Michael Jecks - The Death Ship of Dartmouth

Before she had reached it, Cynegils had stood. His face was flushed, his eyes bloodshot. ‘Leave it, Edie.’

‘No, no, Father. I have offended you, and I must be chastised. Here — take it. Beat me! As you used to beat Mother!’

Cynegils stared at her for a long moment, but he couldn’t hold her angry gaze, and he turned away and opened the door.

‘Where do you go now? To the tavern to drown your sorrows in sour ale?’ she sneered.

Cynegils stood in the doorway, his back to her. ‘I loved your mother,’ he said gruffly. ‘I still miss her like life itself. I know I’ve failed you all. Perhaps you’d be better without me.’

‘Where are you going, Father? It’s nearly dark.’

‘Just out, Edie. Just out,’ Cynegils said, and he left the house and walked slowly away, with the quiet desperation of a man with no direction and no hope.

Just then, someone blocked his path. Cynegils looked up to see a smiling man with a club in his hand.

‘Are you Cynegils?’ he asked.

‘What if I am?’

‘There’s a knight wants to talk to you,’ the man said as two others grabbed his arms.

Back in their storage shed, Alred faced his two employees and told them all he had heard at the inn. ‘So, if it comes to light that we helped the rapist who killed the man in our pit …’

Law spat at the ground. ‘Don’t see it’s our concern.’

Alred looked at him, but it was Bill who grunted, ‘Then you ought to keep your mouth shut till you’ve got something useful to say. If they’re saying this man’s a felon and we helped protect him from capture, what’ll that do to us?’

Crestfallen, Law slumped down on a sack of tools. ‘But all we did was try to help a poor sod who was going to be attacked!’

‘And who’ll believe three strangers?’ Alred snapped. ‘We have to get away from here or find the rapist. If he’s caught by someone else, and he tells how we saved him, we’re sunk. At the least we’ll get a huge fine.’

‘What makes you think he’s still here?’ Bill asked.

Alred stared at him. ‘How’s he going to get away from here? Back inland? If he’s being sought by men like the fellow at the inn, he won’t have a chance of getting away. No, he’s a stranger, he doesn’t know where to hide outside town, so he’s got to be here, waiting until he can get aboard a ship.’

‘He’ll be seen, won’t he?’ Law asked.

Bill shook his head thoughtfully. ‘Nah. If he’s bright, he’ll pay a matelot to get him on board somehow. Those buggers have ways of doing things you wouldn’t believe.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Alred agreed with relief. ‘After all, he’s here at the coast now. He’ll stay put until he can get a passage.’

‘But you said he was new here?’ Law said musingly. ‘If so, how come he can find somewhere to hide?’

‘He has a friend, obviously,’ Alred said, and then he stopped with a gleam in his eye. ‘So he must know someone around here, someone with a large house where he could be hidden …’

‘Why large?’

‘A smaller place would be too hard to conceal a man in. All the folk here live on top of each other,’ Alred said with the contempt of a city-dweller for one of the country’s fastest-growing sea ports. ‘No, it’d be a large house. And there aren’t too many of them round here, are there?’

Peter Strete was in the counting-room when he heard the thundering on the front door and the loud bellow that followed. He sat back in his seat, expecting to be called out to the hall at any moment, his mind going guiltily to his hidden crimes.

The first time he had stolen from his master, the sum had been minuscule: just enough to cover a drinking session with some sailors. Later on, they suggested a game of their invention, called ‘straws’. As soon as he heard it was a gambling game, Peter politely refused to join in. The idea of gambling was repugnant to him: if God wished a man to be financially rewarded here on earth, He would give the fellow money. Trying to fleece other men out of their own meagre wages seemed little better than usury, and he hated usury as much as any.

But the game did seem refreshingly simple. The men took up straws from the floor, and stood with their hands behind their backs. At a call, all would bring a fist in front of their breasts, and they might be holding anything from none to three straws. All a man had to do was guess how many straws were held in total, and he was knocked out of the ring. Then the remaining group continued until one man remained who had wrongly guessed each preceding round, and he would buy the others a drink each. Very simple. And enormously amusing.

Peter had won the first three rounds without difficulty, and he was just beginning to think that it was a typical sailors’ game, in which there was little skill or ingenuity required, when he lost a game. The next, he was out early on again, and then he lost another round. There was much comment of beginner’s misfortune, and he had taken their words at face value, for while he was in their company, it would have been rude to depart, but at the end of the evening, when the reckoning was due, he realised he had not enough money on him. Nor, when he searched his chamber, did he find sufficient there either.

That first little removal of his master’s cash was enough to make him realise how easy theft might be to a weaker man, and he had swiftly repaid it, selling a tunic which he did not need any more. It was a relief to place the coins back in Master Hawley’s strongbox.

Three nights later, the same crew of sailors entered his tavern, and he found himself sitting with them once more, a handful of reeds in his fist, laughing uproariously at his own witticisms, glad of the company of men who appreciated his own so much.

At the end of that evening he was shocked to learn how often he had lost. His meagre remaining profit from the sale of the tunic was scarcely enough to cover his debts. And then he tried to recoup his losses with gambling, and suddenly there were several marks from John Hawley’s chest that he must replace. Master John was forgiving about most things, but not his money being taken without his approval.

It was that which had led Strete to begin to trade information about his master’s enterprises. Information like that could be valuable, especially the prices Hawley was paying for goods, where he got them from, the names of his best contacts. All that was worth money to Hawley’s competitors.

All Strete had wanted to do was make enough to pay back the hole in Hawley’s cash, and then he’d stop. That was all. He was a loyal man, and he didn’t want to harm his master … but the amount he owed kept increasing . He could only sell information when he had something new to give away, and just now there was little enough. And all the time, when he went out, he met with the same sailors and locals who would call to him to join them in a game or two, and when that happened, he felt bound to sit with them. It would only take one gamble to repay all he owed without a problem, and he was just looking for his luck to return. But for some reason it never did. Whenever he tried his luck, he found it had fled.

The men were in the hall now, and Master Hawley entered to join them.

‘Lordings, how may I serve you?’ He looked about the room, then motioned to Strete. ‘Peter, fetch some wine, man. Our guests must be thirsty.’

Strete jumped up from his seat and hurried out. The bottler was in his little chamber, and Strete told him what was needed, then returned to the room.

‘These men are looking into the deaths of those two victims,’ Hawley explained to him.

‘To be fair, we do not have jurisdiction over the death of a man at sea,’ Baldwin smiled.