Four was the last on that floor and where five might have been there was instead a narrow staircase. Elizabeth climbed, slowly, easing her weight down on each tread to avoid creaking and avoid damaging her tender ankle. After what seemed a long time she came to the top of the stairs, the second floor, and there right across from her was a door with the bold number five.
She glanced down the hall, but it was dark and deserted, so she stepped across and paused at the door. She was not sure what to do, so she just stood for a moment and then gave the door the lightest of raps, not enough, she imagined, to wake Billy if he was asleep.
She listened, heard nothing from within, and then tapped again. Still nothing. She doubted that Billy had even heard her, but she did not dare knock louder. She shook her head, then felt for the latch on the door and slowly lifted it and swung the door inward.
A single candle on the washstand gutted in the last of its melted wax, but compared with the hall the room was brilliantly lit. A sleeping form lay under the cover of the bed, back to Elizabeth. She closed the door behind her, softly and slowly, then stepped across the floor. She put a hand on the shoulder, shook gently, whispered, “Billy? Billy?” She did not want to startle him. It was never a good idea to startle a man such as Billy Bird.
Then the figure rolled over-long, thick brown hair, a pretty young feminine face, pert, milky white breasts- looked up through half-closed eyes, and said, “Billy?”
Elizabeth jumped back in surprise. “Damn,” she said, and then from behind, the click of a flintlock and Billy’s voice saying, “One move and I shall blow you away.”
She froze, knowing that Billy was quite capable of doing so. The girl in the bed pulled the blanket up over her, recoiled, began to scream, but Billy said, “Silence!” and she bit off her cry.
“Let me see your hands.”
Elizabeth held her hands out from her side. She guessed that in the muted light Billy could see no more of her than a dark, hooded shape.
“Turn, slowly.”
She turned, saw Billy standing quite naked in the corner, the pistol held straight out. “That is not the only gun you have been fooling with tonight, I take it?” she said.
Billy stared for a moment, unmoving, and then the gun dropped to his side and he smiled and said, “Lizzy, dear, you are likely to get yourself killed, sneaking into a man’s room like that.”
Before Elizabeth could answer, the girl in the bed said, “What’s this, then? Billy, what are you about?”
“Oh, Nancy, darling,” said Billy Bird as he snatched up his breeches and pulled them on, “I fear you must be on your way, my love.”
“Now, see here-,” the girl began, but Billy crossed the room quickly, clambered onto the bed, and pressed something into her hand. In the candlelight Elizabeth saw a dull flash of gold and Nancy became instantly cooperative. She climbed out of bed and began pulling her clothes over her firm and shapely body.
Billy met Elizabeth ’s eye and Elizabeth said, “Very nice, Billy Bird,” and Billy smiled sheepishly.
In a minute Nancy was dressed. Billy gave her a kiss and a quick squeeze of her arse and said, “We’ll see you soon, my darling,” and then she was gone.
Billy turned to Elizabeth. “Ah, Lizzy, I’m all but done in by that little bunter, but I think I can muster the energy yet.”
“As luck would have it, you need not even try. I’m here on other business.”
Billy stepped over to the little table in the corner, poured two glasses from a bottle of wine there, handed one to Elizabeth. “Something involving that miserable Frederick Dunmore, I’ll warrant?”
Elizabeth took a sip, sighed, said, “Billy, I need your help. I am at a loss. I have no notion of what to do. My people are chased out into the wilderness and as long as that bastard continues his campaigning against them they shall never be allowed to return.”
“Not to mention that you are wanted as well for harboring them.”
“I am? What have you heard?”
Billy waved his hand. “Oh, it’s nothing. One hears rumors. But see here, you have come to the right place, as ever. I will take care of your little Dunmore. A tread on the coat, a few harsh words, a meeting arranged, and ten minutes after dawn he will never trouble you again.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, Billy, you can’t kill him. That won’t help. There’ll be more rumors, and surely someone will connect the thing to me. Not to mention the danger to you for killing a prominent citizen. No, there must be some other way.”
“Well, there are only two ways to stop such a man that I know of: kill him or disgrace him. You won’t let me kill him, so I reckon we’ll have to see what we can do to disgrace him.”
“You said there was something that happened to him in Boston.”
“Yes, but I fear I’ve not remembered any more than that.”
Elizabeth sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly very tired. Her ankle was throbbing. “What can we do to find out what it was?”
“We shall go to Boston.”
Elizabeth looked up at him, taken aback. “Go to Boston? Just like that?”
“Yes, go to Boston. My ship swims again now, in fine fettle, all predied for sea. There is no way we can find out what we need to know without we go and look for it ourselves. You couldn’t do it through the post. You’d be an old woman before you were done, and even then I doubt you’d find out anything. No, we must go to Boston, discover the players in this drama, people who knew Dunmore, look them right in the eye, and ask them what is what.”
Billy’s enthusiasm built as he spoke and soon he was carrying Elizabeth along with him, but still she was not certain. It seemed such a crazy thing to try.
“Oh, Billy-”
“No. Don’t ‘Oh, Billy’ me. It is Boston for us. That is how we will rout this foul demon out. After all our years of friendship, my dear Lizzy, I can do no less to help you.”
Elizabeth sighed again. It still seemed insane, but Billy’s arguments were good, his enthusiasm infectious, enough so that she felt herself wavering, inching toward agreement. “I will pay you for your services,” she said. “Pay you in specie.”
“By which you mean that we will go together to Boston?”
“Yes.”
“Grand. But never in life would I have you pay for my services. Hell, you never made me pay for yours.”
Billy saw how unwelcome that joke was, and he stammered on. “There are…a few considerations before we sail, but nothing of consequence. And now, my dear one,” he said, sitting beside her, “will you not enjoy the luxury of my bed? It has been left quite warm for you.”
“Thank you, Billy, I will.” She unbuttoned her cloak and wheeled it off, catching Billy’s glance down at her breasts as she reached behind her. “And you, my dear friend, will comfort yourself on the cold and lonely floor.”
Chapter 15
A cannon fired some ways off, a puff of smoke, and a spray of splinters forward. King James looked up. The impact set up a great howling among the men clustered near the bow, shouting and chanting, like hitting a beehive with a stick, but it did not seem to James that anyone was injured.
It was a big Spaniard firing on them, a fat merchantman they had been chasing since sunup. It was not the way James had thought to spend the day.
First light and the lookout aloft had sung out and Madshaka said, “He see a strange sail, right ahead of us.”
James’s first thought was to turn away, to lose whatever ship that was below the horizon, but before he could say anything Madshaka was calling the men of the various tribes aft.
“What are you doing, Madshaka?”
“We vote.”
“Vote? On what?”
