Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (11 page)

“What occurred?” I asked Striker, as I dropped next to them.

“A damn splinter,” he said. “We thought it not that deep, and I attempted to dislodge it, and then it seemed deeper, and then I realized…” he stopped to swear vehemently.

As I could now see something of the wound, I saw the problem. They had cut quite the trench down the outside of Pete’s palm. Gaston was asking Pete a series of questions and having him move his fingers.

“Not My Fingers,” Pete said.

“Of course not,” Gaston snapped. “I am trying to determine if you fools have maimed this hand for life. Then I will remove the splinter, which is now shattered and spread all about in the blood.”

Despite the anger in his tone, his control was evident. There was no hint of the Horse or the day’s earlier wildness, and I marveled at it. A medical emergency always proved capable of either calming or dismissing his Horse. I had once had the hubris to believe that my being in dire need was proof against his madness, but as I thought on it, I realized any wound made him sane for a time, or at least to appear so.

Pete was stoic and already inebriated, so he was quite inured to the pain. Still, even the most stoic of men jumps about when pricked. Thus Striker held Pete still, and I held Pete’s arm immobile. After determining that no other injury had been done to impair the function of Pete’s hand, by the splinter or the attempted removal, Gaston set about removing all of the wood. I was surprised Gaston could see anything in all the blood, and in truth he did not use his eyes to locate the wood, so much as his fingers and a very thin and long pair of pointed tongs. The splinter had broken, and it was delicate work finding and extricating all the pieces. I got to see how very many pieces there were, as Gaston dropped them onto my knee. Finally Gaston could find no more, and Pete merely mentioned pain, and no longer jerked when the wound was probed. Pete received ten stitches to close the gashes, and a liberal dousing of rum on the entire area, which truly set him to cursing.

I was stiff and sore across my shoulders when at last we were all relieved of the task. I could only imagine how Gaston felt. He was now watching the pot boiling his tools with the same intensity with which he had worked for over an hour on Pete’s wound. He flinched when I began to rub his shoulders, and I paused.

“Non, please continue,” he whispered.

I resumed my ministrations and murmured in French for his ears alone. “You did well. I have noticed you seem to have little difficulty with your Horse when duty calls you to be a surgeon.”

“Oui,” he sighed, and some of the tension drained from him. “It is a thing I learned around Doucette. It is another mask I don. And truly, the Horse is well behaved at such times. All of my concerns become…

petty when faced with another’s need of that nature.”

“I hope you wish to be surgeon for this voyage,” Striker called from nearby, where he had gotten Pete to sprawl in the long evening shadow of the ship.

The loud intrusion echoed my unspoken thoughts, and I flinched as the muscles stiffened beneath my fingers.

Gaston shook his head slowly. “Nay,” he said in English, as loudly as his broken voice could manage, so that he could be heard across the sand. “I am still… not myself. And when I am thus, I am far better at causing wounds than mending them.”

This brought chuckles all around, and Striker sighed. “’Tis a shame.

Any idiot can be taught to kill, but not many have the skill to mend.”

“Aye,” the Bard added. “In all my years of roving, I have not seen another who could have saved Dickey from the wound he suffered this summer.”

Several men agreed. Gaston’s discomfort should have been evident to all, and I was growing annoyed with them.

Still Striker continued. “I have found this lad by the name of Farley who wishes to become a buccaneer. He claims he is a physician. He swears he has trained at a university, yet I don’t think he’s old enough to grow a beard. I am sure he has not seen combat.”

Gaston stood, and I glared at Striker until he winced apologetically.

“I will bring my chest and I will do as I can,” Gaston told him, “but I offer no guarantees, and I will not be named as ship’s surgeon.” He walked away, toward the surf.

“I cannot do it, Will,” Gaston said when I joined him.

“I do not question that. Non, I do question your saying that you cannot, as I do not feel your ability is in question, and I feel you can even when you are not well. But I do not question your lack of desire to do so. I understand. That is your decision. I only wish that you care for me if something is to occur, as you have always done since we met.”

“That is not in question,” he said fiercely. “I will let no other touch you.”

He rubbed his eyes and I could see the wildness gripping him again.

I took his hands in mine, and he met my gaze with a mix of suspicion and curiosity.

“What can I do to calm you?” I asked gently.

He closed his eyes and gripped my hands tightly. “Do not let go.”

I spoke in the same soothing tones I would use with a restless animal, and hoped he would not take offense or find me absurd. “I will not. We will weather this together. We will listen to your Horse, and do what we can to keep it calm. We will finish this careening. We will sail to Port Royal, and see Theodore, and tend to business. We will sail to Cow Island and… hunt bulls, I suppose. We will engage in this regimen you spoke of, and inure me to trysting.”

My heart, which I now supposed could be called my Horse, shied at the unanswered questions I had concerning that matter, but I hushed it just as I was doing with him.

He was nodding as I spoke. “We will inure me as well.”

“How so?”

His eyes opened and met mine calmly. “I must become inured to whips. Doucette was correct in that.”

“Gods,” I murmured, and tried to keep the grimace of worry from my face. “How…? I will not condone his methods in ….”

Gaston shook his head quickly. “His methods were crude in practice, but correct in concept. I must learn to see them without it triggering my madness. I must be forced to gaze upon them.”

“I will force you to do no such thing.”

He frowned. “But Will, you are the only one who can.”

“How… how do you envision this therapy taking place?”

Understanding dawned, and he nodded quickly. “The same way we will inure you to the other. We will retire to someplace quiet and private, and you will show me one while endeavoring to keep my Horse calm. I trust you. I have put great thought into the matter, and I feel you are the only one who could show me a whip and not drive my Horse to panic.”

I finally understood. “Ah, as you are the only one I could allow to…

inure me to being mounted. But whereas, I wish to associate you with pleasure and all things carnal, I do not wish for you to ever associate me with whips.”

He smiled, and then the familiar look of wonder mixed with annoyance suffused his face. “You truly wish to share this with me? You will walk with me even in Hell?”

My heart or Horse, and all other aspects of my true being, spoke very clearly on the matter. “Oui, I have chosen to be your partner in all things, even this.”

My rational mind was concerned on many fronts. I reminded it that the Gods always seemed to favor bravery in the myths.

Gaston woke me at dawn and led me up the beach well beyond the others. At first we frolicked in the waves, chasing each other about; then he headed north along the expanse of white sand, and I fell in beside him. We were not racing, merely running, and we soon matched one another in rhythm and speed. It reminded me of my dream, in which we were horses, or perhaps centaurs. I experienced a satisfaction with life I had seldom felt before, and I ran beside him for the sheer joy of it, until at last I could go no further, and I collapsed to my knees with a fierce pain in my side and laughter on my lips. I flopped to the sand to lie there gasping and laughing as he ran back to join me. We had run a good two leagues, and he looked as if he could run several more.

“You are done already?” he chided with a grin.

“Unlike you, I do not spend my days running about the woods,” I gasped.

With an expansive grin, he fell to earth beside me, and we lay there in the morning light, listening to the surf and the changing of the guard between the omnipresent insects of the night and the ever-raucous birds of the day.

“I find peace in exertion,” he said, after our breathing had returned to normal.

“Well, you cannot do that upon the ship.” Then I felt the fool. “But, of course, that is why you are so intent upon our daily calisthenics there; is it not?”

He grinned. “Oui.”

“And here I thought you always in training for combat. I did not realize you were waging a battle in an ongoing war.”

“I did not think of it as such, per se, but oui, that is what I do while roving. Tiring my body makes the Horse more manageable.”

I was relieved to hear this. I thought of how relatively stable his behavior and mien had been whilst we roved. It was probably truly best we sailed.

“All will be well,” I said, more for my benefit than his. Or perhaps I was making a demand of the Gods.

“Oui.” He rolled to me and kissed me gently.

I returned it in kind, and he deepened it in increments, adding subtle caresses that left me more than willing to do whatever he bade.

Thus, I did not think twice of his asking me to roll unto my belly. Then he was atop me, and nuzzling my neck in betwixt gentle murmurs of reassurance, and I realized what he was about. I grinned as his hands wandered to my buttocks and I found he had brought a pot of salve. At least he had kissed me first.

I found the physical exertion did much to calm my Horse as well.

Though I felt all the old fears, I was not so prone to bolt from them.

However, I learned I could not initially tolerate his being atop me while fingering me. It must be one of the other, and I did not feel the least bit amorous whilst he did either. Yet he was patient and kind, and for the first time I truly believed I might overcome all of the damage Shane had wrought.

And so we began a morning regimen: for the next four days, whilst the ship was cleaned and repaired and finally floated. The fourth night we all moved aboard.

I was dismayed when I became acquainted with the Virgin Quee n’s cabin. Gaston and I had sailed here on the Mayflower, and not the Queen, so we had not had reason to examine this aspect of our vessel.

Our brigantine was perhaps a quarter smaller than the English merchant ship on which we had last voyaged; and this difference applied to the size of the single cabin beneath her quarterdeck as well. It was bloody small after my own abode. Gaston was not the only one who would be forced to once again inure himself to the omnipresent smell and sound of men upon a ship.

The room was the width of the Virgin Queen’s stern beam, a mere eight feet at waist height, and only twelve deep from bulkhead to galley windows. The ceiling was so low Cudro and Pete had to stoop their heads when standing, and all of us ducked under the beams. Much of the available space in the center was taken by a relatively large table.

With the addition of several stools and a sizable desk built into the larboard bulkhead wall, there was little enough room to walk. And yet all six owners – Striker, Pete, the Bard, Cudro, Gaston, and I – expected to sleep here. The total would actually be seven, including Dickey.

I reassured myself that six of us would be in three hammocks, with Cudro in a fourth. And, thankfully, due to our being all of the ship’s officers, several of us would be expected to be on deck and not in the room at any given time. With all the beds in place, the space would be as cramped as the one in which I had sailed to Jamaica, but not so crowded as the alcove between cannon and bulkhead that Gaston and I shared with Pete and Striker for several months last spring.

The cabin’s occupants could barely fit within its confines to contemplate the matter of hammock arrangement: a matter complicated by most of us eschewing slender bags of netting suspended from two hooks, preferring instead wider berths anchored at four points.

Much discussion broke out and it was obvious the room could not accommodate all of us as we would like. Pete was particularly adamant in not relinquishing the wide nest they had already established high up between the beams. Their bloody hammock took up most of the ceiling.

Gaston finally tired of all the discussion and shouldered his way into the room. He slid the table to the larboard wall and dropped down to sit beneath it.

I joined him with a chuckle and announced, “We will be fine here. We will purchase some manner of mattress in Port Royal, perhaps.”

“You’re sure?” Striker asked.

“Quite,” Gaston said firmly. “Nothing will drip on us here.”

This elicited grimaces from all save Pete and me, who grinned. I had not considered that aspect of the matter. Dickey flushed, which amused the Bard.

The others quickly decided to compromise as was necessary. Cudro conceded he would be well with a narrow bed anchored at the windows and starboard wall. The Bard amended the arrangement of his existing hammock so that it would accommodate Dickey, and they also decided theirs would be put up during the day. The only ones not making a concession were Pete and Striker, and Pete seemed quite pleased with the matter.

We eschewed a watch schedule that night. Since the Bard and Dickey still required as much privacy as they could grasp in so small a world, they stayed on the quarterdeck alone. The rest of our crew had staked out prime space upon the deck, and thus only five of us shared the cabin. I lay upon the hard floor and ruminated on how very much I liked hammocks and good feather beds, and how very loud Pete and Cudro snore. I got little sleep. My matelot slept like a babe, and I wondered at his fondness for the undersides of tables. He obviously found great safety and comfort beneath them.

In the morning, we were not left alone to follow the private aspects of our regimen. Instead, we joined the others and assisted as we could in weighing anchor and sailing south around Negril Point. Once the Bard began to tack up the prevailing eastern winds toward Port Royal, Gaston and I found an open area of deck and engaged in calisthenics and a little sparring. We were teased in this, in that our fellows could not understand why we wished to work so hard on such a lovely day, when we only had a short distance to sail and need not be bored or restless. We ignored them, and went at it with abandon, until we were both calmed and sated after a fashion in spirit. As it was a fine day, and all were on deck, we were then able to sneak below and tend to the more personal aspects of our daily regimen. I was relieved, and felt that if we could continue in this manner throughout our future voyage, all would surely be well.