“All right, then,” she said and kissed my forehead. “Sleep and try not to worry.”
At my behest, she left the lamp burning low, and I lay there and watched the light waver upon the ceiling. I no longer felt the pleasant echo of my dream – whatever it had been. I was now gripped with a horrible thought that I knew would haunt me if the Gods in Their capriciousness were cruel. I would rather sacrifice all of them than lose Gaston.
I dozed, the drug allowing no other recourse despite my ugly thoughts. At least it held the mad maelstrom of the past days at bay. I did not feel threatened by my madness, but by the world’s.
Gaston finally woke some inestimable amount of time later – I only knew it was before the dawn and close to the time when my head cleared from the last dose of laudanum. With a squeeze of my hand and a light kiss – once he saw I was somewhat awake – he went about draining himself and then drinking an equal amount of water in silence. He fingered the laudanum bottle with longing, and then placed it farther from him without pouring a dose. I considered asking him for more, but I too decided against it, as there was much we must discuss.
At last he sat cross-legged on the bed beside me, eating a piece of bread, and he seemed prepared to speak.
“I love you,” I whispered.
He smiled. “How are we?”
“The pain is distant but coming closer every moment. But we must speak first. There is much I should tell you, but I must know how you are. Do the winds howl very near?”
He took a deep breath and frowned, and at last shook his head. “I am well enough to stand with you.” He seemed surprised.
“All right, let me see if I can remember it all.” But I told him first of my speaking with Agnes at the end, and my concerns and revelation.
He came to lie beside me and hold me tightly with great love. “If I truly felt we must sacrifice them all, I would not leave.” he whispered. “I do not feel that is Pete’s intent.”
I had been thinking on that. “Non, he made Sarah the king. I think he is willing to use her as bait, not sacrifice her. But, I also think he might be willing to lose the game and keep his life – and Striker’s: just as I am willing to lose if I can keep you.”
“I too place you above them,” he murmured sadly. “Even little Jamaica… as she is… sickly and…” He shook his head.
“It is troubling, non?”
“Oui.” He kissed me lightly. “But necessary. If… trouble overtakes them, they will return to Heaven. You and I…” He took a deep breath. “So what else has been discussed? Apparently I am to be married.” He smiled ruefully.
“Oui, and we chose well.”
He nodded. “If I think of them – the women – they are all tangled together, even Agnes, but I can reason with my Horse concerning her. She did not run. If she had run…”
“I know,” I murmured. “I was very proud of her.”
“So, must I go to the church?” he asked with resignation.
“Non, they have arranged for the marriage to be here.”
He sighed with relief and then looked away with consternation. “I do not know if I can consummate it; even here beside you on this bed. I do not think…”
I grinned and stopped his words. “You need not worry. Striker wishes for us to board tomorrow, and sail in the morning. You only need worry about standing before an election,” I added. “Farley will sail with us, and Striker feels we can offer him the money you will earn as surgeon, and he will be content not to compete for the position.”
“Of course,” Gaston said agreeably. “And by tomorrow I should be fine to stand before them – for a time. I suppose I cannot hide if I wish to be surgeon. I have been thinking on that. I must be among the men on occasion. But I can do that. I must be surgeon if the plan is to work.” He sighed, and then tensed once again. “My father…”
“Is still here and waiting to speak with you as far as I know. Can you see him?”
He nodded. “Oui.” He smiled. “I am doing well.” But those words seemed to trigger the winds rising in his eyes and he looked to me with guilt. “It is wrong, Will. I should not be doing well. I have done a horrible thing, and you are injured because of it, and… I cannot feel so...”
I saw very clearly the path he was beginning to charge down. I was not sure if the calm of a moment before had been the result of his having firm hands on the reins in an island of repose within the storm, or if – and this was a thought I found quite surprising – his Horse had been well with matters and what I saw now was his thinking all should be otherwise. He had been so very calm… I had nothing to lose.
“If you descend into madness to punish yourself, you will cause me even more pain,” I said sharply.
Startled, his eyes met mine with anger and then surprise.
“I am too drug-addled to engage in great discussion of the matter,” I said. “But, suffice it to say, that I will be damn angry with you if you give your Horse the reins and beat it into the bushes when I am wounded and we have much to recover from. If your Horse is willing to sit well over the matter, you should not drive it – or yourself – mad in an attempt to assuage your guilt.”
I saw the play of emotions across his face and the Horse in his eyes, and I smiled with a snort of amusement. “I am as surprised by the idea as you, my love,” I said softly.
He lay still for a time, and then he snorted with amusement. “All our talk of my becoming my Horse, and masks, and caves and shadows, and… You are correct: I can drive myself to it. That is what I did in Porto Bello that night.” He shook his head sadly. “I have… I must think on it.” He shook his head irritably. “I use it as an excuse.”
“You are mad,” I sighed and squeezed his hand. “And when you are at your worst, it is truly the reason and not an excuse, but… There are times when I feel you anticipate it: there are times when I do.”
“You are correct,” he said sadly. He rolled over to gaze up at the ceiling. “I choose to let it… myself… run – these days. I do not know where the madness begins or ends, and where the Horse stands, and what truth is, and…” He gave a ragged sob.
I knew it would hurt horribly to roll over toward him, and once there my right arm could not reach for him. I felt helpless again. I moved my heavy wrist, reaching around for his hand, and not finding it, crawled my fingers along the chain until I came to the other cuff and then at last his fingers. “I love you.”
“That is real,” he sighed.
“Hold on to it,” I said. I recalled our floating together in the sea like this, just our hands touching. I smiled. “We are mad because we choose to live in truth and not shadows. We are our Horses. We only become confused when we attempt to make sense of it all.”
“I could have escaped Christine,” he whispered. “But… I wanted to show her how… foolish she was to want me. I wanted to… hurt her. I wanted to drive her away.”
“So did I,” I said.
“That is wrong, Will,” he breathed.
I frowned. I could very clearly remember the look in her eyes when she fired the pistol. She had looked like that when we dueled on the beach. “She wanted to hurt me. I would rather this than what she intended.”
“I wanted to kill Gabriella,” he sighed after a time.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because she was going to die, and I could not. I knew, Will. I knew what I did was wrong that night. I knew it, and I thought he might kill me, and I wanted him to.”
I did not feel he had presented it in quite that manner before. It meant much, and I thought we should discuss it, but then I thought we need not. I spoke the truth of the moment. “I am pleased he did not.”
“So am I,” he said with wonder. “And I feel guilt for that as well.”
“Have we not discussed how guilt serves us poorly?”
He gave a rueful chuckle. “So if I am not to wallow in my guilt or drive myself to madness, what would you have of me?”
I smiled. “Love me, and drug me again
, and think of all you will need before we sail. The key is here in my sling. I feel it is close to dawn.”
“I see light through the shutters,” he said as he rolled to me and pulled the key on its thong from my sling. He kissed me lightly. “I suppose I will visit the apothecary.”
As he unlocked the manacles and set them aside, I remembered there were things I had not wished to tell him for fear of provoking his madness. He paused in leaning over me to fetch the laudanum to gaze at me with concern. I sighed and smiled ruefully.
“Avoid Sarah,” I said sadly.
“Why?” he asked, a frown of worry tightening his face.
“According to Striker, she is willing to forgive the actions of a madman, but she might not be so kind in her regard of a madman who recovers his sanity in a timely fashion.”
He hung his head, and I was able to pull his face to mine now that my arm was free.
“It is a conundrum,” I whispered. “You are mad, but it seems that you are only to be forgiven the acts of madness by some if you are ever mad.”
‘There is no puzzle to it,” he said sadly. “If I was always as mad as my mother was, then my life would have been much simpler: Heaven or Hell. But instead I am cast into limbo.”
He pulled away and mixed the laudanum for me.
I changed my mind. “I would not have you face the day alone,” I said and turned my head away as he proffered the cup. “I will take the pain.”
His eyes were as firm as the hand that came to grasp my jaw. “You will drink so that I do not have to worry about that, too.”
I took the dose.
“It is early yet: I need not leave you,” he sighed, and slid his arms behind my neck and curled about me so that my head rested against his chest and shoulder.
I wished to keep talking, to reassure him, but the new drug washed in over the receding tide of the old and carried me under quite thoroughly. All I could do was cling to his arm and pray the Gods would continue to let us float.
Seventy-Five
Wherein We Say Farewell
I woke from a dream in which I heard the Gods speaking to me; though I could understand nothing They said. In what I believed to be the waking world – though I did not wish to open my eyes and determine the full glory of its existence – people were speaking French: one of them was my matelot; the other my sleep-fogged mind slowly identified as his father. At first I could understand nothing of what they said, either; and then the words began to make sense.
“Unfortunately, we might only be able to fully resolve the matter by having you stand before a French court, or at least a judge,” the Marquis was saying. “I do not know, though; and it might be possible to arrange that in Petit Goave where the Governor is. I will let you know as soon as I discover the details.” He sighed. “I chide myself on not seeing to the matter before I sailed, but… I knew not how I would find you, and I felt addressing that matter would be awarding more to my hopes than I thought I could bear if they were not met.”
He sounded tired, and I carefully peered through my eyelashes. At the angle my head had slumped in my sleep upon the pillows, I was thankfully able to see him sitting at the table. However, I could only see Gaston’s leg, where he sat upon the floor with the contents of his medicine chest arranged about him.
“I will be content as long as it can be resolved,” Gaston said calmly. “We cannot be sure what the future holds, and even with this new trust between us, I do not wish to place myself under your control should I set foot on French soil. I must be my own man if I am ever to return to France.”
His father sighed and slumped back a little in his chair. “I understand. I do.” He sighed again. “I have much to do… in regards the past as well as the future. I will be composing letters the whole way home.” He frowned. “Do you think I should post Will’s letter to his father upon reaching France? I am hesitant to do so until I can arrange to see that the papers of renunciation can be delivered.”
That was a good question, and I felt I should answer it, but I also felt I wished to spy upon more of their conversation: not solely for my own benefit or through a lack of trust, but because I felt if I disrupted them by announcing my presence, it was possible they would not speak as they should. So though I felt guilt, I stayed still and silent, though not so still that it would appear I was no longer sleeping: or so I hoped.
“We can ask Will when he wakes,” my matelot said. “But I feel they should arrive at the same time, else his father will try to stop the other.”
I agreed, and my heart warmed at knowing I could indeed trust his judgment.
His father nodded. “The ambassador to England is an acquaintance of mine, but I have an old friend who is much closer to him than I. I intend to write my friend first, and ask how I should proceed.” he sighed. “I must determine what I will say, though. It is a good thing I will have many weeks at sea.”
“What is there to determine?” Gaston asked with curiosity and no challenge in his tone, and I saw him moving packets of herbs about, from one pile in the arrangement before him to another.
The Marquis took a deep breath and chewed on his lip. “If… Well, I must tell them that an English lord has endangered my son. I could deliver the letter and document without that explanation, and merely ask that they see to it there; but the ambassador will surely wish to know why, as it might be a thing that costs political coin, as it were. So I must tell them why. But then, they will wish to know why an English lord would do such a thing, and then I will need to tell them… something. If I tell them that this Lord Dorshire merely dislikes your association with his son, they will suspect something more; and if I tell them the truth, they will think things that are… incorrect.”
“You do not wish to tell them we are lovers,” Gaston said. His words were not cold, but they were not warm and conversational either.
The Marquis sighed and emotion flowed across his face as he considered his next words. “Non, I do not wish to tell them that. Because I feel they will interpret it poorly.” He held up his hand in a bid for patience. “I have seen man-lovers about court. They are prodigal libertines, ever up a skirt or down a pair of breeches with little concern for propriety.”
“And you would not have me viewed as that?” Gaston asked with less of an edge to his voice.
“Non, I would not. Because, as I have seen, much to my surprise, that is not the way of it here. But, of more import in dealing with the ambassador, the man-lovers of the court – at least those I have seen, and the ones I feel he might be most familiar with in kind – do not engage in relations or entanglements of a duration to warrant long-term concern by… anyone, save the Devil when it comes to their immortal souls. If the ambassador or my friend perceived you and your relationship with Will as being of that type, they would wonder why his father cared a whit. If Will was the typical libertine, his father would have to destroy dozens of men to keep his son from ruin.”
I could see the Marquis’ point, and as I had once been one of the men of which he spoke, it skewered me deeply.
“I see,” Gaston said sadly. “Can you not convey what you have seen here?”
“That is what I must determine the wording of, and…” He sighed and chuckled. “At the same time I am telling them you are a man-lover who is quite devoted to your man, and he to you, such that his father wishes you dead, I must tell them I am claiming you as my heir once again. You see my quandary.”
“Oui, but… I am not a man-lover. I love Will, but he will be the only man I ever lie with. I suppose that will make no sense to them, either. Unless you say that I am mad, which…” Gaston sighed.
His father laughed. “Oui, it is a conundrum.”
“Oui,” Gaston sighed.
The Marquis sobered. “And, it is a thing I do not understand. I see you, and a blind man would know you loved one another, but… Men love one another, as brothers and the greatest of friends without…”
“Will loves men,” Gaston said quietly, and my st
omach constricted.
“So you… engage in this… to please him. He said something of the sort the day we met.” The Marquis snorted. “And then, well… He said a thing that amused me while arguing with Mademoiselle Vines.”
“What?” Gaston demanded.
My heart joined my stomach in clenching such that I was not sure if it would function.
His father cleared his throat and gave a little moue. “That you are the… bestower… in your relationship.”
“Oui,” Gaston said slowly, and I could feel him gazing in my direction. “Most of the time, but on occasion I do receive him.”
His father grimaced. “Why? I mean, I can understand where… perhaps… poking into… Well, that it would not be so very different than bedding a woman in certain regards, but… the other…?”
Gaston snorted. “Have you ever had a truly satisfying shit?”
His father nodded with seeming reluctance and a grimace of distaste.
“It is like that,” Gaston said, “Over and over again, with an experienced hand about your member at the same time.”
His father flushed and studied the floor with a compressed smile that finally became a chuckle. “I see. So there is some pleasure to it.”
“Oui,” Gaston said with amusement I could hear. His next words were sober, though. “I saw boys at it in the schools you sent me to. They usually paired older to younger, with the younger being considered… like a woman, I suppose. Some of my fights were to fend off advances of older boys because I was small and considered handsome. I wanted none of that. And when I came here, obviously I saw men about it all the time. They paired, but neither was the weaker even if one was always the receiver. And still I wanted none of it. I did not want to be someone’s boy. I did not feel any desire to…” He sighed. “I did not feel any desire. There was no need. Until Will. And even then, I was not enamored of our eventually trysting so much as I wished to please him so that he would be satisfied and stay with me. And now…” He sighed. “I find I prefer him, because it is more a matter of my heart than my loins.”
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