Read Online Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key by Kage Baker - Free Book Online Page B

is just brisk. I’m coming up behind you, so you needn’t fear falling. You’ll get used to this so you run up and down just as though it was stairs at home, you mark my words.”
    “ ‘
At home
’ you say? What home have I? Shunted from one place to another, all my bloody life, ever since I left school. The wife and I took a pretty little cottage on Hampstead Heath; she committed adultery with our landlord, and he had the effrontery to tell
me
to look for other lodgings, if you please! I lived in one wretched lodging-house after another until coming to the West Indies, and what a sty I was given for residence on that plantation! And to what had I to look forward at my sister’s, even supposing this filthy chance had not afflicted us, but a spare bed made up in a dusty corner of a gable?”
    Spleen carried him as high as the crosstrees, where he paused, peering upward at the lubber’s hole and futtock-shrouds.
    “Don’t go through the lubber’s hole there,” said John. “That’s only for—er—lubbers. Climb up around the outside, leaning backwards and hanging onto the futtock-shrouds to pull yourself over the edge of the top. That’s how a real mariner does it.”
    Mr. Tudeley stared up openmouthed.
    “Go fuck yourself,” he said at last, and went straight up through the lubbers’ hole onto the top platform.
    “There ain’t any need to be uncivil,” said John, following him up over the futtock-shrouds.
    “What’s a lifetime of civility ever gotten me?” said Mr. Tudeley, who had wrapped his arms and legs around the join where the topmast was fished to the mast and clung there like a limpet.
    “Not killed afore now?” John stood up and surveyed the wide horizon. There was, as he had said, a brisk breeze, and the
Harmony
cruised along pleasantly. Only, far off to the east, was a smudge of some dirty color.
    “Ha! I should welcome the quietus, sir. Here am I, obliged to wear spectacles after a lifetime of ruining mine eyes on copy-work, and who does the captain send up to keep lookout? Who but I, fortune’s whipping-boy? It makes no
sense
!”
    “Things don’t make sense, much,” said John. “On the other hand, you ain’t any use at hauling and you don’t know the ropes. I reckon Captain Reynald is being charitable-like finding you something you can do. It ain’t so bad. All you have to do is watch all round the horizon, and sing out if you see a sail.”
    “And meanwhile live up here exposed to the wind and the rain like a sodding stylite,” said Mr. Tudeley. “Though I suppose if you can bear your present lot, sir, I must bear mine.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “Pardon me, sir, but the disgraceful behavior of Mrs. Waverly cannot have escaped your notice,” said Mr. Tudeley. “Why, I happed upon her yestereen in Captain Reynald’s arms, when I went up to relieve myself at moonrise.”
    “Oh,” said John, surprised to feel a throb of jealousy. “I didn’t mean that. I know she’s been making sheep’s eyes at him. And he at her, come to that. I reckon she’s using her court-ways to get herself some more presents of emeralds. Much I care; like I told you, she’s only the widow of my mate at Panama. Nothing to me.”
    “Then you are wise,” said Mr. Tudeley. “What did you mean, then?”
    “About what? Oh. What’s a stylite?”
    “A saint given to mortifying his flesh by living atop a high pillar,” Mr. Tudeley explained. “Abjuring any earthly pleasure, fasting and praying, and never setting foot on solid ground for years together. The simile is apt, I think.”
    John decided not to ask him what a simile was. “Ah. Fancy that.”
    The breeze changed its quarter and grew stronger suddenly, buffeting them. Its freshness had all gone; it was hot, like a wind out of an oven door. John turned his head to the east, out of which the wind had come. He watched the dirty smudge, and thought it looked as though it had spread up the sky a bit.
    “Perhaps the Lord intended me to