Home From The Sea (8 page)

“I see.” Toby’s hands had always been gentle, and now they were more so. “How did it happen? You’ve been here at The Raven for several years?”

“Over six,” Jim affirmed. “And I’ve limped since I was fifteen. I was run down by a coach in the street.” He shrugged. “It’ll happen, if you’re stupid enough to run right out in front of a coachman when he has no chance of stopping four big horses.”

“And one of the horses stepped on you,” Toby guessed.

“I was lucky it was only one of them, and he only trod
once
on me!” Jim mocked himself with a
humorless
smile. “Oh, there was blood. They picked me up and took me to the nearest quack, who was a Welsh pox doctor, as luck would have it –”

“Luck?”
Toby actually chuckled. And then, “Well, I suppose there’s one thing a pox doctor knows a great deal about, and that’s suppurating sores! I imagine he cleaned you up and bound the leg, cauterized it?”

“He did. And it healed, likely as not because I was so young.” Jim gave the offending limb a glare. “A month later I got out of bed, put my weight on it and fainted dead on the floor. Six months later we knew, my father and me, I’d never walk right without a surgeon. So he brought one in to examine me.” His face hardened as the ten year old memories scalded him raw.

“He hurt you,” Toby said quietly.

“He … hurt me.” Jim looked into the fire. “He probed the wound with some kind of
thing
, and told us the bone had splintered and I was full of these hedgehog spines. They had to come out, if I was going to walk right again – but he couldn’t guarantee not to do so much harm, he’d be taking the leg right off me, above the line of the old wound. So my father paid him at the door and told him we’d send for him when we were ready to have me butchered.”

“And needless to say, you never sent for him.” Toby’s brows rose. “I can’t say I blame you. But still … you should be careful, Jim.”

“You mean, don’t hurt myself on account of a gypsy girl?”

“She wasn’t a gypsy. She was Spanish,” Toby said too quickly, and then seemed to stop
himself
and seal his lips.

But Jim had heard, and if he had been a cat his ears would have
swiveled
around. “You knew her.”

“I’m afraid to say, I did.” Toby’s voice was heavy with regret. “Her name was Marguerite.”

He would say no more but at once Jim sensed the restlessness in him and, sure enough, a moment later Toby took his hands away and stood. The leg was warm and relaxed now – rose red, and the skin had taken up the oil. Jim took his weight on his good leg, yanked up his britches buttoned them swiftly, all the while frowning at Toby.

“You’re not going to tell me who she was, are you?”

The wide, bony shoulders lifted in an expressive shrug.
“Just a girl.”

“A Spanish girl.”

“As I said.”

“Your girl?”
Jim asked as a curious thread of foreboding stitched through him. Damnit, had she been his wife –?

“Mine?” Now Toby chuckled once more. “Not mine! But yes, I knew her, and where she goes, trouble won’t be far behind.”

“She was a bad sort?” Jim hazarded as he fetched mugs and the thick, syrupy coffee left in the pan from breakfast.
“A whore?”

“Just a trollop,” Toby said with some generosity. “Not her fault, poor lass. When you come from the gutters of any city, orphaned at the age of twelve, it’s often a good trick to avoid landing in some brothel or other. Marguerite stayed out of the whorehouses, but she was always traipsing after a man. If you know what I mean by
traipsing
.”

“I can imagine.” Jim thrust a mug of coffee at him. “So, what kind of trouble could she bring to The Raven?”

Toby’s teeth worried at his lip for a moment. “It wouldn’t come from Margie herself, so much as the company she keeps.
Kept.”
He gestured vaguely with the mug, took a swig of the strong, sweet coffee and made a face. “Good Christ, you could dip sheep in this!” He reached for the blackened tea kettle, tipped half the coffee back into the pan and topped the remainder off with water.

“And I’m supposed to be on the lookout for trouble?” Jim demanded.

“Perhaps.”
Toby seemed genuinely uncertain, and met Jim’s eyes levelly. “It’s just luck I got here when I did.”

A snort of mocking laughter ambushed Jim. “And you’re going to save me from some fate worse than death, are you?”

The mockery was pointed, but he was not at all sure who was being mocked by it, Toby or himself. The balladsinger only chuckled. “Well, now … I might be able to turn a foul wind into a fair sailing breeze.”

“Meaning?”
Jim dropped his voice as Toby stepped closer.

“Meaning, Margie adds up to trouble,” Toby said thoughtfully, “but it doesn’t have to involve you.”

“But it involves you?” Jim’s voice dropped again. “You’re a puzzle, Toby Trelane.”

Unexpectedly, the wide blue eyes glittered with amusement. “Now, why do you say that? Because I knew a poor Spanish girl who was so down on her luck, she was begging for pennies for medicine?”

“That, and … the rest of you.”
Jim cocked his head at the man. “Balladsinger,
traveler
– not a sailor, but you often talk like one. You know the prayers for the dead, in the old language. You tell stories about men who love men. Who the hell are you? Where are you from?”

For a moment Toby seemed to hesitate and then he said, amused, “I was born in London, but my parents were from
Tavistock
. They’re both dead now. I’ve a sister, but I wouldn’t know how to find her. I grew up in Plymouth, went to school in Warminster. You could say I’m from lots of places, and call none of them home.” His eyes danced as they studied Jim.

And for one moment Jim was so sure he saw invitation in them, he had lifted his right hand and placed it on Toby’s chest before he was even aware of what he was doing. The gesture was done before he could stop himself, and in the next split second he actually waited for Toby to jump back and perhaps even lash out.

Instead, Toby’s left hand covered Jim’s, holding it there on his chest, and the moment stretched on and on, a year long, as Jim felt the old familiar jolt of excitement which always thrilled through him when like recognized like. Warmth flushed outward from his belly, reaching his cheeks as well as points much further south, and he watched Toby’s lips curve into a smile.

Oh, yes, like knew like. The moment could have been a flash of summer lightning. Jim could almost taste Toby’s kiss on his own mouth when footsteps raced up to the kitchen door, and it was Jim himself who jumped back with a scant second to spare before little Danny Flynn dove in.

Breathless, clutching a stitch in his side, he flopped down on the stool Jim had recently vacated. “I found the doctor,” he panted. “Right behind us, ’e is – ’e were
saddlin
’ up a nag when I left ’im, and ’e were
comin
’ right ’ere, no stops.”

“That’s well run, Danny,” Jim said ruefully, sharing a glance with Toby. “Now, you take a pastry and an apple, and then
be
off home. Mind you don’t spend your largesse all at once!”

It would be toffee and liquorice, he guessed. Boys were always the same. Danny would spend his penny one farthing at a time and hide in the
hedgeback
to eat his sweets, where his many siblings would not see and want to share. The boy grabbed a wedge of pie and an old apple from the crate in the corner, and rushed out as fast as he had rushed in.

“He’s a good lad,” Toby observed.

“He is.” Jim forgot the child at once, and was intent on Toby. “Well, now.”

“Well, now, indeed,” Toby agreed, and licked his lips, a tiny giveaway gesture. “I
knew
I was right about you.”

“But you never want to speak, not till you’re sure,” Jim added.

“Because the consequences can be dire,” Toby finished, and shadows chased swiftly across his face before he could hide them.

Jim’s
humor
sobered fast. “Damnit, you’ve been caught?”

“Me?” Toby’s face shuttered. For several moments he did not speak, and when he did, it was in an odd tone. “It takes a terrible fool to have to learn by his own mistakes, Master Fairley. One learns not to be
quite
so stupid.”

Which told Jim everything, and nothing.
“A couple of lads were flogged for the sin of fornication just last year, at the assizes,” he said bitterly. “You soon discover how to be careful.”

“You do.” Toby was listening. “I hear a horse.”

“That would be John Hardesty, as good as his word.” Jim set down his cup. “We’ve brought him out here on a wild goose chase. I’ll go and tell him it’s too late. You might have a word with Marcus Stiles, the undertaker, so at least they know what name to write in the parish record book. A name is better than nothing.”

“Marguerite
Fergo
,” Toby said sadly, “age 22, or 23, lately of the city of Corunna. May she rest in peace on this foreign
shore.
”

“And what the hell was she doing here?” Jim wondered.

“A very good question,” Toby whispered, but although the look on his face suggested he knew exactly what the girl had been doing on the Dorset coast, he was not about to breathe a word of it.

With a smothered curse Jim stepped out into the tavern yard, where the shadows were short and the full sun had warmed the bricks at the back of The Raven. He leaned his shoulders there, waiting to see Hardesty’s tall chestnut horse as he came around from the path.

Moments later he called the man’s name. “John! It was good of you to come, but I’m afraid we’ve only wasted your time today. The little waif died not long ago.”

Hardesty was a big man, thick-set – fifty, with a face tanned brown as a walnut and deeply seamed. He had spent twenty years as an army surgeon, and had a piece shot out of his shoulder to show for some battle where he had actually grabbed up a musket and fought when the hospital was overrun. With a couple of brandies under his belt he liked to show off the scar, and would shrug out his waistcoat and shirt, displaying a torso only just beginning to run to flab. He wore a well-powdered gray wig which covered a scalp that had long ago shed most of its own hair; his coat was the
color
of a fox and his boots were thigh-high and polished till Jim thought he could have shaved in them.

“Wasted me time, have you?” Hardesty was hitching the gelding to one of the big iron rings set into the wall. He spoke with a Bristol accent, and gave Jim his hand. “She was just a young girl, so Joe Flynn’s lad said.”

“A Spanish girl, according to a guest of mine who recognized her, quite by chance,” Jim said thoughtfully. “Mrs. Clitheroe said she was ill when she appeared out of the night, wanting pennies to go to the apothecary this morning. Alas, she didn’t live long enough to make it.”

“That’s a shame, that is,” Hardesty said with genuine regret. “Will I take a look at her?”

“It’s a bit late for a doctor’s attentions,” Jim remonstrated.

“But we might want to be sure she didn’t die of anything catching,” Hardesty mused. “There was yellow fever on a ship that got in from points west, just three or four days ago.”

“Yellow fever?”
Jim echoed, and pointed Hardesty at the coach house. “She’s in there, waiting for the undertaker.”

He fell into step with the doctor but hung back at the door as Hardesty went inside. The girl lay under a coach rug, decently covered now. Leave it to Edith Clitheroe to think of the niceties.

“Is there anything you need?” Jim offered doubtfully.

Hardesty had stooped to lift down the rug and look at the girl’s face, and he swore softly. “Poor little mite – so young and so pretty. And no, Jim, there’s nothing I need. At first glance, I’ll be buggered if I know what she died of, but it
wasn’t
yellow jack. Be grateful for that much.”

“Amen.” Jim craned his neck but could see nothing.

“She’s wearing an ugly big bruise,” Hardesty mused a moment later. “Did you get a look at it?”

“I didn’t get close enough to her,” Jim admitted.

“Great black bruise on the side of her neck,” the doctor told him as he set the blanket back into place. “She’d been roughed up, by the looks of her. A pound gets you a penny, she was injured in some bit of nasty business, and it just took a day or three to put her in the ground. There’ll be a man behind this, you mark my words. Women are such fragile creatures. Lay a blow on them that a man might easily weather, and it’ll be flowers in the churchyard come Sunday. Damnit, if she’d been alive, I’d have winkled the name out of her.
I’d’ve
been pleased to take it to the captain at the garrison, and get the man three months in Newgate Prison for beating her. Six months, if I could browbeat the judge into a moment’s decency.”