by J. A. Rock
Fernside and Fitz exchanged a concerned look, and then both gazed at Chant.
“I cannot explain.” Chant shrugged. “Gale defies explanation.”
Gale leaned around the doorjamb. “How long have you owned this house?”
“I do not own it,” Fernside said. “I rent it. I’ve been here for…” He furrowed his brow. “Eight months.”
“Ah,” said Gale, and vanished again. And then, “Here it is!”
Fernside, Chant, and Fitz crowded out into the hallway to find Gale inspecting a section of wall just beside the stairs to the cellar.
“I thought a priest hole at first.” Gale nudged a section of the baseboard with the toe of his boot. There was a faint clicking sound, muffled and distant, and then a narrow section of the wall creaked open. “But what priest would hide on this end of Rotherhithe? Torture and death would be preferable. Also, there are ships right there to take you to France or Spain or some other papist sanctuary.”
Chant stared in astonishment at the dark space behind the wall.
“But of course it’s for smugglers,” Gale said. “Astonishing the lengths men will go to avoid paying excise.” He gestured into the darkness, and Chant saw a set of steps that led downwards. “I’d wager this passage leads to somewhere very close to the docks, and that it’s common knowledge in certain circles. This is certainly how Visser escaped your custody, Fernside.”
“Good Lord,” Fernside said mildly.
“Well, bugger me,” Fitz said, much less mildly.
Gale turned to Chant, an expression of almost childlike glee on his face. “Well, come along, Chant! Fetch a candle, and let’s go!”
And then, without even waiting for Chant or the candle, he dived eagerly into the darkness.
The passage, as Gale had known, brought them out at the docks, close enough to the Condor for Gale to feel a real chill. De Cock’s threat still hung over him heavily, and he was aware that if de Cock was watching him, the captain would see that Chant was with him still, blinking dozily in the sudden light of day and making unhappy faces at the mud on his shoes and breeches.
“Come now,” Gale said briskly. “We shall take a cab to Bucknall’s. I am in need of a drink.”
They dodged around a group of men conversing in a cloud of pipe smoke in the street.
“And are you in need of my company too?” Chant asked.
“I have no need of any man’s company,” Gale said. “But I find yours more tolerable than anyone else’s.”
Chant opened his mouth, and then closed it again. And then he laughed, a short, bitter sound, and shook his head. “Good day, sir.”
“What? Are you not coming to Bucknall’s with me? We have much to discuss.”
Chant reached out and grasped his wrist gently. “Gale, perhaps the fault is mine in hoping for more than you are able to offer, and I hope it does not ruin our friendship, but for today? No, today I will not join you for a drink. You might find my company tolerable, but I fear I cannot say the same at this moment.”
Gale’s breath caught in his throat.
Chant smiled. The smile was brittle, but his eyes were still kind. They were always kind. “I am tired and in bad spirits. I think I would prefer to be alone for a while.”
Gale didn’t know how to respond to that; he didn’t know how to feel about the sudden unease in his chest, as though Chant’s words had caused a black whirlpool to begin spinning in the place his heart should be—a dizzying, sickening sensation of drowning.
“Call on me tomorrow,” Chant said. “I shall be glad to see you, I promise. And please do not seek out danger on your own in the meantime. Will you swear it as my friend?”
“As… as your friend,” Gale said numbly.
Chant squeezed his wrist. “Good day.”
Gale watched him walk away, and then leaned against a wall and brooded for a while. Then, because he would rather brood with a drink in his hand, he looked for a cab and brooded all the way to the Bucknall Club.
Gale made directly for Hartwell at Bucknall’s, as there was no sign yet of Soulden. “Where is young Warrington?” he asked, surprised to find Hartwell alone and without a drink. The fellow was eating a pie and reading a news sheet.
He looked up as Gale approached. “Gale! Are you feeling quite all right?”
“Well enough,” Gale said shortly, taking a seat by him.
“We were worried about you.”
“You needn’t have been.”
“Ah, well.” Hartwell set the news sheet aside. “I know what it’s like to be…”
“To be what?”
“To be in my cups.”
Gale looked sideways at him, then down at the news sheet. “Still pretending you read?”
“I’ll have you know, I am up to volume three of The Maiden Diaries, and Gale… there are certain objects that I simply do not feel should be put up one’s orifices.”
“That’s probably true.”
“And yet it all turns out so well for those characters.”
“It’s just fantasy.”
“Yes, but can a shallot—?”
“You’re reading the news today, though?”
Hartwell waved a hand. “I don’t know what the world is coming to. Murder and mayhem, everywhere you look. That Dutch fellow, the governor’s brother? One of the papers provided a gruesome description of his stabbing wounds—unfit to print, they’re saying, and now the printer’s in all sorts of trouble because, well, he did print it. The wounds were gaping, so the story went. Great holes, rather than cuts. And all over a few jewels. I nearly lost my breakfast.”
Gale had all but stopped listening. He was thinking of Chant once more. And he was feeling guilt, which did not sit well with him. Guilt, over hurting a man he had never invited into his life. “Would you say that you ever chide Warry?”
“Chide?” Hartwell repeated.
“Yes, chide.”
“Are we on to a new subject?”
“We are. Do you chide him?”
Hartwell sat back. “Why, certainly.”
“Under what circumstances?”
“Er… well, nowadays, it is more often he who chides me, for I have the baser manners of us two. I used to chide him for being a nuisance and an irrepressible whelp. But now if I chide him, it is usually for being a temptation.”
Gale tilted his head, trying to understand. “A temptation?”
“Yes, you see, it doesn’t seem to matter what he is doing. Whether he is standing or reclining or eating or reading or talking of scabies in sheep, I find myself thinking unseemly thoughts. So I chide him for habitually tempting me down the path of darkness, which used to have the delightful effect of turning him bright red and causing him to stammer, but now, the cheeky fellow, he grins. Or worse, continues on with whatever he was doing, but in an even more lascivious manner.”
“I feel I am receiving more information than I bargained for.”
“Do you know—I would never have thought this of Warry, but he can eat any food, and I do mean any food, in a manner suggestive of playing a fellow’s pipe? Just last week I watched him eat a boiled egg and nearly spent in my drawers.”
“This is definitely more information than I bargained for.”
“You asked.”
“And I am sorry I did. But you are… you are only teasing him in these circumstances. Do you ever chide him in earnest?”
Now Hartwell was staring at him with open curiosity. Gale struggled to keep his expression neutral. “Are you recently chid?” Hartwell inquired.
“It is of no consequence.”
“Ah! Now you have turned nearly the colour Warry used to.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Was Mr. Benjamin Chant unhappy with your drunken behaviour?”
“No. He was… he was very good to me,” Gale admitted. “But prior to indulging, I had… done something rather dangerous. And I just wonder why on earth he felt it his business to weigh in on the foolishness of my acti
ons.”
Hartwell drummed his fingers on the table, then crossed his outstretched legs at the ankle. “It sounds to me as if he cares for you.”
“Then it is I who should chide him for his foolishness.” Gale paused. “He said he must know whether I… whether…”
“Yes?”
“Whether I think myself capable of sharing any part of myself with him.”
Hartwell did not speak.
“He wants a courtship,” Gale continued flatly.
“And do you want a courtship?”
“Of course not!”
“And you told him that?”
“Of course not.”
“But you will tell him that?”
Gale pressed his forehead into his hand. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. This case has me all out of sorts.”
“Did you just call it a c—”
“Yes. There was a drunk fellow who was murdered, and I took his orphaned child to my house, and today, I thought of her as a sister, but she may hold a secret she refuses to share with anyone that could help me solve this riddle. Chant wants something from me I am not prepared to give, and he chided me… Hartwell, am I losing my bloody mind?”
“Good Lord. You and I need to dine together more often. I feel I am always about eight steps behind in the story of your life.”
“But am I mad?”
“I don’t think so.” Hartwell’s voice remained quiet. “And while I would never suggest making a commitment you do not wish to make, I can’t help thinking perhaps Chant would want to help you bear the other burdens you mentioned.”
That was precisely what Gale feared. “I do not require his assistance.”
“Perhaps not, but it might be nice to have it.”
Gale wished he had never begun this conversation. “I treated him badly. Today. Well, several times. But most recently, this morning.”
“Well, then he ought to have the sense to stay away from you. But if he does not, you might try apologising and not treating him badly in the future.”
How could Hartwell make it sound so simple? Apologise, and then do what? Make some sort of promise he was not sure he could keep?
Gale was relieved beyond measure when he saw Soulden pass through the room. At a nearby table, Loftus Rivingdon, his near-silver blond hair shining in the lamplight, looked up from his conversation and followed Soulden with a gaze as hungry as a wolf’s. Gale got up, determined to reach Soulden before Rivingdon did.
He caught up to him in the next reading room, touching him on the shoulder and causing him to startle.
“Oh, thank God,” Soulden said when he turned, his shoulders slumping. “I thought you were someone else.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why do you have mud on your breeches?”
“Secret passage,” Gale said.
“I do love a secret passage,” Soulden said.
“Is that a euphemism?”
“Not at all. I love secret passages, and also pert arses, and I never mix the two of them up.”
“Yes,” Gale said. “I remember from school.”
“Yours was much perter then.” Soulden appraised Gale with a narrow gaze. “You aren’t forgetting to eat again, are you?”
“You are not”—Chant, he wanted to say—“my mother,” he decided at last.
“I am not,” Soulden agreed. “Tell me about this secret passage. Where in blazes did you find it?”
“Rotherhithe. The surgeon’s house,” Gale said. “For smuggling, of course.”
“Of course,” Soulden agreed. “Was it filled with skeletons and treasure and the ghosts of pirates?”
Gale rolled his eyes. “It was filled with mud, primarily. But it led to a spot at the docks very near the Condor.”
Soulden’s eyes narrowed. “I have heard whisperings,” he said in a low voice, “about de Cock and a certain murder that is being blamed on the French, that de Cock may have had a hand in.”
Gale felt a thrum of anticipation as heady as alcohol. “Tell me.”
Soulden looked around the room and then drew Gale closer to the bookshelf. “De Cock is a Dutch privateer, working with the blessing of his king, and of course, with the blessing of ours because the enemy of our enemy is our friend.”
“Our enemy and their enemy both being the French, of course,” Gale said, cocking a brow.
“Of course,” Soulden said, a smile pricking the corners of his mouth.
“Despite the fact that England has restored the Bourbons twice now.”
“Despite that,” Soulden agreed. “King Louis ought to be more careful with that throne of his. He keeps losing it, only to have us return it to him.”
“I care not for politics. Tell me of de Cock.”
“Well,” Soulden said, “you have heard of Claude de Brouckère, yes?”
“Yes,” Gale replied. “The brother of the governor of Limburg. Murdered by the French at sea. You have heard otherwise?”
“Whispers, as I say.” Soulden ran his fingers down the spine of a book. “If de Cock is the one who killed Claude de Brouckère, then he murdered his own countryman, and he is most certainly a pirate and not a privateer.”
Gale frowned, his mouth turning down. And then it hit him. Hartwell rambling on about murder and mayhem. ‘That Dutch fellow,’ stab wounds like holes rather than cuts. De Cock’s work without a doubt. “Does the Dutch king know? Did he perhaps order the murder? If so, will de Cock ever face justice at all, or will he be allowed to slip the noose at the last moment? There may be political machinations and entanglements here we shall never uncover, or perhaps the plain truth is that de Cock is mad and greedy, and de Brouckère was simply an unfortunate victim of that. There were missing jewels, were there not?”
“Yes,” Soulden said. “I believe the news sheets have that part correct.”
Gale hummed. Surely the jewels were sold off when de Cock disembarked, perhaps. Buried before the Condor ever reached the Thames, even. Or possibly they were not lost at all, and they were still hidden aboard that black ship someplace. Or…
No.
“I can see your brain ticking over like clockwork,” Soulden said. “It’s just a rumour, remember.”
“What is it, Elise? What’s valuable about Flum?”
Please, please don’t let de Cock have hidden stolen jewels up that damn dog’s arse.
“Of course,” Gale said, attempting to keep his expression neutral. “And yet we both know that you, my dear Pip, have your ear to the ground in some very high up places.”
Soulden smiled. “That’s just another rumour, Christmas. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must make myself scarce before that little Rivingdon fellow finds me. I suspect that if he gets close, he shall be harder to dislodge than a tick.”
“I suspect you are correct,” Gale said.
“Ah, but before I do…” Soulden took a letter from the inside pocket of his waistcoat, and held it out to Gale. “Good day, Christmas.”
Gale slipped the letter into his sleeve. “Good day, Pip.”
Soulden clapped him on the shoulder and hurried away.
Chapter 15
“It is technically tomorrow,” Gale said when Chant, sleep rumpled and confused, opened the door to him. He stepped past Chant into the house, all elbows and sharp angles. “You said you would be pleased to see me if I called on you tomorrow. Why don’t you have a footman or a butler to open your door?”
“I have a butler,” Chant said. “Also a footman, and a cook, and a scullery maid, and a hall boy. And I am sure they are all asleep as God and nature intended us to be when the sun isn’t even up yet!”
“Hmm.” Gale swept through into the parlour, where the glow from the embers of the fire that had burned down overnight still illuminated the room. Chant had fallen asleep here several hours before, a book in hand, only to be awoken by the knocking on the door.
“Do you make a habit of nocturnal visitations?” he asked, tugging his shirt straight and dragging his fingers through his hair.
<
br /> Gale didn’t answer him. He only stared in astonishment at the creature snoozing in front of the fire. “Why is there a dog in here?”
“The boys tried to catch her again to remove her from the house once we had established she wasn’t Flummery, but she was not inclined to be caught.”
Gale curled his lip. “At least it isn’t the crow-pecked one, I suppose.”
“You liked that one,” Chant said.
“I did not.”
“Well, it liked you.”
Gale snorted.
Chant stood and gazed at him for a moment, utterly at a loss to understand what the man was doing here a good hour before dawn. He wondered if Gale sometimes simply forgot to sleep the way he forgot to eat. “I’m calling her Miranda.”
“The Tempest?”
Chant nodded blearily, stifling a yawn.
Miranda woke then and realised they had a visitor. She growled suspiciously and let out a low, gruff bark. “She already hates me,” Gale said.
“You might kneel and let her sniff you. Or give her those scraps on the table there, then she’ll be your friend forever. Or if you have more bacon in your pocket…”
“I do not want to be her friend forever.”
“Suit yourself.”
Gale glowered at Chant for a moment, his dark eyes catching the first grey light coming through the window, and Chant tried not to laugh. Then Gale slowly bent and placed his hand nearer to the floor. He did not stick it in Miranda’s face as Chant often saw people do with dogs—a sure-fire way to get bitten. Miranda took a few steps forward, then skittered back with an uncertain growl. “You see? Animals despise me. People too. But it is rather brutal, I must admit, to be hated by dogs.”
“She does not hate you. She’s only shy.”
“So shy she refused to be parted from you.”
“What can I say? She and I got on.” Chant smiled as Miranda stood and stretched, then made her way over and stood protectively beside Chant. Chant stroked her great hairy head.
“Yes, well,” Gale said brusquely. “I have come with two pieces of news. I am torn as to which to present to you first. But I gave it some thought on the way over, and the news pertaining to the investigation can wait. First, I wish for you to have this.” He handed Chant a twice-folded piece of paper.
