Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“How d’ye do, Willy?” he asked, pushing one rum toward the pallid Mr. Insell.

“I had to come!” Insell gasped.

“What is it?” asked Richard, waiting for the burning fluid to start deadening his pain.

“Thorne! He has found out I went to the Excise.”

“I am not surprised, if ye blurt it out to everyone. Now calm yourself. Have some rum.”

Insell drank thirstily, gulped and half-retched on the power of Dick’s unwatered best stuff, and ceased to tremble. Finished with his own half-pint, Richard went to draw two more mugs.

“I have lost my job,” said Insell then.

“In which case, why d’ye need to fear Thorne?”

“The man is a murderer! He will find me and murder me!”

Privately Richard considered that Ceely Trevillian was more likely to do any murders necessary, but did not attempt to argue. “Where d’ye live, Willy?”

“In Clifton. At Jacob’s Well.”

“And what has Robert Jones to do with it?”

“I told him what I had overheard. Mr. Fisher of the Excise was interested in that, but he thinks I am far more important.”

“Rightly so. Does Thorne know you live at Jacob’s Well?”

“I do not think so.”

“Does Jones know?” Richard suddenly remembered Robert Jones, who was a crawler, smarmed up to Thorne. He was how Thorne knew, definitely.

“I never told him.”

“Then rest easy, Willy. If ye’ve nothing better to do, spend your days here. The Cooper’s Arms is one place Thorne will not look for you. But if you drink rum, ye’ll have to pay for it.”

Horrified, Insell pushed the second mug away. “Do I have to pay for this?” he asked.

“These are on my slate. Cheer up, Willy. In my experience, rogues are not very clever. Ye’ll be safe enough.”

The dayswere beginning to draw in a little, which limited the amount of time Richard had to search for William Henry. His first call was always the dell by the Avon, from which place he would clamber up the frowning cliffs, calling William Henry’s name; from the top of the gorge he would strike across Durdham Down, and so come eventually to Clifton Green. The walk home led him past William Insell’s lodging place, but he usually met Insell on the footpath across Brandon Hill, hurrying to beat the darkness, yet too afraid to leave the Cooper’s Arms until after sunset.

He had worn out two more pairs of shoes, but no one in the extended Morgan family attempted to remonstrate with him; the more Richard walked, the less time he had to drink rum. Brother William suddenly needed to have his saws set and sharpened more often (he pleaded a new West Indian timber), and that gave Richard some other place to walk than Clifton. Who knew? Perhaps the little fellow had gotten himself all the way to Cuckold’s Pill, so the journeys to William’s sawpits were not entirely wasted time. And he could not drink rum when he needed his eye to set a saw properly.

He had not wept, could not weep. The rum was a way to dull his pain, which was the pain of hope, hope that one day William Henry would walk through the door.

“I never thought to say this,” Richard said to Cousin James-the-druggist halfway through September, “but I am beginning to wish that I had found William Henry’s body. Then I could have no hope. As it is, I must assume William Henry is alive somewhere, and that in itself is torture-what sort of life must he be leading, not to come home?”

His cousin once removed eyed him sadly. Richard was thinner yet physically fitter-all that walking and climbing had honed down a body always in good trim until now it was probably capable of lifting anvils or withstanding the ravages of any disease. How old was he now that he had just had another birthday? Six-and-thirty. The Morgans tended to make old bones, and if Richard did not ruin his liver with rum, he looked as if he would live to be ninety. Yet what for? Oh, pray he put this awful business behind him, took another wife and begot another family!

“Two and one-half months, Cousin James! Not a sign of him! Perhaps”-he shuddered-“that abominable creature hid his body.”

“Dear fellow, put it behind you, please.”

“I cannot.”

William Inselldid not arrive at the Cooper’s Arms the next day; glad of an excuse to walk out to Clifton earlier than usual, Richard put his hat on and went to the door.

“Off already?” asked Dick, surprised.

“Insell has not come, Father.”

Dick grunted. “That is no loss. I am very tired of him in his corner looking so woebegone that he puts the customers off.”

“I agree,” said Richard, managing a grin, “but his absence is a worry. I will see for myself why he ain’t here.”

The path across Brandon Hill was so familiar by now that he could have negotiated it blindfold; Richard was outside William Insell’s house within fifteen minutes of leaving home.

A girl sat hunched on the stoop. Hardly aware of her, Richard went to step around her. Her foot came out.

“Bon jour,” she said.

Startled, he looked down into the most bewitching female face he had ever seen. Big, saucily demure black eyes, long-lashed-a dimple in either rosy cheek-a pair of lush, unpainted red lips-a glowing skin-an uncoiffured mop of glossy black curls. Oh, she was pretty! And so clean -looking!

“How d’ye do?” he asked, removing his hat to bow.

“Very well, monsieur,” she said in French-accented English, “but I cannot say as much for poor Willy.”

“Insell, mistress?”

“Oui.” She got to her feet to reveal that her figure was as graciously endowed as her face, and fetchingly dressed in pink silk. Expensive. “Yes, Willy,” she added, pronouncing the name so adorably that Richard smiled.

She gasped. “Oh, monsieur! You are very ’andsome.”

Ordinarily shy with strangers, Richard found himself not shy with her at all, despite her forwardness. Conscious that he had reddened, he wanted to look away but found that he could not. She really was amazingly pretty, and the upper halves of two smooth, creamy breasts were even more beguiling than her expression.

“I am Richard Morgan,” he said.

“And I am Annemarie Latour, serving maid to Mrs. Barton. I live ’ere.” She chuckled. “Not with Willy, you understand!”

“He is sick, ye say?”

“Come and see for yourself.” She walked ahead of him up the narrow stairs, her dress kilted high enough to see two beautifully turned ankles below a foam of ruffled petticoats. “Willy! Willy! You ’ave a visitor!” she called as she reached the landing.

Richard entered Insell’s room to find him lying on his bed looking very bilious. “What is it, Willy?”

“Ate some bad oysters,” Insell groaned.

Annemarie had followed him in and was surveying Willy with interest but no pity. “ ’E would eat the oysters Mrs. Barton gave me. I told ’im that old thing would not give me fresh oysters. But Willy sniffed them and said they were good, so ’e ate them. Et voilà!” She pointed dramatically.

“Then serves ye right, William. Have ye seen a doctor? D’ye need anything?”

“Just rest,” moaned the sufferer. “I have cast up my accounts so many times that the doctor says there cannot be any more oysters left down there. I feel awful.”

“But ye’ll live, which is a good thing. Without you to confirm my testimony, Mr. Fisher of the Excise Office has no case. I will drop in tomorrow to see how you are.”

Richard descended the stairs conscious that Annemarie Latour was close enough behind him to smell the fresh scent of best Bristol soap. Not perfume. Soap. Lavender-scented soap. What was a girl like this doing living alone in a Clifton lodging house? Maids usually lived in. And no maid Richard had ever met wore silk. Mrs. Barton’s cast-offs, perhaps? If so, then Mrs. Barton, apostrophized by Annemarie as an “old thing,” must have an excellent figure.