Home From The Sea (38 page)

“You
will
forget. It takes a little while, but the memories fade away and it’ll be months or years before you think of them again.”

Toby’s voice.

Jim spun toward the sound, perfectly willing to believe he had gone mad and was imagining it, but Toby was on the doorstep, leaning on the jamb with Bess sitting at his feet. The spaniel’s tail thumped as he looked down at her, and Jim struggled to find his own voice. “You came back.”

“Of course I came back. You thought I’d run out on you?
Because of this?”
Toby lifted the old oat bin, which was heavy and rattling with the balance of Monteras’s dangerous legacy. The pottery was blotched and smeared with Nathaniel Burke’s blood. “You thought, once I had the prize in my hands – what, I’d run and not look back?” Toby weighed it between his hands, and held it out for Jim to take it from him.

“I wouldn’t have blamed you.” Jim just held it for a moment before he set it on the table among the lanterns. He looked Toby up and down, and shook his head over the man. “You look terrible.”

“So do you.” But Toby came to him, opened his arms, and Jim was glad to grab him in a hug that tested his ribs. “It’s
over
,” Toby whispered against Jim’s hair. “They’re all gone now.”

“Burke –?”

“Made it a furlong, back towards Exmouth,” Toby told him. “I didn’t think he’d make it so far, but he was always strong. Stronger than the rest of us, which is how he seized command … last man on his feet, Jim, but not with wounds he could be healed of. I’m sure Eli put the knife into his lung. In the end it was blood he was trying to breathe, not air. I think he drowned in it.”

“God.”
Jim shook himself hard. “Sailing with a mutineer crew, you saw all this before.”

“Yes.” Toby’s arms tightened. “You
do
forget, Jim … you have to be alive to forget.” He released Jim, far enough to look into his eyes. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“I know.” Jim touched his face, traced the planes and lines of it, felt the stubble that was almost too fair to show. “You came here looking for Charlie. You tried to search the house without me noticing – you’d have taken the prize back to The
Cattlemarket
, I imagine, and let the buggers fight it out there.”

“Such was my thinking, at the time.” Toby ducked his head. “I’d have come right back, though, when it was over. You know by now, they were always going to butcher each
other,
the only question was where and how. Here, or at the doxie house – in fact, rather here than there! There are too many girls to get in the way at Artie
Polgreen’s
place, and get hurt. And always the chance the buffoon would get his own hands on the prize. If Artie once got one fingertip on it, you know he wouldn’t let go.” He was trembling as he added, “it’s
ours
. I paid for my share of it in sweat and blood and pain. You paid for yours in courage and patience and common decency.”

“And there’s nobody else,” Jim whispered. “You’re sure?
Nobody to come after them?
After us?”

“No one.”
Toby was certain. The blue eyes closed, squeezed shut. “There were only eight of us at the last, and … it’s me, heaven help me.
Last man on his feet.”

“With a whole skin,” Jim added.
“Scarred and marked, but whole.”

“Marked,” Toby said darkly as he and Jim began to relax little by little. “One day I’ll drink enough of that laudanum of yours to get up my courage, and I’ll let you put an iron in the fire to cancel the brand. I’ll carry Nathaniel’s mark to the grave, but I can have it
canceled
, the way they cancel the brand on a horse when it goes to market.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jim said doubtfully.

“Enough laudanum in
me,
and you won’t.” Toby leaned over and pressed a kiss to Jim’s forehead. “Do you want to drag the bodies out of here? We could shove them in the stable.”

But Jim made negative noises. “I don’t want to touch them again. Don’t want to even
look
at them again. If you’ll take Bess around to the backdoor and watch over Edith, I’ll walk over to Budleigh. Fetch the vicar.” He cast a bleak glance as the sack-shrouded bodies. “They ought to have something said over them, and I’m sure you don’t want to be the one to do it. Not for these three.” He lifted a brow at Toby. “Where’s Burke?”

Toby made a small gesture into the west. “He collapsed in the bushes at the top of the beach, just off the path. He went down on his back, too weak to get up
again,
and … drowned in blood.” His voice was tight, odd.

“None of it was your fault,” Jim said emphatically. “You only brought them into the same place at the same time, with the innocent well out of the way, and stood back to give them space. The rest was their doing.”

“The innocent?”
Toby set his palm flat on Jim’s breast. “I dragged you into this. I never intended to. You could have been killed.”

“It happened the way it had to,” Jim said slowly. His hand closed over Toby’s. “This was always going to happen, since the day Charlie Chegwidden decided to sell The Raven and my father decided to buy it. And as for me – I’m alive, there’s not a bloody scratch anywhere on me, and I’ve a share in the kind of fortune Blackbeard would have killed for!” He picked up Toby’s hand, brought it to his lips and pressed a kiss to the cold, leathery palm. “Better yet, you’re here.”

“Oh, I’m here,” Toby said with a gentle
humor
which mocked only
himself
.

“And you’ll still be here, won’t you,” Jim teased, “when I get back with Vicar Morley?” He groaned. “Richard Morley’s got a couple of good horses – we’ll ride back and then, while he’s saying what needs to be said over the dead, I’ll ride over to John Hardesty’s place. I know he’ll want to go on to the garrison with me. The pair of
us’ll
make Captain Dixon, or his lieutenant, privy to the raw details. And
you
,” he added, “need to put the prize out of sight till they’ve all cleared off, and then make yourself scarce. All they need to know is
,
you’re a balladsinger working the taverns between Penzance and Dover. Don’t make them ask questions, Toby, and they won’t.”

“They might talk to Artie Polgreen,” Toby mused, “and he could tell them I knew every one of the dead men. He might think it was a great joke to tell Hardesty and Dixon I sailed with them, not just on the mutiny but through their pirate years.”

“Damn.” Jim knuckled his eyes and forced himself to think. “Then, it’s best if you’re not seen at all. I’ll try not to even mention you … if Polgreen does, I’ll tell John and Dixon you left right after the fight and I don’t know where you went.” He paused to mull it over. “Mind you,
Polgreen’s
got no call to speak of you, Toby. Anything he says will only connect him and his bawdy house to the likes of Burke and Hobbs – it’s the kind of attention that’d be the last thing he’d want.” He studied Toby
closely,
almost able to hear the cogs tick over as the man thought on it. “If I was the bold Captain Dixon, and I’d learned Burke’s crew made a beeline for The
Cattlemarket
first,” he went on with chill rationale, “I’d want to know
why
. To be sure, it was all about strong rum and loose women, which they won’t get at a modest house like this one. But if Dixon got his curiosity up, he could connect The Raven with The
Cattlemarket
and
The Rose of Gloucester
. Polgreen might find himself standing in front of a magistrate, and the house he keeps is so disorderly, he’d do anything to avoid that. Yes?”

Toby was with him, thinking it through slowly, soberly, carefully. “Yes. Artie’s shrewd. He’s got a brain like a bag of monkeys. He’s sure to know what’d be going through Dixon’s head, and he won’t want to answer sticky questions, least of all to a magistrate. It’d be
a nightmare come
true.”

“A nightmare indeed,” Jim agreed.
“So … the four of those buggers turned up on this coast, looking for their shipmate – our old Charlie.
Would any of them have mentioned the prize to a soul, much less to Polgreen?”

“Not so much as a breath,” Toby assured him. “One of the rules Nathaniel set down was utter secrecy, on pain of a very nasty death.”

“Then all Polgreen knows is, a company of old shipmates got together in Exmouth and points east and took out ancient grievances on each other.” Jim mulled it over, and nodded. “They got stinking drunk – the women at The
Cattlemarket
can attest to the revels! –
old
wounds were opened, old arguments were raised. It came to a fight, and they killed each other.”

“A fight,” Toby echoed. One brow arched.
“A fight over what?”

“
Honor
?”
Jim wondered.

“Not among that crew. But
this
, now…” Very deliberately, Toby pulled the cork stopper out of the bin. He burrowed his right hand in and pulled out four big, bright stones.
Two emeralds, a ruby, a blue diamond.
“Now,
this
they would fight over, and kill for.”

Roger Dixon would believe the story in a moment. Jim licked his dry lips and cleared his throat. “Can you bring yourself to push those into Pledge’s waistcoat, into the pocket?”

“I can.” Toby rolled the stones in his palm. “If John Hardesty’s as good a physician as you think he is, he’ll want to know what killed Joe, so he’ll take a look at the body … doctors also search pockets, looking for an item to put a name on the dead, so the family can be charged for the burial. He’ll find the stones. He and Dixon won’t need to know any more.”

Jim held his breath as the sackcloth twitched aside, and Toby’s long fingers thrust carefully into the mess of blood, hunting for the pocket inside the brown waistcoat. His face twisted as he worked, but it was quickly done and without a word he strode outside, and around the corner to the rain barrel. He scooped out enough water to lave Pledge’s blood off his hands.

“Good enough,” Jim judged. “The undertaker’s wagon’s going to be here in the morning.
Marcus Stiles should be done and gone by noon … there’s not much more to do than shove the bodies into boxes and load up. You know where to find Burke … but I’d let Dixon’s men find him for themselves. I’ll tell them he staggered out of here, and I wasn’t about to follow him!”

“All right.”
Toby laced his fingers at his own nape, massaging his neck there to ease clenched muscles. “The story would convince me.
And the prize?
Back in the loft?”

“Safest place for it,” Jim judged. “If you’ll see to it, Toby, then make sure Edith’s all right and get yourself something to eat….”

“And you?” Toby lingered in the darkness, one hand on Jim’s shoulder.

“The walk over to the vicarage will clear my head. I need the fresh air,” Jim told him. “I’ve got a head full of ghosts and goblins! I need to chase them, Toby. A couple of hours, and I’ll be back here with the vicar. You need to be
gone
when we get here.”

Some thread of starlight found Toby’s face as he smiled. “I know this coast well enough. There’s a barn on the slope, not half a mile west of here.”

“Belongs to Bert
Dowrick
, I know it. Don’t let him catch you there – he’ll show you the wrong end of a pitchfork, for trying to steal a lamb.” He gave Toby his hand. “Just keep one eye on this place … when you see Stiles pull out, you’ll be safe. Dixon won’t trouble himself to come back, not when John’s found the best reason anyone can think of for bloody murder right there in Joe Pledge’s pocket!”

Toby’s hand was cold. “I’ll watch,” he promised. “Will you come around to the kitchen for some coffee and food before you go?”

But Jim could not have forced down a bite. He took the brass dipper from the peg by the barrel and drank the clean, cold rainwater gratefully. “Let me blow the ghosts out of my head with some fresh air. I’ll get something later.”

“Be sure you do.” Toby drew away, back to the door, where a little yellow light spilled out into the night. “I’ll get the bin right back up to the loft.
And Jim?”

Jim was moving, and turned back to him.

“Be careful,” Toby told him. “The path’s a mess with driftwood and debris. Mind that leg of yours.”

“I will,” Jim promised. “The moon’s rising, anyway – it’s bright enough to see well, once you get away from the lanterns.”

“Do you want me to go for the vicar?” Toby offered. “Rest the leg.”

“I’m fine,” Jim chided. “The night air is just what I need. Better than medicine. Well, that and knowing you’ll not be far away.”

“Bert
Dowrick’s
barn – dry enough for the night, for Bess and me.”
Toby managed a soft chuckle. “It won’t be the first time we’ve slept in a barn.”

“But it will be the
last
,” Jim said with a certain wry
humor
. “You’re a very rich man, Master Trelane.”

“Then again,
there’s
two of us, just as well-heeled.” Toby’s teeth were white in the moonlight as he smiled, and he did not have to force the expression. “Be on your way, then. Mind how you
go,
and I’ll see you tomorrow.”