Home From The Sea (21 page)

“I could wish we’d thought of that first.” Jim moved restlessly to and fro to ease the leg. “You’ll want to wash, and then … damnit, Toby, be careful. You’ve said a few things tonight that make me think you’re not much safer in Nathaniel’s company than I would be.”

“I’m always careful.” Toby’s face was filled with regret. “I’m still alive. And as for you, Jim Fairley –” He reached out as if to touch Jim’s face, then saw the dirt on his fingers and thought better of it. “Don’t set up your lip to Nathaniel, not even for a moment. Don’t make clever remarks. Play the part of the coward, put up your hands and even blubber, if you can manage it! Do that, and Nathaniel will utterly scorn you. When I offer to hold a pistol on you, he’ll turn his back on us both. No
harm’ll
come to you.”

“He won’t assume I found the prize long ago?” Jim speculated as they stepped back into the kitchen.

Toby took the big basin to the barrel and filled it. As he rolled up his sleeves and plunged his arms into the cold water he looked around at the kitchen and, by extension, the tavern. “You wouldn’t be here, still, if you possessed a king’s ransom. You’d have a big house up on the moors, and servants to run about after you while you drank smuggled French brandy and went up to Bath to take the cure, see if the ‘waters’ would soak the pain out of your leg.” He glanced along at Mrs. Clitheroe, who was feeding the cat with herring tails, rewarding him for the three mice which had been laid out for her perusal that morning. Dropping his voice, Toby said very softly, “You can still have those things, Jim. Keep on searching, every minute, and if you find the prize – you get out and you run, and keep on running.”

A lump had formed in Jim’s throat. “And you?”

“I’ll help Nathaniel and Joe rip this place timber from timber, and when we find nothing, and they start to guess you did and made off with it, well …” He gave the old woman a glance. “Edith and I can point them in the wrong direction. They’ll be hunting you in Liverpool and Glasgow while you’ve actually sat your arse aboard a ship bound for the Carolinas. And don’t,” he said darkly, “
don’t
come back, Jim.
Ever.”

“But …” Jim swallowed the lump in his throat. “Not without you. I’ll get on a ship, sure enough. But not until you’re right there, one step behind me, and Bess with you as we walk aboard.”

“Damnit, Jim!” Toby’s voice rose a little in frustration. “Don’t let them get their hands on you. Just – don’t.”

“I could tell you the same,” Jim growled. “In fact, I
am
telling you.” He watched Toby close his eyes for a moment as if in despair, and pressed on regardless. “If I find anything, I’ll run. I’ll borrow a horse from John Hardesty. He’s got three or four out to grass. He won’t miss one, and he’ll do me the
favor
, especially if I tell him I’m being chased like a fox.”

“Just don’t tell him why,” Toby said quickly. “Tell him anything, but not the truth!”

“Credit me with a grain of sense,” Jim remonstrated. “I’ll tell him a story. Heaven knows what – I’ll think it through on the road! And I’ll make my way to Southampton. I know a few taverns just this side of the port. I’ll take a room there, and I’ll bloody
wait
, Toby. I’ll wait six months, if that’s how long it takes you to drag your boots to Southampton and ask around, and find me.
Then … yes, a ship.
The Carolinas or Kingston, Jamaica.
I don’t care where.” He paused for breath and looked into Toby’s wide, bright eyes. “Together.
All right?”

The blue eyes were
too
bright. Sure enough, tears spilled though Toby wore a smile.
“All right.
Now, for the love of God keep your wits about you. And before you say it – I’m on my mettle, Jim, like a bantam cock with its spurs on, just about to be tossed into the pit to fight for its life.”

The analogy was stingingly sharp and Jim winced. He followed Toby back to the taproom, where his coat was hanging, and the mandolin. Bess lingered in the kitchen with Boxer, and twice Toby called her before she came to him.

“She doesn’t want to go,” Jim whispered.

“Nor do
I
.” Toby slipped the strap of the mandolin over his head so the instrument lay on his shoulder, giving the oddly humpbacked appearance Jim had glimpsed from the tail of his eye, the first time he saw Toby. “I … heaven help me, but I do believe I love you, Jim.” His smile was crooked and self-mocking, as if he thought he should apologize for the emotion.

“Likewise,” Jim said gruffly. He glanced over his shoulder, but the old woman was busy and he took the moment of privacy to seize Toby by both shoulders and kiss him soundly. “I think you’ll be back sooner than you know, and then … like the fiddlers say, we’ll play it by ear.”

He gave Toby a push before he could haul the man into an embrace that would be their undoing, and lifted up the bar to open the door. It was heavy enough to task his shoulders, but a rush of anger made it seem much lighter this morning.

The sky was thickly overcast, but the wind had stopped. The air was dank, cold, and as he stepped outside he heard the gurgle of running water. For a moment he thought it was the flow from the eaves trough into the rain barrels, and then he
knew
that sound.

The beck was up over its banks, as it had been two years before. The coastal path was not just glistening wet. As they strode out into the middle of it, they found the water over ankle deep, and not thirty yards east, where it banked
down,
the path was gone, replaced by a slate gray lake, its surface wind-rippled and full of sunken debris. Jim saw broken fence posts, uprooted saplings,
a
wagon wheel bobbing in mid-water. The way back to Exmouth was not merely
impassable,
it was treacherous with hidden pitfalls. He knew the path well enough to know the way on east to Kersbrook and, far beyond, Sidmouth, would be even worse.

“Well now,” Toby said with an acid kind of
humor
, “so much for all our noble sentiments and terms of endearment! We’re
stuck
, the both of us, well and truly!”

“I’d say the word is
besieged
,” Jim suggested. “But look on the bright side. If we can’t get out, Burke and his crew can’t get in.”

They were standing almost up to mid-calf in cold water while Bess ran back and forth at the edge of the lake, yipping forlornly. Toby looked from horizon to horizon. “Much more
rain,
and the tavern itself will be under. There’ll be knee-deep water in your stableyard in two hours’ time, if the level in the beck doesn’t go down. Have you seen it like this before, and had it fall?”

“Twice, last year.”
Jim was intent on the sky. “So long as the rain stops right now the beck won’t get any worse, but
look
at that.” He was glaring at a bank of clouds the
color
of a funeral shroud.

“There’s no wind, mind you,” Toby mused. “There’s enough rain in those clouds to drown us all, but it’s not coming this way. Not yet, at least.” He gave Jim a taut look. “It buys us some more time.”

The thrill prickled through Jim’s whole body again. “Come on, then.
While we can.
I want to start in the stable and coach house.”

“Not the kitchen?” Toby was behind him, feet sloshing noisily through the water.

“If the stable and coach house are going to be three feet underwater by tonight,” Jim said bleakly, “we won’t be able to search them at all. The yard runs down a slight bank – you didn’t notice? The whole tavern is built up, three feet or so higher than the rest of the property.”

“I noticed.” Toby unslung the mandolin and stopped on the threshold to heel off his sodden boots. “Whoever had the inspiration to build the tavern higher – cheers to
him!
”

“Not inspiration.
Convenience.”
Also barefoot by now, Jim gathered up his shoes and stockings in both hands and padded inside. “The Raven was built right on top of the ruin of an inn that stood here before. The cellar’s far older than the rest of the house. The old inn burned down about a hundred years ago, so Charlie told me, and at the time they just pushed the rubble flat, packed it down and built
this
house right on top. The pile of old brickwork puts us three feet higher – thank God for small mercies. ”

Toby had wrung out his stockings and draped them over the back of a chair. He hung his coat back where it had begun and put the mandolin under the bar, along with the blunderbuss. He shoved his feet back into the wet,
disgusting
 
boots
, and made a face. “When we find the prize, the first thing I’m going to buy is a spare pair of boots, so I don’t have to wear wet ones.
Stables?”

“Stables,” Jim agreed. “I can’t offer you my shoes, because you have bigger feet. Anything I own would cripple you. But I do know a cobbler in Exmouth who makes boots to fit, if you come back tomorrow for them. They’re expensive – I could never afford them.”

“Till now.”
Toby was on the threshold. “I’m going around the
outside,
else I’ll leave puddles everywhere I step.”

“One minute, and I’ll be with you,” Jim promised, already headed for his bedchamber, and the first pair of boots he could find.

The stable would hold eight horses, and dry feed was stored in nets and barrels opposite the stalls. Jim did not keep a horse of his own – he had no use for one – but passing gentry often broke their journey here, especially in winter when night fell much earlier and the weather could be dire. The Raven had a reputation for clean beds, good food, unwatered ale, and
a certain
discretion on the part of the taverner. If a man wanted to bring a paramour here, no questions were asked.

With the stable empty and blue daylight streaming in through the open doors, the job of checking every square yard of floor and walls was as simple as it was ravenous for time. At last, agile as a monkey, Toby shinned up into the loft and poked into every corner while Jim watched and hoped. His face looked down from the shadows and he called,

“Nothing here but a century’s worth of dust and some drowsy spiders.
Charlie!” He addressed the thin air, as if Chegwidden’s ghost might be there. “Charlie, what did you do with it, damnit? What
could
you do with a chest the size of a keg of brandy?”

“You could break it down … in which case you could hide the contents in a dozen places, or a hundred,” Jim reasoned slowly.

“Christ, if he did that, we’ll never find it.” Toby slid back down the ladder and dropped the last few feet to the floor. He stood for a moment with both hands over his face, and then shook his head emphatically. “No, the Charlie Chegwidden I knew was a simple soul. The idea of splitting it up into twenty places, or fifty, wouldn’t have entered his head. He was the kind of man who’d just dig a hole and bury what he wanted to hide. And it’s here
somewhere
, Jim. We just haven’t found it yet.”

“Dig a hole,” Jim echoed, leaning on the door jamb and looking out into the stableyard. A light drizzle had begun to fall, leaving the flagstones slick and shining. “He wouldn’t risk sharing the secret with anyone else.”

“Right.”
Toby joined him there, standing behind him with his chin on Jim’s shoulder. “Whatever he was going to do, it had to be done with one pair of hands – and from what you’ve told me, his mother was on her deathbed at the time he arrived home, so the tavern would be full of friends and well wishers. Whatever Charlie did, it was so silent, so cautious,
nobody
ever knew he’d done it.”

“So,” Jim reasoned, leaning back into Toby’s warmth and his hands, which were idly charting his torso as if the territory were exotic, “one thing he
didn’t
do was tear up any of these flagstones in the yard. They’re too big, too heavy, and they’ve been in place so long, if you disturbed one, the mess would be obvious. Everyone in the tavern would want to know what he was doing, digging up the stableyard. Edith would remember.”

“And the floor in the stable here is just mortar,” Toby added as Jim turned into his arms.
“Very old mortar.”

“
Which hasn’t been broken with an axe.
” Jim’s arms slid up around Toby’s neck, and he sighed. “Coach house, kitchen,
cellar
. That’s all we’ve got left.”

Toby feathered a kiss across his lips. “I’m hungry. I’ll get us some food, if you want to start in the coach house. You know it better than I ever will.”

The coach house was smaller than the stable, with room for two modest vehicles, though Jim rarely had to accommodate even one. He used it as a storehouse more often than not, and today he swore as he stepped into its gloom. It was a chaos of crates, trunks and barrels, some of them so old, they had been gathering cobwebs since Nell Chegwidden’s day, and all of them in plain sight, which was his guarantee they contained nothing more valuable than nails or pickled onions gone black with age.

Up above were rafters; the floor beneath his feet was mortar and the walls were plain, unplastered stone.
Fists on hips, Jim gave it all a bleak look and was
still swearing when Toby followed him in. He had brought cheese, bread, salt beef, prunes and a pint of ale, and they ate mechanically while sizing up the job.

“There’s a full day’s work in here,” Jim said through a mouthful of food.

“More like two days,” Toby hazarded. “The best we can do is
try
to think like a simple soul, and get done what we can.”