Wolves

by W. A. Hoffman

  They were solemn, but I saw no argument on their faces, only worry.

  “You’llNa’GoAlone,” Pete said.

  “Nay, I will not. Gaston will go with me.”

  Pete snorted. “An’Me.”

  “What of me?” Striker asked with little humor.

  Pete shrugged. “We’llFightLater.”

  Striker cursed.

  “Stop,” I said. “We will have time to argue. I do not think Father Mark can arrange to have me arrested immediately. If he must get permissions from France, it will take four months at the least. And, as I was saying, it would be best if we stayed here until we heard from the Marquis. We have estimated that we cannot expect to hear a response to our last letter until May at the earliest.”

  Striker was frowning, but he nodded. “Sarah’s baby is due in May or thereabouts. We should not travel until after.”

  “Aye,” Gaston said, “and Hannah and I should be there when she births. Will is not saying we should separate yet. We have time to plan.”

  “So we leave in June?” Liam asked.

  “That sounds right,” Striker said. “The Magdalene should be back by then.”

  “And possibly Pierrot’s Josephine or other French ships capable of sailing to England,” I said.

  “But if our ship or others we know do not arrive in time, we will need to make other arrangements,” Gaston said. “We should arrange for a vessel—or several—to escape quickly on if the need arises.”

  “An’ we should pick a place to go if we don’ know ’bout the Marquis,” Liam added.

  “So, I see these as the task before us,” I said. “Does anyone have another plan or other observations? And we must all remember to share such thoughts if we have them over the coming weeks. It is the beginning of March: we have at least two months to wait and prepare.”

  “Madame Doucette, you and Monsieur Doucette will accompany us?” Theodore asked. “I know you have become very much a part of our lives, but…”

  Yvette stilled and then smiled and looked to Agnes, who nodded. She turned back to Theodore. “Agnes and I are lovers,” she said quietly.

  “Oh,” Theodore said with subdued surprise.

  Pete was laughing, “ITol’Ya,” he told his matelot.

  Striker was frowning as if he understood as much as Bones did about how two women could do such a thing.

  Liam had little care for Striker’s confusion. “So, iffn’ we must leave afore the Magdalene returns, we be needin’ a ship that can take…” He looked about and counted on his fingers, then looked at Striker, “Julio and Davey?” at Striker’s nod he looked to me, “and afore you two go to England?” at my nod he went on, “so that makes seventeen? Damn. An’ then there be the little ones, that be three, no five with Pike and the new Striker babe, and, damn, no six with me son. An’ how many dogs?” he asked Agnes.

  “Eight,” she said with a grimace.

  Liam looked to me, “And what about that horse?”

  I chuckled even though the question did tweak my heart with guilt and concern. “I am fond of Pomme, but I would not wish to trouble him with an ocean voyage: it can be hard on horses and he is old. I feel we will leave him to wander free on the Strikers’ land. I can only pray he will meet a good end.”

  Liam appeared relieved. “So seventeen, plus six babes an’ eight dogs.”

  “We’ll need to commission an entire vessel,” Striker said.

  “Let us hope the Magdalene returns in time,” I said.

  Striker snorted. “Then we’ll just have to placate the Bard with a great deal of rum.” He shrugged. “We can begin to inquire tomorrow, after we explain this to my wife.”

  “An’SheGetsDone Throwin’Things,” Pete said, but his grin showed he was jesting.

  “I will enter first on that if you wish,” I said with humor. “Better she is angry with me.”

  “Aye, YaNa’SleepThere,” Pete said.

  Striker shook his head. “I truly do not think this will make her angry—not if you go to England.”

  This did not appear to make him happy, however. I was sure it was because Sarah would not wish for him to go with us. In truth, I did not, either; and not because of his drinking: a one-armed man would be hard to disguise.

  Gaston, Theodore, and Hannah went to see to see to Rachel: I sat about and discussed possible destinations with everyone else. It seemed a storm had passed and left little damage. Even Yvette seemed pleased with the prospect of leaving. I supposed she was: she had not arrived on this shore willingly; none of us had. I wondered how we would view whatever place we chose to go next. Would we continue to perceive it as a place we had wished to go, or would we in later years only recall that we had been forced to make the choice?

  I felt the same about my father.

  My matelot appeared preoccupied with weighty concerns of his own when he returned from seeing Rachel, but he did not speak of it until we at last retired to our room. “I do not know what we will do with Rachel,” he said. “She does not ail in the body, but in the mind. I found her womanly parts are healing and she no longer fevers. She will never bear another child, though. But that is not the problem. They say she wakes screaming and fearful; and they have drugged her every time after Theodore has found he could not quiet her. He reports she has been wild-eyed and confused. I would see this for myself. Hannah will stay with them in the hospital tonight. She will come and fetch me when Rachel wakes.”

  “I have heard of women going mad over the loss of a child,” I said sympathetically. “And these circumstances were enough to make me fall—and the true horror of it was not contained in my body and I lost nothing.”

  He nodded sadly. “Oui, I fear madness. Only the Gods can know how long it might last. I do not think keeping her in a stupor will solve it. She must be allowed to heal, but I feel that Theodore thinks she will heal in her sleep and simply arise as the woman he loves. He does not seem willing to countenance a prolonged mental convalescence. I do not think it is because he will love her any less, but because he will be overwrought at the sight of her suffering. “

  “Perhaps I should speak to him,” I said. I could clearly envision our friend doing as my man suggested.

  Gaston kissed my cheek. “Try to heal him, my love; so that he can stand and hold their cart while she thrashes about trying to find her feet again.”

  I smiled. “I will teach him about carts, oui.”

  “Teach him about madness,” Gaston said gently.

  “Non, carts, he will wish to have something he can hold on to, not contemplate things that will ever seem to slip beyond his control.”

  My man grinned. “See, I knew you would know what to do. You are the healer of minds.”

  As always, there was a little voice in the dark recesses of my heart that wished to refute him, but I stepped into the light where it was harder to hear.

  Hannah woke us in the darkest hour before dawn. Knowing we had not woken from deep sleep to face battle, we did not become strained and alert. We threw on our clothes, took up our weapons, and stumbled downstairs with sleepy annoyance swaddled in resignation and duty. We found Theodore struggling with Rachel, and all traces of sleep vanished, yet we were still thankfully calm.

  “Where is my baby?” Rachel sobbed as she fought her husband to exit the cot. “I want my baby.” And then she muttered things in Yiddish before repeating her request to her husband.

  Theodore was wild-eyed and seemed incapable of saying anything other than his wife’s name over and over again: cajoling, comforting, imploring, chiding, scolding, and so on, in a continuous attempt to gain her attention or compliance.

  “Hannah, fetch Elizabeth, please,” I said.

  “Nay!” Theodore cried. “She cannot see her mother this way! And that is not the babe she is crying for.”

  “Theodore,” I chided as I waved Hannah away to do as I bid. “Do not make things difficult by being foolish. The babe will likely calm her, and if it does not, then we will know without do
ubt which child she seeks. And as for Elizabeth, she is a baby. I do not remember what I saw at that age, do you? She will be fine.”

  “Nay,” Theodore said. “Rachel is not well: the baby should not be around her while she ails.”

  At my glance, Gaston sat beside Rachel and attempted to keep her on the cot while I grabbed Theodore and pulled him away. When I had him separate from his wife, I shook him a little. I saw anger and confusion in his eyes.

  “Listen to me,” I said firmly. “She does not ail in a manner that can sicken the child and you know it. Rachel ails in the mind. She has survived a horrible thing and it has driven her mad. We must do what we can to allow her heart and her mind to heal.”

  “She cannot be mad,” he said desperately.

  “Why? Would you not be if the same had occurred to you?”

  “Oh Lord, Will,” he sighed and began to battle himself. “Of course I would, but she is… Rachel. She is a sensible woman. She is… sanity personified.”

  I snorted and softened it with a gentle smile. “Sensibility has nothing to do with sanity, Theodore. It may even be said that those who are the most sensible, and who maintain the firmest holds on their hearts and heads, are the ones most prone to fall when struck by calamity.

  “She has suffered a wound to her heart. It needs to heal,” I continued in even kinder tones. “You must help her. She will recover in time, as you have seen Gaston do.”

  A new fear lit in his eyes and I regretted mentioning my matelot. “She will not be like Gaston,” I assured him. “He was born as he is, and his kind of madness was made worse by poor treatment such that he was wounded over and over again—and yet, despite that, he is now far saner than he ever has been. Rachel is different: by all accounts she was very healthy in her heart and mind before this. I am sure she will return to what she was. It may take time, though.”

  Hannah returned with a sleepy Elizabeth. Rachel had not been struggling with Gaston. My matelot had been whispering something to her and she had been weeping quietly and nodding. Now with her daughter in sight, Rachel’s face broke into an ebullient smile and she held out her arms. Hannah gave her the baby and Elizabeth cuddled against her mother happily.

  The sight of this drew the tension from Theodore’s shoulders, and he, too, smiled. “That is all it took?” he asked.

  “Oh, nay, I think not,” I said reluctantly. “But we will see.”

  I perched on the other side of the cot and touched Rachel’s hand. She looked to me quite pleasantly until she recognized me, and then fear gripped her such that even little Elizabeth sensed it and began to struggle and cry.

  “Rachel?” I queried with concern.

  She said something in Yiddish and then pleaded in English. “Nay, nay, please do not take this baby. I have been a good mother. Please, I cannot live if I lose them both. She is only a girl, please let me keep her even if I am not allowed to have boys.”

  As I sensed what course her words were taking, I reached for Gaston and was gratified by his leaping off the cot and going to Theodore. I heard the struggle as my matelot dragged her husband away to whisper fiercely with him.

  I had not taken my eyes from hers. I knew two things: I was not Will to her at this moment; and the last she had seen me she had been quite drugged on laudanum, in pain, and I had been digging a dead child from her belly. I guessed at a path and set foot on it with hope and temerity.

  “Hush, hush,” I whispered. “I will not take this child. You have suffered enough. You may keep the girl.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” she murmured and bowed her head low above her baby and began to avert her eyes from mine.

  “Rachel, who am I?” I asked.

  “An angel,” she said; her gaze still on the blanket and not my face.

  “Why did God send an angel to take your child?”

  She said another thing in Yiddish, and when I did not respond, she switched to English. “I know I have broken the Covenant. I should not have married a gentile. I have pretended to be a gentile to receive things I wanted. I was arrogant. I was foolish. I deserve this punishment.”

  I took a long breath and held it, fighting the urge to sigh. We did not need me here, we needed a rabbi; but then I realized that might be no better than a priest: a rabbi might agree with her. Truly, I did not know enough of Jewish dogma and philosophy to even guess what a rabbi would say. I did not know anyone who did—save Rachel, of course. And even she might be as misguided as Henrietta was about matters of religion. I had known a number of Jews throughout my travels, though; and they had lived in a similar fashion no matter where they were. And in what I had seen of their lives, though the particulars might be different, in all they were not so very different than men of other faiths who took their religion quite seriously and made it the center of their lives.

  Thus I understood. In her moment of need she had reached for her faith as I had done that night. Unfortunately, the faith she had found had been the one she had been born with, not the one she had adopted. She had turned her face to her God and felt He would no longer find favor with her because she had turned away before. I could not speak for her God, or more precisely, the version of her God she understood. I surmised I could do nothing except appease her fantasy for the time being and then deal with Theodore.

  I looked to the facts, with or without God’s involvement—or truly perhaps because of it—she would have no more children. She had one healthy child who needed her as a mother. She had a husband who needed her almost as much as the child. This was her life, and she must be helped to be at peace with it.

  “You will have no more children,” I said with assurance and the somber tones I imagined an angel might use. “That is the price of the path you have chosen. But that is the only price. You are married: a good woman finds peace and fulfillment in her marriage and in pleasing her husband—whoever he might be. And you have a healthy child: a good mother finds peace and fulfillment in caring for whatever children God has given her.”

  She nodded even as she sobbed anew. “I will not do wrong by them. I will be a good gentile to honor them.”

  I saw a problem there, perhaps the crux. “Nay, you will honor God by not lying to God. You will honor God and the commitments you have made by being a good Jewish woman who is married to a gentile.”

  Fear and confusion twisted her face. “But how am I to do that, oh Angel?”

  I was concerned. I was not sure if there was some scripture-driven prohibition against such a thing that an angel should not gainsay. I could but hope there was not; and if there was, pray her current delusion was strong enough to overcome it.

  In the end all I had was my faith to impart—fair or not.

  “It is the challenge set before you,” I pronounced. “You have chosen to walk this path, and now God would see you finish it: without lying to God or others.

  She nodded solemnly. “I will do this.”

  “Good,” I intoned.

  I could not very well stand and carry on a conversation with the others where she could hear. I stood, took the lamp, and left, leaving them to follow me if they were wise.

  The four of us soon stood in the atrium. Gaston released the iron grip he had maintained on Theodore—including a hand across his mouth—and our friend sat heavily on a bench and regarded the paving stones with confusion.

  Hannah took the lamp from me. “I will watch over them,” she said quietly. She paused on her way to the door and turned back to me. “I think that was the right thing. I do not understand your religions, but I do know she has always been troubled by no longer being as she was born.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I looked to Gaston after she left. He nodded enthusiastically, and then pointed at Theodore and gave a worried frown. I moved to sit on the ground in front of our friend. He reluctantly raised his gaze to mine.

  “She is in the grips of madness now, but people speak truth from that place,” I said gently. “She is speaking the truth of her soul. She f
eels she has wronged God by converting, and that is why she is being punished with the dead babies.”

  “I did this to her,” he said. “I convinced her to marry me.”

  I shook my head. “Theodore, truly, you could not have forced her to attempt to convert to Christianity and marry you. Did you put a pistol to her head? Nay, she made the decisions. She wished to be your wife. It has troubled her, though. That does not necessarily mean she regrets being your wife. It means she regrets turning away from the faith of her birth.”

  “But what if God is punishing us? The Christian God,” he added.

  “Because you married a Jew? Because she did not convert fully to Christianity in her heart?” I asked with exasperation.

  He nodded quite earnestly.

  “Then He does not deserve your praise or worship. Petty deities have no damn right to rule the universe.”

  “Will!” Theodore exclaimed.

  I grabbed his collar and pulled his face to mine. “How much of what you know of your God truly comes from your God? Have you spoken to Him? Or have you spent your life relying on the words of others? Listen to the part of your faith that resides in your heart. That is God’s voice!

  “You love that woman, and she you. It is misfortune that she cannot bear another child. Perhaps that fortune was delivered upon you by the Divine. I cannot believe it was delivered because you are bad people. There could be a thousand other reasons. Perhaps some other evil would have befallen those children, and God is sparing them by calling them to Heaven. Perhaps they were never meant to be born and God has given you this test to strengthen your marriage or your persons. We cannot truly comprehend the workings of the Divine, but we can listen with our hearts to the… melodies They play.

  “Do you truly believe your God—any God—hates you or her?” I demanded.

  He took a deep breath, his high brow smooth with concentration. “Nay,” he whispered.

  I released him.

  He nodded and continued. “I feel I am a good man, and I feel as you often say, that God looks upon our deeds with an eye for our intentions. I have never feared Hell because I have always done as I felt was right and good.