Chapter 4 #2
Too many of his friends had had their lives shortened and their necks stretched, and King didn’t fancy his odds.
This fact was impossible to ignore and coming hard upon the discovery of a little child shivering on his own doorstep because the babe’s father had lost everything—well, something had to be done.
King might not have forced the fellow to gamble his life away, but he’d made it damned easy to do.
King of the Rookery was a position impossible to own for long.
Power and might and a willingness to do violence was required to keep a tight grip on that tarnished crown, and King’s taste for such a life had long since waned.
As it was, there was someone ready and willing to take his place, should he allow it, or allow his attention to wander.
Even leaving the place for such a time was a risk he would never have taken before, yet this time it was a calculated one.
King settled back in his seat and sipped his brandy, which was unsurprisingly of excellent quality, considering who drank here. Not that Bill seemed to notice, swigging the stuff back like it was water.
“How’d he die, then?” he asked. He didn’t really care, but curiosity prodded at him.
Bill favoured him with a bleary expression. “Who?”
“My father.”
“Took the boat out when he was half seas over ‘imself,” Bill said, favouring King with another unpleasant grin. “Not such a bad way to go.”
So, drink and the sea both had finished the old devil. Hardly a surprise. The life of a fisherman was fraught with danger, and it was a common enough fate among their kind.
“He washed up past Fairlight way after a storm. Bloated like some fat old whale. No one would have guessed who it was if not for his tattoos.”
“Can’t blame the sea for throwing him back,” King replied calmly, though inside his stomach pitched.
Not out of squeamishness, for he’d lost that years since, nor for his father, a man who deserved his fate as richly as the one beside him if King was any judge, but that it might have been him too if he’d not been so determined to do something different, something better.
If fate had not intervened, he too might be here, drunk and belligerent and fat and bloated, before the sea had even had the chance to do its work.
But that would have come soon enough. It was inevitable to King’s mind, so certain it might have been carved on a stone tablet and handed down from heaven.
“To old Joe King,” Bill said, raising his tankard, his eyes becoming glassy and his hand swaying, tipping the drink precariously as he lifted it in the air. “God rest him.”
King shook his head. “To my father, may he rot in hell for all eternity.”
Bill laughed, shaking his head. “Joe weren’t so bad. He were good to me after you hopped it.”
King snorted. “He always preferred you to me. I looked too much like my mother for his comfort. Lord, but he hated that woman with a vengeance,” he said, shaking his head.
“’Cause she hopped it too, like you did. Can’t blame him for that,” Bill said with a shrug. “Jus’ like his ma, the bitch, that’s what he’d say,” he added, smirking.
King did not doubt it.
“You got a fancy house then, to go with them fancy clothes? Got a fancy woman to warm the bed, have ye? Lucky bastard,” Bill said, and then belched loudly. He wiped his mouth, a speculative look in his eyes. “You always was a lucky bastard.”
King laughed, shaking his head. There really was no point in replying.
“Lucky bastard,” Bill repeated, but with a belligerent look in his eyes now, one which King recognised all too well.
King downed his drink and pushed to his feet.
“What? Going so soon? We’re jus’ getting started, me old pal,” Bill said, reaching out as if he would grab hold of King and pull him down, but he was too sotted and slow and King evaded his touch with ease. “You seen that boy of yours yet?” he added with a malicious sneer.
“I’m no pal of yours, Bill, and that boy’s got nothing to do with me,” King said, though a shock lanced through him all the same as he realised the lad might not know it.
He let none of his thoughts show on his face though, staring down at the man, who’d once been a friend of sorts, with undisguised revulsion before reaching into his pocket.
The chink of coins caught Bill’s attention.
King put a stack of coins down on the filthy tabletop and Bill scrambled for them, gathering them up and regarding the small fortune before him with wide eyes.
“You might do something with that, improve things for yourself, it’s your choice, but if not, do the world a favour and drink yourself to death,” King remarked savagely, heading for the door as he heard Bill calling for another bottle.
It had been needlessly cruel perhaps, but Bill always had brought out the worst in him.
He pushed outside, sucking in a gasping breath the moment he could, as if he’d been drowning on dry land, sinking into the murky depths inside the building.
He took another deep inhalation, slower this time, savouring the clean, crispness of the sea, filling his lungs and feeling as if the sweetness of it might rid him of Bill’s foul stench.
But the pictures the wretch had conjured danced in his mind, tangling with the ghosts that had grabbed at him earlier in the day, clinging to him and demanding he look, take a good hard look at who he was and where he’d come from.
“Go to the devil,” he snarled, and strode back towards the town, leaving Bill behind him, but finding the ghosts far harder to shake off.
The Mermaid’s Tale was a welcome sight after such a tangle with wretchedness, clean and wholesome and still lit up, though the hour was growing late. Even better was the sight of Mrs Adamson as he stepped inside.
“At last! I feared I would have to ask poor Mr Cogger to wait up for you,” she said, her tone disapproving. “The doors are locked at eleven p.m., Mr King, and it is now a quarter past the hour.”
“Have you been waiting up for me, Mrs Adamson?” he asked with a knowing smile, certain this would irritate her. He politely removed his hat as he closed the door behind him. “I am touched by your concern for my wellbeing.”
“Your wellbeing had nothing to do with it. I merely did not wish myself nor the entire town to be woken by you pounding on the door at some ungodly hour of the morning,” she replied tersely.
“Well, as you see, I am whole and returned to you, so you may stop fretting over me.”
“I was not—” she began, only to press her lips together. He could see the effort it took for her to gather her temper, and it only stirred the devil inside him to try harder to rile her. “Then I shall bid you a goodnight, Mr King.”
“Oh, but not just yet, if I might detain you for just a moment, for I was hoping for a nightcap,” he said with the utmost courtesy. “If it is not too much trouble.”
For a moment he saw her war with herself, her desire to tell him to jump off the nearest cliff battling with the businesswoman who would not wish to risk upsetting a well-paying client.
“Very well,” she said, striding off.
King followed her into the guests’ parlour though he had not been invited to do so. A comfortable and cosy room, the embers of a fire burned low in the hearth, giving off a warm golden glow.
Mrs Adamson took a key from the bunch that hung on a chain at her hip and unlocked the cabinet.
“Brandy?”
“Perfect. Won’t you join me, Mrs Adamson?”
She hesitated for a moment, which surprised him, as he’d assumed she would refuse outright. Instead, she further challenged his expectations by taking down two glasses.
King sat in the well upholstered armchair by the fire, watching as she poured two healthy measures. She recorked the bottle, replaced it, and locked the cabinet once more before turning, drinks in hand.
King watched her walk back to him, taking in the lush curve of breasts and hips, now encased in a gown of bottle green.
With her striking red hair, she put him in mind of a pagan woodland deity, the kind the people of this ancient isle might have worshiped and sacrificed to before they became civilised.
Not that the world seemed so very civilised to King, not when children starved on his streets and decent folk rotted in poverty.
Yet here in this room he could believe in it, believe in a better world, if the likes of Mrs Adamson were in it.
He'd sacrifice at her altar should she demand it of him, and willingly at that.
A good woman.
The words came out of nowhere but resounded in his mind as he looked at her, holding out the glass of brandy to him.
Was she? Or was she a cruel goddess, the kind that crushed the weak under her heel, the kind to use her beauty to addle a man’s mind and take his money along with his pride?
Hadn’t she stolen her grandmother’s jewels?
But Mrs Fairway had said they’d owed her that much.
Had they been unkind, her parents, unloving and cruel?
He felt a sudden urgent desire to know, to know everything about her.
Who had been her husband, how long had she been married?
Had she loved him? Did she love him still?
As if the answer was written upon the fabric of the building, King felt compelled to glance up, seeing the portrait of a man hanging over the fireplace.
He had perhaps been thirty years of age when the likeness had been made and was not handsome, but he looked…
decent. Kind. Tidy brown hair and peaceful brown eyes, the sort never troubled by debt or hunger or the threat of getting a knife in your guts for nothing but the worn-out boots on your feet.
“That Mr Adamson?” he asked, affecting disinterest and nodding towards the painting.
Mrs Adamson avoided his eye and did not look at the portrait. “It is.”
King felt a sudden and unreasonable swell of intense dislike for the fellow and looked down at the fire instead.
“To your good health, Mrs Adamson,” he said, raising the glass.