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

by M. J. Logue

  “Aye, since –“ his eyes moved, very slowly, to the shadows, as if he was afraid of what he might see there. “Who’re you talking to, major?”

  “My wife. Who did you think I was talking to? My sister’s shadow?”

  The expression on the man called Eadulf’s face was a joy to behold. He looked as if someone had punched him in the belly. “Your wife?”

  “Someone had to be daft enough to marry me eventually,” Thankful said smugly, and she stood up, surreptitiously holding the edges of that crumpled cloak together over her body-linen and grateful that he hadn’t arrived an hour earlier. When he would have been in no doubt at all that Thomazine and he were man and wife. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance, sir,” she said sweetly, and curtseyed, so that the folds of cloak covered her bare feet.

  “Mistress Russell – Eadulf Gillespie. My bailiff. As I said. He lives about a mile up the valley.”

  “You brought your wife,” he said again, “to this unchancy ruin? Major Russell, that was no’ well done! Ye should have sent word, sir! I’d have – well, I’d at least have seen you decently provisioned! When did all this happen, major?”

  “We came over yesterday,” she said, “at dusk. We didn’t intend to stay overnight, but it was raining, and near dark, and - well, we didn’t. I am sorry, did we inconvenience you?”

  “I might have shot ye, ye daft skite! God a’mighty, Russell, ye’re not twenty-one any more, have ye not the sense ye were born with? I saw the smoke from out o’ the chimney and I knew verra well there’d be none come to here after dark for any good purpose, so I come straight down here to see what was afoot, and – well, here ye are, safe and sound and intact, thank God, and why the- why did ye not tell me ye were coming home? Ye didn’t even tell me ye had a - a lass promised, never mind a wife! And this is no welcome for a gently-born maid, coming to this benighted pile of rubble!” He glowered, running his free hand through his short, ruffled hair. “Well. I’ve said my piece, and I’ll say no more. I bid ye welcome to Four Ashes, mistress. What’s left of it.”

  “Oh,” Thomazine said faintly. “Thank you.”

  “I should like to reassure you that I am not customarily addressed in like fashion by my staff,” Thankful said, sounding very stiff and shocked, and then the unmarked corner of his mouth lifted in that dear lopsided grin. “I don’t hardly count Eadulf as staff, tibber. More in the way of a friend.”

  “Friend, aye, you might call it friendship. More in the way of a keeper, I’d argue.”

  “He pulled me out from under my horse at Dunbar,” her husband explained, and his hand went, all unconscious, to his shoulder, by which she guessed that he had taken some hurt there as well as losing his horse.

  “Aye, and you pulled me out of the cathedral at Durham, a month after,” Eadulf grumbled. “So I call us quits. But Russell! Have ye no more sense than this?”

  “Not often,” he agreed. “Want a slice of bacon? I reckon it’s just about cooked.”

  “Give that here,” the Scotsman said. “I’ve had the benefit o’your cooking before, major, on the run home from Durham, if you recall, and ye're not known for the thoroughness of it. T'was touch and go if it was going to be the fever that got me first, or your food. Aye, well, if you don’t mind breakfasting on raw meat, mistress, you go right ahead and eat it.” He made a disgusted noise, brushing crumbs from the top of the box that was presently serving as a table top. “As if the place wasn’t sufficient of a mess already, with those daubers dragging their splatters all over the house. I’ll sit and visit with you, mistress, in common civility, and then I mun start looking out some likely staff for this place, or the pair of you will starve. Like children, the pair o' ye. Like children, wi' no more sense.” He bit into his bacon with every sign of evident relish, though, with a crackle of only slightly-blackened rind, making a little noise of satisfaction deep in his throat as he hunched closer to the flames.

  She wondered if all Scotsmen growled like dogs, and were as fierce as mastiffs, because she had little knowledge of any man north of Lancashire. And even her Lancastrian father had lived in Essex for so long that his North Country burr was only distinctive in some words. She couldn’t help peering at Eadulf surreptitiously, over her own wedge of bread and bacon. He looked no different – an ordinary, dark-haired, sturdy-built man, with strongly-marked dark brows, and a highwayman’s mask of silvered black stubble on his cheeks and jaws. Broad, strong hands, with a dusting of dark hair on their backs. Broad shoulders, broader yet in the shabby coat he’d clearly thrown on to confront the intruders at Four Ashes. He settled himself more comfortably on the box, and the wood creaked under him as he stretched his booted feet out to the fire. “If ye’d had the forethought to put a jug of ale to warm, we’d be almost comfortable,” he grumbled, and Thankful gave his almost-silent laugh and put his arm about Thomazine’s shoulders.

  “I’m comfortable,” he said. “Right where I am.”

  14

  "Aye," Eadulf said, looking around the kitchen as if he did not often step inside, "it's a well-appointed house, mistress. The labourers have worked hard. When," he looked, sharply, at Russell, "when we can get them. D'ye want to have a look round, then?"

  Which was both transparent and mendacious, and with a hint of gentle malice, she said, "I believed the greater part of the house to be unsafe, sir? So my husband tells me?"

  "Only the west wing," he said, perfectly unabashed. "And if you're careful, and mind where ye step."

  She had a red-headed temper, they said, and perhaps a year ago, two years ago, she might have turned on the Scotsman and called him a liar to his face. Six months ago, even, when things were yet unsettled between her and Thankful, she might have resented being treated as a child, being ordered from his company as if she were a silly maiden.

  Now, though, she was a respectable matron of a week’s seniority, and she had learned guile. And she did not have to tolerate insolence from her household servants. She twisted her wedding ring innocently, and looked at her husband. "Do you have an office, then, to repair to, dear? Assuming, of course, that it's safe."

  And to her absolute astonishment, the Scot gave a bark of laughter. Spoke like a growling dog, and barked like one. "Aye, mistress, touché. Well, I'll be honest, then, me and your good man have dull matters to discuss."

  "That you need not trouble your pretty head with," Thankful said, in a very odd, slightly strangled voice. She glared at him, and he bit his lip and looked innocently out of the rain-streaked window, and Gillespie nodded.

  "Aye, mistress, that you’d not want to be troubled with, unless you've a mind to discuss sheep-scab and the application of Stockholm tar. Though if you're inclined to look over the accounts and see what that shameless rogue at Wycombe has been charging for wormy timber, I'll not say you nay."

  She had made her point, and he had made his, and both understood each other. Also, she was increasingly aware, as the chill of stone and plaster struck at her tender parts, that under that all-enveloping cloak she was wearing nothing but a shift, and that as soon as she stood up her naked feet were going to become all too apparent. She shot her husband a quick glance, and glanced as quickly down at herself, and his eyes widened briefly as he realised exactly what she meant.

  "Perhaps you could show me how the work progresses?" he said. "I can see you're hot to be investigating those boxes, my tibber. Well, I've done my best, poor instrument that I am -" he handed her the blackened, greasy knife, point first, and Gillespie stiffened, as if he thought no decent woman should be handling such a utilitarian implement. "Get on, then, gal."

  "Aye," Gillespie said, with a deep growl of disapproval, "And I'd speak to you privately about that, too, Major Russell! Porcelain, mistress, from the Indies-"

  "China," he murmured, and she thought his bailiff might explode.

  "China, then! Brought in special, at the Lord knows how much expense, with not so much a stick of decent furniture in the house! So aye, you might have dishes the li
ke of the King's, but you've got nothing to sit down to like a civilized woman!"

  "Are you suggesting that my husband is profligate, sir?" she said, bridling, and Thankful snorted.

  "Well, my sister must be turning into her grave, then."

  15

  "Not exactly profligate," Eadulf said grimly, "but Russell! What were you thinking?"

  He closed his eyes, and put his head back against the rough, warm plaster of the bare little room off the hall. Office, indeed. Little more than a cupboard, windowless and airless, and containing no more than one large, worn, and very utilitarian Army paychest, big enough to sit on. The lock of the thing had defeated the most determined looters of both the King and Parliament's Armies, over a course of almost twenty year's campaigning.

  There was a great sword-slash across the iron-bound lid, which caught on his breeches as he shifted uncomfortably. Put there by Colonel James Wardlaw and his band of bloody brigands when they sacked the baggage-train after the battle of Edgehill, and it had made that paychest one of the most distinctive in the Army. He'd have known it anywhere, and he'd grown rather attached to it. (He had a reluctant soft spot for Wardlaw, too, especially after they'd made the disgusting old reprobate the governor of Plymouth.)

  Eadulf propped his elbows on his knees and gave another disapproving grunt. The question about what Russell had been thinking was not, clearly, a rhetorical one.

  "Can we afford it?" Russell said, though he knew what the answer was. He was sitting on it.

  "Aye, we can stand it, as ye well know!" Eadulf said irritably. "But Russell! Look at this place - it's half a house in the middle of God-knows-where, can ye no' wait at least till the woman's cold in her grave afore ye start thinking of setting up housekeeping, and stuffing the house wi' trinkets and gauds for the lassie?"

  "You know the answer to that," he said mildly, though he considered himself reproved.

  "Aye. I do. But does she?"

  "Have you ever known me lie?"

  His bailiff snorted. "No. Well, the once, though I wasn't complaining at the time. I've known ye evade any number of questions, mind. Well, I'll not have ye perjure yourself, major, so you'll pardon me if I'm as straightforward as you are yourself. She's a young woman, and a pretty one - if ye don’t mind that I've noticed?" He didn’t wait for an answer, which was as well, because Russell wasn't going to give him one. "I'd not have the two of ye marked for a happy match, Russell, so I'll ask again. As a friend. Does she know ye for what you are?"

  "She knows what I was," he said, and it was dark enough to see the whites of Eadulf's eyes flash as he rolled them in resignation.

  "Aye, that's the sort of daft answer I thought ye'd give."

  "Well, then. I have not changed. She knew me when I was young and stupid -"

  "Aye, and she knows you now you’re old and stupid, Russell! Were you always a King's intelligencer, then?"

  "I always did as my conscience bid!"

  He snorted again. "Aye, well, I never did reckon your conscience had much sense!"

  "No. No, well, there was a time you were glad of it."

  That was too far. He heard the Scotsman's hurt intake of breath. "Must ye throw that in my face, Russell? Every time I seek to check you? I am yet glad of it. I can still call it the daft, shiftless act it was. Had ye not -"

  "Had I not claimed you as one of my company, Eadulf, you would have died in the cathedral at Durham, with the rest of your countrymen. I do know. And had you not pulled me clear of my horse at Dunbar, a week before it, I would have died in Scotland, and we would not be sitting in the dark having this conversation. For, I think, about the fiftieth time of our acquaintance. I consider us quitted of any obligation to one another, sir. More than quitted."

  "It does not make you any the less soft-heided, major," Eadulf grumbled. He always did.

  "Surely." He could smile to himself, in the gloomy closet, and not have Eadulf miscall him for a dreamy romantic fool. "I always was."

  "Aye. Save in one matter." The bailiff sighed. "I'm glad you broached it, Russell. I would talk to you of - that. Her. Things have - well. Matters are grave. Ye'd know, of course?"

  It should not surprise him. Even from the grave, Fly-Fornication’s malign influence tried to extend over him, then. She'd been a nasty bitch in life; had taken a shy, sensitive, lonely little boy, after their mother's death, and tried to force him into as frigid a pattern-card Puritan as she'd been herself.

  She'd failed, of course. Their mother had been a good woman, a decent and godly widow, but she had also been a loving one and a joyful one. Her God was a God of warmth and loving and comfort, and her skirts had smelt of sunlight and roses, so far as he could remember. He had been three, four, perhaps, when she had died, and he could barely recall how she had looked, now. Only the kindness of her voice and the soft folds of her scented skirts, and a singing as she worked. After that, had been darkness, and Fly's cruel dominion. He had been shy before, but under her rule he had grown fearful and timid; unloved, and not knowing why, and tormented by it. She had held that unloving over his head like a man baiting a dog - promising that if he conformed, if he thought and behaved as she said the Bible told him to, she might come to love him. God might love him.

  It had taken him a long time to learn that love was not a thing of conditions and bargaining. By then there was Thomazine, and she had been a small, bright baby, and then a bright girl, who did not care that he was scarred and uncertain of temper, but only that he was her own. He'd never thought that brave, sturdy young woman with her steady green-gold eyes might ever see him as more than an object of pity.

  Thomazine hadn't pitied him, or scorned him. She'd been kicking him up the backside, metaphorically, since she was old enough to walk, and he'd grown accustomed to it, and he'd not have changed it for all the world. Eadulf sighed, and that recalled him to the here and now, a little. "Russell, I don't know who that lassie is, or where you found her, and I'll not ask. She seems like a nice enough maid, and I wish ye both happiness. I will ask, though, for they talk of it. How d'ye come by the money?"

  "Army pay," he said innocently. "I am a senior officer."

  "Oh, bollocks are ye! A retired half-pay one, sir, and well I know it - d'ye take me for a fool together! There was no money in this estate when she - when the mistress died here, and well ye know that, too. She couldn't keep a servant in the house for more than a week, given that the old besom was living on bread and scrat. Ye know verra well she failed to thrive under your masters in Parliament, Russell, wi' no man to stand her corner under Cromwell. I'd not say you put them up to it, but I know what ye are on your mettle, and I don't say ye'd have lifted a finger to help her. This estate was on its knees, major, and suddenly the mistress of it dies and ye turn up from nowhere throwing gold about like there's no tomorrow? Well, truly, what d'ye think they’re saying?"

  "The wages of sin is death?" he suggested, and felt, but did not see, the bailiff's exasperated glare.

  Most of the King's intelligence work was dull, painstaking, line-by-line accounting, of the sort that only a clerk could appreciate. Requisition lists that did not add up, quite, or added up to more than they should. Deliveries to occasional places where deliveries should not go, or too many names on a muster roll, or the same names in different places. Men who should not have been where they were, or who should not have known each other, mentioned in dispatches.

  It was also almost entirely voluntary, and that suited him well enough, for his name would be appearing on no pay-lists. But Thomazine's porcelain was beautiful, and fragile, and it had been worth every penny of the money he hadn’t paid for it. As had been the bolt of gold-green silk, the colour of her eyes, that he'd bought the same day. In Amsterdam, a year ago to the day almost. He remembered seeing it packed in the great wooden chest - remembered the smell of the sea, and the salt wind coming up off it, bringing with it the romance of tar and hemp from the great ships rocking on the bosom of the North Sea. Also brought with it the slight rott
en tang of the Kalverstraat flesh-market, and he'd laughed with the merchant about how he should get a discount for having to buy his bride's wedding gifts downwind of the winter beast sales.

  The King did not pay Thankful Russell's wages, in any real sense. His Majesty did, however, make a very real and practical contribution to fostering the foolishness of one ageing Puritan, trying to bribe his way into the heart of a pretty young girl. Russell passed without comment in the Low Countries, just one more plain, stern, middle-aged discontented Protestant of unremarkable habits. A fool and his money were soon parted. He was well-known, a contemptible dupe, to be flattered into buying unicorn's horns and silks and gold lacquer cabinets.

  Killigrew had called him out on the cabinet, mind. It was not often that you heard that most urbane of royal spymasters squawk in outrage – apart from anything else, Master Killigrew’s own tastes ran more than a little to the expensive, and what he spent on his mistresses alone would have kept Four Ashes for a twelvemonth - but he'd looked at the bill of lading from that little gilded lacquer box and his hand had been trembling, a little. "How much, Russell?"

  "It was needful," Russell said coolly, which was true. It had been needful. It had been black, and glossy, and it had had a little, beautiful, house and trees on the doors, and a man and a woman standing on either side of it, painted in gold with a brush that must have been finer than an eyelash.

  "Do not. Ever. Pull a stunt like that again, sir."

  And he had been able to say with a comfortable degree of honesty that he wouldn't. For he was retired, he had handed in his note of resignation as an intelligencer along with his commission. Done his duty, for the last time, and had not met a single one amongst the men and women he had come across in his times in Amsterdam, that he should not have been proud to call a friend; no matter what the common gossip was about the vile and bestial habits of the Dutch. Such was war. He knew that. He'd been here before, twenty years ago, when brother had been set against brother by the King's intransigence - aye, and sister against brother by both of their intransigence, for that matter, for he knew he was no saint when he was on his mettle.