‘Give it a rest now, boys,’ the older farmer said. ‘You’re just flogging a dead whore.’
He smirked to say he had misspoken on purpose, and the two young men with him snorted laughter.
Anne wasn’t laughing, and neither was I.
‘Is that supposed to be fucking funny?’ Anne rasped as she turned in her chair to face them, her voice dropping into the low tone of danger to come.
That, I thought, had been a very unwise thing to say in front of Bloody Anne. I thought about telling her to be calm, and decided against it. Why the fuck should she be calm, in the face of that?
‘It’s just a jest,’ the man said, but I could tell he had read the look on her face and not liked what he had seen there.
His face flushed, darkening to the colour of salted gammon as the room fell silent around us.
‘You make jokes about dead whores?’ Anne whispered.
‘Anne, love, I’ve heard worse,’ Rosie started, reaching out to put a restraining hand on her arm, but Anne shrugged her off and rose to her feet.
‘Da,’ Billy started, but I cut him off.
‘Hush now, lad,’ I said. ‘Not yet. Not at all, if we can help it. Not here.’
The last thing we needed was the boy unleashing his cunning for all to see in a place like this. Witchcraft, they’d have called that, I had no doubt, and then we’d have had the whole town to face instead of just a handful of drunken farmers.
‘Come outside with me,’ Anne said to the red-faced man. ‘Come outside and explain your fucking jest.’
He stood up and so did his two friends, and I rose too and then Beast got to his feet beside me and that put a stop to that right then.
‘This is between my friend and yours,’ I said. ‘Best not interfere, lads.’
Beast folded his huge arms in front of his chest and treated them to a glare, and they sat down again and stared into their mugs of beer, not meeting his eyes.
‘Outside,’ Anne said. ‘Now.’
The farmer touched the knife at his belt and spat on the floor, and he marched purposefully out of the inn into the yard where the shithouse was. He had balls, I had to give him that. I wondered how much longer he was likely to keep them.
I had long since learned that Bloody Anne fought her own battles and that I should leave her to it if I knew what was good for me. I slowly regained my seat and picked up my brandy glass, but I didn’t drink. The farmer’s two friends or brothers or sons were still casting dirty glances my way when they thought I wasn’t looking, but it seemed the sheer size of Beast was enough to dissuade them from doing anything more. That was wise of them.
A minute or two later Bloody Anne stalked back into the inn and sat down at our table. She picked up her brandy and knocked it back in a single swallow, and Rosie poured her another in silence from the bottle we shared. The two farmers at the next table got up and hurried out into the yard.
They didn’t come back again.
‘That’s done, then,’ Anne said. ‘He ain’t dead, before you ask, but he won’t be walking any time soon.’
I saw the smile on Rosie’s face, and I admired it. There was pride in that smile, and there was love too.
‘Good,’ I said, and left it at that.
‘Can I ask you something, boss?’ Beast said.
‘Aye, course,’ I said, and swallowed my brandy. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘That warrant of yours ain’t magic, is it?’
‘No, Beast, it’s not,’ I said. ‘It’s a symbol of royal authority, and that’s powerful enough, but that’s all it is. There’s no magic in it.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Didn’t think so,’ he said after a moment. ‘So if that had gone bad, out here in the country where you’ve no City Guard to back you up . . . it wouldn’t have turned out well for us, would it?’
‘We’d have had a fight on our hands, aye,’ I said.
‘There must be forty of the fuckers in here,’ Beast said.
‘I didn’t say we’d have won,’ I said.
Beast blew his cheeks out in a sigh, and I poured him another drink.
‘This is dangerous work we do,’ I reminded him. ‘I don’t believe I promised you otherwise when you joined us.’
‘Perhaps not,’ he said, and took a sip of his brandy. ‘I’m not a coward, boss, I just want to understand how this works, that’s all.’
‘Aye, that’s fair,’ I said. ‘I’m no magician, Beast, but if it ever all looks like it’s going down the shithouse, you remember one thing – Billy here is.’
Beast turned and stared at the boy, his eyes widening in his scarred face.
‘Your lad?’
‘Aye,’ I said, and Billy flushed slightly at the attention. ‘Billy is a cunning man the likes of which even the house of magicians fears.’
‘Fuck,’ Beast said, and I found I could only agree with him about that.
‘We ought to go to bed,’ Rosie said, and Anne nodded and swallowed her second brandy before she stood.
‘Aye, let’s do that,’ she said.
They walked away from the table and up the stairs together holding hands, and no one said a fucking word about it.
Chapter 30
I had thirty-seven, maybe thirty-eight years to me at the time, and I had never seen the sea before.
Varnburg was magnificent. The city was walled, the harbour fortified with great arms of stone that reached out into the bay and sheltered the various tall ships and little boats that bobbed calmly at their moorings within its comforting embrace. Beyond, the sea was a wild animal of greys and greens and white. A fierce wind was blowing from the north and the water hurled itself against the harbour walls, throwing great plumes of foaming spray twenty feet and more into the air. It was very, very cold.
We
