Hearts of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

snorted. ‘If that were a reason for talking, we would spend
every
evening at the table.’ She scowled at Dowling, who would not take his eyes off her. ‘Will you have an ale, butcher? You look like you are about to faint.’
    ‘No, no.’ He waved a hand. ‘I will just sit a while.’
    Jane clicked her tongue and eyed him, suspicious, afore fetching a jug of ale, a cup and a dish of oysters. ‘Tell me your tale, and spin it fast, for I would go to bed.’
    Dowling smiled, hiding the expression quickly before she could spot it.
    ‘We must go away tomorrow,’ I told her, already feeling the need to defend myself. ‘And though I cannot think why I feel so obliged, I will leave you instruction should I not return for a while.’
    She leant forwards and wrinkled her small freckled nose. ‘Youwill leave me instruction? That assumes there is something you are qualified to instruct me upon. Since I have no desire to emulate your enviable ability to piss with one hand and drink with the other, I wonder what other
instruction
you feel compelled to share with me.’
    ‘Do you always talk to me like this when I come home late at night?’ I struggled to recall. ‘Perhaps you forget, you are my servant.’
    ‘No servant of yours could ever forget it,’ Jane growled, cheeks flushed. ‘Not the day of the appointment, nor the detail of each day subsequent.’
    ‘Most servants would be glad to have me as their master,’ I protested. ‘I pay you well. I send money to your brother, to the brother of your sister’s husband, and to your uncle with the swollen head. Indeed I have never declined to help any member of your family, though they are legion. Yet you talk about me as if I am the Devil incarnate.’ I suddenly remembered. ‘And I saved your life.’
    ‘You don’t send money to my uncle, for he died more than a year ago,’ she retorted. ‘And you didn’t save my life.’ She leant back and folded her arms against her plump breasts. ‘Ruth saved my life. You took the opportunity to gaze upon my naked body, and do not think I have forgiven you for it.’
    I sighed, sat down and filled my cup. We had debated many times before. In fact it
was
I, at great risk to myself, who entered my house when she suffered plague and tended to her while a drunken nurse lay slobbering and snoring downstairs. I changed Jane’s clothes when she lay in her own foulness. It was I who ejected the wretched harridan and found a new one, this Ruth.
    ‘You have gazed upon my naked body too, I reckon,’ I replied.
    ‘Aye, bathed in sweat and stinking of ale,’ she snapped. ‘For which task I could never be adequately rewarded.’ She peered out from behind strands of blazing red hair, green eyes sparkling. She was beautiful and I didn’t want to leave her.
    ‘Anyway.’ I slumped back in my chair. ‘Tomorrow we must go to Essex.’ I gazed back into her bright eyes, when usually I would look away. ‘To some small village north of Colchester.’
    Her top lip jumped up to her nose, revealing sharp white teeth. ‘Is this a riddle? You take me for a fool and I will poke out your eye.’
    ‘No riddle.’ I drained my cup and filled it again. ‘Lord Arlington summoned us this afternoon and issued those orders. We are to leave in the morning. Ask him.’ I attempted to divert her attention towards Dowling.
    Dowling buried his nose in an oyster shell.
    ‘What did you do?’ she exclaimed. ‘Spit in the King’s dinner? He might as well send you to Tyburn. I thought Arlington was your great new benefactor, your passage to wealth and fortune.’
    ‘So did I,’ I reflected.
    ‘Tell me, then!’
    I ducked quick to avoid the arm she flung at me. ‘I hoped he would be grateful I saved his life.’
    Jane glowered. ‘You stripped him naked and gazed upon his body too?’
    ‘No,’ I replied, fist clenched. ‘I saved his life. Yet he doesn’t trust me. He is afraid I might divulge the truth of his devious, black soul.’
    ‘As would I