Home From The Sea (6 page)

“A friar lived at the hermitage … fat and old, and so
bald,
he had no reason to shave in his tonsure. He was Brother Alfredo, a keeper of books and records. He had thousands of them, rescued from ships and offices, stored in big wooden crates to keep the mice out of them.

“Did he have a letter? Sir Geoffrey asked. Did he have a bit ripped from an old chart of the coast of South America? Well, Brother Alfredo had a mind like a cote full of pigeons.
Messy, like his house.
He remembered the letter, and he tore the hermitage apart for two days to find the old, brown parchment. But in the end, when Sir Geoffrey had begun to think the whole affair was one enormous wild goose chase after all – oh, the monk found it. Sir Geoffrey had the letter and the map
in his hands
.

“The year had already begun to wind down. The winds were dead wrong for the undertaking of another quest. The Atlantic was about to grow stormy with winter, even if the crew were not anxious to get home, which they were … and back in London the Queen was probably twice as anxious to get a return on her investment! So Sir Geoffrey paid the monk in silver coin, took the letter and map, returned to his ship, and prayed to Saint Nicholas and Saint Christopher for a safe passage east.

“Luck was with him. His ship raced home before storm winds, and she docked on the Thames not six weeks after he’d paid the monk. The Queen was so delighted with the profits of this voyage, she knighted him at once. And it was then, as they drank a little Madeira to celebrate the day, when he told her the story of the treasure of Diego Monteras … and word has it, he showed her the actual letter.

“The Queen read it. She read it again. She set it down and drank another cup of wine, and she looked up at Sir Geoffrey with the green eyes that had made the likes of Sir Francis Drake himself take a step back.”

There, Toby fell silent, sealed his lips and surveyed his audience with a dark, self-satisfied smirk. Jim had hung on every word. The man was a master storyteller. Fred Bailey was the first one to demand to know what happened next – obviously the Queen backed Sir Geoffrey to return to South America on the spring winds and hunt for the treasure, but was it found? What became of Sir Geoffrey?

Several in the audience offered to buy Toby
a rum
, if a jar of ale would not keep him talking, but he held up both hands as if they had him at pistol point. “Not tonight! You want to know the rest? Come back tomorrow, and I’ll be glad to tell you.
For now?
Haven’t you seen the time? Get back to your homes, before your wives think you’ve been struck with death!”

They groaned, and a few fingers shook ruefully at him, but the ploy was an old one. He would get a second bite at this cherry, and perhaps a third, before they had plumbed his store of songs and tales. They might even come back a second time to hear them all again before they began to grow bored. Jim was impressed, not merely by the balladsinger’s skill but also the haul of coins in the box under the bar.

The locals wandered out, some staggering and propping each other up, and trying to remember the words to The Hogshead.
Jim wondered where Toby had learned it, and as the last of his customers drifted away into the night, he latched the door. He leaned on the old timbers and looked Toby Trelane up and down in the flickering light of the half dozen lamps.

“I’d tip my hat to you, if I was wearing it,” he said honestly. “I didn’t think you’d be able to seduce the rummy old bastards who drink here, but you had them wrapped around your little finger.” He nodded at the bar, the coins. “You reckon you can you do it again tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Toby said honestly, “but I’m game to give it a try.” He yawned deeply and knuckled his eyes. “Can I beg a blanket? I’ll take the hearth corner, and be up and around before you in the morning.”

“If that’s what you want.” Jim had more than half expected Toby to hold out his hand, look at him out of dark, bedroom eyes, but the man seemed genuinely exhausted. He was tired enough to want only to sleep tonight? It was a reasonable desire, even if Jim’s own nerves were prickling with intrigue. “You can take any bedchamber, upstairs, if you prefer a mattress under your spine.
There’s no paying guests
at the moment. You know this place well enough to know there’s six bedchambers up there, and only me sleeping in one of them. I’ve got the warm one, right up against the chimney.”

Now, Toby looked at him for a long moment in which Jim was so sure he was going to say
something
, he held his breath. But at length Toby said simply, “I’m beholden. I’ll take Bess out for a breath of air, and then I’ll lay my head down. Do you mind dogs in the bedchambers? She has better manners than most of the gentry.”

“It’s no problem to me.” Jim turned away and grabbed
a half
dozen tankards, three handles in each fist, to cover the moment’s awkwardness. “You can take Boxer out as well. He seems to have hit it off with your Bess. Lock up behind you when you step back in.” The tavern’s ratter was yawning at the kitchen door; his tail thumped as Jim spoke his name and glanced at him. “I suppose I’ll see you in the morning.”

“You will.” Toby gave a low whistle to call both dogs, and lifted the latch. “Goodnight, Master Fairley.”

“Sleep well, Master Trelane,” Jim said with an acid-hot
humor
as he dumped the tankards, and he tackled the steep, creaking stairs without looking back.

The man was so hard to read, he could be dangerous. One moment, Jim was sure he had Toby pegged, and the next he was wondering. Mistakes would be so easy to make – too easy – and there was no way back from a blunder. One mistake was all it took to wreak ruin with a man’s whole life.

With a sigh, he heeled off his shoes, tugged his shirt over his head, and sprawled out on the bed in the light of two tallow candles. The casement was open to the night air, and he glared at the stars framed in it.

“Who are you, Toby Trelane?” he wondered aloud. “Where are you from – and where the hell are you going?”

More importantly, what did he want? Jim’s wilful memory dwelt on the lean, hard body he had seen chopping wood, the soft flaxen hair that stirred in the sea wind. His fingertips could literally feel that skin, and he could almost taste the man’s lips.
Almost
.

Minutes later, he heard the quiet squeal of the door, the rattle of the
sneck
and then the solid thud of the bolt sliding home. Toby and the dogs were back in, the tavern was locked up, and Jim followed him up by the soft sound of feet on the stairs.

He took the room above the yard, and the door closed a moment later. The bed in there was too soft for Jim’s liking. Put the weight of two men on it, and the mattress swayed and dipped. Then again, he admitted, if a man were sleeping alone, and all he was doing was
sleeping
, the mattress was soft enough to serve well enough.

Frustrated, annoyed, mystified, disgruntled, he turned over, punched the pillow and closed his eyes. Sleep was a long time coming and when it did settle over his mind, his dreams were full of an elusive lover who was always elsewhere, unavailable, unattainable, even though he smiled at Jim and winked in mocking invitation.

Chapter Four

The smell of kippers greeted him as he swung downstairs. He followed his nose to the kitchen to find Toby pushing a pair of the smoked fish around with a wooden spoon, in the black iron skillet where a little butter had begun to sizzle. Yesterday’s bread stood on the table and the fat brown pot was brewing fresh tea.

He looked rested, Jim thought, while Jim himself felt barely half awake and annoyed. The kitchen door stood open; the dogs were lying across the threshold while the cat washed his face in the warm, smoky draft from the hearth. Toby wore a smile this morning. He was in the same britches and shirt, but his waistcoat was off and his hair was unbound, loose on his shoulders. He was so
fair,
it seemed he rarely needed to shave. No matter the hour, he looked good enough to eat alive, which only made Jim more annoyed.

“I was looking at your thatch,” Toby said by way of greeting as he pushed the kippers off onto a pair of ivory-stained plates. “It’s coming loose in a few places. You’ll lose a lot of it in the next big wind … I could fix it.”

Jim answered with a grunt, and broke off a piece of bread.

“Look, if you don’t want me to stay, I can move on this morning,” Toby said with a faint but audible sigh.

“Did I say that?” Jim demanded.

“No.” Toby slopped tea into two cups and spooned in a lot of sugar in lieu of milk, of which there was none. “But you look…”

“Do I?” Jim forced his mind back to reality and summoned a smile. “Don’t take any notice to me. I think I got up on the wrong side of the bed.”
Which was my usual side, since there was nobody in it to make me get up on the other bloody side!
He took a large mouthful of kipper and sopped up the salt-sweet juice. “Fix the roof if you feel compelled to, but you don’t have to.”

“I like to be busy.” Toby gestured vaguely. “There’s any number of jobs I can do around the place.”

“You saying you want to stay on?” Jim took a long slurp of the tea, found it too hot and far too sweet. “I can’t pay you much.”

“I’d like to stay for a while,” Toby said cautiously, “and you don’t have to pay me at all.”

“You’re going to fix the thatch, and not hand me the bill?” Jim almost scoffed at the idea. “It’d cost me at least three shillings to get it fixed by the man who comes over from Exeter, and he’d drink a dozen pints of my best ale while he was at it.”

“So the job ought to buy me dinner for a week or three,” Toby said easily. “And then we’ll see if your customers have had enough of me and my stories.”

“They’re good stories,” Jim said almost reluctantly. “Good songs. It’s always a pleasure to hear something new.”

“It is.” Toby sat back and studied him over the rim of his mug. “You, uh, you don’t have a wife who’s due back any moment? That is, I was listening to your customers. I couldn’t help overhearing some of the things they were saying, and…”

Jim pushed away his plate with a sigh. “And they were muttering on about how I’m an odd fellow, all alone, and no use
to a lass
. About how I’m a
eunuch
,” he said sourly.

“Well, not in those exact words,” Toby said with astonishing gentleness, “but I suppose it’s what they were saying. And I couldn’t help noticing how you, uh, that is…”

“Have a gimpy leg.” Jim frowned into his cup.

“You walk with a very slight limp,” Toby amended. “I thought it made you a little mysterious.
Interesting.
I’d have thought the local lasses would be all over you, wanting to mother you.”

“Smother me, maybe,” Jim grumbled.

“Smother?” Toby’s brows arched. “You’re not really a – a eunuch?”

“No, I’m bloody not! But they like to think I am.” Jim regarded him with a defiant glare, challenging him to make something of it.

“No offense intended,” Toby assured him. “I was just curious, because you’re alone. And it’s so unusual to find a handsome young man alone.”

“Is it?” Jim was about to tell him it was far from unusual, when the handsome young fellow was like
that
.
When he was one of
those
.
When his heart lay in places seldom mentioned in genteel company, and then only for a ribald joke. He wanted to snap the words at Toby, and only bit them off at the last moment because the confession could have been a close second cousin to suicide, if Toby were altogether the wrong man to hear any such admission.

Before he could speak, the balladsinger shushed him. “It’s all right, Jim. It’s nothing to do with me, if you don’t want to run the gauntlet of women with a leg that won’t serve you when you need it to. If you’re not a eunuch, though … well, there’s still a lot to be grateful for, I should say.”

And he pushed away from the table, taking the empty plates to the big brass bowl where Mrs. Clitheroe washed dishes. Jim watched him there, seeing the long lines of his back and legs, the strength in the sinewy forearms, the honey brown skin which looked soft as any girl’s. He ached to just come right out and speak the truth, and he could not remember another time when reading a man’s signs had been so damned difficult.

In the end he said nothing at all, but drifted out into the tavern yard and sat on a barrel there, stoking the long-stemmed pipe he rarely smoked. It was midmorning when he could be bothered to stir. He heard Toby up on the roof, singing softly to himself in French and Spanish, and he hopped down off the barrel when Mrs. Clitheroe appeared at the corner.

She wore a tight, worried face, and at once Jim knew something was badly wrong. He had been knocking out the pipe, and now set it aside and took the old woman’s basket, which was heavy with vegetables.

“Edith, what’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“Nay, Master Jim – not me. But …
I’s
sorry,
mebbe
I should’ve asked, but I put ’er in yon coach house, cuz it looks like rain.”

“Who?”
Jim wondered. The stable and coach house stood opposite the tavern yard, like the crossbar on a letter T. From the barrel by the kitchen door, he could not see the coach house’s wide double doors.