Freedom of the Mask by McCammon Robert

Author:McCammon, Robert [McCammon, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Published: 2016-05-31T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

Matthew stood in the Broodie cellar, looking at the crates of blue bottles and the casks of what he was certain was Professor Fell’s latest plot upon the world.

“But you can’t be…like…bettin’ your life on it, can you?” Keen asked, standing beside him with Pie on Matthew’s other flank. All of them held lanterns, uplifted to throw light upon the holdings. “I mean…about it all bein’ drugged. You can’t say for—what would be the right way to put it, Pie?”

“One hundred percent,” she supplied.

“Let me ask both of you one question,” Matthew said. “Would you want to drink a whole bottle of it?”

Neither answered.

“Well, why not?” Matthew prompted. “If it’s only gin, perhaps with a high alcohol content, why wouldn’t you want to?”

“I wouldn’t care to throw up my guts,” said Keen.

“You know that’s not all. You told me in the coach that you’ve never tasted a drop of it. You told me you’ve seen what it can do to more people than Joshua Oakley, and Pie’s told me the same. There’s a reason you forbid any of the Broodies to drink it.”

“That don’t come from me, it comes from Mother Deare. She don’t want to cut into the profits.”

“She doesn’t want her sellers to become addicted wretches and spoil the play,” Matthew said. He looked from Keen’s face to Pie’s and back again and saw they were both struggling with the morals they thought they’d abandoned many years ago. “It’s one thing to release upon the city—and I daresay the whole of England—a liquor of low cost and high volatility. It’s quite enough to be knowingly selling a drug meant to turn its users into mindless maniacs who would do anything to get more of it.”

“We don’t know that!” Keen’s face had reddened. His eyes were shiny, and he looked like a smoldering torch about to burst into flame.

“Yeah,” Pie added. “And anyway, it’s like I told you…if we wasn’t sellin’ it, somebody else would be.” She turned her lantern upon the accuser. “It’s about the money, Matthew! See, you don’t understand it! You can’t! You ain’t a part of Whitechapel, you don’t know what a person has to do to survive here! All right, maybe there is some drug in the Velvet that keeps ’em cravin’ it, but we ain’t the keepers of every poor fool out there! I wouldn’t touch the shit, neither would Rory nor anybody else got any sense in their head, but plenty do and they pay good coin for it and that’s all the matter!”

“Wrong,” Matthew said firmly. “Rory, you told me you wanted to stay far away from Professor Fell. Well here you are in his waistcoat pocket! All the Broodies are, and have been since Mother Deare came to Mick Abernathy to strike the deal. That was four years ago, you say?”

“Near four.”

“I would imagine the Velvet’s gotten more and more highly dosed as time’s gone on. It probably started off with just a light touch from Jonathan Gentry’s book of potions.

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