Home From The Sea

by Keegan, Mel

  The April night was already strikingly cold. The front door and windows were still open, the hearths were out and the floor was still wet, though the water had stopped actually running. It would be the end of summer before the house was fully dried out and smelt right again. Jim sighed as he paused at the bottom of the stairs to ease the kindling on his back. With a glare at the three very dead bodies, he asked himself if he cared enough to stay here and see the work through.

  The share of the prize left on the table was more than generous. Toby had picked out the most perfect jewels, even then hedging his bets, covering every eventuality, in case Burke made it away with the rest –

  Or had he chosen the very best to leave Jim with a rich gratuity, because he knew he was not coming back? The stones winked and glittered in the lantern light as Jim carried the kindling through to the kitchen. Edith was on her feet again, sweeping, stubbornly pushing and shoving at the piles of muck deposited by the falling water. She knew as many curse words as Jim and she was muttering them all, perhaps too deaf to know he was in the doorway behind her. He dumped a bundle of kindling into the fire basket, and without a word returned to the taproom.

  He pulled an old tobacco pouch from the shelves under the bar – it still smelt strongly of tobacco, and the leather was sound. Resigned by now, he gathered his share of the legacy of Diego Monteras into the pouch and shoved it deep into his pocket.

  With daylight he would take a broom and sweep the floor, hunt under the tables and into the corners, looking for every last diamond and sapphire. They were his due, he thought – he had earned them, fair and square, even if the balladsinger ran and kept running.

  And if he ran, Jim realized he could not find it in himself to blame him. Toby was the last survivor, but he would be called to account for The Rose of Gloucester, and he was far from innocent. If the church caught up with him – and it would – his crimes might be dragged into the blue light of day, right back to the time he was caught in carnal embraces with the handsome young verger, and then signed aboard the ship as a man of the cloth when in fact he would already have been dismissed from the priesthood. If Toby should be caught, he might easily pay for his sins at the end of a rope. If he had run tonight, it was out of healthy dread and self-preservation; and Jim could blame him for neither.

  Sighing again, he stepped back through into the kitchen and knelt to set the kindling, refire the hearth. The sticks and shavings were dry, and caught in moments. He watched the new fire, blew on it, trimmed it tenderly, before he lifted down one bundle of the firewood that had been stacked along the mantel.

  Edith was sorting out the pots and pans, trying to find canisters and jars that had been disordered – looking for tea, coffee, sugar. An assortment of odds and ends gathered on the table as Jim lit a taper from one lantern and used it to light five others.

  The fire was stronger, and he held his hands to it. He had not realized how cold he was, and he tried to remember when he had eaten last. Edith had turned up plenty of food which had been kept well out of the water, but just then any bite would have tasted of ash and choked him. He pulled the fire irons closer, poked and moved the wood until the fire blazed up, and then hooked the big hob and pulled it into place. The cauldron clattered onto the black iron plate and he stood back, watching as Edith brimmed it from the tall brown jug.

  “Coffee wi’ a drop o’ rum, an’ a good supper,” she decided, talking more to herself than to Jim. “Soon as Master Trelane gets back. There’s rabbit fer the dogs, an’ all.”

  Cold to the bone, just short of shivering, Jim held his hands to the fire and watched as she hunted for bread, cheese, onions, apples. The smell from the cellar was oppressive and the three dead bodies in the taproom weighed so heavily on his mind, he could not be still.

  “I’ve work to do.” He chafed his hands together. “Shout, when the coffee’s done. I’m going to wedge the kitchen door tight shut. Just leave it be, Edith, all right?”

  She gave him a shrewd look. “I’s seen dead men afore. I were just a lass when I seen the bodies they pulled out of a shipwreck.”

  “But they weren’t shot, blood from shoulders to hips, with holes in the middle of their heads where their faces ought to be,” he said quietly.

  “Mother o’ God.” She crossed herself. “Aye, then, I’ll … I’ll be glad to leave it to thee.”

  And Jim was wishing he could pass the duty to someone else as he hunted under the bar for a piece of sacking. Folded thickly enough, it almost stopped the door swinging. He had to lean all his weight on it to get it closed, and it might take a hammer and chisel to get it back out of there.

  The Raven was in a sorry state, filthy, wet, bedchambers gutted, reeking and filled with death. The best he could do was fetch a bundle of old potato sacks from the coach house and cover the bodies where they were. He tugged Pledge straight in the chair before setting a sheet of sackcloth over him, and tried not to look at the mess that had been Willie Tuttle’s face as he dropped the potato bag into place. Eli Hobbs’s face was blue and bruised after the fight; his eyes were wide open, the whites gone blood red. His own knife was still jammed hilt-deep under the jaw; the blade was in his brain. Jim looked just once at him, and away, and swore lividly as a yard of sacking covered the body. It was a sight that would haunt his dreams, and though every muscle he possessed was shaking with fatigue, he did not relish the thought of sleep.

  He straightened in the middle of the room, catching his breath and trying to remember what he was supposed to do next. He had to go somewhere … the vicarage, over in the village. That was it. And then to the doctor, and the garrison. He pressed his face into his hands, willing the images of violent death to let him be and hunting for the strength to do what he must.

  “You will forget. It takes a little while, but the memories fade away and it’ll be months or years before you think of them again.”

  Toby’s voice.

  Jim spun toward the sound, perfectly willing to believe he had gone mad and was imagining it, but Toby was on the doorstep, leaning on the jamb with Bess sitting at his feet. The spaniel’s tail thumped as he looked down at her, and Jim struggled to find his own voice. “You came back.”

  “Of course I came back. You thought I’d run out on you? Because of this?” Toby lifted the old oat bin, which was heavy and rattling with the balance of Monteras’s dangerous legacy. The pottery was blotched and smeared with Nathaniel Burke’s blood. “You thought, once I had the prize in my hands – what, I’d run and not look back?” Toby weighed it between his hands, and held it out for Jim to take it from him.

  “I wouldn’t have blamed you.” Jim just held it for a moment before he set it on the table among the lanterns. He looked Toby up and down, and shook his head over the man. “You look terrible.”

  “So do you.” But Toby came to him, opened his arms, and Jim was glad to grab him in a hug that tested his ribs. “It’s over,” Toby whispered against Jim’s hair. “They’re all gone now.”

  “Burke –?”

  “Made it a furlong, back towards Exmouth,” Toby told him. “I didn’t think he’d make it so far, but he was always strong. Stronger than the rest of us, which is how he seized command … last man on his feet, Jim, but not with wounds he could be healed of. I’m sure Eli put the knife into his lung. In the end it was blood he was trying to breathe, not air. I think he drowned in it.”

  “God.” Jim shook himself hard. “Sailing with a mutineer crew, you saw all this before.”

  “Yes.” Toby’s arms tightened. “You do forget, Jim … you have to be alive to forget.” He released Jim, far enough to look into his eyes. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

  “I know.” Jim touched his face, traced the planes and lines of it, felt the stubble that was almost too fair to show. “You came here looking for Charlie. You tried to search the house without me noticing – you’d have taken the prize back to The Cattlemarket, I imagine, and let the buggers fight it out there.”

&n
bsp; “Such was my thinking, at the time.” Toby ducked his head. “I’d have come right back, though, when it was over. You know by now, they were always going to butcher each other, the only question was where and how. Here, or at the doxie house – in fact, rather here than there! There are too many girls to get in the way at Artie Polgreen’s place, and get hurt. And always the chance the buffoon would get his own hands on the prize. If Artie once got one fingertip on it, you know he wouldn’t let go.” He was trembling as he added, “it’s ours. I paid for my share of it in sweat and blood and pain. You paid for yours in courage and patience and common decency.”

  “And there’s nobody else,” Jim whispered. “You’re sure? Nobody to come after them? After us?”

  “No one.” Toby was certain. The blue eyes closed, squeezed shut. “There were only eight of us at the last, and … it’s me, heaven help me. Last man on his feet.”

  “With a whole skin,” Jim added. “Scarred and marked, but whole.”

  “Marked,” Toby said darkly as he and Jim began to relax little by little. “One day I’ll drink enough of that laudanum of yours to get up my courage, and I’ll let you put an iron in the fire to cancel the brand. I’ll carry Nathaniel’s mark to the grave, but I can have it canceled, the way they cancel the brand on a horse when it goes to market.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Jim said doubtfully.

  “Enough laudanum in me, and you won’t.” Toby leaned over and pressed a kiss to Jim’s forehead. “Do you want to drag the bodies out of here? We could shove them in the stable.”

  But Jim made negative noises. “I don’t want to touch them again. Don’t want to even look at them again. If you’ll take Bess around to the backdoor and watch over Edith, I’ll walk over to Budleigh. Fetch the vicar.” He cast a bleak glance as the sack-shrouded bodies. “They ought to have something said over them, and I’m sure you don’t want to be the one to do it. Not for these three.” He lifted a brow at Toby. “Where’s Burke?”

  Toby made a small gesture into the west. “He collapsed in the bushes at the top of the beach, just off the path. He went down on his back, too weak to get up again, and … drowned in blood.” His voice was tight, odd.

  “None of it was your fault,” Jim said emphatically. “You only brought them into the same place at the same time, with the innocent well out of the way, and stood back to give them space. The rest was their doing.”

  “The innocent?” Toby set his palm flat on Jim’s breast. “I dragged you into this. I never intended to. You could have been killed.”

  “It happened the way it had to,” Jim said slowly. His hand closed over Toby’s. “This was always going to happen, since the day Charlie Chegwidden decided to sell The Raven and my father decided to buy it. And as for me – I’m alive, there’s not a bloody scratch anywhere on me, and I’ve a share in the kind of fortune Blackbeard would have killed for!” He picked up Toby’s hand, brought it to his lips and pressed a kiss to the cold, leathery palm. “Better yet, you’re here.”

  “Oh, I’m here,” Toby said with a gentle humor which mocked only himself.

  “And you’ll still be here, won’t you,” Jim teased, “when I get back with Vicar Morley?” He groaned. “Richard Morley’s got a couple of good horses – we’ll ride back and then, while he’s saying what needs to be said over the dead, I’ll ride over to John Hardesty’s place. I know he’ll want to go on to the garrison with me. The pair of us’ll make Captain Dixon, or his lieutenant, privy to the raw details. And you,” he added, “need to put the prize out of sight till they’ve all cleared off, and then make yourself scarce. All they need to know is, you’re a balladsinger working the taverns between Penzance and Dover. Don’t make them ask questions, Toby, and they won’t.”

  “They might talk to Artie Polgreen,” Toby mused, “and he could tell them I knew every one of the dead men. He might think it was a great joke to tell Hardesty and Dixon I sailed with them, not just on the mutiny but through their pirate years.”

  “Damn.” Jim knuckled his eyes and forced himself to think. “Then, it’s best if you’re not seen at all. I’ll try not to even mention you … if Polgreen does, I’ll tell John and Dixon you left right after the fight and I don’t know where you went.” He paused to mull it over. “Mind you, Polgreen’s got no call to speak of you, Toby. Anything he says will only connect him and his bawdy house to the likes of Burke and Hobbs – it’s the kind of attention that’d be the last thing he’d want.” He studied Toby closely, almost able to hear the cogs tick over as the man thought on it. “If I was the bold Captain Dixon, and I’d learned Burke’s crew made a beeline for The Cattlemarket first,” he went on with chill rationale, “I’d want to know why. To be sure, it was all about strong rum and loose women, which they won’t get at a modest house like this one. But if Dixon got his curiosity up, he could connect The Raven with The Cattlemarket and The Rose of Gloucester. Polgreen might find himself standing in front of a magistrate, and the house he keeps is so disorderly, he’d do anything to avoid that. Yes?”

  Toby was with him, thinking it through slowly, soberly, carefully. “Yes. Artie’s shrewd. He’s got a brain like a bag of monkeys. He’s sure to know what’d be going through Dixon’s head, and he won’t want to answer sticky questions, least of all to a magistrate. It’d be a nightmare come true.”

  “A nightmare indeed,” Jim agreed. “So … the four of those buggers turned up on this coast, looking for their shipmate – our old Charlie. Would any of them have mentioned the prize to a soul, much less to Polgreen?”

  “Not so much as a breath,” Toby assured him. “One of the rules Nathaniel set down was utter secrecy, on pain of a very nasty death.”

  “Then all Polgreen knows is, a company of old shipmates got together in Exmouth and points east and took out ancient grievances on each other.” Jim mulled it over, and nodded. “They got stinking drunk – the women at The Cattlemarket can attest to the revels! – old wounds were opened, old arguments were raised. It came to a fight, and they killed each other.”

  “A fight,” Toby echoed. One brow arched. “A fight over what?”

  “Honor?” Jim wondered.

  “Not among that crew. But this, now…” Very deliberately, Toby pulled the cork stopper out of the bin. He burrowed his right hand in and pulled out four big, bright stones. Two emeralds, a ruby, a blue diamond. “Now, this they would fight over, and kill for.”

  Roger Dixon would believe the story in a moment. Jim licked his dry lips and cleared his throat. “Can you bring yourself to push those into Pledge’s waistcoat, into the pocket?”

  “I can.” Toby rolled the stones in his palm. “If John Hardesty’s as good a physician as you think he is, he’ll want to know what killed Joe, so he’ll take a look at the body … doctors also search pockets, looking for an item to put a name on the dead, so the family can be charged for the burial. He’ll find the stones. He and Dixon won’t need to know any more.”

  Jim held his breath as the sackcloth twitched aside, and Toby’s long fingers thrust carefully into the mess of blood, hunting for the pocket inside the brown waistcoat. His face twisted as he worked, but it was quickly done and without a word he strode outside, and around the corner to the rain barrel. He scooped out enough water to lave Pledge’s blood off his hands.

  “Good enough,” Jim judged. “The undertaker’s wagon’s going to be here in the morning. Marcus Stiles should be done and gone by noon … there’s not much more to do than shove the bodies into boxes and load up. You know where to find Burke … but I’d let Dixon’s men find him for themselves. I’ll tell them he staggered out of here, and I wasn’t about to follow him!”

  “All right.” Toby laced his fingers at his own nape, massaging his neck there to ease clenched muscles. “The story would convince me. And the prize? Back in the loft?”

  “Safest place for it,” Jim judged. “If you’ll see to it, Toby, then make sure Edith’s all right and get yourself something to eat….” />
  “And you?” Toby lingered in the darkness, one hand on Jim’s shoulder.

  “The walk over to the vicarage will clear my head. I need the fresh air,” Jim told him. “I’ve got a head full of ghosts and goblins! I need to chase them, Toby. A couple of hours, and I’ll be back here with the vicar. You need to be gone when we get here.”

  Some thread of starlight found Toby’s face as he smiled. “I know this coast well enough. There’s a barn on the slope, not half a mile west of here.”

  “Belongs to Bert Dowrick, I know it. Don’t let him catch you there – he’ll show you the wrong end of a pitchfork, for trying to steal a lamb.” He gave Toby his hand. “Just keep one eye on this place … when you see Stiles pull out, you’ll be safe. Dixon won’t trouble himself to come back, not when John’s found the best reason anyone can think of for bloody murder right there in Joe Pledge’s pocket!”

  Toby’s hand was cold. “I’ll watch,” he promised. “Will you come around to the kitchen for some coffee and food before you go?”

  But Jim could not have forced down a bite. He took the brass dipper from the peg by the barrel and drank the clean, cold rainwater gratefully. “Let me blow the ghosts out of my head with some fresh air. I’ll get something later.”

  “Be sure you do.” Toby drew away, back to the door, where a little yellow light spilled out into the night. “I’ll get the bin right back up to the loft. And Jim?”

  Jim was moving, and turned back to him.

  “Be careful,” Toby told him. “The path’s a mess with driftwood and debris. Mind that leg of yours.”

  “I will,” Jim promised. “The moon’s rising, anyway – it’s bright enough to see well, once you get away from the lanterns.”

  “Do you want me to go for the vicar?” Toby offered. “Rest the leg.”