Drawn to the Flame- Book 1 Council of the Light Series

9

Bobbin went back to his ship to speak to his captain, whilst Beatrix and Clarence went shopping. Their money didn't stretch to a horse each, but they got fresh shirts and leathers. Clarence brought equipment to keep his daggers and sharp and clean. Rosa took their cloaks, and she worked on them with hides from the sheep she had been planning to take to market. When she was done, the cloaks were thick, warm and waterproof. Could double up as bedrolls for nights spent sleeping outside as well. They took the cart, packed it with the things they thought they would need, whilst Rosa spoke to her labourers and left the farm in their care.

"Between us all we have fifty silvers," Beatrix told them all, "that's all that's left now we've gone shopping."

"We're rich," Clarence laughed. "Beyond our wildest dreams."

"We're scuppered if we have to pay more than one silver for a room a night. With the food costs too-" Bobbin grumbled, as he gave them each a thrupenny on a leather throng. "This token will identify you as friends of the Sailors guild and it'll get you a beer and a space by the fire for ten coppers in most port and riverside towns."

"Is your captain happy for you to go?" Beatrix asked

"A life debt is a life debt, I know where to wait to get picked up again," Bobbin shrugged as he took a pack from Rosa and put it onto the cart. "Pennies by the fire," he sang with a smile "silver for a bed, and a galleon for the stomach of the woman I did wed."

"I can't stand that song," Rosa moaned as she climbed up to the driver's seat. "Are you all ready?"

They set off half an hour later. Almost everybody bar Beatrix had a last-minute remembrance that drew them back to the farmhouse. Clarence pulled his cloak around him, put his hood up and decided that whilst he could find it, some rest would be welcome.

Beatrix didn't say much to Bobbin. At first, she asked about life as a sailor, but his lengthy explanations regarding the weather gauge and sail plans reduced her questions to increasingly bored utterances to assure him she was still listening. She never does that with me, Clarence thought to himself with satisfaction. When Bobbin started showing her various scars from various accidents over the years she yawned and told him she'd not had much sleep and would he mind terribly? He obliged and went to join his sister in the driver's seat, a smug smile playing around the corners of his mouth as if he thought he had suitably impressed her.

When Beatrix settled next to Clarence he heard her mutter, "Light, protect us from narcissism and pirates."

He shushed her from the depths of his hood and heard her laughing within her own.

"Fred would have liked him," Beatrix told him. "He would have said something like he's a jolly one that Bob."

"It's an act, he's a pirate with a pirate's heart and mind," Clarence warned her. He had to keep reminding himself of it too.

~

The two horses pulling their cart could trot at ten miles a bell for around three bells on a pleasant road, but the roads were not good and going fast was painful for everybody. The cart lurched over stones and hardly made over five miles a bell. They passed through Countisbury, Oare and stopped overnight in Porlock Wier at the Clam and Dagger on the seafront. They ate fish in a watery sauce with barley oats to thicken it and drank a beer called Seagulls Roost before paying coppers for space by the fire once the drinkers had left. Three other travellers were with them: a family going to Taunton who had departed from Barnstaple. The child didn't sleep well and kept them up with half cries throughout the night. So much so that Clarence considered feeding it brandy from his hip flask to shut it up. In the morning he went to the tobacconist before anybody else was up and he got a new clay pipe, matches and tobacco leaf and he sat looking out over the sea as he smoked. The air had the cold, muzzy quality that promised rain. Breathing it made his head spin and his lungs hurt, but Porlock was beautiful. The hills rose behind it like waves pushing it back into the sea. He considered leaving them all and Jumping away, abandoning Fred and Beatrix and doing as he had thought to do before.