Winterwood, page 33
part #1 of Rowankind Series
I had their undivided attention and began my story, telling them of my mother’s parting gift, Martyn the Summoner, the rowankind, and what had been done to them. “To cut a long story short, I’m the last of Martyn’s descendants with the ability to open the box and free the rowankind.”
“That’s good, gal, ain’t it?” Hookey spoke up. “I don’t hold with no one being kept where they don’t want to be.”
Mr. Sharpner nodded.
“I agree,” I said, “but there’s a chance that freeing the rowankind will also bring back wild magic to the land, and that could be bad for all kinds of reasons.”
“Ain’t that what you got? It don’t seem so bad,” Hookey said.
I turned to Corwen for an answer.
He cleared his throat. “What if creatures of legend—tree spirits, water spirits, shapechangers, boggarts and bogles, good creatures and bad—were real? What if the kraken roamed the seas again?”
Hookey shuddered and then turned to me. “Has he got magic, too?”
I nodded, but didn’t elaborate.
“A grave moral dilemma.” Mr. Rafiq understood at once. “A heavy decision for one person to make.”
“What should I do? What would you do, Mr. Rafiq, if by one single but dangerous act you could end the Africa trade?” By the look on his face he would take the risk in an instant.
“Though the decision has fallen to me, there are vested interests. The Fae—” I had to stop as everyone spoke at once, but as soon as I could make myself heard again, I continued. “Yes they still exist, and yes they are powerful, but since the rowankind were taken and stripped of their power, they’ve shunned mankind completely. They know that I’m their last chance to open the box, and they have David in their home, Iaru, a world between worlds.” I held my hand up to forestall another outburst. “He’s fine, they’re not going to hurt him, but he’s the reason I have to go back there.”
“Your other vested interest would be this Walsingham,” Mr. Rafiq said.
“Yes. The Walsinghams have taken a blood feud against the Sumners. It was a Walsingham that hunted my ancestor after the Armada. Almost thirty years ago, a Walsingham destroyed my mother’s family, but was himself destroyed in the process. My mother and her twin sister survived, and thought themselves safe as long as they stayed separate, hiding their magic away from the world, but now there’s another Walsingham.”
“He’s trying to kill you?” Hookey’s eyes held cold murder.
“He’s got magic, Hookey. Big, nasty powerful magic.”
“More than you got?”
I nodded, my mouth dry.
“I think so. Different, anyway, and much more deadly in the way he uses it.” I glanced at Corwen. His mouth was compressed in a thin line. “And since he’s got my brother, Philip, I can’t just run away, much as I’d like to.”
“You’re not made for running away, gal—sorry—Cap’n.”
“You’re the captain now, Hookey. No need to stand on ceremony.”
He cleared his throat and rubbed his hand up and down his face to cover up an unseamanlike blush. “So what do you want us to do?”
“I need to find Walsingham before he finds me. I have to free Philip.”
“I’ll send the lads out on to the streets to ask around,” Hookey said.
“I suppose that means they’ll be asking tavern keepers and whores.” I raised one eyebrow.
“No better folks to ask.”
“Well, give ’em a shilling or two for ale and a supply of Mrs. Phillips’ prophylactics if they’re going to be asking those kind of questions. Your new crewman, Bone, ask him to talk to some of the watermen, see if they’ve rowed Walsingham on the river. And better be ready for trouble if all these questions stir any up.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
I tried not to smile at his automatic use of my former rank.
31
Walsingham
I SPENT THE AFTERNOON on deck waiting for any news to come in from the scattered crew. Mostly I paced up and down, passing Corwen, who sat against the deck rail. I expected him to be restless, like a caged beast, but he had an amazing capacity for stillness. Sometimes I thought him asleep, head propped on arms, supported on bent knees, but if I hesitated in my pacing he would raise his head and look at me with barely concealed hunger on his face.
Once as I passed I reached out and took his hand, feeling his grip, warm and dry, around my cold fingers. For a brief moment our hands did what our bodies couldn’t, fingers twining and exploring knuckle, nail, and fingertip. His thumb caressed the center of my palm while I folded my fist around it and squeezed.
On what felt like the hundredth turn around the deck I could stand it no longer. I stopped by him and touched my fingers to his silver hair. He raised his head, and shivers ran through me as his eyes locked with mine.
My voice caught in my throat. “Mr. Corwen, I have a private matter to discuss, would you mind joining me in my cabin in five minutes.”
“Of course, Captain.” He inclined his head.
I’m not sure if we fooled Lazy Billy, who sat on a nearby hatch mending a tear in a pair of canvas trousers, but I didn’t care. I made myself walk steadily down to my cabin and, once down there, shrugged out of my jacket and waited for Corwen, heart pounding.
It was a long five minutes.
The instant he closed the door behind him and turned the iron key in the lock I flew into his arms, fastening my lips to his, feeling a pang deep in my belly. His hands ran up and down my back, hot through the linen of my shirt. He undid my buttons, pulled my shirttail loose, and ran his hands over the outside of my breast binding.
Corwen soon worked out the fastening, and he leaned me against the stout oak door while he pulled it loose, slowly, and then kissed what it had been covering until I moaned and squirmed.
“Shhh,” Corwen whispered. “Or your crew will wonder if I’m murdering you.”
I kissed him thoroughly and that put an end to my moans for a time. He carried me to the bed, Will’s bed. Small as it was, it served us well, and afterward we dozed together until late afternoon, passion spent, the last taboo broken.
With a start I realized that Will had not put in an appearance, and neither had I thought of him once during our lovemaking.
I drew a deep breath. “I feel guilty lazing here like this,” I said, “with the crew all out working on my behalf.”
“They’re probably working in just the same way, with added ale and rum.” He laughed softly. “Besides, they’ll be back soon.”
He dipped his lips to my breasts again, and I felt him rise to the occasion.
We eventually disentangled ourselves and dressed to await the return of the crew.
The first few back had little to report except for a good time. Hookey returned with a self-satisfied smile but no news. Mr. Rafiq, however, had dressed himself in fine gentleman’s clothes and gone in search of a higher class of Covent Garden lady. It had paid off. His lady had a gentleman friend named Dominic who was prone to pillow talk and boasted of his connections via his employer, Mr. Walsingham, to Sir George Shee, Baronet.
“Shee?” I asked.
“I believe,” Mr. Rafiq said, “Sir George Shee has recently succeeded Mr. Wickham as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department.”
“A scribbler?” Corwen asked
“More than that, Mr. Wickham was to King George as Sir Francis Walsingham was to Good Queen Bess—spymaster—so one must assume that Sir George has now taken on that role.”
I waited until Mr. Rafiq had retreated and then gave a low whistle. “Coincidence or what?”
“You don’t think this Walsingham could be the same one, do you?” Corwen asked. “I do know there are those who might look wholly human who nevertheless have enough Fae blood to live for many—”
I shook my head. “Leo was sure that the Walsingham who was responsible for my grandparents’ death was killed in the explosion. Besides, he seems to have been an older man than the present Walsingham. While Fae blood might extend a person’s natural lifespan, I doubt even the Fae could turn time backward and have someone cheat death and grow younger with the passing years.”
He nodded. “So let’s presume Walsingham is working for Sir George Shee. Shall we find him at Westminster?”
“Or Whitehall, or any number of properties in this city belonging to the Crown, or maybe some dark little hideout in a tenement. Oh, this is hopeless without resorting to magic.”
“As soon as you try any kind of seeking, he’ll be able to follow it right back to you.”
He was right, but hearing him say it didn’t help.
The rest of the men returned before full dark and were ferried back to the Heart in groups of five and six. None had anything to report. It seemed that Walsingham and his kind didn’t frequent the kind of places my sailors did. Bone was the last to return, arriving on a Thames cutter rowed by a crew of two watermen. Hookey brought him to my cabin.
“You found something?” I asked.
“I think so, ma’am—Cap’n.” He looked at Hookey, not knowing which of us to call captain.
I gestured for him to continue.
“Mate o’ mine, name of Doff, regularly plies his trade around Westminster. Often ferries them toffs from Parliament and their flunkies. Gets slipped the odd shilling extra to keep his mouth shut sometimes, but ain’t against making two shillings to open it again. Says he knows Mr. Walsingham and that new young man of his. Always together he says.”
“Does he recall where he takes them?”
“Vauxhall Stairs, ma’am.”
“Is that the man who rowed you here?”
“It is. He’s waiting for his money.”
“Thank you, Bone.” I gave him the two shillings he’d promised to pay his friend and three more. “Ask him to wait, please.”
I looked at Corwen when Bone had closed the door behind him. “How’s your nose?”
He grinned. “Good as ever. I’ll go tracking.”
Corwen’s wolf nose could pick up scents from miles away in the country. I was less certain of it with all the city smells to cover up Philip and Walsingham.
“I’m coming with you. Trot at my side like a dog and most people will take you for one in the dark. Slink around like a wolf on your own and you’re likely to find someone pointing something dangerous at your ribs.”
He nodded. “Deal!”
I strapped on my sword and loaded a pair of serviceable pistols, not the small ones by Mr. Bunney, but a brace of sturdy British sea-service pistols I had used many times in action. Corwen didn’t need armaments. As an afterthought, I grabbed the leather bag that the Fae had given us.
I called Mr. Sharpner and Hookey before we left the Heart and told them that Corwen and I were going to go and nose around. I was pretty sure they didn’t think I meant it literally, but I didn’t explain.
We climbed down into the waiting cutter, crewed by two watermen who looked enough alike to be brothers. Bone’s friend Doff nodded to us and asked where to. I told him Vauxhall Stairs. We settled ourselves in front of our two rowers, who took up the oars, their strokes harmonized by many years of experience.
The high tide was almost on the turn, so we passed under London Bridge at slack water. Seeing it from below, at night, shadow upon shadow, I could appreciate how truly ancient it was. In the light from the lantern on the cutter’s prow, the stonework showed its age. Huge starlings, great bulwarks of stone and wood, had been built to protect the piers of the old bridge, but they only served to restrict the flow between the arches even more. Collisions with boats and debris had gouged and scarred them, and even without the tide churning up rapids between the arches, our watermen negotiated the narrow passage carefully, there being not enough width for the boat and her oars at full stretch.
Blackfriars Bridge, by contrast, was a much easier passage, with wider arches of Portland stone showing pale in the moonlight. Corwen’s nose twitched at a sudden stench of sewage.
“That’ll be the River Fleet,” Doff said. “Empties into the Thames at the north end of the bridge. It’s not much more than a drain now. Ripe, innit?”
“Ripe indeed,” Corwen replied.
As we passed under Westminster Bridge and slid past the palace, I asked Doff about Walsingham.
“Don’t rightly know much about him, sir,” Doff said. “Just ferry him from place to place.”
“But frequently to Vauxhall Stairs?”
“Aye.”
“And not just during the season at Vauxhall Gardens?”
“All year round, though sometimes not for weeks at a time, when I guess he may be out of town.”
“And lately he’s had a young man with him, one who looks somewhat like me?”
“I wasn’t going to comment on the resemblance, sir, but now you mention it, there is a likeness.”
“How does he seem, the young gentleman? Is he easy or fretful?”
“He’s just a young ge’man, sir. Not over talkative, but not uneasy in his manner. He seems well, sir, if that’s what you’re asking. Never bosky like many of the young ge’men we rows after dark. But Mr. Walsingham is never bosky neither. A very sober and serious ge’man. Gracious with his money, though.”
“Do you believe Mr. Walsingham lives on the Vauxhall side of the river?”
“It’s often a journey he makes late at night. And in the mornings he’s most likely setting off from Vauxhall Stairs. We’ve picked him up many a time and rowed him to Westminster, or Whitehall. Sometimes to the Tower, though he’s not one to shoot the bridge. We drop him upstream of the waterworks and pick him up again at Billingsgate. The young ge’man shot it with us once, though, just to say he’d done it.”
I tried to imagine Walsingham indulging his prisoner, but he’d proven in Bideford that he could give Philip enough rope to hang himself, knowing that he had the poppet with which he could kill or maim at any time. If Philip drowned in the Thames it would just save Walsingham the bother of finishing him off eventually. I suspected that at the moment Philip was only alive as bait to trap me.
“Do you want us to wait?” Doff asked.
“No. Go about your business or get yourself some sleep.”
“Aye, sir. Good luck to ye, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Corwen bounded up the steps ahead of me, not such a long climb with the tide so high. A row of houses to our left offered no dark corners in which he could change, but a series of sheds on our right, a warehouse or a small manufactory, offered shelter from view. Corwen quickly shrugged out of his clothes and handed them to me before changing smoothly.
I stuffed them into the Fae bag, which held everything, even the boots. The bag itself weighed next to nothing when I slung it diagonally over my shoulder. Two men walked up from Vauxhall Stairs and Corwen pressed himself close to my leg. I ran a hand across his silky fur as we waited for them to pass out of sight and he nuzzled my fingers. Once they’d gone he was off, nose to the ground, casting around for a scent. I could tell by the way he reacted that he’d found something, and I walked briskly alongside him, trying not to make it obvious that he was leading the way.
We followed the route that thousands of revelers took during the season when they crossed the river by boat to take delight in the lavish enticements offered by Vauxhall Gardens with its flowerbeds, gardens, and musical entertainment, whole orchestras enjoyed from the open air or from the luxury of private supper-boxes.
Will had brought me here once, on our only trip to London, and I’d thought it a wondrous place, well worth the two-shilling entrance fee and the exorbitant price for a cold collation served to us on a table in front of the orchestra building. We’d eaten Vauxhall ham, sliced so thin it was claimed you could read a newspaper through it, along with salads and cheeses, all washed down with a good Bordeaux. But the startling thing was the illumination. The whole garden was ablaze with over a thousand oil lamps that came on simultaneously at dusk. I’d thought it magic at first, but later discovered the lamps were lit by a series of cleverly laid fuses.
Now there was no such glow of light. The season ended at the beginning of September, the autumn being no time for outdoor entertainment. Instead of taking the road around to the Gardens, Corwen followed his nose straight to the biggest source of light in the neighborhood, the White Lion pub, sitting on the roadside across from what smelled like a vinegar distillery. I could see through the bowed front window that the landlord was doing excellent trade. The public bar was full of drinkers and pleasantly hazy with smoke from tobacco and from the wood fire that burned in the hearth.
Corwen sat on his haunches. I ruffled his soft fur, delighting in the feel of it beneath my hand.
“You think he’s in there?”
A very restrained yip from Corwen.
“Philip?”
Yip!
He stood up and waved his tail, leaning heavily against my thigh.
“Walsingham?”
A low growl that I took for an affirmative.
“How shall we tackle this?”
I didn’t expect an answer, but Corwen immediately trotted away from the inn and up a narrow alley that led into the inn yard, where deep shadows and quiet corners abounded. Facing the inn, across the yard, a range of buildings looked like stabling. I opened the door, and the gentle smell of horse dung cleared the sharp tang of vinegar out of my nostrils. I could hear a quiet munching of hay, and one of the horses shifted in its stall and stamped a hoof.
Corwen changed back into himself and took the bag from my hand. He seemed not at all worried that he was naked, but even in the dark, when, apart from the outline of his shoulder, everything else was imagination and memory, my heart beat faster.
