by Rod Duncan
“Tell us a tale, Mr No-Thumbs,” Jago said. “Tell us of the Hudson Bay.”
“It’s cold,” Elias said.
“Eighteen months you spent there. Have you no stories?”
“Only bad ones.”
Jago frowned. “You know your problem? You take each lump in your bed as an insult. And since you now sleep on the dirt, you think the very earth is against you. That’s the highborn in you. But look at me. I’m sired from a line of scum and salt. That’s what they say. But every bit of my bed that’s not a lump is an ally. None of the other Patrons would take this road without a retinue that stretched…” He waved his hand as if measuring out a half-mile of the track.
The bottle had reached him again. This time when he threw it back, Elias saw the bubbles rise. The upstart Patron was drinking a good measure.
“What about you, wench? I bet you’ve stories to tell.”
All eyes turned to Elizabeth. She seemed startled by it.
“Where were you born?” Jago asked. “Come. Don’t be shy.”
Jago was showing signs of the drink, but he’d stumbled on the right question. Elizabeth would have a cover story. But if she said a place and one of the others happened to know it, she’d be asked about someone who lived there.
Elias stood. Everyone turned to look at him.
“There’s a market in Churchill,” he said, gesturing towards the west. “Fur traders and leather workers come from all over to buy and sell. But they have to pay a tax to bring their wares into town. Or to leave it.”
“Who do they pay?” Jago asked.
“A warlord. His men protect the market.”
The Patron nodded, as if to say that was fair.
“Whatever a trader brings or takes, he must pay ten percent.”
“Who decides the value?” Jago asked.
The story seemed to have sharpened him. A moment before, he’d looked set to take another drink, but now he passed the bottle to Elizabeth.
“The value is the trader’s to say…”
Saul grunted in scorn. “They’d say too low, to make the tax small.”
Elias shook his head. “Whatever price he gives, the Warlord’s men can buy it for that. So the traders can’t risk it.”
Jago’s eyes had been narrowing but now he smiled. “You should take an oath, No-Thumbs. The things you’ve seen! A Patron might use such stories.”
Elias held out his hands. “I can’t afford to lose more limbs.”
“Is obedience so disagreeable?”
Elizabeth seemed forgotten by the others. She’d passed the bottle on already. Elias sat.
Logan turned the chickens again, prodding them with a grubby finger, testing the flesh. “They’re done,” he said, then ripped off a leg and handed it to his Patron, who took a bite before passing it to Elizabeth.
He received another for himself, then gestured for his gatherers to eat. When one of the carcasses had been mostly stripped, Logan took it away to Firehand, who still kept his lonely watch.
Elias’s hands were empty. His stomach gurgled in protest. Jago was watching him.
“You wish to eat?”
“Yes, Patron.”
“What’ve you done to earn a portion of my chickens?”
“Didn’t you like my story?”
Jago nodded slowly. “It’s a good system, that tax. I might use it for myself. But you should have set a price before the telling. You gave it free. These men are oath-bound. I feed them as a farmer feeds his stock. And the wench… I have reason to keep her strong.” The men grinned at that. “But you… Elias. I have no debt to you. No reason for care. Have you nothing more to trade?”
“I have another story.”
“Then tell it.”
“For a leg of chicken?”
“What does your story concern?”
“Tax.”
Jago reached forward, tore the wings from the remaining carcass and threw them. Elias managed a double-handed catch, taking them both from the air. The hot fat scalded, but he didn’t let his face show pain.
“A trader went to the market in Churchill. ‘What’s in your wagon?’ the guard asked. ‘One hundred leather boots,’ said the trader. The guard said, ‘Tell me their worth so I can tax you.’ ‘Twenty silver dollars,’ said the trader. The guard pulled out some boots from the wagon. They were fine. Worth many times what the trader had said. So the guard gave him twenty silver dollars and bought the whole load.”
Elias took a bite of chicken wing. There wasn’t much meat on it. But hunger made it delicious.
“That’s it?” asked Jago.
“That’s it.”
“Then you cheated me. This story has no worth!”
“It has the greatest worth. Because when the guard took out the boots and laid them on the ground, he saw that every one of them was for a left foot. He’d bought a load of boots that no one would ever buy. Except the trader. In the end, he bought them back cheap, making a profit.”
The gatherers were frowning.
But Jago smiled. “You sell your stories cheap,” he said.
“I was hungry.”
Jago gestured to the remains of the chicken on its spit. “Help yourself.”
All this time, Elizabeth had been staring into the fire. She’d understood, he thought. Of course she had. Such riddles would be bread and butter to a woman like her.
“What did the trader do with the boots?” Logan asked.
Jago reclaimed the whisky and took a long draft. When he’d wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, he said, “Tell him, No-Thumbs.”
“The trader had a brother,” Elias said. “The brother brought in a load of boots through the gate on the other side of town. He paid his tax to a different guard. One hundred boots of fine leather. Each for a right foot.”
The bottle was empty. A lesser man might have swayed. But when Jago got to his feet, it was with a sailor’s stance. He filled his lungs with the relish of a man drinking fine wine. Then he stomped off beyond the edge of the firelight, unbuttoned himself and pissed into the dirt.
When he faced them again, Elizabeth stood, meek and dutiful. The Patron took her by the wrist and led her to his tent. That at least the men could understand.
The gatherers may not have had the sharp mind of their oath-holder, but Elias had noticed in them a kind of trusting loyalty. None had asked why they shared the road with a one-time outlaw. Jago had willed it. That was enough.
At first Elias had seen Firehand as a lumbering idiot. But there was more to him than that. From time to time the giant seemed to fall asleep at his watch post. But his position in sleep was wrong. And when he sat back up again, there was no sign of grogginess or guilt. He was a half-tamed wolf, yearning to be let off the leash of Jago’s rule. His hunger was for violence itself, Elias thought.
When at last the watch was over and Saul was roused to take his place, Firehand bedded down under the sky next to his master’s tent.
All this Elias watched as he lay, without moving. It wasn’t that he couldn’t sleep. He’d been fighting to keep his eyes open. But every night of the journey, Elizabeth had taken herself off before going to bed, walking a distance from the fire before doing whatever she needed to do. And this night she had not.
He awoke with a start to no movement or sound, but to a feeling that something had just happened. His heart beat three times before he understood what had changed. The left flap of Jago’s tent hung slack where it had been stretched tight before. The dark form of Firehand lay unmoving close by. A man’s form lay on the rocks where a wakeful guard should have been sitting.
Elias didn’t hear a footfall behind him. But there was the slightest darkening of the already dark ground. He was reaching for his knife when a hand clamped over his mouth. Soft skin, slim fingers and the fine silhouette of Elizabeth’s face.
Chapter 20
It was a low tent, suited to the storms of Newfoundland. Each night the men gathered rocks to pile around the edges of the can
vas. With enough weight placed, the cords could be stretched taut from pole to pole, keeping the structure rigid, even with the wind keening around it. The brown canvas might have been cut from the sail of a cargo barge. It blended into the landscape.
Each night as she followed Jago to his bed she’d caught Elias’s eyes on her. She couldn’t read that intense gaze. The irony of it was that of the two men whose beds she’d been forced to share, it was Elias who’d taken the liberty of kissing her. Jago, the brutal Patron, hadn’t even looked at her body. She wouldn’t have needed to keep her false oath-marks hidden.
The furs he kept for himself. And most of the space within the tent. He sprawled, indifferent to her presence, whilst she shivered under the sharp angle of canvas, with only a blanket for covering.
Though she’d been prevented from talking to Elias, his presence told her much. Most of Jago’s men had been dismissed. That was the first clue. The journey was being kept secret from whoever might be watching. And from Jago’s gatherers also. Even the oath-bound man may change allegiance if the reward is great enough.
They were travelling north, towards Short Harbour. A bruised face surely couldn’t fool Jago’s trusted men, now that Elias was travelling with them. And it was Short Harbour to which Elias had sent his message. A bargain had been struck in the sacristy of the church, where no one else could witness it. That explained why she was brought along. Jago was using her as security on the deal, whatever it was. He must have mistakenly thought that Elias cared for her.
All this she’d worked out within an hour of Elias joining them. But each time she tried to approach him, to share a few whispered words, Firehand or one of the others had been there to stop her.
Jago lay facing away from her, his breath slack. The air in the tent stank of spirits. She’d taken only a taste. But for the first time, he had drunk deeply. Reaching out a hand towards the warm furs, she touched him. His breathing didn’t change. But when she prodded him harder in the ribs he sighed, rolled onto his back and began to snore.
The air was colder outside the tent. The moon had sunk low. By its thin light she made out the sleeping forms of Firehand, Logan and Elias. Saul she couldn’t see. That meant he must be on watch duty. She stepped away from the tent, placing her feet so as to make little sound. Saul could have shouted out at any moment. She was braced for it. But thirty yards from the camp, she’d still not been challenged. Stepping off the track she hitched up her skirts and squatted to relieve herself. That had been her plan. Her excuse to cover the midnight excursion. But everything she did after would be a risk.
Elias woke before she touched him. There was a moment when she feared he might call out. But then he recognised her and came willingly, following along the track, away from the others. His footfalls were not so quiet as hers. She winced at the crackle of gravel settling under his boots and looked back to the dark shapes of the sleeping men. None of them stirred.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, when they’d stopped. And again, “I’m sorry.” As if she might not have heard the first time, or as if once wasn’t enough.
“Where’s Jago heading?” she asked.
“A village. It’s near Short Harbour. One more day’s ride.”
“You lost a tooth,” she said.
Distractedly, he put a hand to his mouth, touching the healing lip. “When we reach the north coast, there’ll be villages. I mean, there should be chances to escape. I can make a distraction for you. So long as I’m there at the end, my bargain with Jago won’t have been broken. He has no claim over you.”
“You think I’d get away with Firehand after me? And what about our bargain? It seems you’re still trying to be rid of me. What happens when we get to Short Harbour?”
He sighed. “We go see the man who smuggled me to Labrador. Jago talks to him. I get my reward. That’s all.”
“And he’ll help me?”
“I can’t say. That’s between you and him.”
She’d seen no movement in the camp, but Elias glanced back as if he’d heard something.
“Is Jago… hurting you?” he asked.
It was the question she’d been expecting. The Patron’s indifference to her body in the privacy of his bed was still a puzzle. But even though she didn’t understand, she felt safer keeping it secret. Instead of a direct lie she put on a pained expression, which she hoped he might catch, even in the darkness. Then she looked away as if trying to hide it.
“What’s to be your reward?” she asked.
“That’s my business. You’ll be gone by then.”
“Don’t I deserve to know? After what I’ve gone through?”
She couldn’t see his face, but sensed that her words had hurt him. She would have felt guilty for the deception. Perhaps she should have. But not in the midst of danger.
“You do deserve it,” he said. “Yes. You do. I’m sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“So tell me. What will Jago give you?”
“A kind of revenge,” Elias said. “He’ll take me to the Reckoning. The other Patrons hate him. But they can’t stop him giving protection where he wants. That means I can be there, with the people who cut off my thumbs.”
It was the first thing he’d told her that really made sense. She knew it for the truth. “That’s why you practiced your card tricks,” she said. “They caught you cheating last time. So you’re going to cheat them again. And this time get away with it.”
“No,” Elias said. “Last time I didn’t cheat. They did. They trapped me. This time I will. And I’ll make them sorry.”
“That’s why it had to be Jago,” she said, the realisation breaking across her mind. “None of the other Patrons would do. It could only be Jago – the upstart. He’s the only one who’d help you get revenge.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Elias said. “At first, I thought another might do it. But then he found me and I had no choice.”
She was about to ask what Jago would get out of it, but Elias straightened and angled his head, turning as if seeking out something half-heard. Then she caught it too: a soft sound, not the gravel but something wetter – the mud in the ditch.
Dropping to a crouch, she pulled Elias down. Then she started backing away, over the camber of the road, onto the moss by its side, then further down as the land fell away towards a low outcrop.
They had no cover except stillness and the dark. But she’d been raised in shadows and trusted them. Elias seemed intent on going further but she grabbed his arm and pulled him onto his knees. Water seeped through her skirts where she knelt. Ignoring the pain of the cold, she focused on keeping her back bowed, presenting the same curved profile as the rocks behind them.
A silhouette rose up from the road. Not Saul’s angular frame, but an unmistakable outline, seven foot tall and with half a missing arm. Firehand turned slowly. She imagined his gaze passing across the land like the beam of a lamp. She held her breath. But the darkness was doing its work. Once he’d turned a full circle he tilted back his head. It could have been her imagination but she thought she heard him sniffing the air. Just when her chest had started to heave for breath, his silhouette began to recede. She imagined him stepping back into the ditch on the far side, along which he must have left the camp, bent low. Then there was just the road and the outline of the far hills. She opened her mouth wide and filled her lungs. Her hands were shaking.
“Did he see us leave?”
“No,” Elias said. “Or he’d have followed sooner.”
Elizabeth wasn’t so sure. If he’d thought she was trying to escape, he might have chosen to give her a few minutes start, hoping to catch them far from the camp, out of Jago’s hearing. Out of his control. Then he’d finish the battle she had started in the storeroom of the inn. He’d tell her to draw her knife, to make it a real fight. Then he’d run her through. The skin on the back of her neck tightened and she shuddered.
“He’ll know I’ve gone wandering,” Elias said. “But he’ll not know we’re
together. I’ll go back first – let him see me bedding down. You wait half an hour. Go to Jago’s tent from his blind side.”
She was about to object, but the angle of his head made her change her mind. He was still holding something back. She closed her mouth and waited.
“Tomorrow…” He faltered.
She thought she heard the sound of his teeth grinding against each other.
“Tomorrow what?”
“We’ll reach Short Harbour.”
“You said that already. I’ll meet your smuggler.”
He nodded. It was a tiny movement.
She had first thought Elias a man built of revenge, violence and trickery. But something else ran deeper in him. For all his bravado, there was a core of morality buried below the surface. It made him vulnerable to guilt.
“When I meet him,” she said, “all I’ve endured by Jago’s hand will have paid off.”
Elias’s shoulders drooped lower.
“I haven’t told you everything,” he said. “That man… it’s true he can get you to Labrador. If he wishes. But… you shouldn’t trust him. Once he knows your need, you’ll have put yourself in his power. It may be worse than anything Jago could do.”
“But he did help you to escape,” she said.
“You think me free? I’m no more than the bait in a trap.”
“Bait to catch Jago?”
“Jago’s already caught. Now they will catch all the other Patrons. And in their place they’ll put an upstart king.”
Chapter 21
On the last day of the journey north, memories rushed at Elias from every rock and hollow. He tried to push them away, but the land of his childhood would not be forgotten. Living beyond the rule of his great uncle’s fortress, he had ridden, fished and hunted as he pleased. Such remembered happiness left a bitter taste.
They stopped a mile before Short Harbour, making camp a good way from the road. A messenger rider passed as they were putting up the tents, pausing to look at them before galloping on. It was Calvary land as far as the eye could see. A Calvary messenger, then.