Cock'a'tail tavern. Here stands the celebrity of New York! he thought bitterly. Look how well he's dressed, and how fine a figure he makes! He lowered his head. All that could go to Hell, he thought. The only thing that was important now-the only thing that both taunted and compelled him-was seeing Tyranthus Slaughter back in chains.
He was aware of a movement to his left.
When he looked up, the young Indian girl who was holding a wooden cup full of water instinctively stepped back, like a frightened doe. But she only retreated one pace, and then held her ground because, after all, it was her ground.
Her dark eyes shone as if pools of some exotic amalgam of ebony and silver. Her long black hair was a midnight stream, flowing over the warm brown stones of her shoulders. In her lovely, full-lipped face and steady gaze Matthew saw something ancient and indescribable, as if the hundreds of ancestors who had hunted and farmed this land, had raised children here, had died and returned to the earth, were there behind her eyes, studying him. She was maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, but timeless. She wore the deerskins, beads and ornaments her mother had worn, and her mother's mother, and on back into the mists before London's first citizen had built a fire on the edge of the Thames. He felt flowing out from her like a spirit force the dignity of great age, but also the curiosity of a child who never aged.
She said something softly, like a church bell heard at a great distance. Then she came forward and offered him the cup, and he took it and soothed his thirst.
Step by step she backed away, calmly watching him, until at last she turned around and was gone among her people.
"Matthew Corbett," said Walker In Two Worlds, standing at his side. "Come with me now."
In his state of increasing weariness, his mind beginning to fill up with fog, Matthew followed Walker back to the house of the medicine sisters. Within, the two women were prepared for him. They washed his hands with warm water from a pot over the fire, dried them and applied a red powder to his raw palms that made him grit his teeth and almost shout from the pain, but he was determined not to make a fool of himself. Next they coated his palms with a brown, sticky liquid that smelled of pine sap, and was as cooling as the pain had been hot. Pieces of white cloth were bound around his hands, followed by strips of leather that were knotted and secured so that he in essence found himself wearing fingerless gloves.
The sisters were chattering at him, wanting him to do something he couldn't understand, and Walker had not entered the dwelling with him so he was all at sea. Then one of the women overturned a large wooden pot in a corner and plopped herself down on it, motioning Matthew to follow her example. As he sat on the makeshift chair, the medicine sisters removed his-Greathouse's-boots and treated his damaged feet in the same fashion, with powder and pine sap liquid. Then they repeated the process of the pieces of cloth and also the binding of his feet with the leather stri ps, knotted and secured across the top of the foot. He started to stand up but they grasped his shoulders and wouldn't allow it. A nasty-looking black elixir was poured from a long-necked clay jar into a fist-sized cup and put to his mouth. He had no choice but to drink it, and though it smelled like wet dirt it tasted surprisingly sweet, like musky fermented grapes or berries. They wouldn't let him stop until he'd finished it all, after which he was light-headed and his tongue felt coated with fur. At the bottom of the cup was a residue of what appeared to be pure black river mud.
"Here," said Walker, as he came into the house. "These should fit you." He held out for Matthew a pair of moccasins. They were by no means new, but looked to be sturdy enough.
Matthew took them and tried them on. They did fit, quite comfortably.
"Sleep in those tonight," Walker told him. "Get used to them. Those English boots aren't any good for travelling."
"Thank you. Where will I sleep?"
"Outside my house, on the ground. I'll give you a blanket. You ought to get used to sleeping on the ground, too. Besides," he said, "my demons come in the night."
Matthew nodded, deciding it was far better to sleep on the ground than witness a visitation of Walker's demons, whatever they were.
"We'll eat well tonight," Walker continued. "But you'll be wanting to sleep early, with all that " He hesitated. "There's no English word for what you just drank, but the sisters know what they're doing. We'll leave at dawn, and we'll be travelling light and fast. That is, as fast as you can move."
"We?"
"You'll never find that man by yourself," Walker said. "I told you I liked the watch." He was still holding it, Matthew saw.
"All right." Either the drink was about to overpower him, or it was the sense of relief. "I thank you again."
"Thank me after he's caught. Which, as you English would say, is tomorrow's business."
Matthew stood up in his new footwear. He approached the beaverskin hammock where Greathouse lay silent, eyes closed, in his wrapping.
He remembered something Greathouse had spoken to him, that morning at Sally Almond's.
I can't be with you all the time, and I'd hate for your gravestone to have the year 1702 marked on it.
"I as well," Matthew said quietly. But it was equally important-vitally important-to stop Slaughter from filling up any more graves. He prayed he would be in time, and that when the time came he would be strong enough-and smart enough, having crawled back from that deepest pit in Hell set aside for men who think themselves so very smart-to be more than a match for a monster.
But, as the Indian and the English said, that was tomorrow's business.
Seventeen
Up on the road ahead of them was the wagon. One of the horses was missing, while the other stood with head hanging and shoulders slumped, forlorn in its solitude and unable to reach any leaf or stem of edible vegetation.
Matthew followed Walker up the hillside. It was still the dim light of early morning, the clouds thick overhead, and the air smelling again of approaching rain. Walker had already pointed out the clear prints of Slaughter's bare feet. "He's carrying something heavy," Walker had said, and Matthew had nodded, knowing it was the explosive safebox.
The missing horse made Matthew's guts twist. He'd thought that surely neither of those old swaybacked nags would have carried a rider. And, anyway, how fast could the horse go, even if whipped by a stick? Still, for Slaughter to have a horse meant he could give his legs and lungs a rest, which was a definite advantage over his trackers-or at least one of them.
At the first rooster's crow this morning, the wet nose of a dog sniffing his face had brought Matthew up from his sleep beside Walker's dwelling. His hands and feet were sore, his left shoulder badly bruised; if he'd awakened in such condition in New York, he might have lain in bed until midday and then staggered out to see a doctor, but in this country he thought that such injuries amounted to a splinter in the finger. Not a half-minute after Matthew had pushed aside his blanket and tested the strength of his legs, Walker In Two Worlds had emerged from the shelter. Today the Indian was wearing, along with his usual garb of deerskin loincloth, leggings, and moccasins, a dark green cloak tied at the throat. Fixed to Walker's scalplock with leather cords was an arrangement of feathers dyed dark green and indigo. Around his right shoulder was a leather sheath, decorated with the beaded images of various animals, securing his bow, and around the left his quiver of a dozen or so arrows. A knife hung in a holder from a fringed belt around his narrow waist, along with a small rawhide bag that Matthew thought probably contained a supply of dried meat. What Matthew took as spirit symbols-swirls and lightning bolts-had been painted in black on Walker's cheeks, his forehead, and across his chin. His eyes had been blackened, and made to resemble the glittering danger of tarpit pools. As Greathouse might have said, Walker was ready for bear.