Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure (7 page)

I did not see Theodore. Gaston swore and began to set the chest down. I followed his lead and turned enough to see Theodore collapsed on the sand behind us.

Gaston quickly had his fingers at Theodore’s throat, and then relieved at what he found there, felt down our friend’s body, searching for injury. My heart pounded painfully as I dropped to kneel beside him.

I sighed with relief when my matelot did.

“He has fainted,” Gaston said quietly.

I chuckled.

Above me, Striker was swearing. “Jesus! How bad is he?”

I waved him off. “He is…” I thought it would be difficult for men to ever forget Theodore swooned. “He must have taken a clout on the head.

He is not wounded, though.”

Gaston and I pulled Theodore upright to lean against the chest as Striker and the others discussed what to do with our surviving assailants. There were apparently members of the militia present, and it was decided that the men should be taken to the gaol until the matter could be sorted through. I heard Gaston’s name mentioned once. I thought it likely we had a long day of explanations ahead of us. I hoped I could spare Gaston most, if not all, of it.

Theodore came around quickly when Gaston put salts under his nose. He sputtered for a moment and patted his body with alarm.

“You are well,” I said lightly.

Gaston gave me an admonishing look to say that he would be the judge of that.

“Do you feel well?” he asked Theodore. “Is there pain?”

“Only my pride I feel,” Theodore whispered. “Did I… swoon?”

We nodded.

“I told all you took a blow to the head,” I said kindly.

He appeared greatly relieved. “Are we…? Are they…?” He looked about.

“Dead or wounded,” I assured him. “We are all well. The survivors are being taken to the gaol. I would imagine the dead will be too.”

Gaston was frowning at the man I had shot in the leg.

Behind me, one of the wounded was protesting in French as men hauled him to his feet. “But he is French.”

“We know ya be French!” one of the men holding him upright yelled in English.

I stood. “Nay, he is saying that my matelot is French, which is wrong. He is an English citizen now.”

The men from the militia, not all of whom were buccaneers, turned to regard me.

“Is that Lord Marsdale?” their leader asked Striker, who nodded and shrugged.

“Would you know what this is about, my Lord?” the man asked me.

I sighed. “Aye, I feel I do, but I do not wish to discuss it here.”

There was a great deal of grumbling in the crowd around us.

I addressed them. “It concerns my matelot, who is an English citizen now.”

This seemed to assuage many of them, but others seemed more hostile than curious. I suffered an odd moment of disorientation, as if I had seen all this before. I had. Though the facts were different, the gist of it all was much the same. Then I suffered the realization that it would always be thus with Gaston and me in relation to the rest of humanity.

We would always be subjected to scrutiny, and judged wanting.

I turned away from them.

The puppies were now in Theodore’s lap. He was cradling them carefully with Bella and Taro standing guard – over or of him, I could not be sure.

Gaston was digging about in his medicine chest. He found what he wished and went to the man with the leg wound, before the buccaneers who were taking him to the gaol could roll him onto a sheet of sailcloth to carry him.

“Hold him still,” Gaston told two of the men.

One of them was a man we had sailed with, and he quickly complied and the other one followed his lead. While they pinned the wounded man down, Gaston shoved his fingers into the man’s wound. He probed about inside the man’s leg with great concentration, his lips between his teeth and his eyes on some distant thing so his vision did not distract from what he sought to feel. The man screamed and all other activity about us stopped.

“He be a surgeon,” a buccaneer to my left told someone.

Gaston at last found what he sought, and pulled a thick red blood vessel from the hole in the man’s thigh. He placed a clamp on it. The pulsing flow of blood from the wound stopped.

“There,” Gaston said. “Now he will live long enough for someone to amputate the leg. He might even live beyond that.”

As many were still quiet about us, the militia leader had apparently heard him.

“So we should find them a surgeon?” the man asked.

“If you wish them to live,” I said.

“I care not,” the man said quickly. “Do you want them to live?”

Gaston swore softly in French and studied the sand with angry eyes. I could see his need to act: either to fight or heal. His Horse had had quite enough with being still whilst a barn burnt around it. It now needed to run, either under his hand, or away from it.

“Aye,” I said. “We wish them to live.”

Gaston looked up at me with bitter amusement. “I will tend them,”

he muttered in French.

I nodded. I turned to the militia leader. “Gaston is a physician; he will see to them.”

The man shrugged.

As it appeared the medicine chest must be moved, I went to help Theodore rise. He was trying to awkwardly position the sling over his shoulder.

“I’ll Take It,” Pete said, and carefully took the puppies from him.

He positioned the sling across his shoulder and shushed and cooed the now-mewling and hungry puppies. Then he looked at Striker, Theodore, Gaston, and me. “I Take ’Em Home. Tell The Women We Live.

Y’all Get Ta The Gaol. Don’t Need Me Now.”

Striker rolled his eyes. “How do you know that?”

Pete grinned. “All That Be Left Be The Talkin’.” With that he walked off with the dogs at his heels.

I sincerely hoped he was correct, but with so many men about us now, I doubted even the stupidest of men would move against us. Still, I looked about as everything and everyone was gathered up for the move to the gaol.

A tall man at the edge of the crowd caught my gaze. He was watching Gaston with hard and speculative eyes, and disdain etched deep into his sharply-featured visage. I assessed his clothes and arms, and saw he made choices based upon quality and functionality: not only was he not fashionable, he seemed to care little for aesthetics, but his pistols and blade were finely wrought and well-used.

The thin man next to him was quite the opposite. His clothes and mannerisms said “courtier” more clearly than if he had a placard strapped to his chest saying the same. As I watched, he whispered almost continuously in the tall man’s ear, in a manner that suggested he was repeating what he heard, or rather, translating.

One of the men carrying Gaston’s medicine chest bumped into me accidentally, and I turned my attention back to the last of the chaos around me. Gaston was gazing down at the stout man. I went to stand next to him. I saw I had shot the stout man in the eye.

Gaston gave me a wry smile. “You are amazingly precise when startled.”

“Are you implying my shooting lacks precision when I am calm?” I teased.

He snorted. “You are always precise.”

“Do you recognize him, or any of them?” I asked.

He shook his head. “This bastard was staring at me as if he recognized me, but I cannot recall him.”

“What of that tall man over there?” I gestured surreptitiously to where the disdainful man and the courtier still stood.

Gaston caught the meaning of my low hand movement, and casually glanced about, letting his gaze slowly travel to where I had indicated. He froze and quickly turned back to me.

“Vittese,” he hissed.

“The tall stony-faced man with the fop beside him?” I asked.

He nodded tightly.

“Well, then…” I said.

“Will,” Gaston said quickly. “He is competent.”

I met his gaze and shrugged.

He shook his head with frustration, but I thought it more at his own thoughts and not me. “You are a thousand times better, but… do not think he is as foolish as these were.”

“I understand,” I said solemnly. “I wish to speak with him, though.

Will you stay with me?”

He regarded his blood-stained hands and looked to where the wounded were already disappearing into the crowd on Lime Street. “I should not.”

“All right then, is there anything you would have me tell him?” I asked.

He sighed, and a small smile graced his lips. “I am sure you will make him angry. You can tell me of it later.”

I smiled and leaned close to whisper. “I am proud of you. You are doing well this day.”

He met my gaze with startled eyes and then a rueful smile. “Am I?” He thought on it and nodded to himself before smiling at me. “I am loved.”

“Oui,” I breathed.

He seemed to have to work up to it with little rocking motions, but he grabbed me and kissed me deeply there on the beach of the Chocolata Hole, in front of dozens of people, and Vittese. He grinned triumphantly when he released me.

“I am loved,” I said with a matching grin.

“More than I can ever express,” my matelot said happily, and then he left, walking swiftly through the crowd without looking toward his former gaoler.

I did turn to look at Vittese. The man was glowering at Gaston’s back.

The courtier had his kerchief over his mouth and amusement all about his eyes. I thought he might be blushing. He reminded me very much of Dickey when first we met.

Vittese moved to follow Gaston, the courtier at his heel.

I stepped into their path. “Vittese!”

The man’s hand darted to his sword hilt. I grinned, and dropped one leg back in preparation of drawing. I awarded him a raised eyebrow. He let his hand drop away.

“I am the Viscount of Marsdale,” I said in French.

Both the courtier’s and his eyes widened, but Vittese’s narrowed quickly, whilst the other man’s mouth dropped open.

I let my grin widen. “Tell your master that we have done him a great favor by removing several imbeciles from his employ, and that we will be delighted to continue to perform this service for him.”

Vittese did not reply, but Gaston was correct, I had succeeded in making him very angry.

“And,” I continued, “tell him he will meet with me, alone, and I will judge whether or not he shall be granted audience with his son, at a place and time of our choosing.”

“That will not be acceptable,” Vittese rasped.

“Then your master has sailed very far for nothing.”

With that, I left them and went to follow my matelot to the gaol. We would see who the Gods followed this day.

The gaol was a house one of Jamaica’ s worthy citizens, a Sir Thomas Lynch, had donated to the town. It had been built within the first years of the colony, and sat on the wharfs, and by all rights was prime warehouse property. The place was in the grips of chaos when I arrived, and I had to shoulder my way through the throng of curious onlookers to reach a member of the militia, then argue with him before I was granted entry. I hoped someone had been available to lead Gaston through it. Someone apparently had, as my matelot was inside and working on the man whose leg I had shot. I soon had a great deal of the poor fellow’s blood upon me, as Gaston required my aid in performing the amputation. Thankfully, he had drugged the man with sufficient laudanum to keep him not only quiet but unconscious. From the state of intense concentration my matelot was in, I thought it possible I would be drugging him to calm him so that he might sleep before the day was out.

Once the amputation was complete and cauterized, we moved on to the others. The assailant Striker had shot died. One of the men Pete struck had a broken jaw – which I heartily sympathized with. Gaston cleaned and sewed the blade wounds Pete and Striker left in two of the others. Then we turned to the man Bella and Taro had mauled. He would be severely scarred for life. Dogs with heads the size of a man’s, and jaws that can break marrow bones, will do that to a man. Both bones in the arm he had thrown up to defend himself were broken and all of the tendons torn. Gaston gave the man laudanum and had a calm discussion with him about whether he wished to keep the hand – which would be little more than a club – or have it removed, which was going to be a likely result of the matter anyway if any sort of putrefaction set in on the wound.

During this discussion, Theodore came to ask if I could join him in the doorway. I looked where he indicated and saw several well-dressed notables there, including our Governor Modyford and Sir Thomas Lynch. With a sigh, I wiped the blood from my hands, whispered to Gaston that I needed to play diplomat, and followed Theodore.

Modyford looked me over with some degree of confusion until at last he recognized me and smiled. “Lord Marsdale? It is you.” He bowed.

“Well, you do seem to take to the buccaneer life quite well.”

I smiled in return. I had only seen the man a handful of times, and always while dressed like a proper English gentleman. “Aye, Governor Modyford. It is a pleasure to see you.” I bowed in return. “I am sorry it is under such circumstances.”

“Ah,” he shrugged, “I was in town anyway. What is this about, my Lord? I understand you were assaulted by the French.”

His gaze found its way repeatedly to my neck, and I wiped at the area his eyes seemed drawn to and discovered it as not errant blood that held his attention, but the mark Gaston had given me.

I snorted and shrugged. “I do not believe they intended such bloodshed, but aye.”

Modyford pointed at the body of the stout man, which had been laid, uncovered, outside the door, as the room within was crowded. He spoke with amusement. “Was there not some other altercation involving you shooting a man in the eye? An escaped bondsman of yours, was it not?”

I was surprised he remembered, and then I remembered that was another burden of nobility: to be notable whether one was a great man or a great pissing idiot. “Aye, his name was Creek, and I still view the matter as unfortunate.”

“Aye, bondsmen are expensive to replace,” Modyford said with a shrug.

I suppressed a sigh. “Creek was a drunkard who had fallen in with some very foolish fellows. I did not wish to shoot him, but… the situation unfolded much as today’s did. When we disembarked at the Chocolata Hole, we were approached by this man.” I gestured at the dead man at our feet. “He was eyeing my matelot in a manner I did not like. He informed his fellows, in French, that Gaston was the man they were seeking, and then he rudely addressed him. Our good friend Pete struck the man and admonished him for his rudeness. At which point, the man ordered his fellows to attack us. Though in thinking on it now, I realize they did not draw weapons. I was not aware of that at the time, though, I merely saw that we were set upon. And Pete, Captain Striker, Gaston and myself did as any buccaneer would do in a like situation: we prevailed.”