This seemed to assuage many of them, but others seemed more hostile than curious. I suffered an odd moment of disorientation, as if I had seen all this before. I had. Though the facts were different, the gist of it all was much the same. Then I suffered the realization that it would always be thus with Gaston and me in relation to the rest of humanity. We would always be subjected to scrutiny, and judged wanting.
I turned away from them.
The puppies were now in Theodore’s lap. He was cradling them carefully with Bella and Taro standing guard – over or of him, I could not be sure.
Gaston was digging about in his medicine chest. He found what he wished and went to the man with the leg wound, before the buccaneers who were taking him to the gaol could roll him onto a sheet of sailcloth to carry him.
“Hold him still,” Gaston told two of the men.
One of them was a man we had sailed with, and he quickly complied and the other one followed his lead. While they pinned the wounded man down, Gaston shoved his fingers into the man’s wound. He probed about inside the man’s leg with great concentration, his lips between his teeth and his eyes on some distant thing so his vision did not distract from what he sought to feel. The man screamed and all other activity about us stopped.
“He be a surgeon,” a buccaneer to my left told someone.
Gaston at last found what he sought, and pulled a thick red blood vessel from the hole in the man’s thigh. He placed a clamp on it. The pulsing flow of blood from the wound stopped.
“There,” Gaston said. “Now he will live long enough for someone to amputate the leg. He might even live beyond that.”
As many were still quiet about us, the militia leader had apparently heard him.
“So we should find them a surgeon?” the man asked.
“If you wish them to live,” I said.
“I care not,” the man said quickly. “Do you want them to live?”
Gaston swore softly in French and studied the sand with angry eyes. I could see his need to act: either to fight or heal. His Horse had had quite enough with being still whilst a barn burnt around it. It now needed to run, either under his hand, or away from it.
“Aye,” I said. “We wish them to live.”
Gaston looked up at me with bitter amusement. “I will tend them,” he muttered in French.
I nodded. I turned to the militia leader. “Gaston is a physician; he will see to them.”
The man shrugged.
As it appeared the medicine chest must be moved, I went to help Theodore rise. He was trying to awkwardly position the sling over his shoulder.
“I’llTakeIt,” Pete said, and carefully took the puppies from him. He positioned the sling across his shoulder and shushed and cooed the now-mewling and hungry puppies. Then he looked at Striker, Theodore, Gaston, and me. “ITake’EmHome. TellTheWomenWeLive. Y’allGetTaTheGaol. Don’tNeedMeNow.”
Striker rolled his eyes. “How do you know that?”
Pete grinned. “AllThatBeLeft BeTheTalkin’.” With that he walked off with the dogs at his heels.
I sincerely hoped he was correct, but with so many men about us now, I doubted even the stupidest of men would move against us. Still, I looked about as everything and everyone was gathered up for the move to the gaol.
A tall man at the edge of the crowd caught my gaze. He was watching Gaston with hard and speculative eyes, and disdain etched deep into his sharply-featured visage. I assessed his clothes and arms, and saw he made choices based upon quality and functionality: not only was he not fashionable, he seemed to care little for aesthetics, but his pistols and blade were finely wrought and well-used.
The thin man next to him was quite the opposite. His clothes and mannerisms said “courtier” more clearly than if he had a placard strapped to his chest saying the same. As I watched, he whispered almost continuously in the tall man’s ear, in a manner that suggested he was repeating what he heard, or rather, translating.
One of the men carrying Gaston’s medicine chest bumped into me accidentally, and I turned my attention back to the last of the chaos around me. Gaston was gazing down at the stout man. I went to stand next to him. I saw I had shot the stout man in the eye.
Gaston gave me a wry smile. “You are amazingly precise when startled.”
“Are you implying my shooting lacks precision when I am calm?” I teased.
He snorted. “You are always precise.”
“Do you recognize him, or any of them?” I asked.
He shook his head. “This bastard was staring at me as if he recognized me, but I cannot recall him.”
“What of that tall man over there?” I gestured surreptitiously to where the disdainful man and the courtier still stood.
Gaston caught the meaning of my low hand movement, and casually glanced about, letting his gaze slowly travel to where I had indicated. He froze and quickly turned back to me.
“Vittese,” he hissed.
“The tall stony-faced man with the fop beside him?” I asked.
He nodded tightly.
“Well, then…” I said.
“Will,” Gaston said quickly. “He is competent.”
I met his gaze and shrugged.
He shook his head with frustration, but I thought it more at his own thoughts and not me. “You are a thousand times better, but… do not think he is as foolish as these were.”
“I understand,” I said solemnly. “I wish to speak with him, though. Will you stay with me?”
He regarded his blood-stained hands and looked to where the wounded were already disappearing into the crowd on Lime Street. “I should not.”
“All right then, is there anything you would have me tell him?” I asked.
He sighed, and a small smile graced his lips. “I am sure you will make him angry. You can tell me of it later.”
I smiled and leaned close to whisper. “I am proud of you. You are doing well this day.”
He met my gaze with startled eyes and then a rueful smile. “Am I?” He thought on it and nodded to himself before smiling at me. “I am loved.”
“Oui,” I breathed.
He seemed to have to work up to it with little rocking motions, but he grabbed me and kissed me deeply there on the beach of the Chocolata Hole, in front of dozens of people, and Vittese. He grinned triumphantly when he released me.
“I am loved,” I said with a matching grin.
“More than I can ever express,” my matelot said happily, and then he left, walking swiftly through the crowd without looking toward his former gaoler.
I did turn to look at Vittese. The man was glowering at Gaston’s back.
The courtier had his kerchief over his mouth and amusement all about his eyes. I thought he might be blushing. He reminded me very much of Dickey when first we met.
Vittese moved to follow Gaston, the courtier at his heel.
I stepped into their path. “Vittese!”
The man’s hand darted to his sword hilt. I grinned, and dropped one leg back in preparation of drawing. I awarded him a raised eyebrow. He let his hand drop away.
“I am the Viscount of Marsdale,” I said in French.
Both the courtier’s and his eyes widened, but Vittese’s narrowed quickly, whilst the other man’s mouth dropped open.
I let my grin widen. “Tell your master that we have done him a great favor by removing several imbeciles from his employ, and that we will be delighted to continue to perform this service for him.”
Vittese did not reply, but Gaston was correct, I had succeeded in making him very angry.
“And,” I continued, “tell him he will meet with me, alone, and I will judge whether or not he shall be granted audience with his son, at a place and time of our choosing.”
“That will not be acceptable,” Vittese rasped.
“Then your master has sailed very far for nothing.”
With that, I left them and went to follow my matelot to the gaol. We would see who the Gods followed this day.
Fifty-Five
Wherein We Return to Homes We Have Not Known
The gaol was a house one of Jamaica’s worthy citizens, a Sir Thomas Lynch, had donated to the town. It had been built within the first years of the colony, and sat on the wharfs, and by all rights was prime warehouse property. The place was in the grips of chaos when I arrived, and I had to shoulder my way through the throng of curious onlookers to reach a member of the militia, and then argue with him before I was granted entry. I hoped someone had been available to lead Gaston through it. Someone apparently had, as my matelot was inside and working on the man whose leg I had shot. I soon had a great deal of the poor fellow’s blood upon me, as Gaston required my aid in performing the amputation. Thankfully, he had drugged the man with sufficient laudanum to keep him not only quiet but unconscious. From the state of intense concentration my matelot was in, I thought it possible I would be drugging him to calm him so that he might sleep before the day was out.
Once the amputation was complete and cauterized, we moved on to the others. The assailant Striker had shot died. One of the men Pete struck had a broken jaw – which I heartily sympathized with. Gaston cleaned and sewed the blade wounds Pete and Striker left in two of the others. Then we turned to the man Bella and Taro had mauled. He would be severely scarred for life. Dogs with heads the size of a man’s, and jaws that can break marrow bones, will do that to a man. Both bones in the arm he had thrown up to defend himself were broken and all of the tendons torn. Gaston gave the man laudanum and had a calm discussion with him about whether he wished to keep the hand – which would be little more than a club – or have it removed, which was going to be a likely result of the matter anyway if any sort of putrefaction set in on the wound.
During this discussion, Theodore came to ask if I could join him in the doorway. I looked where he indicated and saw several well-dressed notables there, including our Governor Modyford and Sir Thomas Lynch. With a sigh, I wiped the blood from my hands, whispered to Gaston that I needed to play diplomat, and followed Theodore.
Modyford looked me over with some degree of confusion until at last he recognized me and smiled. “Lord Marsdale? It is you.” He bowed. “Well, you do seem to take to the buccaneer life quite well.”
I smiled in return. I had only seen the man a handful of times, and always while dressed like a proper English gentleman. “Aye, Governor Modyford. It is a pleasure to see you.” I bowed in return. “I am sorry it is under such circumstances.”
“Ah,” he shrugged, “I was in town anyway. What is this about, my Lord? I understand you were assaulted by the French.”
His gaze found its way repeatedly to my neck, and I wiped at the area his eyes seemed drawn to and discovered it was not errant blood that held his attention, but the mark Gaston had given me.
I snorted and shrugged. “I do not believe they intended such bloodshed, but aye.”
Modyford pointed at the body of the stout man, which had been laid, uncovered, outside the door, as the room within was crowded. He spoke with amusement. “Was there not some other altercation involving you shooting a man in the eye? An escaped bondsman of yours, was it not?”
I was surprised he remembered, and then I remembered that was another burden of nobility: to be notable whether one was a great man or a great pissing idiot. “Aye, his name was Creek, and I still view the matter as unfortunate.”
“Aye, bondsmen are expensive to replace,” Modyford said with a shrug.
I suppressed a sigh. “Creek was a drunkard who had fallen in with some very foolish fellows. I did not wish to shoot him, but… the situation unfolded much as today’s did. When we disembarked at the Chocolata Hole, we were approached by this man.” I gestured at the dead man at our feet. “He was eyeing my matelot in a manner I did not like. He informed his fellows, in French, that Gaston was the man they were seeking, and then he rudely addressed him. Our good friend Pete struck the man and admonished him for his rudeness. At which point, the man ordered his fellows to attack us. Though in thinking on it now, I realize they did not draw weapons. I was not aware of that at the time, though, I merely saw that we were set upon. And Pete, Captain Striker, Gaston and myself did as any buccaneer would do in a like situation: we prevailed.”
This brought appreciative chuckles from most of my listeners, but I was distracted from gauging their sidelong looks at one another by the eerie sound of my words being repeated in French. Vittese had apparently joined us, courtier at his heel. I looked toward the sound, and froze with surprise such that I doubt I kept it from my features.
Vittese was indeed there, and the courtier, but he was whispering in another man’s ear. This man bore a great resemblance to my matelot, though not in coloring or build: as he had blue eyes and did not appear to be red-headed, though I could not be sure beneath his wig, but as he was not powdered, it was evident his eyebrows, and even his long lashes, were golden and not red. He was also slimmer than Gaston, and at first I thought it might be due to frailty of age or illness, as he leaned upon a cane and appeared many years older than my father. But then I saw that my perception of his age was misled by the great many lines upon his face. They were not the deep and trenchant etchings of a man in his dotage, but the fine feathery web about the mouth and eyes a middle-aged man receives for a life spent smiling and frowning, and simply expressing emotion with his face – a thing I think my father did everything in his power to avoid, and not because it would help him cling to the vestiges of youth. Even now this man was smiling, not seemingly maliciously at my surprise, but a fox’s grin of perpetual amusement at the world. His smile danced in his eyes, though they were narrowed a little in speculation. I had only rarely seen Gaston with a similar expression, but so many details of their faces, in the little angles formed by muscles and the bones beneath, were the same that I could well imagine my matelot gazing at me as this man did now.
“I must apologize,” he said strongly in French, with a fine voice that made me wonder what Gaston’s would sound like if it had not been broken.
“These men were in my employ,” he continued, the courtier repeating each phrase in proper English. “I gave them poor orders. I did not intend for an altercation to occur.”
“And you are?” Modyford asked suspiciously.
“I am the Marquis de Tervent,” the man said with a smile toward me.
Modyford glanced at me.
I smiled thinly. “As my matelot’s father is the Marquis de Tervent, and this man bears a striking resemblance to my matelot, I would judge him to be who he says.”
The Marquis smirked once he heard the translation.
Modyford frowned, but quickly rearranged his features into a genteel smile of diplomacy and bowed. “Greetings, my Lord, I am Governor Modyford, appointed by the King of England to govern this English colony.”
The Marquis gave a slight bow and smiled. “As I said, I regret to make your acquaintance under these circumstances.”
The governor nodded thoughtfully, and his gaze darted from the Marquis to me and back again to settle on the Marquis. “My Lord, I must ask, what this is about?”
“It should not have been a matter of your concern, Governor,” Vittese stepped forward to say in French, earning him a short-lived glare of annoyance from the Marquis. “The matter involved a French citizen, and my Lord Tervent takes needless blame in the matter. I am the one responsible for the poorly given orders. We did not understand that the man we sought would be in the company of others.”
“But…” Modyford began, while eyeing Theodore and me.
“The man you sought,” Theodore said briskly, “is now an English citizen. Governor Modyford signed the petition himself.”
This surprised both Vittese and the Marquis.
“We received notification from the Marquis that he was here and wished to meet with his son,” I said smoothly. “Mister Theodore delivered it to us. We came, but before we could arrange any sort of meeting, or for that matter, even deposit our baggag
e in our house, we were accosted on the street.”
Vittese took umbrage at that, but the Marquis seemed to feel guilt – and his glare at Vittese showed who he blamed for it.
“I am sorry,” the Marquis said, to me, in French, and waved off the courtier’s translation. The fox’s grin was gone. “That was not my intent. The last thing I wished to do was cause more harm.”
I bit back many words, not only because to my amazement I judged him sincere, but also because we were still surrounded by others who had no business in the matter.
“We must speak,” I said in French.
He nodded resolutely.
I turned to the governor. “I need to speak with the Marquis in private. Is there anything else you need from either of us?”
“My Lord,” Lynch said from beside the governor. “Do you wish for these men to be charged with a crime?”
“Nay,” I said quickly, and then paused to think. “I feel they have paid for their hubris and indiscretion far more than they deserve. I would see nothing more come to them.”
“Very good, my Lord,” Lynch said. He turned to address the Marquis. “Then, my Lord, if you would be so kind as to arrange to have men from your ship remove these men from my gaol. Your son has already been kind enough to tend to their wounds.”
This surprised the Marquis, but he gestured at Vittese. “My man will see to it.” Then he looked to me.
“Your son is a fine physician and surgeon,” I said. “Doucette trained him.”
The Marquis nodded thoughtfully. “Shall we speak then?” He looked to Modyford and the others. “If you gentlemen will excuse us.”
They nodded, and I nodded, and the Marquis and I began to stroll down the side of the building toward the wharf, with Vittese and the courtier.
I stopped. “As you already know, you will not need him.” I pointed at the courtier and nodded politely. “And I will not countenance his being present.” I looked at Vittese.
As expected, Vittese was not pleased, but he kept his eyes on the horizon and did not comment. I found it interesting he did not look at his lord for instruction, either.
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