Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (48 page)

“A matter involving matelotage,” he said gruffly.

“I am flattered that men seem to feel I know much of the matter.”

“Do they?” he asked.

I frowned. “Well, you are the second to approach me on such matters. And you did approach me, for some reason.”

He ignored my comment and glanced about. “Who was the first?”

“Well, Dickey, and that was before we sailed here.”

“So none here?” he asked.

“Non.”

He appeared relieved. Gaston and I exchanged a quizzical look.

“I have been approached concerning the matter,” Cudro said quietly.

“For advice?” I asked.

“Non, for… I have been asked to become a man’s partner,” he sighed.

“Ah! Well then… Who?” I asked.

“There have been two,” he grumbled.

“Do tell. Famine or feast then,” I teased.

He sighed irritably. “I wish for neither… of the men, boys… damn it.”

I sobered. “Let me guess, the candidates are among the new men.”

“Oui. Burroughs and that boy Ash.”

“And you find favor with neither of them.” I was not asking. Cudro had tastes in the matter as refined as mine, and if he had merely wished to have a partner it would have been easy for him to obtain one. Cudro was also as much of a romantic as I, in his own fashion.

“And furthermore,” I added, “they did not seek you because they find favor in you, but because they are seeking a strategic partner as we instructed; and they felt the lone and experienced quartermaster would be an excellent choice.”

“Precisely,” he snorted.

I shrugged. “So… refuse them. Tell them you wish to pair for love.”

He swore vehemently in Dutch at the sky. “I did refuse them, politely even, but not for that reason. I told Burroughs and Ash they lacked the experience to partner with a quartermaster; that my matelot might need to stand in my stead.”

I shrugged again. “That is true, and probably left few hard feelings.

So why then are we talking?”

He swore again. “There is a third. One I wish to approach.”

“But you cannot because of the other two?” I guessed.

“Precisely,” he snorted. “The third is young Nickel.”

I laughed. I should have realized. Nickel of the fine features and build would have captured Cudro’s eye.

“Oui, laugh,” Cudro sighed.

I tried to contain myself. “I am sorry, my friend. So is that what you quarreled with Liam over?”

“Oui. I wished to have the boy as a boarder.” He shook his head. “He is, of course, best suited to be a musketeer.”

“And you cannot approach him now, anyway,” I said, “as you rejected the other two for lack of experience, and the same would apply to him. You have fenced yourself into quite the corner. You should not have lied.”

“Oui, I know that now. Thus we are talking,” he said glumly. “I have made a tragedy of it, or perhaps a comedy. I always do. I am nearly never attracted to men who would do well as my equal partner among the Brethren, just as I am ever attracted to those who…” He gave a guilty glance toward Gaston.

“You prefer younger, handsome men,” I said kindly, “such as Tom, or Dieppe, or even Gaston.”

“Oui,” he said quickly.

“Cudro, might I ask, how long has it been?”

“Years,” he sighed. “There have been men, but not men I would want as matelots, or… not men I could take as matelot for battle. There have been men I wanted to lie with, and men I wanted to fight beside, but the two have not been the same. It’s been… Damn it, Will, it’s been so long that if I thought Burroughs was the least bit interested in me, I would take him on and close my eyes at night. But he is not; he said as much.”

“Would Nickel find favor with you?” Gaston asked.

“Non,” Cudro growled in anger, at himself, not my matelot. I was surprised he had managed such a sound with a word with no r’s.

“I know well I am not your kind of man,” Cudro added.

Gaston turned to look at him. “I did not wish to be anyone’s boy.”

Cudro nodded sadly. “That is the crux of it. No man worth having as a matelot in these West Indies would want to be someone’s boy.

And I want a boy. I want someone to take care of. It is a thing I do not understand, but the possibility of it is a thing that often drives me concerning love and lust.”

I patted the big man’s shoulder. “I have met young men who would find great favor with both you and being cared for, but you are correct, they would make poor matelots. I see why you are alone, and I am sorry.”

He shrugged. “It is the way of it. Or rather, it is my way.”

“I know not what advice I might offer,” I said.

“Non, neither do I. Perhaps I merely needed to speak of it,” he sighed.

“Find a man who favors men as you do, and fights well, and make the best of it,” Gaston said. His tone was not cold, but it was not kind either.

Cudro snorted. “You make it sound so easy.”

“You make is sound impossible,” Gaston replied. “If you can no longer tolerate being alone, you will find someone, and you will learn to love them.” With that, he left us.

“Though his point is sharp and a bit harsh, it does pierce the truth, perhaps,” I said.

“Oui,” Cudro sighed. “I always wish to have what I cannot, and I never seem to take what I could have and enjoy it.”

“Do you feel some great need to treat yourself so?”

He smiled sadly. “Perhaps I do. I will think on it.”

“You are worthy of love,” I hazarded.

He regarded me sharply. “How would you know?”

I sighed. “I do you no singular favor. No matter what sins they have committed, I feel all men are worthy of love by someone. I might not be the one to grant them that respect or devotion, but there is always someone who will, and if there is someone, then they can be loved. Yet, I know well it is a notion we find great difficulty placing faith in when it concerns ourselves.”

Cudro smiled. “I will ponder it.”

“Then I leave you to that.”

I jogged down the beach until I caught up with Gaston. “I agree that he sets hurdles he cannot jump,” I said as I fell into stride beside him.

“And tell me: are you making the best of it?”

He sighed. “I feared you would interpret it in that manner.”

I chuckled. “I say things I fear you will take poorly all the time.”

“I am not making the best of it,” he said. “This is the pinnacle. There is nothing for me to fabricate to convince myself it is such a thing. It is simply the best.”

“But when we started?” I chided, and poked him in the ribs.

He turned to face me, his eyes earnest. “You were of enough interest, and I was lonely enough, that oui, I decided to make the best of it.”

“Then it is not a bad thing at all,” I said gently.

He showed me once again how little of a bad thing it was.

I was pleased we were well down the beach, so as not to arouse Pete yet again by our antics. Still, I noted that the Golden One eyed us curiously as we returned. Our friends were passing a bottle of Madeira, and Striker seemed to have had more than his share, though he was not drunk. When Pete reached for him he did a surprising thing, and stood with a roar of annoyance. All about the fire regarded him with wonderment: most of all, Pete. It was the first time I had seen Striker at a loss for how to behave when he had all eyes upon him. He stalked off into the night. Then all attention turned to Pete.

To my further amazement, Pete did not follow his matelot. Instead, he looked to me and said, “Someone Should Watch After’Im.”

The ancient Godlike mien had descended into Pete’s eyes once again, but this time it was quite dark in character. Whatever was afoot, he knew the nature or it.

Gaston shrugged when I looked to him, and I turned and hurried in the direction Striker had gone. I found him standing in the surf. I joined him, studying what I could of his profile in the moonlight. His eyes were tightly closed.

“Do you wish for company?” I asked over the waves.

“What did Cudro want?” he asked without turning to me.

I decided responding to his ploy would not be a true breach of Cudro’s confidence. “He wishes for a matelot, but he wants more than a partner in battle, and he does not want the men who want him, and the men he wants are not suitable as matelots.”

Striker swore. “At least he…” The growl that followed was unintelligible, but I did not think it was meant to contain the words to finish his sentence.

“What is the matter?” I asked. “I would aid you if I could.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if you would understand.” He finally turned to me. “You want what you have.”

“This concerns Pete,” I said.

“Aye, it concerns Pete!”

He was furious, but I did not feel it was directed at my person.

“You once told me that though you do not favor men, you favor Pete a great deal. Has that changed?” I asked.

He looked away to kick at the waves in frustration and rail. “I love him. I cannot conceive of life without him. A man could not ask for a better matelot. There are times when my member finds great favor with him. And most times I enjoy his finding favor with me. But damn it, Will! The talk of marriage and babies set me thinking, and then he feels it is a threat to him, and then you two are going at it day and night. Now he will not leave me alone! I am so…”

He sat in the surf, and I was forced to drop to my knees beside him in order to hear his words.

“I dream of my wife… and other women, some I have known, others I merely fancied in my youth. I wake hard as iron with thoughts of breasts and the curve of a girlish arse. I want to fuck a woman. I want a frail body in my arms. I want to tongue a teat I could suffocate in. I want to smell the scent of her cunt on my fingers. I want to slide my prick deep inside her without the odor of hogs’ fat or shit. I want to feel that when I spill my seed it might take root. I want…”

He shuddered with unshed tears and frustration. I put an arm about his shoulders. That closeness was what allowed me to hear what he said next.“It makes Pete angry,” he whispered. “He knows, and he feels I’ll leave him, and so he tries to convince me no one will love me as he will, and… He hates them, Will, he truly does. I’ve suggested sharing a wife.

I’ve suggested that I visit a whore on occasion. He’ll have none of it. So I’ve slipped away to whores when I feel as I do now. He doesn’t know. It eats me alive that I had to lie to him; that I’ll do it again.”

I truly knew not what to say. For a time I could only rub his back and contemplate the surf as thoughts tumbled through my head. There was a common weave to them, and I struggled to decipher the pattern until finally I thought that divulging them might help.

“You are correct,” I said at last, “I do have that which I desire, but what you do not know is that has been a long and painful struggle to achieve.”

“Will, I didn’t mean…”

I shook my head. “Nay, hold, let me speak of this and ramble a bit about it. The topic might assist you in finding another way of viewing your own predicament, or it may not. At the least, you might find it a distraction.”

He chuckled with little mirth. “Then I’ll listen.”

“Many assume that, as there was Adam and Eve, so there are all men and women; that a man is strong and manly and a woman soft and yielding; and that a man should hold only to women and vice versa, but we all know that is not always the way of it. I have oft been confronted by the notion that a man who favors other men is expected to be womanly in some fashion, that he must be womanly, else he would not favor other men.”

“Aye,” Striker said bitterly.

I thought it good he had been in the West Indies and not England with his predicament, as being branded a sodomite might have driven him mad. But of course, in England, where there were women, he would never have cleaved with Pete such as he had.

“I have met many men who favored men who were not the least bit womanly,” I continued. “And a number of women who favored women who were not the least bit manly. The two things, whether one is masculine or feminine in nature, and who one favors, have little to do with one another. And by the same coin, men who favor other men sometimes favor masculine men, and sometimes feminine men, just as women who favor women sometimes favor masculine women, and sometimes feminine. They are all separate colors that weave the pattern of that individual, and every pattern is different.”

Striker was frowning, but it was thoughtful frown and he turned to face me.

I continued. “I recently met a young woman who wishes to be manly in many ways. She wishes to embrace the role a man can have in this world, in that she would learn to sail, fence, attend a university, and lead men. Yet, this young woman did not wish to be manly per se when it came to matters sexual. She wished to be with a man, not a woman.

And I feel this dichotomy is very hard on her.”

In fact, I realized it probably tore at her very soul, and I felt great sympathy for Christine.

“In other examples,” I went on, “we both know a man, Cudro, who favors men, yet does not favor men who are as manly as himself. He is enamored of younger men, softer and more yielding men perhaps, who he can care for in ways that men usually care for women. Yet a man of that nature does not make a good matelot for a buccaneer, and so Cudro exists in a quandary over the matter. Sadly, he would do fine in the courts, where there are often young men of that nature in abundance.”

“Where do you stand on these matters?” Striker asked.

I sighed and smiled grimly. “I favor men; I have done so since my youth. I favor manly men who I can yield to, though only now have I found a man I am willing to yield to. I have spent much of my life as a lover of men, bestowing – because I could not trust another in that way – and yearning to at last be able to receive, to yield. Yet, I do not perceive of myself as being womanly.”

“I do not see you as being womanly,” Striker said. “And Gaston, though he does not favor men, he finds favor with a masculine man?”

“Who yields. Aye, he wishes to bestow.”

“Pete must bestow. And…” He reclined onto the stand to study the stars with a thoughtful mien. “In truth, I do not know if Pete favors men.” He said it as if it were a curiosity to him.