I swallowed brandy and pushed that thought into the broken strongbox in the back of my mind with all the other things I didn’t want to think about, and I showed Anne a wry grin that I didn’t feel.
‘Is she still fucking Brak?’ I asked, for want of anything else to say.
‘Who, your aunt? Aye, far as I know. They’re still living together so I assume so. His shoulder never truly healed, though, so he’s barely got the use of his left arm even now.’
‘I don’t think it’s his arm she’s interested in,’ I said, and Anne snorted laughter.
This was what I needed, I realised, not maudlin thoughts about my wife but coarse soldiers’ banter with my best friend.
She made some jest then; I don’t remember what but I’m sure it was a good deal cruder than mine had been, and I threw my head back and laughed loud, and that was when Jochan finally noticed me.
‘Fuck a nun, Tomas Piety!’ he roared.
He was across the common room in six running steps, and a moment later he had dragged me out of my chair and hauled me into an embrace that frankly astonished me.
‘Brother,’ I said, returning his hug as best I could as he all but lifted me off my feet.
I thought of Konrad and his sister, and guessed that few Queen’s Men ever received so enthusiastic a welcome from their siblings. All the same, I knew Jochan was still not of sound mind and never had been, even before the war. According to my aunt neither had I, but after what our da had done to the pair of us I supposed that was hardly surprising. He was clearly better than he had been, though, and I would take that and be thankful for it.
‘How are you?’ I asked him when he finally put me down. ‘I trust Hanne and the baby are well?’
‘Aye, aye,’ he assured me. ‘Hanne’s a good lass, keeps my house and that. Good cook, too. And the baby’s not such a baby no more. We named her Enaid, did I ever tell you that?’
I smiled. He hadn’t, but it didn’t surprise me. As the younger, Jochan had always been more of our aunt’s boy than me after she took us in. He had only had eight years to him then, after all. After Ma died. After I killed Da. I didn’t want to think of that then, though.
‘That’s a fine name,’ I said, and clapped him on the arm. ‘Will you drink with me, brother?’
‘Is Our Lady death’s face?’ he asked, and laughed at his own joke. ‘Aye, what do you think?’
I tossed Hari a silver penny for a bottle of brandy, and retreated to a quiet table with it and my brother. I needn’t have paid if I hadn’t wanted to, of course, not in the Tanner’s Arms, but I wanted to make my new status as plain as I could. I wasn’t even a Pious Man any more, not really, but this lot would continue to think of me that way unless I showed them otherwise, and as I have written, I didn’t want to do anything to undermine Anne’s position as their new boss.
I sat down opposite Jochan and poured for us both, and raised my glass to him.
‘To family,’ I said.
‘Family,’ he replied, and he clinked his glass against mine then tipped its contents down his throat in a single swallow.
I almost didn’t dare ask, but I knew I had to.
‘How’s Cutter?’ I said.
Jochan’s face softened in a way I didn’t think I had ever seen it do before.
‘Yoseph’s well enough,’ he said, after a pause. ‘He doesn’t come out much any more, not that he ever really did, but he’s well set up in the house on Slaughterhouse Narrow. He wears a patch, in public, and the scars give him a certain menace, I suppose. He’s still working. The sort of customers he gets at that boarding-house have seen worse than burns before, and in the other type of work no one ever fucking sees him coming anyway. Billy and Mina saved his life, Tomas, after what that Skanian cunt did to him. I’ll never forget that.’
‘And you and he are still . . .’
Jochan met my stare for a moment, then he poured himself another brandy and slammed it down in one swallow.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Aye, Tomas, we are. Do you have a fucking problem with that?’
I shook my head.
‘Not in the slightest,’ I said. ‘Our Lady doesn’t much care who we lie with, so long as both are willing. There’s Hanne, though.’
Jochan nodded slowly, and I think my acceptance took some of the tension out of his shoulders. It hadn’t been uncommon in the war for a man to lie down with a comrade or a camp follower between the tents, when they got the opportunity. Not all such couplings had been between men and women, and no one thought much of it. When you truly didn’t expect to live to see the next dawn, who could honestly give a shit about who someone else chose to fuck? Our Lady certainly had better things to worry about, and so had most of us.
‘Aye, there is,’ he allowed. ‘She’s a good lass, Tomas, but I married her because I got her in the family way and I felt obliged. I like her well enough but I can’t rightly say that I love her. She pretends not to know about Yoseph and me and I pretend not to know that she does, and it seems to work in its way. She doesn’t want for anything, and I don’t beat her or anything like that.’
‘No,’ I said, and put a hand on his arm.
