A Night at the Inn

Ages ago, the little wayside inn had been a busy establishment, serving the travelers who passed by at a near constant rate. The road, which had years before provided a steady source of income for the hostelry’s owners, had widened to the point that there was no more than a yard or two between its edge and the front door. There had always been a cheerful glow from within, welcoming weary souls, inviting them in from out of the elements. Locals would gather there, sharing a few pints with neighbors and mingling with newcomers. Gossip was exchanged over its tables and politics debated. It had been full of life once…

Things had changed dramatically after the bridge had been built downstream, though. It was a wide, strong bridge, eliminating the need for people to make the forty-mile trek to the main road by way of the ford just down the road from the little inn. There were still travelers, of course, usually those with a reason to use this particular route, but they were far fewer in number than they had been at one time and usually went on their way without so much as a glance at the building. The structure had never been remarkable, but now there was even less to recommend it to passers-by. The weathered wooden sign over the door hung askew on its one remaining rusty hinge. Mud and dust that had been kicked up by the infrequent traffic remained unwashed from its windows and the oak door stuck so hard and fast at times that potential guests often continued on, thinking it locked.

On the other hand, the place was dry inside and that was all that mattered to the two men who managed to push their way past it that night. They shook the rain from their coats and removed their hats, spilling what seemed to be an ocean’s worth of water on the dusty floor. After stamping a few times to remove the mud from their boots, they crossed over to the fireplace, rubbing their hands together and holding them eagerly over the blaze.

The innkeeper, roused by the sound of their entrance, poked his head into the room, his round face falling a bit as he saw them. He had become unaccustomed to guests and found it rather a nuisance to be stirred from his pleasantly sedentary life to serve them. He cast a critical eye over the two. One tall and lanky, his trousers too short by an inch and the elbows of his tired wool coat inexpertly patched; the other athletically built and of medium height, sporting a midshipman’s coat with the white collar patches removed. He was either very newly commissioned or too poor to afford the uniform his station demanded. Given his friend’s appearance, the innkeeper assumed the latter. In any case, he did not hold out much hope of theirs being a profitable stay.

Nonetheless, he greeted them with feigned cheerfulness, and after inquiring after their horses, offered them ale and supper and asked if they needed a room for the night. The taller one hesitated, subtly running a hand over his pocket as if to remind himself of how much money was there before reluctantly agreeing to a meal. There was no such delay from his companion, however. The would-be lieutenant happily accepted the offer, announcing that he had a craving for plum duff afterwards (if it was to be had) and that the sooner the ale could be brought, the better and that, yes, they would need a room. With a nod and a prayer that his young lodgers would be able to afford such bounty, the innkeeper withdrew to shoo his wife into the kitchen…

*****

Horatio, his belly now full despite the unsatisfactory nature of the meal, cast a dubious gaze about the room to which their host had shown them. He could not make out much in the darkness. It was his misfortune that his vivid imagination only too readily filled in the details of what his eyes could not see.

He looked sidelong at Archie, who, remarkably aware of his friend’s thoughts, merely shrugged with resignation. "It’s only for one night. Better in here than in that mess out there," he contended, gesturing towards the window.

Hornblower wrinkled his nose at some unfamiliar, but rather revolting, smell. "You seem very certain,"

"Don’t be so fastidious," Archie plopped down on the bed, kicking off his boots before stretching lazily across it. "You’ve slept in worse…"

"Not by choice," Hornblower mumbled. He threw one more look around what he could see of the room before crossing over to the bed and placing his candlestick on the tiny night table next to it. The bed ropes gave an oddly foreboding groan as he sat down to pull off his own mud-encrusted boots, but Horatio was so glad to get off his feet, he paid the sound hardly any mind. His back was sore, his thighs were killing him, the inside of his knees seemed as though they had been scraped of every bit of skin on them and he was, in general, wishing that his entire body would simply go numb. Except, of course, the one place that currently was numb and that area, he was certain, was never meant to be so.

They had been out all day—at Archie’s insistence. Hornblower had never been enamored of riding, but he had kept his thoughts (and any mention of his aching backside) to himself. Still, Archie may have sensed his discomfort. As the daylight had begun to fade, he had mentioned that it was but five more miles to his family’s estate. It was at precisely that moment when the heavens had opened up on them, and thus, they had found themselves here—though where ‘here’ was, Hornblower was uncertain.

"God, I didn’t realize how tired I was," Kennedy groaned, forcing himself to sit up so that he could strip off his rain-soaked jacket and trousers. He tossed them over the back of a chair in the corner. "Mattress is probably all wet now," he grumbled. "Here…stand up and we’ll flip it over."

Hornblower rose, moving his boots against the wall before helping Archie to turn the mattress onto its other side, trying not to gag on the rank odor that inevitably rose from its disturbed depths. He shot a glance at Kennedy, wondering when the floodgates of the infamous Kennedy candor would open and all manner of ruthless comments regarding their lodgings would come tumbling out. But Archie remained mute on the subject, and Horatio, seeing no sense in whining about what could not be changed, and even less in irritating his friend with his petty complaints, did likewise. The sheets at least had the appearance of having been washed, he observed, as he handed them to Archie to spread onto the bed. In silence, he removed his own wet outer garments and climbed into bed, with only a mumbled ‘goodnight’ to Kennedy before he blew out the candle and closed his eyes.

Extreme fatigue got the better of extreme discomfort, and he’d actually succumbed to a rather deep sleep, only to be awakened with the very odd notion that someone was tapping on his head. He had ignored it until the sensation had fully seeped into his consciousness, but now that he was on the brink of full wakefulness, he could not.

"Archie…" he growled, his eyes still closed. Being the first to fall asleep around Kennedy had always been a risky business. To Archie, tormenting a reposing innocent was a capital bit of entertainment, and he did it with flair. Cleveland fell asleep once on his right side only to wake up the next morning with no whiskers on his left. Hether could recount more than one embarrassing incident involving a bowl of warm water. For his part, Horatio had yet to forgive Archie for the night his clothes went missing (which might not have been so bad had it not been for the inconsiderate French frigate which required Mr. Hornblower to report to the quarterdeck wearing nothing more than his nightshirt). It was a maddeningly annoying habit and one that Horatio was in no mood to tolerate tonight. Happily, at the sound of the rasp in his voice, the tapping ceased…

…only to start once more ten seconds later.

"Damn it, Archie!" Hornblower hissed, not amused in the least. Again, the tapping stopped.

And again, it resumed soon afterwards.

Irritated to no end, Horatio reached up and grabbed at the offending hand, fully prepared to break it at the wrist if necessary. But the "hand" was much smaller than Archie’s and…hairier. And the surprised squeak at the unexpected capture did not come from Kennedy’s mouth. Hornblower swallowed, his eyes finally opening as he brought the hand forward with a fervent prayer that Archie’s arm would reluctantly follow. But Archie did not resist the move in the least—in fact, he remained uncomfortably still while the "hand" squirmed in Hornblower’s grasp…

With a curse, Horatio hurled the mouse across the bedroom. He heard it give another startled squeak as it flew through the air, landing with a soft thud at the end of its flight. For a moment, there was no sound—presumably the rather abrupt stop had stunned the animal—but it soon recovered its wits, frantically scurrying away before a worse fate could befall it. Hornblower had not intended to launch the poor creature as he had, but he had not expected it to bite his palm, either. For a while he lay unmoving in the bed, listening intently, expecting to hear its scratching or feel its whiskers tickling his face at any moment. After a minute or two, though, it seemed clear that the mouse was not going to return. Rodents did not frighten him—life aboard ship would have been a misery if they had—but there was something about the thought of one crawling on him that was simply insufferable. He allowed himself a shiver of revulsion. Rest would not come easily now, he was certain, but he forced himself to close his eyes. And, seeing no other means of prompting sleep besides distraction, he began reciting Latin verbs in his head.

But once again, exhaustion trumped all other impediments to slumber. He found himself pinching his brow, trying to shake off a sleepy delirium as a hoarse whisper came to him from the dark.

"Denny!"

He tried to ignore it, foggily concentrating on the task at hand. He could recall ‘sum, es, est, sumus…’, but could not quite remember if he had progressed any further. Struggling to focus, he attempted to begin again, his weary brain puzzling over how one would go about conjugating ‘Denny’…

"Denny," came the whisper again, this time followed by a rough hand shaking Horatio’s shoulder. "Denny, wake up!"

"Oh, for God’s sake…!" Hornblower moaned, feebly pushing the hand away.

As if it weren’t enough that the intruder smelled as though he had been marinated in gin, he seemed to find it necessary to lean into Horatio’s face so that the lieutenant might get the full effect. "I can’t find it, Denny," the man whimpered.

Hornblower rolled onto his side to escape the foul breath. "I don’t bloody care…" he snarled unsympathetically from behind closed eyelids. "I’m not Denny."

Eventually—though not soon enough for Hornblower’s tastes—the man moved away from the bedside, his lumbering footsteps forlornly scraping across the floor of the room and then out into the hall and finally down the stairs.

Archie stirred slightly beside him. "Wha’s it, H’ratio…?" he slurred drowsily.

"Nothing," Hornblower replied, resettling on his pillow. "Go back to sleep." It was a rather redundant suggestion; Kennedy was already snoring again. Doing his best to follow his friend’s example, Hornblower yawned, sleep overtaking him this time without the assistance of a pointless grammatical exercise.

But sadly, this welcome repose had made him deaf to the sounds of the returning footsteps, and the unexpected jolt at being shaken awake with brutal urgency had his brain reeling once more with bewilderment.

"I still haven’t found it, Denny," reported the drunkard sadly. "I have to find it."

Too weary to argue any longer, Hornblower sighed. "What haven’t you found…?" He bit back the "damn you" that was threatening to burst from his lips.

"The privy, Denny…’Tain’t where it was last night…"

Horatio’s head sunk back into his pillow in exasperation. "Oh, for mercy, use the pot…Use the pot under the bed…!"

Of course, he had meant for the man to make his way to his own bed and find his own chamber pot, but when Horatio heard the man drop to his knees at the foot of his and Archie’s bed, he was beyond caring. Having some strange sot relieve himself no more than a few feet away was, in Hornblower’s opinion, a small price to pay for a moment’s peace. God knew, he snorted dizzily to himself as he tried desperately to reclaim sleep, that the fellow could miss the damn thing without significantly altering the cleanliness of the room. He was on the brink drifting off again when a garbled, "Will you hold this for me, friend…? Thankee…" made him sit up in alarm.

Denny’s mate was struggling to undo the buttons on his trousers as he danced impatiently by Archie’s side of the bed. He had placed the chamber pot on the mattress and managed to coil Kennedy’s arm around it to keep it from toppling over—apparently without disturbing Archie’s slumber in the least.

Horatio jumped up from his place, grabbing the empty chamber pot and the arm of the drunkard and hauling him physically out of the bedroom. While there might have been some satisfaction in seeing Archie repaid an hundredfold for the tricks he had played on his dozing shipmates, Hornblower knew better than to think he could ever live with himself had he allowed such a thing to happen.

Once in the hall, he shoved the pot into the startled man’s hands and started back towards his bed. He turned a deaf ear to the drunk’s whimpering behind him, uncaring that the man probably lacked the coordination at the moment to undo his trousers. Sleep was beckoning…and even the rancid mattress of the public rooms seemed welcoming now.

"Oh, Denny…Denny, help me!" the man sniveled as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

Horatio cursed silently to himself, and, wondering if it were possible for a man to visit several circles of hell within the space of one night, he turned around…

*****

The blue-black sky was giving way to a softer crimson when Hornblower returned to the room. Uncertain that he would be allowed to sleep otherwise, he had gone to the trouble of settling the drunk into a bed of his own. The alcohol had done its work—mere seconds after his head hit the pillow, the man was snoring loudly. Plodding back to his own bed, Hornblower contemplated that Denny had been a prudent fellow to flee as he had, even if he, personally, could not appreciate the fellow’s disappearance. He sighed as he looked down at his own companion, still sleeping soundly, one arm still crooked to embrace a missing chamber pot.

With red-rimmed eyes, Horatio plopped down wearily onto his side of the bed. There was a sudden snap as he did, though he could not tell from whence the sound came. Without warning, the edge of the mattress fell away from him and Hornblower found himself folded double between the bed frame in front and the mattress behind with parallel bed ropes on either side, his arse on the floor and his feet in the air.

Stunned to find himself in such a position, he merely sat, jack-knifed in the most ridiculous way as Archie slept on.

And then, Horatio Hornblower began to giggle.

He giggled maniacally, laughing even harder when his first futile attempts to remove himself failed. He could envision Archie’s reaction in the morning, when Kennedy found his friend looking very much like the letter ‘V’ in one of those horrible children’s picture books. Archie would keel over in hysterics, no doubt. And despite the fact Horatio knew how humiliating it would be, his overtired brain could not motivate itself to do anything but snigger at the moment.

At last, straining against his aching joints, he managed to heave himself out. He retreated to the corner, giving one last glance to the pink-gold light streaming through the window before dropping recklessly into the chair and not caring a fig about how much it had hurt when he had done so or that he was sitting on Archie’s still-wet clothes. He leaned his head against the wall and, ignoring the sound of the crowing cock outside, Horatio fell asleep.

"What on earth are you doing here, you clot? If you had wanted to sleep in a chair, you might have saved yourself the shilling for the bed…!"

Hornblower opened his eyes slowly. Archie was grinning, damn him. People who were cheerful in the morning deserved to have rude words said at them—and said in abundance—but for the life of him, Hornblower could not conjure up the energy to utter them. "Couldn’t sleep," he drawled lazily instead, his heavy lids drifting closed once more.

Another tap on the shoulder, this one rougher than before, coaxed a growl from Hornblower. He squinted up at Archie in irritation.

"C’mon, H’ratio…We need to go." Kennedy tugged on the coat and trousers beneath his friend, jostling him mercilessly in the process. "Unless, of course, you want to be charged for another night."

If there was any justice in the world, Hornblower mused as he stood with a sigh, he wouldn’t be charged for the first night, but, once more, he kept his thoughts to himself.

*****

Puddles covered the muddy ground, the only reminders of last night’s blustery winds and torrents of rain. Now, every one of them cheerfully reflected the cloudless blue sky above. Even the surrounding trees could not shut out the bright morning sun. It shone with all its glory on the two lieutenants exiting the inn; one smiling and inhaling the crisp spring air deeply into his lungs, the other wincing and turning his face away from the blinding light.

Hornblower looked up as a sudden gust of wind caught the tavern sign overhead, and its one remaining hinge squealed in feeble protest. In his haste to escape the elements last night, he’d never noticed the name on the sign: Blandon Hill Inn.

"You know," Archie chuckled, following his friend’s glance, "it’s known in the area as the ‘Bloody Hell Inn’." He shrugged, "Fondly meant, of course. No palace, but it’s really not such a bad place, is it?"

That was yet another opinion Hornblower thought might be better kept to himself.