Historical fiction; United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
Mr. Derry smiled slowly, reached in the air for an imaginary throat,
twisted it, wiped his hand lingeringly on his breeches. "Mr. Kenny, if
Marsh be found anywhere in the town, I can detain and question him. Why,
I dare say he'll be found before Mr. Dyckman must be buried. He shall be
brought before the body, and does any man doubt the wounds will bleed?"
"May I be there!" said Captain Jenks to his tremendous hands.
Reuben felt a new sort of sternness in his great-uncle as the small old
man leaned far over the desk. "Peter." He waited until the Captain
turned to look at him. "Peter, I will not delay the sailing of
_Artemis_. When she hath her cargo and her complement, and the tide is
right, she'll go, sir, and landside justice no concern of hers."
"Well, John---" Captain Jenks sighed cavernously. "Well, John...." For
the dozenth time he rubbed at his flushed face as if cobwebs clung to
it; his gaze wandered until it met Constable Derry's, and then he spoke
more or less as to a friend: "Find him soon, Constable."
Daniel Shawn had stepped to the window, a little behind Mr. Kenny.
Reuben could see him, his gaunt and handsome face staring away through
the smeary glass. "It's the hard thing such a man as Mr. Dyckman should
die, and for what? The poor scrap of money he may have had with
him--what's money beside a man's life, Mother of God?"
Nobody answered him. To the Captain Mr. Derry said: "I expect to find
him soon enough, and you have the right to be present when he's
examined. You understand, sir, there'll be no interference with the law,
no cheating of the gallows, for except I be strangely deluded, the man
will hang." Malachi Derry bowed to the room at large and moved to the
door on the balls of his feet.
"And that no great loss, I suppose," said Mr. Kenny. A tumbling of
disorderly papers on the desk had threatened to submerge his gold-headed
cane. He rescued it and rubbed the handle, that was shaped into an elfin
woman's leg and thigh, against the dry sagging skin beneath his jaw.
"But Jan will still be dead."
Stooping for a passage of the doorway, Mr. Derry paused to stare in
disapproval. "Mr. Kenny, surely you, sir, will not display a froward
heart before the will of the Lord? We are insects before his footstool:
we do what we may, more we cannot. Is it for us to question the
judgment? Did not your friend himself commend his soul to God? He said:
'God's will be done!' Amen."
"I am sure he said it." Mr. Kenny gazed at the Constable politely. "Mr.
Dyckman was a Lutheran, by the way. If you find Marsh, and if his guilt
be proven on him, I shall not protest his being hanged, or hanged, drawn
and quartered since that ever pleaseth the multitude, and left on the
handiest gallows Boston can provide, as a plain apodeixis"--Mr. Derry
winced and looked largely wise--"a veritable indicium of human justice.
Good morning, Mr. Derry."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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