A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1)

by M. J. Logue

  So still that the disconcerting, all too audible grunting snarl from the far chamber made Russell jump and blink, imagining the worst. And made Thomazine smile at his discomfiture, for being a woman she had more knowledge of these matters than he did. He stared at her, wide-eyed, and she leaned forward till her forehead touched his. “What was it you always used to say to me,” she said gently, “ - all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well?”

  - as if she were the older of the two of them, and he nodded, slowly, reassured, for if Thomazine said a thing would be so she would move heaven and earth to make it so. “All proceeds as it should, Russell,” she said, and disentangled his hand from hers and pushed his loose, fear-sweaty hair out of his eyes. “Come back to bed, and be comforted.”

  8

  Frances Pettitt was the lighter of a daughter, by dawn, and the house was buzzing like an upturned ant's nest.

  Het was crumpled and teary-eyed, reminded of her own babies, all grown up now, and she said the little mite was the loveliest thing she had ever seen. Uncle Luce said he had half a mind to have the child christened Rosamund, the Rose of the World. And Thomazine's father, who looked a little misty-eyed himself, muttered darkly that he'd only ever thought Luce had had half a mind at the best of times, and to give the poor little mite a sensible name, in all charity.

  "Like Thomazine, you mean?" Luce said tartly, bouncing the little bundle of spotless drapery in his arms, and the infant gave a tiny mew, like a sleepy kitten, and nestled against her father.

  She caught her father's eye, and he smiled, and scratched at his cinnamon stubble. "I'm happy with Thomazine," he said softly. "Now, lass, I'd never have suspected that man of yours of idleness. Is he likely to appear before breakfast, to admire this child prodigy?"

  She had left him sleeping, as it happened. Did not know what he might make of a new baby, whether he would turn sentimental, or be timid, or distant. Did not, in all truth, know if he liked children or not, for themselves, and not as merely a means to continue a name. There was a deal she did not know about Thankful Russell.

  - had not known his given name was Thankful-for-His-Deliverance, until yesterday, for one thing, and the memory of that rather ludicrously godly and well-concealed Christian name lightened her mood suddenly. But yes. She had known him all her life, and yet there was still so much she didn’t know about him. Well, this was one thing she could discover for herself.

  "A what?" he said muzzily, without opening his eyes.

  "A baby. Uncle Luce's baby. She -"

  He sat up then, and slithered out of bed just as he was, as bare as an egg, and gone casting about the room for his clothes, and ended by bounding downstairs barefoot, a solitary stocking trailing anyhow from his pocket. "She? He has a daughter? Oh, bravely done, Frances! About time!"

  - He liked children, then, she thought, following in his wake. And the baby, being a matter of hours old, and not objecting at so tender an age to being passed from pillar to post like a little parcel, had not been frightened by his marred cheek, but had simply lay cuddled in the crook of his arm and looked up at him with unfocussed blue eyes.

  Russell had looked at Thomazine, and Thomazine had looked at Russell, and an unspoken understanding had passed between them. And she had not cared who might see the look of dazed joy on his face, or the tenderness on hers.

  It was a fragile understanding at best, though, and not the sort of thing that could be shared in a room full of people, and a nursing mother upstairs, and all the talk of the new one's beauty - how she might have Luce's height, such long legs for a tiny wee one, and wasn't she a sweet poppet, and did you see, so young, and she smiled, truly she did, and did you think she would be dark like her mammy or fair like her father -

  Russell handed the child back to Luce, with an air of one having successfully carried off a frightening duty, and absented himself to his wife's side. "They don’t break," she said out of the corner of her mouth, "unless you drop them on their heads."

  "So small!" he murmured, and there was an edge of marvel to his voice that made her look at him sharply, and found him still with his hand cupped as if he were still cradling the child's head. She moved her foot against his and gave him a shove.

  "Russell, people will think you are a mooncalf. Have you never held a child before?"

  "Only you, tibber," he said, "I didn’t dare any others, after that. You were sufficient wriggly to frighten the life out of me." He gave a happy sigh. "We'd not be missed, lass. If you'd care to see our home. Travel light, we'd be there in - a week? Maybe?"

  9

  Afterwards, she looked back on that week as their honeymoon, for all it was spent trailing hock-deep along deep-rutted muddy lanes in the rain. She learned a number of things: that it was possible to ride holding hands with a man, if your respective mounts were amicable enough, and if you were able to slip the disapproving eye of your maid and his groom for more than an hour at a time. That amongst his many admirable abilities Russell's ability to command a hot meal and a warm bed in short order in even the busiest inns, was amongst his finest, and that without even raising his voice. That he could be remarkably intimidating, if you put his back to the wall; that he was fierce in his defence of his own, and would brook no insolence from his subordinates. She wondered if he had always been so, as a fiery young officer, or if that trick of arrogant command was a thing he'd learned later.

  "Boots," he said firmly, and that was something else she had learned about her new husband. She sat and put her muddy booted foot into his lap obediently, with a sigh.

  "Russell, do we really have to -"

  "Dry boots, clean stockings." It was something of an obsession of his, this dry boots and clean stockings, every day. He rolled her stocking down over her foot, rubbed her frog-cold toes between his hands, and looked up at her. "You ask my bailiff, my tibber. He was with me in Scotland, and I have never seen men as miserable as those without good boots. Can’t be warm when your feet are damp, Zee, no matter how many clothes you have on."

  "I'm not a soldier, Russell," she said patiently, and he'd planted a kiss on his palm and placed it on her instep.

  "Surely. But you’re my wife, and I have a duty to look after you."

  "Oh? Indeed? So dragging me halfway across the country in midwinter is looking after me?"

  "Character-forming," he said sweetly. "Anyway, you’re enjoying it."

  And actually, she was. She had never been so far outside Essex before, crossing the Chilterns, though she cared little for the chalky taste of the ale. The people sounded different, the sky looked different, the trees looked different. Everything was a little wider and paler and colder than it was in Essex.

  And then they were in Buckinghamshire, and it seemed that they would be obliged to call at every little manor in the county, at Radnage and Walters Ash and Wooburn, that Major Russell might introduce his draggled bride in company. And she fell to wondering if perhaps she might not take to her new home after all, for Russell at his stiffest and coldest was as nothing to the stiffness and the coolness of the people he claimed as friends and neighbours, moving politely around each other, offering cakes and wine with a brittle social gloss.

  "My new bride," he said, and his voice had the same pride to it as it had had the ,first time he'd said it, and this had to be the fifth or the sixth.

  Mistress Eleanor Lane, of Everhall manor, inclined her head graciously, and looked at Thomazine with some curiosity.

  A big house, venerable and - Thomazine sniffed, surreptitiously - not very well kept, for despite its grandeur, it smelt of mice, and damp. Not as clean as White Notley, either. She restrained herself from craning her neck to observe the creamy cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling, that her domestic soul itched to take a broom to. Almost imperceptible, but distinctly there. "Indeed, Mistress - ah - Russell?"

  "Indeed," Thomazine replied, returning her stare for stare, for Mistress Lane evidently fancied she resembled a blush-rose, in her stiff pink silks. In poi
nt of fact, with a roll of creamy fat over the stiffly-boned shoulders of her fashionable gown, and a bum roll behind and about, she resembled nothing so much as an undercooked sausage. Thomazine was a little crumpled, for they had spent the better part of a week on horseback and the greater part of her baggage was as yet at White Notley. But her plain steel-blue wool gown was good, for her mother had a taste for line and colour that was unsurpassed throughout Essex, and Thomazine drew herself up to her full height and looked down her not-inconsiderable nose at Mistress Lane as though she was the Queen of England herself. (Possibly taller.) "We are new-married. A week, no more."

  "How charming. Such pretty hair." With a smile that said, such a shame about the lamentably prominent nose, dear, and the unfashionable length of your bones. "You have such a lot of it, Mistress Russell. I always find long hair so difficult to keep tidy, don’t you? Such a relief that the prevailing fashion is for en deshabille, I think. It must make things so much easier."

  "Indeed," Thomazine said again, unsure whether or not she ought to give the sausage-lady tit for tat, or whether perhaps she had misunderstood that last. For, after all, it wasn't Thomazine who was crouched on a spindly stool like a toad on a mushroom, with her sagging bubbies thrust up as a kind of ghastly support for her jowls, simpering at polite company. Perhaps Mistress Lane had only meant that the prevailing fashion was not to finish putting on a bodice before receiving guests. She glanced up at Russell, hoping to take her lead from him - was it meant, perhaps, as a joke, that he might understand?

  "Well, madam, I must not keep you from your journey," the sausage-lady said, and the rude baggage actually twitched her head aside, tinkling a little bell with one podgy hand to summon a servant.

  "No," Russell said, equally curtly, and he had that old, slightly wide-eyed, rigid look about him, as if by holding himself very stiff he might also hold his temper in. (It was not a look she had often seen, at White Notley, and she put her hand out and touched his wrist. He smiled down at her, but he stayed rigid. That angry, then. Sausage-woman had meant to be rude.) "No, we have a way to travel, before we reach home."

  She was not surprised that Russell was as slight as he was, if the only refreshment anyone ever offered guests in these parts was thin, sugary wine, well-watered, and stale cake, and even that grudgingly. At White Notley any guest who arrived at the supper hour would have had a place made for them at table, and be expected to do service to Williams's good food. "Perhaps you would do the honour of calling on us when we are settled at Four Ashes, Mistress Lane," Russell said icily.

  "Perhaps. Although it will be a while and a while before the house is fit to live in, so I believe. I understand the house to be gutted, sir. Wholly gutted."

  "It was," he said. "My bailiff has had men working on it this six months and more."

  "No expense spared, indeed."

  "None."

  She inclined her head again, dismissively. "How very fortunate that Mistress Coventry's untimely death should leave you so well provided-for, Major Russell. My congratulations on your - most unexpected - marriage, sir. And my husband's, also, were he here to offer them. I bid you a good day."

  10

  "Well. That went well." He sniffed, and hunched his shoulders, and looked so remarkably uncomforted that she nudged the black mare up close to his big grey horse and took his hand.

  “I imagine we are going to get any number of odd looks for a while. It is a little unexpected of you to turn up with a new wife, when you’ve been the county’s most eligible bachelor for years. She's probably been secretly in love with you for years herself.”

  Which startled a laugh out of him. “Thank you, Thomazine, for that piece of shameless flattery. A patent untruth, but thank you. They’ve not set eyes on me for the better part of twenty years, tibber. I could have had six wives, for all they know.”

  “All at once?” she said delicately. “That would have kept you busy.”

  “If they were all like you, mistress, I should be even greyer than I already am.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a reluctant smile. “Unexpected. Aye. You might say so. I had thought – well, I was a regular guest at their table, before the wars. Am I so changed? No, don’t answer that, Thomazine. A regicide, a most notorious Roundhead, and now I’m turned up out of nowhere with a beautiful young woman to wife, after twenty years missing. They probably think I’ve spent the last twenty years smuggling fleeing Malig- King’s men to France, at an enormous profit. Or selling arms to the Dutch. Or something.”

  Thomazine’s mare heaved a blubbery sigh and shifted her weight onto one back foot. “I’ll not have them be rude to you, Zee,” he said, and she looked up expecting her watery husband to be blinking back tears. Instead he looked rather frighteningly purposeful. “I’ll tell you one thing straight off, mistress. They rent a farm at Walter’s Ash off my estate, and that lease is terminated. As of now. I will be instructing my bailiff to write and put an end to that agreement, and they can have till the end of the quarter to find new grazing for their benighted stock. She wants to play silly buggers, and I intend to play silly buggers right back. And I bet Henry Lane won’t thank her for that, when they’re put to the trouble of finding new pasture.”

  “There’s no need for –“

  “She was discourteous to you, Thomazine. And I will not tolerate insolence, from an aged parasite in, in borrowed finery!”

  “Borrowed?”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Well, unless Lane’s been spending the rent money on those god-awful gowns of hers, I’m fairly sure they’re not paid for, tibber. Since I’ve not had a penny off ‘em since the turn of the year.”

  Thomazine looked down at her gloved hands on the mare’s reins. Neatly gloved, as well they might be, since they’d been made by Uncle Luce’s father, and he’d been a member of the Guild of Glovers. Very neat, and well-made, and well-kept, in plain russet leather. But plain, and a little worn, and neatly mended in places.

  Looked at the lace on her husband’s cuff, which was narrow, and discreet, and hellish expensive. “Dear,” she said, carefully, “I had always assumed you were, well, you were. Ah. I don’t really know how to say this. I had assumed you were like us.” He was looking amused, now, that long, slow, cat’s blink that was the closest he could get to a smug grin. “Would I be right in guessing that you are... significantly better placed than I had assumed?”

  “Tibber, you behold the last of the noble Russell household.” He gave her a sly sidelong glance. “I don’t take much feeding. I am, I would argue, cheap to keep.”

  She took another deep breath. “Your," she swallowed, "land. Lands. Which bits are yours? I mean, did the King – did His Majesty – does he not mind, with you being a, a, you know -?”

  “If you are asking do I own half of Buckinghamshire, mistress, I may assure you, I do not. And does the King mind that I do happen to own a proportion of it, well, as I have no objection to his mistresses being my next-door neighbour, then I trust he has no objection to a notorious regicide living next door to Radnage Manor. Why, Thomazine, I do believe you are shocked!”

  “You live next door to one of His Majesty’s mistresses?” she squeaked.

  “There is a respectable distance between us, madam, I guarantee. I have yet to see the lady in question, but I am assured she is in no way remarkable, and nor does she live as to excite comment in the neighbourhood. Although my bailiff assures me that she is frequently visited by a plain country gentleman who goes by the name of Rowley. That being why he gave her the wretched place in the first place.” He turned his head, and looked at her solemnly. “That’s the King, dear. Though I’ve only met him the once, in a – civilian – capacity.”

  “Goodness,” she said faintly.

  “Goodness had very little to do with it, tibber. Although I’m told His Majesty is a very nice man, and very kind to his, ah, friends. And madam,” he looked down at her, and there was a smile lurking in his eyes, “I have been involved in regicide once already, and if
Master Rowley thinks he’s going to make frolic with my wife, I may be moved to become so again.”

  “Why, Russell. I do believe you’re jealous!”

  “How very perceptive, madam.” He pulled his hand away from hers, gently. “I reckon it’s coming on to rain, Zee, and I’d like to make shelter before dark. Twenty years ago there’d have been half a dozen houses where we’d have found a welcome and a bed for the night within an hour’s ride of here, but I wouldn’t stake my life to it, after Mistress Lane’s welcome. Welcome to bloody Buckinghamshire, wife. It’s raining, and nobody wants to talk to me.”

  “Oh, well, dear.” She put her heels to the mare, and trotted on a few strides. “I’m not so tired of your company yet that I can’t manage a little further conversation with you.”

  And thank God, the turf beneath the mare’s feet was solid and firm, and the path flat, because as that sweet little mare trotted out willingly, her wicked husband set his own horse chasing after her, bounding from a standing start into a gallop, and they arrived at the coppice that gave Four Ashes its name in the gathering dusk, laughing and breathless.

  11

  But as they walked the blowing horses side by side out of the dripping black trees, her first sight of the house where she was to spend her married life broke her laughter off short. For it was a ruin, looming up stark through the gusting rain at the end of an overgrown track.

  One wing, and the centre, of the house were as honey-gold new as a fresh-minted gold piece. New-finished, and sturdy, and homely. And then the house tailed off, fire-scarred and black, into a jumble of broken glass and charred timber and broken stone, and there was something heartbreaking about that. Beside her, the grey horse threw his head up and backed as if Thankful had jerked on the reins, and then he dismounted with a thump and walked towards the ruin, his hands outstretched like a blind man’s.