The Queen of Bedlam Read Online Free PDF Page B

as the Sainted John Home for Boys, before it was expanded to include two more buildings for orphaned girls and adult paupers-he had been the fifth John of thirty-six boys, thus his identity. John Five had one ear; the left had been hacked off. Across his chin was a deep scar that pulled the right corner of his mouth down into a perpetual sadness. John Five remembered a father and mother and a cabin in a wilderness clearing, perhaps an idealized memory. He recalled two infant siblings, both brothers he believed. He recalled the logs of a fort, and a man in a tricorn with goldleaf trimming talking to his father and showing him the shaft of a broken arrow. His memory could pull up the shrill sound of a woman screaming and blurred figures bursting through the window shutters and the door. He saw the glint of firelight on an upraised hatchet. Then the candle of his mind went out.
    One thing he remembered quite clearly-and this he told Matthew and some of the others, one night at the orphanage-was a thin rail of a man with black teeth, tipping a bottle to his mouth and telling him to Dance, dance, you little shit! Dance for our supper! And smile or I’ll carve one in that fuckin’ face!
    John Five recalled dancing in a tavern, and seeing his small shadow thrown on the wall. The thin man took coins from the customers and put them in a brown pot. He remembered the man drunk and swearing on a nasty bed in a little room somewhere. He remembered crawling under the bed to sleep, and two other men breaking into the room and beating the drunk man to death with cudgels. And he remembered thinking, as the man’s brains flew upon the walls and the blood flowed over the floor, that he had never really liked to dance.
    Soon after that, a travelling parson had brought the nine-year-old John to the orphanage and left him in the care of the demanding but fair-minded Headmaster Staunton, but when Staunton had left two years later to answer the call of a dream bidding him to take God’s salvation to the Indian tribes, the position had been filled by Eben Ausley, newly arrived with commission in hand from jolly old England.
    Standing with John Five alongside Master Ross’ blacksmith shop, as the town began to speed itself into the rhythms of another day of trade and citizens passed by in their own currents of life like so many fish in the rivers, Matthew looked down at his shoes and measured his words carefully. “When we spoke last, you said you’d consider my request.” He looked up into the younger man’s eyes, which he could read like any book in his collection. Yet he had to go on. “Have you?”
    “I have,” John answered.
    “And?”
    John gave a pained expression. He stared at the knuckles of his hands, which he closed into fists and began to work together as if fighting a private battle. And Matthew knew this was entirely true. Still, Matthew had to persist: “You and I both know what needs to be done.” There was no response, so Matthew plowed deeper. “He thinks he’s gotten away with everything. He thinks no one cares. Oh yes, I saw him last night. He crowed like a madman, about how I hadn’t gone to the magistrate because I have nothing. And you know the high constable is one of his gaming friends. So I have to have proof, John. I have to have someone who’ll speak up.”
    “Someone,” John said, with just a trace of bitterness.
    “Myles Newell and his wife moved to Boston,” Matthew reminded him. “He was willing, and close to it, but now that he’s gone it’s up to you.”
    John remained silent, still pressing his fists together, his eyes shadowed.
    “Nathan Spencer hanged himself last month,” Matthew said. “Twenty years old, and he still couldn’t put it to rest.”
    “I know very well about Nathan. I was at the funeral too. And I’ve thought about him, many days. He used to come here and talk, just like you do. But tell me this, Matthew,” and here John Five peered into his friend’s face with eyes