Read Online The Queen of Bedlam by Robert R. McCammon - Free Book Online

lemon-yellow, and pink. She was ever the elegant-looking lady, Matthew thought, save for the black boots with metal filagree at the toes. He’d heard she could give a drunken customer a kick to the buttocks that would land him on Richmond island without need of a ferryboat.
    As the pipes puffed and the gallery keenly watched this new entertainment, Polly Blossom strode along to the second row on the right side and stopped there to stare down upon the gentlemen who occupied that pew. All faces there were averted and no one spoke. Still the lady Blossom waited, and though Matthew couldn’t see her face from this angle, he was certain her beauty had somewhat hardened. At last the young Robert Deverick, all of eighteen and perhaps wishing to show that courtesy was still in fashion to ladies of all situations, stood up from his seat. Abruptly the elder Pennford Deverick grasped his son’s arm and shot him a scowl that were it a pistol had blown his son’s brains out. This caused a current of whispers to go flying about the room and culminate in a few wicked chuckles. The young man, fresh-faced and scrubbed and wearing a pin-striped black suit and waistcoat in echo of his wealthy father’s attire, looked torn for a moment between individual chivalry and family solidarity, but when Deverick hissed “Sit down,” the decision was made. The youth turned his eyes away from Madam Blossom and, his cheeks inflamed with red coals, sank back down into his seat and his father’s control.
    But instantly a new hero arose upon the stage of this play. The master of the Trot Then Gallop, the stout and gray-bearded Felix Sudbury in his old brown suit, stood up from the fourth row and graciously motioned that the lady in need could find refuge where he’d been sitting between the silversmith Israel Brandier and the tailor’s son Effrem Owles, who was one of Matthew’s friends and who played a wicked game of chess on Thursday nights at the Gallop. Some gallant gadfly began to applaud as Sudbury gave up his place and the lady slid in, and then several others clapped and guffawed until Pennford Deverick swept his gray-eyed gaze around like a battle frigate positioning a cannon broadside and everyone shut up.
    “There’s a sight, eh?” Solomon Tully dug an elbow into Matthew’s ribs as the noise of conversation swelled once more and the linen fans flapped against the roiling smoke. “Madam Blossom coming in here like she owned the damned place and seating herself right in front of the Reverend Wade! Did you ever see such?”
    Matthew saw that, indeed, the madam of Manhattan-who probably could own the building, with all the money he’d heard she and her doves were making-was sitting directly in front of the slim, austere, black-suited, and tricorned William Wade, who stared solemnly ahead as if through the lady’s skull. Another note of interest, he saw, was that John Five-dressed in a plain gray suit for the occasion-was seated to the right of his father-in-law-to-be. Whatever might be said about Reverend Wade’s rather grim personality, let it never be said that he wasn’t fair-minded, Matthew thought. It was quite a feat for the minister to give his daughter over to marriage with a man whose past was largely a blank, and what wasn’t blanked were memories of brutal violence. Matthew considered that the reverend was giving John Five a chance, and perhaps that was the most Christian gift.
    Someone else caught his eye. Matthew’s stomach clenched. Three rows behind John Five and Reverend Wade sat Eben Ausley, dressed up like a watermelon in a green suit and a vivid red velvet waistcoat. For this important day he was wearing a white wig with rolled curls that spilled down over his shoulders in emulation of formal judicial style. He had chosen to seat himself amid a contingent of young attorneys, among them the law associates Joplin Pollard, Andrew Kippering, and Bryan Fitzgerald, as if sending a message to Matthew and all those