Page 79 of The Cornish Mermaid

“How long do we have?” came a voice he ought to know. Sam’s voice. Yes, Sam was here. Sam? How so? Sam was at Ormonde, not here at Nanpean, and Sam knew nothing of his master’s smuggling activities.

“Not long. Clean shirt and get him into his coat, then if the bandages leak no one’ll see.” Jago’s voice, gruff and concerned.

What must have been a clean shirt went on, was tucked into his breeches with hasty fingers and then Sam and someone else, someone big and strong, got him into a coat that felt too tight and pressed on his wound. He bit his lip to prevent himself from crying out.

Quick fingers did up a scarf around his throat, and someone held a flask to his mouth. Liquid trickled in. He coughed on it, swallowed, and coughed again, the liquid running down his chin.

“Keep drinking,” that same gentle voice he ought to know said in his ear. “You have to appear to be drunk. Drink a little more so you smell of it.”

He did as he was told.

“They’re a-comin’,” came Jenifry’s voice from afar. And someone bodily lifted him and set him at the table. His head flopped forward onto his left arm, his right arm hanging loose onto his lap, throbbing, his fingers fat sausages he couldn’t move.

The grate of chairs on the flagstones, and he had the sense that other people had sat down at the table, the clink of glasses, the rustle of cards. Someone put a glass into the loose fingers of his left hand. What were they doing? He had to play the part they’d given him.

A hammering on the door. He wanted to get up and tell whoever it was to go away because his head hurt near as much as his arm, but he couldn’t. His head swam at the thought, and if he had to stand up, surely he’d embarrass himself by casting up his accounts.

“You go, lad,” Jago’s voice grunted. “We’s too busy at our card game, ain’t we?”

The slap of cards on the table. Who was playing? Sam was here. What was Sam doing at Nanpean? Playing cards with Jago, whom he’d only met once before, of all people?

Kit managed to open an eye. A tall, slim boy, barely visible away from the one light in the kitchen, plodded to the door and lifted the latch. The door swung open and a moment later, half a dozen redcoat soldiers were standing in the kitchen.

Jago’s voice, calm as if this were an everyday occurrence. “What’re you about, this time o’ the night when decent folks are shut up in their houses?”

“Are you Jago Tremaine?” A cultured voice—an officer. Another voice he ought to know.

The scrape as Jago pushed his chair back. “Aye, I am that. And you know well I am, Captain Carlyon.”

Fitz. Here. At Nanpean. With the revenue men. Kit wanted to lift his head and tell his cousin to get out of the house, but he couldn’t. His body wouldn’t lift his head.

“Have you been out of this house tonight?” An edge of irritation in the voice. Fitz was more than a little angry. Frustrated probably. He’d thought to make arrests tonight and what had he got? One dead man on a beach and no contraband. Kit managed a chuckle from his position prone on the table. It turned into a snort.

“What’s wrong with him?” Fitz demanded. A clump as he stepped closer.

Kit rolled his head onto one side and hiccupped. “C’n I help you, Cuz?” He chuckled again and blinked myopically up at his cousin. “C’n I offer you a drink?” He hiccupped and blinked again. The man would simply not come into focus.

“Kit!”

Fitz sounded astonished to see him.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Ignore him,” Sam said with a sneer. “He’s foxed. Again. Just as well because he cheats at cards.”

“I do not,” Kit mumbled, incensed by the foul calumny. This was taking realism too far. “I do not cheat…” but his words ran away with themselves and ended in a slur. Fresh blood was trickling down his right arm, tickling his skin. He lifted it with care and put it in his lap, burying his face in his other arm again so none might see him wince.

“There’s horse droppings out in your farmyard, and there were ponies down on the beach to meet a ship from France,” the captain said to Jago. “How do you account for that?”

Jago gave a snort of laughter that Kit wanted to join in with. “Horses did it,” he said. “What did you think did it? Passing dolphins?”

The air shimmered with resentment that even Kit, inebriated as he was, could feel. Men like his cousin didn’t take kindly to being mocked.

“There are a lot of droppings,” the captain went on, his voice stiff and stilted, accusatory even. “And there were men down on the beach with the ponies, only someone warned them so they fled. You must have seen or heard something. They must have come right past this farm.”

“I’ve got horses,” Jago said. “Who ain’t round here? An’ I been out wi’ them today, sev’ral times, so they bin in my yard on an’ off all day. Want to see them? I c’n get the boy, there, to nip out and fetch ’em in for you.” He paused and a bottle clinked against his glass as he topped it up. “And we been here at cards all evenin’ an’ not heard a thing.”

The captain grunted. Kit closed his sausage fingers around the sleeve of his coat, blood running onto his hand and breeches. It was going to drip onto the floor in a minute.