Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (8 page)

“Thank you, and we will manage,” I murmured, and kissed his temple.

He smiled sadly and shooed me off.

I walked taller back to Pete and Striker. “We will sail. When?”

They appeared dubious, but quickly changed their mien at my glare.

“As soon as we finish careening,” Striker said. “Will you be able to assist?”

I shrugged. “We will do what we can.”

The remainder of our repast and visit passed amicably enough, with Gaston even finding amusement in some of Striker’s tales of his boyhood on pirate vessels on the seas about England. Then it was night, and the wolves found a likely hollow in which to sleep in our yard.

Gaston and I retired inside.

Gaston regarded our hammock with reluctance.

“We can be as chaste as kittens,” I assured him.

He snorted. “Are kittens chaste? I have seen them lick each other quite heartily. And puppies are worse; they are ever cleaning one another’s arse.”

“And mounting one another, oui,” I chuckled. “Nuns, perhaps.”

“I have never seen nuns sleeping together; I would not hazard to guess what goes on beneath their habits. The monks I knew were… odd at times.” He frowned. “I do not believe man is chaste by nature.”

I forced myself not to hold my breath, or release it in a sigh. He was in a curious spirit.

“May we speak of last night?” I asked.

He nodded without regarding me, and busied himself with cleaning grease off his fingers. “I feel we must.”

I sat in the interior doorway on the hammock, and dangled my feet, composing my words.

“I thought I dreamed…” I said at last.

“Will…”

“Let me finish,” I said quickly. “At first I could not separate memory from dream, or dream from reality. I feel… you have… found something you thought lost. I would say that if this is a result of your time wandering about, then it is good. And I will welcome your advances, if you would but wake me first the next time you feel the need.”

He turned to regard me solemnly. “It was not me.” At my frown, he held up a placating hand and smiled weakly. “Let me finish. Remember once when I described my madness as an unruly horse that I am unable to ride?”

“Oui. Do you feel it acts without your knowledge?” I found this alarming: I had often wondered how connected all the shadows of himself he showed when mad really were. “You have often said you do not remember…”

“Events, when it is running wild, non, not clearly, but I am there, clinging to it; I just do not have the reins. Will, the Horse has never suffered from impotence. I believe I have mentioned this: when I am mad I am quite functional. I believe I have been… hampering my function in that regard, because all thoughts of lust were part of the Gordian knot involving my sister and that night. I always felt my lust led me astray.”

“Do you feel that now?” I asked.

“Non, actually, and I feel some guilt over it,” he sighed. “Since you made me see those memories again, I have been able to examine them, and I have come to regard some things in a clearer perspective.”

I nodded. “So your time here has not been for naught.”

He shrugged. “Non, I suppose not. But my objective upon coming here was to regain my sanity, and I have failed.”

“Perhaps, yet… What do you regard from a clearer perspective?”

He sighed and looked away sadly. “I have come to see that my sister was as mad as I, or our mother. She seduced me. And I feel… betrayed in that regard. She planned the entirety of it, and cared not what would happen to me in the aftermath. She escaped her madness and pain and left me to our father’s wrath.”

I was relieved he had come to this conclusion, as it was one I had long held. Still I could see his pain.

“Oh, Gaston,” I sighed sympathetically. “And she was the only one you ever felt truly loved by. I am sorry.”

He met my eyes with a calm gaze. “And now I feel you are the only one who has every truly loved me.”

I heard something in the ether between us, the shadow of denial.

“And you do not know if you can trust me?” I asked carefully.

“Non, non,” he shook his head quickly. “I feel my madness will harm you. It is I who cannot be trusted.” He held up his hand in a bid for my silence, and I tried to still my refutation and racing thoughts.

He spoke calmly. “You once remarked that I could not fall from the horse because I am a centaur. I feel you are right, but not from the induction of the metaphor we originally established to explain ourselves in the world of wolves and sheep… rather from the perspective that I am both man and beast. I have… Plato’s allegory of the cave has occupied my thoughts a great deal. I have come to think that the Horse, my madness, is the thing you would see if you were to turn in your seat and look out the cave mouth into the light. And that the man is merely the shadow I have learned to cast upon the wall. I feel I am mad, and this rational face I show, sometimes, is merely a façade. It is a mask.”

He looked away sadly at this admission, and my heart ached for him, but his words sparked new ideas that resonated with other suspicions I realized I had also long harbored.

“May I give my thoughts, as that concept has engendered a very strong image in my mind?” I asked softly.

He nodded.

“From my seat in the cave,” I said, “I have seen you cast a number of shadows upon the wall, encompassing both horse and man. I feel you are a centaur in the light, both man and horse. And you move about, depending on... whether or not the Horse has the bit in its teeth, and thus you cast different shadows. Let me ask a thing. When have you felt most sane?”

He thought on it, and his answer was slow in coming. “When we sailed last summer, and when I lived amongst the monks. But Will, even then I felt I was in constant battle….”

“Hold a moment. When have you felt truly mad, so that there was no battling with the Horse at all?”

This answer was quick. “When I first recovered from the… flogging.”

“So, for perhaps three years of your life, you have felt mostly sane or mostly mad. And you are twenty-eight years? What of the rest?”

He frowned, but a wry smile slowly replaced it. “I see your point. I have spent most of my life betwixt the two. But Will, you do not know how very hard I have to fight the Horse.”

I clung to his metaphor. “Is that because the Horse is truly unruly and hateful of you, or because it wishes to go places faster and with less care than you feel prudent – because you feel it may lead you both into harm again? What does your Horse wish to do when it gets away from you? I know you are not truly a horse, but whenever I have had a horse refuse to go someplace, or buck beneath me, or wish to run in one direction or another, it always had a reason that made sense to it.

Perhaps a snake was emerging from the hedge that I did not see, or it heard a thing I only later discovered.”

He was thoughtful. “I see what you say, and… I must think on it.

Sometimes, I think my Horse is my soul, and it is a thing of the truth and light and cares little for civilized shadows on the wall. But then, on occasion, it delivers to me urges or thoughts I cannot abide and call myself good, and I want no part of it. If it is the truth of me, then I am evil.”I wondered what thoughts could be so very dark. “Does that relate to the events with your sister?”

“Oui and non,” he sighed. “I must think on it, truly.”

“I do not feel you are evil.”

“I try not to show you those shadows,” he said solemnly.

I thought of last night, and of waking weeks ago to find him standing over me with a knife. I had many more questions, but I kept silent as he turned out the lamp and joined me in the hammock, his back pressed to mine. I mulled over events of the last two days, truly allowing myself to remember. I winced with shame at my humiliating reaction to his assault. That was a thing I must think over and reconcile, if not remedy.

It brought to mind one other facet of the situation though.

“Gaston,” I whispered. He had not yet seemed to relax into sleep.

“Oui.”

“Last night, you stopped – or rather the Horse stopped, I suppose – when I cried out. I cannot see that as evil.”

Now I felt the tension ease from his back.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

Neither of us slept for a time. I do not know what dark thoughts he harbored, but my own swirled about chasing their tails. I laid many a curse upon his father and Doucette, as I had many times since Île de la Tortue. Gaston had been well before, to such an extent that I had not been able to comprehend his claims of madness except for rare instances. Yet, if I truly looked back over our life together, I could see hints here and there of his Horse’s antics. I knew his assertion that he has always been mad was true, though I still chose to believe his father responsible for much of the Horse’s wildness – even prior to the disastrous night eleven years ago. And I could surely blame that bastard Doucette for inciting it to run amuck these last months.

This did little to ease my troubled mind. I wished to have clear villains to revile, as I felt I had in my own life. I did not wish to blame Gaston for his Horse being an unruly creature. I could place blame for my tormented soul squarely upon two heads, my cousin Shane’s and my father’s. Then I realized even that was folly. I considered myself equally culpable, did I not? Was I not the one who taught my Horse to run instead of fight? Had I not allowed myself to be herded through life? Had I not been born with my own madness, which I too rode poorly, though with different result? That begged the question: could Gaston not learn to ride his Mount better? This, in due course, led to the allegation that I could learn to ride better as well; and that I could still blame his damned father and all the others for not teaching him how to ride in the first place.

And how apt was this allegory of a horse for our heart of hearts? I seemed to take to it well enough. Were we all not just beasts ridden by a rational soul attempting to control what God had wrought? And where was God in all of this? Was He not responsible for Gaston’s having an abundantly spirited and sensitive Horse, or my having one that was too inquisitive and favored men? And could one learn to ride from another?

And if so, how did one teach it?

I had trained a number of horses, some so spirited I was the only one they would allow to ride them. And there was a dark thought. Did I not take pride in being the only one Gaston ever handed the reins to, just as I had taken pride in being the only one able to mount my great destrier of a hunter, Goliath or the others? Was that the unworthy pleasure I took in accepting the mantle of responsibility? Is that why I felt I walked taller under its weight? And all allegory aside, was that why I took such pride and satisfaction in our love, because I was needed?

I had never been needed before; I had always been the one doing the needing in my relations with others. I had always been the boy, ever running from trouble and ever seeking some small praise, a pat on the head, or perhaps a treat. And damn it all, could I not blame my father for that as well, as I surely never received a kind word from him as all boys should? And did he not allow me to be driven from his home prior to my becoming a man? I had to teach myself to become a man, to ride my Horse, and perhaps I have done a piss-poor job of it.

How was I going to help Gaston in that light? My Horse was always running amuck, was it not? But unlike Gaston, I did not cling to it for dear life; nay, I enjoyed the ride and whooped with glee as we jumped this or that fence and chased the sheep about. Yet, was that a fair comparison? Was my Mount as feral as Gaston’s?

I saw us as horses, he a wicked black one unused to the traces or even paddocks: a wild creature of the woods, a mythic forest denizen peering into the world of ordered green fields. And I was a white creature born of those fields, but badly trained and misused, so that I trusted few and ran far. And we met somewhere in a meadow betwixt forest and pasture, and frolicked in the morning dew like colts, sometimes challenging and other times examining one another. And we would race, until we fell into step like a well-matched team, hooves striking in tandem, stride for stride.

I woke feeling I had little sleep, as if I had truly been running about all night. Gaston looked as weary as I, but we chose not to trouble one another on it, or discuss anything of merit with Pete and Striker around.

We went about the day.

It took sadly little time to pack the belongings we would leave behind in the sea trunk. We closed my crude shutters, blocked the door, and caught all the chickens we could. Then, laden with Gaston’s medicine chest, our weapons and traveling gear and the fowl, the four of us made our way down the hill to the beach.

I stopped to look back only once at my abode. It had been more a home than many places I had lived. I hoped Theodore had completed the land grants. I realized that was a thing I needed to tell Gaston of.

All were happy to see Gaston. He, of course, was not as pleased to see all of them, especially their pressing about and speaking loudly, but he made the best of it and I sheltered him as I could. That is to say, I was pleased he did not stab or even snarl at the men who I had to stop from embracing him. We could do little about their speculative looks, though. All seemed to wish to gauge his relative sanity. I understood to some degree; it was with effort that my eyes were not always upon him, wondering if this or that would upset him.

They had already begun to scrape the ship free of seaweed, barnacles, and all other manner of things that adore adhering to wet wood in the tropics. Once an area was clear, another man would apply pitch to the seams and coat the surface with tar. Meanwhile, a few men painted what they could above the waterline to protect the wood there.

Painting was not an option for the decks, but all of the vertical surfaces were thus treated. The Bard had chosen a lively blue for this coat of paint, and I thought our Virgin Queen would be quite handsome once we were done.

Gaston quickly chose to take a turn with the scraping. I was put to work stirring the tar. I was not enamored with sitting about the smoky fire, even in a fine sea breeze, but other than scraping or applying pitch, tasks we already had ample men pursuing, I have little to offer the careening process. As no one else wanted to sit about the fire with me, I was left alone, except for Davey and Julio coming to refill their tar pails.