Home From The Sea (26 page)

“I’m very glad you did survive.” Jim went back for more wood. The mantel was stacked now, and the table. They would be loading up the bar
soon,
and anything they said would be overheard. “I’m glad you found your way to my
door,
and as for the rest …” He looked away, at Burke and Pledge. “It’s not over yet.”

With the table stacked, they trooped back and forth from the kitchen woodpile to the bar, two loads, three, four, while Jim worked up a sweat and the leg began to hurt as if a knife were thrust in among the muscles. He had bent to pick up another load when he heard the sound he had been waiting for.

A soft thump; heavy breathing; a groan of protest, the scrape of a chair leg and then a heavier, splashing
thud
.
Toby spun, and Jim viewed the scene with smug satisfaction. Pledge was the one asleep on the table, snoring. Burke had held out a fraction longer, had half-drawn a pistol, pushed back his chair and then dropped to the floor, where he lay in the water, nose and mouth bubbling.

“What in hell –?” Toby demanded, as breathless as if he had run a mile.

“Dutch laudanum.”
Jim slapped his leg. “I keep a bottle in the house. I told you, I use a few drops of it when the pain gets beyond bearing. Two or three
drops,
and I’m dozy. Six
drops,
and I’ll be dead asleep. Like them.”

“In the food?”
Toby splashed across to the table, and as Jim watched he retrieved every pistol, every knife he could find.

“In the ale,” Jim corrected. “I told Edith to count nine drops into each mug and twenty more into the pitcher … and I told her to add salt, a lot of salt, to the pies and cabbage. The pickled pork is salt itself. Oh, they’d drink as soon as they started eating.”

Four pistols and seven assorted knives stacked on the bar beside the wood, and Toby pulled both hands across his face. “That’s why you didn’t let me drink.”

“If I had, you’d be face down with them.” Jim dusted off his hands.

“How long?”
Toby wondered.
“Till they wake?”

“If it were me, four or six hours,” Jim mused. “Burke’s a lot bigger, so he’ll wake sooner, but I’ve the remedy for that. Edith?”

She stood, scattering the cat, and produced a brown glass bottle from the pocket of her voluminous green skirt. This she gave to Jim, and he and Toby rolled Burke onto his back. Jim forced open the man’s mouth and ignored the reek of his breath as he placed four heavy drops directly onto the back of his tongue.

“He’ll not wake for six or eight hours,” he said darkly as he straightened. “Pledge might start to wake sooner.
Toby?”

Again, the open mouth, and three fat drops fell on the back of Pledge’s tongue. Even Toby was satisfied, and Jim watched him relax visibly. “Damnit, Jim, I’m beholden.” He gave Burke a solid kick. “For old times, he said.
As if I’d want to be reminded.”

“Forget it, if you can,” Jim said softly.

The blue eyes were wide. “Can you?”

“I can try.” Jim passed the bottle back to Mrs. Clitheroe and beckoned both of them into the kitchen. “We’ve got a few options, now.” He pulled a chair up to the hearth, where the fire was still burning in the black iron basket which sat a hand’s span above the bricks, and barely three inches out of the water sluicing across the kitchen floor. Edith returned to her chair and Toby perched on the three-legged stool. He lifted Bess up onto his knee to get her out of the water. Jim tucked Boxer under his arm and wondered where the cat could be, until he saw a sinuous shape move, black in the shadows on the shelf among the canisters of tea, sugar, oats.

“Options,” Toby said thoughtfully.

“A few.”
From somewhere Jim found a faint, wry smile. “They can die, Toby. They can feed the fish, the same way Barney Bellowes did.”

Toby’s eyes closed. “Could you do it?”

“Kill them?” Jim pulled a tub chair closer to the warmth, settled and balanced the terrier on his lap.

“Murder,” Toby corrected.
His brows quirked.
“We have the better of them. The advantage is in our hands. Kill them, and it’ll be murder in cold blood.”

“No court in this
land’d
convict thee,” Edith said tartly. She had cupped a hand behind her ear to catch every word.

“True,” Toby agreed. “And we can surely kill them, Jim – it’s all too easy. But think, before you do.” He held up his palms. “There’s no blood on these hands, not yet. I’ve never killed. I’ve done a lot … been
made
to do a lot … that I’m not proud of, but I’ve never killed a man and I don’t intend to, if I can help it. There’s one stain I don’t want on my poor soul.”

“You still believe any of the old Bible twaddle?” Jim was astonished.

“I don’t honestly know,” Toby admitted. “But I’ll tell you this. When Judgment Day rolls around, as you can be sure it will, I’ll be able to stand up in front of the Judge and say honestly, I never took a human life, much less murdered.” He shrugged eloquently. “It’s important to me, Jim. I’m going to burn, no doubt about it … but I don’t think I’ll burn for very long. Not compared with the likes of Nathaniel and Joe. The
goblins’ll
grant me manumission from Purgatory a hundred years ahead of them. It matters.”

In fact, it did. Jim thought back to his father, who was so fond of the Psalms, always in church on Sunday, careful not to blaspheme, just as careful to contribute to the poor fund. Arthur Fairley would have agreed with Toby without hesitation, and as for Jim – he was far from sure it could all be dismissed as ‘Bible twaddle.’ At least
something
inside that thick, mystifying, confusing book might be true. And if it were true, the lighter the burden of sin one carried with him to Judgment Day, the better.

“Damnit,” he muttered, “you’re not going to make it easy!”

“Nothing ever is.” Toby was stroking
Bess,
and intent on Jim. “We have options other than murder.”

“Two that I can see,” Jim said slowly. “One, we take their longboat and leave. We just go, and don’t come back.”

Toby nodded slowly. “I thought about leaving. The trouble is, if we vanish, they’ll wake up sure we had the prize all along, and we took it with us. You heard Nathaniel. We’ll be hunted, and eventually we’ll be found. We’re easy enough to recognize in a crowd.”

“Especially me, with this leg.”
Jim breathed a long sigh. “Then, we find the prize, don’t we?” He looked from Toby to Edith and back. “The last option we have is for us to find the prize before we let the buggers wake up.”

“Yes.” Toby licked his lips and sat forward, betraying his eagerness. “We take a small share, and we leave the rest. Trust me, Jim, we can be rich as lords on a
very
small share, and we can be gone before they’re clear headed enough to see what’s on the table in front of them.”

One brow
raised
at Toby and Jim asked, “Burke wouldn’t hunt us down, to recover what we’d taken?”

“Not if we took less than what would be my share anyway.” Toby smiled, lopsided and engaging. “He has his own odd code, and he keeps to it. I was there, I shared the same risks,
did
the same work. He put his mark on me and I did my duty by him, never shirked in what he asked of me.”
Color
rose in his face as he confessed this much, but he lifted his chin. “I’m due a share.”

“As a slave?”
Jim asked uncertainly.

“A
small
share,” Toby allowed, “along with my freedom. I’ll also leave them a letter – Nathaniel can read, after a fashion. I’ll tell them Barney’s dead, and how, so there’s one less way the prize has to be split. There’s more for everyone with Barney out of the way, and even Charlie, rest his soul.” His face shadowed again. “And that’s another thing. There’s two more of Nathaniel’s crew back in Exmouth that I know of, and a third who should have arrived by now. If we want to walk away from this as free men and not have to spend the rest of our lives looking back, we need to settle with Eli Hobbs, Willie Tuttle and Rufus Bigelow at the same time. Have it done, finished.”

“Well … shite.” Jim passed a hand before his eyes. “You’re not asking for much, Toby.”

“I know.” Toby stood and let Bess have the stool, where she perched looking down at the water. “But I also know these men. If we split the prize with Nathaniel and Joe, and cut out the other three, it’ll be Eli and Willie right behind us, and I’m not too sure about Rufus, either. He was always the best of the bunch – which isn’t saying much. They’re perfectly capable of murdering all of us, Nathaniel and Joe as well, to get what they call their fair share.” He gestured west. “Eli and Willie are at a tavern not far on this side of Exmouth.
The
Cattlemarket
.”

“I know it.”

“And I’d give you good
odds,
Rufus
will’ve
joined them by now.”

Jim was silent for some moments. “You want to bring them here.”

“
After
we find the prize.”
Toby was looking into the fireplace even then. “We find it first. There’s a tradition among thieves and pirates.
Division of the spoils.
In the company I knew, the captain took half. The first mate took a quarter of what was left. Then the remainder was split up according to shares. Gunners got three shares apiece; ordinary men got one.
Slaves due their freedom, a half share and a ticket of leave.”
He looked away. “Slaves not due their freedom got nothing but the gift of life and the chance to live another day.”

“And if we can get the five of them here,” Jim said slowly, “they’ll hold to this?”

“They will. I’d swear to it. I know them.” Toby took a kick at the water and muttered an oath. “If we’re going to do this, Jim, it has to be soon. It’ll be hard enough to search the fireplace already, and in a few hours we’ll be wading up to our knees in the cellar. The longer we talk, the harder it’s going to be.”

“And our lives depend on it,” Jim finished.

“Yes.” Toby’s face darkened. “I’m rather afraid they do.” He paused, and his voice was plaintive. “Please, Jim.”

For better or worse, the decision lay in Jim’s hands, the first time he had ever carried such a burden of responsibility. He might have struggled with it, but Toby knew these men too well and he was right. “Then, we’d better find it,” he said tersely, “because we’ll never convince Burke and the others we don’t have it. We might as well put ourselves out of our misery, if Charlie Chegwidden’s outsmarted us.”

“He hasn’t – not yet,” Toby whispered. “He was shrewd enough to keep the secret safe for six
years
after they put him in a hole in the ground, but I knew Charlie. He wouldn’t try to swindle Nathaniel – and not because he had any affection for him!”

“It was all about sheer bloody fear?” Jim guessed, with a glance into the taproom.

“Let’s say, he had a healthy dread of Nathaniel.” Toby had picked up the small brass bucket in which the cinders and ash were carried away from the hearth, and was bailing water into the fire basket to put out the coals. “I wouldn’t care to have Nathaniel Burke hunting me!”

Jim hauled himself up onto the aching leg and gave Boxer the chair. “Edith, I’ve a job for you. Those swine will be starting to think about waking up in six or eight hours. Make note of the time, and with an hour to spare, pry open their nasty mouths and give them four more drops apiece, right on the back of the tongue. You can do this?”

She made a face. “I’ve dosed enough bairns in me time … not that any of ’em ’ad rotten teeth.”

“Careful with the laudanum,” Jim warned. “Too much, and you can kill them – and you heard what Toby said. You don’t want murder on your conscience any more than we do.”

She waved him off as she heaved herself out of the chair. “I’ll get up there an’ get a fire
goin
’ in the big bedroom, an’ all.”

“It’s a mess up there,” Toby warned. “Do what you can, Edith. When we’ve found what we’re looking for, I’ll come up and help.”

“When,” Jim echoed.
“
When
we’ve found it.”

“
When
.”
Toby had the fire out now, in a mass of hissing coals and gray smoke. He straightened, one hand in the curve of his back, and gave Jim a rare smile. “I’ve got to believe it’s here.”

So did Jim. As Edith stepped out he caught Toby’s head in both hands and held him to a kiss that left them both breathless. His lips felt bruised as he stepped back and said, “All right. Now we find it.”

Chapter Fourteen

The water was cold enough to make Jim’s finger joints ache, and filthy enough for him to lose sight of his hands two inches below the surface. He and Toby had slung every lantern they possessed from the mantel, filling the fireplace with light. The fire basket stood out in the kitchen now, still hot enough to cast grudging warmth though it was cooling rapidly, and the sweat of effort continued to prickle along Jim’s ribs after the sheer effort of clearing out of the hearth – water, cinders, soot, ash, the debris of recent fires – while the water washed everything right back in. The fire basket might never have been moved since it was set in place when The Raven was rebuilt on the ruins of the old inn.