by M. J. Logue
She wanted to argue, and then his teeth closed, very gently, on her nipple and she found herself saying something else altogether without having the faintest idea what it was. But she had his shirt over his head and she felt him laugh as the collar gave under her tugging, and then it was his hot skin against her coolness, warming her, melting her -
“Thankful you can’t do that!” she yelped, struggling bolt upright, and he lifted his head and he kissed her belly, with intent.
“I bloody can, sweet girl.”
He could not. Must not. It was -
“I haven’t - I’m not clean - I -”
His tongue was investigating the fold of her navel. “You taste sweet enough to me. Be still, and let me -”
His loose hair grazed her hipbone, and she caught her breath on a little sob. “Let me taste all of you,” he said, and his voice was shaky. “No secrets, Thomazine. Not between you and I.”
She did not know what to say, what to do - could do nothing, in the end but gasp and tangle her hand in his hair so that he could not pull away until she was utterly spent. And afterwards she lay, trembling and panting with her heart thumping so hard she thought it must burst her chest, feeling as if all her bones had turned to warm honey.
“Was that so very wrong?” she said drowsily. “For anything that felt so nice -”
“Mm?” He turned his head where it rested on her thigh, and his whiskers tickled, but her limbs were too heavy for her to care.
“Thank you,” she said. Which seemed a foolish thing to say in gratitude for such fire and exaltation, but-
He said nothing, and he must be uncomfortable, poor lamb, sprawled there untidily half on and half off the bed with his head in her lap. “Thankful?”
He did not open his eyes, but slid back up the bed, dragging the blankets with him and folding her into his arms. He was shivering, and she tucked her head under his chin so that they lay belly to belly, breast to breast.
Not shivering. Shaking, his skin twitching like a fly-bothered horse under her hand.
“Tibber,” he said, and his breath caught in his throat as she moved her hand in query, “would it - would you serve me - likewise?”
She thought he slept, afterwards. She surely did, drugged by loving and weariness, rolled safe in his arms with a lullaby of boots and curfews and watchmen in the cold, starry night outside.
Only once, she woke, at the sound of his voice. Quite clear, as lucid as if he were talking to her, or to another in the room with them.
“I know loving, you filthy-souled bitch,” he said. “I know what it is, now. You could not steal it from me wholly, and I pray God you burn for your trying.”
But when she sat up, they were alone, and he was asleep.
She remembered it, afterwards, as the last bright day before the storm. For one day he lay still and quiescent in bed and sat up, propped with pillows, to have his good healing invalid food spooned into his mouth - and to share it with the Bartholomew-baby, who liked to cuddle up catwise on the bed with him, it being the warmest room in the house.
(It left you somewhat disinclined to romance, having a little round baby rolling around the bed endeavouring to suck his toes and sharing your husband’s meals. But it seemed to give both of them pleasure.)
And then the next morning she awoke to a faint pale sun the colour of primroses shining in slats across the attic floor, and Russell up and half-dressed in his plain wool breeches and his plainest shirt, a little shaky but recognisably himself.
He stopped mid-stocking, leaned across the bed, and kissed her with an enthusiasm that took her aback.
“Feeling better, then,” she said wryly, and he tossed his loose hair out of his eyes and grinned sideways at her.
“Getting there, my tibber. Spring fever.”
He took her hand and drew her across the rumpled sheets, to sit beside him on the boards looking out across the rooftops. Pigeons were courting, in the eaves across the street, wheeling and dipping against the sun in an ecstasy of flight. It smelt as bad as ever it had, but there was a certain vibrant life about Aldgate, in the April sunlight. “In the spring, a young man’s fancy,” he said innocently, and his fingers linked with hers. “Lightly turns to thinking about - “
“Breakfast,” she said firmly, “and if Uncle Lucey heard you mangling poor Master Shakespeare’s verse so, he would nail your ears together.”
“Nonsense, mistress. He would be delighted that any of it stuck at all, and happier yet to see it put to the purpose for which it was intended “
“Which is what, pray, sir?”
“Persuading a lovely young woman to take her clothes off and come back to bed?”
Thomazine sat up in the rumpled sheets, with her flimsy shift hanging off her shoulder and her hair in a frowsty braid, and opened her mouth. “Thankful,” she said, “Thankful, dear, it may be a sign of your advanced age, but - um, you have almost all of your clothes on, and I have none at all?”
“How remiss of me,” he said, perfectly seriously. “I must remedy that forthwith.”
Afterwards, she lay in bed watching him dress, which was always a rewarding sight. Long and lean and as elegant as a sight-hound, with a swordsman’s athletic muscles and a horseman’s -
“You have a lovely bum,” she said dreamily, and he peered over his shoulder at the part so praised.
“I do?” He looked quite startled. “My arse has never been singled out for praise before, wife. It holds my legs in place, and that’s the most I’d ever considered it.”
“Mm. A lovely sweet handful -”
“Spring fever,” he said firmly. “Now remember, young lady. I am a poor invalid, and I need my breakfast.”
For it seemed that he was not yet sufficiently well to return to his work, and yet he was well enough -
“That’s lying down, though,” he pointed out. “It’s almost resting.”
And she had to laugh at him and that, honestly, was not a thing she had done before, not in twenty years of knowing him, for she had never known that quick facility to tease, never known him - flirtatious, almost, and suddenly he was quicksilver and funny and loving and as ardent as an apprentice.
And if that was only for this one day, she would take it.
It was wicked, and exciting, that he slipped downstairs with his boots in one hand and her hand in the other, the pair of them stifling giggles, and fled past the widow’s bedchamber before she could wake.
Running - not walking sedately, as befitted respectable married citizens, but running through the rain-washed dawn streets scattering pigeons, hand in hand like children. Her hair tucked unbrushed under a respectable cap, he unshaven with his collar askew, darting into a bakehouse to feast on hot mutton pie and fresh bread till they were surfeited. “I’m alive, tibber,” he said, as if it explained everything, and she nodded blankly.
“Surely.”
“Every time I come through that ague, and I don’t die of it. Ah, sweet Christ, I am grateful! So - here I am. Here you are. Me and you and a few hours of grace, though I fear you must treat me gently, for I am as yet fit for little.”
“You were fit for plenty about an hour ago,” she said tartly, and he shrugged, flattered.
“Well, my tibber. I have not thanked you for either your care of me, or your service. I am at your disposal, so long as we might sit down often. What would you?”
She didn’t want much, actually. To walk with him, without fear of interruption or duty. To take him to Leadenhall market and stare, at the great wheels of cheese and the piles of herbs and the mounds of fruit -
To buy him a pair of stout woollen stockings, with her own money, and for him to kiss her right there in front of everyone as if they truly were an apprentice and his lass, and not a truanting married couple. (He said he would cherish them always, the silly man, and the woman in the shop laughed at him, and he did not mind.)
A foolish, frivolous, merry morning, of no point or principle, but joyous. And then they stopped, for
he grew tired, though he said he wasn’t, but he looked it: so they went back and bought some bread and cheese from the market, and went to watch the world go by.
“May I show you the Perse?” he said.
She said nothing, having a mouthful of bread and cheese, but looked intelligent. She hoped.
“The Persephone,” he added. “My ship. Well. Not mine. Ship I have an interest in, then. As does your Uncle Luce. Can walk so far as Wapping, I think, after a rest.”
It was busier than it often was, and more bustling than was customary, with an air of suppressed excitement that was almost feverish. It took him like it always took him -
"He saith among the trumpets, ha ha, and he smelleth the battle afar off," he said to Thomazine, and squeezed her fingers in his own. She had not a clue what he was talking about, the darling girl, but she gave him that sparkling, indulgent look that she often gave him these days, as if they were two adventurers together setting out on a quest to far-off lands.
He had grown fanciful, since he married. (Not a thing anyone would have suspected him of, once.) And he found himself standing on his tiptoes, tall as he was, looking for her, as eager as a lad for a maid. For he would know her anywhere, stout, unremarkable old dear that she was, and landsman though he was, and for a minute his heart gave a great squeeze in his chest because she was not here -
"There she is," he said to Thomazine, and he knew he was grinning, bursting with pride, for though he had never had the sailing of her - no, nor would he, for he liked the solid ground beneath his feet too well - the Persephone was all things magical to Russell: she was mystery, and hope, and magic, and had she come back with a phoenix for her figurehead and a merman for a captain he would not have blinked an eye.
She followed his pointing finger. And then all the breath came out of her on a long sigh, too, and she looked on that fat old nautical goodwife with her eyes like stars. "Where has she been?"
"East India," he said softly. And then shook his head. "Well, no, truly, the Perse has been no further than Amsterdam. She trades with the East Indiamen, you see." He gave a sigh of his own. "Sandalwood, and cubebs, and silks -"
"My silks?" she said, and she looked up at him as if he'd given her the moon on a plate. "Thankful - you -"
"Chose them myself," he said, feeling rather shy. "Went out and chose them my own self for you. Well. I was engaged in the other work, too, but - yes. From India, to Amsterdam, from my heart to yours."
"You are an old fraud, Thankful Russell."
"I never claimed to be other than sentimental, my tibber. Other people may think as they choose."
37
They would probably have stood there all day admiring the Persephone rocking gently at her anchor, if a rather large gentleman in a very conspicuous waistcoat had not barrelled up to them and suggested that they might wish to take their mooning elsewhere. He suggested it so roughly, and so unkindly, that Russell was moved to suggest in return that unless the gentleman in question wished to wear one of the great spars of wood that were piled on the dockside as a suppository, he might like to moderate his manners before ladies.
He had turned round by this point, to stand in front of Thomazine lest matters come to that pass, and so the large gentleman's comical change of expression when he recognised Russell went unnoticed by her.
The large gentleman's profuse apologies did not, however. Things were all at sixes and sevens on the docks of late. Strangers coming and going at all hours - murders -
Well, he had often known murders, down here on the docks: sailors, drunk, knifing each other in brawls, or brawling whores drowning one another, or footpads, and one more or less did not shock him. It offended him rather badly, though, that some ne'er-do-well had come down to his docks, where his ship was moored, and done this dreadful thing, whilst Russell had been ill. He took it personally, somehow. A murder, and a fire, and he was not sure what was worse, for he had known Tom Jephcott. Not well, he had not been an intimate of the man, but he remembered passing the time of day with him before.
"Strangled," the large gentleman said, with grim relish. "Some bas- begging' your pardon, miss, some not very well-meaning person throttled poor ol' Tom. Strangled him black, they did, with the eyes popping out of his head and -"
"That is sufficient, sir," Russell said sharply, more out of concern for his own sensibilities than hers, for she was all eyes and ears listening to this ghoulish talk.
"Talk of the town, it is, for by God's grace some of the lads off the Perse was in the Devil's - uh, the Pelican last night, and they put the fire out before too much damage was done, but..." His face clouded. "Done a mort o' damage to the warehouse, mind. God alone knows how much it'll cost Master Giddings to put right, for it were the better part of the Go And Ask Her's cargo, and her new-unladen. Year's earnings, poor old sod. And he wasn't the only one to be so afflicted, for 'twasn't only his cargo in there."
"And the Perse?" he said sharply, and the shipmaster shook his head.
"Not a mark to her."
"Then I'm sorry for Master Giddings, and will do aught I can to help him. Send word if I may be of any use, Master - um, I'm sorry, I know your face, but I -"
"Aye, and I know yours, Major. You're a hard man to mistake, no matter what they say. Keziah Dolling, as is ship's master to the Ariadne," he swept his greasy bonnet off his head to reveal a head of close-cropped badger-grey hair, and made an unexpectedly genteel bow. "At your service, mistress - your daughter, major?"
"My wife," he said with indignation, and then realised by Dolling's horrible grin that he was being made game of.
"They was celebrating a safe return," the man went on primly.
"In the Devil's Tavern. Hm. Very safe. So the Perse came in -?"
"Perse come in on the evening tide on the Wednesday, and she was all right and tight, empty as a whore's purse - sorry, miss - by Friday morning, not so much as an old stocking left aboard."
"Splendid," Russell said happily, and then remembered they were talking about a man's death.
"She done well, the old gal. Aye, some of them lads was paid off with full pockets, major, they done well this time around, and there was some serious lifting the elbow going on in the Dev- the Pelican that day." He closed one eye thoughtfully, "You ever considered a new master for the Perse?"
Russell said nothing, for he had a new ship in mind, one day. Give the Perse her honourable retirement, and send the Fair Thomazine out adventuring in her stead. But that was for a long time hence, God willing, and before then -
"So, what? A fight?"
"Seamen ain't much given to wearing ribbon," Dolling said grimly, and Russell frowned, not understanding.
"Thomas was choked with a ribbon, major: pretty little trinket, like a gentleman wears, all ‘broidered by a lady’s clever fingers. So they say. Bloody funny choice o' murder weapon, you ask me. Almost as if someone were trying to make a point. Like it was a token or some such."
"Jephcott was a married man, to my sure and certain knowledge," Russell said, and then - "Oh. Oh I see. You think -"
"We-ell," the ship's master drawled, "well, that's what some of the lads are saying. Maybe. Choked with a lady's ribbon for putting his hands where they ought not to go. Some fellers is like that - possessive, you might say." He closed that bright eye again. "And then some of the lads is saying that maybe Thomas come across a thing he should not have come across, late one night in a warehouse where they was unloading ships all full of silks and spices. Maybe a ribbon was what some bright spark had to his hand, if a watchman doing his duty happened to find him in a warehouse full o' silks and spices."
"I think I am being stupid," Russell said.
"I don't think you are, major. I think you are very far from stupid. I think you know very well what I mean, and I reckon you would do well to be mindful of it. Folk talk. Stupid talk, for the most part, but there it is. There was damage caused here, the night Tom Jephcott was throttled. The Ariadne's going to be out of the water for the
better part of a month -"
"Will you want for work, sir?" Thomazine said urgently, and poked Russell in the flank under cover of the edge of her cloak.
"Me? No, me dear, though I thank you for asking: no, she's a fixer-upper. No, there was a bit o' damage to a few of the shops that are laid up fitting for the long voyages, a little bit, nothing a good carpenter can't mend. A dozen bales o' silk - cargo, for the the most part, stored by, and had it not been for them lads off the Perse, the whole boiling lot would've took fire, the whole far end of the dock gone up in smoke. Four ships just come in after the Perse, and they'd have lost the lot. All English trade, though, major. East Indiamen, you get me? English East India Company. Four ships damaged, a warehouse full o' cargo burned up, and not a scratch on the Perse. And for meself, I happened to be playing both sides off against the middle, I might watch meself. Eh?"
"Master Dolling," Thomazine said sweetly, "would you let me go on board your ship?"
38
He did, of course, and she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and trotted about the deck with him while he pointed out the bits of the Ariadne that needed repair, and told her enormous lies that Russell was too polite to call him on. (He wasn't jealous. precisely. Much. Just - well. A little bit.)
He skulked behind them, amusing himself by placing his feet precisely where hers had trod, half-listening to Dolling's phenomenal tale of a great whale he had seen off the coast of Norway once, and wondered what the bloody hell had been going on, in this last week.
Murder. Arson. Profit. Greed?
War, for sure. Were the two connected? He didn’t know – though in his experience, it wasn’t unlikely.
Bloody George Downing, the King’s erstwhile ambassador to the Dutch - expelled from the Hague for his perfidious politicking, poking and poking until His Majesty thought war was the best option. Russell wasn't so sure. (Hadn't took to war when he'd been a seventeen-year old lieutenant in the New Model Army, liked it even less when he was in Scotland with Monck and half-dead with a fever, and thought any man who wanted it now had to be out of his tiny mind. But. It was different, in all probability, if you were the one giving the orders and not the one taking them. Which thought made him smile for it seemed he was still, at heart, the same ungovernable rebel he had always been.)
