Free A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1) by M J Logue Page A

young woman, and a pretty one - if ye don’t mind that I've
noticed?" He didn’t wait for an answer, which was as well, because Russell
wasn't going to give him one. "I'd not have the two of ye marked for a
happy match, Russell, so I'll ask again. As a friend. Does she know ye for what
you are?"
    "She knows
what I was," he said, and it was dark enough to see the whites of Eadulf's
eyes flash as he rolled them in resignation.
    "Aye,
that's the sort of daft answer I thought ye'd give."
    "Well,
then. I have not changed. She knew me when I was young and stupid -"
    "Aye, and
she knows you now you’re old and stupid, Russell! Were you always a
King's intelligencer, then?"
    "I always
did as my conscience bid!"
    He snorted
again. "Aye, well, I never did reckon your conscience had much
sense!"
    "No. No,
well, there was a time you were glad of it."
    That was too
far. He heard the Scotsman's hurt intake of breath. "Must ye throw that in
my face, Russell? Every time I seek to check you? I am yet glad of it. I can
still call it the daft, shiftless act it was. Had ye not -"
    "Had I not
claimed you as one of my company, Eadulf, you would have died in the cathedral
at Durham, with the rest of your countrymen. I do know. And had you not pulled
me clear of my horse at Dunbar, a week before it, I would have died in
Scotland, and we would not be sitting in the dark having this conversation.
For, I think, about the fiftieth time of our acquaintance. I consider us
quitted of any obligation to one another, sir. More than quitted."
    "It does
not make you any the less soft-heided, major," Eadulf grumbled. He always
did.
    "Surely."
He could smile to himself, in the gloomy closet, and not have Eadulf miscall
him for a dreamy romantic fool. "I always was."
    "Aye. Save
in one matter." The bailiff sighed. "I'm glad you broached it,
Russell. I would talk to you of - that. Her. Things have - well. Matters are
grave. Ye'd know, of course?"
    It should not
surprise him. Even from the grave, Fly-Fornication’s malign influence tried to
extend over him, then. She'd been a nasty bitch in life; had taken a shy,
sensitive, lonely little boy, after their mother's death, and tried to force
him into as frigid a pattern-card Puritan as she'd been herself.
    She'd failed, of
course. Their mother had been a good woman, a decent and godly widow, but she
had also been a loving one and a joyful one. Her God was a God of warmth and
loving and comfort, and her skirts had smelt of sunlight and roses, so far as
he could remember. He had been three, four, perhaps, when she had died, and he
could barely recall how she had looked, now. Only the kindness of her voice and
the soft folds of her scented skirts, and a singing as she worked. After that,
had been darkness, and Fly's cruel dominion. He had been shy before, but under
her rule he had grown fearful and timid; unloved, and not knowing why, and
tormented by it. She had held that unloving over his head like a man baiting a
dog - promising that if he conformed, if he thought and behaved as she said the
Bible told him to, she might come to love him. God might love him.
    It had taken him
a long time to learn that love was not a thing of conditions and bargaining. By
then there was Thomazine, and she had been a small, bright baby, and then a
bright girl, who did not care that he was scarred and uncertain of temper, but
only that he was her own. He'd never thought that brave, sturdy young woman
with her steady green-gold eyes might ever see him as more than an object of
pity.
    Thomazine hadn't
pitied him, or scorned him. She'd been kicking him up the backside,
metaphorically, since she was old enough to walk, and he'd grown accustomed to
it, and he'd not have changed it for all the world. Eadulf sighed, and that
recalled him to the here and now, a little. "Russell, I don't know who
that lassie is, or where you found her, and I'll not ask. She seems like a nice
enough maid, and I wish ye both happiness. I will ask, though, for they