spark of interest. With sweat oozing from his pores he waited for the next thrust even as he s.h.i.+fted carefully to the left.

Dahlgren's sword struck. A feint. Too late, Matthew reached out to check it and was off-balance. The blade hissed in, twisted, and struck at Matthew's face like a viper's tongue. Matthew jerked his head aside and stumbled backward, but now Dahlgren was coming in on him with a death's-head grin.

In panic, Matthew threw his sword like a spear even as he realized the action would stamp him as a rank pretender. Dahlgren reached out with his own blade and casually flicked the flying sword aside. It clattered across the silverware on the table. At once Matthew had bounded back to the array of weapons and pulled another one out. Dahlgren was almost upon him, the sword's point rising toward Matthew's throat. Matthew braced his legs-to h.e.l.l with the form-and knocked the point aside. Dahlgren's arm seemed to rotate with supernatural speed and again the rapier's tip was a flash of steel, this time aimed at Matthew's chest. Matthew dodged in an ungainly sprawl but was not quick enough, for the sword tore through the cloth of his right upper arm. When the point came out, there was blood on it but Matthew was beyond feeling pain. He stepped forward, his teeth clenched and his face a rictus of terror. He lunged at Dahlgren's face but in the next instant his rapier was broken in half and his wrist almost with it.

Matthew pulled a third sword free. As he was turning to face the Count, the enemy's rapier tip almost pierced his nose. He ducked down and scrambled away to give himself room.

Dahlgren followed.

Matthew tensed, his nerves screaming. Dahlgren made a quick feint to the right, but Matthew was too slow to respond and didn't go for it. Then Dahlgren's knees bent a little more, and Matthew knew the next attack was coming. He backed up and hit the table.

Dahlgren's rapier tip moved slowly from right to left, with mesmerizing effect.

Matthew took an instant to dare a glance at the table. Dahlgren sprang forward, but Matthew had already seen and picked up Chapel's silver pepper bowl with his left hand. He threw the contents into the swordsman's eyes.

Dahlgren cried out and threw an arm across his face, the sword thrust went wild over Matthew's right shoulder, and for a second Matthew had the clear image of a chessboard where his next move had to be offensive. He took a rapid measure of distance followed by a single quick lunge toward his opponent. The point of his sword pierced cloth and entered Dahlgren's chest on the right side. It was not the same as striking a bale of hay; this was more like sticking a side of beef. Dahlgren wrenched himself backward off Matthew's sword and kept going back, his own rapier thrusting left, right, and center in a blur and his free hand working to clear his eyes.

Matthew rushed upon the man. He swung with all his strength, intending to hit Dahlgren on the side of the head. There was a brittle clang as the two swords met and half of his broken rapier again flew across the room. Dahlgren blinked rapidly but his eyes though shot with red were cleared. He swung a backhanded blow at Matthew, who once more fell against the table with a grip and eight inches of rapier in his hand.

Dahlgren sneezed pepper from his nostrils. His chest convulsed. He spat bright blood upon the floor, and then settled himself into his formal combat posture.

Matthew dropped the broken blade, picked up a silver plate full of chicken bones, and threw it at him. The plate pa.s.sed over the man's head and crashed against the fireplace bricks. A second thrown plate glanced off his shoulder. Matthew reached to the table a third time and brought up a knife, still glistening with chicken grease.

Dahlgren retreated to the nearest array of swords and slid free a second rapier.

Matthew looked dumbly at his own little chicken-skinner. His fingers opened, it fell to the table, and he retrieved his original sword that lay amid the carnage of lunch.

The Prussian advanced, the two swordpoints making small circles in the air. Outside the house there was a third pistol shot, and now from beyond the corridor came the noise of fighting: the smack of a blow against flesh followed by a shrill cry of pain.

Dahlgren came in like a juggernaut, his face perfectly composed and a red thread of blood spooling from his lower lip.

One rapier thrust high while the second thrust low. Matthew parried the first without losing his own sword, but the other blade was aimed at his groin. There was no way to escape it without growing wings. He twisted his body for protection and was almost gratified when the rapier slid into the flesh of his left thigh. He'd thought he was beyond pain, but this nearly paralyzed him. A grunt escaped his lips, fresh sweat bloomed on his forehead, and he struck with his own blade into the Prussian's face. Dahlgren jerked his head aside but his lung wound was telling; the tip of Matthew's sword went through the man's right ear and just that quickly Dahlgren gasped for air and stumbled backward. Matthew's sword left the wounded ear and Dahlgren's blade retreated from the wounded thigh.

Then Dahlgren began to circle, keen for another opportunity. His back was to the open door of Chapel's office. He made feinting motions with both rapiers, watching for Matthew to react. Blood was welling up on Matthew's breeches leg, and as he backed away he feared his strength was a short-lived proposition.

Dahlgren took a quick stutter-step toward Matthew with the tips of both rapiers crossed, and that was when a figure with a black and swollen face came screaming and staggering out of the doorway behind him and grabbed him around the shoulders in agonized supplication.

Matthew saw his chance while the Prussian tried to fight off the nearly deranged Miss LeClaire. He thinned his body in the way Greathouse had told him and lunged as best he could with one thigh feeling like a melon. Dahlgren battled his blade away even as the man struggled to get loose from his enc.u.mbrance. The swords clashed and rang and Miss LeClaire shrieked like a cat on fire. Matthew struck high and low and high again and always the two blades were there to defend, yet Dahlgren could neither s.h.i.+ft his position nor attack with the baggage hanging off him. Then the Count threw one sword away, turned, and seized the woman. With a shout that might have been a Prussian oath, he ran her through stomach to back. He pushed her off his blade with a disinterested boot and still parried Matthew's next strike. Miss LeClaire stumbled against Matthew, who swung at Dahlgren's head and was rewarded by having his sword knocked from his hand. It spun away as the lady crumpled to her knees and pitched forward onto the remains of her beauty.

Dahlgren's face was contorted, the blood coming up through his coat. Perhaps eager to finish his opponent, he now charged Matthew not with the cool logic of a swordsman but with the fury of a wild animal. The sword flashed at Matthew's ribs. He sidestepped the wicked point, grabbed at Dahlgren's rapier arm to pin it, and drove his fist into the man's face. b.l.o.o.d.y spittle flew from the mouth. They locked together and fought at close quarters. Matthew saw the green eyes, flamed with red, right in his face. He slammed his fist again into Dahlgren's mouth, splitting the upper lip, and then he too received a stunning blow to the side of his head from the hilt of Dahlgren's sword.

In this blurred and frantic struggle, as Matthew's knees threatened to give way and he hung on to the sword arm for dear life, he saw Dahlgren's free hand start to go up under the man's waistcoat. And with that betraying motion he knew.

Before the hand could reach its destination, he gave Dahlgren an uppercut on the chin that rocked the man's head back. He took another blow from the rapier's hilt that made a red haze briefly blind him, and suddenly he was falling across the table and dragging the gentleman's silverware with him in an unG.o.dly crash of platters, trays, and soup bowls. He lay on the floor on his stomach amid the debris, his arms pinned up underneath. When Matthew sat up with bells ringing and beasts roaring in his head, Dahlgren was staggering around the table after him, his rapier ready for the kill and blood drooling from his mouth.

Matthew stood up.

He shoved a chair at Dahlgren but it was kicked aside. Then Matthew flung himself at the man even as the rapier thrust, its tip penetrating Matthew's coat but luckily no flesh. Again he caught the sword arm and again they fought face-to-face, Matthew battering at Dahlgren's head, Dahlgren trying to get in a blow with the rapier's hilt and clawing at Matthew's face with his other hand. They caromed off the table and went 'round and 'round like battling tops.

As Matthew fought for his life, he had one thing in mind.

Something Hudson Greathouse had said.

You'll someday cross swords with a villain who'll long to get a short blade in your belly. You'll know him, when the time comes.

Matthew knew him.

He saw Dahlgren's left hand go under the waistcoat. He grabbed at the wrist to trap it, but another blow from the hilt rattled his brains. Where was Dahlgren's hand? Panic flared in him. Where was- Suddenly Dahlgren's hand emerged. It had six fingers, one formed of steel and deadly sharp.

With a whuff of air and a burst of demonic strength, the Count drove his hidden dagger squarely into Matthew's stomach.

There was a sudden loud crack. No more, no less.

Dahlgren screamed like a woman. He fell back, the dagger dangling and then dropping from the hand that hung off a broken wrist. His rapier also clattered to the floor. His eyes were wide with shock, and perhaps they widened even farther when Matthew reached under his own waistcoat and pulled out the silver fruit tray-about the size of an open hand-that he'd slid down to protect his belly from the dagger attack that Greathouse had warned him in the wisdom of experience to antic.i.p.ate.

One thing could be said about Dahlgren, Matthew thought. The man certainly kept his thumb locked down.

Dahlgren shook his head back and forth, his damp blond hair standing up like horns. Matthew took the opportunity to smash the fruit tray into his face. When Dahlgren retreated a few paces and made a dazed circle with the broken wrist clutched to his chest, Matthew hit him again. Then a third time, and the Prussian fell into the wine-red curtains that hung over the garden doors but due evidently to his status as a grenadier did not allow himself to fall. Matthew dropped the fruit tray back into the silver debris from whence it had come. He tore the curtains off their hooks and wrapped them around the man's head. Then, moving slowly and painfully but with definite purpose, he managed to pick up a chair and with it clouted Count Anton Mannerheim Dahlgren a final soul-satisfying blow that sent the swordsman cras.h.i.+ng out the doors and over the terrace railing into the goldfish pond, where he sputtered and feebly kicked beneath his wrappings.

Matthew fell to his knees.

It couldn't have been very long before he could move again, because though the commotion out front had subsided there were still shouts and an occasional curse to be heard. He crawled to Charity LeClaire and ascertained from her moaning that she was still alive, and if she lived long enough to think about it she would surely reconsider her purpose in this world.

He got to his feet and unsteadily went through the corridor.

Lying in the doorway was Lawrence Evans with a huge blue bruise at the center of his forehead. His nose was also pretty much a pulp. A knife was on the floor near his right hand. Sitting not far away with his own hand pressed to a circle of blood on the s.h.i.+rt at his left shoulder was Dippen Nack, whose nose was covered with a white plaster and both eyes dark-shadowed courtesy of Matthew's fist. The black billyclub rested beside him, a good afternoon's work done.

Matthew thought he'd taken too much of a beating, for surely he was seeing what was not there. He blinked and looked again.