THE Providence Rider is the fourth installment in the extraordinary series of historical thrillers featuring Matthew Corbett, professional problem solver. The narrative begins in the winter of 1703, with Matthew still haunted by his lethal encounter with the notorious mass murderer, Tyranthus Slaughter. When an unexplained series of explosions rocks his Manhattan neighborhood, Matthew finds himself forced to confront a new and unexpected problem. Someone is trying—and trying very hard—to get his attention. That someone is a shadowy figure from out of Matthew’s past: the elusive Professor Fell. The professor, it turns out, has a problem of his own, one that requires the exclusive services of Matthew Corbett.
The ensuing narrative moves swiftly and gracefully from the emerging metropolis of New York City to Pendulum Island in the remote Bermudas. In the course of his journey, Matthew encounters a truly Dickensian assortment of memorable, often grotesque, antagonists. These include Sirki, the giant, deceptively soft-spoken East Indian killer, Dr. Jonathan Gentry, an expert in exotic potions with a substance abuse problem of his own, the beautiful but murderous Aria Chillany, and, of course, the master manipulator and “Emperor of Crime” on two continents, Professor Fell himself. The result is both an exquisitely constructed novel of suspense and a meticulous recreation of a bygone era. Filled with danger, narrative surprises, and an almost tangible sense of place, The Providence Rider is historical fiction at its finest and most developed. It is the novel that McCammon’s many devoted readers have been waiting for.
The Providence Rider Copyright © 2012 by The McCammon Corporation. All rights reserved.
Dust jacket and interior illustrations Copyright © 2012 by Vincent Chong. All rights reserved.
Interior design Copyright © 2012 by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.
Electronic Edition
ISBN
978-1-59606-486-7
Subterranean Press
PO Box 190106
Burton, MI 48519
www.subterraneanpress.com
To kc dyer.
Thanks for the help, the encouragement,
and for showing me the silver swan.
Contents
Part One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Part Two
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Part Three
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Part Four
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Twenty Nine
Thirty
Thirty One
Thirty Two
Thirty Three
Thirty Four
One
THE crab that scuttled amid rocks in the liquid dark knew nothing beyond its shell. Born from what? Struggling toward where? It knew not. It tasted the cold currents, and within them the essence of flesh to be consumed, and so it changed its course to the direction of that call and labored slowly through the muck toward its prey.
Over more rocks again, into crevices and cracks, sliding down and clambering up in its sideways gait, its claws thrusting here and there as was the nature of the crustacean. On its passage over an oyster bed the crab’s presence sent a tremor across the field of plate-sized shells, as if in their moist senseless dreaming the mollusks felt the shadow of nightmare where no shadow could be. The crab went on, and whatever small panic had roused the oysters beyond their state of somnolence died in an instant, and life between the shells continued as before.
Whither it travelled, the crab stirred whorls of mud beneath its claws. The hard-backed and determined dweller did not know the full moon painted silver light upon the surface of New York’s harbor, or that the month was February and the year 1703, or that lamps glowed in the windows of the sturdy houses and well-seasoned taverns of Manhattan on a Saturday night, or that a cold wind from the northwest ruffled its roof. It knew only that it smelled something good to eat in this nightblack and muddy morass spread out before it, and so it went on hungrily and one might say clumsily, without forethought or plan.
Therefore when the mud beneath it opened up and tentacles sprouted forth and what appeared to be mud shuddered with voracious delight, who was to blame but itself? When the tentacles wrapped around the crab and flipped it over and the beak of the octopus began to gnaw into the underbelly, what thought flashed like a scent of dead herring through the crustacean’s nerves? For truly the crab struggled to escape, but of chance for this there was none. In bits and pieces the crab began to come apart, to lose itself to biting beak and impartial sea, and as the smaller fish darted in to seize these little floating shreds of meat the octopus pulled its prey closer like a jealous lover and squeezed itself down into a hole where two rocks kissed. Thus very soon the last of the crab was down in an even darker place than before, and so farewell to the solitary traveller.
Having completed its meal, the octopus sat in its hole. It was old and slow, and in its own way it seethed and fumed against the indignities that time had laid upon it. But it had been lucky, to feast so well. Very soon, though, the feelings of hunger began gripping its innards again. So it pulled itself from its crusty den tentacle by tentacle and ventured forth upon the battlefield once more, and drifting hither and yon like a speckled cloud it searched for a nice plain of mud and weeds to sink itself into. There it would wait for the next hapless denizen of the deep to cross its path, and woe to the crabs and small fish of the night.
The octopus, dedicated to its own progress and appetite, floated past a cluster of rocks upon which was jammed the rusted remains of an anchor torn from a Dutch ship in a storm many years before. The creature whose home and refuge these rocks and anchor had become immediately woke from its stupor and, sensing the presence of food in a tingle of its inner ear, thrust its tail from side to side and propelled itself outward. Thus the grouper’s mouth seized the bulbous head of its prey. As the alarm of black ink jetted forth—far too late—the octopus was pulled into the grouper’s maw and crushed by the heavy tooth plates within. The flailing tentacles were ingested in a gulp. It was such a clean dinner that not a shred was left for the little beggars. The grouper swam in a kind of victorious trance, its belly grazing the bottom and its tail sluggishly moving water.
Presently a new smell of food beckoned the grouper, which changed course like a barnacle-blotched frigate. Searching high and low, it came upon an oily piece of meat suspended in the water, there for the taking.
It took.
When the mighty maw closed over the meat, there was a sudden jerk upon the line that rose up forty feet to the surface. The fishhook set. The grouper, mildly annoyed, pulled back and intended to return to its den, yet was stopped at this attempt by an admirable resistance from the upper regions beyond which the grouper had no knowledge. Hook, line and grouper began a test of wills, and if anything the grouper was strong and stubborn. Still, the grouper was pulled toward the surface little by little over the following few minutes, and try as it might the fish could not shake the hard spiny thorn that set tight in its throat. On its way up from depths to heights its eyes caught sight of strange shapes in the world beyond. A round light shone down in a most beautiful silver glow that nearly transfixed the grouper. The fish shivered in its attempt to escape this nuisance of being pulled where it did not wish to go, and its gills swelled with the flush of anger.