The Lion Lies Waiting Read online

  He brought the journal everywhere with him, tucked safely into the pocket of his overcoat. It gave him an enormous sense of comfort to have a tangible connection to his father, lost those forty years. Aside from the detailed maps of distant islands and tall tales of his exploits at sea, it was a window into his father’s personal history, into his mind, into his soul, even. The fondest hopes and darkest thoughts of a man who’d sailed the seven seas from the age of thirteen. A man who’d seen the beauty and horror of the oceans. A man Robin had barely known.

  Edwin had been dozing for an hour or so. Robin occasionally glanced over to him, watching the rise and fall of his stomach, smiling at the occasional gentle snore escaping through his parted lips. Robin had been mulling over Eva and Iris’s proposition. He had never considered becoming a father—at least, not since he was much younger—and he wondered precisely what his role would be. Eva and Iris would raise the child in Blashy Cove, he assumed, in Wolfe-Chase Lodge. Edwin would perform whatever fatherly duties were required, but where did that leave him?

  He had been making a real effort not to repeat the mistake of his past. When he and Duncan had been together, he’d worked too much and talked too little. A distance grew between them, one which eventually became too great to cross. And now Edwin was talking of putting actual distance between him and Robin by moving to Blackrabbit. How long would they be apart? How would Edwin find time for his mother, his child, and Robin? Was Robin being selfish thinking in such a manner? Did he really deserve to be a priority when Edwin’s life was being turned upside down? They hadn’t even said they were in love yet and there he sat wondering how he factored into, amongst other things, the life of a child who hadn’t even been conceived.

  Conception. There was something he hadn’t thought much about. He started to picture how Edwin’s task would be performed. He knew Edwin had lain with women in his youth, though it was usually in a drunken stupor, when any kind of affection shown toward him was rewarded. Robin wasn’t given to jealousy, but he had no particular desire to watch Edwin and Iris together, even if it were through a curtain, or whatever Eva’s suggestion had been. Wait. That can’t have been what she said, surely? He highly doubted Iris would want him leering as she and Edwin…no, he must have picked Eva up wrong. The general idea wasn’t a novelty. There were a couple of people in Blashy Cove who’d been conceived through similar means. Being effectively orphaned at an early age himself, he always envied them, as it meant they had two sets of parents to love them and care for them.

  EDWIN AND ROBIN disembarked their carriage on the stone bridge leading to Gull’s Reach. They walked to the first tenement which, unlike last time, was filled to capacity with families. Every pair of eyes watched as they made their way up the rotting, unsafe stairs to the roof and walked once more into the Roost. Outside his mother’s shack, its fishing boat roof covered in snow, Edwin hesitated.

  “Robin, I’ve been thinking, and I’ve made a decision,” he said. “I am going to stay with Mum, here on Blackrabbit, just…just for a little while. There’s no other way.”

  “If you think it’s best,” Robin said. “We can—”

  “And…I don’t want you to stay with me.”

  Robin looked wounded.

  “It’s not what you think…I just think if you’re here, I’ll spend most of my time worrying about you—about us—instead of trying to help Mum.”

  “But I can ’elp you, both o’ you.”

  “You can’t, not this time. I have to do this myself.”

  “But why?”

  “Because she’s my responsibility! I can’t bring her back to Blashy Cove. Dad wouldn’t be able to cope with her being there. I owe her this, Robin.”

  “Owe her for what?”

  “For not being a better son! I owe her this for all the stress and worry I caused when I was young, for not realising how sick Ambrose was, for not realising how sick she is! She’s been ill this whole time, Robin, for my whole life, for her whole life, but I was too wrapped up in myself to see it. I have to do this, and I have to it by myself.”

  Robin closed his eyes, clenched his massive fists and took a deep breath.

  “I know, I know,” Edwin said, taking Robin’s sweet round face in his hands. “But it won’t be for long, I promise. Just until the new year, then we can—”

  He was cut short by a series of screams. He dashed over to his mother’s shack and whipped open the curtain flap. Inside, he found Hester tearing at his mother’s hair.

  “How could you take them? You just took them!” she screamed, over and over.

  His mother was clawing at Hester’s face and body, issuing no words but rather a shriek of fear. Edwin grabbed Hester around the waist and pulled her away as Robin positioned his considerable bulk between the two women. The scream had drawn other residents who clambered round the hut to see what was happening. One of them grabbed Sylvia and tried to calm her down.

  “What is this?” Edwin bellowed, uncharacteristically loudly. It even made Robin jump.

  Hester shook herself free from Edwin’s arms as his mother sat on her pile of cushions with her chin in the air. She pulled her shawl around herself with one hand, and with the other, she straightened her ragged hair as best she could, trying to make herself presentable.

  “This madwoman attacked me,” she sniffed.

  “I’m mad?” Hester yelled. “You took my boys!”

  “My boys!” his mother hissed, her eyes widening. “They’re my grandsons—they need me!”

  Hester made for her again but was stopped by Edwin. He looked to the gathering crowd outside.

  “It’s fine, we’re family. I’ll look after them.”

  One of the people in the crowd—a chestnut-haired man—spoke to his mother.

  “Is he speaking the truth? Do you need us to stay?”

  His mother shook her head. “He’s my son. And this is his lout.” She gestured towards Robin, who bit his tongue. “Thank you for your concern, Arthur.”

  The crowd began to disperse.

  “I will be outside, Mrs. Farriner,” the man she called Arthur said, looking Hester up and down. “Should you need me.”

  Edwin’s body turned to lead and his heart sank. “You must know you can’t just take the boys, Mum. You frightened them. You frightened Hester.”

  “She frightened me! She’s always screaming at me, attacking me in the street! She’s a wild beast, Edwin, a wild beast!” his mother said, cowering into herself and trembling.

  Hester was furious. Edwin could see in her eyes she wanted to tear his mother to pieces and he put himself between them, towering over both. His mother was slight and feeble looking. Hester was a little taller than her, though Edwin remembered her being plumper. He supposed the years of worry and sorrow since his brother had died had taken their toll on her.

  “Please, just calm down, both of you,” Edwin said.

  “I won’t calm down! She could have hurt them!” Hester shouted, pointing at her mother-in-law.

  “I would never hurt them! They’re sick! Can’t you see?”

  “They’re not sick, Sylvia,” Hester said through gritted teeth.

  “They’re sick! And you can’t take care of them, only I can!”

  “Like you took care of Ambrose?” Hester screamed.

  She looked surprised at her own words and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “What do you mean?” Edwin asked, dropping his arms.

  “Tell him, Sylvia. Tell him how you took such good care of his brother, of my husband. Tell him how you poured Ambrose’s pennyroyal water down the drain instead of giving it to him.”

  “It was poison!” his mother shrieked, even more wide-eyed and on her feet again. “Doctor Greenaway was trying to kill my boy! My Ambrose!”

  “It was medicine! It would have saved him! You let him die! You let Ambrose die!” Hester screeched at the top of her lungs, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Edwin swayed in his boots. It was as if the whol
e of the Roost was slipping from the rooftops and about to go crashing into the sea. Robin stood frozen on the spot.

  “What are you talking about?” Edwin said, barely a whisper.

  “I’m sorry, Edwin,” Hester sobbed, “I’m sorry, I never wanted to say anything, but I saw her, I saw her pouring the medicine away. I wasn’t sure that’s what it was at first. I was in such a daze back then, when Ambrose was ill. It was only afterwards, after he died—when I found the empty bottle—I realised what she’d done.”

  His mother was pacing the little room now. “Lies!” she cried. “It’s all lies Edwin, the lies of a madwoman!”

  “It’s not, it’s not,” Hester said, wiping away her tears. She was on her knees, holding onto Edwin’s hand, his leg.

  He didn’t speak.

  “Ambrose had that cough, remember? That terrible cough for weeks and weeks, he was in such pain,” Hester said. “Doctor Greenaway came, he said it was pleurisy. He drained blood from his chest. I had to work in the bakery with your father and I had to look after the boys, you were never there, someone needed to watch him. The doctor, he gave Sylvia a bottle of pennyroyal water to give to Ambrose. To help him. But she didn’t want to help him, she wanted him to stay sick, so he’d have to rely on her. She always hated the fact I took him away from her.”

  “More lies!” his mother screamed at the top of her lungs. “She always hated me! She kept Ambrose away from me, she knew I was the only one who could—”

  She stopped dead in her tracks. She looked like a complete stranger to him just then. Something inside of him, the last shred of compassion he had for her, the final, lingering thread of familial loyalty which had kept him by her side had snapped.

  Without saying a word, Edwin turned on his heels and left.

  DUNCAN HAD STUMBLED when the spindly man with the knife and dirty fingernails had shoved him inside the little makeshift cell. The gate had clanged shut behind him, the key clanking as it turned in the rusty lock. From the shape of the ceiling and the lack of windows, Duncan deduced he was in the cellar of the council building. The stone ground was covered half-heartedly with straw and a bundle of filthy blankets sat in one corner. The other two cells Duncan could see were packed with barrels, as was the space in front of them. The spindly fellow—Percy, the other man called him—had taken the lantern away with him and the only light came from the torches in an adjacent hallway.

  He’d been there for a couple of hours when the thump of heavy boots on stone heralded the arrival of a huge, dark shape moving towards his cell.

  “Duncan?” the shape called.

  He moved closer, holding a little lantern up with hands like meat pies, illuminating his broad face. The light caught a bent nose and bristly beard.

  “Hrmph. You are here.”

  “Vincent,” Duncan said. “You going to pretend you didn’t know?”

  “Mudge doesn’t tell me much these days. Heard Hickory Palk talking, thought he said your name.”

  “What’s Baxbary up to now?”

  Vince gripped one of the bars of the cell. “He’s getting worse. Past few years…” Vince shook his head. “He’s obsessed.”

  “With becoming Rabbit?” Duncan ventured.

  Vince nodded.

  “Ever since the day I met him, he’s wanted to be the head of the council,” Duncan said.

  “His ambition, it’s made him do some bad things,” Vince growled, his voice low, his words blunt as rocks. “Saw you getting off the boat in the harbour. Followed you. Was going to tell you to leave but my men caught up with me first. They’ve been following you ever since. Couldn’t let them see me warning you off.”

  “Well, I wish you’d at least tried,” Duncan said, rubbing the bruise on the back of his head.

  “Wasn’t my doing. In the Roost, when you were getting Hester’s boys, you said you knew Sylvia Farriner was working with Mudge. Shouldn’t have said it. Percy and Hickory must have gone straight to Mudge and told him. He must have ordered them to bring you in.”

  “I appreciate the thought, I suppose,” Duncan said. “But it’s not as if we were ever friends. We’ve hardly spoken two words to each other before today.”

  “You still don’t deserve to be in Baxbary Mudge’s sights. Not sure anyone does.”

  “You’re going soft in your old age,” Duncan grinned. “I knew Martin would be a good influence on you.”

  Vince’s face dropped, his whole demeanour changed.

  “Wait. What’s…what happened?”

  “Martin’s dead.”

  “Oh no, I’m so sorry. I liked him; he was a good man. What happened?”

  “Drowned. It was a message. For me. Someone from the mainland came, thought she could muscle in on my territory, take over from me. Taught her the error of her ways, mind you. While ago, this was. Doesn’t matter now.”

  “Of course it matters.”

  Vince grunted.

  “Why are you still working for Baxbary, Vincent? It’s been years, now. You were with him before he and I ever even met.”

  “Not many opportunities. Not for a man like me. Gotta make a living, same as anyone. And stop calling me Vincent.”

  “Why? It’s your name, isn’t it? Vince is short for Vincent.”

  “No, it isn’t. Look, your friend, the big one in the cap with the anchor on it. Who is he?”

  “Who, Robin? He’s Robin Shipp. He’s no one. He’s a friend.”

  “A friend from Merryapple?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Vince just grunted again. “Something about him.”

  “Never mind him, you’ve got to let me out of here.”

  Vince stood still, his enormous hand still resting on the rusty bar.

  “What are you doing down here?”

  Vince turned to see where the voice was coming from. Percy and Hickory stood in the hallway.

  “None of your damn business!” Vince barked.

  For a moment, Duncan thought the two men were about to make a move on Vince, to attack him, perhaps. But instead they stood aside to let him pass.

  “Got work to do,” Vince said, storming towards to the hallway. “Let’s go.”

  “Hey, leave me a light!” Duncan protested.

  “Safer this way,” Vince said, holding his lantern high to illuminate the barrels around him. “Trust me.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  ROBIN AND EDWIN had returned to the bar of the Lion Lies Waiting. Edwin hadn’t spoken a word the whole way there. He ordered a whiskey, then another, then another, and before too long he was slumped in the corner, with a tableful of empty glasses in front of him.

  Robin was awash with the heaviest sorrow. He tried several times to pull Edwin away from the bar fearing what he was seeing was Edwin slipping back, back into the way he used to be. Long before they had become lovers, before they were even friends, Robin knew Edwin only as a drunken tearaway, running wild in Blashy Cove with a pack of like-minded roustabouts. It was the death of his brother, Ambrose, which had snapped Edwin out of that way of life, forced him to take responsibility for his family’s business, forced him to grow up. He’d been careful with drink ever since then. He still enjoyed his cider but to nowhere near the same extent. Robin often wondered if he drank it as a sort of test, to see if he could have a few and stop. If it was a test, he passed it each time. Edwin was what Morwenna Whitewater called a “happy drunk.” He became more gregarious and outgoing, more relaxed. But something had changed. What he was putting himself through wasn’t simply a test, it was a crucible, and at last, it became too much for Robin to bear.

  “Edwin?” he said. “Please, talk to me.”

  Edwin lifted his head and looked at him with barely focused eyes.

  “She killed Ambrose,” he said. “Or, at the least, allowed him to die. What am I supposed to do about that, Robin? How can I forgive her?”

  Robin struggled to respond. “You said yourself, she’s not well. She’s not been well for a long time, maybe ever. M
aybe you can’t truly forgive ’er, an’ you certainly can’t ignore what she did, but maybe, with time, you can understand—”

  “Understand?” Edwin shouted.

  “—that it weren’t intentional! She didn’t mean to do it, she didn’t know she were doin’ it! Please, Edwin, you know I’m no good with words, I’m just tryin’ to…I just want you to take a breath and remember she’s your mother. She’s the only mother you’ll ever ’ave. What she did was unforgivable, but it weren’t entirely ’er own doin’, not really.”

  Edwin lay back against the soiled green seat. “What else has she done I don’t know about, eh? What other horrors has she committed?”

  Robin didn’t answer.

  “It’s not just in her, you know,” Edwin said.

  “What isn’t?”

  “The animal,” Edwin said, tapping his temple. “I can feel it too, always could. I thought I’d beaten it after Ambrose died, after I stopped drinking, but it’s just been lying in the dark, waiting for its chance to strike.”

  He held up a glass, turning it in the light, watching the amber liquid slosh inside, then drained it one gulp.

  “You know,” he said, “for years I waited to tell you how I felt about you but the whole time I worried you might not feel the same way, and I worried even if you did, it might ruin our friendship.” He turned in his seat and looked at Robin. “Well, maybe it did. Maybe we need to be brave enough to admit we made a mistake.”

  Robin’s stomach churned.

  “This is just the drink talkin’,” he said, trying to convince himself as much Edwin.

  “I’d like to think so, too. But what if it isn’t? What if this is who I really am? What if this is who I’ve always been? I wanted to be better, Robin, I did. After Ambrose died, I wanted to think I’d changed, I’d become responsible, but I haven’t. The animal was inside me all along. Just like it was inside Mum. You’re better off without me. You can go and be with Duncan again.”

  “Be with Duncan? What are you talkin’ about?”

  “It’s what he wants. It’s why he’s always around.”

  “’E came ’ere as a favour to us, a favour to you!”