Tanyth was mildly put out with Frank for interfering, but Mr. Pendleton looked at Frank and then back at the envelope before taking it gingerly between thumb and forefinger. “Very well,” he said in much the same tone that Tanyth had heard children agree to eat vegetables.
He tilted the envelope up to the light, pushing his spectacles up to peer closely at the seal.
“It’s valid, Mr. Pendleton,” Frank murmured.
Mr. Pendleton shot a look at Frank. “Do you know what’s in this?”
Tanyth heard Frank shuffle his feet but fought the urge to look back at him.
“More or less.”
“So you’ll know if it’s been tampered with?” Mr. Pendleton looked at Tanyth with a barely concealed accusation in his eyes.
“Oh, yes, sir. Without a doubt,” Frank said.
Pendleton sighed, took a seat behind the desk, and broke the wax seal. He removed a single sheet of paper. As he read it, the color on his face drained away and then refilled again in a rich scarlet. “This is preposterous,” he said. He looked over Tanyth’s head at Frank once more. “Mr. Crane, you cannot believe that the Royal Bank will honor this request. It’s simply not done.”
“Are you certain, Mr. Pendleton?” Frank asked. Tanyth recognized a quiet, dangerous tone in Frank’s voice and turned to look at him. He smiled down at her.
“Quite positive, Mr. Crane.” Mr. Pendleton jumped to his feet and shook the letter in the air. “To give this much to a woman? It simply is not done, sir.”
Tanyth felt caught between a whirlwind and the deep blue sea. She thumped the iron heel of her staff once on the wooden floor. “You might try talking to me, Mr. Pendleton, and explain what the issue is.”
Mr. Pendleton looked up to Frank and back at Tanyth. “Madame, Mr. Mapleton has asked me to withdraw from his accounts a sum which is completely inappropriate for a woman to have in her control.”
“How much, Mr. Pendleton?” she asked, more curious than furious, although she suspected her fury would come along soon enough. The closeness of the office after over a week on the road, the cloying scent of furniture wax, and the ludicrousness of the situation added fuel to a temper that was already dangerously close to breaking lose.
“Twenty gold crowns, madame.”
“And does his account not hold twenty gold crowns, Mr. Pendleton?” Tanyth asked.
“Of course, of course, madame, but that’s not the point.”
“What is the point, Mr. Pendleton?” Frank’s voice, calm and deceptively quiet cut through the office.
“Mr. Crane, you know as well as I that handing that much money over to a woman is completely inappropriate.”
Frank laid a hand on Tanyth’s shoulder. She felt him vibrating through it. “So if, for example, I was to request that amount, there would be no problem?”
Relief washed over Mr. Pendleton’s face. “Exactly so, Mr. Crane. I’m so glad you—”
Frank held out a second envelope. “Then perhaps you might read this letter, Mr. Pendleton.”
Mr. Pendleton smiled and took the letter. “Of course, Mr. Crane.” He broke the seal and began reading even as he talked. “Royal Bank stands ready to...” His voice trailed off and he sat back down, gingerly balancing on the edge of his chair. Tanyth could see his eyes trace and retrace the words on the page.
“Is there a problem, Mr. Pendleton?” Frank’s voice chilled even Tanyth.
Mr. Pendleton took off his spectacles to stare at Frank over Tanyth’s head. He opened and closed his mouth several times as if looking for and failing to find the words.
“Is there?” Frank repeated.
Tanyth watched Mr. Pendleton fumble his glasses back onto his face and take a moment to smooth his shirtwaist. His hands shook visibly. “No, Mr. Crane, no problem. Just one moment, please.”
Mr. Pendleton rang a small silver bell on his desk and a youth entered the room almost immediately. “Bolton, please fetch twenty gold crowns for me.”
“Twenty gold crowns, Mr. Pendleton. Yes, sir.”
“A moment, if you please?” Tanyth said.
Mr. Pendleton’s color lost some of its pastiness and he was able to almost look at her. “Yes, Madame Fairport?”
“Correct me if I’m mistaken but a gold crown is rather a heavy and unwieldy item?”
Frank snorted behind her in something that she suspected was a laugh.
Mr. Pendleton looked at her with an expression of disbelief. “Well, madame, perhaps so. Why do you ask?”
She sighed and turned to Frank. “Mr. Crane, should a frail old woman like myself be wanderin’ the streets of this fair city with that much gold on my person?”
Frank's eyes danced and his lips twitched in what threatened to be a grin. “No, mum. That might be a bit unwise.”
“I thought so myself.” Tanyth nodded as if making up her mind about something before turning to Mr. Pendleton. “Sir?”
“Yes, madame.”
“Do you think that the Royal Bank might be willing to accept a deposit from a woman like myself?”
Mr. Pendleton blinked several more times. “Well, madame, it would be somewhat irregular. You’d need to have your husband countersign and you would need to find a factor to manage your account and to make certain that only...” He saw the look on her face then and his voice petered out.
“But not as impossible as, say, giving me twenty gold crowns and letting me walk out the door with them?” she asked.
Mr. Pendleton looked up at Frank and then back at Tanyth. “Well, no, madame.”
Tanyth looked to Frank who shrugged in a “why not?” gesture and nodded.
“Then perhaps I might draw out, say, fifty silvers and leave the rest on account until I need it to book passage to North Haven? Would that be less irregular still?”
“Yes, madame, but you would still need to secure a factor to manage your account,” Mr. Pendleton said. “Under the circumstances, I can recommend any number of our people—”
“How about you, Mr. Pendleton?” Tanyth asked, breaking into his ramble.
“Me?” his voice almost squeaked. “Madame, I feel that you might find some of our other factors more to your liking.”
Tanyth looked at him. “Why?”
“Well, madame.” He sighed and saw that his secretary still stood in the doorway, ears flapping. “That will be all for now, Bolton.”
“Yes, sir.” Young Bolton removed himself but Tanyth felt certain he would be listening at the keyhole.
“My apologies, madame. We have a reputation at the Royal Bank and perhaps I took that too far.” He looked like he might strangle on his tongue. “Under the circumstances, I felt that you might find one of my colleagues less...” He groped for a word.
“Argumen’ative?” Tanyth supplied.
“Uh...”
“Hide bound, per’aps?”
“Well, um. Yes, madame.” Mr. Pendleton finally had the grace to look her in the eye and look as sheepish as a Royal Bank factor might when seated in his own office staring down his nose—at least figuratively—at a poorly dressed little old lady.
“All right then, Mr. Pendleton,” she said. “Now that we have an understandin’, I think you’d make a splendid factor, assuming you’ll have me?”
Mr. Pendleton sat back in his chair and cocked his head. “Madame?”
Tanyth leaned forward and tapped the front of his desk with her fingertips. “Please, call me Tanyth? And we got off on the wrong foot. I think we understand each other now, don’t you?”
Mr. Pendleton seemed taken aback. “Madame...er...Tanyth, I’ve never had a woman with her own account before.” He looked almost embarrassed.
“And how many of your colleagues have?”
He examined his hands. “None that I know of...Tanyth.” He looked at her apologetically. “I could make some discreet inquiries...”
“No, I don’t think that will be necessary.” She looked to Frank who merely pretended not to notice, staring straight ahead
as if nothing in the room involved him. “How do we proceed then, Mr. Pendleton?” she asked.
Half an hour later, Frank and Tanyth left the imposing stone edifice that was the Royal Bank and began working their way toward the docks. A skirling wind whipped down the alley between two buildings and carried the tang of dead fish and cold salt water. Tanyth shouldered her coat closer around her body.
“That went well,” Frank said.
“Yes,” Tanyth agreed. She looked up at him. “I do have one question, though.”
He grinned. “I expect you do.”
“What was in the letter?”
“Which letter?” He wore his innocence like a cloak.
“I will hit you with this stick, sir.” Her words delivered calmly, but Frank had no doubt that she might do just that.
“We had a little talk back in Ravenwood,” Frank said. “William is rather naïve.”
“William?” Tanyth nodded. “He thought that the bank might not deal with a woman?”
“No. He thought they would.”
“But you thought different?”
Frank nodded with a rueful grimace. “You met Mabel.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah. Of course.”
“Have you met her Matthew yet?”
“This morning. Just for a minute, why?”
“Mabel’s got the brains in that marriage. Matt’s a good man, keeps a good stable, but...” Frank shrugged.
“So?”
“So they needed to open an account for the inn. They wouldn’t take Mabel’s signature even though she brought in the money.”
“They made her fetch Matt?”
Frank nodded. “It was easy enough for him, but...” he shrugged again.
“So you figured they’d give me trouble if I tried to cash that note from William?”
“I was pretty sure of it.”
“Why didn’t William have you withdraw the money then?”
He grinned down at her. “Would you have taken it from me?”
Tanyth grinned back. “Prob’ly not.”
He shrugged as if that were all the answer he needed.
“What was in the letter, then?” she asked.
“Instructions to withdraw all our money and close the account.”
Tanyth stopped in the middle of the street and looked up at Frank. “You’d have done that?”
Frank stopped and looked back at her. “Naw, I knew he’d give in.”
Tanyth shook her head. “Why in the name of all that’s holy...?”
“What? Why would he give in? Greed. He makes a nice cut from the money we spend through the Royal Bank.”
Tanyth frowned. “Can I ask?”
“How much money?”
She nodded.
“The village has something over forty in the account. It grows a little bit each year as we make more than we spend. We have some investments that pay well.”
Tanyth gasped. “Forty gold crowns? You gave me half of Ravenwood’s money?”
Frank laughed and Tanyth nearly beaned him with her staff after all.
“What’s so funny? We have to go back there right now. This is impossible.”
Frank held his hands up, palms out in a placating gesture. “No, no, Tanyth. Not forty crowns.”
“What?”
“The balance isn’t forty crowns. It’s forty thousand.”
Tanyth felt like she’d been punched in the chest.
“The twenty crowns is about what we get for two barrels of clay.” Frank held out his hands to the sides. “It’s not a problem, Tanyth. Really.”
She stared at him.
“What is it?” He stepped closer to her and took her hand. “Are you all right?”
“You fought Andy Birchwood? Risked it all when you could have paid him off?”
Frank folded her in his arms, holding her close to his chest.
She tried to push him away. “You risked all those lives? Kurt got killed!” Her anger threatened to boil over but he held her tight.
“Tanyth, we would have paid him if it would have helped. You saw what he did at Foxrun,” Frank’s voice sounded muffled, vibrating through his chest. He held her against her struggles until she stopped pushing, then he stood back and looked down at her.
Tanyth saw what looked like tears in his eyes when she looked up and her protests died unspoken. “What? What aren’t you tellin’ me, Frank Crane?” She wanted to be angry but the look on his face made her voice come out soft.
“Andy Birchwood killed my sister.”
“All-Mother, help us.”
“After he collected all he could, he killed her and her husband. There was no proof, but we all knew the kind of man he was. We thought we were shut of him.”
Tanyth let him hold her then, and she wrapped her own strong arms around his chest, hugging back but being careful not to clunk him in the back of the head with her cast. “You never said...”
“No,” he said. “We knew what he’d do. We knew he was a murderer.”
“Did William know?” she asked, pushing back to look up into his face.
Frank nodded his head. “He knew Andy was a killer, but not who he killed. Not until...”
“Until?”
“Until after.”
“After I killed him, you mean?” Tanyth asked.
“After he almost killed you.” Frank held her close once more. “I thought he’d come after the wagon. It made more sense. I thought I was going to get a chance at him myself. When he didn’t—” His voice caught in his throat.
After a few moments, he regained his composure and took a large red handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose loudly, not looking at Tanyth.
He cleared his throat a couple of times and turned toward the docks, carefully linking her casted arm in his, before resuming the story. “So, we could have paid, but we knew—I knew—that as soon as we stopped, he’d kill us.” He looked at her, walking alongside him. “All-Father forgive me, mum, but that’s the truth of it. I’d have brought the gold back in my teeth if I’d thought it would have saved anybody.”
Tanyth felt shaken and confused. All she could do was walk alongside and shake her head. Finally she said, “But you live in huts.”
Frank’s laughter echoed off the fine, stone buildings and his laughter infected her. “Yes,” he said at last, “but they’re excellent huts.”
That set them off in more peals of laughter and they chuckled all the way to the docks, ignoring the curious looks their laughter earned them.
Chapter Fourteen:
Delayed Freight
Frank held the door for her and she sailed into the harbor master’s office, a cluttered little lobby with chalkboards around the walls and a wet wool smell that clung to her nose. A cheery bell tinkled as the door opened and closed. The clerk behind the counter looked up and glanced back and forth between the two of them. He seemed a bit confused when Frank lounged beside the door and Tanyth approached, her staff making hollow clunks as she walked.
“You’re not going to give me any trouble about buying passage, are you, young man?”
Her fierce expression must have made an impression on him. He goggled a bit but stammered, “N-no, mum. Where would you like to go?”
“North Haven.”
He nodded. “All right, mum. When would you like to go?”
“How soon can I leave?”
The clerk looked up in surprise and scanned the chalkboards. “Mum? You know North Haven is still not open, yeah?”
She looked at him with a frown. “I heard there’s a windy something we’re all waitin’ on?”
The clerk laughed politely before apparently realizing she hadn’t made a joke. “Yes, mum. The Zypheria.”
“How much longer?” she asked.
The clerk shrugged and shook his head. “We don’t know, mum. Everybody’s waiting for the Zypheria’s Call. Could be any day. Might not be for a month.”
“I’ve been hearin’ about this zypher thing f
or a couple weeks now,” she said.
“Zypheria, mum. Warm wind that comes down of the mountains out on the western end of the bight, mum. It blows the ice out along the north shore. Can’t get a ship in there until then.”
“And when it does?”
“There’s four ships in port ready to sail with supplies.” He pointed to the boards displayed around the office. “Them boards there, mum? That’s all the ships comin’ in, getting’ ready to leave, or just fillin’ in time. That board on the end? That’s ships bound for North Haven.”
She saw that the departure dates were blank and somebody had scrawled “Iced In” across the top in red chalk. She turned back to the clerk. “I see. And do any of those ships carry passengers?”
He nodded. “Oh, yes, mum. Most of ’em, but they won’t accept passage until they know when they’re leavin’.”
“Which they won’t know until...?”
“Until the Zypheria starts blowin’,” the clerk finished. “Could be any day but nobody knows for sure.”
“Seems kinda haphazard to me,” she said.
The clerk simply shrugged.
“So, if I come back in a week?”
“You prob’ly should check every day now, mum.” The clerk gave her an apologetic smile. “We just don’t know and I’d hate for you to miss it.”
“Can you send me a message?” She looked at the boy. “You do have messengers in this city, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, mum, but it’ll cost a silver—”
She slapped two silvers onto the counter. “Tanyth Fairport. I’m staying at the Broken Gate. Think you can get me a message?”
He gulped and pulled a blank envelope from under the counter. In a labored scrawl he wrote “Tanith Fairport, Broken Gate, North Haven bound” on the front and tucked the silvers into it. He then folded the envelope closed and tucked it into the side of his window. “Yes, mum.”
She smiled. “Blessed be, lad. Thank you kindly.”
“Yes’m. I’ll be sure to send it.”
Frank held the door for her and she sailed out of the office into a brilliant afternoon.
Tanyth stopped on the walk outside and surveyed the wharfs, wondering which of the many ships tied up at the various piers were waiting to go to North Haven.