Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (13 page)

“Let us see if Theodore has a guest room for the night.”

Gaston was not overly pleased at this suggestion, but he acquiesced relatively quickly, and we turned up New Street. I soon spotted Theodore’s shingle, well lit by a lantern, as we approached the intersection with High Street. The house was truly twice the size of his last one, at least in the vertical dimension. This dwelling was no more than ten feet wider than the last, but it was a solid three stories with a gabled fourth. Warm and inviting light spilled from the lower windows into the twilight.

We knocked, and a dignified Negress answered. I was not sure if she spoke English, but I gave our names and she nodded cordially and let us into a small foyer before withdrawing to announce us.

Theodore was embracing us mere seconds later. He ushered us into his office, which was separated from the entrance hall by a set of double doors. Rachel, or rather Mistress Theodore, peered at us from a second doorway leading into a back room. Seeing who we were, she nodded politely and left.

“I am so very pleased to see both of you,” Theodore said, as we sat about his new desk, a massive teak piece that dwarfed his former dining table.

“We just arrived this evening,” I said.

“Alone?”

“Nay, with our shipmates. They are at the house.”

He grimaced. “I have seen the house.”

“Striker promises to compensate us for the damages,” I said.

“Where will you stay until repairs… and cleaning, can be accomplished?”

“I am glad you asked.” I grinned. “I hate to trouble you, but might you have a guest room we may avail ourselves of for the night?”

He laughed. “I wondered why you came to me so soon. Of course.

You are very welcome, and I will not hear of your staying elsewhere until your house can be made suitable.”

“Thank you. It will not be for long. We plan to sail before the Twelveday.”

“So soon?” he asked with some small alarm. “I heard Morgan planned to sail late in January at the earliest, after the cane harvest.”

“We wish to provision first,” I said. “Do you have need of me?”

He sighed, but Mistress Theodore and the Negress entered before he could speak. They bore trays of wine, cheese, biscuits, and fruit. We stood. My stomach growled at the smell of food.

Theodore chuckled. “You can join us for dinner as well.”

“Thank you. Mistress Theodore, you look well,” I told her in all sincerity.

She looked truly healthy, though a touch heavy: as pregnant women are often wont to do even before their bellies truly show. Beyond her being with child, I thought perhaps some of her radiance was due to the lovely yellow of her dress. Before, I had only seen her in the plain and demure couture of the Jews, who rival the Protestants in drabness in the name of morality or some such rubbish.

“Thank you, Lord Marsdale.” Her eyes flicked over Gaston and me.

“And you two look as you usually do, but it is good to know you are well.”

“I have asked them to be our guests until their house can be made suitable,” Theodore said.

She awarded him the look that ladies give their husbands to say there will be later discussion about his judgment. Then she turned to the Negress. “Hannah, we will need a bath set in the guest room.”

The woman frowned curiously.

“Lord Marsdale is fond of bathing,” Mistress Theodore explained with a shrug.

The Negress nodded and regarded us with compressed lips and disapproving eyes, before leaving the room with decorous steps. I thought it likely she and Mistress Theodore got on quite well.

“Do you still have Sam?” I asked them in her wake.

“Who do you think will haul the water upstairs?” Mistress Theodore asked. She quickly added, “And you can’t have him to clean your house.”

“That was not the intent of my inquiry,” I said pleasantly.

“I would suggest acquiring a housekeeper,” she said. “Those two cannot be left alone, not and live like men.”

I did not need to ask which two she meant. “We have noted that.”

She smiled. “And find one that cooks pies. Pete’s over here every other day.”

“You have befriended him,” I said.

“I suppose some would consider that a blessing.” She shook her head with a sigh. “And I do, truly, but he’s a big child and he’s not mine,” she said in a softer tone.

“I understand. We will be at sea soon. And either before or after, we will do all that we are able to procure a housekeeper who can cook.”

She nodded curtly, apparently pleased she need chide me no more on the matter, and turned to her husband. “So they will join us for dinner as well?”

“Please,” he smiled.

She smiled at her husband in a truly pleasant manner. She paused in the door as she left, and awarded me a serious look. “My bed linens are new. I would appreciate them not being soiled unduly.”

I nodded with ill-disguised horror. Memories of concealing my adolescent nighttime dissipation from the upstairs maids returned to me and I wondered if we should sleep on the floor. Gaston appeared as appalled as I, and I gathered he was remembering his own childhood fear of servants.

We sat, and Theodore poured wine and awarded us an apologetic shrug. “She is a forthright woman.”

Gaston wore a mask of incredulity.

I chuckled. “Aye, but she is honest, and you are pleased to be married to her.”

Theodore looked to the doorway where she had exited and smiled warmly. “Aye. She can be very… companionable.” He seemed a little embarrassed at this admission and sipped his wine quickly.

“I am pleased you are happy,” I said. “As you are the one married to her, which is all that matters.”

“Aye.” He gave another nervous glance to the back doorway and then whispered. “Do not let her know I told you about the child, please. She feels the need to be very private about the matter.”

Gaston appeared concerned. “Does she have a good midwife? Most physicians are useless in this matter.”

Theodore nodded. “There is a well-respected woman in town, and Mistress Theodore is well by all accounts.”

“That is good to hear,” Gaston sighed.

“So, you sail within the fortnight?” Theodore asked.

“So I am told. We plan to visit the plantation. I will write my father.

Is there ought else I should do?”

“Well, there are the matters we discussed in October, and… the matter we did not.”

I frowned. He sighed and went to the shelves lining the wall to pull two leather satchels and place them on the desk. One was marked “Williams/Sable”, and the other, “Marsdale”.

Theodore spoke as he opened the Williams/Sable packet and withdrew documents. “I saw to all of the legal matters. Gaston is now a citizen and you both…”

“What?” Gaston asked.

He looked from one to the other of us and I realized something quite important.

“I forgot… to tell you, these last few days,” I said. “Theodore came in October and we parsed the French documents and…

Gaston seemed to be struggling to remember what I was talking about.

“As you were not considered a competent Frenchman,” Theodore said smoothly. “I thought it best you become a new Englishman.” He handed Gaston a document. “Mister Gaston Sable. Blame your matelot for the name if you dislike it.”

Gaston studied the page and touched his new legal name in a curious fashion. Then the tension left his shoulders and at last he nodded.

“It is acceptable,” he told us. “I did not wish to be English, and not French, but I suppose it is as it must be.”

Theodore smiled. “Gaston, no one has told the French you are no longer French. It is simply wiser if you do not go near them.”

“Ah.” Gaston nodded, and then his gaze was on me alone. “Thank you for remembering my surname,” he said quietly in French.

“I am relieved you are pleased.”

He thought on it and nodded. “Oui, I am.”

Theodore was pulling more pages from the satchel. A crude map was among them.

“What else have you wrought?” Gaston asked me quietly.

“I believe we own land,” I said.

“Aye, generous grants. Both of you and several of your associates will soon own that coast you dwelled upon. There is one grant that still needs a complete name. The governor has assured me he will grant all that we ask, but I still require signatures before the formal request is filed. I need a surname for Pete, but they have not delivered one.”

“We will see to it,” I assured him, and perused the map. We would indeed own all of the point, beach, morass, and even the semicircular bay to the north. The map had rough squares drawn in and names jotted within them: Striker, Pete, Cudro, Liam, Otter, the Bard, Davey, Julio, Gaston and myself all owned adjoining lots of land, which varied in apparent size from thirty or so acres to several hundred. Striker and I had the largest, with him owning the bay to the north and me owning the point itself.

“All of the dwellings are now on land I will supposedly own,” I noted.

“I could do little for that,” Theodore sighed. “I am hoping you can work out some arrangement amongst one another.”

“I am sure we can.”

Gaston touched the block with the name Sable. It was smaller than mine and lay east of the point proper.

“Damn you, Will,” he whispered in French. “You have made me a man of consequence.”

“I am sincerely sorry for that,” I replied, and gave him a hopeful smile.

I was relieved that his answering smile was warm and amused.

We signed our grant requests. Gaston paused for a time before signing Gaston Sable in his neat script. Once relieved of the pen, I slipped my hand under the desk to caress his thigh reassuringly; and once he set the pen down, his hand came to cover mine. A small smile graced his lips as he passed the papers back to Theodore.

“What else is there?” Gaston asked.

“I have taken the liberty of writing a last will and testament for each of you,” Theodore said, and produced two more documents for us to sign. “These name the other as the sole inheritor of all of your possessions. If you are to die together…” he spread his hands wide to indicate it would then be up to God.

“We will have to consider what is to become of the land and house if we should perish mutually,” I agreed.

Gaston shrugged. “Decide as you will,” he said to me in French. “I will not outlive you. If I should die, you know where the gold is buried.”

I made no attempt to gainsay him; and as he had been quite disimpassioned about the utterance, I was left to decide whether it was romantic or tragic. I could make no such determination. It made my heart ache either way.

“We will think on it, together,” I said.

He shrugged again.

“And now,” Theodore sighed, “we must discuss the things that you said you would leave to my discretion in October.”

I remembered what he spoke of. I looked to Gaston again. “Theodore said there were things that need be dealt with but not immediately, things of which I might not wish to hear regarding my father and the plantation. I told him that I trusted his judgment as to whether they could wait until we returned here or not.”

Gaston nodded amicably, and Theodore opened the other satchel.

“First, I was able to purchase a number of Negroes for the plantation,” Theodore said.

“I suppose we will see them when we visit,” I sighed. “And we had discussed the need for them before I left.”

“They are even more necessary now,” he said with a sad shrug. “A number of the bondsmen have died.”

“That is sad to hear,” I said.

I thought of all the men with whom I sailed to Jamaica and wondered what I would find when I visited Ithaca.

“Is the why of it known?” I asked.

Theodore shrugged. “They seasoned poorly. I know you knew them such that their names might have meaning. I will leave Fletcher to the telling of it.”

I nodded resolutely. At least good Fletcher was still alive.

“And then there are the letters from England,” Theodore said. “They arrived in September. I do not feel concern that you will fault me on withholding your father’s; but in hindsight, I feel some guilt that I did not deliver the others to you in October, because you might have wished for them. As for your father’s, I have not read his missive to you, but I know what he wrote me, and… well, I thought we would have more time to address the matter prior to your sailing again. As it is…” He sighed heavily and pushed the satchel to me across the desk.

I regarded the satchel with trepidation. I knew I truly did not want to know what Theodore thought it wise to withhold from me.

“As always,” I said, “I am sure you had my best interests at heart.”

He stood and rounded the desk to pat my shoulder. “I hope you will continue to feel so. I will leave you with it then, and inquire as to our meal.”

He withdrew through the back door, closing it after him. Gaston and I regarded one another. I pushed the satchel toward him. He opened it as if it might contain snakes he would have to kill. There were four letters. I recognized my father’s script on the first, and so did he, as he set it aside. The next had very fine and pretty writing that looked to be female in origin. The third was from Master Rucker. The fourth much-battered packet, to my utter amazement, was from Alonso, and addressed to me at my father’s estate. I was pleased it had been forwarded.

“What is wrong?” Gaston asked as I continued to stare at it.

“This is Alonso’s hand.”

Gaston glared at the packet.

“The Spaniard?” he spat.

I sighed and snatched it from him to break the seal. “It is dated the day after I left Florence.” I handed it to Gaston. “You read it and tell me what it says.”

He handed it back. “My Castilian is not proficient to that degree.”

I glanced at the last page, which contained many crossed-out words and blots of ink. “Even I will have a hard time reading it; he appears to be quite drunk by the end.”

“Read it,” he said.

“I do not know if I wish to.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Well, you throwing a jealous fit for one.”

He rolled his eyes and slumped in his chair. “I am sorry.”

“And for another,” I said, “I truly do not wish to read it yet. I can guess its contents, as it was written after he woke to find me gone. I do not imagine it to be pleasant.”