Jackdaw (17 page)

“And there’s the problem,” Day said. “Right. I want to talk to Spenser on his own, and Mrs. Merrick wants to interrogate Pastern about windwalking, so, Jenny, take him outside now, would you? Nothing stupid, please.” That appeared to be addressed to both windwalkers.

Jonah gave Ben a quick, worried look. Ben nodded, since he couldn’t imagine this would make anything worse.

“Fine,” Jonah said. “But you don’t do anything stupid either. My cooperation ends if you lay a finger on him.”

“Go
away
,” Day told him, and Jonah departed with the Merricks, leaving Ben looking from Crane to Day with a distinct sense of being both outnumbered and outgunned.

“Well.” Day propped his elbows on the table. “The thing is, I am not impartial here. Not at all. I saw the painter’s victims die, and Pastern could have made Lord Crane one of them when he tore that picture. I would be very glad to see him hobbled and gaoled till he’s ninety. Come to that,
you
knocked Jenny Saint out and threw her off a roof. She broke her arm and collarbone, not for the first time. I could happily lock the pair of you up for good.”

“But…” Crane said helpfully.

“Yes, thank you, Lucien.
But
.” Day looked at Ben. “Well, you tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“What I should do.” Day’s golden eyes were intent. “You claim he’s a reformed character. There’s a lot of people here who seem to agree. And, as Lord Crane reminded me, I do prefer to see people back on the straight and narrow if it’s possible to have them there. I can’t say I expected that of Pastern, and I’m not saying I’m convinced. But the fact that you two attacked my student and my”—a fractional hesitation—“friend shouldn’t make a difference to my judgement.”

“How can it not?” Ben demanded.

“Because that’s what judgement is. Now. You know what Pastern did, and you know the law. I say again, as a policeman, what do you think I should do about him?”

“What can you do but arrest him?” Ben asked. “That is, what are the choices?”

“Whatever I want them to be. I’ve resigned. I’m not a justiciar any more. I’m acting as a private citizen.” Day read Ben’s face and added, “If you’re planning to challenge my authority, don’t. You know what my authority is.”

“Being stronger than us?” Ben took a deep breath. “That’s not right, sir. Not right, and not just.”

“No,” Day said. “That’s practitioners for you. It’s why a practitioner who goes bad must be stopped, one way or another. So why don’t you tell me what way you’d choose?”

Ben looked between Day and Crane, over at the wall. Somewhere out there Jonah was in the sun and the wind. He should be soaring.

“I can’t say…” He cleared his throat. “I can’t say you should let him go. Not in the law. I know what he did. There’s crime and there’s punishment, that’s how it works. But—” He looked back at Day, praying for understanding. “But that shouldn’t be all. What’s the good in the law, in telling people what’s wrong, when they never get told what’s right, or have a chance to do it?”

Day was watching him, eyes intent. “Go on.”

“The law didn’t protect Jonah when his parents threw him on the street to starve. The law did nothing when he was left with, with
slavers
, by the justiciary—”

“What?” Day said sharply, and then, “In Cambridgeshire?”

“Yes.”

“The Collinses.” Day sat back. “Pastern was one of their victims? I see. I…didn’t know that.” He chewed his lip. “No. It may interest you to know that the Cambridge justiciary did finally catch up with them a few years ago, and that they were not offered mercy. Carry on.”

“Someone should have helped him,” Ben said. “You take a child, or a man down on his luck, and give him no help, just kicks, and make it so that any way he turns breaks the law, and then tell him he’s a criminal. It’s not right. That’s not how it should be.”

“Good Lord,” Crane said. “The copper’s a Radical.”

“I’m not,” Ben said, the denial instinctive.

“It wasn’t a criticism. I found myself that a brush with the law from the wrong side gives one a much more nuanced appreciation of crime and punishment.”

Day sighed. “Do be quiet, Lucien. Spenser, I fail to see how your eloquent defence ties into the fact that Pastern was a professional thief for years, but do continue.”

“That’s all. I know he’s done a lot of bad things, but Jonah’s not a bad man. He’s not…like other people, but I don’t know how many of you practitioners are.” Crane’s expression suggested he agreed with that. “But he’s got a chance now—with honest work to do and people who treat him decently and someone to show him right from wrong—”

“Some might suggest he could have taken up honest work at any time he chose,” Day remarked. “Or that the individual is responsible for himself, for his own actions and morals—”

“No. Or—yes, but— For God’s sake, I can’t manage alone. I need other people so I can be better myself. I need to know who I’m doing the right thing
for
. I need help sometimes. Don’t you?”

“He’s got you there,” Crane said.

“Perhaps. All right, yes. Granted. But… I could be persuaded that Pastern behaving himself, out of sight and out of mind, would be the best outcome for everyone—you, us, the Met and my people. The damage has been done, the wounds are healing, and there’s something to be said for letting them scar over. But I need to know he would stay out of sight, because if he causes any more trouble it will rip those wounds back open, and affect a lot more people than just him and you.” Day looked at Ben, eyes very golden. “I need an honest answer. I won’t repeat it to him. Do you truly believe he’s trustworthy?”

“He’s done nothing wrong here—” Ben began.

“In three months. Remarkable.”

“We only heard of him via the pawn shop,” Crane observed. “And we wouldn’t even have been in the country to hear that if Mrs. Gold didn’t have the gestational period of a pachyderm. I thought those babies would never appear. It was like waiting for the Second Coming.”

“For heaven’s sake, Lucien!”

“He’s done nothing wrong here,” Ben repeated, loudly. “I don’t believe he will. I trust him, and I’m staying with him. Whether you hobble him, gaol him or leave him alone; here or in Land’s End or John o’Groats. I am staying with him, and he is staying with me, and I can’t promise he won’t do anything reckless ever again, but I trust him to try his best. I’d bet my life on that. I
have
bet my life on it. If you need a stake, or a surety for his good behaviour, or anything else, I stand for him. For God’s sake, Mr. Day, give him a chance.” Ben knew he was pleading, didn’t care. He’d beg on his knees if he had to. “He hasn’t had many.”

“I can’t comment on Spenser’s judgement, Stephen,” Crane said. “But I would remind you I won my bet this morning.”

“And I’ll pay up tonight.” Day’s voice was quite casual but the look he got from Crane in answer made Ben flush. Day caught his expression and gave a little, rather self-conscious shrug.

“Judging by my narrow escape from lockjaw this morning, there are quite a few people placing faith in Pastern,” Crane went on, not noticing or, more likely, ignoring that brief connection. “And if you can just bring yourself to join them, there’s a ship waiting for us at Plymouth now.”

“Thank you, I’m well aware that’s your reason— What was that?” Day was on his feet as the distant shriek cut through the air. Ben leapt too, in immediate panic. It was a woman’s cry, and he sprinted for the door, praying.
Jonah, Jonah, please, nothing stupid, not now…
He ran through the kitchen, into the garden, came to an abrupt halt as he saw what was happening, and was sent stumbling by Crane’s sizeable frame colliding with his back.

Dora leaned on the fence, one hand clutching her heart, mouth open. Merrick was beside her, shaking his head. The windwalkers stood together. Mrs. Merrick’s eyes were wide with excitement; Jonah wore a manic grin. And in the air, Agnes was windwalking. The little girl squealed with glee as she hopscotched madly through the sky, ten feet above the lush grass.

“Oh my God, it’s another one,” Crane said.

“No, that’s Pastern doing it.” Day gazed up. “Good Lord, he’s talented. That’s astonishing.”

“It’s wonderful,” Ben said. Agnes shrieked his name, flailing her arms. He waved up and saw her laugh. “You have no idea how wonderful it is.”

“Look at that.” Dora came over, head tilted back, watching her daughter. “My Agnes, flapping round like a kite. Lord above. That Jonah.”

“What if he drops her?” Day asked, and got a look that should have made him curl up like a salted slug.

“If I thought he’d drop her,” Dora said, voice pure ice, “then I’d not let him do that with her. Would I?”

“No, ma’am,” Day said meekly. “I beg your pardon.”

“Right.” Dora folded her arms meaningfully. Day glanced up at Crane, who moved smoothly over to speak to her. Day tapped Ben’s arm and nodded over at the fence, indicating that Ben should follow as he walked a few steps away from the others.

Day propped himself against a fencepost and leaned back, watching Agnes in silence for a moment. Something relaxed in his face as the child shrieked with joy, the rigid, implacable, professional expression dissolving into an oddly endearing lopsided smile. This was what Day looked like when he wasn’t a justiciar, Ben thought, and a tiny, painful hope grew.

“I’m dancing!” Agnes whirled around.

“Keep moving!” Jonah yelled, grinning, and Mrs. Merrick sprang into the air with a whoop that made her husband laugh aloud.

“Incorrigible,” Day said to himself. “I’m surrounded by incorrigibles.”

“Mr. Day?”

Day glanced over at him, back at Jonah and over at Dora. To Ben’s incredulity, she actually seemed to be dimpling under the relentless pressure of Crane’s charm. Day caught his expression and gave a little exhalation of amusement. “She’ll be putty in his hands, fear not.”

“She’s nobody’s fool,” Ben said defensively.

“I’m not suggesting she is. Well, nor am I, come to that.” Day shrugged. “I’ve had occasion to remark, charm’s a dangerous thing.”

“There should be a law.”

Day looked up at him with a quick grin. “There really should. ‘Impeding the rational action of others by the use of charm, good looks and irresistibility—’”

“‘A sentence not less than six months’,” Ben completed. “With hard.”

“It’s the only hope for we lesser mortals.” Day let out a long sigh and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Oh Lord, Spenser. I used to have morals.”

Ben knew exactly how that felt. He wondered if Lord Crane might be almost as disruptive as Jonah to a plain man’s quiet life. “So did I.”

“
Don’t underrate yourself. You seem to be doing rather a good job bringing Pastern up to your level. Whereas my standards are eroding by the day.” The foxlike smile twitched at Day’s lips. “Look, I can’t clear his record. If he gets picked up by the justiciary, he’ll have to take the consequences. But, God help me, I will send a note to London to say that it was a false trail and there’s no sign of him in Cornwall. If you make me regret this, I will take it very personally indeed.”

Ben swallowed, hard. “We won’t. I swear it. Thank you.”

“Good luck, Mr. Spenser.” Day shot him a quick, shrewd glance. “If I may say so, Pastern is a great deal more fortunate in you than he deserves.”

Ben felt himself redden. “No, he isn’t.”

“He really is. But he knows it, and that’s something. Right. I’d say we’ll leave you to it but…” Day looked up, in time to see Agnes take a flying leap into Mrs. Merrick’s arms, accompanied by a chorus of shrieks from air and ground, and the clear, joyous peal of Jonah’s laughter. “Just now, I don’t think we’ll get Jenny out of here at gunpoint.”

“She can’t read, you know,” Jonah said that night.

“Who, Mrs. Merrick?”

“Mmm. Same as me. The letters dance, she says. Day thinks it’s to do with the windwalking somehow.”

“Really?”

“So she says. I like her.” Jonah lay on his back. He looked half-asleep. Ben wasn’t surprised. The two windwalkers had spent the rest of the morning in a clifftop race of astounding recklessness, returning breathless, windswept and on first-name terms. It clearly hadn’t crossed Jonah’s mind that Merrick might not want his youthful wife swept off by a handsome young man.

It hadn’t seemed to concern Merrick in the slightest. He and Crane had propped up the bar for a couple of hours, swapping increasingly unlikely stories of foreign travels amid a growing crowd of fascinated locals, until the windwalkers had returned and the group departed. Ben had given Day his letter to post in Plymouth. He thought he could trust the man to understand its importance.

The night in the Green Man had been riotous, partly with relief and gratitude at Jonah and Ben’s escape, partly because Crane had asked that they should buy every man a round on him as what he called, meaninglessly but effectively, “an apology for the misunderstanding”, and left enough money to keep half the village drunk for a week. Dora was rationing that, but it had still been something of a party, with Jonah presiding, giddy with release.

At last they had collapsed, exhausted, into bed, where the iron shackle still hung from the hasp behind them.

“Did you apologise for us throwing her off the roof?” Ben asked. “I meant to, but—”

“Oh, she got over that ages ago.” Jonah grinned sleepily at the ceiling. “Doesn’t hold a grudge, Jenny. Unlike her husband.” He waved his hand airily at Ben’s forehead, which had an impressive bruise developing from that bang against the floor. “Shame she’s going away. Where’s Constantinople?”

“Turkey, isn’t it? Why?”

“That’s where they’re going. Paris and then down through…places, I forget, to Constantinople and along whatever the Silk Road is.”

Ben had no idea and just hoped it was far away. He rolled over on one side, watching Jonah’s face. “Do you want to travel?”

“Me?” Jonah looked startled. “God, no.”

“You sounded…”

“No.” Jonah rolled over as well, facing him. “I’ve…I’ve had adventures. I’ve done rooftop escapes and lawbreaking and things, and it’s horribly uncomfortable, and I’d rather be here. I like it here. I just want to walk the wind, watch you play rugby. Make kites for Agnes and do things, when I can—Florrie Tapley’s roof is in a state, you know, I want to have a look at that—and come to bed with you at the end of the day. I’ve stopped running.”