Home From The Sea

by Keegan, Mel

  After so many years of watching the sky and sea, Jim foresaw a calm morning. No more rain for a few days at least – a chance for the beck to drop back within its own banks, so they could open up the doors at front and back of the tavern and sweep out the water. The cellar was another matter, and for just one moment Jim considered the unpleasant task of bailing it out. Then the memory of the king’s ransom hidden in the loft mocked him, and he growled a laugh.

  He would never lean on another broom, he thought, nor stuff another mattress. And if he ever ate salt pork and kippers again after this night, it would be for the sake of nostalgia. It would be venison, partridge and salmon after this, he told himself as he added fuel to the fire and hunted up enough blankets for Edith to spend a comfortable night.

  They all needed rest. While the old woman tended the food in the big bedchamber, Jim went carefully down and called through the dank taproom, “You need a hand there, Toby?”

  “No, I’m just finishing.” Toby straightened, stepped back and held the lantern to display his handiwork. “They’re not moving, Jim, not so much as a muscle, until we give them permission to twitch.”

  The way he had tied them was studied, Jim thought. He had used the kitchen rope, a thin, fine line used for everything from tying sacks to securing the load on a barrow. Burke and Pledge lay in water, spines bent like a couple of bows, hands and feet secured together, and the line passed over each gullet. They would only punish themselves if they tried to struggle. Both heads remained propped on the split logs, or they would have drowned already.

  “They can’t get the tip of any finger to so much as an inch of rope,” Toby said darkly. Vengefully. “They’d be there till the breath failed in their lungs, if we chose to walk away from them. Good enough?”

  He was splashing back through six inches of water on the taproom floor as he spoke, and stopped at the bottom of the stairs, two steps below Jim. “Good enough,” Jim decided. “They’ll keep, Toby. He laid one hand on Toby’s shoulder. “I took a look out … the sky’s clearing. We’ve seen the worst of the flooding; it should be going down again now.”

  “Thank God,” Toby breathed.

  “You can still say that?” Jim pressed against the wall, giving him enough space to squeeze by.

  “Figure of speech. Perhaps thank some goddess who’s been watching over me since the night Nathaniel put his brand on me.”

  “One day,” Jim said darkly, “you’ll tell me the whole story.”

  “Only,” Toby murmured, “if I’m too drunk to have enough sense not to speak of things that’d be better forgotten.” He leaned both palms on the wall, on either side of Jim, and kissed him soundly. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Jim’s voice was husky.

  “For trusting me.” Toby ducked his head for a moment. “After the things you saw and heard, when Nathaniel got here –”

  “After those things, it’s a bloody miracle Burke and Pledge are still alive,” Jim rasped. “I never suspected myself of being a selfish, jealous sod, but I think I could learn to be, in matters concerning yourself.” Toby looked sidelong at him, taken aback. “I won’t share,” Jim elaborated, “any more than Nathaniel Burke would share.” His voice gentled. “But it’ll be my great pleasure to spoil you, the way a man spoils the one he loves most in the world.”

  “No marks and collars and chains, then.” Toby was only teasing, and his eyes were bright.

  “Not unless the collars are studded with jewels.” Jim rose to the teasing. “And the chains are gold, and holding pendants of emeralds and sapphires which match your eyes. And as for marks … any mark I leave on you will be from some frantic embrace, and it might last long enough for me to see a hint of it, the next time we lie down together.”

  To his intense gratification a blush rose in Toby’s face. “Well now, that would be entirely different.”

  And Mrs. Clitheroe chose that moment to lean out of the room above and yell, “Grub’s on, if any bugger’s ’ungry enough to eat it!”

  Hunger was the wrong word. Jim was ravenous, and Toby looked just as famished as the slabs of pork and fried brown onions slithered onto a couple of plates. Toby tore into the food as if he had not eaten in a month, while Edith poured half coffee, half rum. She took a mug for herself, and a piece of bread stuffed with meat and onions. She was in the leather chair by the fireplace while Jim perched on the three-legged stool and Toby sprawled on the floorboards, letting the dogs creep close and feeding them while he continued to eat as if he had never seen food for an eon.

  Food and warmth went a long way to reviving Jim. The strength of youth was still his greatest ally, as old Fred Bailey had told him many times. The leg throbbed but it was not weak, and the rum settled it, soothed it, until he turned the old blind eye and deaf ear to it. He knew Toby was watching him, but Toby of all people knew how to ignore what could not be cured.

  He looked down into the wide, dark eyes, gave Toby a smile and was gratified when it was returned. The food filled the void within, though Jim would have been lying if he said he tasted it. In the chair opposite, Edith was starting to drift into semi-sleep. She must be exhausted, Jim realized. She might not be his grandmother, as Burke had assumed, but she was quite old enough to be, and she had been awake and on her feet for far too long.

  “Edith, get you to bed,” Toby said quietly, one hand on her knee to shake her out of a doze.

  “I ’as to keep watch on them villains,” she said tiredly.

  “No, you don’t. I tied them so tight, their hands’ll be blue,” Toby assured her. “If we start hearing bellowing and cussing from below, one of us will go down and dose the pair of them with enough laudanum to put them out for another six hours. You can forget about them till you’ve had some sleep.” He smiled into her craggy brown face. “You can keep watch on them in the morning while Jim and I … get this sorted out.” He looked over at Jim now, face softening. “I promise you, Edith. By sundown tomorrow you’ll rest easy.”

  “And there’s a warm bed waiting for you.” Jim jerked a thumb over his shoulder, in the direction of the small room. “The fire’s on, there’s a pile of blankets. What else will you need?”

  “The privy,” she muttered as she hoisted herself out of the chair, “but I’ll make do wi’ a chamber pot, an’ chuck it out the winder, come mornin’.” She cackled with exhausted humor, and clapped Jim’s shoulder on her way by. “God love thee. God love thee both. I seen the treasure with these old eyes!” At the door she paused, face shrewd indeed. “It’ll be a big secret, then, will it? I won’t be tellin’ that silly young swine of a grandson o’ mine?”

  “Not yet,” Jim agreed. “A fat purse of gold coins for you, Edith – but keep the secret until Toby and I decide it’s to be told.”

  “Aye. An’ if it’s to stay a secret, lifelong?” Edith hazarded.

  “Then it stays a secret, doesn’t it?” Toby got to his feet and dusted down his britches. “That fat purse of yours can be topped up three or four times, to keep you in your leisure in a cottage at the top of the hill which never floods, with a young maid to do your bidding and take care of you in your old age. Yes?”

  Again, she cackled. “Oh, aye. I knows ’ow to keep a secret, an’ the better the secret, the easier it is to keep.”

  She was gone with those words. Six short steps, and the door opposite opened, clicked shut. The big room’s door remained open. Bess and Boxer and the cat had the run of the upstairs. While Jim watched, Toby set down the basin from the washstand and half-filled it from the pan on the hob. The water was too hot for the animals, but it would soon cool. The dogs had eaten, and Jim took a moment to shred a piece of leftover pork and put it up on top of the wardrobe. The tomcat would eat when he deigned to.

  The bed looked like forbidden luxury. He sank down on the side of it and felt the mattress give more than it should have under his weight. The split in the bottom would have to be stitched up. But not tonight. With a groan, Jim threw off his waistcoat and tugged l
oose his shirt. He knuckled his eyes and when he opened them again he saw only Toby, who stood just out of reach, side-lit by the firelight, haunted, lovely.

  Without a sound, Toby Trelane stripped to the skin and draped the britches and stockings over the chairs, where they would be almost dry by morning. And then he turned deliberately to display the mark, the brand on his flank. For the first time Jim was invited to look closely, and he studied it for some moments.

  The brand was a capital B with wings sweeping out and up from the upright stroke. Nathaniel Burke’s mark. He would endorse documents with this sigil; he might have signed aboard the Rose of Gloucester with it. Jim leaned over and with one fingertip traced the outline of the wings. The brand was a decade old now and starting to blur just a little, but it would never fade entirely. Like the scars on his back, Toby would wear it to the grave.

  He was looking down, watching, waiting for Jim to say something, and Jim searched for the right words. “I can’t erase this,” he said at last. “And I don’t think it ought to be erased. It’s part of who you are. It was the price of your life, so you told me.”

  “It was.” Toby sighed heavily and turned toward Jim, head bowed. “The crew of the Rose weren’t angels. There was an element of scum among them, and when the mutiny cut them loose to run wild they got the bit between their teeth and – ran. They stood together just enough to keep the Rose viable. Nathaniel likes to call himself the captain because it was he who had the strength – the power of personality, the ruthlessness and readiness to kill. It was enough to hold the crew together, and make the Rose an attractive proposition for others who joined us in the ports between Caracas and Jamaica.”

  “And you?” Jim wondered, loath to pry and yet greedy to know the details. “You could have jumped ship, turned your back on them and found another way.”

  “I intended to.” Toby sat on the side of the mattress beside him. Their double weight made it sag again. “I just left it too late. I wanted to jump ship in an English-speaking port, because at the time I didn’t have more than a few words of Portuguese and Spanish combined. I’ve a good ear, but we were never in one place long enough for me to learn, and then …” He looked away. “Nathaniel took on the survivors of a crew that’d been whittled to nothing by a storm and sickness aboard. Their ship was rotten at the waterline, leaking like a hulk. She went down while we watched, off the coast of South America, and our crew was suddenly a dozen hands stronger, with another man aboard who’d called himself a captain.”

  “There was blood,” Jim guessed.

  “Oh, there was blood.” Toby’s head tipped back. He worked his neck to and fro, where the muscles were stiff. “Four days after the new crew came aboard the Rose, a Liverpool character called Ephraim Buckley made his move, a bid to seize command. He tried to pull a pistol on Nathaniel.” The shadows of memory wreathed Toby’s face, finding every bone and hollow. “You might have noticed, Nathaniel’s left arm doesn’t work quite the way it should.”

  “I noticed. Shot?” Jim was not surprised.

  “The pistol ball buried itself right in the bone,” Toby said grimly. “It’s still in there, causes him a lot of pain he’ll never admit to. Rufus and I held him down and tried to get it out ... we cut and cut till we thought we’d kill him, but we couldn’t get to it, and all the while he was screaming his head off, with vast amounts of rum in his belly and none of it dulling the pain enough to …” He shuddered visibly. “In the end all we could do was close the wound over and cauterize it with a smoking iron. We didn’t have a surgeon aboard, but Rufus had tended to sheep and I’d stood by the dead and dying often enough, me being a priest in my wasted youth. Neither of us was squeamish.”

  “Damn.” Jim swallowed hard. His throat was dry as dust. “And where was Ephraim Buckley of Liverpool while this was going on? Dead?”

  “Dying.” Toby blinked several times, as if banishing the ghosts. “Nathaniel was already down on the deck when he put a pistol ball into Buckley’s gut, and Joe Pledge had the man in irons before he knew what was happening. Buckley lived the day out – long enough for us to cut into Nathaniel and almost kill him without even getting to the ball. Joe swore he’d hang, draw and quarter Buckley, if Nathaniel died … and you can be sure he meant to do it. Then Nathaniel woke, dragged himself to his feet. He came up on deck, looking closer to corpse than living man. He had Buckley bound to a hatch, naked, and the crew of the Rose took turns with a navy cat, cutting him to pieces, head to foot, back and front, till there wasn’t much left that you’d recognize as ever having been a man.”

  He was shivering with the memory, and without thinking Jim turned to him, both arms going around him. “Ghosts,” he said. “They’re just ghosts. They’re out, now, in the light. Ghosts can’t stand the light – just let them go, and they’ll not be back.”

  “Let them go,” Toby echoed, leaning heavily on him. “Let them go.” He seemed to catch himself, shake himself, and his voice firmed. “You can take me if you want. Fuck me. Nathaniel surely intended to – it was what he wanted of me, most often, back in the days when we were hunting for the treasure of Diego Monteras.” He blinked at Jim, eyes wide and sane in the firelight. “Take what you want from me. It’s yours to claim.”

  The offer was raw. For the life of him, Jim did not know if it had been made out of love, desire, guilt or duty. Roughly tender, he pulled Toby closer and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Don’t be so daft. When and even if I do that to you, Master Trelane, it’ll be because you’re wanting me to do it so much, you can’t speak for trembling with need. And if I do it, it’ll be because I want it for us, for your pleasure as well as mine.” His arms tightened for a moment, enough to inspire a grunt from Toby. “As for Captain Burke … well, now, he’s hogtied and lying in the cold water, out of his head on Dutch laudanum. I’d say his pigeons are coming home to roost by the flock.”

  “You don’t scorn me.” Toby seemed puzzled.

  “Scorn you? For heaven’s sake, why should I?” Jim was surprised.

  “I’m dishonored,” Toby said simply. “And the worst thing is, I did most of it to myself. I was a priest. I did shag my handsome young verger. Even on Sundays … it was far from the first time, when we were caught! I did run away, and sign aboard the Rose under false pretences, with credentials that would have been rescinded.” His voice dropped. “I stayed too long on the Rose, was caught between the scum of one crew and the bastards of another, and I was glad to drop my britches and ask Nathaniel to put his brand on me as if I were a heifer on the way to market.”

  The rasp of his voice made Jim shiver. “You survived, and any debt you ever owed to Nathaniel Burke – and I don’t believe you did! – was repaid long ago, likely a dozen times over. You were a free man when the survivors of the Rose split up. You’re a free man today. And,” he added, “if we can just negotiate the morrow, you’ll be a rich man as well as a free one!” He took hold of Toby with two fists buried in his hair, making him look up, turn his face toward a kiss. “What is it you’re looking for, Toby? Absolution?” Toby’s eyes clouded. “I’m not a priest,” Jim said hoarsely. “I can’t give you absolution. All I can give you is love.”

  “Love,” Toby echoed, as if it were a word of high magic. The blue eyes closed. “I’ve heard it said love is the only real absolution under heaven.”

  “Is it?” Jim heard a chuckle in his own throat. “If it is, then consider yourself absolved.” He tugged Toby back and down, onto the bed. “Consider yourself loved.”

  He put his head down, silencing Toby with his mouth, while his hands feathered over him from brow to knees and back again, dwelling across his chest, where his nipples rucked like pebbles, and between his legs, where the root of him rose, hard, proud, seeking. A groan issued from Toby’s throat and he spread those legs, lifted his knees into his belly, offering everything that he was.

  But Jim shushed him, whispered to him to be calm. “Another day,” he said against Toby’s ear. “Now’s not the time, no
t when the pair of us need to be fighting fit tomorrow. I need you strong and quick, not hopping about, raw and aching, because you thought you owed me some bloody debt of duty!”

  For the first time in so long, Toby smiled. “It’s yours to take, Jim, any day you think is the right day.”

  “Only because we both want it,” Jim said gruffly. “And then you can roll me over in the clover, tickle me pink and till my field. I like it no less than you do … always supposing,” he added thoughtfully, “you do like it. Or did the bold Nathaniel teach you to hate it, and despise yourself for surrendering to it?”

  Toby caught him, pulled him over and down, until Jim was pillowed on him. Under the weight, his voice was breathless. “He taught me to hate it when it’s not done with love. Taught me the difference between love, lust and the shite one endures to survive.” He looked up, bright eyed. “You want a lesson in this part of life? Talk to almost any woman, Jim, and certainly those who work in any whorehouse! You think the deed is any different, any more dire, because it’s a man on his hands and knees, just waiting for it to be over?”

  “Shush,” Jim told him, and kissed him to silence. “You think too much.”

  “Make me stop,” Toby whispered.

  It was a challenge Jim was pleased to take up. He knew Toby’s body by now, its scars, its tender places, where to touch him to make him gasp, where to stroke to bring him up hard and urgent.

  There was so much he wanted from Toby – so much he could have taken from him now, tonight, while Toby was so vulnerable, he would not have protested. But the last thing Jim wanted was to take advantage, and he made it as simple as their first time had been.