Wolves

by W. A. Hoffman

  “Aye,” I sighed, “but that will entail adding another to our secret, and thus endangering it that much more. But Pete, why would no one believe it? They have only seen you with Striker. Perhaps he was a fluke of circumstance. Others do not necessarily know what kind of man puts the wind in your sails; they only know the man you have loved these many years.”

  Pete snorted contemptuously. “An’’EBeNothin ’Like’Im.”

  “I will not do this even if he agrees!” Chris cried. “This is madness. I cannot believe that one man pretending to lie with another can add validity to either being perceived as men.”

  With that, she lost whatever sympathy I might have nurtured for her. “Well, boy, if there were any women about, I would say you best pretend to bed them: as you are correct, that would lend far more validity to your claim of masculinity. But our destination will have no women. And, I sincerely doubt we will find a man there who could make you appear manly in comparison. And as you will not even appear manly enough to be someone’s equal, it would be best for you to pretend to be someone’s catamite; as much as that might offend your sensibilities.”

  She flushed anew and looked away with a muttered, “I want to be a man.”

  I felt smug at her useless protest, and then I began to wonder at my commitment to the enterprise. Did I truly wish for her success in this, or did I wish for her to fail? Did I truly still harbor such ill will toward her specifically, or was I simply angry in general from some innately male foundation of my being that she should dare usurp what was rightfully ours? And I surely was angered anew every time she disparaged sodomites.

  She turned from the sea and faced me. “I do not wish to be… the one on the bottom. That is why I wish to be a man—to be perceived as a man. I do not wish to be the one who must always receive and submit to the attentions of those who do what they will in the world. That is the entire point of being a man: to not be treated as a woman! But you are saying that is impossible.”

  I was touched by her poignant earnestness, and pushed from the cave of my cloudy thoughts to sprawl awkwardly in the light of truth.

  “I am sorry, Chris,” I said with sincerity. “It is not a thing possible here. Not what you wish for. Truly, it… Well, surely you already know it is a thing of comparing one to another in many minds. Being more masculine or feminine in juxtaposition to another is what dictates common notions of masculinity and femininity. You are far more masculine in thought than many a courtier I have met, or many sodomites, or, of course, women. But this is not the Versailles, this is the West Indies, and men here make most courtly men of Christendom appear to be the weaker sex in comparison. It is a very difficult crowd indeed for the theater you wish to present.

  “Suffice it to say that no matter what you might wish over the course of your life, you cannot be the manly man here. You must be the effeminate man here. We can possibly—if we are very careful, and you work very hard—convince manly men that you are not a woman; but you will never be perceived as you wish. In Christendom, you could probably pass as a man with greater ease, but it is possible that you might never become manly enough to satisfy your heart there, either.

  “You must decide if this will be enough—for now at least. This voyage to Cow Island is a temporary thing. We will go there and see if we can hire a ship to take us to England. Once there, you can do as you wish. I am sure you realize that among us, you will always be the girl. But we can endeavor to help you learn how to avoid others thinking the same.”

  She regarded the sea with teary eyes. “I understand, but it is not fair. I should not need to have a husband in order to do as I wish: here, there, as a woman, or while pretending to be a man. Or have to disguise myself with some woman who is willing to appear far weaker than I in order to prove my manliness. I cannot see where I would ever want such a woman as a friend, much less… And I am truly not enticed by them...” she trailed off sadly.

  She rubbed her tears away angrily. “It is horrible. It is as if I have been cheated. And then God has seen fit to curse me further still by allowing me to realize it.”

  She finally surrendered to her sorrow and buried her head in her arms to sob quietly. I looked around and found my companions solemn and once again watching the sea. I wondered why some are content with the lot they are given in life, and others are not. Then I realized that no man on this craft had been content: that was why we were here.

  “I have seen very few people who are truly content with what the Gods see fit to give them,” I said kindly. “And those few that are content are complacent cows who accomplish little in life. We must earn our happiness. Perhaps that is part of the lesson of living.”

  Chris snorted disparagingly. “You do not face my trials.”

  “And you do not face mine,” I countered. “There are things in this life that I want that I will never obtain. I daresay that is true for everyone present.”

  “Such as?” Chris snapped.

  “The love of my parents,” I said with amusement. “A home country where I can love as I choose without fear of recrimination or the need for discretion. A place where I can worship as I will.” As I spoke, my amusement fled, and I felt the nip of melancholy as the specter of all we had just fled rose in my thoughts.

  “You are still far freer than I,” she said.

  “Am I?” I asked with venom. “I am fenced by the notion that men must only love women. You are fenced by the notion that you are a woman. At least you love the proper sex in the eyes of the world. Even you constantly disparage my love of men: claiming it a thing that makes me less a man. You seem to happily bow to the supposed providence and primacy of women in matters of men’s hearts and cocks—you who rails against your own confines. I find it hypocrisy.”

  “Me?” she cried. “You are the one patronizing me with your explanations of why I cannot have what I wish because I will never be manly enough.”

  I considered the truth of my heart and thankfully found her wrong. “Nay. I have not said that you cannot have what you truly wish in the world, which is to do as men do. I have merely explained why attempting to make yourself into a man will not work—in this locale. Here or elsewhere, you will have to learn to act as men do while being a woman.”

  “That is impossible!” She made a disparaging gesture that encompassed Ash and Pete. “Men perceive a woman, and then she has no rights and no power unless she schemes to get a good grip on their cock.”

  “It is about sex,” Gaston said thoughtfully, and all gazes shifted to him. He shrugged at the new scrutiny. “She is somewhat correct: matters of gender are perceived from the perspective of who is on top. All men and women are steeped in the knowledge and consequences of that power from their first days in the nursery. All our relations with the other sex involve the exercise of power. Those who bestow have the power: those who receive purportedly do not. A man can do both, but a woman will never truly possess the instrument required to bestow. Men are born with swords, and women are born with places to put them: wounds or scabbards, depending on their choice.”

  She seemed pleased he agreed with her.

  He met her smug gaze and spoke kindly. “You cannot avoid… sex. That is what all this talk of manliness is about. No one will believe a slim youth will be allowed to bestow upon a grown man. Will is correct; in Christendom perhaps you can accomplish it, but not here. And you can decry the unfairness of it all you want, but your lot in life has already been drawn. You must make the most of it.

  “And all this talk is truly sophism,” he continued. “This is not about what you want in life. We are sailing to Cow Island. You cannot be seen as a woman there—even if that is what you wished. We must either hide you away completely, or convince all that you are a man by whatever means necessary. If you are discovered to be a woman, we will not be enough to protect you, and you will likely suffer far more than you did at the hands of my madness.”

  This sobered her, and the self-pity fled her eyes to be replaced by fear. “Why could you
not protect me?”

  “They will be angry with us and we’ll be protecting ourselves,” Cudro rumbled. “And no man here can take on a hundred.”

  “So you will have to swallow the bitter irony that your quest to be a dominant man and not a submissive woman has led you to this: you must follow orders and play the necessary role, or we will need to be rid of you,” Gaston said with a still-amazingly calm and kind tone despite his words. It was the mask of his Wolf physician, and he was telling a fat man with gout who was to blame.

  “I am willing to do everything Will has said,” she protested. “I will learn to piss while standing. I will learn not to blush at… I just… I will not lie with a man.”

  “Nay,” I said, “but you will pretend to—once we find one willing to aid in this ruse.”

  Chris slumped dejectedly. “Where could you put me off?”

  Cudro rumbled with amusement. “Well, we’ll be passing a number of Spanish towns, or we could sail east to Barbados.”

  “Nay,” I said. “Our young gentleman will battle the conflicts raging in his soul.”

  “It will be good for you,” Gaston told her. Then he pulled me close to whisper, “And she is wrong and foolish, being loved by an avowed sodomite makes me feel very manly.”

  I chuckled and kissed him even as I mused on why the Gods were so very different from us in the matter of sex and gender: no Greek or Roman ever purportedly questioned Athena leading an army into battle. I supposed it was because Gods rode atop us all and thus even their women were above our men. Yet, the Gods Themselves also seemed to not be troubled over such things. Could we ever aspire to be like the Gods in this matter?

  One Hundred and Three

  Wherein We Salute Gods and Monsters

  It was soon the first week of July, and we had cleared the mountain range that ran along the northern side of Hispaniola and begun to sail southeast alongside a great, flat forested area of lavish greenery. There were now signs of Spanish settlement: a tower here, and a swirl of smoke from some unseen fire there. We spent our days further from shore and curious eyes; only slipping in toward land with the dusk; and we slept aboard. We still had sufficient water, but we were far from adequately provisioned, and this new need to sneak about was not going to aid the situation. We began to keep a fishing line in the water day and night.

  And if the looming danger of the Spanish was not enough to trouble us, the camaraderie of our little band had become quite strained.

  We had renewed our vow to only think of Chris as a man; and he had dutifully tried to learn to act more like a man. With a great deal of ingenuity, we fashioned a wood cup and funnel of sorts that he could hang from his waist and tuck into his linens to give the appearance of a man’s bulge; and—given time and practice—deftly palm and use to direct his urine in the appropriate arc. With obvious reluctance, but thankfully, pleasantly little complaint, he began to practice with this item. He also stopped dashing away as soon as we were ashore to do his other business. We learned his menstruation would soon be upon us as well. We reinforced his under things with oil cloth to prevent leakage, and prepared bandages to be used as rags.

  The one thing Chris still fought us on was accepting the inevitability of being a man’s matelot. He used every success at learning some new art of manliness to make his case that the other would not be needed.

  Pete agreed with him.

  On the other front, Ash was quite the besotted fool. I was sure I would have seen it all along if my matelot had not been at death’s door in our first weeks of this voyage. Ash found great difficulty in keeping his gaze away from the object of his desire; and, ominously, he stopped sleeping in the stern with his matelot, and speaking to him.

  Cudro had become silent and sad. It hurt me to look upon him. He pretended joviality, but whenever he thought no one watched, he lapsed into the utter picture of melancholy.

  Gaston and I took to curling chastely together every night with our only shared intimacy a pair of resigned sighs.

  I wondered how the matter could be resolved, especially since our vessel could not provide the opportunity for private discourse without physical intimacy. I was damned if I was going to lie beside Cudro or Ash and whisper in their ears.

  We all seemed to spend our days peering toward shore, seeking some excuse to land and forage—or achieve a little privacy.

  “Is the whole eastern side of the island inhabited?” I asked on the fourth day as we eyed the second column of smoke we had seen in as many hours.

  Cudro sighed. “I don’t know, Will,” he admitted sheepishly.

  I was not the only one who turned to regard him with alarm.

  He shrugged eloquently. “I don’t know. The Bard might know; but I’ve never sailed around this side of Hispaniola. I’ve heard this side is curved out a little, unlike the western side where there is a giant bay between two long peninsulas. This side is just supposed to curve out and down. Then there’s a thirty-league-or-so wide passage—with some islands, I think—in between the south-easternmost tip and the island the Spanish call Rich Port.

  “Then you get to the southern side: that I’ve sailed along: we all have. You sail past it from Barbados to reach Jamaica. There’s an uneven crescent of shore from that southeastern point to the southernmost point. The thickest Spanish settlement is there. Beyond that southern point is the peninsula that Cow Island sits beneath.”

  I had, of course, not really considered how we would attain Cow Island. Now I thought on what he said and what I remembered of the southern side of Hispaniola. I was alarmed at the result of my musing.

  “That area past the southern point, is that where we tried to provision last year before we went to Maracaibo?” I asked. “Where Striker lost his arm? Where it took us three damn weeks to sail around that damn southern point?”

  Cudro sighed and nodded.

  I swore. “This will not take a month of sailing. They will have sailed against the Spanish before we can arrive.”

  The Dutchman shook his head and chuckled. “Will, the winds will be with us from the east. It won’t take three weeks to round that point.”

  “Well that is good, but how the Devil are we to provision?” I asked. “We are already seeing Spaniards, and if they stretch all the way around the southeast of this island, and are thicker still across the south…”

  Cudro’s look of worry told me I need not chide him into realizing the problem.

  “We would have faced the same sailing north along the Florida coast,” he said sadly.

  I looked to my matelot and Pete. “Have either of you sailed along this coast before?”

  Gaston shook his head with a grimace.

  Pete snorted. “Nay, I’veNot. ItDon’Matter. YaWorryTooMuch. We’ll JustDo ALittleRaidin’.”

  “There are six of us,” I countered.

  “ThenWeNa’Be Takin’San’Dominga,” he drawled.

  “You stupid bastard,” I spat with little vehemence despite my concern.

  He laughed. He was the only one.

  That evening we had the fortune of spying a small inlet fed by a brackish stream. We hid the boat and prepared to slog inland to find drinkable water before the sun set.

  Gaston whistled a low warning just as Pete, Cudro, and I started out. We hurried back to his side near the boat, and squatted in the brush and peered where he pointed. There was a sloop sailing south: cutting the water where we had a mere half hour before. She flew Spanish colors. She was too far from shore for us to see much else.

  “We haven’t seen a port north of here,” Cudro rumbled.

  “One to the south?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  I sighed, kissed my matelot for luck, and began to slog up the stream—such as it was. The brush on the banks was too thick to cut through and go anywhere before we lost the light. Cudro joined me in wading in the murky water, but Pete decided he did not wish to dirty his boots, or risk walking in the mud without them. Barefoot, he scampered onto the roots of one o
f the trees. The big tangled things wove all around one another and reached far into the water. They seemed to hold the mud and not the other way around. We watched him nimbly pick his way up the stream well above the water—holding the branches or trunks above his head to steady himself.

  I considered the closest roots. “I suppose that appears a faster way to travel.”

  “Not for me, but…” Cudro finished with an unintelligible, disgruntled sound as he stepped into a sudden hole and sank to his waist.

  I laughed and slogged back the few feet we had come to deposit my muddy boots next to my amused matelot. Cudro did likewise, and we were soon traveling by tree branch as Pete had—far less adroitly, though: he occasionally dropped back to laugh at us.

  On one of these brief sessions of abuse, I rolled my eyes and looked away from Pete’s laughing face in time to see a log in the water move—toward me—very fast. “What the De…?” I began to ask.

  “Cayman!” Cudro roared.

  He hit me between the shoulder blades, propelling me off the roots and into the bracken of the bank. There was a sudden weight on my leg and I heard an ominous snap beside me. I felt no pain, but I was not sure if it was because I was injured or broken.

  I twisted and found myself nearly nose to nose with a dragon. Its teeth were embedded in the root I had fallen beside. Its attempts to thrash were stopped by this impromptu bit in its mouth. Its heavy, scaly body was across my left leg. Its clawed feet were scrabbling in the mud as it attempted to pull itself away—thankfully, I had no flesh below them.

  Pete and Cudro were atop it, stabbing it with knives like fiends. Sorrowfully, I watched the light die in its beady black eyes. Now that I knew what it was, I was sorry it was dead. I had heard about the Cayman beasts before I had even set foot in the West Indies; and now the first one I saw was dead.

  “Will, are you well?” Cudro was roaring and shaking me.