‘Now there’s a good idea.’ From the wall behind him, Tristan retrieved two saddle bags and started packing items from the table, opening drawers as he searched for the essential items every sailor and captain worth his salt would need. The decision to travel fast and light was an easy one. Anything else he could buy in London as it would be paid for by the company anyway.
‘There are two other matters,’ said Finn cautiously.
‘Aye?’ Tristan had his head stuck in a chest in the corner of the room.
‘This arrived at the Old Man’s home, addressed to you.’
From the chest, Tristan heaved a small crate onto the table’s top and cursed the searing pain in his side under breath before he rummaged through its contents, throwing things into saddle bags like a crazed man who was about to embark on a search for his wife and child. ‘Who’s it from?’ Tristan ignored the outstretched hand.
‘’Tis still sealed. Here. Look at the back.’
Tristan grabbed the letter, walked to the window and threw open the shutters. He held it up to the morning light and watched the handwriting, so pertinently familiar that it initiated memories he had thought were long forgotten. Turning it around, the seal at the back confirmed it. Set deep within the blob of red wax were two crossed daggers. As if the letter was burning his fingers, he hurried back to the table, now enshrined in brightness, and quickly placed it in the satchel.
‘Are you not going to open it?’
‘I know what it says.’
Finn’s mouth gaped open. ‘How? So you’re not going to read it?’
‘No.’ Tristan knew that his friend’s ever-inquisitive nature that had plagued him since childhood was driving the Irishman crazy, but he also knew that now was not the time, for there were far more important matters at hand.
Through a mouthful of tea, Finn mumbled something disgruntledly while Tristan placed the walnut case for his pistols atop the table and commenced dismantling one of the guns.
‘You said there were two matters.’
‘Tristan, they found him.’
‘Found who?’
‘James Kilmister. Or at least they think they found him. Sir McArthur will know more.’
‘My, aren’t you a singing herald of sorts this morning. What’s next? A letter from my long-dead mother?’ Tristan immediately regretted his words as the seriousness of Finn’s news set in. Briefly stopping what he was doing, he looked at his hands stained with dark grey oil.
Father?
A million questions wreaked havoc with his mind as he bundled the half-cleansed gun back into the case. Sliding his stiletto into the specially made pocket inside his coat and grabbing the golden cross around his neck reassuringly, he looked at everything he had assembled in mere minutes. His eye caught the map, on it a large island encircled with ink. Jamaica. ‘No time to waste then. Let’s be off.’
The Fire Within Page 73