‘He does not. And I’ll thank you to leave him in ignorance.’
‘But if you’re away and he’s here when I run out of ale …’
Fergal drily assured me there’d be little chance that I’d run out of ale with Jack in the house. ‘Even if you did, he would be off down to the Spaniard with his cup and bowl, he would not need my cider. But yourself,’ he said, ‘you cannot leave Trelowarth without Danny or myself, so if the cider keeps you safe another day, so be it.’
Turning from the well he led me off again to what I hoped would be our final stop, because my legs were having trouble keeping up to Fergal’s pace. Against the north wall of the stable block stood a small shed with a rickety roof.
‘And your firewood is in here,’ said Fergal, and shoved the door open to show me the tightly wedged stacks of split wood. ‘Though with luck you’ll not have to come all this way out for it. I’ll leave a fair supply stacked in the scullery.’
When we went back to the house I discovered he’d already been hard at work in the scullery, arranging the food in the cupboard so that I’d have no trouble finding the things that I’d need to make one of his stirabouts. ‘If we have cheese, which we usually do, it will be at the back in that tin there. And this,’ he said, raising the lid of a small keg nearby and lifting a leathery long something out of it, ‘this is salt beef. Bane of a sailor’s existence, that is, but we always keep some for the Sally. I’ll leave this lot here, then you’ll need never fear you’ll have nothing to eat.’
I took the length of salt-cured meat from him, feeling its strange texture, hardened like wood. ‘And you eat this?’
‘Well, not like that, no. Break your teeth if you tried. No, you boil it and soak it to draw out the salt, and then cook it with other things into a broth. Here, I’ll make it for dinner and show you.’
He started off by showing me the way to use a tinderbox to light the fire, explaining as he went, and, while I doubted I could match his skill, at least it let me see the steps more closely than I’d seen them when the constable had done the task. And with the fire lit Fergal kept a close eye on me while he was cooking, to see I was paying attention. I was. Fergal’s hands were the hands of a hard-working man, and his knuckles were scarred from a lifetime of fighting, but he cooked as deftly as any trained chef I had seen. A true man of abilities.
‘Fergal?’
Turning around with his knife in his hand he asked, ‘Ay?’
‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘Taking care of me. I’ve never had a big brother before.’
‘Have you not?’
‘No. I had an older sister, but she died this past winter.’
He looked at my face for a moment. ‘God rest her soul.’ He crossed himself respectfully and turned back to his work.
I asked him, ‘You don’t honestly have seven sisters, do you?’
‘When did I say that I did?’
‘You told the constable.’
‘Well then, it’s certain I told him the truth, for I’d never tell lies to the constable.’
I couldn’t help smiling. ‘Me neither.’
‘See then,’ he said with a nod of approval, ‘and did I not say that you were an O’Cleary?’
The moment of companionship sat easily between us while the kettle on the hearth steamed with the scents of salted beef and boiling cabbages and carrots, and it struck me just how comfortable I had begun to feel here, even with the things I had to learn, the things I didn’t know.
‘And so the people at Trelowarth,’ Fergal asked me, ‘are they not your family, then?’
I took a minute to explain my whole connection to the Halletts, my relationships with Mark and Claire and Susan.
Fergal listened intently, as though he were storing the facts in his memory. ‘And what do they think when you vanish from their time? Where is it you tell them you’ve gone?’
‘They never know, so I don’t have to tell them anything. Things work a little differently at that end,’ I explained. ‘When I go back, it’s like I’ve never been away, I step back into the same moment that I left.’
I watched him think this over. Daniel had been right about the quickness of his mind, he didn’t miss much. ‘But the last time you went back you were in different clothes.’
‘I was.’
‘And no one noticed?’
‘I’d been walking on my own, there wasn’t anyone to see me.’ But the thought of clothes reminded me that, ‘Daniel said I ought to give my other clothes to you, so you could hide them.’
‘Did he, now? Well, bring them here then, and I’ll see what I can do.’
And that was why, when Daniel came to join us in the kitchen several minutes later, he found Fergal deep in fascinated study of my jeans.
‘You see now, Danny,’ Fergal told him, barely glancing round, ‘this is a work of genius, this is.’ And he ran the zipper up and down to prove it. ‘Look at that. I’ve never seen its like in all my years. And see this seam, with every stitch so even. Sure my own granny could never sew a seam like that, and she was known through all the county for her needlework, she was.’ He smoothed the fabric with his roughened hand in wonder and appreciation. ‘A pair of breeks as fine as this would last a man a good while. ’Tis a shame,’ he said to me, ‘that you are not a larger woman, else I could take these in trade for the trouble you’ve caused me.’