Home From The Sea (37 page)

Chapter Eighteen

He dragged the salt sea wind to the bottom of his lungs while his eyes grew accustomed to the mauve twilight. Of Toby there was already no sign, but he heard barking, sharp and persistent, and he knew that voice. “Boxer,” he muttered. “Damnit, Boxer, where are you?”

And where were Bess and Edith Clitheroe? He cast about, following the sound, and swore beneath his breath as it took him to the stable. A crack of candlelight showed under the door, and as he opened it the terrier launched himself into Jim’s arms. Jim caught him, held him tight. People who knew dogs always swore they could smell fear, death,
fury
. Boxer must have been able to smell it for hours now and his small body was trembling with reaction.

But before Jim could call her name, Bess shot past his legs and streaked away into the night. Either her ears or her nose told her where Toby had gone and the last Jim saw of her, she was tearing through the stableyard, headed west toward the path to Exmouth.

“Master Jim,
yer
alive.” The old woman was sitting on a hay bale, and wrapped in a blanket. Two fat tallow candles stood on a barrelhead beside her and her basket was at her feet, still half-full of food and drink. “I ’
eard
a lot I didn’t ken … pistol shots, an’ all.” She blinked owlishly at him. “Somebody’s dead?”

“They’re all dead,” Jim said bitterly, hardly recognizing his own voice.

“Master Trelane’s dead?” She was aghast.

“No … thank gods, he …” Jim swallowed hard. “We brought back two more, a charming pair of cutthroats – be grateful you never made their acquaintance! They fought, as Toby knew they would. Fighting among
themselves
was the only reason they came here. If Charlie Chegwidden had been alive, he’d have run a mile when he saw the bastards coming, Edith. It’s a wonder Toby and I
are
still alive.”

“It’s a miracle,” she agreed, looking past Jim, out into the yard. “Where is ’e, then? Master Trelane?”

“He went after Nathaniel Burke.” Jim shook his head slowly. “Burke was on his feet, but there wasn’t much life left in him. He had the prize, but he couldn’t have made it far.”

“And Master Trelane.”
Edith worked her way down off the hay bale with
an ouch
and a wince as old hips and knees protested. “That is, ’
e’s
comin
’ back, ain’t ’e?”

For the first time Jim acknowledged the tiny worm of doubt which had been wriggling through his gut since the moment Toby paused on the doorsill and turned back, face dark with so many shadows and secrets. The handful of gems he had chosen as the very finest still lay on the table, and dozens more had been scattered when the lantern upturned. Burke had taken everything else, though he would not stagger far, Jim thought. With a night’s head start, Toby could be twenty miles away – forty, if he bought a horse along the way; and nothing but Jim’s word would connect him with The Raven, or with the mutineer crew and his own patchwork history.

“I …” Jim hesitated, wanting to be honest. In fact, he was far from sure he would see Toby Trelane’s handsome face again. Even Bess had raced after him as if afraid she would lose him. For some time He was silent, and at last could not bring himself to speak the truth. He forced a smile and swiped up the basket. “Of course he’s coming back. He just went after Burke to make sure of him.” To know exactly what became of a dangerous enemy, and secure the treasure of Diego Monteras at the last, keep it out of the hands of some passing stranger, perhaps a yokel from a nearby farm, a fisherman stumbling home with three sheets in the wind, who would be delighted to literally fall over it on the path and claim it as his own. “Come on, Edith,” Jim encouraged, “come back to the house. Don’t go into the taproom, mind you, but I’ll get the kitchen hearth organized. You get a good fire going, and some hot food. It feels like it’ll be bloody cold tonight.”

She made a face. “It’s
startin
’ to stink in there, what
wi
’ the cellar
bein
’ flooded.”

“Better than spending the night in the stable, though,” he hazarded. “I’ll seal the cellar up tight till we can get some men in, get it dry.” He set Boxer down and snatched up the blankets. Edith picked up a candle in each hand. “You’ll be better in the warm, with a meal inside you,” he told her, for want of something to say to cover the sick churning of his insides.

“I will, at that,” she admitted.
“What ’
appened
to Bess?
I can’t see ’er.”

“She shot off like a cannonball, after Toby.” Jim swallowed the lump in his throat as he steered the woman across the stableyard. He kept talking out of a need to fill the silence where Toby should have been. “Just stay out of the taproom, you hear? I’ll wedge the door shut. Then I’ve got to go over and get Vicar Morley. They were the worst kind of sinners, but they’re dead and somebody has to say the right words over them. Then,” he said resignedly as they clambered up out of the persistent water, “I ought to ride over to the garrison, report this – to John Hardesty’s good friend in person, if he’s there. Captain Dixon. If Dixon’s not there, his lieutenant will be. And since I’ll be riding past Doctor John’s door, it’d be damned rude of me not to knock and tell him what happened after he left here yesterday. And remember. Edith – let’s keep the story
simple
. Everything that happened, happened
after
Doctor John passed by, you hear? Don’t be forgetting, now! It’s an innocent tale, but it’ll stop a dozen nasty questions before they’re even asked.”

The backdoor always swelled in the rain. After the flooding it was jammed so tight, it almost seemed to be bolted shut. Jim put his shoulder against it, grunting and swearing as he forced it open. He took a candle from her, lit the three lanterns on the pantry shelf right by the door and set them up where they cast a decent light around the chaos of the kitchen.

The fire basket still stood in the middle of the room; the chairs were shoved into corners, the table thrust against the wall opposite the hearth. Mrs. Clitheroe was right, the reek of must and mildew from the cellar was already like the bilges on a neglected boat, and would only get worse. Muttering vile language, Jim wrestled the big wrought iron basket into place and kicked a chair up beside it. He pulled the table back where it belonged with a squealing of wet wood on filthy floor, and set a lantern by the chair. Edith was hovering, dismayed by the mess, and he urged her into the chair, shushed her.

“I’m just going to bring down enough kindling to get the hearth going,” he promised. “We took it all upstairs … there’s nothing to fear now.”

Nothing to fear, but still his hackles
were
prickling as he went through into the taproom and closed the door deliberately behind him. The three bodies seemed to mock him with grotesque shadows as he took a lantern and passed them by, and as he climbed the stairs he thought those shadows plucked at his hair, touched his clothes, with hands he could
almost
feel.

He cursed himself for a fool and swallowed his heart as he shoved his way into the small room, where he and Toby had set the baskets of kindling. Toby had tied it into bundles, and Jim hoisted up two at a time. He slung half a dozen over his shoulder before retrieving the lantern, and took the stairs with exaggerated caution.

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.