Home From The Sea (40 page)

But the dragoons were already pulling out, and Dixon was up on his tall, cream mare. He paused only to give Hardesty a mock salute with his crop before he led the squad away, west up the sodden, muddy path toward Exmouth. They would be back at the garrison in an hour or so, even at Dixon’s leisurely pace. Jim angled a glance at the sun, over the tavern’s roof. Morning was old; noon was not so far away, and Toby would soon be getting hungry.

Instinct told Jim he was close. He rounded up the old vicar with a smile and the offer of a sit-down meal, and as he stepped into the house he smelt apple pie, pork pie, roasting potatoes and boiling cabbage.

A glance into the kitchen showed him Edith Clitheroe, dozing in the big leather chair as she waited for the food to finish, with Boxer at her feet and the black cat in her lap. The floor was mopped and half dry by now. The stink of
mold
and mildew was dissipating with the draft from open doors and windows – and the bucketful of mortar Jim had
troweled
into the gaps around the trapdoor while Vicar Morley opened his Bible over the dead.

He could chisel the mortar out soon enough, when a gang of laborers came in to bail out the cellar and set the braziers to dry it out, but a voice in the back of his mind asked him, did he want to bother?

For some time he stood in the kitchen doorway, frowning at the big, wet places on the taproom floor where he had scrubbed up the blood. Some of it defied the brush. If the flagstones had been any less than mahogany dark, they would be shadowed with stains. Upstairs, not a bedchamber was habitable. The Raven would be simply a drinking place until he could get new mattresses and linen – yet the story would race along the coast, and customers would come in from far afield to hear it from his own lips.

The thought reminded him of Toby. When the pies came off the wide iron baking hobs he cut a piece of each, swiped the best potato, a ladle full of cabbage, a knob of salt butter, and set aside a plate. Hardesty and Morley were at the long table under the window, where the backgammon tokens often rattled on a winter’s evening, and Jim surveyed the taproom with mixed feelings.

He could still see Charlie Chegwidden, sitting at that very window, watching the sea and the path,
waiting
– as Jim knew now – to see Burke or Hobbs or any of them come sneaking back to The Raven years early. Charlie had fully expected them to try to swindle each other, and only fear had kept that crew honest.

If he narrowed his eyes, he could even glimpse his father standing behind the bar, polishing the best pewter tankards. He smiled at the memory, breathed a sigh and fetched himself back to the present with an act of willpower.

The Raven was rich with memories … filled, he supposed, with ghosts. It had been a sanctuary for a young man as lame as himself, not to mention a healthy young male with a taste for ‘the other,’ as Toby called it. A sailors’ tavern had been magnificently convenient, until Toby Trelane walked up the path, just days ahead of Burke’s bastard company. At last, Jim had no need to watch out for handsome sailors who shared his fancies and would respond to a raised brow, a wink, a discreet beckoning into the shadows.

But Fred Bailey’s keen old eyes had seen the truth. Lately, the Raven had become as much a prison as it had ever been a haven. The stubborn echo of Fred’s voice was in Jim’s ears even now, as he ate a slice of pie and listened to Hardesty and Morley talking over parish business.
Your trouble is
,
you never get out. You never do … stuff. You never see nothin’. You never make the acquaintance of mates and enemies.

He was right, but knowing it had never made it possible for Jim to ‘do stuff,’ in the company of those mates and enemies.
And now?
In the loft was the old oat bin from the kitchen, heavy with the entire treasure of Diego Monteras and the Indian prince who was the love of his life. For Jim Fairley, nothing would ever be the same.

A little before noon, Hardesty permitted himself a comfortable belch and pushed his chair back from the table. “Well, Richard, it’s been damn’ fine talking to you again, man to man, outside of chapel,” he told Morley, “and I’m honestly sorry I have to be on my way. I’ve got a dozen bally patients who’ll be looking for me in half an
hour,
and it’d
behoove
me to be on time!” He clasped the vicar’s hand, and looked up over the silver head at Jim. “Will I see you for a game of whist and a snifter on Sunday, Jim?”

“Perhaps.
If I can be there, I will … and if I can’t, I’ll send a lad with a message,” Jim told him. “Do you need anything else from me?”
 

“Regarding the dead, you mean?” Vicar Morley twisted in his chair and peered up at Jim with the faded eyes. “No, no. You’ve done more than enough, Master Fairley – and it was most decent of you to fetch me to whisper a prayer or two over the likes of them. Lord knows, we’re all bound for Judgment one way and another, but I’d like to think those rogues will burn a
lot
longer in Hades than you or I can expect to!” He sighed heavily. “They’ll have pine boxes and paupers’ graves, and we’ve no real names … still, we’ll do the best we can, as we did for the poor little Spanish girl.”

“Then,
it’s
over,” Jim breathed.

“Over and done,” Hardesty affirmed. “You heard Roger Dixon. You can’t hang a dead man, no matter what he was guilty of. Well, I suppose you
can
, but he’s not going to kick very much for your amusement at the end of the rope!”

The
humor
was black, and Jim gave him a cynical smile. “Thank you, John. I’ll be in touch.” Hardesty had stepped out when Vicar Morley graced Jim with a benevolent smile. “Take care on the ride home,” Jim told the old man. “I’ll have the horse I borrowed back in his own stable by evening, my word on it.”

“In your own time, my boy.”
Then Morley shook a long finger at him, mock stern. “I expect to see you in church on Sunday morning, now … you’ve a good few prayers of thanks to say. You’re alive, against the odds. Call me partial if you will, but I do believe the Almighty was vigilant, Master Fairley, or it’d be
you
being laid to rest tomorrow, right beside your father.”

“Amen to that,” Jim said softly. “Sunday morning. I’ll be there.”

With the visitors gone, The Raven was very quiet. Mrs. Clitheroe was singing tunelessly to herself in the kitchen; Boxer sat on the doorstep in the sun while pigeons scratched about in the thatch above; the tomcat had found a patch of warm floor and was rolling luxuriously on it. Everything was so absurdly normal, Jim found himself almost on edge as if he were waiting for
something
, without knowing what it was.
 

He busied himself, sweeping, bundling wreckage to be taken out and burned, making a list of what was needed to set the tavern to rights, but all the time he was listening. He heard footsteps from the path, and was at the door as the tall, slender figure and the black dog ambled into view.

“All done here?”
Toby asked hopefully. By habit his hands were buried in his pockets. His eyes were shadowed, as if he had not slept well, but no lines of dread were etched into his face today. The sea wind played in the long fair hair, tossing it into his eyes, and he raked it back.

“All done,” Jim affirmed. “Captain Dixon’s happy. The undertaker has carted off the dead, Vicar Morley’s putting them in the ground tomorrow. John found the gems on Pledge, as we knew he would. He and Dixon are quite convinced of the motivation for
bloodletting … are
you hungry?”

“Starving,” Toby confessed. “I’m smelling food.”

“I saved you some. Come and eat.”

The door closed behind him, and Toby had hung up his coat when Jim seized him bodily, hugged him hard enough to knock the breath out of him, and manhandled him out of sight of the kitchen so they could kiss without Mrs. Clitheroe catching a glimpse of them.

Toby groaned
,
face buried in the curve of Jim’s shoulder. “Eight
years
, I’ve lived with a bloody cold-sweated fear of these last days, yet how could I not come here? The prize was in the offing and I earned my share. Perhaps I should have stayed away, but …” He shook himself. “Times, I thought Joe or Eli would kill me, just for the sheer spite of doing it, or maybe even for the fun. The truth is
,
I used Nathaniel almost as much as he used me.”

“Then it was an even trade,” Jim judged. “Oh, let it be, Toby. Dame Fortune dealt the hand and they played it out – we all did. For some reason she dealt me into the game, though I never knew it at the time. Damnit – any of those bastards could have walked up to my door, any day of the last six years, and put a pistol to my head. And I wouldn’t have known what they were talking about!”

“Fear of Nathaniel, and of each other, kept them more honest than a bench full of judges,” Toby said quietly.

“It did.” Jim was conscious of the sweat prickling his ribs and scalp as the possibilities began to dawn on him fully. He shook the shadows off with an effort. “The only thing we have to think about now is where we go from here. Sit
down,
I’ll bring your food. Will you have
an ale
, or a rum?”

“How about both?”
Toby pulled a chair up to the table where Hardesty and Morley had sat.

The plate set down before him with a clatter, and Jim fetched a pair of bowls for Bess.
Stewed rabbit in one of them, a half pint of brown ale in the other, which she seemed to relish as much as the meat.
Toby was eating as he hooked a chair with his foot and drew it closer, and for a time Jim was content to just watch the man until Toby said,

“It’s all a question of what you
want
to do now, Jim. You can have anything you care for – we both can.”

“What I want?” Jim was only a little overwhelmed. “What I really want is to see some of the world. All the places you’ve seen and I’ve only dreamed about after someone like yourself told stories. Places that are just flyspecks on a map to the likes of me.”

“Then, we’ll buy a ship and outfit it, crew it,” Toby suggested. “A merchantman, so she can pay her way with cargo while we see the world.”

“And you’ll show me Port Royal and Kingston, and the ports of Spain and France.” Jim could scarcely believe he was saying these things.

“If that’s where you want to go.” Satisfied for the moment, Toby sat back and mopped his lips. “First, let me visit a disreputable old dealer I know in Santander. He can turn a handful of gems into gold coin … you can’t actually
spend
jewels, you know! If you try, and you don’t have the pedigree of a duke or an earl to account for how you came by them, people soon assume you’re a thief.” He took a long swig of ale. “But there’s a clever old merchant with a dark little counting house a few streets back from the docks in Santander. He’ll give us half of what the gems are actually worth –”

“Half?”
Jim protested.

“And he’ll consider himself very clever for cheating us on the little handful of stones,” Toby said wryly. “But
half
of their value is still an outrageous fortune, and then all we need is a story people will believe, for where the money came from.” His eyes danced as he looked at Jim over the rim of his cup. “I do believe I have a grand uncle in Scotland who’s about to pass away and leave me some money … and it seems you bought a treasure map from an old rummy who was so down on his luck, he sold it to you for the price of enough grog to drink himself to death in Portsmouth.”

“And we,” Jim said slowly, “take this ship of ours and pretend to go hunting for treasure.”

Toby spread his hands. “We do, if you want to return to England with a great chest of jewels and a solid explanation for where they came from. It’s almost the truth, anyway. That’s how the treasure of Diego Monteras was found in the first place. No one ever need know it was found by Nathaniel Burke’s crew and lay
here
, unknown for eight years, walled up in your cellar. Perhaps you and I might say we found it right where Hugo and Fernando left it … even if we have to take it back there and find it all over again.” He lifted his cup in toast. “Then, if you want to come home, there’s no mystery about where the largesse came from. You won’t have to hear, and contest, the word ‘thief’ when you take a ruby or an emerald the size of a pigeon’s egg to a dealer in London or Manchester.”

“We’ll just be rich men,” Jim whispered, and groaned, a sound of sheer pleasure.
“You and me, Toby.
Gentlemen explorers with the whole world to discover.”

“Yes.” Toby leaned over the table and caught Jim’s hand. “But you’ll find, Jim, nothing in the world is sweeter than coming home.”

“If you’ve someone to come home to,” Jim allowed.

“Or with.”
Toby took a quick look around to be sure of their privacy, and touched a kiss to Jim’s knuckles. “Come with me to Spain. You’ll like Santander. It’s a port, and like any port it’s the crossroads of the very world you’re so hungry to explore. You’ll see things, hear things, you can’t even imagine.”

“I don’t speak a word of Spanish,” Jim protested.

“But I do.” Toby was smug. “I learned to speak it well. Where do you think I’ve been for so long, the law in this country forgot I ever existed! Give it a few weeks, till the excitement dies down. Let’s get The Raven back into shape,
then
we’ll take the coach to Plymouth and the first ship we can get to Santander. I’ll introduce you to one of life’s most charming old rascals, who’ll make you laugh, make you like him, even while he’s robbing you blind … and you won’t care a fig about being robbed.”