“Make it all go away,” I whispered, knowing that would distract us both.
“Do you want laudanum?” he asked.
“Do you?”
He sighed. “After, perhaps.”
He kissed me deeply, and I accepted it with great love. And he lanced my wound again, and I cried out in relief that was nearly as profound as the pleasure I could not rise to accept.
In the aftermath, I lay curled in our blanket to sop away the sweat, and he fingered the bottle of laudanum.
“I have not allowed myself it,” he said. “I have not wished to be complacent about others’ plans for me. They drugged me twice, but I told them no more once we were aboard this ship. I have Pete and Striker to thank for not forcing it upon me. Savant would have kept me drugged to Cayonne. And now I fear complacency because I fear them.” He shook his head sadly.
“What of Agnes in all that?” I asked with the stirrings of anger; letting it sweep aside the guilt that we should mistrust our friends; letting it burn brighter fueled by the knowledge we must distrust them.
“She tried to be helpful,” Gaston said tiredly, “but she felt her duty was to protect me when you could not—not to help me rescue you. My Horse was very angry with her.”
“Did you hurt her?” I asked with concern.
He shook his head sadly. “I cannot remember clearly. She did not run: I know that. But I recall Pete pulling her away. I know not what she thought. That was the last I saw her.”
He offered me the bottle, and I knew I did not wish to be dulled such that I was complacent—and trusting—either; even with him to watch over me. I shook my head. He put the bottle away without uncorking it and came to curl beside me.
The lassitude of resignation settled over me like a blanket and I let myself succumb to the exhaustion and pain: led by a bright light of hope into the land of dreams. Diving into dark waters to follow him into the wilderness appealed to me far more than braving the monster I had created in the cave in my soul. Yet I knew one would lead to the other, and that was for the best.
We lost track of the days. We lived by lantern light. Sometimes sunlight streamed through the hatch, other times it was darker above than below. Sometimes the ship was listing under full sail, and other times she bobbed at anchor. There was a storm, and we were told by the few people we saw that it worked to our favor in reaching Tortuga. However, the Bard and Cudro had chosen to sail close to the wide-spread chain of islands and cays known as the Bahamas rather than brave the deeper waters near the Cuban coast in the middle of summer. Thus, the Bard was unfamiliar with the waters we sailed, and often chose to anchor for the night rather than risk running aground on a sand bar in the moonlight. Thankfully, nothing had been seen of my father’s chartered sloop. It was assumed she had been overladen with men and supplies from the sinking frigate, and chosen to sail to a safe port rather than pursue us.
Our friends left us alone: whether from pity, guilt, a wish to avoid us lest we press our suit for the Haiti, or a sincere respect for my request that we not be bothered, I did not know. I occasionally fretted over the matter, but mostly, I slept. Unfortunately, though the slumber did much to ease my aches, it did little for my soul: I woke from nightmares more often than not. My only true succor was my matelot. As always, he was at his best when I was at my worst. He was not free of his madness, either, though. His Horse was ever lurking, his Child lived in terror, and when he was the Man I had first loved, his moods were mercurial. He, too, often woke screaming hoarsely. Lovemaking was a balm we applied liberally and with zeal, but even in its sweet embrace we were haunted: most overtly by my brokenness.
Beyond sleeping and trysting, there was only the writing. At first, the letter to his father passed from Gaston’s heart to his fingers and the quill with relative ease. He had much to say and he was sure of how he wished to say it. With calm purpose, he told of the betrayals of the Maracaibo raid, our discoveries upon returning to Port Royal, my capture and torture, and his madness and confinement. He was only forced to pause when anger or sorrow overwhelmed him as he felt anew the various events. For all that, his prose was direct and devoid of euphemism or embellishment. He wrote without care for his father’s reaction. And then he reached the end of the missive and the necessary discussions of the future that should occur in those final pages; and here my matelot began to falter; as doubt about our course crept in to gnaw at the foundation of his resolve.
We became suspended between conundrum and irony. How could Gaston convey our hopes and plans for the future when we could not consider them without floundering in madness? How could he speak of wives and babies and where we wished to live when it filled us with so much dread we could not speak of it without tears? Were we not determined to escape to the Haiti to avoid these very discussions?
“I will not lie! I want none of it!” Gaston railed as I rescued the finished pages from his destructive rage once again. “I cannot say I wish for Agnes as a wife if I am willing to abandon her these next months! And what is she to do, Will? What is everyone to do? You are correct: we have ruined their lives! I hate them all!”
I smoothed the crumpled pages and tucked them into a crevice behind me; knowing I would hand them back to him once he slept and calmed: as I had three times already in the past two days.
I sympathized and empathized and had no answer for him that he would hear. I sat and regarded the floor boards with exhausted tears. “Please, we cannot do this now,” I told the Gods.
Gaston knelt before me, and commenced to rock with frustration, bumping his forehead into my shoulder time and again.
I was gripped with the urge to strike him. The answer was obvious to me: we should tell his father the truth: we were escaping to the Haiti to consider the future and would write him when we returned. For some reason he could not convey to me, Gaston found writing those words unacceptable. He did not feel he could walk away without making some decision, and it was driving him madder and madder: and he was towing me along with him.
I got my arms about him and crushed him to me to hold him still. Thankfully, he did not struggle.
There was a noise in the dark beyond our alcove, and we tensed. There was a new and harder light shifting over the crates beyond the soft spill of our lantern’s illumination. Our den seemed small and constrained: a trap we could easily be shut in. Our whole world was dark and cramped and stank. I hated this damn hold. I hated all ships. I swore that once we were free of this I would never again go below on any ship. Once we were free of this… What was this: a Hell of our own making?
“Who goes there?” I called hoarsely as Gaston’s fingers closed on a knife.
“Cudro. I’m alone.”
I was surprised. Gaston and I looked to one another. The Child was in his eyes. I stifled a sigh of frustration. I had hoped to speak with Cudro: he was still captain, and Gaston and I had harbored a forlorn hope that he would be sympathetic to our request to go ashore where we wished, or at least to return our weapons. He was one of the few people who had deigned to visit us, but never alone, and thus we had not had the discussion we wished. And now he chose to come when Gaston was so very…
I sighed again and shook my matelot lightly. “I must speak to him,” I hissed.
Gaston appeared chastised, and he pulled away obediently. I sighed yet again and kissed his forehead before easing out of our den.
Cudro was a huge and looming specter in the harsh light of the lantern he held high near his face. I started at the sight of him.
“It’s almost dawn. All is quiet and… I heard… arguing,” he offered by way of explanation for his intrusion.
I forced myself to smile. “We have been discussing Gaston’s letter to his father.”
“Ah,” Cudro said, but curiosity suffused his features. “So he’s writing his father now?”
“Oui, it is a rather large missive: an attempt to chronicle all that has befallen us since last we saw him. We thought it best to write it now whilst we had little to do. If
it is done by the time we arrive, it can be posted immediately in Cayonne if there is a France-bound vessel.”
He nodded agreeably to that. “Will it be done by tomorrow?”
“What?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “We’re anchored off the Coast tonight. We’ll sail into the passage in the morning. We wanted to be able to see everything in the port and passage before we anchored. We’re planning to send a boat ashore as well—to see if anyone has been inquiring of us.”
My heart pounded. “Cudro, we do not wish to go to Cayonne,” I blurted. “It is best if we do not. We are not… ourselves. We will do more harm than good there.”
“Will…” Cudro sighed with concern and settled onto a barrel, setting the lantern on a crate before him. “Striker said…”
“What? That we were mad?” I snapped.
Cudro frowned. “That Gaston felt the need to run around in the woods like he used to, and you were addled enough to want to go with him this time.”
“That is essentially true, but not precisely accurate,” I said. I stopped before I could blurt more. I could not trust him to be reasonable. I could not trust any of them.
I tried a different tack. “Cayonne is a place of intrigue for us. We do not know what Gaston’s status is under French law. We cannot know if my father has hired agents there.”
“All the more reason for us to stay together, Will,” he said. “Hiding on the Haiti… We won’t be able to find you if something is wrong. Hell, we won’t be able to find you if everything is fine. And the Haiti is a hard place, Will. And you… I can’t see you clearly down here, but I remember how you looked when they brought you aboard. You can’t be healed yet.”
“Cayonne will not speed my recovery,” I said tiredly.
“What happened, Will?” he asked kindly. “Striker said they tried to cure you of sodomy…”
“My sodomiacal tendencies: my love of men,” I finished for him.
Cudro smirked only to quickly try to compose himself. “How? I mean…”
I did not wish to discuss it; yet, I wished to garner his sympathy. “My father sent a parson to instruct me in the Bible’s condemnation of sodomy; and when that failed, I was beaten and tortured; and when I fought even that… They began to do all they could to make me hate the touch or presence of a man.”
“Good God, Will…” he breathed. His face took on a pallor I could see even in the wan light.
“They failed.” I felt it a lie.
“Much to your matelot’s relief, I’m sure,” he said.
“Oui, but… I am still recovering.”
Cudro sighed, his face contorted with concern. “I’m sorry, Will. We didn’t know. We thought you would be well enough.”
“I know. I know. But… Then let us not repeat that mistake. We will not be well enough in Cayonne. Truly. It will be a hardship for us—for both of us. We wish to retreat and heal for a time.”
He frowned and his gaze became speculative. “Let us care for you, Will. Suffering all you say… I understand why you claim you are not well. And Will, you’ve never been on the Haiti. It’s a harsh land, and now harsher still that there are men crawling all over it: men without scruples: planters and the like with no knowledge of the Way of the Coast. The Haiti has changed since Gaston was last upon it. And look at you: you tremble when you stand. Why trouble yourself so?”
“To be free,” I snarled. “To be free of men of who think they know best for us.”
He winced but countered quickly. “You said it yourself, Will: you’re not well. Sometimes a man needs others to look after him.”
Panic assailed me, and I felt the fear Gaston had been berating me with these past days: that they would lock us away somewhere until we came to our senses: until we behaved as they wished.
I would not suffer that again.
Cudro regarded me with concern, and I knew not what he saw upon my countenance: I could not control my plunging Horse or racing heart, much less my composure.
“This will be decided when we are ashore, then,” I said.
He seemed relieved by this, and stood to go. “Everything will be well, Will.”
“Oui,” I said with great conviction as I turned to squat in the doorway of our den. I snatched up a belaying pin we had appropriated as an impromptu weapon.
Cudro was just beginning to pick up the lantern and leave when I lunged and struck him with the pin. He slowly spun and crumpled to the floor. Until he fell, I thought the expression of surprise on his face meant I had not hit him hard enough; and then once he was down, I was scared by his stillness that I had hit him too hard.
Gaston was now at my side. He quickly dove to snatch the toppled lantern before it could ignite the oil it was beginning to spill. Then his hands were upon Cudro. He looked up at me. His eyes held nothing but Man: a thoughtful and surprised man…
“He is not dead,” he said as he adjusted Cudro’s head and neck to a less-strained position.
“Good,” I said with sincere relief.
“What did he say?” Gaston asked. “Where are we?”
“Off the Haiti.”
My matelot sighed with relief. “That will make it easier,” he said with a strange calm. “We will still have to swim, though.”
I tried not to think about how we should not be calm as I dove into our den and began shoving our meager possessions in our bags. My frantic, questing hands were stopped by the quill and ink. Without any great deliberation, I pulled the finished letter pages from the nook and found the last one. I scrawled an inelegant post script.
Due to all that has been conveyed, we are lost to madness. We know little of the future. We love you, and wish we could better serve you, but for now, we must retreat and heal.
-Will
I dusted it and folded it with only the barest hope it would not smear. Gaston had pushed me aside and finished loading our bags and ejecting them from the den as I made a hurried job of sealing the missive. He saw what I was about, but he did not goad me to hurry, nor did he ask what I had written or make comment.
I stuffed the letter in my belt and went to join him in the passageway. He had relieved the still-unconscious Cudro of the one pistol and cutlass the big man was wearing.
“We will need our weapons,” Gaston said resolutely. Then he shrugged and sighed. “We could survive without them, but… it would be best.”
“The cabin?” I asked and picked up Cudro’s lantern.
My matelot sighed and nodded with resignation.
“It is still dark, they are likely sleeping,” I said as I led him to the hatch steps.
“Pete will hear us sneaking about—even if he is drunk,” my matelot said quite reasonably. “We will anger them if we hold the pistol on them.”
“I care not, to either; and I plan to do more than that,” I snarled.
I crept up the steps and peered over the hatch threshold. There were two men speaking quietly on the quarterdeck; their backs were to me. All others appeared to be snoring. I was sure there was a man on watch at the bow, but he was likely looking to sea as he should be. The sky was the first grey of dawn. A long and low shadow of land lurked to starboard.
Gaston was not beside me. I looked down and saw him standing at the foot of the steps with a bemused expression in the wan lantern light.
He smiled as our gaze met. “One of us must be sane,” he whispered with amusement. “I am always surprised when it is me.”
My gut churned, and my Horse eyed him with concern: he was the only one who could change our course. “I will not be reasonable,” I whispered. “We are escaping their clutches.”
He nodded. “I love you.” Then he was beside me.
We dove out the hatch and threaded our way through the sprawled limbs of sleeping men to reach the cabin door. Once there, I tore it open and charged into the room with the lantern held high before me. The Bard and Dickey’s hammock was occupied—presumably by them. I ignored them. The upper hammock was also sagging: I
ignored it as well for the moment. My eyes were on the unlikely sight of Pete curled companionably with my sister in the lower hammock.
Pete’s blue eyes were open and squinting at the sudden light. He began to move: one hand pulling himself up, the other reaching for a pistol in the netting above his head.
I tossed the lantern at him. As he scrambled to catch it, I darted in and grabbed my sister’s arm. Then—with my madness and fear granting me the strength of ten men—I hauled her from the hammock and into my arms whilst crossing the room to press my back against the beam between the gallery windows. Once there, I wrapped my arm tightly about her chest and put the blade I held to her throat.
Pete cursed. Sarah screamed. I roared for silence.
Then all was still. Gaston was beside me with his back to the wall of windows. Pete held the hot lantern balanced on his fingertips: his eyes held murder. Striker was a bleary-eyed presence peering down at us. Sarah gasped in my arms like a fish out of water, but she did not squirm.
A drawled, “Oh Bloody Hell…” emanated from the Bard’s hammock.
“We want our weapons, and we are leaving,” I hissed.
“Will…” Striker breathed. “You’re truly mad. Let…” He began to crawl from their hammock.
“Do not doubt my resolve!” I yelled. “She has betrayed me as has every other person of my relation.”
“Oh, Will,” Sarah sobbed. “I did not…”
“ShutUp, Sarah,” Pete said. He carefully moved to set the lantern on the floor. Then his gaze locked with mine. “I’llNotForgiveThis.”
“Nay, you will not,” I said with surety. “Which is why I cannot release her now. But I will not be held against my will again. You are no better than the damn men you rescued me from. I do not live to serve your interests any more than I live to serve my father’s. I will not be told how to live or think or feel by anyone!”
Pete frowned, and then the anger slipped from his face until he regarded me with sad eyes. He spared a disparaging glance at his matelot.
“Do not blame me for this!” Striker growled. He turned his gaze back to me. “Will, this is… We wish you no harm, damn it! You must know that! We’re your friends.”
Wolves Page 11
