Treasure

by W. A. Hoffman

  He leaned forward and took the bottle from my hand. “I believe I would like to drink more of this rum and then pass into oblivion without laying eyes on another soul. I would be content to sleep on this settee.”

  I smiled. Could the damn man now do nothing that I disliked? “I think we can do better than that, and thus assure that you will not be woken at an early hour, and if all goes well you will only have to suffer the brief attentions of the housekeeper.”

  He grinned. “If you can arrange that, then I am pleased to be your guest.”

  I left him sipping rum and went to find Sam. He was surprised, but willing to show the Marquis to one of the guest rooms. I assured him the Marquis probably did not wish to eat, but that a good supply of fresh water should be left for him to find in the morning.

  I found Striker, Pete, Sarah, Agnes and Rucker eating in a fine dining hall along the left side of the house. Rucker bounded to his feet at my appearance and rushed to greet me, but upon seeing my face, he paused. The others were frowning at me as well.

  “I am well, now. And Gaston will be, in time,” I assured them. “I will greet you properly on the morrow, my dear friend,” I told Rucker. And then I informed my sister, “We have a guest. I hope you do not mind. I asked Sam to show him to a room.”

  “He’s staying here?” Striker asked incredulously.

  “Aye,” I sighed. “He seems genuine in his wish to mend things.”

  “Some things can’t be mended, Will,” he said.

  I walked the length of the table to cuff his head. “We will forgive who we want, when we want,” I hissed in his ear.

  Sarah and Pete laughed.

  Striker appeared recalcitrant, even amused. “Aye, aye. It is your concern.”

  I took a thick hunk of beef from the platter and left them. I was not hungry, but I knew it would be best if I put something in my belly, and Gaston should too.

  I found him curled on his side close to Bella and the puppies. His eyes were open, but he was oblivious to the world. He was not moving to stop Bella from cleaning his face.

  I decided he would not eat, and after taking but a mouthful, I split the meat between the Bella and her mate. Then I doffed my weapons and went to lie behind Gaston. As I positioned a pistol within reach above our heads, he spoke.

  “You do not like straw.” It was the Child’s voice.

  “I feel it will not call forth any bad memories this night,” I murmured as I curled around him.

  He settled back against me. “You are loved,” he whispered.

  “As are you.”

  I brushed a kiss on his ear and wondered at this new place to which the Gods had led us.

  Fifty-Six

  Wherein We Face a Trail of Brambles

  I woke to gentle fingers on my face tracing the outline of my eyes and mouth and the length of my nose. I heard Bella tending her young and a clatter from the cookhouse, and the world smelled of straw, puppies, bacon, and my matelot – who did not possess the finest odor at the moment, but at least it was familiar and comforting. I was stiff and ached: not in my bones, but once again, in the flesh beneath the marks he had left upon me. I stretched slowly and opened my eyes. The stable was cool and dim, but the light streaming through the doorway between the stall and the corner in which we lay and was disconcertingly bright, and I wondered how high the sun had risen and whether there was any water readily available.

  Gaston was sitting by my head, with his back to the wall and his knees to his chest. His mien was soft and childlike, but I saw much of the Man in his eyes. I kissed his fingers, and he smiled down at me with such great regard that my aches faded before it.

  “Did I dream… him?” he asked quietly.

  “Non,” I said with a smile.

  “He was here,” he stated, but his tone displayed a need for corroboration.

  “Oui, he was here; and… to the best of my knowledge – unless he has risen and left this morn – he is still here, sleeping in one of the guest rooms upstairs.”

  Gaston tensed with alarm and his gaze shot to the open doorway and presumably what he could see of the house.

  I stroked his leg reassuringly. “What do you remember? Or do you wish for me to relay what I can recall?”

  He released his held breath in a long quiet sigh and spoke as if he did not wish to be heard by any other than me. “Did he truly fall to his knees and beg my forgiveness?”

  “Oui.”

  He pulled his gaze from the door with obvious effort and looked down at me with his teeth worrying his lip. “You judged him sincere?”

  I nodded solemnly.

  “And my mother was far madder than I.” He looked away again.

  “Judging from what he said…” I considered my words carefully. “She was either madder than you, or she possessed far less control and they did not know how to… manage... her Horse, and, of course, she was apparently plagued by a misapprehension of the nature of her illness.”

  He sighed. “What days do you live for?” he asked timorously.

  I had been afraid he would remember that. I pushed up to my knees so we were face to face, and locked my gaze with his. “Every day that I am with you, however you might be.”

  He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to mine, but a subtle smile curved his lips. “Thank you,” he breathed.

  “I did… understand him, though,” I said.

  He nodded, rolling his forehead up and down on mine. “Did you speak after I left?”

  “Oui, and shared some rum.” I tried to recall what was said. All I could immediately remember was gazing into those blue eyes in the dim lantern light and seeing a reflection of myself.

  I pushed the image away and recalled what I could. “I told him you were overwhelmed, but that we wished to know more of him. He said there was more he wished to say. We spoke of all of us being tangled in the past, and I told him you had not been able to remember that night for many years. He admitted to feeling as if he had become mad himself that night.”

  “He was,” Gaston said distantly.

  I was thankful for the interruption, as I was reluctant to mention his father’s issues with sodomites.

  “I drove him mad,” Gaston added sadly. “He said he hated me, did he not?”

  “Oui,” I sighed, “but that was due to…”

  He put his finger on my lips. “I know. He does not feel it now. He did then, though.” He pulled his head back enough to gaze into my eyes. “Why do you feel he is here now? To mend things between us, oui; but why now?”

  “I would imagine it is because you wrote him, in part; but also because he wishes to make peace with God and his soul perhaps. Older men sometimes…”

  Gaston’s eyes hardened with sudden ire as his Horse raised its head. “That belittles me,” he hissed.

  I did not recoil from the sudden change. “How so?” I asked.

  “He should be here to make amends with me, not God,” he growled, and stood to step around me and out of the stable.

  Equally amused and bemused, I stood and followed him. I caught up with him as he entered the latrine at the back of the property. I ignored his scowl and joined him in the shed above a surprisingly large wooden cover. My sister must have decided she did not wish to have a new one dug anytime soon. Judging from the depth our piss fell, I thought she had bought herself many fine years with this pit. And she had hidden it all behind a great mass of flower trellises. Their heady blooms did not completely diminish the stench, but they did keep it from drifting toward the house. I decided that we must remember to empty the chamber pot out here, and not simply dump it out the window.

  “Looks as if they dug a well,” I noted as we stepped out. “And it sounds like they found water.”

  “Dig a hole on any cay and you will quickly find the sea,” Gaston said irritably.

  “I cannot speak for your father’s reasons,” I said amiably as we started to walk back to the house.

  He sighed and turned to regard me. “I do n
ot know what I want. I have dreamed of his apologizing to me for years: for all my life. And now…” He shook his head. “It does not make it all go away. It does not take the scars off my hide. Or my heart,” he added sadly.

  “Can you take any comfort in the reasons he gave: in that it was not you who caused it, but situations concerning your mother?” I asked gently.

  He nodded slowly. “Oui, but that… just gives me more I must think on and wonder at.”

  I was interrupted from asking of those thoughts by Sam stepping into our path from the doorway to the cookhouse. “Masters, will you be eating? I made bacon and eggs.”

  “And water?” I queried as we nodded agreeably to the mention of food.

  “Aye, Master, always boiled water for you, and tay,” he said.

  “Tay?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Leaves from the Orient in water. The Mistresses be fond of it.”

  “Oh, that,” I sighed. “I will take water without leaves.”

  At this, Agnes stepped into view and handed me an onion bottle. “It’s really quite good, the tea, you know.” She fidgeted with her long fingers. “Do you want to see my sketches?”

  I took a long drink of water and looked at Gaston, whose Horse was still obviously prancing about, and sighed. “Not just yet,” I told the girl. “Let us… perform our morning toilette, and eat. Our room is that one there?” Then I remembered a thing that made me smile. “And where is this bathing room?”

  Agnes’ wide mouth split her face asunder in a smile and she squealed quietly with glee. “You have not seen it yet. Come! Come!” She scampered around the stable and over to a door on the main floor of the house, below our room.

  I very nearly squealed with delight myself at the bathing room. It was as Striker had described it: a great iron tub supported by huge bricks over a stone bed for coals, with a brazier to heat the coals in the corner. Water was delivered to the tub by a pipe protruding through the wall. There was a handle and a weighted trap at the end of the pipe. I went out and looked around the corner of the building, and saw the covered wooden cistern sitting on brick stilts and posts so it stood even with the first floor ceiling. Its water was supplied from the main cistern next to the stable by an ingenious contraption of small buckets on a cable. That apparatus was apparently driven by a capstan which either a person could push around or a donkey could pull. We had not seen any of it the night before, as the entirety of the works was hidden by a trellis of flowers and the side of the stable.

  Gaston, now totally distracted from his earlier ire, was walking about the works and the room. “This is extraordinary,” he told Agnes in passing.

  “Aye,” I added. “Striker told us of it, but the seeing of it is a wonder.”

  “Mister Rucker said it is somewhat like what the Romans had,” she said with pride. “He has been to Bath, and seen mechanical drawings of similar rooms and devices. Mister Fletcher, the miller, came in from the plantation to design and build it.”

  Hearing that, I was reminded of Theodore’s words about having to pay men extra to have this house built. I thought it likely the cost for Mister Fletcher’s services had been paid in the coin of having to listen to Donoughy whine about Fletcher’s absence from the plantation and then by having to listen to Fletcher complain about a bathing room being an odd and unseemly thing to build. Yet, he was proud of his engineering marvels at the plantation, and so perhaps he had viewed this project as one of curiosity and worthy of his efforts and ingenuity.

  “How did you find Mister Fletcher?” I asked.

  The girl stiffened, and she regarded me as if I had suddenly bit her.

  “Was he well?” I asked cautiously. “The last Gaston and I saw of him he was recovering from a fever.”

  She sighed with relief and shook her head. “He was fine. Thin perhaps, but hale enough, I suppose.”

  Gaston came to join us: he too had seen her reaction.

  “What did you think I meant?” I asked quietly.

  Her thin shoulders slumped a little and she looked about to see if anyone listened. “There are many who feel I should marry. Mister Fletcher feels he should marry. I feel I should not. We did not find one another agreeable.”

  I looked at her skinny figure and recalled Gaston’s thoughts as to her future as the mother of our children once I put the Damn Wife out. She still appeared to be a gawky child, but I knew she was old enough to marry.

  “You do not have to marry anyone,” I told her. “Unless you wish, but do you not still favor women?”

  “Aye,” she said emphatically. “And I do not wish to marry any man, but…” She began to fidget, her long fingers twining in that mesmerizing manner they had.

  “Speak,” I said.

  “I worry sometimes,” she finally said, her eyes on the ground. “You have both been very kind to me. And Sarah says I shall always have a place in this household. But I worry about what will occur if you are not… alive, to… keep things as they are. I think sometimes that perhaps I should marry – as you suggested Christine do – a man who will allow me to have unusual freedoms. But… I am not sure that will solve anything, either, because what will I do if he dies?”

  I cursed quietly and she looked up at me with surprise. I shook my head. “I am not angry at you. I am angry at myself for not remembering all those who might suffer in our absence.”

  “We should not have left you to worry,” Gaston said. “You will be cared for.”

  “Aye,” I said. “We will speak to Theodore and make arrangements. For one thing, we will see to it that there are proper papers making you a free woman and negating the bond contract made with your stepfather. And we will provide for you in our wills.”

  Her eyes were large and teary and she looked from one to the other of us. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “And who the Devil, other than Fletcher, feels you should marry?” I asked.

  She regarded me with a perplexed frown, as if she could not understand why I was daft, and then her words tumbled out in a frustrated rush. “All the women – with the exception of Sarah who knows my feelings on the matter – feel I should be betrothed at the very least. They say it is not natural for a girl my age not to be entertaining suitors unless I am betrothed. And we have not wished to tell them I am a bondswoman and thus it is your decision. Your Uncle often asks if I am married off yet, and he even suggested such a thing to Mister Donoughy and Mister Fletcher. And even if marriage is not on their minds… Captain Striker has asked if I am… enamored of someone. He is not mean-spirited about it, but every time I go out he teases me about meeting with some young man. And your uncle is ever telling Sarah I should be chaperoned more lest I be ruined. But in truth, I feel I would rather be chaperoned at times when I go about town with all the men eying me: men old enough to be my grandfather.” She shuddered. “And I know that has ever been the way of it, but still… The only time I feel safe about the matter is when I am about Pete or the other buccaneers from your ship. There are days when I feel I will have to use this pistol.” She pulled the small piece she wore on a lanyard about her neck and shoulder from a slit in her skirt. “Not to shoot a man attempting to attack me, but to shoot one who wishes to marry me honorably, because he will not take nay for an answer. I wear baggy dresses to hide myself, but still, I am tall, and they ask of me. Women are so scarce they do not care what my age is or how I appear. I thank God for the dogs, who at least growl at them to drive them away.”

  Gaston was looking righteously appalled, but I could no longer contain my humor. They glared at my chuckling.

  “I am sorry, I am sorry,” I said quickly. “But damn it, girl, it is funny. Not that they should pursue you so, but… your rendition of it holds great amusement.”

  My matelot awarded me another glare before taking her by the shoulders and addressing her earnestly. “Agnes, you are meant for… better things.” He cast another look at me over her shoulder that implied he was not sure of the truth of that statement.

&nbs
p; I snorted and rolled my eyes, but I told her, “Aye, Agnes, we will not see you marrying some damn fool who could not appreciate your talents. You will be cared for. I say it again; you need never marry if it is not your wish.”

  She nodded with relief. “You two have been a true blessing upon my life. Thank you.” She began to walk away, but stopped and turned.

  “We will be delighted to see your sketches after we bathe,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Did you know Christine is here, in town?”

  “Aye,” I said with a frown. “Striker made mention of it. He saw her at a ball or someplace. He said she is watched at all times now.”

  Agnes nodded sadly. “I have not been allowed to see her.”

  “Truly? Well, that is unfair,” I said. “You could not besmirch her virtue…” I regretted my words. “Even if you were to…” I decided I should just shut my mouth.

  She colored slightly. “True, but I am considered… troublesome. Her stepmother came here and spoke to Sarah and told her to keep me away.”

  I swore. “I am sorry.”

  She shrugged. “I thought perhaps you could see her… As you are married, and thus…” She frowned. “But perhaps not. I just want someone to see her and tell me that she is well. Sarah cannot since she is lying in.”

  “We will see what we can arrange,” I assured her.

  She left, and I turned to find Gaston glaring at me.

  I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Why did you not tell me?” he asked.

  “Oh, bloody Hell… I forgot! Striker made mention of it, but we were discussing numerous things, and then Theodore produced your father’s letter. I have not thought of Christine since; not before Agnes’ mention of her just now.”

  He massaged his temples. “I am sorry.”

  “I know.” I said softly and rubbed his shoulder. “You have enough to think about; that is why I would not have mentioned her, even if I had remembered her.”

  “Why?” His question was more curiosity than suspicion.

  “Because…” I sighed. “Apparently she was found and returned to her father, who is very likely quite concerned that she will bolt again – and probably with good reason. And her father is married now, and Striker said the stepmother would not let him speak to Christine for any amount of time. I feel sorry for the girl. I had hoped she was happily away somewhere, dressed as a boy and practicing her swordsmanship, but instead she is imprisoned here – not even allowed to see old friends.”