Entertaining Angels: A Christmas Novella
Page 10
After Thomazine had come down with her joyous news, Het went upstairs herself. Not that she didn’t believe her daughter, but she was minded to see for herself that he was on the way to mending.
And, possibly a little, to see if he might remember her, too.
Het went upstairs with Thomazine bouncing at her heels, and frowned down at Russell, and said she did not like his breathing, and considered liquorice tea and whether he needed more sage oil on his poor chest, and buried him in a foot and a half of extra blankets and shoved more hot bricks at the foot of the bed.
Russell, being very firmly asleep, said nothing about anything.
She put her hand on his forehead and scowled. He wasn’t feverish, he was just worn to a pack-thread, poor boy. He muttered and stirred under her hand restlessly, tossing his head on the pillow. She picked up his dropped coat and smoothed it absently over her arm, folding it and setting it on the coffer. And wondered how he might have come by such a good coat – in his pitiable state, with his erratically-mended linen and his threadbare stockings, it seemed somehow incongruous that he should have a decent suit. Well. Probably second, or third, hand. Good cloth, plain, but very well-worn. Discreetly patched, and nicely-mended in places – shiny in the elbows and the collar, as if it had been someone’s favourite coat, once, before the rag-man had it.
Slightly bloodstained in the breast, as if a previous owner might have died in it. She set it down hastily.
It chinked, and Het stiffened.
She put her hand in one of the pockets. Carefully, in case the thing that chinked was dangerous, or sharp, or loaded.
A small, soft leather purse. Her mouth was dry, suddenly. She took it out and loosened the strings, and then put it back very quickly.
And then opened it again, because it was not a scandalous sum of money. It was no more money than they often had in coin themselves, when Hollie had sold some of the young stock. It was not unreasonable that a man should have (she counted, with shaking fingers) sixty guineas, in gold coins, in his pockets.
In those pockets? Sixty guineas would have bought him decent clothes, and enough to eat. Neither of which he had owned for some while, by the look of him.
The pamphlet “New Jerusalem’s Glory”, though, frightened her. It was an old one. It was out of date, and surely such things had passed from fashion, and talk of insurrection and insurgency was –
“Was nuts and fruit to that boy, in the late wars,” Hollie said grimly, when she told him. “Now what is he up to?”
“Well, whatever it is, it’s not doing him any good!” Het snapped, irritable with relief now that such matters as being a party to treason had been dumped in her husband’s lap. “What is it?”
“Fifth Monarchy-men, Henrietta, is what it is. That’s their talk, that is. He’s going to get himself cut in pieces, that one. God! Does he never learn?”
He looked furious, and that was not so uncommon, for Hollie still had a red-haired temper, even though the russet of his hair had faded to a rose-brown with the years. But that he was frightened, and he was, she could tell - that frightened her. “What are Fifth Monarchy-men, dear?” she said warily. “Is it a soldier thing?”
“All you need to know, lass, is that they’re bad 'uns. And that’s not me telling you what’s the proper things to think, Het, because the less you know about Fifth Monarchy-men the less they can question you on, if that one up yonder gets taken up. Which he will, because in addition to not having the sense God give to rabbits, Hapless Russell has never had the ability to keep his shumoutht. Whatever stupid whelp thought he’d made a good spy, wants his head testing. They’re rebels, and you’d have thought he’d have had his fill of rebellion ten years ago. Seems he’s not learnt nowt, doesn’t it?”
“They shan’t have him.”
Neither of them had heard Thomazine come back downstairs.
“Don’t talk stupid, Zee.”
“But he hasn’t done anything!” she said wildly, “he couldn’t have, daddy, he’s my friend, he couldn’t –“
“Thomazine, now, hold your tongue!”
And Het looked up sharply at her husband because it was not like him to speak so short to his eldest daughter, his firstborn, and the one who looked and behaved the most like him. In most things he had indulged her most horribly. “You don’t know what he might have done, or become, in ten years, daughter,” Hollie said sternly, “I’ll not harbour insurgents in my house. I’ll not put my family in danger for that scabby wreck upstairs. He’s out, so soon as he can stand on his own two feet –“
“You would do that to Thankful? After all he did for you?”
“All what he did for me? Nearly get me killed, on more than one occasion – be a pain in the necessary, drooping about the place like a wet weekend – getting me in perpetual trouble? Disappearing without a word for nearly eleven years, letting us think he was dead or worse, with not so much as a letter to mind him by? Damn’ right I’d turn him out, Thomazine! How could I do else, but turn him over to the authorities? D’you not think if he’s up to the ars- earholes in bed with the Fifth Monarchy-men, one of the first places they’re going to come looking for him is here?”
“I don’t care!” Thomazine yelled back at him, “I won’t give him over to the King! They’d kill him!”
“Better him than you, lass!” Hollie yelled back at her. “I’d rather see his head on a spike than yours, Zee, for that’s where it’ll end!”
And Thomazine fled, sobbing and unlovely, and Hollie folded his arms and glared at his wife in the manner of a man who knows very well he has said something he ought not to, and is not going to apologise for it.
“There was no need for that, Holofernes,” Het said, very mildly. “You did not need to be so blunt about it.”
“She has been tagging after that lad since she could walk, and I’ll not have him lead her into bad ways.”
“You have not so much as spoken to Thankful since he arrived, husband. You are very quick to assume he is a leader, and not himself led. Which is an assumption I should not care to make, were I you. He could always be turned from intemperacy by kind words –“
“Aye, ten years ago!”
Het lifted her chin in a martial fashion. “Would he change so much, then? For you knew him for –“
“Half of that, Henrietta. And I would have said ten years ago little would turn him from intemperacy but thirty-two pound shot. And now I wouldn’t even bet on that being sufficient. When I knew him last he was an ungovernable little – piece of work – and he’s had I dunno how long of being masterless, since. I couldn’t keep him muzzled when I was stood six inches behind him with a firm grip on the back of his collar. The hell chance d’you think I’d stand now, when he’s been his own man since they kicked him out of the Army?”
“You don’t know he was – discharged,” she said primly, “from the Army. You don’t know anything!”
“I do know that that fleabitten vagabond turns up and starts fluttering his eyelashes and all the female members of my household suddenly go a bit wobbly,” Hollie said, and closed one eye and squinted at her thoughtfully. It wasn’t a look she’d seen him give her for this many a year, and it suddenly made her want to giggle.
“Holofernes Babbitt, I believe you’re jealous!” she said in astonishment.
“What, of that long streak o’ raddled crow’s-bait?” He snorted. “In his dreams. Don’t change the subject.”
“Oh, you silly man. I did not – I do not – have anything other than a maternal affection for Thankful Russell. Although he is still a good-looking boy –“
“Henrietta, if you consider that – derelict with half the side of his head missing, a good-looking boy –“
“Don’t exaggerate,” she said lovingly.
“He’s an ungovernable rebel!”
“Well, Mr Kettle, meet Mr Pot, dear. So are you.”
“I’ve learnt the error of my ways, Henrietta!”
He sounded outraged,
and she hadn’t been married to him for so long without knowing at least something of his tricks. “No you’ve not, Holofernes. You have simply learned to be quieter about it.” And she looked at him over her glasses, smiling. “You are every bit as wicked and dangerous as when I first set eyes on you, dear. An ungovernable rebel, indeed. Now go up and see him, for I imagine he is very much afraid.”