A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) (3 page)

“Your mother? Um
– fifty- something?”

“Too old for
another baby, I suppose. Well. That’s a relief.” He probably should be shocked.
Instead, it made him laugh.

"Russell."
She settled herself comfortably against him, her bare shoulders warm against
his arm even through the layers of linen and sensible wool. "Russell
,
will
we
have babies?"

"What?"

"Every -" she
straightened her back, "every time I've seen mama get - that friendly -
with daddy, she - um - I end up with a sister."

"Would you
mind?" He wouldn't. God help him, he wouldn't.

"What -
another sister? Well, no, but -"

"No, Thomazine,
our
own
baby."

"No. It
would be nice. Is that why mama does it?"

"What?"
She wasn't wearing scent. She didn't wear scent. She smelt of clean skin, and
fresh air, and very slightly, of rosemary. He couldn't think straight.

"Is that
why she does it - for the babies?"

"Um.
No." He had no idea what Hollie was doing to his wife under the table, but
Het had a particularly glazed expression on her face and Hollie looked very
well pleased with life. Not precisely smirking, but - "I - Thomazine -
it's - it's, ah. not something I can really explain, it's, ah -"

"Ahhh."
Enlightenment dawned. "You have to
show
me."

5

He didn't want to hurt her, or frighten
her. He wasn't sure he wouldn't do both.

She sat on the
edge of the bed wearing only her prettiest shift, running a comb through her
hair. Looked up at him and smiled, that loving, wide smile that lit up her
whole dear face, and he sat down on the polished boards right where he was and
put his head in her lap. "Oh tibber, I do love you," he said softly.

She loosed the
ribbon out of his hair and ruffled it onto his shoulders, and he shivered.
"Cold?" she said. And scooted up the bed and turned the covers back,
sitting up against the pillows with her hands round her knees.

And then he took
a deep breath. "Thomazine - wife - I -"

No, she was
absolutely unfazed. Not frightened. Not intimidated. Curious, but no more. Why
should she be? God knows her parents were all over each other - a miracle that
Het Babbitt wasn't knee-deep in children, by now. No, Zee knew what loving
looked like, in a most real and passionate sense. (If Russell was any judge,
he'd just sat across the table from Het whilst that unregenerate ruffian she
was married to had done the loving. In a most real and passionate sense.)
"I think I should be grateful for a hug," he said feebly, and she
scooted back down and put her arms round him.

And she held him
so for a moment, and then drew back, looking quizzical. "Ah.
Thankful."

"Thomazine?"

"Is that -
is that my fault?"

"Well, I
shouldn't say you are to blame
entirely
, Thomazine. It is, after all,
attached to me, not you."

"Thankful."

"Thomazine."

"Is that
what, ah -"

"I should
prefer not to conjecture, Thomazine," he said firmly, having a very good
idea where this conversation was leading and distinctly preferring not to go
there.

"Thankful."

He sighed.
"Thomazine." 

"Do you
mind if I -" 

No, he didn't
mind, he didn't mind at all, and the intent look on her face as she examined
him nearly undid him altogether. He said nothing. Oh, but he didn't need to,
because that serious and intent look was giving way to a dawning delight at
what exactly she could do to him. "Do you
like
that,
Thankful?"

"I do. But
- Zee - I don't want to hurt you, my tibber," he muttered, scowling
fiercely into his lap.

"Hurt
me?" Thomazine looked at her husband blankly. "Why would you -"

He lifted a
shoulder in an awkward shrug. "Um. because it does. Um. Apparently. So I
am, uh, told. By people who know about these, uh, things. Kind of thing."

"But
Thankful -" She went and sat closer to him, and he edged away as if she
might burn him.  "What's the matter?"

Out of the
corner of his eye, he gave her a wry look. "Oh, nothing, lass. Just a
funny prejudice against, you know, causing my wife distress."

"It's our
wedding night, Thankful, and you don't want to be anywhere near me. That causes
me distress." She wriggled her fingers under his arm and poked him in the
ribs. "Hey.
Thankful-for-his-Deliverance
." Which got a small
smile out of him. "I love you, you big silly. I don't mind if you hurt me
a little bit."

"I
do!" He gave a great sigh. "Oh, Zee. What are we to do?"

"I could
give you a cuddle," she said, sounding so much like her mother that he had
to laugh. A practical wench, to the tips of her fingers, and one much given to
a belief in the therapeutic properties of fondness and good feeding. With
another sigh, he rested his head on her shoulder, closed his eyes. He was
contented. Happy. He didn't need to - well. He didn't. He was a man, not a
beast.

He could feel
the curve of her collarbone against his cheek, and her skin smelt of sunshine
and cleanliness. She was warm to the touch - warm, and breathing, and soft, and
alive, and he wanted to hold her so tight he'd never let her go, and at the
same time he was terrified that he'd hurt her, break her, in his ardency. What
he did not need at that point was Thomazine putting her hand on his back, in
all innocence, and stroking him like a fractious horse. Suffice it to say that
it was not soothing him. Not at all. "Are you cold?" she said
curiously, and he shut his eyes very tight and held his breath and said
nothing.

"Thankful?
Are you cold? It's not the fever come back, is it? Do you want to get into
bed?" And she put her hand on his forehead, which was nice and comforting
and which brought certain of the softer parts of her anatomy into rather closer
contact than he was entirely comfortable with, right now.

"Yes,"
he said honestly, "yes I do, very much, but -"

"Oh, look.
Mam left us a jug of ale in the hearth. Oh, bless her." And thank the
Lord, Thomazine had pushed herself free of him and was scooting across the bed
to the fireplace, squatting on her heels on the hearth to test the warmth of
the jug with the flat of her hand. "Still warm, too. "

He was, it had
to be said. He was very warm indeed. Especially when she grinned up at him over
her shoulder, with the firelight rendering her shift all but transparent.
"Shall I pour you some?" she said.

"Please."
It might help. It might be somewhat anaesthetic, because he couldn't keep
putting it off, and at some point he was going to have to get undressed and lie
beside her. In just her shift. And he knew Thomazine, and she wasn't one to
just lie there like a stick of wood. She was bright, and brave, and curious,
and loving. And she liked kissing him, he knew that much, she'd enjoyed that
part, she'd wanted more, and it was only by God's grace and the fortunate
arrival of a groom in the stables on more than one occasion that had brought
her innocent to her bridal bed. Innocent-ish. There had been a degree of
familiarity between them - a shocking degree of familiarity - he pulled a
pillow into his lap again.

"Can you
help me with my laces? I should have a maid, you know...."

"I imagine
that I may act as a personal maidservant. With direction," he added. He
had some knowledge of her intimate garments. He wouldn't have called himself
confident, but he knew where the laces went. Came out. She'd managed to untie
the lacing of her gown, but that was as far as she'd got. "Oh, come here,
wench," he said with a sigh. "You're all adrift."

Stiffened and
boned like a cuirassier's breastplate, and he knew how it felt, but he finally
pulled the last lace through the eyelet and freed her from that dreadful
instrument of torture, dropping it on the floor. Rubbing her poor pinched
little waist, where the linen of her shift was all creased and crumpled where
it had been rucked up against her skin, and then remembering what he was doing
just slightly too late as he forgot how to breathe. So did she, and she took
his hand and held it against her flank, and the pair of them stood like a pair
of holy fools, not quite touching, her face turned up to his. She swallowed.
"Thankful, I think you’re going to have to kiss me."

"Think I
must, tibber," he agreed, because he thought he did or die in the wanting
of it. Meaning to be careful, and gentle, and in the end being none of it.

6

He was still lying there at gone
midnight, flat on his back with his hair fallen in his eyes and a silly grin on
his face, watching the moonlight move in squares across the clean scrubbed
boards of Thomazine's own.

(- she snored, a
little, and he liked it. Liked her snuffling, whistling breathing, and the way
she growled in her sleep when he might have taken more of the coverlets than
she thought he was entitled to, and the way she was holding him as tight as if
he might take it into his head to disappear in the night. He felt -

He felt
married
.
And the thought of it gave him an odd feeling about his heart again, and he put
his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her in ardent silence, and she muttered
something incomprehensible and buried her face in her armpit.)

He was loved.
Loved, and loving. He had a place. It was, currently, a grace and favour place
in the Babbitt household - his old commander's son-in-law, by God, who'd have
ever thought it? - till there was a roof on the house at Four Ashes again, and
the place wasn't falling to bits about his ears. But that was in the future,
and for the first time since he'd been a passionate boy in the New Model Army,
there
was
a future. There would be children at Four Ashes again, and
laughter, and joy. He would make it so. He would make it a home again, for this
bright girl and the bright babies they would fill it with, one day. And no
child of his would ever know imposed fear, or humiliation, or darkness, not the
way he had known it as his sister's hands.

She had been a
monster, and he was not sorry she was dead. A cruel, unloving, vicious,
inventive bitch, and the Lord be thanked she had never whelped children of her
own, for she would have twisted them worse than she had managed to twist him.
She had almost managed to break him of his faith, but he still had a God, and
he prayed to Him, nightly, that her black and rotten soul might be brought to
look on what she had done to her little brother in the name of godly zeal. And
he couldn't forgive her, though a good man should do so.

He had not
visited her grave, and they could make of that what they would at Four Ashes.
And nor would he, unless it was with a stake and a rowan-tree, to make sure
that the bloodless bitch stayed buried.

Thomazine
stirred, and pushed her knee against his, and her hand tightened on his
backside in a proprietorial fashion, which was startling, but nice.

He wanted to
take her home as soon as may be.
Their
home. He closed his eyes, and
snuffed the clean scent of her hair, and thought of Four Ashes. Not as it had
been, a stark ruin black against a scarlet dawn, with burned rafters sticking
up into the sky and a thin grey rain falling. Even almost six months after the
fire, when he had first seen it: the house black and ashen, yet with the first
pale shoots of new grass starting to poke through the fallen wreckage of the
western side of the house. Still smelling like the ruins of a city under siege,
which had made him gag, imagining the greasy taste of burned meat at the back
of his throat.

The whole west
wing had gone down, and he had stood knee-deep in charred timbers and shattered
stone, the dawn gleaming wet and red on shards of broken glass where the
windows had burst through in the blaze. It was not a thing he could help: he'd
been a supply officer, and a good one. He was trained to assess what needed to
be done, and how to do it as efficiently as possible. He’d looked at it,
thinking of the bright girl he'd left half-promised behind him, and for
possibly the first time in his life his head had counted the cost of making
Four Ashes right, but his heart had accounted how he might make it
good
:
more than a shelter, a home.

It had been an
odd thing, to even dare to dream of the future. At first he had considered good
plain furnishings for a house that didn’t yet exist, fitting for a middle-aged
retired soldier of quiet tastes. And then, given free rein, he had discovered
rapidly that his tastes in furnishings were neither subdued nor quiet, but
inclined somewhat shockingly towards the magpie. Standing in warehouses in
Wapping, up and down the stinking river docks, stroking silks and holding
trinkets up to the light, talking of his impending marriage casually. Of a
young bride who might care for fashionable blue and white china from the Low
Countries, or who might prefer porcelain of China, and so, unable to decide, he
thought she might like a little of both. A Turkey carpet. A bolt of green-gold
silk, the colour of her eyes. Pearls. (She had liked the pearls. She'd
pretended not to - she'd called him fond and foolish and said he'd spent far
too much money on her - but she had liked them. He would have covered her bed
with pearls and precious rubies, if she'd asked it of him.)