by Keegan, Mel
“I bloody knew you’d get here first, Trelane. Quick as a ferret as usual. You always were.”
“I just didn’t sit about with a bunch of well-poxed whores, getting blind drunk,” Toby retorted.
“Better than the rest of us, ain’t you?” the man sneered.
“More sober, perhaps,” Toby said quietly. “You’re not welcome here, Bellowes. They’ll have buried poor Marguerite by now.”
“Dead?” Bellowes had a rum-rough voice, like gravel on a shovel. “You’ve seen her?”
“She was running.” There was a sharp edge of anger in Toby’s voice. Jim had never heard it before, and he hung on every word as Toby said, “It was just pure luck, happenstance, that she came to the doorstep of the old lady who cooks here, begging for a copper or two to buy medicine in the morning. She made it here, and she died.”
Bellowes spat into the mud at his feet. “She were sick.”
“And you beat her,” Toby added scathingly. “It takes a fine, fine man to take his fist to a woman. What, you beat her till she picked up her skirts and ran, on a night that was cold, wet, filthy?”
“She’s dead? Then she’s dead, and there’s the end of it,” Bellows snarled. “Let it be, Trelane. She’s not why I’m here. You fuckin’ know why I’m here.”
“Oh, I know,” Toby said almost too softly for Jim to hear. “And you’re too late, Barney. We all are.”
The man missed a beat. “Chegwidden’s gone? He’s swindled the lot of us, and buggered off?”
“He’s as dead as poor Margie,” Toby informed him, “and he’s been dead for years. The house belongs to Jim Fairley now, and his father before him. You don’t believe me? Walk on up to the churchyard, read the headstones. It’s no secret that Jim and his father came out here, bought the place from old Charlie and gave him a good home, a little care and comfort, while he sweated through the last few weeks of his life.”
“Well … shite.” Bellowes snatched off his hat and dragged both hands over his face, which was sheened with oily sweat. He glared at Toby, and from above Jim saw a shining bald head and gray-brown hair caught back at his nape with a green riband. “So Charlie’s gone to hell ahead of the rest of us. It don’t change one damn’ thing, Trelane.”
“It does,” Toby said quietly, “when I tell you there’s nothing here.”
“Nothin’?” Bellowes echoed. “What in the name o’ Christ are you sayin’, Trelane?”
And he barged toward Toby, in through the open door, out of Jim’s sight and hearing. Jim’s heart beat a tattoo on his ribs, and his palms prickled with sweat as he set down the shaving mug. What he needed was the blunderbuss, but it was under the bar with the bags of shot and powder. He had no weapons upstairs, and the whole length of the taproom separated bar from staircase.
He heard voices but could not make out the words as he slipped out and along the passageway. He pressed against the wall at the top of the doglegged stairs, out of sight around the corner, and went down one at a time, hoping the voices would become more distinct. Most of what he could pick out were curses as this Barney Bellowes character grew angrier and began to snarl at Toby.
It was getting ugly faster than Jim could slither stealthily downstairs, and he heard the high, sharp notes in Toby’s voice before he began to make out words. So Toby Trelane was no angel – and Jim had suspected as much for some time, since no angel ever had so many secrets, and was so vigilant about protecting them. But Jim had taken an instinctual dislike to Bellowes, and if he was going to take sides on gut feeling alone, he would stand by Toby every time.
“For the love of God,” Toby began, sharp with alarm.
“Don’t you bloody quote God at me,” Bellowes roared. “I don’t trust you, Trelane. I never trusted you. Time an’ again, I told Nathaniel to get shot of you. You’d’ve been fish food, if it were up to me.”
“Then I’m grateful it wasn’t. And if you’ll just put the pistol away and talk for one minute –”
Pistol? Jim froze, two steps short of the corner where he would be plainly visible from the taproom. He swallowed hard on his heart, which seemed to be beating in his throat, and took a deep breath.
“Shut your yap,” Bellowes growled. “Twice I’ve told you, Trelane, and I ain’t got no breath to keep repeatin’ meself all night. You come clean, you hand it over, and you keep a head on your shoulders.”
“Barney, there’s nothing to hand over,” Toby said in desperate tones. “I’ve searched this house from loft to cellar! I’ve been in every inch of it and there’s nothing. Nothing.”
The mystery was like splinters of glass under Jim’s skin. He had always abhorred a mystery, and this one was maddening because he had come to care for Toby. Healthy lust was only a part of what he felt. It was sheer dread that gripped him by the throat as he inched nearer to the corner, listening to the sound of shoe leather on the floor as Toby moved – dread that there would be a vast emptiness where Toby had been, and the world would be colder, darker, at least in the corner where Jim lived.
“Like I’m goin’ to believe one word outta your trap?” Bellowes was sneering. “Stay right where you bloody are, Trelane! You get on your knees, you put your hands on your head and you start talkin’ truth before I beat it out of you!”
“Like you beat Marguerite?” Toby said bitterly.
“Forget the doxie! And stay where you are! I swear –”
Whatever Bellowes was about to swear, Jim never knew. He heard the slap of footsteps on stone, the rasp of a chair being shoved out of the way, a smothered curse, and then a pistol shot, deafening in the confines of the taproom. Toby grunted, not a cry of pain but the solid “ungh” of a man who had been punched, the air knocked out of his lungs. Jim’s heart seemed to stand still and then raced, and he thrust himself away from the wall now, in the half minute of safety before Bellowes could reload. Who was it who said, the only good thing about a pistol was that it had one shot, and until it was reloaded it was just a club; and as clubs go, it was puny.
Sure enough, as Jim moved out onto the lower flight of stairs Bellowes was digging through the pockets of the threadbare brown coat, scrambling for powder and shot. Jim’s eyes were wide, searching for Toby, and he swore as he saw him. He was bent back over a chair, struggling for balance while scarlet blossomed around his right arm. Blood soaked the shirt sleeve while Jim watched, but Bellowes had shot wide and Toby was more furious than hurt.
His teeth were bare in a wolf-like grimace as he shoved himself upright, kicked away the chair and seemed to ignore the wound. Bellowes was struggling with the leather pouch, spilling gunpowder over his boots as Toby launched himself – younger, taller, stronger, infinitely angrier. With his left hand, he batted the pistol and powder bag right out of Bellowes’s grip. Bellowes was still grabbing for them when Toby clenched the same left fist and hammered an immense roundhouse into the side of the man’s head.
The blow sent him sprawling. He was so far off balance, he dove over the table behind him and kept falling, into the cold, unlit hearth at the far end of the taproom, where kindling and fire irons were kept. The second hearth was only lit in the very dead of winter, with snow up to the windowsills. In April it was clean and polished. Bellowes went into it, face-first and cursing.
Jim was intent on the fire irons, fully expecting Bellowes to roll over, snatch up the nearest poker and come after Toby with it. He did not even feel the leg as he propelled himself toward the bar, and under it, both hands seizing the blunderbuss. The gape-muzzled boat gun was always kept loaded. If Toby had only known this he would have gone for it at once, but Jim had never had cause to mention it.
Waiting to hear the clatter of the pokers, curses and threats from Bellowes, he swung back toward the hearth at the far end of the taproom, and it was Jim himself who swore.
Bellowes had not moved. Toby was beside him where he lay, half in the hearth, half out, and Jim watched him give Bellowes a shove with one foot, and another, harder.
“I think you can put the na
val gun away, Jim,” he said softly.
“He’s knocked himself senseless?” Jim wondered, shifting his grip on the blunderbuss. He felt the leg keenly now as he paced the length of the taproom, and around the table that had sent Bellowes sprawling.
“He’s broken his ugly, stupid neck,” Toby whispered. “Well, there’s a wise old saying. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” He looked up at Jim, eyes wide and dark, and dropped carefully to his knees beside the body.
And then he was murmuring, and Jim had heard these words before from his lips. “Réquiem æternam dona ei, Dómine. Et lux perpétua lúceat ei. Requiéscat in pace. Anima ejus, et ánimæ ómnium fidélium defunctórum, per misericórdiam Dei requiéscant in pace. Amen.”
“Amen,” Jim echoed. He had set the blunderbuss on the table, and blinked down at Bellowes with ice cold curiosity. “What is that recitation?”
“A prayer for the dead.” Toby stood and hissed through his teeth as he became aware of the wound.
“The old language,” Jim observed.
“Latin.” Toby closed his eyes. “It’s still spoken today, by a few of us.”
“Lawyers and priests.” Jim looked away from the body, with its neck twisted at a crazy, horrible angle. “You’re not a lawyer.”
“No.” Toby’s eyes were shades darker. “I’m not. And I’m bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig. You’ll have to help me, Jim.”
Reality snapped back into focus like a physical blow, and Jim took a deep, hard breath to the bottom of his lungs. “Sit,” he told Toby.
He grabbed up the blunderbuss and thrust it back under the bar. Before he went in search of a yard of ragging to bind the wound, he threw the bolt to lock the tavern’s front door. They were lucky. The weather had kept drinkers away, and even as he locked up, he heard the rain coming back in, spattering in the puddles outside and drumming on the shutters. The only people who knew Barney Bellowes had arrived here were himself, Toby, and Edith Clitheroe, who stood in the kitchen doorway, wringing her hands and looking from Jim to Toby and back with big, startled eyes.
Chapter Nine
The trapdoor slammed down into place, and Jim dusted his hands as he and Toby stood back. Mrs. Clitheroe was stoic, brewing tea, slicing apple pasties and hard old cheese, and by now a little of the color had returned to Toby’s face. For some minutes he had been waxen, sweated, as Jim tore the sleeve out of the ruined shirt and examined the wound. He clenched his teeth as it was doused with strong rum, before Jim bound it tightly with strips cut from an old bed sheet. It was the best cure anyone knew for flesh wounds – and thank the gods, Barney Bellowes’s aim had been as atrocious as his temper.
The body was still cooling, wrapped in two well-worn sacks, tied with a dozen yards of line and dumped down at the bottom of the steps. It lay in the cellar, out of sight but weighing heavily on Jim’s mind. “That’s two dead bodies on my property in three days,” he said darkly as he scraped a chair up to the table and took a mug from the old lady. “In the six years I’ve been here, the only other dead body I’ve ever seen belonged to Charlie Chegwidden, who died of old age and infirmity … and all three of the departed are connected to you, Toby.” He looked up at the balladsinger, brows arched, took in the shuttered face, the downcast eyes. “I think,” he said softly, “it’s high time you told me the truth. All of it.”
“Yes.” Toby sank into the chair opposite, took a mug of tea and held it between his palms. “Yes, I rather think it is, before…” He looked away.
The wound was hurting him quite badly but Jim had seen at once, Toby Trelane was far more accustomed to pain than any man should be. He was simply ignoring it. The shirt sleeve was pinned back up at the shoulder; the bloodstain was drying out to a dark, rust-brown color.
“Yes, I owe you the truth,” he whispered, “before anything else happens here. Lord knows, I knew I should have told you before, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak.” He looked up at Jim, and away again. “I’m not proud of the things I’ve done. Had to do. Been compelled to do, and subjected to. Not that I’m trying to tell you I was a victim. I walked into it with my eyes wide open, and when it went wrong I was stuck tight as if my boots were a foot deep in stinking mud.”
The sound Jim heard in his voice was sincerity, and a muscle inside him relaxed. Since Bellowes’s arrival he had half feared Toby was some sort of charlatan, a charming swindler and convincing liar. But whatever else was going on, he was sure by now that Toby was none of those things. He settled to listen with an open mind.
“You heard what Barney said?” The blue eyes were wide on Jim. “I was the first to get back here because I’m the one who didn’t sit in a pox shop, drinking myself legless. I left them all drunk as lords, and walked over here. I was looking for Charlie Chegwidden, as you’ve always known. He was …” Toby shrugged. “Charlie was the trustee of the group, all of us who survived to the end, and who started out on a merchantman called The Rose of Gloucester. You must have heard of it.”
The name was familiar. Jim searched through his memory while Toby waited, and at last he ventured, “If I’m remembering right, there was a mutiny aboard. The story made it back to the towns along the coast here because she shipped out of Plymouth and a few of the lads were local. I remember, just a few days ago Fred Bailey said Charlie’d shipped out on her, but he was off her before trouble struck. Right?”
“Yes ... and no. Charlie was aboard in the trouble.” Toby shrugged expressively. “They … we mutinied because any number of the crew were being abused. There were floggings too often, and much too brutal. The captain was a God fearing man by the name of Jeremiah Graves.” Shadows gathered like crows in his face. “Two weeks out, Graves hanged a lad for having relations with another boy – and getting caught. A month later, it was another death aboard when a man died under the whip. His crime was to speak his mind to an officer about the treatment of his fellows. A few weeks later, the captain hanged another young boy for being in love with his friend … and he flogged the ship’s priest for trying to counsel him to leave such matters to the Almighty.” Toby’s voice was rough as crushed silk as he spoke these last words.
“Jesus,” Jim whispered. “You?”
The fair head nodded. “Of course it was. But you already guessed this, didn’t you?” He sighed heavily. “I never had very much faith, Jim. I’d seen too much as a youth, growing up in rough places. Whatever I had, I lost on that voyage when I watched the suffering of my companions. I heard the prayers of innocents go ignored, as if the Lord didn’t care a fig about his children. They tell us never a sparrow shall fall without the eyes of the Almighty upon it, and yet innocents pray for respite and justice, and get nothing.” Toby seemed to clench his teeth to stop the flow of indignation, and began again in a quiet tone. “I protested three times. I was flogged to ribbons, you’ve seen the scars. Touched them. When the mutineers rose up, obviously I went with them!”
“I’d be shocked if you hadn’t,” Jim said evenly. “They killed the crew, and that damned captain?”
“No. A few were killed in the fighting, and the bodies thrown to the sharks. We put most of them, captain and all, ashore in the Azores with enough supplies to last them until another ship came along and took them off.” Toby looked into his cup as if it were a crystal ball. “We knew we couldn’t go right back to England without being arrested and hung. To go anywhere else, we needed enough money to pay fat bribes, stay in the shadows, till we were forgotten. New names, new trades … the Carolinas, perhaps, or the Indies. So we went hunting.”
“Hunting?” Jim echoed, warming to the story.
A glitter was back in Toby’s eyes now. “Treasure.”
Jim groaned. “You can’t be serious! Treasure hunting?”
For the first time in so long Toby laughed, but it was a painful sound. “Not at once, but eventually, after we – well, we came by a map. Or, a piece of a map, and as it happens one of our number had spent fifteen years in the navy, looking over the shoulder of a navigator.
Harry Price was killed not long after, but he could read charts in his sleep.
“We took our bit of map to Lisbon, in Portugal. Paid a handsome fee to a chartmaker, and our navigator spent two afternoons going over the best maps in the world, matching what we had, until he found it.”
“A bit of a map?” Jim demanded. “You were mad enough to take on the Americas, the Caribbean, on the strength of a little piece of a chart?”
“There was a lot more to it than that,” Toby protested. “No one was especially mad, though we were all desperate enough to be rash. You see, we heard the story in Kingston, Jamaica, of a great treasure … months before this, in the wake of the mutiny we’d picked up a cargo. All perfectly legitimate, contracted for in Caracas and delivered properly to market. We got paid,” he added, “honest pay for honest work, which you don’t often expect from a crew of mutineers!
“The news about the mutiny hadn’t yet reached Jamaica. We knew we were running in front of it, safe enough to go ashore, drink in their taverns, spin yarns with the locals. And there was a story we heard from a blind old woman who was said to have been a great beauty in her day, and now tells tales, minds children…
“It all began a long time ago, back in the great days when Spain was shipping gold out of the Americas faster than the natives could dig it out of the ground, and enslaving the Indians, working them to death by droves, to do the labor. It seems one of the natives they enslaved was a prince by birth, the last scion of a royal house with a lineage going back further than Henry Tudor himself. The tribe protected him even in captivity – or especially then. They thought, if he could escape, maybe their people could be reborn someday through his royal blood. In those days kings were seen as gods too, you know.
“So this Indian prince was jealously protected until they could arrange for his escape, and it was just damned bad luck when a storm came up, swamped the little boat he was trying to sail away from Spanish territory. He was clinging to the wreckage when the lookout aboard a pirate vessel saw him, and they pulled him aboard.