27

Once Odin caught up to Spider, they rushed outside. Ruth had vanished.

“If you see Half-Jim, let me know.”

Odin spat. “Why?”

“Because I almost diddled his woman and now she knows we came here looking for Hob.”

“When did diddling and tattling become part of our plan, Spider John?”

“It was not a thing I . . .”

“So if one of us has to diddle a wench, can it be me?”

“Odin . . .”

“It should be me. I think I can manage to get my pecker wet without telling the lass our whole fucking . . .”

“Listen to me, you ugly, shit-stinking, cock-sucking son of an old whore’s mule!”

Odin stopped complaining to Spider and stared at him. “You accuse me of cock-sucking, Spider?”

Spider sighed heavily. “Well, sorry. As for my actions, whatever damage I may have done it seems pretty Ruth is gone from us for now. Let’s find a copse to hide in. Tell me your news.”

“Aye,” Odin answered. They walked, seeking cover. “I am supposing drink addled your brain, as usual.”

“I do regret drinking this time, Odin, for certain.”

“While you were drunk and horny and talking too goddamned much, I was rolling bones in the barn with some gents.”

“Oh?”

Odin nodded. “Aye. One of those boys I was dicing with, Edward, says the folk in the town up north are convinced that Daphne wench, or some other crazed person, escapes from these grounds and kills young men.”

“Is that so?”

“Aye. Three deaths. Well, one death and two disappearances. But everyone thinks the vanished lads are dead.”

“Is that what this Wilson fellow is about, the man Oakes mentioned sneaking about his grounds?”

“His boy Joe was the one they found dead, yes.”

Spider pondered. “Good cover here.” They stepped into a space surrounded by five oaks with great, broad trunks, one of which sported a broken limb that dangled low and obscured the view from the house. “I have a story forming in my head, Odin. Trying to fit parts together, make a good dovetail joint between what you are telling me and what I’ve learned myself. Go on. How long ago was the most recent disappearance from the village?”

“Maybe eight months, maybe more. Lads were drinking, and arguing a bit.”

“Hmmmm.” Spider scratched his beard. “And they found no bodies?”

“Just Joe’s. He’d been in a brawl and lost, they said.” Odin lowered his breeches to take a piss.

“Was his death the last of the three instances?”

“Aye.”

“What makes the villagers think Oakes is involved? Or Daphne, I should say?”

Odin finished and tucked up his breeches. “The very first lad disappeared not long after Oakes started boarding madmen, Spider. Not quite a year ago. Daphne was his first patient, they say. Rumor is they’ve seen a woman in white in the village, too.”

“She escapes now and then, does she?”

“Aye, she gets out of the house sometimes, although the dicing boys tell me she ain’t never got that far away. She’s made it to the road a time or two, pestering passersby and asking for rides. But they say they always find her quick.”

“I know someone else who gets off the grounds now and again.” He was thinking of Michael, the huge farmhand. “Continue.”

“The second disappearance was a few weeks after that first one. Both lads, first and second, just gone, one went to milk cows and never came back. The other had been courting a girl but went gone on his way home. And then the Wilson boy, killed in the middle of the night, a fortnight or two after that. They’d started a patrol at night, in the village, because lads kept disappearing, and he had the watch the night he got killed.”

“And those deaths drew some attention, aye? Riled everyone up?” Spider crossed his arms and looked at Odin.

“Well, aye,” Odin said. “Wilson and others have been peeping around here, sometimes sneaking, sometimes hollering for blood.”

“You said the Wilson boy lost a brawl.”

“Aye, they found him dead. Looked like he’d taken on Blackbeard or fucking Ned Low or some other scallywag. Broken arm, bloody face, deep gashes, lots of blood.”

“That little girl Daphne did not do all that,” Spider said. But Michael could have done it.

Odin shrugged. “Probably not. Ruth?”

“She probably could do it,” Spider said, “but why would she?”

“Who knows why a woman does anything?”

“Not me,” Spider said. “I reckon women know why they do things, though.”

“Do they?”

The watch bell rang.

“Odin, we are in a deep smelly privy here. Ruth knows we are looking for Hob.”

“Why did you tell her that?”

“I thought I might learn where he is.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Is that why you didn’t fuck her?”

Spider grasped Odin’s shoulders. “She knows why we are here. And Half-Jim is her man. She said he was away, busy or something. And I do not know if she spoke the truth. Maybe Jim told her to try to find out why I was here, maybe it was her that suggested it to him, or maybe she really just wanted to find out what we were about on her own. I don’t know. As you said, who knows why a woman does anything? Anyway, Jim could be anywhere, he could have maybe even been in the next room listening to Ruth and me talking. Even if he wasn’t, when she sees him she probably will tell him why we came here.”

Odin considered that. “Will he care if we came here looking for a friend?”

“I have no idea,” Spider said. “He might, he might not. The answer to that probably lies in why the smugglers were snatched in the first place. Jim won’t like being lied to, though, I can vouch for that, but if it does not involve danger to Oakes—and it does not have to, if we can find Hob and get him away from here—then Half-Jim may not care much.”

“So what do we do?”

Spider rubbed his hands together. “I do not know. I have an idea of what is happening here, I think, or at least a wee hint, and it is damned ugly, Odin. Damned ugly. That little girl might not have killed Wilson’s boy—hell, I am certain she did not—but she might well be killing men around here. She might be the source of the illness that keeps killing patients.”

“Aye,” Odin said.

“Aye,” Spider said. “She looks at death the way you look at a tart in Tortuga. She is fascinated by it. And she is allowed to take rum to the patients. Poisoned rum, it may be.”

“Why would a girl do that?”

Spider shook his head. “Maybe she just wants to watch them be buried. Maybe she listens outside their doors while their breath rattles. I don’t know. I just know she is a scary little wench.”

“She is, indeed.”

Odin shrugged. “Well, then. I am done with booze until we reach some civilized place, Spider John. What do we do?”

The watch bell rang.

“We’d best muster for our watches, I think, so we don’t arouse notice. We will be late as it is, I fear. But let us go to our posts, and be ready for Half-Jim or Ruth or, fuck, everybody to come after us.”

“Just like our old days on the account. Ha!”