IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF AN AUTUMN DOWNPOUR when Tobias first met Henry Silver. Summer had come and gone, and the wood was quiet. Tobias was snug inside his neat little cottage with Pearl asleep on the hearth, tail twitching occasionally as she dreamed of catching sparrows. He had all his knives laid out in a row on the table and his oilstone to hand. He looked up through the cloudy panes of his one good window and saw the young man in a well-fitted grey coat stumbling along the track with wet leaves blowing into his face and his hat a crumpled ruin in his hands. Then Tobias didn’t even really think about it, just stepped outside and hollered for him to come in. The young man looked up with a startled expression. He had a soft boyish face and pale grey eyes, and his mud-coloured hair was plastered to his skin.
“I said come on in, you’re getting soaked,” called Tobias from his doorway.
The young man stared at him a little longer, and then carefully opened Tobias’s garden gate, closed it again behind him, and walked down the path to the cottage. Tobias stood aside to let him in. “Need some help with that coat?” he asked.
“Thank you,” said the young man, and once Tobias had taken it off him—it was a damn good coat, even Tobias could tell that, the kind so perfectly tailored it required a servant to pour you into it and peel you out again—he saw that his new guest really was soaked through. “I’ll get you some clothes,” he said.
He went into the cottage’s one other room and fetched out some of his old things. “I’m Tobias Finch,” he said as he came back to the main room. The young man was crouched by the fire. Pearl had opened slitted eyes to consider him, but she was a very unflappable cat, not likely to be startled from her warm spot by a stranger who did not disturb her.
“Silver,” said his guest after a moment. “Henry Silver.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, Mr Silver,” said Tobias, and offered him the pile of dry clothes.
Silver got changed and then sat down by the fire again. Pearl graciously crawled into his lap and butted his hand with her head to indicate he might have the honour of petting her. Tobias sat down by the window and returned to sharpening his knives. He let himself glance over once in a while, but Silver didn’t seem inclined to chatter and Tobias had never been the talkative type. He often intimidated people, being a big and grim-looking sort of fellow; he’d accepted it years ago and had long since stopped trying to be the kind of man who smiled enough to make up for it. Silver’s hair dried into fluffy curls, and although not a particularly small man, he looked like he might disappear inside Tobias’s shirt and trousers.
An hour or so went by. Silver stroked the cat, who eventually began to purr. Tobias finished sharpening his knives, put them all away in their proper places, and got out his mending. The rain was still going strong, rattling on the roof and through the trees. An occasional distant boom meant there was thunder in the wind somewhere. “Might go all night,” he said at last, owning the truth. “You can have my bed.”
“They say a madman lives in Greenhollow Wood,” said Silver, looking over at him.
“Who’s they?” said Tobias.
