Home From The Sea (24 page)

Pledge was chortling now.
“And the
Portuguee
, in Barbados.”
He doubled up in glee and slapped his thigh. “Damn,
d’yer
remember ’
ow
’is eyes bugged ’
alfway
outta ’is ’
ead
when
yer
shoved a
belayin
’ pin right up ’im, and branded ’is tits
wiv
a pair of doubloons straight outta the brazier? Ha!”

“Then, there’ll be plenty for you to enjoy,” Burke said, still fingering Toby’s hair in a mockery of tenderness, “unless the lad’s tellin’ the truth. In which case, you’ll be too busy
countin
’ your share of the swag to care what happens to this
un
.”

The Adam’s apple bobbed twice, three times, in Toby’s throat. “Honestly, Nathaniel – I’ve searched. It’s
got
to be here. You’ll find it, and when you do – all I’m asking is a handful of
little
ones, and you let me go. You won’t see me again. You always said I’d earned it.
Freedom.”

“Aye, maybe you
has
.” Burke withdrew his hand. “We’ll see. Right now, you can earn your ticket of leave with the truth. If
you’s
bein
’ honest with me, we’ll find where old Charlie hid the swag. If
you’s
not…” The
tricorned
head cocked at Toby. “I wouldn’t be you, lad, if
you’s
lyin
’ to me. You know me. I’ll winkle the truth out of you. You want to walk away from here? You play nice.”

“I want to walk away.” Toby’s head bowed. “I’m telling you God’s honest truth –”

“Don’t you
dare
quote God at
us!
” Pledge roared. “One more word about God outta them filthy lips, and I’ll hammer you right through the deck!”

“Joe, now,
be
calm before you hurt yourself,” Burke said with infuriating good
humor
. “You don’t lay a hand on Toby. Not even a finger. Not while he’s
wearin
’ my brand, and
I’s
tellin’ you not to. You want him, you ask
nice
, and you give back what you borrowed in the same condition you borrowed it. You know how it goes … it’s been a long time, but you ain’t
forgot
.”

“I ain’t
forgot
.” Pledge was seething, and gave Toby a glare that would have felled an oak. “But don’t bloody dare quote God at me, or when the time comes to ’
ave
the truth outta
yer
filthy ’
ide
, I’ll ask Nathan, all
nice
like,
fer
the pleasure o’
doin
’ you
meself
.”

Burke gave that congested laugh and slapped Toby’s backside. “And there’s a treat I’d be happy to grant.
So, lad.
Time you were
showin
’ me, eh?” He turned back to Jim now. “And you, Master Fairley, lay on this food and drink you promised. You can’t get away from here. The water’s up to your doorsill, you can’t row the longboat single handed … and I saw the old woman back there in the kitchen. Your grandmother, is she? You vanish on me, Fairley, and I’ll put a bullet in her, somewhere it’ll take her three days to die in the kind of agony you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, you
bein
’ the nice lad you are.”

“I might,” Jim breathed, “wish it on you, Captain … but I take your meaning. I have no foggiest notion what you’re talking about, but if you want to search the house, go ahead. Start with the loft and work down, and if you want to burn the place and sift over the rubble, at least have the decency to let me and Edith and the dogs step outside before you set it alight.”

The remark made Burke laugh aloud. “Maybe I won’t have to. Maybe,” he added, shoving Toby in the direction of the stairs, “we’ll just find old Charlie’s
hidin
’ place, and be on our way.”

The sense of impotence was overpowering. Jim stood in the kitchen doorway, watching as Burke and Pledge followed Toby up, and his head reeled with everything he had seen and heard. The threat to Edith Clitheroe was very genuine, and only the deafness of old age prevented her hearing it for herself. Jim did not repeat it.

And he realized Toby could only have told him a fraction of the story of what had happened in the time between the mutiny on
The Rose of Gloucester
and the day the eight survivors went in eight directions, to stay ahead of the law. The details – personal, painful, shaming – he had kept to himself, and now those old secrets were flaying him alive.

“
Does
thee know these buggers?” Edith tugged at his sleeve.
“Who in ’ell is the one
wi
’ the pot belly an’ the ringlets an’ the wicked temper?”

“I only know what Toby’s told me,” he said as softly as he could and still be heard. “They’re the last survivors of a mutineer crew he sailed with.” He looked down at her, saw the clench of her face. “Charlie hid something belonging to them. They’re here to take it, and if they don’t get it…”

“They’ll kill us all,” she finished.

“Edith, don’t be panicking,” he began.

“I’m not bloody
panickin
’,” she growled, “an’
I’s
seen enough. The big bastard ’ad Master Trelane down on ’is knees, an’ I don’t need to see no more.
They’s
like to murder us, thee knows it, well as I do.
If we let ’em.”

The same thought was scudding through Jim’s mind, and he studied Edith with a frown. “Will you trust me?” he asked, not for the first time.

Her eyes narrowed. “Aye, I’d trust thee – sooner than
that fool
of a grandson o’ mine!”

“All right, then.” Jim dropped a hand on her shoulder and steered her back to the table where her best work was done. “You just stay well away from them, and do exactly what I tell you. Promise me this, now.”

Chapter Thirteen

The sounds of industry took Jim upstairs and he stood, tight-lipped, watching as Joseph Pledge tore the mattress off the last bed and strewed its stuffing across the floor. Every other bedchamber in the house was a similar shambles, including Jim’s own, where everything he possessed was cast about like so much rubbish. Burke and Pledge would turn to the stones in the fireplaces next, before they took an iron and began to pry up the loose floorboards. Everything Jim and Toby had done with care, leaving the tavern habitable, was being redone with the violence of frustration, as if only reducing the house to a dismembered chaos would appease the aggravation of finding Chegwidden long dead and the prize out of reach.

Without a word, Jim watched Pledge shove the bed across the floor in the last room and attack the boards with the narrowest of the fire irons. Toby stood back, let him assault the timbers, and met Jim’s eyes with a tight look. His own eyes were wide, dark, filled with dread and warning
. Don’t provoke them – let them wreak their havoc, it’s only timber and linen and straw, it’ll mend!

Jim heard the words as clearly as if Toby had spoken them, and he backed off, sealed his lips, merely watched as if the process interested him. Nathaniel Burke wore a face as black as a thundercloud, but he had his temper on a tight rein. He was by far the more dangerous of the two, Jim realized. Pledge might be deliberately cruel and stupid as a brute, but he could be goaded, forced into risks that would be his undoing. Burke had the cooler head – the brain of a snake and a deep streak of malice which might outdo Pledge’s.

“I told you, Nathaniel,” Toby said as they exhausted the possibilities of the upstairs. “I’ve already done all this, and found nothing.”

“So you say.” Burke had taken off his hat, bundled it into his pocket. His hair was sparse, salt-and-pepper, and the lantern light gleamed on his pale, bare scalp. “And you’d like me to believe you.”

“I’d like you to recognize the truth when you hear it.” Toby sighed and leaned both shoulders against the wall. “You think I
want
to come under your hand again? As if I have some secret craving to be whipped till I faint? You have me confused with the wrong man.”

“Has I, now?” Burke leaned on the wall beside him, with one fingertip idly tracing the lines of Toby’s nose, lips and jaw. “Seems to me you took a lot and came up
smilin
’.”

“I took it like a man and wouldn’t let the bastards reduce me to blubbering and begging,” Toby corrected acidly. “Smiling? Not me, Nathaniel. You could be thinking of your little French molly. What was his name?”

“Ah.” Burke chuckled deep in his throat. “Jean Pierre. You remember Jean Pierre, Joe?”

“I recall ’is mouth, and ’is arse,” Pledge said gruffly, panting as he finished with the floor.
“Nothing ’ere.
No
fuckin’
thing.” His eyes were blazing on Toby. “I’d ’
ave
yer
nailed to a wall an’
screamin
’
yer
goddamn’ lungs out, if it was up to me. Be bloody glad
yer
wearin
’ ’is mark.”

 
“I am,” Toby said quietly, looking into Jim’s face. “A thousand times, I had cause to be very glad indeed I wore his brand.”
His brows quirked at Jim.
“Does it seem strange, Master Fairley, for a man to be grateful to be branded, carrying the mark of another man’s ownership?”

“It does,” Jim admitted. “But if it meant being the plaything of one man rather than the amusement of a dozen, I daresay I’d take the brand. It was like that for you, I suppose.”

The blue eyes were full of gratitude. “It was. I survived … and as much as you’ve likely already come to despise Nathaniel, there’s a truth you won’t get past. He’s the reason I survived.”

“He branded you in an act of charity?” Jim asked scornfully.

The question inspired Burke to a belly-laugh.
“Charity?
Ye gods, what nunnery d’you live in?”

“I don’t live in a nunnery at all.” Jim met Burke glare for glare now. “So you’re one of
those
.”

 
“One of what?”
Burke’s laughter was gone.

And Toby’s face was sharp with warning:
Careful!

“One of those,” Jim said, almost without inflection, “who prey on folk less powerful than themselves … one with an eye for the pretty, the lovesome.
One who’ll take what he wants, when he wants it.
You fancied a pretty thing to beguile away the night? What, there were no women on hand? Or was this one –” nodding at Toby “– simply prettier and more lovesome than the girls, and you thought you’d take him for your bitch instead.”

Burke’s lips pursed as he studied Jim thoughtfully. “You’re a deal
more savvy
than you look. As a eunuch, you’d likely know all about being a man’s molly.”

The words were far truer than Jim liked to admit, but there was danger in admitting it. “I don’t know anything about it at all,” he said in level tones, “and I’m not a eunuch. I’m lame. There’s a difference.”

“
Thass
not what them lasses back in Exmouth
sez
,” Pledge jeered.

“Well, they’re wrong, aren’t they?” Jim kept his voice quiet and never took his eyes from Burke, trying to read his expression every moment. “Maybe I just don’t have a use for the kind of doxies you meet in ale houses. Maybe …” He looked along at Toby. “Maybe I have a taste for sweeter flesh, and I know real beauty when I see it. In a woman,” he added quickly, lest Burke know where his heart lay. “And I’ve run a sailors’ tavern for years, quite long enough to know all about matelots and punks, mollies and bitches.” He shrugged. “Six months at sea, well out of sight of a petticoat, and I can imagine how a lovely face and a smooth, slender body would start to look irresistible.”

“There’s a lot of truth in what you say, Master Fairley,” Burke mused. “And this
un
here, this Toby Trelane, till lately a priest – did you know that? –
this
un was so pretty, eight and ten years ago, he should
never’ve
been at sea. I often wondered what witlessness put his stupid arse on a ship.”

To Jim’s surprise, Toby managed a shaky laugh. “I saw a notice
posted,
the requirement for a man of the cloth on a merchantman whose captain was a churchgoer and intended his crew to follow his example. The notice also asked for a doctor, a navigator and a topman. I walked through a door and talked to the owner – not the captain.”

“And signed your damn’ fool life away,” Burke finished. He looked sidelong at Jim. “As the lad told it to me, he was runnin’ away from a scandal in Norwich. He’d been caught with the handsome young verger, the pair of ’em clasped tight in a carnal embrace.” His lip curled as he looked at Toby. “So the lad runs as far as he can, and as fast, and finds hisself in Portsmouth … and glory be!
The Rose of Gloucester
’s
takin
’ on crew, and Captain James Graves wants a preacher as well as a sawbones.
Graves
.”
He spat on the floor at Jim’s feet. “I bloody knew I should
never’ve
signed on with a skipper with a name so filled with evil.”

“And
yer’d
know all about evil,” Pledge muttered, finished with the hearthstones. Little piles of broken plaster lay around the walls, and he kicked them away as he came back around the broken bed frame. “So,
yer
gunna
winkle the truth outta this git, Nathaniel?”