Winterwood, p.20
Winterwood, page 20
part #1 of Rowankind Series
David looked at it over my shoulder. “Fairies?”
“Fairies, Fae, Hobgoblins. The old beliefs. This book is over a hundred years old.”
“You think people don’t believe any more?”
“Not so much.”
“What about the Green Man and his Lady?”
“I don’t know. A remnant of what used to be, perhaps.”
“Pretty powerful for a remnant.”
When I’d been in their forest the whole world of magic had seemed so open to me. Since I’d returned to the sea, I’d let it fade.
I looked at the book again. There was nothing special about it. Maybe my mother had wanted to keep me away from anything even vaguely related to magic. I looked at David and shrugged.
“I can’t see why she made such a fuss.” But David’s eyes were not on the book, they were on the inside of the cover where I’d placed it on the table. There was an inscription, faded into the heat-browned paper. I called the witchlight down from the rafters to shine brightly over our heads. The very top bit was burned away, but it looked like a date, and might have been the year before I was born. Below it was inscribed: To M. I have tried and failed. Perhaps I was not firstborn. It’s yours now. Be strong. Your loving sister, Rosie.
My mother had a sister.
“We’ve got an Aunt Rosie.” David’s voice held wonder. “First a mother and now I’ve got an aunt. The Lady said the key was in family. Can we search, using the book?”
“After more than twenty years?”
“She must have touched it.”
I put my hand flat on it, and David placed his next to mine, but as soon as our eyes met we both knew there was something wrong. It had already given up that secret to someone else.
“We’ll get no more help from this,” David said.
“So now all we have to do is find someone called Rosie Sumner who had a sister called Margery, and at the same time try to avoid people who want to kill us, or me at any rate, since I hope they don’t know you’re my brother.”
He shrugged. “When you put it that way . . .”
A sound below made me snap off the witchlight. I grabbed David by the wrist and retreated against the wooden wall, crouching low, away from the edge of the stair, in the recess of a loading door above the dock. The main door downstairs creaked. Two sets of footsteps, some indistinct muttering, and the sound of steel striking flint preceded a low flare of light from somewhere beneath us.
I stretched out my hearing to catch what they were saying, but after the first mutterings they went about their business silently, but separately. I could hear one moving about below our gallery floor. The other stopped suddenly and cursed.
“Look at this, Figgis. It’s witchery. I want none of it. This place was bad enough in the daytime wiv the old feller carkin’ it as soon as he was asked a civil question.”
“Shut yer trap, there’ll be none of it left if yer do yer job. Noffink to ’ang us for. Make haste, fer gawd’s sake. He’s a-waitin’ on the dockside, an’ ’e ain’t a man to be kept waiting.”
Walsingham? Here? My heart was already trying to break out of my chest, but the thought of Walsingham out there, waiting, turned my blood to ice water.
There was a crash as one of the piles of neatly stacked timber was tipped, a sudden stink of whale oil. My gut sank, and I squeezed David’s wrist tighter. There was a whoomp as the oil ignited and the low light from the men’s lantern was overwhelmed by flames, not just from one area of the warehouse, but from several, including one right beneath the rickety open steps. I heard them call to each other, and then the main door rattled, and rattled louder, as if they’d found it bolted from the outside.
“Quick! Over ’ere!” Figgis shouted. He coughed and spat and I heard him push on the side door that we’d used earlier. That was also now locked. Whoever had sent Figgis and his partner in here to torch the place didn’t intend for them to get out again. A perfect, self-cleaning operation.
Searing flames billowed up the stair, our only means of escape, and sparks roiled into the rafters. The boards beneath our feet began to smoke. It would be our shoes next. The fire’s crackling roar and crack of timbers filled my ears. I wrapped my forearm across my nose and mouth to try to filter the choking air, but with little effect. My eyes streamed from the heat and the smoke until I could hardly see where I was.
Figgis and his friend hammered on the door below. Their shouts rose in both volume and pitch, pleas for aid that went unanswered. I stood and fumbled with the shutter on the window, but it was closed and barred.
One of them began to scream, not a cry for help but a throat-tearing, primal scream of agony. I clawed at the shutter again, redoubling my efforts, David adding his strength to mine.
“It’s no good. Stand back,” he yelled.
David’s explosion of desperate energy turned the door and a good section of the wall to ash, both in front of us and below. Our gallery floor creaked ominously, some of its joists supported by nothing more than thin air and habit. Figgis and his mate had an opening below us. They were on their own. The timbers shifted. Collapse was imminent. I clutched David’s hand. We ran and leaped off the splintering boards out into the night. All I could think was that I hoped there was water beneath us, and not a solid, moored-up coaling barge.
The icy shock of water knocked the air out of me. It closed over my head, drilled into my ears and nose. I clamped my mouth shut, trying not to gulp convulsively, and kicked for the surface. Somehow I still had hold of David’s hand. I didn’t even know whether he could swim. I came up under the edge of a barnacle-encrusted hull, grazed my shoulder, but had the sense to stick close to it, treading water. David’s head broke the surface beside me. I heard him gasp.
“All right?” I asked.
“For now.”
“Can you swim?”
“A bit.”
I let him go and he leaned into the hull, too.
The timber warehouse blazed like a million torches. Sparks rained down into the water. Only the hull of the fishing boat protected us from the inferno, but it would soon be alight itself. And then the rest of the ships in Sutton Pool.
The boat rocked as if someone had jumped into it, maybe Figgis or his partner. It began to drift away from the dock, released from its mooring. We drifted with it, protected from the worst of the flaming debris. Not until we were well into the middle of Sutton Pool did I tap David on the shoulder and begin to swim away. He followed me, and we reached the shelter of the moored craft on the Foxhole side, working our way around to the slipway by New Quay, where we staggered out of the water, thoroughly exhausted and almost too heavy to walk.
A crowd had gathered, their attention on the fire. The tumbledown buildings on Cockside could all go up like so much dry tinder. No one would be sorry to see the end of Skinner’s warehouse, but if it took the rest of Cockside with it, and the shipping in the pool, there’d be hell to pay. Men ran for buckets and a fire crew shoved off from Plymouth Steps in a barge with a water-pumping engine and hoses on it.
David overbalanced and fell, dragging me down with him.
“It’s all right, I’ve got you,” a familiar voice said in my ear. “I’ve got him, too.”
Mr. Corwen!
“What—?”
“Don’t try to talk. You’re in no danger from me.” His arm wrapped itself around my waist, and he almost picked up David with the other arm. He was stronger than he looked. Like three drunks we staggered back to the Twisted Skein. He even retrieved my blanket from where I’d dropped it behind barrels in the alley. By that time I could stand by myself, and so could David, though he still supported himself with one hand on the wall.
“Mr. Corwen—” I tried again.
“Mrs. Webster. No need for words right now. I’ll bid you good night and urge you to get into some dry clothes as soon as you can. It’s cool for September, and I wouldn’t want you to catch your death of cold. Either of you.”
He nodded to David, a short, sharp movement picked out by the light of a lantern burning at the far end of the inn yard, and then he was gone.
19
Moving On
EXHAUSTED, David and I both fell onto the bed in my room. I expected Will’s ghost to pay a visit, but he didn’t show up. Within minutes David’s breathing was deep and regular, but I couldn’t sleep for thoughts chasing themselves around in circles.
I should get up right now and drag David as far away from Mr. Corwen as I could get, but my legs wouldn’t move. If Mr. Corwen had wanted to turn us in to the authorities, he’d have done it by now.
If only I knew more about Mr. Corwen, the box, Walsingham and Philip. Right now I knew just enough to lead me into danger and not enough to get me out of it.
Finding Philip and the rest of my family suddenly became important for all sorts of reasons, as did finding out more about the box. I couldn’t walk away from something I didn’t understand, at least not until I knew more.
But the Twisted Skein was definitely no longer safe for us.
At first light, I was up and washing the stink of Sutton Pool out of my hair and clothes in a bucket of cold water. The clothes I’d borrowed from Dan were pitted with burn holes from flying sparks and had a huge scorch mark on one sleeve. Examining them closely made me realize how close we’d come to a horrible end.
Having done the best I could for now, I dressed in my green linsey-woolsey and packed everything else neatly. Leaving David sleeping, I turned up for breakfast as early as I could, hoping to avoid Mr. Corwen, but he was already at his usual table. After last night I could hardly snub him when he stood and asked if I would join him.
He was one of those annoying people who looked as good in the morning as he did at night. After my adventures, I doubted that I was at my best. Maybe if he’d had to jump out of the upper floor of a burning building into the harbor he might look a little more haggard.
“I’m afraid I’m bad company at breakfast before my third cup of coffee, Mr. Corwen. You’ll have to forgive my lack of scintillating conversation.”
“In that case . . .” he got up from the table, crossed over to the kitchen and brought me a huge cup of coffee, black and sweetened exactly as I like it.
“Ahh.” I couldn’t help sighing as I tasted it. “Very observant. That’s perfect.”
He grinned at me. “Self-preservation, I assure you. I would hate to be the object of your anger. I make it a point of honor never to argue with a lady who wears a concealed knife at her waist, especially when she’s in need of coffee.”
I froze with my cup halfway to my lips. I did indeed wear my leather-sheathed knife strapped horizontally behind me in the small of my back, beneath the flounce of my dress. I had only to reach my right hand behind my waist to grasp it through a concealed opening beneath a pleat.
He smiled. “A very sensible precaution for a lady traveling alone.”
“I’m not traveling alone.”
“Your rowankind companion . . .” I was pleased he didn’t say servant. “How old is he? Fifteen at most. Hardly a bodyguard. In fact I suspect if there’s any guarding to be done, Mrs. Webster, that lot might fall to you.” He smiled. “But where is the lad this morning?”
“Sleeping.”
I prepared to fend off more questions about why my servant was abed while I was up and about, but they didn’t come. Him finding us half-drowned and singed around the edges might never have happened. Instead, breakfast arrived, hot and savory. There was blood pudding, kippers, bacon, coddled eggs, and stewed plums, plus a hunk of freshly baked bread, some cool butter, and a little strong cheese, all of it washed down with more coffee.
“I’m sorry to be so hasty, Mr. Corwen.” I got up from the table almost before I’d finished the last mouthful, and I could tell I’d caught him by surprise.
“I was hoping to invite you to stroll along Plymouth Hoe later this morning. I hear that it’s bracing at this time of year with the sea breezes.”
“I’m afraid I have business to attend to. I’m leaving this morning.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I live in hope that our paths may cross again.” He stood while I left the table, then sat down to finish his own coffee.
I still couldn’t shake the conviction that I’d met him before, and I determined that David and I would truly be out of Plymouth by tomorrow morning at the latest.
Then where to? Will’s ghost asked.
“I don’t know. To find Philip, or to find our aunt. Wherever the quest leads us.”
And if it doesn’t lead anywhere?
“Back to the Heart I suppose, now that I know how to shield the box.”
Good enough.
By the time I’d settled up for our board and lodging with the Twisted Skein’s landlord and arranged for my bags to be stored until I could send one of Dan Fairlow’s boys to collect them, David had charmed his way into breakfast in the kitchen with Annie. He took his leave of her with a sigh, then we walked down through Old Town, taking a detour to avoid Market Street, the Guildhall and the Watch office. We turned right toward Southside and the Ratcatchers.
Dan ushered us into his kitchen again. “Everything all right, Cap’n?”
I nodded. “For now, but we need a place to stay if you can accommodate us.”
“Of course. I’ve got a room at the back, off the yard.”
As we stepped out of the Ratcatchers’ front door to go around to the yard, I almost bumped into a tall, silver-haired figure.
“Mrs. Webster, David.” He gave us both a polite nod.
“Mr. Corwen. What a surprise.”
And not a pleasant one either. This was surely more than coincidence.
“Indeed.” He glanced at the street, as rough and as businesslike as you may find in any dockside neighborhood, with taverns, small shipping offices and two rival chandlers side by side. “I thought you’d left town. I wouldn’t expect to find a lady on business down here.”
“That shows that your expectations of ladies are sometimes misguided. Good morning.”
I stepped around him and walked on quickly, knowing he couldn’t follow me unless he deliberately turned around. I found myself shaking inside.
Once around the corner of the building, I stopped and leaned against the wall, took three deep breaths, and popped back to watch Mr. Corwen as he strode toward the New Quay.
“Is he bothering you, Cap’n?” Dan asked. “You want I should find someone to deal with him?”
I looked at him blankly for a moment, thinking of alternatives, but I had no proof against him, so Mr. Corwen was one innocent man too many. I shook my head. “No, leave him be—for now.”
We might have ended our quest right then and gone home to the Heart having reached a dead end, but the enquiries I’d asked Dan to make to find Captain Ezra Pargeter, otherwise known as Captain Cyclops for his one eye, bore fruit the very next morning. When I came down into the kitchen, Dan was already making up the fire in the inglenook. He straightened up and handed me a scrap of paper with an address scribbled on it.
I ran up and changed swiftly from my gray morning dress into my breeches and jacket. The address Dan had given me was not more than a quarter-hour walk from the Ratcatchers, but it took me a little time to find the right door in the middle of the mean streets behind the market. I knocked and waited. I could hear movement inside and eventually the scraping of a heavy bolt being drawn back. The door opened a crack, and a wary face peered out at me from the gloom. She was rowankind, maybe sixtyish, with pinched cheeks and flyaway hair. She seemed disinclined to open the door more than a few inches.
“I’m looking for Captain Ezra Pargeter,” I said.
She shook her head and would have closed the door, but a voice from the hallway said, “Captain Pargeter, is it? See, Minna, someone knows about my ship. Show him in, girl, show him in!”
She looked over her shoulder and backed away from the door.
“He’s not well, sir,” she said quietly.
“Well? Well? I’m as fit as a flea, sir, and don’t let anyone tell you any different. You’ve only just caught me. Due to sail on the tide, don’tcha know?”
“I didn’t know, sir. I’ll not keep you long.”
I followed Pargeter into his tiny parlor crowded with the souvenirs of a lifetime on the ocean. He was eighty if he was a day, with a bush of snow-white whiskers and a black eyepatch. He had a fierce tremor in his left hand, but he was still turned out neatly in a blue sailing jacket now a little loose on his shrunken frame.
“Well, come in, boy, come in. What can I do for you? Have you found my ship yet? I have a cargo of mixed goods for our colony in Virginia, but I seem to have mislaid my ship.”
I looked at Minna and she shook her head slightly.
“And you are, sir?” he asked.
“Goodliffe, sir, Philip Goodliffe.” I bowed.
He returned my bow, if a little stiffly.
“My wife, Mrs. Pargeter, Mr. Goodliffe.” He waved to the rowankind woman, who looked flustered. I noticed no ring on her finger, but there were many good partnerships not recognized by the church.
“Mrs. Pargeter.” I bowed.
“Would you like some tea, Mr. Goodliffe?” she asked.
“Goodliffe? Goodliffe?” Pargeter stared out of the window, perhaps seeing the past rather than the street. “Used to have a first mate name of Goodliffe. Any relation?”
“My father, sir. You took him on when he came to Plymouth from . . .” I hoped he might fill in the blank if I left the sentence hanging, but he was off on a tack of his own.
