Home From The Sea (19 page)

Hunger rumbled in his belly as he made his way back down. The lantern cast wicked shadows, and the hearth where Bellowes had died might have been a gaping mouth. Jim took a moment to pick up the fire irons, set them back into place and even checked the floor for any dusting of ash which had been disturbed. By the time he was done, no clue remained to suggest the scene.

The stew smelt divine. His mouth watered as he returned to the kitchen, where Toby was already eating. In the dim light he was pale as a ghost, not quite shivering. The bandage was blood-soaked, though not as badly as Jim had feared. By morning it should be dry and, with luck, unnoticeable under a shirt.

As Toby sopped up the last liquid, Jim handed him the clothes. “Get warm, for godsakes! And then …” He lifted a brow at the man.

He was on his feet a moment later, using the high back of a chair for privacy as he stripped to the skin while Mrs. Clitheroe was either oblivious or politely pretending to be. “And then…?”

Jim was already eating before be pulled a chair up to the table. “I’d be surprised if you were in any mood for sleeping! It’s a filthy night, and that
wound’ll
be paining you … and Bellowes has to be on your mind.”

“And Nathaniel, and the rest of them.”
Toby buttoned the front of a pair of britches that were a little too loose. He gave Jim a hard look. “The pair of us ought to just
go
. If we’re not here when the bastards arrive –”

“If we’re not here,” Jim said quietly, “they’ll tear this place to pieces, drink every drop of grog in the house, and if they don’t actually find the prize, they’ll come looking for us. Six years, Toby, and I’ve never even seen a hint of it. Say Nathaniel’s crew tears The Raven apart and finds nothing. They’ll assume we got out in the night with the goods, and ran. If they catch up with us – and they will! – they’ll beat the pair of us to blood or to death, trying to winkle words out of us that neither of us has to give.”

“Yes.” Toby looked away. “Jim, is there anyone you can turn to for help? You know the local vicar, and the doctor. If you went to them, first thing in the morning, and asked for a couple of dragoons …?”

“I can do that,” Jim said slowly. “But if I
were
this Nathaniel Burke of yours, and I saw Jim Fairley under guard – well, now. I’d know several things, wouldn’t I? I’d know Master Jim knew
all
about the treasure, which probably means one Toby
Trelane
crossed his path recently, or Master Bellowes, or both. If I couldn’t find Trelane and Bellowes, I’d soon be asking myself what this cove, Fairley, had done with them. Maybe he shot the pair of them. Maybe they’re buried under the flagstones back in his tavern yard ... or did he feed ’em to the crabs out in the bay? Maybe this Fairley shot them because he
did
find the prize and intends to keep it! Or did Charlie Chegwidden give up the secret on his deathbed? Either way, it would seem this Fairley has no intentions of sharing – he knows Nathaniel’s crew is back, he’s called in dragoons to guard him.” He lifted a brow at Toby. “If you were Nathaniel, what would you do?”

He was dressed now, crouched by the hearth and holding both hands to the fire. “I’d either wait – weeks, if it took so long – till the dragoons just went away again, as they eventually must. Or, if I was impatient, I’d waste a couple of pistol balls on them. Then I’d come for Master Fairley.” He looked up at Jim, eyed wide and dark. “I’d know for a fact, Trelane and Bellowes walked the path across from Exmouth and vanished. I’d soon find out Charlie died a long, long time ago, and since Toby and Barney were wiped off the face of the Devon … well, this Fairley
cove
must be a dangerous bastard. Handy enough to kill a nasty piece of work like Barney and rotten enough to cut down a nice lad like Toby; and all for what?
A king’s ransom in precious stones.
Why else would a man murder?” He straightened and thrust both hands into the pockets of the britches.

He was deliberately ignoring the wound, Jim knew from the faint pinch in his features as he moved it. Toby was far from a stranger to pain. He knew how to disregard it when the need arose. “A guard of dragoons might delay the day, but in the end Nathaniel Burke would come for me, armed to the gills, ready to tear me apart along with the tavern,” Jim finished bleakly.

“He would. Damn, I’m so sorry, Jim. I’ve just brought death to your house. I never intended to – it wasn’t supposed to be like this.” He pulled his shoulders square. “Look, I can make my way back to Exmouth at first light. Head them off, if they’re on their way here –
tell
them about Charlie, for a start. I can tell how Barney pulled a pistol on me. The wound proves it! Then I can also tell them
I
killed the bugger, borrowed your boat without you knowing a thing about it, and dumped his body on the tide.”

Jim nodded slowly. “But Nathaniel and his people will still be heading here. You’ll be with them, and you’ll have to pretend you don’t know me from Adam. They’ll expect you to help them tear the house to pieces.”

“I can do that. It’s only a sticks and stones, Jim. You can always rebuild a house. Or I can volunteer to hold a pistol on you while they do it,” Toby suggested. “At least
I’m
not likely to actually shoot you! Then – let them rip the place to pieces, if you like. Lord
knows,
maybe they’ll actually find the prize and just bugger off with it, and leave us in peace.”

It was possible. Jim mulled over the proposition for some time, while Toby stared unblinkingly into the fire. At last he asked almost soundlessly, “Could you let them do that?”

“What – find the prize and walk away from here, leaving wreckage and ruin behind them?” He dropped his buttocks onto the chair by Jim’s, a few feet closer by the hearth. The firelight gilded his face and his hair had begun to dry almost curly. “I’m still a balladsinger and this is still your tavern. We can repair what they broke, and we’d have our lives.
The future.”
He dropped his voice to a faint whisper.
“Each other.”

He was right, and Jim gave an expressive groan. “Damnation! You know, for one moment I was sure I could smell a fortune. I could almost
feel
those baubles among my fingers.” He mocked himself with a grin, and gave Toby his hand. Toby took it lightly, squeezed it.
“All right.
When you’ve got enough daylight, start back. You’re sure they won’t take the price out of your hide, for
Bellowes’s
death?”

“They might.” Toby’s face shuttered. “Nathaniel might. But Barney’s been a hardcase every day since he signed on the
Rose
. Nathaniel used to tell him, one day it’d be the end of him.” He glanced down at the wound. “He almost killed me, what chance did I have?”

“Almost killed you for what?” Jim’s brows arched. “Nathaniel will be asking the same question.”

“For things that were done and said between us a long, long time ago.” Toby seemed to wrestle with himself, and Jim knew much remained unsaid. “He used to tell me, a sodomite priest belonged in hell with a spit shoved through him from his arse to his gullet, turning on that spit over a slow fire for the rest of eternity.” The blue eyes were haunted as he looked up at Jim. “It wouldn’t take much to make Barney pull a pistol on me. I just got the better of him at last. Even if Nathaniel took it out of my hide, as you said, he’d also reckon it was overdue and Barney had it coming.”

The reasoning was sound. Jim looked up at the clock on the mantel over the fireplace. “We won’t see them before afternoon tomorrow, not in this weather.
Which gives us half a chance, if you’re game.
”

“Game?”
Toby echoed.
“For what?”

“For tearing the house apart just a
little
more gently,” Jim told him. “If Charlie hid the prize somewhere on this property before my dad and
me
got here, he certainly never touched it again. He died two weeks after he signed the bill of sale, and it’s a safe bet this chest of yours is still here. Where else would he put it?”

“Where else indeed?”
Toby was on his feet now, obviously thinking hard.

“Did he own any other property, besides The Raven?” Jim wondered.

But Toby made negative noises. “The fact is his mother, Helen – Nell, to those who knew her well – owned The Raven outright, after the death of his father when Charlie was quite young. He always said he chafed at being tied to a woman’s apron strings, so he went to sea in his teens, to make his own way in the world. He was still shipping out when Nell was very old. A man gets to love the sea and goes back to her, the way he’d return to a lover. It was only providence that brought him to
The Rose of Gloucester
the day that swine of a captain was signing on a crew for the run to the Azores, the Caribbean, the Carolinas and back. No, Jim … The Raven was all Charlie owned. So, if he still had the chest, it’s here somewhere.”

“Oh, he had it.” Jim stood in the middle of the kitchen, turning around and around, using his eyes to
look
at the place for the first time in years. “In the weeks before he died, he’d sit at the window either in the taproom or in his bedchamber, watching, always watching – now I know he was watching out for any one of you to come walking up that path.”

“We all swore we wouldn’t come back a day ahead of the date we set,” Toby reminded.

“I haven’t forgotten,” Jim mused. “But a man like Bellowes could easily have come back a year early, or five years, and stolen the prize from Charlie either by force or trickery. I think Charlie believed one of them would. He was … vigilant. That’s the word. Even when he was green to the ears with the ailment that put him in the ground he was
vigilant
, as if he half expected someone like Bellowes to creep up on him and hold a pistol to his head, for the secret of where he’d hidden the prize. I never knew if Charlie kept a pistol on him, but from what I know now, I’d have to guess he had two or three stashed, loaded, against the chances of a swindle.”

The argument was compelling, and Toby accepted every word. “All right, so we assume the treasure of Diego Monteras is still here. The only other piece of turf Charlie could lay claim to was his mother’s grave, and he wouldn’t have buried it there. Not when Nathaniel would have defiled the grave to recover it. One thing Charlie always did was lift a mug to his old ma when a new bottle was opened. She raised him alone, when his father died. He had no siblings, just two little brothers who died as babes.”

“So it’s here.
Somewhere
.”
Jim looked down into Mrs. Clitheroe’s face, wondering how much of this she was hearing. She was listening intently and Jim ventured, “You knew Charlie well, Edith, didn’t you?”

“Better than ’is ma even knew ’im.” She had the cat on her lap, and a cup of ale in both gnarled hands. “I can tell thee many a truth ’bout Charlie Chegwidden that Nell never dreamed of.”

“But you never knew he was hiding a chest of … valuables.”

“I knew ’e were ’
idin
’
somethin’
, but a man’s got a right to ’
ave
’is share o’ secrets.
S’not
fer
the likes o’ me to ask.”
She petted the cat absently, thinking back across the years. “An’ ’e
were
fond of ’is guns.
That much were
no secret! As I recall ’e ’ad
three
bloody great boat guns, always loaded, one under the bar, like Master Fairley ’
isself
… one in the pantry, and
t’other
up in ’is bedchamber. An’ ’e were always
watchin
’, like thee, Master Trelane. An’ now,” she added darkly, “we know why.”

“We do.” Jim gave Toby a deeply speculative look. “I’d start in his bedchamber.”

“I looked,” Toby began. “Chests and trunks –”

“Hearthstones, floorboards, loose plaster on the walls, or new plaster that looks like it was added just in the last eight years.” Jim managed a creditable chuckle. “I’ll wager you didn’t have time to look at those!”

Toby echoed the rueful
humor
. “I didn’t. And we ought to be looking at
every
hearthstone, every floorboard,
every
flake of plaster in the house.”

“The good news is
,
we have all night.” Jim cocked an ear to the rain. “Even Barney Bellowes waited for the sky to clear before he came here. If he’d been a day earlier –”

“You could be dead already,” Toby finished. “Lucky for the pair of us, he was blind drunk in Exmouth.
Drunk enough to take his fist to a poor young girl.
I’d walked away from them before it happened. Barney liked to swing a kick at Bess, if she got too close. I’ve smashed a bottle over his head before now, for similar malice.” He mocked himself with a crooked grin. “What kind of a priest would you call me?”

“A bloody good one.”
Jim did not even have to think about it.

But Toby’s head was shaking. “A priest ought to have some skerrick of faith. I’ve none. Or, none left. I never had much to begin with, and what I owned was soon knocked out of me aboard
The Rose of Gloucester
.” He rubbed the back of his neck where he still wore the gall, a constant reminder that the weight of a cross had rested there for many years. “Put it out of your mind, Jim. I surely have. I’ll pick up that particular gauntlet when I’m called to be judged – and by damn, the only authority I’ll be judged by is the Almighty. If he wants to burn me for being exactly as he made me, and loving just as he designed me to love … well, it’s his prerogative, I suppose. But it doesn’t reflect very well on him, does it?”