by Steve Goble
“Ha!” Then Odin muttered. “Like that?”
“Not so much like an old witch, or you’ll frighten her, but you get the notion.”
The old man sighed. “I’ll wager a bottle of rum Hob’s already gone from this place,” Odin said. “These sots are all action and attention when Half-Jim is near, but they’re a lazy rum lot otherwise. Hob would be a handful for them.”
“You can’t afford a bottle of rum,” Spider replied.
“Well, you owe me a bottle, damn you, and do not forget.”
Spider glanced at Odin. The ancient mariner had been crotchety the day Spider met him and he’d never stopped, but the old salt had never fixated on something the way he obsessed over that chess game and the rum bet. That limp was bothersome, too.
Spider had no idea how old Odin really was, and now he wondered if all the years finally were catching up to his friend.
No. Odin’s tough as good oak. He’ll be fine.
Spider tried to get back to the matter at hand.
“You may be speaking truth, though, Odin, and I hope you do. Hob’s a daring lad, and smart, and I have not seen a one here I thought could best him in a fight. Even if he is gone, though, I want to stay about and see if we can learn where he might have headed.”
“You think he would have told anyone here?”
“You haven’t seen Miss Ruth, have you?” Spider shook his head. “Part of Fawkes’ crew. She’s a sight, and a match for Miss Anne Bonny, I dare say. Good looking, probably dangerous, just the lass to turn that idiot Hob’s head.”
Odin grinned. “He does like the ladies. And I have heard tell of her, among the men a bit. Raldo says she is a right naughty baggage, but he sounded pissed. Maybe she won’t be naughty with him.”
“Aye.” Spider bit off half the egg he’d filched from Odin. “And if Fawkes catches him with her, Raldo will be dead, I reckon. I plan to talk to the lass, see if she’s seen Hob, see if the arse tried to arrange a rendezvous in London with her or some fool thing. Or a rendezvous on some pirate vessel, more likely.”
“You think Jim’s crewing a ship, maybe some voyage Oakes is planning?”
Spider chuckled to keep up the pretense. Mrs. Fitch turned her back to them and thrust a knife into a fat cabbage. “That’s not a bad notion. Jim says most of this lot is old mates of his, and they all have sailor manners. I have not heard anyone say anything about a voyage, though, but Jim’s not the kind to spill secrets before he must. So if there is something in the wind, only Jim and Oakes know it, most likely.”
“Fawkes could be up to something on his own,” Odin said. “Maybe Oakes has money here, and Fawkes plans a mutiny.”
“Perhaps. We’ll just have to poke around here, quiet like a pair of ghosts, and learn what we can.”
“Well, then,” Odin said. “I shall eat, and sleep, and wake up and sit by the goddamned gate again, no doubt. Against all odds, we have a plan. Ha!”
“How is the leg, Odin?”
“I will be fine,” the old man said. “Don’t go planning to saw it off just yet.”
“I don’t saw them off,” Spider said. “I just make the pegs.” He glanced heavenward in thanks. That unpleasant duty of amputation often fell to carpenters on ships lacking surgeons, but Spider had been fortunate enough to avoid having to use his saw for that purpose.
“I don’t need a peg,” Odin said. “I need the fucking bottle of rum you owe me.”
“Why do I owe you a bottle?”
“The chess game! I was winning before you ran off to see who killed Missus Bonnymeade’s husband and then led us to this goddamned hellhole. Do not suppose I will let you forget I won! Ha!”
Justice for Mrs. Bonnymeade, Spider thought. That was a rash promise now, wasn’t it? I’m here to find Hob, and I don’t really give a seal’s slick shit about Tom Bonnymeade.
He did not mention any of those thoughts to Odin. “I do not recall the chess bet, Odin. And we never finished the game.”
“You always recall the bets you win. I hope birds eat your eyes while you sleep.”
“Do you know where we sleep, by chance?”
“Cellar,” Odin said, pointing toward a hall. “First door on the left, or you can go in from the doors on the north wall outside. They’ve turned it into quarters for the men. You get a hammock or a bunk, and a chest. You’ll find dry clothes, too. Mine fit fine, yours might not. Cramped quarters, it is, and smells like belowdecks without the salt and fish smells. Still got the piss and shit smells, though.”
“It will feel like home, then,” Spider said. “I’m off to sleep a while, then I’ll explore a bit, see if I can find Hob.” He popped the rest of the egg into his mouth.
“Aye. Did you finish the flask I stole for you?”
“Want to wager a bottle of rum on the answer to that?”
“You are a fuck, Spider John.”
19
It was a short sleep, and troubled by dreams of Em and Little Johnny and Hob, all on a shore he could not reach because wind and tide kept drawing him away. But his involuntary slumber on duty the night before meant Spider had gotten more than enough rest. He rolled out of his hammock, noted Odin was snoring peacefully not far away, and grabbed his guns and knives from the chest that had been allocated to him. He spotted a pouch in another man’s chest, held it to his nose and smiled. Virginia tobacco, if he was any judge. He tucked that into his belt, grabbed his hat and pipe from his own chest, and wandered toward the kitchen in search of a coal or a brand to light his smoke.
Soon he had a good fire going in his pipe and stepped out the back door. A horse whinnied from within the bowels of a large barn nearby, and chickens scratched at the ground.
Spider lifted his head, blew a cloud at the sky, and noted the black pirate who’d escorted him to the house the day before. The man was near the kitchen door, staring at him.
‘I’m Spider John. Would you like some of this?” Spider lifted his pipe.
“No,” the man said, before spitting violently. “No, I would not.”
The man’s gaze was ice, and Spider involuntarily reached toward Hob’s knife. But the man turned away and strode boldly down the road.
Perhaps, Spider thought, it was the tobacco that had given offense. Blacks from the west coast of Africa had been captured by the thousands and shipped to the American colonies, many to work in the tobacco fields surrounding Chesapeake Bay. It was a harsh and violent life, and some of those who managed to escape found their way into piracy. This fellow may have walked a similar path, and Spider decided he would not smoke around him again.
After taking a couple of deep breaths and wishing he could smell the sea, Spider went back inside. He wandered about until he reached the central foyer and the wide staircase leading upward. No one seemed to be about, so up he went, Stingo’s warning be damned. He halted briefly when he heard a pitiful sob from above. A man’s voice, but too old and frail to be Hob’s. Spider continued when he heard nothing further.
As soon as he gained the top, he paused to get his bearings. The stairwell opened onto a long hall with a series of doors on each side. Light poured in from a window at the end of the corridor. A stain of some sort—perhaps from water, perhaps from blood—on the wall to his left brought to his mind a shadowy face peering at him, and a low wail from somewhere toward the end of the hall almost sent him back downstairs. He’d told Odin he didn’t believe in ghosts, but he’d known when he said it that he’d been trying to convince himself of that. He gulped and continued forward.
Daphne emerged from a doorway on his left.
“Mister Spider!”
“Miss Daphne,” Spider said, stepping toward her quickly in hopes it would prevent her from speaking so loudly again and drawing unwanted attention. “You look to be in good spirits.”
Indeed, she did. She wore a nightgown, fresh and clean, and she looked all scrubbed and shiny compared to the dregs of humanity Fawkes had hired, and to the ever rushed and sweaty Mrs. Fitch.
&n
bsp; “I am feeling well today, thank you, sir. I was not wrapped in wet sheets last night! Nor did I have to drink from that foul bottle.”
Spider tilted his head. “They wrap you up?”
“To keep me doing harm,” she said, “although I have done no harm to anyone. I have not harmed any cats, either! Still, they give me awful medication, it tastes abominable, it does, and tortures. They mix it with brandy, which I detest, but the medicine is even worse. Worst of all is the sheets. I hate the wet sheets! So . . . cold. I can’t move in them. Terrifying. I imagine it must be how death feels.”
Daphne’s smile was at odds with her words, though, and Spider felt a chill himself. He tried to step away.
The girl crowded against him. “Are you a pirate?”
“No.”
“Oh, come now. Are you a pirate? Have you gutted men with your sword?”
Spider tried to push her away, but she backed him up against the wall.
She persisted. “What is it like? Tell me, please, I beg you.”
“What do you mean?”
“To gut a man with a blade, or to run it across his throat, to shower in his blood. What is it like? It must be a singular experience!”
Good Lord.
Spider grabbed her elbows and put some distance between himself and Daphne, but she seemed familiar with the maneuver and twisted out of it. “Now, look, miss . . .”
Spider John had, in fact, run sharp steel through a man’s neck and stood blood-drenched more than once, but he was trying to leave such experiences behind him and he sure as hell was not going to discuss them with this strange girl.
“Have you?”
“No, miss,” he said, “I never done that. Not once. An honest sailor, that is me, hammers and saws instead of flintlocks and cutlasses.”
“Half-Jim hires pirates, not honest sailors,” Daphne said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Do not call him Half-Jim, I beg you,” Spider said. “He hates that.”
“So you know him! You sailed with him! Pirate!” She jumped up and down as she said it.
“God damn, girl, would you . . .”
“Pirate, pirate, pirate!” She ran down the hall, yelling the word in a singsong fashion. A lean, bald man in a robe rounded a corner and stepped into her path, almost causing a collision, but she danced around him and vanished. The bald man paid no attention at all to Daphne, or to Spider. Instead, he peered through the window bars at the end of the hall and sobbed. It was the same mournful sound Spider had heard earlier.
Spider looked back at the face peering from the stained wall. It seemed to be laughing now.
Jesus.
Spider listened to the girls’ echoes reverberating through the house and thanked God that Half-Jim and Ambrose Oakes already knew he had been a pirate, and that neither seemed to care.
The sobbing man vanished into a door on the right. Spider stood in the now empty corridor, stunned, and said a quick prayer for the man.
He uttered one for Daphne, too. That girl has such an obsession with death, he thought. Could she be the one filling those graves?
She was too small and frail to put up much of a fight against the rough company Fawkes had hired, but that did not rule out stealth. A fetching lass with a devious intent could prove to be a deadly siren for the men here. And for Hob. Especially for Hob.
Spider moved to follow Daphne down the corridor, but two men emerged from a near doorway. They saw him, scowled, and moved quickly to block his path. Shoulder to shoulder, they glared at him.
“Don’t try her,” said one of the men, who wore a large leather apron and held up his hands in a sign of warning. His hair was cut short, and he bore no weapons Spider could discern. He was powerfully built, though, with muscular arms.
“What?” Spider raised his own hands to indicate he wanted no altercation.
“Don’t try her,” the other man said. Like the first fellow, his height topped six feet and his hair was cropped short, but he wore no leather apron. He, too, was unarmed. He was thinner than the other man, and lacked the impressive muscles. One or both of these men smelled like Kegley’s apothecary shop.
“She’s pretty, and no doubt juicy, but don’t try her,” the second man added.
The first man stepped forward. “Billy tried her, and she nearly clawed out his eye. Master says hands off her since then.”
“Aye,” Spider said. “Hands off.” As he spoke, he smiled, all the while deciding that he could get a foot between the strong fellow’s legs, trip the bastard toward the thin gent, topple them both and get a knife in play in a couple of heartbeats—if it came to that.
“I’m Simon,” the first man said. “He’s Gold Peter.”
“I am Spider John.”
“Why are you up here? And with weapons? No weapons upstairs unless master orders it,” Simon admonished. “And he never orders it, because it is a fool idea. The crazy people tend to snatch at guns and knives, some of them, and they don’t care who they kill or why. Hell, they don’t even know they are doing it.”
“You certainly do not wish that girl to grab anything sharp, or anything filled with powder and lead,” the other man said. “You do not want that.”
Spider stepped back. “Have patients here killed their caretakers?”
“Not yet. We see that they don’t,” Gold Peter said.
Simon leaned forward. “That girl hurt Billy, though. Scratched him deep.”
“I shall be careful, then. I’m new,” Spider said. “I’m a carpenter, as well as a hired guard. Thought I’d come up here and look at the place, see what needs fixed. This place has not seen a lot of care. It would be really nice with a lot of hard work.”
“We’ll give you a list of things to fix,” Gold Peter said. “A long list. But you don’t come up here without orders. If you were on day watch, I’d know it. You are not on day watch.”
“Aye, it’s night watch for me,” Spider said. “But it is easier to spot wood rot by daylight, and I can’t inspect the house if I am out marching up and down along a wall, can I?”
Gold Peter stepped forward. “Go downstairs. Now. If the master wants you up here, he will tell us.”
Spider stared at him. Peter had no long hair or earring Spider could snatch at. Still, the man’s stance left his belly and balls wide open to a swift kick or a quick knife, and Spider reckoned he’d be able to end any fight the moment it started. But there were two adversaries here, not one, and they’d repositioned themselves just enough to render his first plan of attack useless. Besides, beating this snotgoblin into the floor would not find Hob, so Spider stepped back.
“Noted, gents. Just learning my way here. Let’s not fight, aye?”
“Downstairs. Now,” Gold Peter ordered again.
“Aye.” Spider turned slowly. He passed the face stain; now, it looked amused.
Spider descended the steps. Once he reached the bottom, he glanced back upward.
Gold Peter and Simon still watched him. Somewhere behind them, a man moaned like a wolf. But the men ignored that, and remained focused on Spider.
Spider left, but the wolf howl followed him.
20
Spider found a hot coal and a supply of tobacco in the kitchen, so had his pouch refilled and his pipe going by the time he’d stepped out the door and wandered toward the wooden frame that held the ancient ship’s bell used to call men to duty, or back from their posts. Odin was there, leaning against the frame and scratching his head.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Aye,” Odin said. “Ungodly dull duty, though, sitting near a gate on a dark night waiting for some fool to sneak through. And nothing to do off-duty save snoop. I wish I were on a ship, Spider, up in the trees where I can feel the wind and see the horizon all around me and listen to the snap of sails and the hum of the stays.”
“Aye,” Spider confessed quietly, puffing on his pipe. “A ship bound for Nantucket, with Hob on board with us, would suit me.”
“We coul
d find a ship easier than finding Hob,” Odin growled. “I don’t know that he is here.”
“And I don’t know that he is not,” Spider snapped. “I have had plenty of time to think, but it did no good. I can’t fathom what goes on here.” He looked around. Mrs. Fitch was watering plants toward the front of the house, and a tall fellow who looked like a scarecrow with a blunderbuss patrolled the road leading to the gate. Upstairs, a bald man peered between iron bars, his hand caressing the window glass as though it were a lover.
“This place makes me wonder if you are correct about ghosts, Odin. Let us take a walk about the grounds,” Spider said, trudging off. “We need a chance to talk.”
Odin followed him.
Spider headed toward the north wall, opposite of his station from the night before. He was happy to notice Odin walked with less trouble than he had the previous day. Once Spider deemed they’d put the house and any prying eyes and ears far enough behind them, he spoke.
“This place is thick with something.”
“Ghosts, as you said,” Odin replied, his eye widening. “I heard them, in the night. Coming from the house, pitiful wails that traveled all the way down the hill to the gate. Sorrowful, mournful like a low, slow fiddle tune.”
Spider exhaled pipe smoke into the sunshine. “Not ghosts. Probably.” He wished he felt more confident saying that. “Most likely, you heard patients. They get treated upstairs, apparently, and it’s a sad place. I saw one empty-minded sort, and of course there is Daphne. Some rough gents are standing guard up there, too, and they don’t much like strangers wandering about, so if you do go up there hide your knife and such. I did not see any weapons, but they both look like they can fight. The girl, Daphne, tells me they wrap her up in soaked sheets, so she won’t harm no one.”
“You visited the girl, did you?” Odin leered.
“I went up there and she found me,” Spider said. “I did not go see her for anything, you old leech. She found me. And don’t you go visit her, either, though she thinks you fascinating, or some damned thing. She is not well in her mind, Odin. It would be wrong to take advantage.”
