Home From The Sea (32 page)

The hardest pull was to get the boat out over the submerged path, where barely a hand’s span separated keel from gravel. Moments later the current took hold of it like a great hand pulling the little craft along. Jim rested on the oars, feeling the boat run by
itself
. He knew the whole bay as well as anyone who lived in the few miles east of Exmouth, and he gave Toby a
humorless
grin.

Now, they only pulled to speed the boat, and watched the shoreline pass by – the little headland, the slow, gentle rise of the land up slopes checkerboarded by tiny fields green with the spring barley. Little towns were strung out along the coast; the lower-lying settlements were still as flooded as The Raven, and looked forlorn.

The
Cattlemarket
was east of Exmouth, in the hamlet of Foxholes Hill. A dozen cottages, a forge, a schoolhouse, a barn, stood just high enough on the slope to be above the new shoreline. This part of the coast was also draining faster, Jim saw. It was only a matter of a few miles from home, but the lie of the land here was different and the floodwater had already begun to recede. Foxholes Hill would be dry days before Budleigh.

“There it is.” He pointed out a gray-shingled roof, set a little apart from the rest of the hamlet. “You know it well?”

“Alas, I do. It’s a bawdy house,” Toby said ruefully. “I don’t think there’s a sailor in these parts who doesn’t know it – Hobbs and Tuttle knew it well enough to head straight there. They’ve a fancy for the kind of doxies you find in such houses.”

“And you don’t?” Jim leaned heavily on the right oar, to turn the boat.

“I’ve a taste … for the
other
, as you’re very much aware.” Toby lifted his oar out of the water to make it easier for Jim to turn the little craft, then dipped the blade back in and began to pull with him, in the same easy rhythm. “The
kind
of pleasures you and I enjoy aren’t likely to be found in any of these houses, no matter how bawdy they are! Well,” he added, “not till you get into places much wilder than anything you find on these gentle shores. There’s a rogue harbor called Tortuga … lawless, godless, no place for delicate flowers, but I’ll admit – it has a few of its own delights, if you know where to look for them.”

Jim did not doubt a word of it. He wanted the stories of
The
Rose of Gloucester
, but it would be years before Toby spoke openly of those days, if he ever did. For the moment Jim did not ask, but pulled hard to bring the boat in against the current. Sweat prickled his face and torso as he felt the keel rasp onto gravel, and Toby hopped over the side.

They were close to the path above the beach, Jim guessed. With the water levels falling rapidly here, the boat would be safe right where it had grounded out. The oars rattled in the well and he stepped over, up to his knees in murk and swirl as he got his bearings.

A finger of smoke angled up from the chimney of The
Cattlemarket
. The white-walled, gray-shingled building was a little larger than The Raven, and Jim knew it was many times busier. It was also infamous as a disorderly house, and when the lads from the garrison were not carousing here, they were raiding the place in search of smuggled grog and dissolute women performing heinous acts that were, so the local parson preached, ‘an abomination to God and Man.’

But at ten in the morning on the day after the rains stopped, the house was quite orderly. There was nothing particularly bawdy about it and certainly nothing heinous going on. The only women Jim saw were less dissolute than simply hungover. Two were headed out to a clothesline, lugging a wicker basket of laundry between them. Another was emptying pisspots into the privy, a few yards from the rear corner of The
Cattlemarket
, showing that management and staff had the gentility not to just tip them out of the windows. Jim was impressed.

Red eyes greeted him and Toby as they stepped up to the threshold. He thought he knew the face of the girl in frills and flounces, sitting in a tub chair at the door. He had seen her at the shops in Exmouth. This morning she was smoking a pipe and holding her head as if her skull was parting company from her shoulders.

Certainly, she knew Jim. “Master Fairley, what in the world can we do for the likes of you?” she demanded, as if the volume of her own voice hurt. She meant, what was a eunuch doing, visiting a notorious brothel in broad daylight? Then her eyes passed on to Toby and she smiled. “
Ullo
, love, you decided to come back, did you? Told you, you’d get only the best ’ere, not up the road at yon
ale’ouse
. The Raven ain’t got
no
girls, just an old crone who does the
cookin
’, like I warned you.”

“Yes, well, perhaps I enjoyed the ale there, and the cooking,” Toby said, amused. He accorded Jim a wink and asked, “How’s your head, Rosie? You look like you could use a tincture.”

“I could, an’ all,” she admitted, bloodshot eyes closing. She took a few puffs of tobacco smoke. “You’d be lookin’ for them mates o’ yours.”

Jim and Toby shared a swift glance and Toby said in careful, level tones, “I am, as it happens. Where would I find them?”

She gestured over her shoulder. “They
was
upstairs, in
wi
’ Peggy and Marie …
prob’ly
still there.” She coughed on the smoke and winced, holding her head between her hands. “
Gawd
, ’
ow
much rum did I gargle last night? I should ’
ave
me bloody brains looked at.”

“Go and have a nice lie down, sleep it off.” Toby patted her shoulder as he stepped by, in through the tavern’s low doorway, a pace ahead of Jim.

Dim light, the smells of hearth smoke and frying kippers, perfume half-masking the earthier scents of unwashed bodies and distant chamber pots, greeted them. Jim took a moment for his eyes to get used to the light before he glanced around a house he had seen once or twice, albeit years before. Nothing had changed. The floor still needed sweeping, the tables could have used a lick of beeswax,
the
innkeeper was still portly, ruddy-faced, wearing a ridiculous bag wig which was slithering back from his shining bald forehead. He was in a vast leather chair by the hearth, and looked up from a half-doze as the door closed behind Jim and Toby.

“Well, now, Artie Polgreen, you’re looking a mite healthier,” Toby said with congeniality Jim knew was sham.

“You mean, I haven’t died yet,” Polgreen said acidly. He tugged the wig back into place with a vengeful jerk.

“I thought you might, the morning I walked by your door and stopped long enough for a jar of ale,” Toby admitted.

“I had a drop of two of bad grog, is
all.
” Polgreen made a face and smoothed the ruffles of a shirt stretched taut over his belly. “What brings you back, Trelane?” Small brown eyes nested in fat and creases transferred to Jim. “What brings
him
with you?”

The question was pointed, and Jim had been expecting it. He was the local competition, at least as far as drinking men were concerned. “Me? I’m on my way to Exmouth – which, this morning, means rowing a bloody boat. Toby’s been at The Raven for a few days –”

“Singing for his supper, no doubt.”
Polgreen peered down his nose at Toby.
“Too good for the likes of The
Cattlemarket
, ain’t you, Trelane?”

“I had business elsewhere,” Toby said evasively. “I still do. I’m just looking for Eli and Willie. Point me at them, and I’ll soon be back on my way. I’ll even take Master Fairley with me, since you don’t seem to want him inside your establishment.”

Polgreen rearranged his immense limbs in the chair and stretched, yawned. “Ain’t
no
place for eunuchs in a brothel … well, not unless it’s one of
those
houses,” he added thoughtfully, studying Jim rudely. “I don’t keep
no
molly house.”

Anger surged like the tide and settled just as fast. Jim forced a chuckle. “You’ve been listening to too many
rumors
, Artie. I’m not a
eunuch,
I’m just lame in one leg.”

The man was frowning at Jim’s legs; or perhaps a tiny tad higher. “That ain’t what our
Esme
says.”

“Your
Esme
,” Jim informed him, “has never been closer to me than the other side of a bar. She’s a gossip, as well as a trollop, with a tongue like vinegar. If she was selling horse racing tips, she’d have been shown the business end of the bastinado before now.”

“Aye, maybe so, maybe so,” Polgreen allowed.
He sniffed disdainfully and nodded at the stairs. “Hobbs and Tuttle are still up there. They might be awake by now … Peggy and Marie came down an hour ago.”

“I’ll go and wake them.” Toby took a step toward the stairs, and paused. “Did Rufus Bigelow ever show his face here?”

Polgreen roared a laugh. “It’d be a sight to take seven years off your life, if he did!” He peered at Toby. “He’s dead.”

Jim shot a quick glance at Toby, saw a shade of his
color
fade away.
“Dead?
Since when?
What do you know, Artie?”

The big man pushed forward in the chair, resting both elbows on his knees, which made breathing difficult. He sounded winded as he said, “Soon as your Willie and Eli sobered up a bit, they were asking after him. They paid me a coin to send a lad into Exmouth, talking to people on the docks, looking for Bigelow.” He pulled a kerchief from the pocket of his waistcoat and mopped his face. “Word is
,
he took a knife in the guts over a game of cards, three, maybe four years ago.
In Kingston.
As in, Jamaica.”

“Well … damn,” Toby breathed. “Rufus was the only decent one among the whole company.”

“Other than you, you mean,” Polgreen scoffed. “Not decent enough to play fair at cards, it seems. Or,” he added scornfully, “too cack-handed to get away with it.” He settled back into the chair, laced his fingers on his vast middle, and closed his eyes, though his voice was a roar. “Polly! Where’s that tea, girl? Am I going to fall dead of old age before I get it?”

Without another word, Toby beckoned Jim to the stairs, and they went up quietly. The
Cattlemarket
was almost empty at this hour of the morning. The doors to the bedchambers stood open, and the windows were also open to the sea wind, blowing out the thick, heavy aromas of human bodies, stale grog and forgotten food. Every room they passed was empty.

At the chimney end of the house, one door remained closed. Toby stopped there, and the blue eyes were on Jim as he applied his knuckles. A series of sharp raps solicited an answering groan from inside, and he knocked again, louder. A man’s voice, dense with the sound of Glasgow, growled,

“If
thass
Peggy
wi
’ the coffee, come on in, lass. If it’s any bugger else – get ye gone, an’ stay gone.”

Undaunted, Toby pushed open the door and stepped inside. A pace on his heels, Jim took in the dim room with one glance while the smell assaulted his nose. Without asking for permission, he threw open the windows. One bed stood against the back wall; the hearth was cold, the counterpane so rumpled, it was difficult to tell a second body was in the bed, turned upside down so its feet were tucked under the pillow.

The roar of protest as sunlight lanced into the room made Jim chuckle, and Toby said, “The one with the red eyes and the screwed-up little monkey face is Eli Hobbs, who looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in days. The pair of feet you’re almost seeing can only belong to William Tuttle, since Rufus seems to have died, rest his soul.”

“Rufus – what?”
Hobbs was sitting up, scrubbing his face, and it did bear an uncanny resemblance to a monkey, Jim thought. He was tanned dark brown, with shaggy hair and small, gappy yellow teeth – a short man, wiry, who looked as if he would be nimble enough to be a topman when he was sufficiently sober to climb a ladder, let alone a ship’s rigging.

“Rufus Bigelow,” Toby said sadly. “That fat fool, Artie Polgreen, told me he’s dead. You paid him a penny to send a lad to ask after him, in Exmouth? There’s the news the boy brought back.”

“I paid the fat-arsed halfwit tuppence,” Hobbs corrected, “an’ aye,
thass
the news.
Yer
old mate’s gone tae hell ahead of
ye
, Trelane.”

“Well, it means one less man to divvy the spoils among, doesn’t it?” Toby said with mock cheer. “I should think you’re glad to know Rufus isn’t coming back. And I
assume
you’re actually still hoping to get a share.”

Hobbs was scratching his face, hacking mucus out of his lungs, and Jim looked away as he spat onto the floorboards.
“
Whatcha
rambling on about now, ye silly wee dobber?”
He threw back the counterpane, revealing a thin, hard, naked body on the mattress beside him. “
William
!” he bellowed, and landed an open-handed blow on one small buttock, hard enough to leave his palm print there and draw a roar from Tuttle. “Wake up, ye bastard
bampot
! Move
yer
bloody arse.”

The blow had shocked Tuttle awake. He rolled over, clutching at his head, and Jim saw a flushed face, eyes that seemed to be glued shut, copper-bright hair curling around a thin neck, wiry muscles and pale, freckled skin. “Eli, in the name of sweet Jesus bloody
Christ
, will
yer
shut
yer
yap?” The accent was Manchester, if Jim was any judge. “
Wot’s
wrong
with you, man?”