Home From The Sea

by Keegan, Mel

  “I know how it is.” Toby had dropped the wet clothes fast and reached out now, offering his hand.

  Jim took it. The fingers were cold, wet. “For godsakes get into dry things! My mother used to say a man caught sickness in his lungs and his bones, running around in wet clothes. One day the ailment makes away with us all – it’s the way your old mate Charlie died, as far as John Hardesty knew.”

  The mention of Chegwidden darkened Toby’s mobile face, and he turned his attention to the clothes. A shirt, a pair of britches; the stockings and linen he had dumped at the foot of the bed – some of the few items he owned, carried in the capacious inside pockets of his coat.

  He was thin, hard, pale in the candlelight, and shivering slightly. On a whim, Jim snatched up a blanket and wrapped it around him, and Toby held it there as he sorted linen from britches. “If you don’t mind, I’ll dry off a little before I put on your clothes, or they’ll be almost as wet as mine.”

  “Don’t get dressed on my account.” Jim managed a creditable chuckle. “You’re a pleasure to look at, in the state the gods created you.”

  “Skinny and covered in scars,” Toby said disdainfully.

  “Maybe you are.” Jim only shrugged. “Maybe that’s what I like.”

  The remark won him a chuckle. “You’re a rare one,” Toby informed him, studying him, head on one side.

  Something in the dark eyes made Jim’s pulse quicken. Without waiting to be invited, he took Toby by the shoulders and pressed him back, down, onto the bed. He sprawled here, all wiry limbs and fair skin, and Jim took the time to look long and hard at him, before he went down beside him and began to touch. A thousand caresses began at his face and breast and ended at the nest between the lean thighs; and there, Jim put his head down and began to work, while his own body throbbed eagerly to life.

  He took his pay in groans and heavy breaths. Toby never seemed to make much noise, no matter how excited he became, but when the blood must have been like liquid fire in his veins, he whimpered. Jim heard all this, and slowed his fingers and tongue even while he relished the salt-sweet taste of Toby, and the heat and bulk in his mouth. He knew Toby was close and pushed him on now, urged and encouraged, before he held his breath and drank down the rush of blood-hot seed.

  The whimpers abated, and for a moment he thought Toby wanted to rest. Jim waited there, grateful for the respite himself as he felt the tense shaft begin to relax against his lips. But what Toby wanted was very different. Astonishingly strong hands took him by the shoulders, brought him around and dumped him down, and before Jim could even curse Toby had him bare from breast to hips. Long arms went around him, lifted him into the right place, and then Toby moved against him and the straw colored hair was tickling Jim’s belly.

  It had been too long, Jim thought with some tiny corner of his mind that was still thinking while he and Toby moved together. It had been much too long, and life had a way of racing by, never to be recovered. Was The Raven his prison as well as his home, as Fred Bailey maintained? For a moment, as Toby’s mouth, his tongue, brought Jim to a crest of ecstasy and excitement he had seldom had the time or liberty to court, he thought it might be.

  The rattle of the shutter before the gale, the battering of rain lashing sideways off the sea, welcomed him back to reality. Thunder growled; the sea roared in counterpoint. Toby lifted his head and looked along at Jim with dark eyes and a wistful smile.

  “You’re a rare one indeed,” he said thickly, as if his lips were still reluctant.

  “I could say the same.” Jim sat up, reached for Toby’s head and kissed him hard. “Do you taste yourself on my tongue?”

  “As much as you taste yourself on mine.” Toby stretched his shoulders and plucked at the blanket. “Damn, do you feel that? It’s getting colder.”

  “And I’m hungry,” Jim added. “You want to eat?”

  “We just did.” Toby licked his lips.

  “Yes, well you’ll forgive me if I saved a corner for pie and ale!” Jim swung his legs off the bed and deliberately refused to notice the pain in the left. “Get dressed – I’ll take your clothes down to the kitchen, put ’em over a chair in front of the fire.”

  “You’re too good to me,” Toby accused as he pulled an old shirt of Jim’s over his head. It fit him as well as it fit Jim, and looked fine on him.

  “Maybe I am.” At the door, hands full of wet britches and linen, Jim paused. “Maybe I like to be. I’m allowed.” He studied Toby for a moment longer, and stepped out.

  Chapter Eight

  Jim woke with a start and for a moment wondered where he was. His back ached, his head was thick as honey and he smelt pickled pork frying –

  The kitchen. The three of them had opted to pull the big chairs out of the taproom, stoke the hearth and open a bottle of rum. The old lady soon went to sleep, snoring softly with Boxer and Bess at her feet on the new rag rug, while Toby and Jim passed the bottle back and forth, listened to the storm and made desultory conversation about government, ships, battles long ago and, as the rum had its way with them, old lovers.

  It must have been after midnight when Jim slept at last, in the corner chair, and he knew a moment after he woke, what had jerked him out of his dreams. The dogs were gone, though Mrs. Clitheroe was still snoring quietly in the chair opposite, and the tavern’s front door had just opened. The noise that had hauled Jim out of a confused dream about being locked in the hold of a ship with the water rising about his knees, was the thud as Toby set down the big timber locking bar.

  With an ear cocked to the weather, Jim heard no thunder. For the moment the wind was silent in the chimney and he heard no lash of rain at the shutters. Rubbing his eyes, yawning, he followed the waft of fresh air. He smelt the sea, heard the roar of the waves before he stepped into the shaft of silver-blue daylight falling in through the open door. The morning was bitterly cold, but if the sky could be trusted, it was after nine already.

  Little wonder his back ached and his neck suffered a powerful crick. He was rubbing both as he came out into the daylight, nostrils flaring on the scents of beach and ocean. His eyes protested the light but he saw Toby at once, and permitted himself the rare pleasure of just looking at him while the man had no idea he was being watched.

  He was standing in the middle of the path, and for some moments Jim thought he was waiting for the dogs. Then he saw the truth, and his brow creased in a frown. Toby was looking out for something or someone. With his eyes, he was searching as far as he could see in both directions on the path before he looked out to sea, and Jim would have sworn he was hunting through the man-sized waves. He could only be looking for a boat.

  The sky was low, dim, some shade between blue and purple, and though the rain had eased for an hour, more was on the way. The lowlands would be quagmire already and by evening, Jim knew from old experience, the flooding would be up to the doorsills of the poor people’s houses. The air was chill, heavy with humidity, but Toby stood out there for a long time, getting damp, growing cold enough to hug his arms about himself – watching.

  At last he turned back to the tavern, and Jim stepped inside a moment before he would be seen. He retreated to the bar, where a single lantern burned, and made a show of counting bottles as Toby stepped back inside. On the threshold, he whistled for the dogs. They hurried in as they saw the door about to close, and the taproom plunged back into semi-darkness.

  “Cold out.” Jim did not look up from the shelf under the scarred timbers of the bar.

  “It’s bloody freezing out,” Toby corrected. “But the dogs needed to go about their business. You and Edith were still asleep – I tried not to wake you, but Bess insisted. Out, she said, or it’ll be puddles, or worse, and Boxer didn’t have an argument to make against the proposition.”

  Despite himself, Jim had to chuckle. Toby was certainly being evasive but he did it with enormous grace and charm. “You put a slab of pork on the hob before you stepped out. It’ll be sizzling by now. Breakfast?”


  “Too late for breakfast, too early for lunch.” Toby rubbed his hands together. “It’ll be raining again in an hour, and I think it’ll rain all day. Have you ever flooded here – the tavern itself?”

  “Twice.” Jim abandoned the bottles and picked up the lantern. “There’s a beck that runs down to the sea not thirty yards east of the stableyard. It’ll hold a lot of water, but if there’s enough rain on the higher ground, up there by Squire Lawson’s place, we’ll be bailing ourselves out.”

  “So, two days of rain, three, before we fetch out the buckets?” Toby wondered shrewdly.

  “Three.” Jim frowned at him. “Two storms in three days … it’ll take one more day of the kind of rain that got Noah rummaging for hammers and nails, then you’ll be helping me hump the firewood and food upstairs, and the grog.” He was back in the kitchen, following his nose to the sizzling slab of pork.

  “The cellar floods?” Toby was a pace behind him.

  “It would, if I didn’t seal the cracks down with mortar.” Jim lifted the skillet over onto the table, set it down on a patch already burned black by hot iron. “It’s a trick I learned when I was a lad, back in London. You lift the trapdoor, throw an oilskin over it, close it again so the rag-ends hang down below, like caulking, I suppose. Then you trowel mortar in all around. You could hammer in some oakum, but the stuff stinks like – well, like tar, because that’s what it is! It’s fine in the bilges of a ship, but you don’t want it in the house, much less in the kitchen. The mortar’s good enough to keep the water out of the cellar, else you’ll be bailing it out by the bucketful, and the whole place stinks to high heaven with mildew for a year after.”

  “Like the stink of bilges. I know it well.” Toby was hunting for clean crockery as the old lady woke. “Pork and eggs for breakfast, Edith?”

  “Nay, lad, not yet. Least, not fer me. But I’s gunner make a pan o’ coffee.” She hauled her bulk out of the chair and pressed both hands to her spine. “It’s not rumblin’ an’ flashin’. We’s dry upstairs, then?”

  “For the moment.” Jim examined the edge of the carving knife, and set about the pork while Toby cracked half a dozen eggs into the grease that had cooked out of it. He watched Toby without comment, wondering if he would answer an honest question, and then thought better of it. A devious question, perhaps. “Not many people around this morning?”

  “I’m sorry?” Toby gathered the eggshells and crushed them between his palms.

  “When you stepped out with the dogs.” Jim’s eyes were on the meat, in the interests of his fingers. “You didn’t see many people on the path.”

  “No one at all,” Toby said in an odd tone of voice – taut; filled with unspoken meaning.

  Jim took the tone as his cue and angled a glance at him. “What, you were expecting someone, on a morning like this? Who’d be mad enough to run out in the lull between deluges?”

  For a moment Toby hesitated, and then dropped the eggshells into the sack under the table where Mrs. Clitheroe dumped her debris. “I can’t imagine,” he said, much too cheerfully.

  Oh, yes he could! Jim bit his tongue to choke back any comment, and slid three thick slices of meat off the broad blade of the knife, onto a plate. “There, get that into you. I swear, if you get any skinnier –”

  His voice dropped to a murmur as he took the plate. “I thought you said you liked a man skinny and covered in scars.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t,” Jim countered. “Grab those eggs before they burn!” He glanced at the old woman, who was singing tunelessly to herself as she simmered an iron pan of coffee on the small hob, on the other side of the wide fireplace. He was silent as he watched Toby scoop up three fried eggs with the big wooden spoon and slap them onto his plate.

  He pinched salt from the silver bowl and dusted them down, and held out a hand for Jim’s plate. “Mother Nature’s going to keep the roads clear for a while.” He slid Jim’s eggs beside the pork. “Which means I won’t be singing for my supper.”

  “There’s … other ways to earn your supper,” Jim whispered.

  A lovely blush warmed Toby’s cheeks. One side of his mouth curved into a smile but he said, “Well, now, I’m not a whore.”

  “And I wouldn’t ask you to be.” Jim salted his eggs. “You’ve already mended the thatch, secured the place for the storm, cut wood and helped me hump a ton of lumber into the cellar. Good enough, I should say.”

  “I … oh.” Toby chuckled. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re touchy on the subject,” Jim observed.

  “I suppose I am.” Toby was already eating.

  “Voice of experience?” Jim hazarded as he thrust a fork into the meat and only then realized how hungry he was.

  But Toby was not about to answer, and took the offer of a mug of thick, black coffee as a diversion.

  Jim let him be, but an hour later the balladsinger was back out on the coastal path, eyes roving in every direction, and if Jim troubled to notice, he felt the prickle of the hackles beginning to stand up on the back of his neck.

  Soon enough, rain drove Toby back inside. He was restless now – throwing darts, pacing the tavern until Jim pulled out the box of dominoes and scattered them over the table where Fred Bailey and Billy Mulligan had sat drinking the first time Toby sang The Hogshead.

  “Do you play?” he asked as he sorted the dominoes.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Toby pulled up a chair. “The stakes? I’ve no money, mind you! But I can pay in chores … if I lose.”

  “I smell a challenge.” Jim chuckled. “What’ll you take … if I lose? Money?”

  “Oh, no.” Toby dropped into the chair opposite. “Not money.”

  “You need money.”

  “Perhaps. But not as much as I want something quite different.” He lifted a brow at Jim. “We understand each other?”

  A pulse hammered in Jim’s throat as he dealt the dominoes. “I believe we do. That’ll be the stakes, then, will it?”

  Toby’s blue eyes were shades darker, and at last he relented with a wide, genuine smile which softened the lean contours of his face, stripped years from his age. “Only if you want to play this game, Jim. Only if you don’t mind losing, just as I don’t mind for a moment. So long,” he added quietly, “as I was losing to you.”

  The pulse in Jim’s throat beat harder, faster. “Oh, I can’t say that I mind at all, Master Trelane.”

  “Then, I’ll fetch us a little rum,” Toby suggested, “and we’ll play.”

  Win or lose, it was almost all the same to Jim. Almost. But there was enough of the hunter about him even now – lame leg and all – to make him relish the fantasy of Toby under him, heaving and gasping as he was plundered like any fair maiden of legend. He mocked his own fancies and studied the other man’s face over the hand of old, smooth-worn dominoes. Half-lit in the glow of three lanterns, he was equal parts angel and imp and Jim wanted him fiercely.

  They played for hours, winning and losing by turns while the afternoon wore away. Rain hammered relentlessly at the shutters and then eased in the early evening, and Toby slipped away from the table with a soft word to Bess and an apologetic look at Jim.

  “I’d best let the dogs out while there’s a chance to do their business without coming back like drowned rats. Bess hasn’t had a proper bath in a long time – get her wet, and she’s going to reek, bless her.”

  “Boxer’ll smell just as strong. You’ve no rush,” Jim told him. “I’m going to go up and drag a razor over my face.” He waggled a brow at Toby. “I do believe I’m winning this game, and I don’t want to take the cheeks off you when I collect what you owe me.” He raked his fingernails through his two-day stubble.

  The remark made Toby laugh quietly. “You only think you’re winning, Master Fairley! Still, by all means shave … you’re prettiest when you’re a peach.”

  He was gone on those words, leaving Jim blinking after him. A peach? Jim had never thought of himself as pretty in any sense of the word, but if Toby
was persuaded in that direction he saw no reason to argue. Chuckling, he tackled the stairs to his bedchamber, mindful of the leg that was still protesting the cellar steps.

  Two big ship nails pried out of the shutter outside the casement, and he opened one side a crack to let in enough daylight to risk pulling a blade across his throat. He was still using his father’s shaving knives, excellent blades ground almost hollow through so many years of use. The soap was indulgently fine, made of whale oil and the whitest ash, and smelling of wild mint.

  Whistling absently, he lit a candle to warm water in the tin mug, and was entertaining idle fantasies about a future at The Raven that included Toby Trelane when he heard the slop and splash of footsteps on the path. Still working the soap in the mug, steadily beating it to froth, he went to the window, wondering who in his right mind would be out on a day like this.

  A man was coming, as he would have expected – it was not a woman’s dainty tread. He was in a shabby brown coat, battered hat, muddy boots, hands thrust into his pockets, butting his way into the wind from the direction of Exmouth. The coat was dry, Jim saw at once, so he could have come no further than The Cattlemarket, at Foxholes Hill. The taverner there – big Artie Polgreen himself – watered the liquor, rarely changed the sheets and employed the poxiest whores in the westcountry, but the house had its regular customers. Jim did not recognize the newcomer, and had not expected to. Most men who walked this path were strangers, seamen on their way from one port, one ship, to another.

  But Toby knew him.

  For the second time that afternoon Jim’s hackles began to rise as he heard Toby’s voice call from the door right below this casement, “I’ve been expecting you.”

  The man came to a halt ten paces away and lifted his head. The tricorn perched forward on that head, crammed down to keep it on against the wind, prevented Jim from seeing his face, but he was looking Toby in the eye as he said,