Seven Shades of Evil, page 1
Seven Shades of Evil
Stories
Robert McCammon
Contents
The Four Lamplighters
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Night Ride
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
The House at the Edge of the World
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
The Scorpion’s Eye
One
Two
Three
Four
Skeleton Crew
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
The Pale Pipe Smoker
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Wandering Mary
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Incident on the Lady Barbara
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
About the Author
The Four Lamplighters
August 1702
One
“If this is music,” said Hudson Greathouse in a voice not so sotto voce, “I’ll eat my boots.”
His declaration of both melodic revulsion and strange appetite was met with a faint spit of hissing, as if a small nest of snakes had been disturbed in their reptilian raptures. The display of displeasure came not from creatures of the scaly community, but from the females sitting in the audience dressed in as much finery as they could sculpt upon themselves—high wigs, waist-choking bodices, and festoons of lace—so that they appeared more like birds of vibrantly colored feathers than the ladies Hudson and Matthew Corbett saw every day in the shops and on the streets of New York.
“Well?” the irritable critic continued, seated beside Matthew. His knitted brows told the tale. “Do you think this is music?”
“Hush!” commanded—and indeed a whisper may be commanding, if delivered through gritted teeth—the person sitting on the other side of Greathouse, who this day happened to be Sarah Goodenall, who secondly happened to be a strolling guitarist at Sally Almond’s tavern on Nassau Street, and who thirdly happened to be Hudson’s romantic interest of the moment. Greathouse returned a scowl that meant the interest was in jeopardy but otherwise kept his next remark in his throat, and Matthew decided to keep his own opinion in silence.
Silence was not the order of the day. This August afternoon, Hudson and Matthew sat amid the audience of forty or so citizens—again, mostly women—in the concert room of the Dock House Inn, a chamber offering pews sawn from the best local oak, drapes the color of purple passion itself (chosen specifically by the inn’s fastidious proprietor Gilliam Vincent) and an upraised stage upon which now stood the four performers whose musical abilities irked Hudson Greathouse and brought a—necessarily guarded—smile of amusement to the face of Matthew Corbett.
They called themselves the Four Lamplighters, and whose lamps they were currently determined to light were the females in the audience, who by their squeals, giggles, and shifting in their seats told Matthew that the wicks were being well-flamed. The first song in this performance had been titled “Fishing for Beauties on a Summer’s Eve” and after many proclamations of how long and sturdy were the poles of the Lamplighters, things had gone in the further general direction of southern titillations.
But Matthew had to admit that they were quite a sight. The lead singer and guitarist, who had announced himself as Lawrence Love, had introduced the others of this traveling troupe: Rollie Dell on the second guitar, Adrian Foxglove playing the fiddle, and Ben Dover banging away on a pair of drums mounted on stands accompanied by a rather extraordinary cymbal contraption that he operated with a foot pedal. What made them quite a sight, however, was their manner of dress: Love all in burning red, Dell in eye-scorching blue, Foxglove in a shade of sea green, and Dover in a nearly luminous purple that put Gilliam Vincent’s drapes to pitiful shame.
And then there were the wigs.
Were they wigs, or constructions of powdered cake swirled round and round by a mad London baker to ridiculous heights? No, they were certainly wigs, and what wigs they were! Love’s was a bonfire to match his suit and ruffled shirt, Dell’s was a blue scream, Foxglove wore the hue of the green-creamed waves that rolled into New York’s harbor, and Dover wore the color of the bruises and abrasions that had only recently disappeared from Matthew’s body after his fight with the sinister swordsman Count Dahlgren at Simon Chapel’s school for young criminals.
It was because of the aftermath of that near misadventure that he was sitting in this audience. Greathouse had come to his doorstep—the little dairy house behind the Grigsby home—not to chide him for being a “moonbeam” or demand that he continue his lessons in swordplay—but to ask him to accompany himself and the Lady Goodenall to this musical farrago.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead at a concert,” Greathouse had steamed, “but Sarah’s bound and determined, and I think it wise to go along. If I don’t, what would that tell her of my interest in her music?”
“The truth?” Matthew asked. “That is … nothing at all?”
“I can’t admit that! She’s too good of a cook and I am very fond of her roasted chicken! Also, she affords me a cut rate on my dining at Sally Almond’s!”
“So very valuable to you, I’m sure.”
“Yes, valuable! And I don’t like that tone, Corbett! So get yourself to the Dock House on Friday afternoon at two o’clock, as I don’t wish to be assaulted by this dubious performance alone! Your ticket has already been purchased!”
Misery desires company, Matthew had thought. Further argument was futile, and he had decided it was best not to rile this walking mountain, as there was more training to be done as a new associate of the Herrald Agency, and it could be as rough as Greathouse pleased.
But there was another reason Matthew now sat among this audience, which connected with the strange ending of his deeds regarding the elderly woman he had come to know as the Queen of Bedlam. The blood card delivered to him as a portent of death from the hand of the mysterious Professor Fell weighed heavily upon him night and day, burdening his step in the sunlight and blighting his sleep. In truth, Matthew thought of Hudson Greathouse as a bullying lout with only a modicum of intelligence … but a bullying lout with only a modicum of intelligence who could be counted upon to deflect a bludgeon, blade, bullet, or choke-rope from one of Fell’s hidden assassins, therefore Matthew deemed it wise to tag along whenever the opportunity presented itself.
The Lamplighters were in full voice now, Love’s lead singing being supported by the harmonies of Dell and Foxglove. What was amazing to Matthew—and to the rest of the gallery, he was sure—was that the Lamplighters stood for their performance and actually moved back and forth upon the stage. It seemed also that they liked to shake their wigs, which brought forth further animation from the ladies while the menfolk sullenly smoked their pipes as if to befog the chamber. The Lamplighters were all young men, in their early twenties the same as Matthew, and all might be called handsome but for the drummer Dover whose leviathan of a nose could be a hook for a tricorn hat … or two, or three.
They had begun a new ditty, with the accompaniment of banging drums and harmonies from the green and the blue:
“My name is Love!
(His name is Love)
My name is Love!
(His name is Love)
And I thank the stars in Heaven above, that every time I set my cap, I can lie in any lady’s lap! My name is Love!
(His name is Love)
My name is Love!”
“Groan,” said Greathouse, followed by a little whuff when Sarah put an elbow in his ribs.
And another tune followed, or rather tumbled forth:
“Oh, the merry month of May, is the time when the ladies lay,
Down their troubles and their woes,
And feel the grass between their toes,
Oh, how I wish I were grass!”
“You’re an ass! Does that count?” Greathouse suddenly rumbled, loud enough to cause snickers from the men, sneers from the women, and evil eyes from the Lamplighters, but the foursome was undaunted and the rhythm never wavered.
“Oh, the merry month of May, is the time when the ladies play,
With their trinkets and their toys,
And all the bright and handsome boys,
Oh, how I wish I were …
“Good Christ,” was Greathouse’s twisted-mouth response, though it was delivered in a guttural funk.
“Thank you, fair ladies, and you fine gentlemen who possess good manners, and you know who you are!” proclaimed Lawrence Love when the song and the applause—all from feminine hands—had ended. “We would now like to share a song that has been a great part of our performance since we came together as musicians in Liverpool three years ago! Since then, we have played the stages of some of the most majestic halls of England—”
“I didn’t know horse barns had stages,” said Greathouse directly into Matthew’s ear, keeping his volume low and therefore his ribs free from attack.
“—and thus we find ourselves on tour in these glorious colonies,” Love went on, “and straight here we have come from a smashing concert appearance in the great town of Boston. So without further pause, here is the tune that one might say put the Four Lamplighters on the path to fame and the wonderful opportunity to meet such gracious, noble, and … yes, of course! … beautiful company. Here is ‘The Ballad of the Rutting Ram.’”
“God save us,” said Greathouse, again only for Matthew’s ear, but Matthew had the thought that if the man could sing and play a guitar this might be the very kind of tune that would spill forth.
With a wigshake, a strum, a drumbeat, more strumming, and a wide-legged stance that Matthew thought might bring the fair ladies to fainting, Lawrence Love began:
“A ram he stood in the pasture there,
(Oh, hi-oh, hi-oh)
Spotted he a dame with long blonde hair,
(Oh, hi-oh, hi-oh)
Said the ram to the damsel fair,
Might I have a locket of hair,
To soothe me through the winter nights,
And take my desires to their heights,
For I am a rutting ram,
And I’m horny as can be,
(Yes, he is a rutting ram)
And I’m horny as can—”
“CEASE THIS OBSCENITY!” came a shout from the back of the chamber that made nearly everyone—Matthew and Greathouse included—fly up out of their seats. It was followed by the crashing of what sounded like a giant’s timber smacking the oak hull of a sixty-cannon warship, and in this caterwaul the Lamplighters went silent, and everyone wrenched their necks around to see what parade had just marched into the show.
It was a brigade, not a parade. Leading the pack was High Constable Gardner Lillehorne, resplendent in his own sky-blue suit with clouds of ruffles at the neck and cuffs, his blue tricorn topped by a sunny yellow feather; yet there was no sunshine in his countenance, for his narrow, pale, and black-goateed face wore an expression of the deepest disgust, and his hammering at the nearest pew with his ebony cane was summer thunder.
But pounding the hardest with his own evil black billy club was the vile—at least to Matthew’s senses—squat, red-haired, and stocky so-called constable Dippen Nack, whose usually rum-sloshed mouth opened to holler accord with his master’s voice: “Obscenity! Obscenity! Obscenity!”
As if he even knew what the word meant.
By this time, everyone was on their feet and chaos ensued. Some of the women had regained their senses and were screaming their outrage at this intrusion, while the pipe puffers just kept smoking up the place. Coming in behind Lillehorne and Nack were three more burly gents Matthew recognized as constables, telling him that this had been a well-planned attack on the musical talents of the Lamplighters. The performers themselves remained uncharacteristically mute, but for Dover stomping the cymbal pedal once as a last shimmering note.
But one person was far from becoming mute. From the front row of pews, there sprang an imp of a man perhaps five feet in height at most, sixty or so years of age, with a single white sprig of hair atop his pate that stood erect to emulate the goatee at his chin, which ended as sharply as a white dagger. His eye sockets were nearly shadowed over by his brows, which met above the bridge of his bulbous nose like a battle between two armies, each conflicting with the other in shaggy combat.
“Here, here!” the imp shouted, with even more vigorous volume than had Lillehorne. “What’s the meaning of this outrage!” And before he’d finished that rather needless question, he had scrambled up to the high constable and from his low position appeared to be about to bite into Lillehorne’s knobby blue-stockinged knees.
“Obscenity!” returned the shout of Dippen Nack, who shoved the little man back with his billy club to the center of the chest and then, grinning, looked around to make sure everyone noted his prowess with the bludgeon.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” fretted Gilliam Vincent, who was racing around the chamber doing his impression of the nearest windmill. The shouts and screams of the enraged females were growing to a fever pitch, and Matthew caught sight of two of Polly Blossom’s more hefty ladies of the evening who looked as if they were preparing to roll up their lace sleeves and start battering some constables’ faces into tomorrow’s mush.
“Silence! Silence, I say!” But Lillehorne’s command went unheeded, and Matthew was amused to see lighting upon the expressions of high constable and brutish bully a flicker of fear before the advancing petticoated warriors.
Then there glided through the open double doors another petticoated figure, tall and lanky in stature, who lifted up two green-gloved hands and said in his manly tone, “By my order, this wretched performance has ended, and anyone who protests may be spending a night behind bars along with these four beasts!”
It was probably the wrong thing to say, and Governor Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, likely knew it at once, for here came a wall of women throwing themselves forward even as their hapless menfolk tried to restrain the assaults.
“Home detention, I should clarify!” Lord Cornbury was showing that as a politician he knew how to fry an egg before it was thrown at him, also that he was fashionable in his pale green gown and curly white wig, his makeup and eyeshadow immaculate. “But iron bars for these four purveyors of obscenity!”
“Damn your eyes, lady!” yelled the imp. And instantly, awash in his boat of confusion: “I mean … man. They’re making music, not—”
“I know full well what they’re doing, sir!” returned the governor. “And I presume you are their manager? Sidney Sodd by name?”
“And a name known in the entertainment world as a star shines in Heaven! This is a damned outrage I’ve never seen the like of!”
“Oh, really? You mean you’ve already forgotten that four days ago you and this bunch of yours were hauled behind bars in Boston for just such depravity as you’ve displayed here? And a messenger was sent by packet boat from that upstanding town to warn us just what would ensue at this …” The long thin nose wrinkled. “… event?”
“If he wants to see depravity,” Greathouse whispered to Matthew, “he should come with me on a late-night tour of the taverns.”
“I protest this treatment!” Sodd plowed on. “In London, these young men are considered artists of the finest merit! The Boston Puritans have no sense of art!”
“I have no opinion on that subject, sir, but I do know this is New York, not New London, and obscenity will never have a purchase in this fair haven! Lillehorne, do your duty and take these offenders away! A night in the gaol should cool their ardors!”
“We are due in Philadelphia in two days! You cannot detain us!”
“Listen to him prattle, Lillehorne! Yes, I’ve seen those broadsheets you’ve passed around and I am aware of your schedule. Next Philadelphia and then Charles Town. I’m sure the authorities in those locales will appreciate our adherence to proper social conduct. Away with you!”
“I refuse to be taken away like a common criminal! My charges likewise refuse to be—”
Sodd abruptly stopped speaking. Two men Matthew didn’t recognize had come into the chamber behind the constables. One was husky and bearlike, the other smaller with pinched features and a hawk’s beak of a nose. They simply stood staring at Sodd, who Matthew saw gave the men a fretful glance.
“All right, then!” Sodd said in what was nearly a tangle of three words. “We’ll go peacefully. Yes, we’ll go! Bring your instruments, boys! A night in the gaol won’t be so terrible, will it?” And though this inquiry was aimed at Lord Cornbury, Sodd seemed to be speaking directly to the two newcomers.
