Home From The Sea (9 page)

And now it would have been a rope around the neck of the same man, for the crime of murder, Jim thought, save that the girl had taken the secret to the grave with her. The bastard would never pay the price. He had caught one glimpse of Marguerite
Fergo
as Hardesty held up the blanket. She had been
lovely,
quite pretty enough to be caught in the snare of becoming the doxie of one man after another. It was a bad life, often filled with danger, and when a girl’s looks faded with time, what would become of her? Jim sighed as Hardesty settled the rug and stepped back.

“Well, I’ll tell Captain Dixon,” he was saying. “I’ve got to go into Exmouth anyway, tomorrow, so it’s no trouble to call in and see Roger. He has a horse he wants to show me … he knows I’m too soft hearted to let an old warhorse go to the knacker’s yard for the sake of a few shillings and a feed in my paddocks.”

“Sorry to have brought you out,” Jim began.

But Hardesty would hear none of it. “It’s a glorious April day, and a good stretch of the legs. Though, I wouldn’t say no to a pint of ale and a piece of last night’s treacle pudding, if you’re offering.”

Jim beckoned him toward the kitchen. “I’m offering! And thank you, John. It’s good of you to be here for a young girl neither of us knew.”

But Toby had known her, Jim mused, and the thought dogged him through luncheon and on into the afternoon, when Marcus Stiles arrived with his cart and a cheap pine box. Toby talked at length to the undertaker, telling all he knew of the girl, which was not really so much.

A plain wooden marker would stand in the churchyard. It would say, ‘Marguerite
Fergo
of Corunna, age 23, died this 22nd day of April in the Year of Our Lord 1769.’
Stiles was
writing down everything Toby could tell him, and Vicar Morley would record every word faithfully in the parish register. The girl would be interred tomorrow or the next day, and in a week the incident would be forgotten.

Forgotten, Jim thought, by all but Toby Trelane. And Toby’s face was dark as a thundercloud as he watched
Stiles’s
vehicle rumble away. It was very obvious he knew a great deal more than he was saying, and a shiver assaulted Jim as he watched from the front windows of The Raven. The cart rattled off, drawn by a big black horse which walked patiently behind the undertaker, back towards Exmouth. Toby stood right in the middle of the path that followed the great sweep of the bay, watching
Stiles’s
vehicle out of sight as if he expected to see
something
. Jim could not imagine what, and not knowing troubled him.

He listened with half an ear to Hardesty’s chatter about a racehorse, foxhunting, a fighting cock that had won him the princely sum of two guineas, and the lord of the manor, whom he would not name, who went to France to buy brandy and came back with the worst case of clap Hardesty had ever seen, despite his twenty years of treating soldiers.

The gossip was interesting enough, but Jim could not concentrate on it, not when Toby was standing in the sun right outside the windows, with his hair shining like gold and every line in his lean young body calling to Jim with the allure of the forbidden, the delicious,
the
very fruit that had seduced Eve herself.

Chapter Six

The sky dimmed in the late afternoon, and the sea air grew chill an hour before rain began to pelt the thatch. Such weather in the evening was usually bad for business, and by five Jim had resigned himself to sharing
a rum
with Fred Bailey before he locked the doors early and took up the challenge of Toby Trelane.

But at six the laborers from the nearby farms began to duck in out of the
drizzle,
and by half after he was seeing faces from the villages within easy walking distance. A cauldron of stew was bubbling on the kitchen fire, full of pickled pork, onions and dumplings, and farthings began to rattle into the coin box. Jim lifted a brow at Toby as he poured a fifth mug of ale in three minutes, and Toby answered with a small, flourishing bow.

The locals were eager this evening. The same customers were back, and they had brought twenty more. On a night when Jim would usually have sat by his own hearth, watching the fire and listening to the wind in the chimney, the tavern was busy. At least for a while, the balladsinger was going to be good for business.

Tonight he sang a Spanish tune about a young girl whose lover went to war and had not yet returned, and perhaps never would, then launched into a ribald monolog concerning ‘a farmer from Dorset who needed a corset, his back was all twisted and bent; along comes a lady who looks a touch shady, but has stays that’ll lace ’round the gent. Then, right up from Dover a black Irish rover arrives with a nod and a wink; says, “What a surprise, you’re a sight for sore eyes in pink corsets … might I buy you a drink?”’

The more the rum flowed, the better his audience liked the bawdy
humor
, and Jim wondered how many more of these songs Toby knew. But it was the end of the story of Diego Monteras they wanted to hear. Before he could sing again they sent him pie and ale, and had him retell the first half for benefit of those who had missed it. The food was soon dispatched, and Toby pulled up the stool as he launched into the end of the adventure.

With a familiar sense of amusement Jim settled to listen, and for half an hour Toby spoke of
pirates and Spaniards, priests from hell and murderous angels, witches, ghosts, strange magic and hellhounds.

Sir Geoffrey Gaunt took the Queen’s commission and returned to the Caribbean on the spring winds of the year following. He chased the treasure of Diego Monteras for three years – along the way, he found a haul of gold and diamonds that would have warmed the cockles of Queen Elizabeth’s notoriously avaricious heart, but he never found the treasure which Monteras and Francisco had buried.

And in the final season before he called an end to the expedition and headed east, the letter and the fragment of map vanished. They were stolen, so went the story, and though Gaunt never knew for sure who had taken them, he suspected a merchant from Florence who had gone out to the Indies for exotic goods to please the rich Italian markets.

There, the story of the treasure of Diego Monteras reached its end, but Jim saw a wicked glitter in Toby’s eyes and he could guess what was coming.

“It’s still out there,” he said to his rapt audience. “The most dazzling haul of gems, beyond anything the King of Spain himself could imagine, is still out there, waiting to be discovered by a lad – perhaps even one of you in this very tavern, tonight – who can hunt down the bit of map, make sense of its clues and follow it to a bay on the landward side of an island off the east coast of the Americas.

“Now, the Queen of England got a great shipload of gold, so she was happy. Sir Geoffrey was rich beyond anything he’d ever dreamed, so they were
both
happy. I’ve heard a reliable story that says a disreputable merchant from the wrong side of Florence coerced a money lender in Genoa for the largesse to buy three ships and outfit an expedition, the goal of which he never whispered to any soul aboard. The ships certainly anchored in friendly Spanish ports, where the merchant was made welcome, and then …”

He shrugged expansively. “And then history loses sight of that little bit of map, and the treasure of Diego Monteras remains just where it was buried. Waiting,” Toby added, looking from face to face, “for the right lad to find the clues and follow them to riches that could make any one of you a king.”

The Raven was silent as the rummies
savored
the potential in the end of the story. Toby took a drink, strummed the mandolin, tuned a string or two, and glanced sidelong at Jim before he demanded of his audience, “So what’ll you hear now? A love
song,
or something disgusting?”

Last night’s customers shouted for The Hogshead, and Toby chuckled as if he had expected it. His fingers flew over the strings and he began, “
Come, cheer up, my lads, there’s a hogshead of rum –”

In a week they would know every word, Jim thought as he returned to the bar, but next they would want to know every word of the song about ‘the farmer from Dorset, caught wearing the corset, the pink one with ribbons and bows; and the wild Irish rover who’d roll in the clover with anyone – yes, even
those
!’

Or, especially
those
?
Jim wondered. The songs were wicked enough to get the local rummies laughing. If Toby knew enough of them, he could earn a decent living between Plymouth and Margate, wandering the coast, back and forth, always welcome whenever, wherever he arrived.

They crowd was starting to break up at nine, and he returned the mandolin to the corner by the hearth, with the stool and his coat. “Come back tomorrow,” he called to the men who were leaving, “and I’ll tell you the story of Dolly McGuire and the handsome young Vicar of Haughton Vale … a haunted church with a graveyard that drove men mad, and a terrible secret it took a sweet young maiden to uncover – and how she went in a virgin, and came out … well, come back tomorrow!”

They were hooked like so many trout, Jim knew. When the last of the locals had wandered home, leaving only two who were so drunk, they would snore in the back of the taproom they were thrown out at
dawn,
he raked through the coin box and dropped six bright halfpennies into Toby’s hand.

“You don’t have to pay me,” Toby protested, “not when you’re feeding me better than I’ve been fed in years, and I’m sleeping on a soft bed.”

“You’re due your share.” Jim tipped the rest of the coins into a pouch, leaving sixpence in the box, in farthings and halfpennies, to make change tomorrow. “I’m doing business in the middle of the week that I’d have been delighted to do on Saturday. This crowd seems to love a bawdy song and a good story. You know a lot of them?”

“Scores of stories and hundreds of songs,” Toby assured him. “I’ve been collecting them for years, since…”

He said no more, leaving Jim to guess – since he walked off the ship where he and Charlie Chegwidden had served for a short time? Or since he had lost the position that let him earn a living without battering his hands?
Because the hands that had plied the mandolin were still fine, supple, slender, at an age when most men’s had been turned to iron and leather by two decades of hard work.
And Jim fiercely wanted those hands on him.

With the doors locked and the fire banked down to preserve the last embers till morning, he turned back toward Toby and waited. They were alone now – the drunks in the back were snoring, unconscious. There was only the wind in the chimney, the sizzle of the occasional drop of rain which made its way into the hearth. Bess lifted her head, looking drowsily at Toby, but she was curled up with Boxer while Toby –

The balladsinger was smiling, as enigmatic as ever, and for a moment Jim smothered a groan, fully expecting him to say something unfathomable and retire, as if he had forgotten the moment of recognition they had shared just before the Flynn boy ran in.

But Toby said nothing. His eyes
smoldered
on Jim, never leaving his face as he walked past him to the stairs, and up. He stopped on the third step and turned back. His left hand extended in the invitation Jim had been waiting for, longing for.

Jim’s right fingers slipped into Toby’s palm, found it warm, dry, firm, and then Toby’s grip tightened on his hand and he went on up the stairs. At the top he hesitated, and Jim gestured toward his own room. He hardly knew his own voice as he said,

“The mattress is better on my bed. That is, it’ll hold two … two tied in a knot, you understand … without flattening out like a girdle-cake.”

“Then, your bed it is,” Toby whispered, and let Jim lead him the other way, to the big room at the end, right over the bar, where the heat of the chimney made it warm as a lady’s boudoir.

Two lamps fluttered to life, flames dancing in the draft from a shutter that could have fit better. The same draft raised a prickle of gooseflesh on Jim’s skin as he turned to study Toby in the soft light. He was like pale gold, his eyes shadowed, and Jim fancied they were filled with mystery. There was much of the exotic about Toby, a quality that inspired Jim to discover his secrets if it took a dozen years.
Or a lifetime.

“You’re very beautiful, Master Fairley,” Toby said softly.

“Me?” Jim was inclined to scoff. “I’ve got youth on my side – and all my teeth, which is only damn’ good luck. But, you, now … you’re not like the rest.”

“The rest?”
Toby took a step closer, close enough to draw a caress about Jim’s face.

“The men you’ve meet on this coast, in this house.” Jim closed his eyes to
savor
the feather-light sensation of the caress. “I’ve known a highwayman, and a young earl, and the bastard son of a duke, and a Dutch sailor. And you’re not like any of them.”

“I’m flattered.” Toby’s voice deepened, roughened, as he came closer still.

His arms slid around Jim almost experimentally and Jim lifted his head, hunting for the kiss he had been imagining since noon, when the Flynn boy beat him to it by no more than a minute.

It was light at first, as they both explored new territory, and Jim’s heart jumped in his chest like a deer. Toby gave a groan, and his arms tightened around Jim. He leaned closer and his mouth was suddenly hard, his tongue flicking across Jim’s teeth, and inside.