Page 53 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
“He brought you here early this morning. Said you were injured in a chimney collapse.”
“The chimney at the Bell,” Hartley said, remembering the sound of falling bricks, followed by darkness. No, not entirely darkness, but dreamy confusion punctuated by fear. His godfather had been there, somehow, which was impossible. Except he remembered Sam rescuing him from Easterbrook’s hands. Doubtless he had been deluded from the blow to the head, but he’d figure that out later. For now, he needed to know about Sam. The Bell was everything to him. “Where is he now, though?”
“I don’t know. He said you needed a doctor, but by then you had come around, so I cleaned you up and put you to bed. A doctor couldn’t do much more, and I didn’t think you’d want a stranger pawing at you.”
“Quite right. Good thinking. Thank you. I hate to ask you this, because you’ve been up all night, but can you please check on Sam and see if he needs anything?”
Alf was silent for a moment. “I would, if I knew where to find him.”
Hartley started to shake his head, but stopped when he felt the contents of his skull lurch painfully about. “I’m certain he’s returned to the Bell.”
“He may have done, to see if he could get his belongings from the rubble.”
Rubble. “It was destroyed, then?”
“Have you ever seen a chimney collapse? There’s not much left afterward. But maybe Sam was lucky.”
“I need to go to him.” He got to his feet, but the room spun darkly around him. He sat back down and raised his hand to his throbbing head. There was a length of linen wrapped around his temple, and beneath it was tender with pain.
“All right, sit back down,” Alf said. “I’ll run over to the Bell and see if Sam’s there, so long as you promise not to do anything stupid while I’m out.”
Hartley agreed on the condition that Alf help him downstairs. He didn’t want to be in his dark lonely room, two flights of stairs away from any other person. “Go into the top drawer of my desk,” Hartley said, when they passed the library door. “And take out whatever money is in there. Give it all to Sam for repairs and tell him he can have whatever else he needs.”
“I don’t know if he’ll take kindly to that,” Alf said doubtfully.
“The Bell is his life.” Hartley held himself up against the doorframe. “I only want to help him have that.”
“Maybe you ought to tell him so yourself.”
Hartley shook his head. It felt like it was filled with sludge where his brains ought to have been. “I can’t do that. It’s better if he stays away from me.” The events of last night were slotting into place, and he remembered stray words from a man he thought was a constable. Hartley had been terrified of the man, having gotten him mixed up with his godfather. Sam had risked his own safety by bringing him home, and Hartley knew that he needed to return the favor by not exposing Sam to any more danger.
It wasn’t until late that afternoon, when the crowd of gawkers had thinned a bit, that Sam ventured to reenter the Bell. It hadn’t been a complete chimney collapse, and for that he ought to be grateful, several people cheerfully assured him. And he was grateful: a chimney had collapsed on Shoe Lane a few years earlier, and five people had died, not to mention the building being destroyed. But, surveying the ruins of the taproom, Sam reasoned it might as well have been destroyed. He’d never manage to repair the building. He’d certainly never reopen the Bell.
Everything he had worked for was gone, and he wouldn’t get it back. The Bell had been his life, his home, the center of all his hopes. When he had buried Davey and stepped away from the ring for the final time, he had gone directly to the Bell. Between him and his father, they had seen ten lifetimes’ worth of blood and sin and evil. He had hoped to use the Bell to balance the scale in the other direction, even if all his work amounted to only a pebble against the mountains of wrong that had been done. Without the Bell, he didn’t even know who he was or what he was for.
“It’s not that bad,” Nick said, coming in from the kitchen.
Despite himself, Sam almost smiled at his brother’s unflagging optimism. “Three walls and a roof good enough for you?”
“Nah, it’s got four walls in there, only a little hole in one of them.” The kitchen had originally belonged to one of the neighboring buildings, so it was set off to the side of the Bell and had been spared the bulk of the damage. “And the stove still works, so I’ll go on making pies just as I did before you bought the Bell. And if you help, we can sell them as fast as I can make them. That’ll do for a bit.”
It would do, and for more than a bit. A person could make a living selling pies, which is precisely what Sam’s mother had done. She had gone to markets, fairs, hangings, all the usual places. “All right, then,” Sam said, not wanting to crush his brother’s hopeful mood. “And will you sleep in the kitchen?” Even Nick would have to acknowledge that the upper floors weren’t safe.
“About that,” Nick said. “Kate agreed to have the banns read starting this Sunday. So I might as well go on staying with her.”
Sam managed a smile. “I’m glad. Good for both of you.”
“Don’t make a fuss in front of Kate. She’ll have my hide.”
Nick left, promising to return in the morning after doing the marketing. Sam had just enough good sense not to attempt to climb the stairs to see whether any of his belongings were salvageable, but not nearly enough sense to find someplace more suitable to spend the night, so he bedded down in the cold kitchen. After a while, Daisy appeared and curled around his feet, and Sam let himself drop into an uneasy sleep.
When he opened his eyes, a faint light was coming through the broken window. It was late enough in the year that this dimness could mean dawn, dusk, or anything in between. The clock had been destroyed by a falling brick, so time hardly existed at all, although the emptiness of his stomach argued that it had been a good long while since he had eaten. A sound came from the courtyard. Muffled swearing, as if someone had stubbed a toe on one of the stones and bricks that now dotted the ground behind the Bell. Sam hoped whoever it was broke a bone. Then Sam registered that there was no good reason for anyone to be behind the Bell. Somebody had probably decided to help themselves to the ale, or the contents of the till, or whatever else they could carry off. Sam grabbed a fire iron and stepped into the darkness.
He didn’t see the man right away, only a shifting in the shadows. He gripped the iron harder. Then his eyes adjusted to the dark and he could pick out a slight silhouette.
“I hope that’s you, Sam,” said a voice from the darkness. “Otherwise I suppose I’m about to get myself murdered.”
“Alf?” He lowered the iron. “What are you doing here? Is it Hartley?” he added, a sick queasiness seizing his insides.
