In the Brief Eternal Silence (58 page)

“You!” he said, hurting Ryan's ears. “You're
t'lad that was here the night that son of a fiend ran off with me
daughter!”

Mrs. Herriot, who stood in the door frame,
cringed with distress. She glanced at Ryan, looking a deal
embarrassed, and Ryan could well understand her chagrin that the
Duke of St. James had picked a lass with a roaring drunk as a
father. He smiled in sympathy to her from around the massive bulk
of the Squire, and she dared to hiss, “My apologies, Mister
Tempton, but he utterly refuses—”

But her words were cut off as the Squire
swung around and bawled at her. “Get on with ye, you pesky hen! How
many times am I to tell ya your presence is not needed and not
welcome?”

And with a little squeak, Mrs. Herriot fled
from the door frame and quite disappeared.

This little by-play between the Squire and
the housekeeper at least shifted the Squire's apparent ire to that
unfortunate lady and as he turned back to Ryan, he did not continue
to rail at him, but instead collapsed onto the sofa (which Ryan
judged to be recently upholstered) and muttered of high-handed
females bursting into his home and refusing to leave even when he
threatened to bodily throw them out. “Who are you again?” he asked
Ryan in the midst of his dire diatribe. “I rem'ber who you are,
just what was yer bloody name, I mean?”

And Ryan coughed, plastered a polite smile on
his face and said, “Mister Ryan Tempton, Squire. I was here to see
your filly run with my brother, Lord Tempton and Milord Duke of
St.—”

“Aye! I rem'ber! That son of a heathen!
What's become of me

daughter, Mister Ryan?”

“Tempton. Mister Tempton.”

“Yes, Tempton,” and the Squire waved the
bottle of rum before him in a drunken ark. “Whate'er. Where's me
Lizzie? For I tell ya, I've traveled e'ery day to the inn, five
miles t'is. Five miles in the rain most morns or afternoons or
eve's or whene'er I man'ge t'get there. But five miles in the rain
most, uh, covered that, I think, but where was I? Traveled to the
inn, and I looks for the banns,” and he nodded his head and put a
sage finger up to tap upon his forehead, nearly stabbing one eye as
he was about it, “for the banns, mind ya! And does ya think I finds
any?” and his head was back very far and his eyes opened very wide
and Ryan swallowed for answer and the Squire boomed, “No, be God, I
sure as bloody do not! Now what says ya to that, Mister Ryan!”

Ryan, who had not the least idea what to say
to that, and as to the question of where Lizzie was, could not even
answer it with any certainty, only fumbled for an answer that would
not put the Squire into even more of a rage.

But the Squire did not even heed his
hesitancy. Instead he lurched to his feet. “Here!” he bellowed.
“I'll show 'em to ya, if'n ya don't believes me.” And he swayed
about the room, looking on first one table and then another, and
then looked beneath the sofa and the chairs, of which Ryan politely
lifted his feet when the Squire stumbled over to his, and it was
when he was tearing the cushions from the sofa that the Squire
began to curse. “Blasted, bloody Mrs. Hooligan with her incessant
tidy'n up'n all. Man can't even have a bloody newspaper 'round for
more than a single day!”

“Herriot,” Ryan corrected for want of
something better to say.

“What's that?” the Squire demanded.

“The housekeeper. Her name is Mrs. Herriot,
I'm sure.”

The Squire waved his bottle of rum again.
“Whate'er.” He sat down with a force onto the now disarrayed
cushions of the sofa and his blustering left him with the sitting.
He took a long, unsteady pull from the mouth of the bottle, fixed
Ryan with his drunken and rather bewildered eyes and said with sad
finality, “Me thinks the duke has ruined me lass. That's what me
thinks. And all this—” and he waved his arm about to indicate the
changes being made in his home, “is the buy off. That and a hundred
quid a month.” Then his eyes closed, the bottle listed in his hand,
and in but a moment he was snoring, his chin resting in the thick
folds of his neck.

Ryan cocked his head, looked at the Squire
with some amazement at this rapid nodding off. Then he frowned, for
a hundred pounds a month did seem too generous to be legitimate.
Add to that the cost of repairs and refurbishing. . .

He was interrupted in his thoughts by Mrs.
Herriot peeking around the door frame, and her face once again
wreathed into smiles when she saw that the Squire was asleep. “Now
then,” she said, “I've taken the liberty of bringing you a spot of
tea and I have made up an extra room for you so you should be quite
comfortable, and asked the groom to take care of your horse.” She
bustled into the room, ignoring the Squire's fitful snores, and
held a saucer and cup out to him, which he took.

“Thank you, Mrs. Herriot,” he told her with
pleasure.

Mrs. Herriot beamed at him and said, “Yes,
she must be quite a lass to have his lordship not only overlooking
the behavior of her father, but being quite generous toward him
also. And before any announcements have even been made,” she
confided to him.

And Ryan felt a sick twisting in his stomach
that perhaps, just perhaps, he had not been doing St. James a
service by coming here, but had nearly mangled up a very neat job
on his part of managing to shirk off his responsibility toward Miss
Murdock.

For how better to dally with a young lady and
then sweep the whole affair beneath the rug than to persuade a
rather impressionable younger man to elope with her?

And he would have admired this trick quite
completely, chalking it off as another sign of St. James' infinite
resourcefulness, if it had been played upon any other young female
besides Miss Murdock.

“What's yer name, lad?” the bald bartender
asked. He leaned one massive forearm along the smooth, worn surface
of what passed as a bar in Red's Pub.

The bar was, in fact, nothing more than an
old barn door, cut in half, and then laid end to end across four
saw horses along the length of the narrow room. The dim room was
crowded, even at half past two in the morning, and the smell of gin
and sweaty men attracted a steady swarm of flies in the windows
that were blocked with nothing but gaping oil cloth. The flies were
sluggish from the cold and the wet and the foggy night air, but
there were a great deal of them all the same, and if they flew
somewhat slower, they also buzzed somewhat louder.

There was no proper door entering the pub,
but only clapped together boards, which seemed more nuisance than
otherwise as it was constantly being yanked open as tired men made
their way in, and others, drunk, made their way out. Below the
rumble of rising and dying voices, the cold murmur of the Thames
was heard, and the creaking of dock ropes as they held their barges
in discipline.

“Steven. Steven Crockner,” Steven said and he
stared at the bald man with his gray eyes. “Me dad was on a job for
Red. Tell 'im that.”

The bartender frowned, said beneath his
breath, “Shut up about that business here in the front room, lad.
Wait here.” He turned and pushed his way down the narrow space
between bar and barrels and Steven was left standing only shoulder
high between the press of men.

They looked at him, curious, and he looked
with insolence back at them. It was a look that he had not had but
for perhaps twentyfour hours, and it was not one that he was aware
that he had now, but it was there all the same. Mayhaps
milordship's pistol beneath his coat had something to do with it.
But the men only ignored him, and he stood amongst them and watch
as they drank.

Then the large, bald man was back in front of
him, and he poked a finger across the bar and into Steven's narrow
chest. “Yer wanted in t'back,” he growled. And Steven looked up at
him and in a voice unrecognizable to himself, said, “Coo, mister.
Don't e'er be pokin' me in the chest again, do ya ken?”

And the men hooted in laughter at this
remark, but the bartender, seeing something in the eyes of the boy
that he did not like, did remove his finger. “Sure, m'lad,” he said
with an exaggerated chuckle. “Fer if ya be a 'man' of Red's, I
t'wouldn't want to be steppin' over to yer wrong side.” And the
laughter increased as the bartender threw his hands in the air for
dramatic effect.

But Steven didn't smile, he just nodded and
said, “You'd be wise t'remember it.”

“Oh ho,” the bartender exclaimed. “I'd be
wise to rem'ber it, he says. And where'd a dirty scrap of a lad
such as you get such fancy talk, I wonder? Mayhaps t'same place ye
got those fancy breeches, for if t'rest of ya is a ragtag bit,
those are some mighty fine bloomers!”

And the press of men roared and glanced at
the pants that were below Steven's unbuttoned coat. They were a
fine quality of thread, and a deal too large for him, but he had
remedied this by cutting the hems to the proper lengths and belting
the waist of it about him with twine.

Steven didn't answer, but his eyes moved
around the men that surrounded him, laughing until tears streamed
down their faces and clapping each other on the back. “Be wise!”
they mimicked. “Oh, hoity-toity, but you'd be wise! for I be here
in me fancy mucketymuck breeches!”

And he marked all their faces, one by one,
and it was something in his demeanor, the way he did not flush with
embarrassment at their laughter, nor even seemed to notice it over
much, but just marked them with intentness, that they subsided and
settled back to leaning upon the bar, their shoulders hunched. The
bartender said, “Ah, get on with ya, lad,” and he made a motion
again to a door at the end of the room, a proper door this time,
and Steven turned and went to it. And he was very aware of all
those men's eyes upon him as he went.

He opened the door without knocking, stepped
inside and closed it behind him. A man was seated there with very
blue eyes and a very red face. His hair was reddish blonde. He was
older than Steve's Da had been and his physique showed his age,
being rather bowed at the shoulders and thick at the waist line.
But it was easy to see that at one time he had been quite fit, and
if he were not taller than average, he had once been fairly
powerful. Now, he looked flabby, all that one-time muscle gone
soft. But he didn't seem concerned about it, and the pistol sitting
on his desk, a very odd pistol that Steven had never seen the like
of before, made it clear that he had long since given up his fists
as his weapon of choice.

“Yeah? What'cha want, lad?” he asked and he
smoked something that Steven had never seen before either. It was a
long pipe with a small bowl on the end, and the smoke coming from
it had a strange, sweet smell that made his stomach ill.

“Me name's Steven. Crockner. Me Da was on a
job for you.”

“Don't know nothin' bout dat, lad,” the man
said.

“Yer Red, aren't ya?”

The man nodded. The motion of his head was
exaggerated, as though he were nodding from sleep rather than in
agreement. He drew the pipe from his mouth, and that motion was
slow, languid also. Steven had the sudden thought that he could
probably pull his pistol and shoot him where he sat before the man
could get one of those slow moving hands to the gun that sat on the
table.

“I was told t'talk to Red. And you say that's
you,” Steven told him.

“Yeah? And who by?”

And Steven said, “Me dead father.”

Red started, the lazy look leaving his eyes,
and he pointed with the long stem of his pipe to the chair that
Steven had thus far ignored. “Sit, lad, and tell me about yer
Da.”

Steven spurned the seat. “Me Da's dead by the
man you sent him to kill. T'Duke of St. James. I want to know when
and where the next hit is, an' I want t'be in on it. An' I want the
money he was to get fer doin' it when I'm done, so's I can support
me mother.”

Red stared at him. “Yer on fire for
ven'gence, are ye now, lad?”

Steven nodded, his gray eyes unflinching.
“Aye. I am 'n' all.”

“An' now ya think yer man enuff t'settle
t'score with t'bloke? After ya seen yer own Da couldna do it?”

“Aye,” Steven said again.

“Well, I'd like t'see that 'n' all,” Red
chuckled. “Ya got a weapon or was ya plannin on starin him t'death
with those mean eyes of yourn?”

For answer, Steven pulled the most of the
long dueling pistol from beneath his coat, let it linger there for
a brief second, and then pushed it back beneath his waist band
again.

Red's eyebrows went up. “From t'looks a that,
not the first time you been on a job,” he said, and Steven only
smiled. Red looked him up and down, his eyes narrowing. “From
t'looks of t'gun 'n' those breeches, I'd wager you've killed
yourself some swell,” and he glanced into Steven's face.

But Steven only held to his cold and silent
smile.

Red smiled, waved a lazy hand. “Come back
t'morrow night then, same time. Ya can keep yer trap shut, well
'nuff, an' ya got the proper nerve t'do it. More than yer Da had,
any rate. There'll be some men waitin' fer ya outside.”

And Steven said, “I wants t'same share me
father was t'get. Ye tell yer other men not t'be tryin' to cheat me
'cause I'm just a lad. Or I'll be taken theirs from them and
sharin' with no one.”

Red shook his head. “I'll tell 'em, lad. But
don't be thinkin' that they'll take kindly t'that kinda talk.
Likely slit yer throat fer ya.” He sat back, lit up his pipe and
drew in a great lungful of creamy smoke. “Not that I care two bits,
one way or t'other. Understand that, lad. Ye hire on with me, ye
take care of yer own skin.”

And Steven said, “I ken that. I can do
that.”

“Tomorrow night, then. We'll see what yer
made of, right 'nuff.” And his laugh was a sudden loud boom in
Steven's ears as the boy turned and left.

He made it through the crush of men, but they
paid him no mind now, only kept to their drinks and their loud
conversations, and he pushed through the rickety door of the pub
entrance. He walked down the shadowy street, and with each step he
took, he began to shake, and finally, he darted into a mew, not
unlike the one his father had died in, and his shaking, empty
stomach spasmed. But he could throw nothing up, for he had not
eaten in the past twenty-four hours.