Home From The Sea (20 page)

The words framed everything Jim had always half-felt, half-known, without ever being able to think the matter through to its bitter end. Toby had trodden this path a long time ago, and gone on. For a moment Jim dwelt on what he had seen and suffered, and then consigned the past to another day when he could brood on it at length – or when Toby would speak of it.

For the moment, time was wasting and he felt the prickle of excitement. Like most boys, he had grown up on stories of pirates and treasure and exotic islands where palm trees nodded in the heavy, humid air and a king’s ransom lay buried under golden sand. As a man, he had listened to the tales of men like Charlie and Fred Bailey, stories of the brutality of the navy, the hardships and danger of life on the whalers in oceans filled with ice and ripped by massive storms. With the gammy leg, Jim had resigned himself to living in his imagination, with daydreams fed and
colored
by the stories of men like Chegwidden and Bailey – and Toby Trelane. What he could never have imagined was that the thrill would walk up to his own door –

Or that a violent death would be stalking him as surely as Toby. His skin prickled again as he took a lantern in each hand and headed up the stairs with Toby on his heels, carrying two more. A great gust, no less than gale force, broadsided The Raven just as they came up onto the landing, and Jim ducked involuntarily.

Toby whistled. “Listen to her blow. You want to be in the rigging in this weather, Jim, fighting with a bunch of tangled rope that’s so slick with rain, you can’t get a grip on it, while the ship leans over and almost puts her gunwales underwater, smacking into every wave like a diving porpoise, and the wind seems to grab hold of you with fingers like ice and tries to tear you away into a sky that’s all silver with mist and wild water.”

“Christ.” Jim took a breath, held it, let it out slowly. The pulse in his throat was hard and fast. “You’ve done that.” Not a question. “Fred Bailey tells those same stories, and …” He looked down at his leg. “Maybe I’m lucky to be too lame for the navy to take an interest in me.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it luck,” Toby mused, “but any luck you had changed when I showed my face here. Did it change for the better? Now, there’s another question!”

He was right, but Jim felt the thrill now, the challenge, and he was not about to run up any surrender flag without a fight. He led Toby to the bedchamber where Charlie had slept, and they lit a dozen smoky tallow candles to augment the lanterns.

First, the rugs came up. The mattress was lifted, shaken, probed, opened in long slits on the bottom, and Toby thrust his arm, elbow-deep, into the straw stuffing. A shake of his head, and they upturned the table at the bedside, and then the trunks under the window.
Nothing.

They held the lanterns to the walls, peering at the plaster, knocking on it, finding loose pieces and pulling them carefully out. Nothing was hidden in the walls, and the remaining plaster was probably older than Jim. They puzzled the plaster bits back into the holes and turned their attention to the floor.

The bed squealed as it was shoved into a corner, and now Toby stamped on the floorboards, hunting for loose ones. Most were tight, but two moved a fraction, enough to make them suspicious. Jim fetched the smallest of the fire irons and forced it into the gaps between the slack boards and their snug
neighbors
. They lifted out cleanly, and in a wash of lantern light he and Toby peered into the space beneath.

Nothing.
Jim swore and sat down on the bedside, watching as Toby dismissed the floor from his attention and began to examine the fireplace. The musician’s hands tried every stone, every brick, jiggling and pulling until he found three loose enough to be interesting. He glanced at Jim, beckoned with a nod of his head, and together they wrestled the bricks out.

Again, lantern light probed into the dark places, but they were empty and Jim muttered blistering curses. The bricks jiggled back into place and Toby stood, hands on hips, glaring at the room. “I’d have been prepared to swear we’d find it in here.”

So would Jim, but his mind
had
raced on. “It could be in any chamber, under any floor, in any wall. Hand it to Charlie – he made a bloody good job of this! If he’d been able to read and write he might have left a letter, not to be opened till one of you returned.”

“But Charlie never learned how to read,” Toby said with wry amusement, “and the treasure of Diego Monteras is not the kind of secret you’d ever share, to have someone else write it for you.” He
huffed
a sigh. “We have a long night ahead of us, I think. Could he have buried the chest somewhere else, not on your property but very close to it?”

The question was shrewd and Jim gave it full consideration. “No,” he said at last. “Right in front,
it’s
beach and tidal. Nothing stays buried. The sea washes anything right out. To the east, it’s the beck, and inclined to flood every two or three years. Anything you bury there will be washed out of the ground. To the north
it’s
heathland
and paddocks, and it floods when the beck washes over. To the west it’s fields belonging to Squire Lawson. Half the time they’re under the
plow
. He grows barley to feed his cattle through the winter.” His brows rose and he scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Mind you, Charlie grew up in this area. He’d have known there’s old mine workings not far from here. They’re still taking tin and copper out of the ground but a lot of the mines are dead, abandoned.” Then he dismissed his own idea. “No, the mines are dangerous and anybody born on this coast, like Charlie, knows it. The roofs come down, the pits are flooded with rainwater … and
there’s always gypsies
on those heaths. You go lumbering in with a heavy load and an hour later ride away without it – anything you left behind wouldn’t say hidden for long.
Charlie’d
know
this as well as I do
. Damn!”

“Patience, Jim.” Toby’s hands fell on Jim’s shoulders. “Two of us and all night to search, and we know what we’re searching for. The odds are with us.” He leaned in and down the little that separated them in height, and laid a kiss on Jim’s mouth.

Jim’s arms went around his waist and for some time they were silent, content to eat each other alive. “What wouldn’t I give,” Jim said with unrepentant
humor
when they parted, “for a soft bed and an hour to beguile away with you, and nothing to do in the morning but sleep it off.”

“You make it sound very tempting,” Toby admitted. “But an hour could be the difference between having the treasure of Diego Monteras in the palm of your hand, and looking down the business end of a pistol and begging Nathaniel Burke not to shoot the pair of us in the head.”

“We work,” Jim said with grim conviction.
“Work now, hump later.”

“Win through tonight,” Toby agreed, “and we’ve months and years, a lifetime, to learn each other’s secrets.”

“A lifetime.”
Jim smiled, and it was not a sham. “I like the sound of that.” He pecked Toby’s cheek with a kiss and stepped out of his embrace. “So we work.”

Each bedchamber consumed an hour, and there were six of them including Jim’s own and the one they had already searched. Mattresses, floorboards, plaster, bricking in the hearth – nothing was overlooked and they were tired, filthy, hungry, when they returned to the kitchen.

The backdoor stood open and steel blue light streamed in. Dawn was not far away. Mrs. Clitheroe was absent – she would have gone out to the privy, Jim guessed – and the dogs were nosing around the stableyard, about their business. He put a pan of water on the hob for coffee and gave Toby a dark look.

“We’re running out of time,” Toby said quietly. “We need to look behind the hearth stones in both the fireplaces in the taproom … God! How strange, and how fitting, if Barney broke his stupid neck right on top of the prize!”

“And we should check the walls in the taproom, and then in the kitchen here, and then every floorboard in the kitchen before we get into the cellar. Not to mention the stable and the coach house.”

“Not enough time,” Toby repeated, and gave Jim a faint, tired smile. “It was worth every moment we spent, and at least we can be sure about the taproom before I have to go.” He gave Jim his hand. “You know Burke and Pledge and the others will be here, if not today, then tomorrow.”

“Oh, I know.” Jim held Toby’s hand tightly for a moment. “But I’ll feel a thousand times safer with
you
holding the pistol on me!” He hesitated, and then framed what was on his mind with great care. “Are you sure you can you do it, Toby? Be sure. Can you let them tear this place to pieces find the prize, then stand back and watch them walk away with everything?”

“I can.” Toby had obviously thought it through. “Right from the beginning, I knew I’d have to fight Nathaniel and Barney for any share, much less a fair share. They’d find some way to short change me. When the gemstones are on the table, Jim, and hellfire starts to twinkle in men’s eyes, the pistols will be out. There’ll be blood, trust me, before the prize is divvied up, because it
won’t
be an even share-out. Two words in the wrong direction and I could be buried in your churchyard right beside Marguerite. Could I stand well back, let them toss me some scrap so they can mock me before they walk away?” He lifted his chin. “I can – because when they’re quite finished mocking me with scraps, they’ll not be back. And I … I think I’ve found somewhere to belong.” He frowned deeply at Jim.
“If you’ll have me.”

“Have you?” Jim echoed. “You mean, to have and to hold, sickness and health, till death us do part and all the old twaddle?”

“Twaddle?” Toby chuckled richly. “Hardly twaddle. I used to speak those words.”

“You’ve married people?” Jim was surprised, and knew he should not have been. The idea was as strange as it was charming.

“Not lately.” Toby spooned coffee and treacle into the boiling water and lifted it off the hob. “I told
you,
put it out of your mind. I have. Whatever I was, I’m not the same man now. All I want is peace, rest, honest work, and someone to be with in the dark.”

The sentiment touched Jim profoundly. He took a mug from Toby and caught his hand again. “You’re welcome here.
More than welcome.
I’ve waited half my life for you.”

“You’re saying I was late?” Good
humor
made Toby’s eyes lighter, brighter. “I got here as soon as I could. The date was set many years ago.” He lifted Jim’s hand to his lips, kissed the knuckles in a curiously chivalrous gesture. “Let’s finish searching the tavern itself, at least, before I have to go. There’s time, if we get a move on.”

The coffee was strong enough to wake the dead. Jim almost gagged on it and then choked it down, for he needed the heat and the odd jolt in the limbs and mind he always felt after he drank the brew. Some men swore it would sober them up after a binge on rum and ale; smugglers swore it would propel them through a night of high seas and icy rain, playing hide and seek with the excise men. All Jim needed was the strength and resolve to get back on the aching leg and finish what they had started, before daylight began to brighten in earnest.

Chapter Eleven

Nothing.
And if he was honest with himself, Jim knew he had expected nothing, because the taproom was so familiar to him. If there had been a loose stone in the wall, or a false back on the shelves under the bar, or a stone in either of the fireplaces that was less than snug, he would have known about it.

As delicious as it would have been to find Charlie’s secret and Diego Monteras’s legacy under the hearthstones where Barney Bellowes had snapped his own neck like a carrot, the fireplace was empty. As they worked over it, testing every brick, they both heard a profound silence in the chimney. As they sat back on their knees – dirty, tired, frustrated, anxious – Toby said softly,

“The wind’s dropped. The storm’s passed us by, Jim, and it’s an hour since dawn.” He pushed up to his feet and inspected his filthy hands. “If I’m going, I’ve got to go now or this whole scheme is for nought.”

“I know.” Jim stood with difficulty,
favoring
the leg. He would be aching the rest of the day and like as not tomorrow, after the
night’s
unaccustomed work.

What he needed was a shot of the best Dutch laudanum, and he knew he would be taking it the moment Toby had gone. He used the laudanum as infrequently as may be, because John Hardesty had warned him, the stuff was worse than grog for making a man come to need it for its own sake. But Hardesty had long trusted Jim, and never hesitated to provide the laudanum; and Jim usually kept a bottle in the house.

He rubbed the leg slowly, heavily, aware of Toby’s eyes on him. “Yes, I’m not the best. I won’t try to dupe you! But it was worth it. We’ve learned a lot. We know – absolute fact! –
where
the prize
isn’t
. I’d like to see Burke and his crew start in the taproom and the upstairs, and get tired and angry.”

“The angrier they get, the more violent they’ll be,” Toby said doubtfully. “After I’ve gone, you keep searching. Treat the kitchen to the same kind of rape and pillage we’ve given the rest of the place. Have Edith douse the fire in the cooking hearth. Now I come to think of it, I can’t imagine a better place to hide a fortune than right underneath a blazing fire that’s never allowed to go out.”