“Did he try to hurt you again?”
“He tried, succeeded a time or two, but never got the blade in me.” Roarke shrugged, a slow lift and fall of shoulders. “The old man warned him off that when he saw how it was. As I did earn my keep.”
“Patrick Roarke never took him in, so to speak, or acknowledged him as his son?”
“Gave him work, but as for the rest, no. And I think the old man had the right of that.”
“Why?”
“Ah, genetics, I suppose. He looked nothing like the old man. Had light hair rather than dark, eyes of what you call hazel, not blue. Shorter and stockier of build.”
“His mother?”
“Brown hair, though she often dyed it red, blue eyes that leaned toward gray. We’ll say voluptuous. I made a point back then to travel to their neighborhood, get a look at her. They had rooms over the pub where she worked. I grew up in a hovel,” he added, “but their circumstances made mine near to a palace. And still …”
“Still?”
“I think the woman loved him. He had that. Knowing your enemies is a vital part of surviving, so I made it a point to know him. She never raised a hand to him, it was said, and praised him to the skies. He was a young prince in her eyes.”
Mira nodded as the picture formed. “But he wanted what you had.”
Because that wasn’t the whole of it, Roarke shook his head. “He wanted me not to exist, and to have what I had. The first I can see if I look through his eyes. I was in his way. But why he wanted a life with the old man and Meg—who had a hand like a brick, I’ll add, and used it liberally—I can’t see. He had a mother’s love in his hands, but coveted a place at the table of a man who’d beat him for sport.”
“A child—” Dennis blinked. “Sorry, interrupting. Thinking out loud.”
“Think out loud,” his wife invited.
“I’d say it’s a natural, an innate need for a child to long for a father, a mother if he lacks one. He might look for substitutes, surrogates, replacements. In this case, the boy Cobbe was told by his mother, this is your father. It may be he was born with his own cruelty, a bent toward violence. And what I know of that time and place, it could be cruel and violent, so nature, nurture, environment combined. He would have, it occurs to me, not just striven to emulate the man he believed was his father, but to outdo him, and so earn his respect and pride.”
He paused, so obviously thinking through the rest Roarke said nothing.
“A mother’s love, to such a personality, is weak, isn’t it? It’s soft, and has no real power. But the pride and respect of a father, one who lives outside the law, who takes what he wants, this would be strength. It’s a power, and one that can be inherited. Especially to a coward who believes himself brave.”
Mira smiled, squeezed a hand on Dennis’s leg. “Yes. You blocked that power from him,” Mira told Roarke. “You still are.”
“The old man’s dead.”
“That makes him more powerful. Sorry, Charlie.”
“No, Dennis, you’re absolutely right. Dead—and dead by violence—he’s an icon, a goal unattained, a right stolen from him before he could earn that pride and respect. And you’re living proof of what he never had.”
Watching Roarke, Mira sipped her wine. “What sort of work did he do for your father?”
“Well, he never had a talent for straight thievery, and had he four hands couldn’t have picked a pocket. Enforcement’s what he did to earn his place.”
“Of what sort?”
Odd, so odd, Roarke realized, to sit in this pretty, welcoming room and think of those hard and miserable days.
“If someone balked at the protection fee, Cobbe might be sent along to persuade them. Or if someone didn’t pay the old man what he deemed as his fair share of a take on a job, he might send Cobbe to collect. One way or the other.”
“How old was he when he started?”
“Ah, about twelve or thirteen, I’d wager. It sounds young, but it was a different time and place.”
“Still young,” Mira said. “And his father figure selected him to cause physical harm to others. Did he kill, even then, at your father’s behest?”
“Possibly. Probably, yes,” Roarke corrected.
“Did he ever send you with Cobbe?”
“Christ no. I was too useful to end up gutted, and the old man had sense enough to know Cobbe would at least try to do me. My talents lay elsewhere. I was born a thief.” He shrugged again. “And the need to survive honed that natural talent. I worked the tourists and the shops, and then the homes and flats of the rich. I won’t insult two people I care for by denying I enjoyed it.”
“We tend to enjoy what we excel at,” Dennis commented, and earned a flashing grin.
“True enough.”
“And how did your father treat him when Cobbe worked for him?”
“Well enough, I suppose, if Cobbe did the job in what the old man considered good time and brought back the approved amount.”
“And if he didn’t?”
“The fist, the boot—but you’d get that as well if the old man had a mood for it, and he often did. It was rarely more than that, as Cobbe did his work—and enjoyed it. I got worse, as I squirreled some of my take away. It was worth a beating to know one day I’d have enough to get out and gone.”
Roarke paused as he lifted his beer.
“You remembered something else.”
“I did, yes. A time Cobbe got the worst of it. This would be a year or more after he first knocked on the door. In he came with his day’s take, and it must’ve been enough to please, as the old man had Meg pour Cobbe a half pint. Cobbe sat, as if at home, and told the old man some tale on me. I don’t recall what it was now, or if it was truth or lie. Hardly matters. He beat Cobbe bloody for it. He didn’t tolerate whiners or rats, you see. I got bashed as well, but Cobbe took the brunt that time.”
“That would be your fault, in his mind. And still, the beating was attention. Focused on him. A kind of proof he mattered. All of this helped foster what he became.”
“Did—I can’t call him Roarke’s father, Charlie. Biology doesn’t make a father.”
At that Roarke looked down at his beer, said nothing. Could say nothing through the sheer flood of simple gratitude.
“Did he ever show Cobbe any of the pride or respect?”
To give himself a moment, Roarke sipped his beer. “Some respect, I suppose, but pride, no. And more than once I heard him tell Cobbe he had no drop of Roarke in him, and he’d crack his skull if ever he used his name as his own. He called Cobbe’s mother a whore. And sure he’d had his share of whores, but he’d know if any of them grew a brat of his in their belly. And the like of that.”
“And Cobbe took it?”
“He did, yes.”
“What did he call him?” Dennis wondered. “The boy Cobbe was?”
“Cobbe. Or sometimes Jabber if his mood was fine. As Cobbe liked jabbing with his knives.”
“And you? Is that too personal?”
“It’s not. He called me boy, or young Roarke, but most often he and Meg called me dailtín or diabhal. They didn’t have more than a handful of Irish—curses and insults. Those would be brat or devil, respectively.”