The high from a successful pickup—or a successful invite to the pub at any rate, which was almost the same thing—lasted all of thirty seconds after Mal stepped out of the dusty air of the naval museum and into the bright sunlight.
Hermione. He was fucking well going to miss her. She’d been the best rat a bloke could have. The best. And yeah, he still had Rose the Third and Luna from her last litter, but it wasn’t the same with them. They were great rats, course they were, but him and Hermione, they’d been through so much together. He’d cried on her fur that night after—
Shit. Not gonna think about that. Mal got down to the road, and wondered which way to go. Back to the Sea Bell? Tasha was pretty good at knowing when a bloke needed a hug. And it was literally the ideal place to get a stiff drink to toast Hermione.
Trouble was, Tasha wouldn’t stop at the hug and the drink. She’d want to know what was wrong, and Mal wasn’t sure he could handle talking about it. Not yet. Not without blubbing like a baby, and no way was he going to do that in front of his best mate’s little sis.
He turned towards the cliffs instead, making his way down the lane and then onto the footpath over the grassy clifftop. It was quiet up here, except for the gusting of the wind, the crashing of the waves on the rocks below, and the screaming of the seagulls . . . Actually, come to think of it, it was bloody noisy up here, but they were quiet sounds. Like, non-people sounds. You didn’t get those in London. Mal liked a bit of his own company, every now and then, which was one reason he hadn’t wanted to stay in customer service . . .
Mal shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. Nope. Not thinking about work. Think about . . . Think about Jory, instead. Yeah, that’d do.
He didn’t really know why he’d bothered to pick up the shy museum bloke with the dodgy mugs and even dodgier milk . . . Okay, that was a lie. Mal didn’t have a type, exactly, but tall and built would pretty much do it for anyone, wouldn’t it? And yeah, he liked the contrast between the way the guy looked and the way he spoke and acted. Like he had no idea how fit he was. It was cute, the way he somehow managed to stand and sit like he was apologising for his height all the time.
Mal left the footpath and sat down on the grass overlooking the bay. Over to the right, as he glanced down, were some vicious sharp rocks jutting out to sea. His tourist map told him they’d been named after Voldemort’s mum and judging from those jagged edges, they’d probably caused almost as much trouble. On the plus side, they were dead handy for the lifeboat station. Mal couldn’t see it from this angle, but he knew it was there from walks with Tasha.
He’d been kind, too, Jory had. Mal liked that in a bloke.
And anything was better than hanging around the pub on his tod for another night with Tasha being nice to him. Christ, Dev and Kyle couldn’t get here fast enough for his liking. They’d be here in a week, staying at that cottage on the cliff that Kyle had had last summer. It was only a short distance from Roscarrock House, so they could lean out of the window and shout Fuck you up the hill anytime they wanted. Although Dev kept saying he was well over all the shit that had happened last year.
If he’d said it a few less times, Mal might even have believed it.
He squinted along the cliff and could make out the big house up on the high point at the other end of the bay from where he was standing. He’d visited yesterday, basically cos he was a nosy sod but also cos he liked a bit of history. Always had. He’d been the one member of the family who’d actually enjoyed it when Mum dragged them round to yet another ancient pile when him and Morgan were little. Later, when Morgs was old enough to put her foot down, it’d just been him and Mum. Well, fair dues, his dad’s shifts hadn’t always allowed him to come along.
Mum would like this place, he’d thought as he traipsed round the place with a load of other tourists, keeping an eye out in vain for anyone who looked vaguely like the old ancestral portraits. The family must keep out of the way on days when it was open to the public. Mum had offered to come down here with him, but Mal was a big boy. He didn’t need his hand held, and more to the point, Morgan was the size of the bloody Gherkin and about ready to pop her first sprog. She needed Mum with her.
It’d given him an idea, anyway, visiting Roscarrock House. Something to do while he was here. Take his mind off things. Mal had overheard one of the volunteer guides talking about Mary Roscarrock, and it’d rung a bell, so he’d stayed to earwig. It was when the old bloke mentioned she’d been a bit of a goer that he twigged—Kyle had said something a while back about her being his great-great-whatever-grandma or -aunt or whatever. Allegedly. And okay, Roscarrock might be a four-letter word round him and Dev’s, but Mal still reckoned Dev would probably be glad to find out more about her.
Maybe it’d even help him. Show him the family weren’t all straitlaced snobs, that kind of thing.
And Mal owed Dev and Kyle. They’d been fucking great to him since . . . since he’d had to take time off work, and hadn’t been coping too well on his own. They’d let him camp out at theirs as long as he wanted, no problem, despite how it must’ve cockblocked them something chronic, and then Dev had set it all up so Mal could come down and stay here with Tasha.
It’d be good to have something to tell them when they got here.
So he’d stayed to listen while the old bloke went on about Mary Roscarrock from the early sixteen hundreds.
“She was a very spirited young lady,” the guide had said. “It’s said she was disowned by the family for some misdeed, the details of which have been lost to time.”
That alone made Mal glad he’d stayed. After the crap that family had given Dev . . . Yeah, anyone disowned by them was definitely worth knowing about.
“Was she up the duff?” he butted in.
The guide glared at him over the tops of his glasses, which were the wire-rimmed sort and made him look like a pissed-off professor. “The details of which have been lost to time,” he repeated pointedly.
Mal wondered where the naughty step was, and if he should go and sit on it now or wait to be told.
“Didn’t she become a pirate?” The woman who’d spoken was a wiry old girl with grey hair and pale but sharp blue eyes. She reminded Mal of the husky one of his neighbours had owned when he was a kid.
His ears pricked right up. A pirate in the family? Dev’d be well chuffed to hear about that.
The guide nodded. “Oh, yes. You might say she learned the trade at her father’s knee—Sir John, who built this house in which we now stand, sailed with Sir Francis Drake on the Golden Hind. Came home with a fortune in Spanish gold.”
Mal frowned and tried to remember his history books. “Wasn’t he supposed to be a hero? Drake, I mean. Saved us from the Spanish Armada, and all that.”
“To the English he was a hero, yes.” The prof gave him a slightly more approving look. “To the Spanish, whose ships Drake captured and stripped of all their treasures, he was nothing but a pirate, for all he was sponsored by the crown. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the constant attacks by English privateers, King Philip might never have sent the Armada to invade England.”
“Huh. So what about Mary Roscarrock?”
“She became captain of her own ship, crewed by men—and women too, or so they say—from down in the village.”
“What, so Lady Mary from the manor goes down to the village and is all ‘I say, you chaps, one is going to become a pirate, what larks, who’s with me?’ and they all go ‘Yeah, why not, we ain’t got nothing on today’?”
The husky lady laughed, and so did a few other people who’d stopped to listen in. The prof seemed to thaw a bit—Mal reckoned it’d made the old boy’s day to get this big an audience. Now he had them, it’d probably take one of those cannons they had out on the lawn to get him to stop talking. “Ah, but you forget how close-knit communities were in those days—and with no welfare state, the poor relied on the kindness of their landlords. Plenty of those villagers would have had very recent memories of Mary Roscarrock herself helping their families or friends out in times of need. And, of course, attitudes to the laws of the realm were, ah, we’ll call it pragmatic, shall we? There’s many a family kept food on the table by a bit of smuggling on the side, or wrecking—although it’s never been proven ships were deliberately lured onto the rocks around here, needless to say.” He tapped the side of his nose with a wicked smile.
Mal found himself grinning back. “Bet the rest of the family were dead chuffed. You got any more information about her? She sounds well cool.” He could see her now, dressed up in men’s clothes, a pistol in each hand—if they’d had pistols in them days. Maybe just a cutlass—and forcing some rich entitled bastard to walk the plank.
“There’s a book,” the guide said dismissively. “Romantic codswallop, if you want my view. All about her running off to be with one of the village lads, too lowborn for the family’s taste.”
Mal had picked up a copy of The Beautiful Buccaneer in what passed for a gift shop anyhow, and had read a couple of chapters since then. He kind of liked it, but it was pretty clear the author hadn’t been aiming for historical accuracy. Lots of corsets and heaving bosoms, which Mal didn’t have a problem with, but he was fairly sure posh young ladies who’d persuaded their brothers to give them a quick fencing lesson one afternoon weren’t actually able to fight off ten hardened swordsmen at once, all while sailing a ship single-handed cos the crew had gone and got themselves captured again.
The old boy’s parting suggestion had been a trip down to the naval museum and a poke around in their local history archive, which was why Mal had headed there today. Not that he’d made it very far before getting that phone call from Mum . . .
Ah, sod it. Sometimes you just needed a hug even if it meant you’d have to talk about stuff.
Mal got up and took the lane back to the Sea Bell.
Tasha was on her own behind the bar when he got back, so Mal didn’t go straight over to speak to her. He could wait until her boss had come back from the cellar or the gents’ or wherever the hell he’d got to. Jago Andrewartha was a slow-moving old bastard who ruled over the pub like he was King Arthur himself, which must make the locals on their barstools his knights.
Mal had a little snigger at the thought of that lot on horseback, armour gleaming in the sun. For his eleventh birthday, his mum had taken them down to Hever Castle to watch the jousting. His sister had whinged on about it being boring and stupid and why couldn’t she have spent the day with her boyfriend instead, but Mal had loved it. He’d wanted to try it himself, but Mum and Dad hadn’t had the money for horse riding lessons even if they’d been able to find anywhere local that did them. And anyway, round where he lived, poncing about like you reckoned you were posh could get the shit kicked out of you if anyone heard about it, so it was probably just as well.
Rats were his thing, not horses. Grief for Hermione slammed into him again. Shit. Maybe he wasn’t in the mood for company after all—
“Mal!” Tasha yelled out, waving at him. She held up a pint glass with a clear question in her eye. Half the Round Table had turned to look, like they hadn’t just seen him at lunchtime—seriously, didn’t some of these old codgers have homes to go to?—so there was nothing for it but to nod at Tasha and head on up to the bar.
She was already pulling him a pint of Rattler Cyder, which Mal had tried on his first night here and decided he liked better than the local beer. Plus, it had to be healthier, didn’t it? It had proper Cornish apples in. Hermione had liked apples . . .
“You all right, babe?” Tasha asked.
Jago loomed up behind her like he’d come from nowhere. He’d been in the cellar, then. “You’ve got a face on you like a wet weekend,” he rumbled before Mal could answer.
“So? He don’t have to be all happy-smiley if he don’t wanna.” Tasha gave her boss a pointed look.
Fuck, Mal was sick of this. “Had some bad news from home,” he said shortly.
“Sorry to hear that.” Jago gave him a nod and moved deliberately to the other end of the bar, where the locals were clustered.
Tasha leaned on the bar, her eyes wide. “What’s up?”
“Mum called. Hermione’s died.”
“That’s one of your rats, innit? Oh, babe. Come here.” She leaned even further and gave him a hug. It’d have been a lot more comforting if they hadn’t had the bar between them, but then again, Mal could feel tears pricking at his eyes already. Shit.
“’S all right. ’M all right.” He pulled back and tried to smile. “Hey, I met a bloke at the museum. He’s coming here tonight.”
“You don’t hang about, do you? What’s he like? Fit?”
“Not bad. Tall. Blond. Got a beard. Sorta geeky.”
“That your type these days?”
Mal shrugged. “Haven’t got a type, have I? I’m an equal-opportunities lover.”
“Everyone’s got a type.”
“Yeah? What’s yours?”
Tasha made a face. “Bastards, mostly.”
“Yeah? What about you and Ceri? Been wondering about you two for, like, years.”
“We ain’t known her years. Not even one. And we’re mates, that’s all, you got that? Now are you gonna drink that drink, or just sit and watch the bubbles all night?”
Mal could take a hint. She’d been a bit touchy about Ceri lately—something to do with her going off to work abroad for six weeks with her college mates when term ended, Mal reckoned. “Gimme some dry roasted to go with it?”
“They’ll make your breath stink, they will.” She still handed over the bag of nuts. “Make sure you clean your teeth before you snog Tall, Blond, and Geeky.”
“Yes, Mum.”
Tasha gave him the finger, then went to serve a customer with a smile like butter wouldn’t melt.