Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (91 page)

When it subsided, and we had returned to our places, I glanced at Cork and found him watching us sadly. I stupidly wondered at it for a moment, until I realized he was alone.

“We will rescue him,” I told him.

Cork smiled sadly. “If he still lives.” He shook his head. “Pay me no heed. Enjoy your man while you have him and hope for the best.”

“I do. Sometimes I think I am truly a fool for risking it all for…

anything. But we do not sail to gain a thing, but to leave other things behind.”

He nodded. “When Wolf and I were captured, we spent a month arguing and blaming one another over how it wouldn’t have befallen us if we had done this or that. Then the men started dying around us, and we realized we were fools. In a place like that, we learned to just be happy when we woke to find that we had both lived through the night.”

“By God,” I said, “it must be torture to be here and know he still faces that alone.”

He shook his head. “I know he’s happy I ran. They kept most of the matelots apart, chained us with other men just to be cruel. So I wasn’t with him when the time came. I had no chance to say farewell. I can only hope he knows I escaped. I’m sure the Spaniards told them we’re all dead. Either way, we had talked on it when we could. All of us there decided that if any escaped they should bring help rather than try and get the rest out on their own. I’ve been like a man possessed since. And still…” He looked about us. “I worry about bringing all of you into it.”

“You must not feel any guilt over it,” I chided gently. “You know damn well that though we sympathize, and we are all too happy to rescue your matelot and the others, most here are going for gold.”

Cork chuckled. “As Wolf and I would if we were with you. Nay, I well understand that.”

“Good. I would not have you laboring under any illusions.”

I looked to Gaston, who had settled in beside me. He nodded.

“However,” I added, “I will say this: if the needs of the many should run contrary to yours, we will stand by your need to the best of our abilities.”

He looked from one to the other of us and nodded solemnly. “Thank you.”

“Now, Striker has given us a fine account of your description of the place, but I would hear it yet again from you, if you do not mind.”

Cork nodded and began to sketch in the sand.

Later, Gaston and I found a quiet place on the beach. My thoughts had taken darker and darker turns as I had considered the underbelly of Cork’s words and tale. I imagined Gaston and me being chained apart with fifty others in the tiny cell he had described. I felt the twisting in my gut and wretched pain in my heart that would occur if I were forced to watch Gaston flogged because he was too weak to stand. It filled me with fear, and I thought Cork the fool for seeing me as he did.

I lay looking up at the stars as Gaston arranged weapons. “Does your contention that I am a fool match with his in meaning and intent?”

I asked.

He pounced upon me and gazed into my eyes. “Oui, you do not know better. Thus you are a fool for loving me. But you are my fool.”

“But I am afraid. Of all manner of things,” I sighed.

He kissed the bridge of my nose and then each eye in turn so that I closed them. It was no matter, as it was too dark to see. I listened. He was a long time in replying.

“Do you still fear me?” he whispered.

“Non. To be sure, I am afraid of your demeanor after this battle. But I am in far greater fear of our being captured. I am afraid of losing you.

Of seeing you harmed. But it is true that I do not truly fear for myself.

You are the focus of all my fear, as you are the focus of my life.”

“You are my fool indeed,” he murmured and kissed me.

As he stirred me beyond my dark visions, I wondered again where the line lay between madness and sanity, and where foolishness fell upon that continuum.

In the morning, Morgan called for us all to gather on the beach.

Those of us ashore came to stand in a great semicircle about the dune from which Morgan had chosen to speak. I guessed our number at less than five hundred. He spoke of what our cabal already knew: his plan to take Porto Bello. There was much grumbling, primarily about our being so few against such a target.

Ever the statesman, Morgan walked down amongst us and said,

“Though our number be few, our hearts are large, and the greater the amount of booty each will receive.”

Porto Bello as a target was shortly passed by a hearty majority.

Buccaneers are easily swayed, even when they have bellies full of beef.

That afternoon, the Fortune was hauled ashore to careen. When she was cleaned and tarred, the Lilly would be brought up. Then we would leave. In the meantime, the Brethren who knew the way of it had been busy making boucan of the salted beef so it would keep longer.

Despite all this industry, Gaston and I were needed for little, so we told Striker we would withdraw for a time, and we walked a league or more across the small island to find a little cove on the southern shore.

Once there, we swam and frolicked in the surf like colts, as was our wont.

As the sun began to set, Gaston practiced with his whip, while I watched and dug holes in the sand and made little castles. He had not shown anyone else the whip. Pete alone knew he could touch one, and I doubted in all the excitement of his return that Pete had told Striker.

Now I wondered if Gaston sought to hide it, or whether it was a thing that should be known.

“Will you tell others you have overcome your fear of those?” I asked between cracks.

He shook his head and paused in flogging a palm tree. “I have not overcome my fear.” Then he looked to me with a nasty grin. “And if any think to use one against me to my disadvantage, they will be surprised.”

“Then I will not mention it.”

“Why would you?” he asked, and looked away.

I frowned at that. “If I were called on to give proof that you were doing well.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Do not.”

“Pete knows. Should we tell him not to speak of it?”

“Oui,” he said somberly. “I wish for whips to be a private thing.”

Then his gaze was upon me again, and it was speculative.

“We are quite alone here,” he said huskily.

I nodded and smiled. I did not understand why that should have import, though my manhood understood his intent well enough to stir.

He coiled the whip and stuck it in its sack. Then he approached to kneel on the other side of the little castle I had shaped in the sand.

His gaze was intent upon mine, and there was a great deal of the Horse about it.

“What?” I breathed.

“May I hurt you?” he murmured.

“Oh,” I said stupidly. My chest still had the remains of yellowed bruises that I dared not show. Yet, my breath caught, my heart raced, and cock swelled at the thought of it, whilst my knees felt weak and my stomach sick.

“Oui,” I breathed.

He appeared quite pleased with this response, and I followed him into the trees. He found a likely tree with large ropy roots I could grip, and told me to strip and lean across it. I slowly shed my clothes as he patiently removed the scabbards and other attachments from his belt. When it was a single strip of leather, he folded it in half. I tried to remember how it would hurt, but all I could truly feel was how very hard my manhood was.

“Kiss me first,” I said.

He nodded, and the Horse receded a little, so that when his lips reached mine his eyes were warm.

“Thank you,” he murmured, “for allowing me to try this.”

“I will see if I can take it,” I said.

He looked away.

“What?” I asked.

“I wish to bind you as well, and…”

“Make me take it?” I asked.

He nodded sadly and turned away. “Non, let us not.”

“Non,” I said quickly and caught his arm. “Let us try it. This time without my being bound. If it is a thing I will take, then next time we can try that as well.”

He shook his head and would not look at me. “You always make it sound so reasonable.”

I sighed. “You do not wish to hurt me for the sake of… hurting me, or rather, to punish me, oui?”

He nodded. “I wish for you to… prove your love to me.” He faced me, his eyes searching mine. “I know that is…”

“Non, we have discussed that,” I said quickly. “I am still troubled over the matter, but… like your need to conquer the whip, it is a thing that grips me that I feel I must examine.”

I brought his hand to my throbbing member. “Look at me,” I sighed.

“As confused as I am regarding the matter, my Horse is very solid upon this path.”

He smiled and fondled me so that I gasped.

“Kiss me again, and fuck me after,” I said.

He nodded, and his mouth closed intently over mine. When he let me breathe again, his eyes were emeralds in the afternoon sun and his lips curved wickedly.

I thrust all doubt aside and went to kneel and grip the roots. The first blow was as hard across my buttocks as my old governess had always given me. She had ever been quite bothered to be forced to take a strap to me: I always thought she disliked the amount of exertion it called for; thus, she had always been quite thorough and forceful in her beatings.

I closed my eyes and did not wonder at Gaston’s motive for striking so hard. I concentrated on how it felt: the sting of the blow and the deep burning, like fire within my muscles. I was gasping by the third blow, afraid that if I tried to bite my lip to hold it in I would bloody myself.

He moved the placement of the blows down the back of my legs and back up again. On the fifth blow I cried out. He hit harder on the sixth and I was louder. But I knew, as I had before, that I would not ask him to stop. And then I felt as if I were running again. I was a great beast beneath him, with a pounding heart and heaving lungs, and I ran for him. I felt there was surely some precipice ahead in the brambles of this path, but I had faith he would stop us in time. And then, somewhere along the way, the pain receded and there was just the running. My cries changed as I became aware of my manhood again. It had shrunk from the pain, but now it returned in even greater need and glory. And then the strap was gone, and his belly was pounding on my savaged backside while he pumped furiously within me. Then I came, with nothing to caress my cock but air.

We collapsed on the roots and panted with mutual exhaustion.

“You may do that again if you wish,” I at last gasped.

“I wish to,” he whispered.

“And you may bind me, and even gag me if there is need to keep me quiet,” I added.

He held me so tightly my ribs creaked.Later, when we lay curled together in a nest in the sand and watched the stars, some sense returned to me and I realized how very sore my arse was, I asked, “Am I badly marked?”

“You are bruised, but I did not break the skin.”

“Will it be obvious if I drop my breeches in front of someone?” I asked.

“Oui,” he sighed.

Then he nibbled my ear and chuckled. “If it is in front of me, I will take you again.”

“Well, I suppose that is all right, then.”

Still, I wondered how we would hide this new aspect of our relationship from others.

He did not wish to do it again in the week we spent on the beach.

He was true to his word about finding great satisfaction in seeing the bruises that ran from my hips to my knees, though. We coupled often and heartily, but with pleasure and no pain.

All too soon, we felt we must return to the others; and we packed our things and walked back across the island, to the northern end of the long western beach where everyone was camped. Then it was much as it had been on Cow Island: the days were spent lounging about for those of us with little to do, and the nights were spent drinking the alcohol the Lilly had brought from Port Royal.

At the end of May, this peaceful time came to a close, and we all boarded our respective vessels and sailed west to the coast of Honduras to seek canoes.

As with all such undertakings, this one sounded much easier over a bottle of rum than it proved to be. It took us nearly a month to gather twenty-three seaworthy canoes to accomplish our goal. Many of the captains called for seeking the Galleons, which were surely sailing by as we skulked about. But Morgan held firm to our goal, and when we finally had enough craft in tow, we sailed to Boca del Toro, fifty leagues or so west of Porto Bello, and moved to the canoes.

I was even more loathe to leave the relative comfort and safety of the ship this time than I had been at Puerto del Principe. The thirty-foot vessel Gaston and I were assigned was a bit large to truly be called a canoe. It had a sail, and was larger than the flyboat we had stolen in Cuba; yet still it seemed small and very close to the water, which of course made it ideal for our purposes. However, with over forty of us aboard her, I expected a miserable trip.

An amused Bard joined me at the rail and looked down at the canoe with humor. “Well,” he drawled. “If it sinks, you’ll be right on the shore.

You can swim. And we’ll be along in a couple days to pick you up.”

“Do not mistake my meaning,” I said. “I do find comfort in what you say, but as to that grin on your face, to the Devil with you.”

“Aye,” Dickey said and smacked him lightly upon the arm. Then he embraced me sincerely and whispered, “Be careful.”

“All right, then,” I said with a chuckle as he gave Gaston the same admonishment. “Let us sail home then.”

“What makes you think that will be safe?” the Bard chided. “From what I hear, there are wives and babes there.”

Gaston snorted. “He is correct. We will take our chances with the Spanish.”

Upon viewing it in that manner, I agreed. Then I reminded myself I was the kind of fool oft favored by the Gods; and so far, I had surely led a charmed existence.

The first day was misery such as I had not experienced before. After a night spent taking turns at the oars or sitting in one another’s laps, we finally pulled to shore in the grey light before dawn. We hauled the canoes up after us, and disguised them as best we could, lest they be seen by a passing ship. We did not wish to announce our presence with smoke from fires, so we ate boucan and dried fruit. Gaston had seen that we were well slathered in fat before we even entered the canoe.