Wolves

by W. A. Hoffman

  When I finished I found Gaston leaning in the doorway watching me.

  “If I find those hooks he used upon your eyelids, I shall make him eat them,” I informed him.

  He smiled wanly. “If I ever get my hands on your father, I shall fashion a turnip as was used upon you from anything at hand.”

  I smiled. “Even if we clean it thoroughly, and… burn the contents, will you ever truly feel at ease here?”

  He sighed and glanced about before shrugging with resignation. “It is mine.” He looked past me. “And Doucette’s too, I suppose.”

  I turned to see the object of his gaze and saw the blood stains from the beating Doucette took.

  “If that is how one comes to own a room,” I said, “then… Pete sank my frigate.”

  My matelot chuckled briefly before giving a sigh of relief. “I do not know, Will. Let us clean and see how we feel.”

  “I suppose we could ask the pair next door to trade,” I said hopefully.

  He nodded, but it was obvious his thoughts had wandered on. “The thing I remember most about this room is the fear I had killed you.”

  “I am sorry that fear added to your pain.” I could not imagine how horrible it would have been to be imprisoned by Thorp thinking I had harmed Gaston in some fashion—or that he was dead. I would have died.

  My matelot shook his head. “I cannot envision what my life would have been if I had not met you. What would I have done? I could not have lived here.”

  “Can you now, truly?”

  “Oui, with you,” he said with assurance. His gaze met mine and he returned to the present. “I love you.”

  The regard in his gaze warmed my heart and made me forget where I stood. “And I you.”

  “Let us clean it and go to the market,” he said with surprising cheer.

  We set about emptying the chamber of all but the planks of its walls, floor, and ceiling. It was blood-spattered but bare when Sam came to ask if we would break the fast. I had smelled bacon every time I stepped onto the balcony to heave something over the rail. I was famished, and Gaston did not appear so driven by our task as to not show enthusiasm at the mention of food, either.

  As we left the room to join the others, I was dismayed to see the mound of wreckage heaped below the balcony. Sam asked if he and the boys should haul it away. Gaston assured him they could do as they wished with the heap, but added, “I will see to the chair.”

  I felt better about the gazes from around the tables; even though many were no longer curious or alarmed, and now held that mixture of shared shame and pity I suppose must be accepted when compassionate people know a wrong has been done to oneself.

  I sat at a table with Yvette and Agnes: it was the furthest from the rest. My matelot did not sit: he snatched up a handful of bacon and, skirting the pile of debris, went to the cookhouse.

  “So, you will be well with that room?” Yvette asked.

  “We will see how we regard it when it is fully clean,” I said.

  “He...” She paused with pursed lips.

  “I feel I understand,” I said quickly. “It is a trigger... It seems to induce his memory of the event.”

  Fighting sympathy, I considered how much Doucette might be aware of the loss he had suffered. What would it be to know you had been robbed of much of what you were?

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “I have drugged him. I must when he becomes so agitated,” she said sadly.

  For her I allowed sympathy to flow. I felt again the empathy I had experienced with Gaston’s father. Here was another who must care for the wounded and mad. We were brethren in that regard. Yet, did I have a right to stand where I had on the matter as I had a year ago—as a fellow sufferer of the vagaries of a loved one’s madness—now that I had proven I could be as mad as my matelot?

  Gaston had returned from the cookhouse with an axe. With great enthusiasm, he waded into the debris and handed whips to Sam, telling him to burn them.

  “I thought he could not bear whips... I mean...” Yvette said with curiosity.

  “He overcame it. After what occurred here, he realized he did not wish for them to be a weakness. It took many months, and much patience, but we at last inured him to them.”

  “As my husband wished to do,” she said without challenge.

  “Oui, but without strapping him to a chair or holding his eyes open with hooks,” I said without rancor.

  She winced.

  Gaston had cleared space around the chair, and now he was attacking it quite savagely with the axe. I looked back to Yvette and found her fearful and tense with her gaze locked upon my matelot’s efforts. Her scar-twisted lip made her look as if she was preparing to snarl a warning as a dog would.

  “Do you fear knives?” I asked to distract her. Doucette had claimed she did not, but I doubted he had truly known or cared.

  “Non,” she said quickly with conviction. She turned to face the table, shutting out my matelot’s antics with a slim but determined shoulder. Agnes offered her hand, and Yvette took it gratefully.

  I kept hold of my tongue and turned attention to my food. Surely she had a trigger: as surely I was seeing evidence of Gaston’s behavior pulling it now.

  Yvette toyed with her food a moment before lowering her voice and dipping her head in an earnest birdlike manner while seeking my gaze. “I never saw the blade. That is why I do not fear them. I only saw him… The one who… scarred me. He was very intent: like he was doing some chore that required great… concentration. It was as if I wasn’t there.”

  I glanced at my matelot: engaged with great concentration in destroying a thing that had harmed him. I understood.

  “Did you know him? Your attacker?” I asked.

  She shook her head sadly and sighed. “Non, but he had visited the brothel before. He was well known. There had been no trouble with him. It was my first time with him, and all had gone well, and we had begun to speak afterward, and… suddenly he became mad.”

  “What did you speak of?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Dominic was ever curious about that. He thought I must have triggered the man’s madness.” She shrugged.

  “It would never make you to blame,” I said quickly.

  “Non, non,” she said with a smile. “I do not feel that. Understanding it was madness made me feel… relieved. I understand I did nothing to anger him. I just…” She shrugged again. “We were talking about women he had known. I had complimented him on his skills. He had been quite the charming lay. Very kind. I must have reminded him of someone. I knew even as it happened that he wasn’t angry with me. He didn’t even look at me; at least not my face. He pinned me to the wall with a hand on my throat, and… he seemed so concerned about what he was doing. So intent, you understand?”

  I nodded. “And he was not trying to kill you, per se.”

  “Non,” she said with a bemused expression. “He could have done so easily.” She shrugged. “When he was done, he dropped me and donned his clothes and left.” The remembered fear returned to her features. “Then I thought about screaming. And it was like I could not scream loud enough for anyone to hear me. I felt I was falling into a deep well. And I knew I would drown, and they would not hear me. And I slipped away. Then there was Dominic, pulling me out.”

  “Did you know Doucette?” I asked, reluctant to disturb her reverie, but not wishing her to become mired in it.

  She shook her head; and then that movement traveled down her spine, and she shook the memories away as a dog shakes off water. She smiled at me. “I had seen Dominic, and heard of him, but I hadn’t required his services. I was very new here.”

  And then he had become her savior. “What happened to the man who hurt you?” I asked.

  She sighed. “The other patrons killed him. The girls said he seemed confused about why the men were angry with him.”

  It seemed that the event that scarred her held more in common with the attack of a wild animal than the horrors to which Gaston and
I had been subjected. That was why she seemed so untroubled by it. Her pain and misery had not been inflicted in the name of personal vengeance: it had not been a personal matter at all.

  As I thought on what I knew of her, I realized this revelation explained her ease about men and knives—a thing I had found curious upon learning of her scars—but it begged more questions than it truly answered. I could not believe that her ladylike manners and speech had been taught by Doucette since her marriage.

  “How is it you became… employed in that profession?” I asked. “Please do not be offended, but you are very well spoken for a... whore.”

  She smiled winsomely. “Thank you. I was raised to be a courtesan—from a long line of courtesans—in Marseille.”

  “Ah, that explains a great deal; yet, however did you…”

  “Come here?” she supplied. She sighed and glanced at Agnes with a sad smile which the girl returned. “I fell in love with the wrong girl.”

  I laughed such that everyone else in the courtyard turned to stare. Yvette blanched and blushed and Agnes regarded me quizzically.

  “I am sorry, Madam,” I said quickly and quietly. “It is just that your revelation is so in keeping with much that I have experienced here in these West Indies that I wonder why I did not suspect it.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Why is it that men think they are the only ones?” she asked.

  “Because we are arrogant fools?” I asked with humor.

  She grinned, but sobered quickly with another guilty glance at Agnes. “I fell in love with—and seduced—my first serious patron’s fiancée. He was furious.” Her mien became truly somber. “I would not do the same again.”

  Agnes looked away with a troubled frown.

  “I was young and foolish,” Yvette continued. “Not that I am old now, it is just… That was only five years ago, but it seems a lifetime.”

  “I assure you, Madam, there is no conflict here,” I said.

  Her gaze met mine, and I saw in her young eyes how very much she must have aged in those five years—and especially in the three years since we had first met her: years in which she had been forced to be the mistress of her own life with no one to support and aid her.

  “With you,” she chided. She glanced about. “But we dare not let others know. The Church: my God…” she sighed. “And men such as your fine friends who accept you as you are; but who will surely find a woman loving another as an affront of a different kind. And…” She sighed yet again: this time with sadness. “There is Dominic. He would never accept it.”

  “Would he understand?” I asked carefully.

  Her gaze was chiding again. “He is not so very daft as that. And he despises sodomy—even in women. When I told him of my life he told me I was mistaken: that I had only thought I preferred women because I was trained I should not truly love men, as they would never love me. He claimed it was a common thing among whores who are poorly treated by men. I did not argue with him. He was—is—so very stubborn about such things.”

  An old spark of thought jumped to life in my head. I smiled. “I think he protests too much.”

  Yvette frowned; but across the table, Agnes smiled.

  “What do you mean?” Yvette asked.

  “I think he finds great favor with men, but cannot countenance it in himself,” I said. “Thus all who do as he feels he cannot must be condemned.”

  Yvette considered that for a time before saying, “He loves Gaston. More than he ever loved me. And, you are correct: it is not as a son.”

  I nodded mutely. So, as I had expected, and my Horse had obviously known, I had told the world the truth when we sought to slander Doucette. There was always the kernel of truth in any lie. That is why a truly good lie is so insidious.

  I was minded of my father; and it set me to wondering about his true relationship to the matter of sodomy again. As always, it would excuse nothing, but it would explain so much. Perhaps the only reason I did not simply accept it was because acceptance of his having a reason was the road to understanding; and that could lead to forgiveness and sympathy. I would have none of that. Or rather, he would receive none of that from me. I wished to hate my father with an untroubled heart.

  Gaston had finished with the chair. It lay strewn about his feet: no one piece larger than a hand’s breadth. I was sure the axe was dulled from his striking the stone to cut the last bits down further still; but the anger and concentration no longer seemed to grip him. He went about the work now like a man splitting firewood: absorbed by the task, but emotionally oblivious to it.

  I turned back to the women in time to witness an intense but silent exchange. Yvette was tightly gripping Agnes’ hand, whilst Agnes tried to pull it away without disturbing the infant in her arms or alerting anyone else to their tussle. The women were not looking at one another. They glanced about to see if others watched: no one was.

  I reached across the table and laid my hand atop their straining ones, causing them to start. Yvette relinquished her grip and fell back in her chair with tearful eyes. Agnes jostled little Apollo to quiet him and stared at her reddened hand beneath mine. I pulled my hand back.

  “What did I miss in my reverie?” I asked quietly with a calm mien.

  “I am not a child,” Agnes hissed under her breath.

  Yvette pressed her hands to her eyes and sighed. “I did not say that,” she breathed.

  “When I was young,” I whispered, “I would have happily meddled in this matter out of my enthusiasm for your love and my fervent wish that you both be happy. But I have not been young for, oh, perhaps six months now, and I no longer feel it is my place.”

  Agnes glared at me; but Yvette chortled briefly behind her hands before peering at me over them.

  “I am afraid,” Yvette said.

  I saw the scars from the event that had truly marred her soul: the tragedy of love that had driven her from Marseille and made her a common whore for a time. She had been thrown into the mud before swine for loving someone.

  I tried to stand in her shoes and see how her life could be destroyed, and I could only think one thing.

  “My dear lady,” I said and took one of her hands. “What is the worst that can happen? The trouble that I likely bring to all who know me will surely destroy all you hold dear before any repercussions of an affair with Agnes could.”

  Agnes’ breath caught, and Yvette stilled. She studied me for a time before taking a deep breath and nodding. “I understand,” she breathed.

  I looked to Agnes. “And you, my lady… People only tell you to slow down because they love you enough not to want to see you hurt as they have been.”

  She flushed and looked away.

  “But…” I added. “If I had such a wondrous lady dangling before me, I would be impatient too.”

  Yvette smiled. “You meddle well.”

  “Oui, perhaps. It is good I am no longer young.” I left them before I could cause more trouble.

  Gaston was quite amenable to abandoning his reduction of the chair to splinters. He leaned on the axe and grinned happily at me as I approached.

  “Is it dead?” I asked.

  He cocked his head in consideration. “It has been dead for some time. I am merely laying it to rest.”

  “Good, then let us depart for the market.”

  “Is there haste?” he asked quietly, his gaze glancing to the table I had left.

  “Non,” I sighed. “Need perhaps, but no haste.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, and we retrieved our belts and baldrics from the library. We were hailed by Theodore and Liam as we headed toward the door.

  “Where ya be off to?” Liam asked with great concern.

  I gave my matelot a rueful smile—and he replied in kind—as we turned to face them. We were so unused to answering to anyone for our comings and goings: it was likely to chafe until we became accustomed to it.

  We assured our friends we were merely going to the market and we had left our muskets as hostages. This se
emed to assuage them, and we were allowed to go in peace. Then I spied one of Yvette’s servant boys following us down the street.

  “I do not relish this scrutiny,” I remarked as I cocked my head toward our less-than-deftly-surreptitious follower.

  Gaston made a disgruntled snort when he saw the boy. “Should we lose him?”

  “Non,” I said with regret. “Someone might value him and wish for his return.”

  My matelot chuckled, and so we ignored the spy and went about our business.

  “What did you discuss with Yvette and Agnes?” Gaston asked quietly in English after we had haggled with a stubborn merchant over our first purchase: an absurdly ornamental chamber pot adorned with vines and grapes by some assuredly-drunken Greek.

  I told him of Yvette’s true scars and my meddling as we purchased a new hammock.

  The news pleased him. “So it is truly not her alone this time. The Gods finally smiled upon Agnes.”

  “It appears so.” I felt sudden unease as I thought on it. “But now we are four.”

  He considered that and sighed. “I suppose so.” He looked to me. “Does it change anything?”

  I shrugged. “Nay, I suppose not. It is just… more in the cart.”

  His shoulders slumped as if he felt the weight already. “Aye. How do you now see the road here?”

  I watched our spy buy a sweetmeat with a foolish display of coin. He pulled all he carried from his pouch and counted it in his hand for everyone to see before allowing the stall keep to tell him a quarter slice of copper was enough. Three lanky youths watched this from nearby with hunger in their eyes.

  “Packed sand awaiting a rain that will render it a mire we will never pull free of,” I sighed and went to the boy.

  “Never show your coin,” I told the startled spy in hissed French as I pointed at the youths—who now regarded me with equally wide eyes. I took the boy by the arm and towed him back to my matelot.

  “Especially if you continue to throw things in the cart,” Gaston said with amusement.

  “Nay, nay,” I assured him. “This does not go in the cart. We have enough there. All others can run alongside.”