Raised By Wolves 1 - Brethren (41 page)

I presented them. I was surprised to see the amount of damage. The blisters across the base of my fingers had all broken open, and the skin beneath was raw.

“I should wash them again?”

He nodded.

“And bandage them to keep them from receiving more injury?”

He nodded. “Bring the bandages here, and I will help.”

I went to do as instructed. As he bandaged my hands, I noticed him stopping and clenching and unclenching his own in a distracted manner. I studied his hands carefully and noticed nothing amiss with them, until I spied a disturbing ring of scars around his right wrist where it joined the hand. Then I saw a similar ring on the other. My bowels cringed, as I could only think of one thing that would cause such damage: his hands being bound tightly and for a long enough duration for the rope or strap to cut into his flesh. It did not explain the clenching behavior, though.

“Why do you do that?” I asked casually, when he had stopped and shook his right hand again.

He seemed confused by the question; and then he looked at what he was doing, as if he had been unaware of his actions before.

“My hands go numb.”

“Excuse me?”

“When I am engaged in a task that flexes my wrists repeatedly, such as binding this frame together, my hands go numb and tingle.

Sometimes it occurs if I sleep on them in a certain way.” He shrugged and looked mildly uncomfortable discussing it.

“Have they always been thus?” I asked carefully.

He was looking at his hands carefully now, and he sighed. “Non.

They were damaged. I do not wish to discuss it.”

“As you wish. May I assist you with the task that is causing them difficulty?”

He nodded, and once he finished bandaging my hands, he taught me how to bind the fronds to secure a joint in the slats. I proceeded to assist him in wrapping and making knots as he directed, at least as much as my damaged hands would allow.

The other two platforms were coming along as well as ours, and the men not involved with that had been amassing firewood. Once our platform was ready, it was judged time to begin the slaughter. I was sent to herd one pig at a time from the pen to whichever of the butchers was ready for it. This is not as easy as it may sound to those as uninitiated in swine as I was at the start of the endeavor. I learned a great deal about the animals over the course of the day, and after getting rammed and almost bitten numerous times, I was pleased to send many of the animals to their reapers.

Once a hog was killed, it was butchered into large slabs of meat, which were in turn cut into thin strips. These were laid across the platform of sticks in layers. Fires were kindled below and fed with wood, as well as bone and bits of hide from the animals themselves. Gaston, Cudro, and Otter were our butchers; and they worked tirelessly to render the animals down to slabs, so another could cut it into strips. As the hogs weighed many times what a man would, and we had no means of raising them, the process required a great deal of manhandling of the carcasses in the broiling midday sun. The men stripped down to their breeches, and were soon covered in blood and sweat. All except for Gaston, who was just as hot and covered in offal, but chose not to remove his tunic.

I wondered at this. I could not recall him removing his clothing in my presence. Then Cudro spoke while taking a break between animals and some light was shed on the matter, though not in a way I would have preferred.

“You look miserable,” Cudro taunted Gaston in French. My matelot did not deign to regard him. “Why don’t you strip down? Oh that’s right, you wouldn’t want to do that, would you? Somebody might see.”

“Do you truly blame him for not wanting the likes of you ogling him?” I countered.

This elicited several snickers from the other French-speaking men, who had grown quiet and tense at Cudro’s taunting. Gaston was ignoring all of us.

Cudro regarded me with a smug smile and I hoped I had not stepped into some trap. “I think he’s hiding from you.”

“And why would he hide from his matelot?” I asked, as I was determined to play it out.

“Because his matelot is a gentleman, used to pretty things,” Cudro said.I frowned and raised an eyebrow. I glanced at Gaston. He appeared embarrassed. If he was already in that state, I reasoned, I could do little to make it worse. “I think he is a pretty thing.”

“Then you’ve a stronger stomach than most,” Cudro said. “Or hasn’t he let you see?” There was challenge in his eyes.

I have bluffed men with little in my hand and taken their money many times. I let nothing show upon my face except contempt for my opponent. “I do not make purchase sight unseen.”

He shrugged. “Then I was wrong. I am not the only one who can overlook it.” He turned to the pig I had brought for him, and the matter was closed for the moment.

I looked around and found Gaston watching me. His eyes flicked from my gaze. Now I apparently had another secret to uncover. Cudro’s implications troubled me. Was Gaston scarred or marked in some way?

Or did he have a condition of the skin or something else of a hideous nature? I told myself it mattered not, but I was lying. On occasion I have found myself deeply bothered by physical imperfections or anomalies.

By evening, we had reduced all of the swine to strips of pork, and the platforms sagged under the weight. We fed the fires again, and Cudro and the other men went to clean up in the sea. Liam, Otter, Gaston and I remained to watch the pits until they returned, at which point it would be our turn to get away. My matelot had been silent since my exchange with Cudro, not that he had spoken a great deal prior to that. When the other men returned to camp, he stood and took up his musket.

“Come.”

I followed, my own musket in hand.

He led me a ways up the beach, outside Striker’s perimeter. We were very much alone when he stopped. He studied the sea in silence.

“You do not have to show me anything,” I said quietly.

He shook his head sadly and propped his musket against a tree, and removed his belt and other weapons. “Will, I am severely scarred, enough to evince shock and pity in those who witness it, if not revulsion.”

I held myself steady. I was sure I could learn to accept scars. I have scars. He was indicating these were far more serious, though. Even as I looked at him fully clothed, I could see a few. There was the one on his forehead, and the slash across his right forearm near the elbow, and several more just below his knees, and the ones at his wrists. With a growing sense of horror, I wondered if they were all related and of a kind somehow. I forced the fear away and said lightly, “Well, as of yet, you have managed to engender curiosity and not revulsion.”

He met my eyes. “Will, I do not choose to discuss what happened, with anyone. This did not occur here. No one in the West Indies knows the details of my life before the Line. Do not ask. Do not comment. I beg you.”

“I will do my utmost to honor your request,” I said solemnly.

He closed his eyes and doffed his tunic and breeches. I was thankful he relieved me of the necessity of keeping my reaction from my face, as I do not know if I could have.

He was covered, with practically not an inch spared betwixt shoulder and knee, with the white stripes of whip scars. These were not the thin lines and pocks I had seen on the backs of sailors or the occasional man exposed to the gaoler’s lash, but wide, white-ridged tracks that I guessed could only be made by a horse-whip. And they were not restricted to his back, but wrapped all around him. As I struggled to comprehend it, I was able to reconstruct how the damage could have occurred: not the how and why of it, but the physical aspects of the scenario. He had been bound and suspended with his hands above his head, so that the whip had access to his entire body. He must have shielded his face as best he could in his arms, and that was why there was little evidence of the carnage in his visage and about his neck, and the top of his shoulders or the top of his arms. The tender flesh of the underside of his arms had been quite torn, though. Likewise, he must have made some attempt to protect his privates. It was quite evident from scarring in that region that he had been naked. There was no patch of unmarred skin to even indicate a loincloth, and yet his manhood was only marred by a scar near its base, which connected across the top of his thighs. All of the rest of his flesh had seemingly borne the damage somewhat evenly, and I could not even think to count the number of times he must have been struck. The scars crossed one another and combined and split apart, in a pattern it would take hours to trace.

And yet, underneath it all, he had the most exquisite body I had ever beheld. Much like Pete’s, Gaston’s form reminded me of the classic Greek sculptures, with every muscle defined and an overall conformation approaching perfection. Only Gaston was compact, whereas Pete was long and lean.

Gazing upon him, my manhood stirred in response; and I bit my lip in frustration. I was sure it would never possess this object of my desire.

I now understood a great number of things. I knew why his voice was broken. He had screamed until it cracked, and it had never recovered. I knew why his wrists were damaged. His weight had surely been suspended upon them for a great deal of time. I was sure that even if this event were not the full reason, it was at least partially responsible for his madness. And I understood why whips and being restrained could drive him to the edge of his sanity. I was not sure about bleeding or his sister’s death, but I had the strange thought that it might all be related somehow. I knew I would know in time. I knew he was an enigma I would spend my life unraveling if he would give me the chance.

I wanted to hold him or bellow in rage for him. His eyes were now open and he was watching me with a guarded expression. I swallowed the anger and sympathy and composed my thoughts and words. If I was indeed his friend, he was counting on me now.

“May I say one thing?” I asked. To my relief, his face relaxed into resigned amusement. He nodded. “I wish I had some talent at the arts, so I could sketch or sculpt you. Or in some way show you what I see when I look upon you. Then you would know that I do not find you revolting. The scars are horrible, but underneath, you are exquisite. And I would have you know that, if I could.”

“You are kind and delusional,” he sighed. “And a fool.” He smiled sadly on the last.

I handed him my musket and doffed my gear and clothing. My manhood proudly saluted him with an obvious disregard for his words.

His eyes widened with surprise.

I shrugged. “He does not dissemble well at all, and usually does his own thinking, much to my dismay.”

I could see the effort he put into pulling his eyes back to my face. He looked young. If he had been another, I would have swept in like a hawk and pressed the advantage of surprise; but this was my matelot, and not a conquest. And even more, this was Gaston; and after last night I was not sure how he would react. I walked into the surf and rinsed the day from my skin.

A minute later he joined me, and scrubbed the blood and sweat caking his own skin away.

“Will, I am sorry.”

“For what?’

“That I do not favor men.”

I cursed silently under the weight of those words. “You do not know how many times I am sorry that I do. It has been the bane of my damn existence.”

“And now the irony of your existence,” he said. “Here you are amongst the Brethren where it is acceptable, and yet you are with me.”

I did not find his comment amusing, and I looked at him sharply. He was studying the surf quite somberly.

“It is not fair,” he added. His eyes met mine. “I will do what I can.”

Then his gaze darted away and he appeared distraught. He quickly returned to the beach and set about cleaning his clothing.

I stood there for several minutes with one thought: When? I was unable to convince my manhood it was not now, and chose to ease myself there in the surf. Then I came in and washed my clothing.

He was not looking at me or speaking.

“Is there anything else I should know prior to engaging in another verbal sparring match with Cudro?” I teased.

Gaston frowned, but with thought and not anger. “I can think of nothing at the moment.”

I watched the play of muscle under his scarred skin as he wrung ouy his tunic. In a way, it looked as if he had armor imbedded in him instead of scars. There were thin strips of skin between the tracks.

“May I ask a question?”

He nodded.

“Do you still have sensation…?”

He froze, and I bit my tongue. There was a trace of betrayal in his eyes. He was barely within arm’s reach. Without moving any closer, I held up my hand where he could see it and slowly moved it to his shoulder to stroke lightly from the undamaged skin and onto the scars with my fingertips. It was textured but soft. He held his breath, but he did not pull away. I moved closer and ran my fingers up to the soft unmarred skin of the side of his neck and then down across his shoulder and back. He closed his eyes. I continued, moving my body closer and spreading the area I touched in increments until I was caressing his entire back in light strokes.

“May I ask you a question?” he whispered.

“Oui.”

“Is it not disgusting to touch?”

“Non, it is a different texture. In truth, normally I avoid scars, but in this case... Well, there are so many, it is simply your skin and not an anomaly; and so I do not find myself reacting to it as I would with another.”

“It feels good,” he whispered. “The scars are dull in sensation, but the skin in between is very sensitive, and the mix of the two is pleasant.”

I clawed my hands and scratched a little, and he arched like a cat. I grinned.

“Since you say you have not had a lover, then I would guess no one has touched you thus…”

“Oui.”

“Thank you for allowing me to.”

“You are welcome,” he said.

I do not know if he opened his eyes to watch the beginning of the sunset as I massaged and scratched his back. I know I did gaze at it and felt content.

He must have opened them at some point. “It is getting dark: we need to return.” He sounded sleepy.