"What the hell is this?" Greathouse suddenly said, and Matthew dared to look over his shoulder at what the other man had already seen.
On their left the woods had been cleared away, and emerging from the rain-thrashed gloom were the simple wooden markers of a small cemetery. Matthew counted thirty-eight graves. The surprising thing about it was that the cemetery was so orderly and well-kept, free of weeds, vines and underbrush that normally would have quickly overgrown such a sylvan setting.
"A cabin ahead," Greathouse said, and in another sticky quarter-revolution of the wheels Matthew also saw it, a dark shape sitting on the right. Then, a second dark structure came out of the rain on the left, this one with a collapsed roof. A third cabin stood just beyond that one, also seemingly abandoned, and as more of them emerged on both sides of the mudtrack Matthew realized it was a village. Or, at least, what had once been a village.
"Slaughter!" Greathouse called, and the prisoner stirred. "Is this the place?"
"No," came the reply, as he sat up and gazed around with rain running from his beard. "This is New Unity. Rather it used to be, before I went into the loon house. I wonder what happened to the people."
"You sure you didn't kill them?"
"It was an active village when I last passed this way."
In another moment Matthew caught a whiff of woodsmoke, and he spied a light glinting behind the shutters of a cabin just ahead on the right. "There!" he said, but Greathouse only nodded because he'd already spotted the sign of life. That and the smoke fighting its way up into the sodden air from a fieldstone chimney.
"I think it's best we get out of this for awhile, if they'll accept any visitors." Greathouse started to turn the team toward what appeared to be New Unity's single occupied dwelling.
"What're you doing?" Slaughter was up on his knees. "You can't stop here!"
"I say one miserable wreckage of a village is as good as another in a downpour, especially if there's a roof and a fire."
"You can't" Slaughter insisted, a note of desperation in his voice. "We're so close to the fort!"
"The fort? What're you talking about?"
"Where the safebox is buried. The Dutch settlement at Fort Laurens. We have to keep going, we can get there by-"
"Nightfall?" Greathouse interrupted. "In this rain? Only if we're kept out of that cabin at gunpoint." He urged the horses through the muck and off the road. Both he and Matthew had already seen what appeared to be a small barn just beside the cabin, and none of Slaughter's pleadings about keeping on to Fort Laurens made a whit of difference to either of them; they were drenched, cold and uneasy about this journey, both for their own reasons, and the lamplight behind a shutter was for the remainder of this day at least as good a shine as gold.
If they would be accepted by the occupant here, and that was the question. "Matthew!" Greathouse said. "Go knock at the door."
"Me? Why me?"
"You're dressed as a gentleman. A soaking wet one, but a gent all the same. Go."
Matthew got down off the wagon and went up three stone steps to the cabin's door, which was set on a porch supported by large flat rocks. The place was made of timbers chinked together with mud, the same as the rest of New Unity's constructions. Everything was weather-beaten, dark-stained and dismal. The windows were shuttered tight, but through their cracks Matthew saw what appeared to be the light of several candles. He glanced back at the figure of Greathouse, sitting with as much dignity as could be maintained in a cold drenching downpour, and then he balled up his fist and knocked against the door.
He waited, not without trepidation, and heard footsteps approaching across the planks within.
"Who's there, please?" came a voice from the other side. A feeble, quiet voice, but carrying perhaps also an expectant note. The voice of an elderly man, Matthew thought.
"Travelers," Matthew replied. "The storm caught us. May we rest here for awhile? Or at least, in your barn?"
There was a pause. Then: "How many are you?"
"Three."
"Going to where?"
"Fort Laurens," Matthew said.
Again, a pause. Matthew thought the speaker must've gone away. Then, quite abruptly, the door was opened. The old man who peered out held a candle in a wooden holder. The flickering light painted him with orange and yellow. He was lean, rawboned, and of medium height, yet had been much taller in his youth for now his back was stooped with the ravages of age. His face was a mass of lines and wrinkles, like a map that itself had been left out in the rain and crumpled by a careless fist. His remaining tufts of hair were wintry white and as fine as the first frost, but his white eyebrows had grown as thick as summer's cornfields. He angled his head to the left and then to the right, and Matthew realized the man's sunken eyes might only be seeing him as a man-shaped shadow.
"All of you, please come in," said the old man. He opened the door wider, and Matthew motioned to Greathouse that their request had been granted. "Come in, come in. Warm yourself," the old man urged. Matthew waited to make sure Greathouse could handle the prisoner on his own, getting him out of the back of the wagon, and then he entered the cabin and went directly to the cheerful crackling fireplace, where he set the pistol atop the mantel, took off his tricorn and basked in the gratifying heat.
"I am John Burton." The old man had left the door open for his other two guests and had come up beside Matthew. With an age-spotted but steady hand, he lifted the candle nearer Matthew's face. "Your name, sir?"
"Matthew Corbett." He heard the rattle of chains coming. "Mr. Burton, I need to tell you that-"
He was interrupted by the noise of the thunderball, which Slaughter had been carrying in his manacled hands, slamming to the boards just outside the door. Matthew winced, thinking that visitors to a stranger's cabin ought not to destroy the porch floor within the first minute.
"Oh, forgive me," Slaughter said in the doorway, his back bent with the irons. "I carry a heavy burden, sir."
"Sit down," Greathouse told him. He shrugged off his wet cloak and threw it upon the prisoner. "Wipe the mud off your feet before you enter a man's home."
"If I had shoes, my feet wouldn't be so muddy, now would they?"
To the credit of his nerves, John Burton had jumped only a bit when the ball had fallen, and had not lost hold of the candle. Matthew saw in the stronger light that Burton's eyes were nearly opaque, and by the flame glowed with a murky yellow that Matthew thought must be the color of London's fog. Possibly the man wasn't completely blind, but most of his sight was surely gone.
"You have a man in chains," Burton said, again tilting his head this way and that. "A prisoner. Taking him to Fort Laurens, then?"
"Yes, sir," Greathouse answered. "My name is Hudson Greathouse. Matthew and I are from New York. We appreciate your letting us warm ourselves."
"Your prisoner. He has a name?"
"Tyranthus Slaughter, at your service," he said from his seat on the porch, where he was fouling Greathouse's cloak with his filthy feet. "And you are?"
"John Burton. I should say, Reverend John Burton. I was the minister here." He hesitated, silent for a few seconds, and then seemed to make a decision. "I am the minister here," he said firmly. "Pick up your chains, and come in."
"You drop that ball again," Greathouse warned as Slaughter struggled to his feet, "and I'll take two balls for one with my boot. Understand?"
Slaughter looked up at him from his crooked posture and grinned wryly. "Put your threats back in your pocket, sir. I promise as a gentleman to be on my best behavior. All right?"
Greathouse motioned the prisoner in. Then he picked up his cloak, surveyed the damage and with a noise of disgust threw it off the porch onto a mound of wet leaves. He closed the door, walked past Slaughter and stood next to Matthew warming himself at the fire. "Ahhh!" he said, holding his palms out. "Much better!"