The man took an oil flask and a piece of linen from the long shelf above the open fireplace. Over the shelf hung a long gun and a couple of heavy pistols, also a seaman’s cutlass and a pair of iron wristlets. He dropped some of the oil on the rag, and began to dab his face with it, blinking his red lids like an owl.
“Take it up yourself, Nance; I’m tired.”
She looked at him with a shrewish lift of the chin.
“Tired, you great hulk! Dang those rickety stairs, they make my knees ache; a bat put the candle out last night. Mother of God! I wouldn’t be here another week but for the doubloons! Think of the smell of the sausage shops and the snug little taverns Southwark way! I would give a gold Jacobus to sniff the river mud at low water. They might take us for papists from St. Omer; as for the girl—Black Babs, she’s no more mad than I am.”
The woman had a certain air of culture—the culture, perhaps, of a bold and clever orange girl who had caught some of the courtliness of the playhouses and the gardens.
“So we are papists,” quoth the man, still dabbing his face, “and to say whether a wench is mad or not is none of our business.”
“It’s my business, Sim, to see no one drops a noose over my neck.”
“Noose be damned! When a great gentleman opens his purse, you slut, wise folk ask no questions.”
“P’r’aps not. Lift the pot off. My Lord Pomposity wishes the girl mad, I gather, and mad she will be in six months, with the winter coming—or, maybe, stiff as a frozen bird. Then it will be old Drury and Whitefriars again.”
“As likely as not. Captain Grylls will be black-guarding it this way with orders before long. They must get us fresh supplies sent in before December.”