Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (89 page)

“True. I have seen many a strong man made weak in the face of it. I did not know you had been about many women with child,” I said carefully.

“My Mum Died Birthin’Me Brother. An’There Be Another When IBe Older.

And ISeen Babies Born Still. Never Seen ABabe Born Without Someone Di’n.”

I wanted to ask if the women had been in good health and well cared for, but thought better of it. I told myself not to worry over the matter: it was true, women often died in childbirth, but not all did, or neither of us would exist. Then I told the Gods I wanted very much for her to live and have a healthy child.

Gaston returned downstairs and went to rouse Agnes before joining us. “I have examined her,” he sighed, “but I know not what to look for.

She needs a midwife.”

“Let’sFetch One,” Pete said.

“Nay, well, aye,” I sighed, “but you must speak to her about it. She does not wish to because of my Damn Wife.” I quickly explained about Lady Marsdale’s behavior and claims.

Pete snorted when I finished. “That One Can Die Birthin’.”

“We can only hope,” I said.

Pete returned upstairs to speak to Sarah, and Gaston and I went to forage in the markets for food.

“Should we speak?” Gaston asked as we started walking up Lime Street.

“About this morning?” I asked.

“Oui,” he said without looking at me.

“We do not need to, but perhaps we should. Is that a thing I should expect often?” I asked lightly.

“That was an experiment,” he said quietly.

“And did you learn what you sought?”

“Oui. You love me and I am mad,” he sighed.

I shook my head and smiled. “Non, I question your observation. I love you, and we are both mad. I found pleasure in it. Not the pleasure I find in other things but…” With a sigh I explained my metaphor of being ridden and jumping.

He was thoughtful, and as we had reached the fish market, we were silent on the matter until we were returning to the house.

“It brought me great pleasure,” he said quietly when we were relatively alone. “And I am ashamed of it.”

“We are quite the pair, are we not?”

He smiled sadly. “We must belong together.”

“That has been my assumption for a time now,” I said with amusement. “I feel the Gods saw the two of us and decided we deserved one another.”

Sarah was downstairs when we returned. Though she professed pleasure in our procuring the morning meal, her stomach wanted little of it and she hurried to the back door to retch.

“She’llBe Seein’AMidwife,” Pete pronounced as he watched her run out. “Rachel’As One. Ya Need Ta Ask Theodore O’’Er.”

I had forgotten Theodore’s wife was pregnant. I sighed. “We must ask Theodore a number of things, but I do not wish for any to know we are here. Someone needs to fetch him, discreetly.”

“I will go,” Agnes said, and hurried out the front door with several dogs in her wake.

Theodore arrived as we ate. He was as always – and ever to my amazement – delighted to see us.

“Thank God you are well,” he said as he embraced me.

“Aye, and how are you? And of more import, how is Mistress Theodore?” I asked.

He sighed and appeared tired. “She is as well as can be expected.

She has been lying in for a month now, and we expect the babe any day.”

“I am pleased to hear it, and sorry we will not be here to greet the new arrival. We sail with the dawn,” I told him.

He nodded and shrugged. “I expected as much from what Miss Agnes said. Has the raiding met with any success?”

“Not really,” I sighed. “We sail for another target once the Lilly returns. And we have lost the French.”

“A pity.” He frowned in thought. “As you do not wish for any to know of your brief presence here, I suppose you will not be writing your father or… seeing your wife?”

“Those are precisely the two people I wish to avoid.”

“There are matters we should discuss,” he said carefully.

I nodded. “Let me tell you what Sarah told me, and then we can progress from there.” I relayed all that Sarah had said regarding my wife’s proclivities.

“That would be the lay of it,” he said when I finished. “I assume you will divorce her upon your return.”

“I must think on it,” I said. “Sadly, I will very likely return before she could give birth if she is indeed with child. If I could avoid her until after she gave birth to a son, I might not put her out, as it would serve my purposes. And that is why she has done this: not to cuckold me or out of love for this young fool, but to insure our mutual needs are met with all haste. She has apparently shown an unfortunate lack of discretion in the matter, though, and the talk of it will most likely sink the entire affair, even if it did meet my interests.”

He nodded sadly. “Aye, many know she has taken a lover in your absence. I would have been appalled for you if I thought you might care.”

“Has anyone written my father of it?” I asked.

“I have not,” he assured me.

“Well, do not, as of yet. Let me return from this voyage and then express outrage as is necessary. In the meantime,” I looked to the others in the room. “My sister has an announcement.”

Sarah sighed, but she informed him of her news, her concerns in being made to look the fool in my wife’s wake, and her need to meet discreetly with Mistress Theodore’s midwife.

Theodore said that all could be handled discreetly.

“Do you have the time and inclination to discuss other matters of business concerning the plantation, houses, properties, and shipping interests?” Theodore asked.

“I suppose I must,” I sighed.

Sarah chuckled at this. Gaston and Pete stood.

“Do not be alarmed. I merely need to be alone, and… I have no head for this now,” Gaston told me quietly in French.

I nodded, and he retrieved the sack with the whip from the corner and departed to the back of the house.

Sarah stood, and pulled Pete’s ear close to her lips to whisper to him before he could follow my matelot. With a mighty sigh, the Golden One returned to sitting at the table beside her.

Then, Theodore and Sarah proceeded to bore Pete and me with details of all of the business affairs we were somehow connected to. I wished to assure them that I thought all was probably well-managed, until they informed me that my uncle had taken a keen interest in the plantation and decided to manage it himself. Though he had not disobeyed my directions concerning the growing of edible food in the garden plot, or of Fletcher teaching the Negroes, he apparently agreed with everything Donoughy and every other planter from Barbados told him. It meant little change from how things had been done before; but sadly, it meant there would be little change until I dislodged him.

Of course, the truly troubling aspect of that was that the only way I could unseat him was if I did produce a male heir; which my uncle was apparently well-informed enough to realize would not legitimately come from the woman to whom I was married.

It all made my head and heart ache, and I felt great relief when they finished.

Oddly, I was the only one relieved; Pete had actually mustered an interest in it all and was asking questions and making suggestions.

I thanked them for their excellent work and excused myself.

Throughout their presentation, I had been disturbed to hear the cracking of a whip. The first weak sound had been noticed by me alone, but as he gained proficiency, and the cracks became gunshots, all about the table had begun to jump. Pete had at last gone to see what the matter was, and regarded me quite curiously upon his return. I had merely shrugged.

I now followed the sound, which had taken on a metronomic precision some time ago. I was sure the neighbors were quite displeased.

I found Gaston standing between the cistern and the cookhouse, practicing cracking the whip in midair, without it touching anything at all. I maneuvered – well out of the reach of the lash – until I could see his face. He was not himself; or rather, he did not wear his mask. I wondered if I would ever settle that matter in my mind.

I sat on the cistern and thought of what to say to catch his attention, as he had not looked my way though I was surely within his view. Dozens of inanities paraded through my thoughts, but I bit my lip and kept them in. I found myself scratching at the mortar between the bricks with my thumbnail, and a clear memory surfaced of his doing the same, in this place, just over a year ago.

So I spoke. “I remember sitting at this cistern, washing away the smell of a burning ship, and speaking of whether we would sail together or not.”

He stopped, and ever so slowly the tension departed his features and shoulders. The whip dropped to his side, and he sighed.

“I have been at it for a time now, have I not?” he asked.

“Oui. You should rest,” I said gently.

“I wish to conquer it,” he sighed, “but… the sound… bothers me, and then I wish to conquer that.”

“You will, my love, in time,” I said quietly.

He nodded. “What… If you could stand there… on that day… and speak to your self as you were then…what would you say?”

I thought on it deeply. “I would tell myself that there is far greater complexity and… poignancy… to love… life… and even lust, than I had ever dared dream. And that the red-haired stranger I gazed upon then was the key, if not the very door, to it all.”

He smiled sadly. Then he coiled the whip and shook his arm vigorously, clenching and unclenching his hand in a way I knew well.

He was numb again. I motioned him over, and he came and gave me his hand. I massaged his wrist and forearm. With a deeper sigh, he leaned his forehead to mine.

“What would you say to yourself then?” I whispered.

“To not be afraid,” he said solemnly.

He pulled free from my ministrations and wrapped his arms around me. “Will,” he murmured, “I will overcome it… my madness. I promise.”

I nodded. I did not tell him it was unnecessary. I had faith in him, just as I had faith in the Gods who had led me to him.

We made our farewell to Sarah, when she came downstairs to see us off in the hours before dawn. Gaston and I had said goodbye to Theodore and Agnes the night before. We had still not seen Rucker or my uncle; I hoped both would survive until we returned.

Pete kissed my sister sweetly in parting, and she seemed truly distraught that he would leave so soon. I thought I would always wonder how they had won one another over. Obviously, both had many admirable qualities; but I was pleased, relieved, and somewhat surprised that they had seen them in one another. As Gaston had noted, I had apparently been exercising little faith in the matter.

As we trod down quiet streets, steering our steps between darkened buildings by the light of a torch, I found that I did not regret missing the others I knew here. With the notable exception of not seeing Rucker, I had visited with and said goodbye to the three people I cared to ever see again. And now, once again, I greeted packing myself onto a vessel, with dozens of other men, to sail at peril to places unknown, and there to make war for gold, with great anticipation: and not merely because that course of action would keep me at my matelot’s side through its entirety.

There were parts of what we were to do that gave me pause and threatened to mire me in a moral quandary; but overall, it was preferable to being among presumably civilized men. The only thing that would have been better than our escaping Port Royal would have been our escaping mankind altogether; and this after yet another short visit. I truly quailed at what we do if we were forced to stay here for any length of time. How many unfaithful wives, evil cousins, commanding fathers, idiotic uncles, and conservative-minded plantation managers would we be forced to endure were we ever to truly reside in the place? Or was I merely more aware of all of that because I was not allowed to slowly watch their antics evolve, like watching flowers bloom in the spring, but was instead presented with a full and tidy bouquet of their stupidity whenever I arrived for my short visits?

Once upon the Lilly, the three of us claimed a small patch of deck near a cannon, and settled in to nap a bit before sailing. I thought of the other times I had sailed and found myself overly concerned with things I felt we could not escape; I was not troubled this time by such thoughts.

I had great faith in our being able to sail beyond anything.

Gaston was curious as to my ebullient mood. He placed his hands alongside my face and raised an eyebrow.

“We are escaping,” I whispered. “We must not return.”

He smiled and kissed me.

“We will not spend the rest of the year here when we do,” he said. “I would not survive it.”

“You are not the only one who would need to worry about his sanity in such a place.”

He frowned at that. “You are becoming more like me.”

“Non,” I said with a grin, “I think that I have perhaps ever been like you, and now, only in your presence, is my true self becoming known.”

He did not share my amusement or enthusiasm over this, and I recalled how concerned he had been at my bout of madness on the cay.

And then memory of my reaction to his torturing me the day before drove the rest of my humor away. He was correct; it was not a good thing: one of us truly should be sane. But, what if that was not the way of it, and my words spoken in jest were true?

“I can still act saner than you,” I teased.

He shook his head and sighed, but amusement curled his lips.

The return voyage to the Caymans was more pleasurable than sailing to Port Royal had been. This time there were no slaves or injured men aboard, and the mood of the buccaneers was considerably brighter.

In our small corner of the ship, Pete’s improved demeanor was a relief, though he still pined for Striker and worried overmuch, as he had not been prepared, at least in spirit, to be gone so long.

And we had been gone quite a time, when at last we spied the masts of vessels we knew. Even though we had been running with the wind throughout much of our voyage, we had encountered a storm that the master of sail thought it best to sail around, and thus reaching the fleet at the Caymans had taken nearly as much time as sailing to Jamaica from Cuba had. We had been separated from our friends for nearly three weeks, and it was now approaching the middle of May.