Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure (73 page)

He lay still for a time, and then he snorted with amusement. “All our talk of my becoming my Horse, and masks, and caves and shadows, and… You are correct: I can drive myself to it. That is what I did in Porto Bello that night.” He shook his head sadly. “I have… I must think on it.”

He shook his head irritably. “I use it as an excuse.”

“You are mad,” I sighed and squeezed his hand. “And when you are at your worst, it is truly the reason and not an excuse, but… There are times when I feel you anticipate it: there are times when I do.”

“You are correct,” he said sadly. He rolled over to gaze up at the ceiling. “I choose to let it… myself… run – these days. I do not know where the madness begins or ends, and where the Horse stands, and what truth is, and…” He gave a ragged sob.

I knew it would hurt horribly to roll over toward him, and once there my right arm could not reach for him. I felt helpless again. I moved my heavy wrist, reaching around for his hand, and not finding it, crawled my fingers along the chain until I came to the other cuff and then at last his fingers. “I love you.”

“That is real,” he sighed.

“Hold on to it,” I said. I recalled our floating together in the sea like this, just our hands touching. I smiled. “We are mad because we choose to live in truth and not shadows. We are our Horses. We only become confused when we attempt to make sense of it all.”

“I could have escaped Christine,” he whispered. “But… I wanted to show her how… foolish she was to want me. I wanted to… hurt her. I wanted to drive her away.”

“So did I,” I said.

“That is wrong, Will,” he breathed.

I frowned. I could very clearly remember the look in her eyes when she fired the pistol. She had looked like that when we dueled on the beach. “She wanted to hurt me. I would rather this than what she intended.”

“I wanted to kill Gabriella,” he sighed after a time.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she was going to die, and I could not. I knew, Will. I knew what I did was wrong that night. I knew it, and I thought he might kill me, and I wanted him to.”

I did not feel he had presented it in quite that manner before. It meant much, and I thought we should discuss it, but then I thought we need not. I spoke the truth of the moment. “I am pleased he did not.”

“So am I,” he said with wonder. “And I feel guilt for that as well.”

“Have we not discussed how guilt serves us poorly?”

He gave a rueful chuckle. “So if I am not to wallow in my guilt or drive myself to madness, what would you have of me?”

I smiled. “Love me, and drug me again, and think of all you will need before we sail. The key is here in my sling. I feel it is close to dawn.”

“I see light through the shutters,” he said as he rolled to me and pulled the key on its thong from my sling. He kissed me lightly. “I suppose I will visit the apothecary.”

As he unlocked the manacles and set them aside, I remembered there were things I had not wished to tell him for fear of provoking his madness. He paused in leaning over me to fetch the laudanum to gaze at me with concern. I sighed and smiled ruefully.

“Avoid Sarah,” I said sadly.

“Why?” he asked, a frown of worry tightening his face.

“According to Striker, she is willing to forgive the actions of a madman, but she might not be so kind in her regard of a madman who recovers his sanity in a timely fashion.”

He hung his head, and I was able to pull his face to mine now that my arm was free.

“It is a conundrum,” I whispered. “You are mad, but it seems that you are only to be forgiven the acts of madness by some if you are ever mad.”

‘There is no puzzle to it,” he said sadly. “If I was always as mad as my mother was, then my life would have been much simpler: Heaven or Hell.

But instead I am cast into limbo.”

He pulled away and mixed the laudanum for me.

I changed my mind. “I would not have you face the day alone,” I said and turned my head away as he proffered the cup. “I will take the pain.”

His eyes were as firm as the hand that came to grasp my jaw. “You will drink so that I do not have to worry about that, too.”

I took the dose.

“It is early yet: I need not leave you,” he sighed, and slid his arms behind my neck and curled about me so that my head rested against his chest and shoulder.

I wished to keep talking, to reassure him, but the new drug washed in over the receding tide of the old and carried me under quite thoroughly.

All I could do was cling to his arm and pray the Gods would continue to let us float.

Seventy-Five

I woke from a dream in which I heard the Gods speaking to me; though I could understand nothing They said. In what I believed to be the waking world – though I did not wish to open my eyes and determine the full glory of its existence – people were speaking French: one of them was my matelot; the other my sleep-fogged mind slowly identified as his father. At first I could understand nothing of what they said, either; and then the words began to make sense.

“Unfortunately, we might only be able to fully resolve the matter by having you stand before a French court, or at least a judge,” the Marquis was saying. “I do not know, though; and it might be possible to arrange that in Petite Goave where the Governor is. I will let you know as soon as I discover the details.” He sighed. “I chide myself on not seeing to the matter before I sailed, but… I knew not how I would find you, and I felt addressing that matter would be awarding more to my hopes than I thought I could bear if they were not met.”

He sounded tired, and I carefully peered through my eyelashes. At the angle my head had slumped in my sleep upon the pillows, I was thankfully able to see him sitting at the table. However, I could only see Gaston’s leg, where he sat upon the floor with the contents of his medicine chest arranged about him.

“I will be content as long as it can be resolved,” Gaston said calmly.

“We cannot be sure what the future holds, and even with this new trust between us, I do not wish to place myself under your control should I set foot on French soil. I must be my own man if I am ever to return to France.”

His father sighed and slumped back a little in his chair. “I understand. I do.” He sighed again. “I have much to do… in regards the past as well as the future. I will be composing letters the whole way home.” He frowned. “Do you think I should post Will’s letter to his father upon reaching France? I am hesitant to do so until I can arrange to see that the papers of renunciation can be delivered.”

That was a good question, and I felt I should answer it, but I also felt I wished to spy upon more of their conversation: not solely for my own benefit or through a lack of trust, but because I felt if I disrupted them by announcing my presence, it was possible they would not speak as they should. So though I felt guilt, I stayed still and silent, though not so still that it would appear I was no longer sleeping: or so I hoped.

“We can ask Will when he wakes,” my matelot said. “But I feel they should arrive at the same time, else his father will try to stop the other.”

I agreed, and my heart warmed at knowing I could indeed trust his judgment.

His father nodded. “The ambassador to England is an acquaintance of mine, but I have an old friend who is much closer to him than I.

I intend to write my friend first, and ask how I should proceed.” he sighed. “I must determine what I will say, though. It is a good thing I will have many weeks at sea.”

“What is there to determine?” Gaston asked with curiosity and no challenge in his tone, and I saw him moving packets of herbs about, from one pile in the arrangement before him to another.

The Marquis took a deep breath and chewed on his lip. “If… Well, I must tell them that an English lord has endangered my son. I could deliver the letter and document without that explanation, and merely ask that they see to it there; but the ambassador will surely wish to know why, as it might be a thing that costs political coin, as it were.

So I must tell them why. But then, they will wish to know why an English lord would do such a thing, and then I will need to tell them…

something. If I tell them that this Lord Dorshire merely dislikes your association with his son, they will suspect something more; and if I tell them the truth, they will think things that are… incorrect.”

“You do not wish to tell them we are lovers,” Gaston said. His words were not cold, but they were not warm and conversational either.

The Marquis sighed and emotion flowed across his face as he considered his next words. “Non, I do not wish to tell them that.

Because I feel they will interpret it poorly.” He held up his hand in a bid for patience. “I have seen man-lovers about court. They are prodigal libertines, ever up a skirt or down a pair of breeches with little concern for propriety.”

“And you would not have me viewed as that?” Gaston asked with less of an edge to his voice.

“Non, I would not. Because, as I have seen, much to my surprise, that is not the way of it here. But, of more import in dealing with the ambassador, the man-lovers of the court – at least those I have seen, and the ones I feel he might be most familiar with in kind – do not engage in relations or entanglements of a duration to warrant long-term concern by… anyone, save the Devil when it comes to their immortal souls. If the ambassador or my friend perceived you and your relationship with Will as being of that type, they would wonder why his father cared a whit. If Will was the typical libertine, his father would have to destroy dozens of men to keep his son from ruin.”

I could see the Marquis’ point, and as I had once been one of the men of which he spoke, it skewered me deeply.

“I see,” Gaston said sadly. “Can you not convey what you have seen here?”

“That is what I must determine the wording of, and…” He sighed and chuckled. “At the same time I am telling them you are a man-lover who is quite devoted to your man, and he to you, such that his father wishes you dead, I must tell them I am claiming you as my heir once again. You see my quandary.”

“Oui, but… I am not a man-lover. I love Will, but he will be the only man I ever lie with. I suppose that will make no sense to them, either.

Unless you say that I am mad, which…” Gaston sighed.

His father laughed. “Oui, it is a conundrum.”

“Oui,” Gaston sighed.

The Marquis sobered. “And, it is a thing I do not understand. I see you, and a blind man would know you loved one another, but… Men love one another, as brothers and the greatest of friends without…”

“Will loves men,” Gaston said quietly, and my stomach constricted.

“So you… engage in this… to please him. He said something of the sort the day we met.” The Marquis snorted. “And then, well… He said a thing that amused me while arguing with Mademoiselle Vines.”

“What?” Gaston demanded.

My heart joined my stomach in clenching such that I was not sure if it would function.

His father cleared his throat and gave a little moue. “That you are the… bestower… in your relationship.”

“Oui,” Gaston said slowly, and I could feel him gazing in my direction. “Most of the time, but on occasion I do receive him.”

His father grimaced. “Why? I mean, I can understand where…

perhaps… poking into… Well, that it would not be so very different than bedding a woman in certain regards, but… the other…?”

Gaston snorted. “Have you ever had a truly satisfying shit?”

His father nodded with seeming reluctance and a grimace of distaste.

“It is like that,” Gaston said, “Over and over again, with an experienced hand about your member at the same time.”

His father flushed and studied the floor with a compressed smile that finally became a chuckle. “I see. So there is some pleasure to it.”

“Oui,” Gaston said with amusement I could hear. His next words were sober, though. “I saw boys at it in the schools you sent me to. They usually paired older to younger, with the younger being considered…

like a woman, I suppose. Some of my fights were to fend off advances of older boys because I was small and considered handsome. I wanted none of that. And when I came here, obviously I saw men about it all the time. They paired, but neither was the weaker even if one was always the receiver. And still I wanted none of it. I did not want to be someone’s boy. I did not feel any desire to…” He sighed. “I did not feel any desire.

There was no need. Until Will. And even then, I was not enamored of our eventually trysting so much as I wished to please him so that he would be satisfied and stay with me. And now…” He sighed. “I find I prefer him, because it is more a matter of my heart than my loins.”

My heart felt as if it would burst, and it took nearly all my concentration to remain still and silent.

“But…” His father said with dismay. “You have been with a woman, now, non? Your bride, oui? I understand your love for him, I merely…”

Gaston sighed. “Women are complicated for me. It is due to…

Gabriella… But, I feel, even if there was not that and my madness to contend with, I might find I preferred Will.”

“Well,” his father sighed. “That would mean you love men more than women, would it not?”

“Non,” Gaston said with a sigh. “It would mean I prefer the tightness of an anus; and that, for my life here, I prefer the constant company of a man as opposed to a woman who I must ever leave in port. And though I wish for children, I am pleased to not have to concern myself with the matter every time I wish to tryst.”

His father had flushed anew and now laughed. “I can see where that might have a benefit. For the life you lead here,” he added seriously.

“If I come to France,” Gaston said with equal somberness. “Will will be with me, and we will share a bed wherever we reside.”

“My son,” the Marquis said, “in France, as in England, sodomy is illegal. I do not know if the English prosecute the matter with diligence, but in France it is a matter under the purview of the Church and the church courts. They overlook individuals with those proclivities if they are discreet, and in the city or at court, but a nobleman having a lover in his bed at all times would be…” He shook his head sadly. “Especially in the country. We have loyal servants, I feel that if you have a wife and children, and Will has a room down the hall, they will overlook the fact that one bed or the other is not often slept in. But discretion will have to be maintained outside of the household.”