I never keep track of what hour it is, all I know is that it is late. We’ve made our way back to Alphonse’s sleeping quarters. I notice my side of the bed has been made up, the red linen blankets smooth now. I realize that I have not stayed in many nights. Once I had a need for it, to keep close to someone as my nightmares attacked. But now after many years, it seems like they’ve slowed, and my determination and indifference has grown.
I cannot believe that it worked. Our plan. I am quite pleased. The shock has fizzled out and I am left now with the skeleton of what is true. Giselle has been reborn into the skin of this…Gia Roswell. I throw myself back upon Alphonse’s bed and lay a hand across my eyes. I see her and then I see Giselle, splashes of past images connecting. Her personality is different. But her face, her body, the way she carries herself: they are the same.
“We are here,” I breathe heavily. “Can I say that I am surprised?”
Alphonse shuffles through the darkness, lighting a candle and setting it beside us. He looks down at me and I cannot gauge his expression. It looks lost and mysterious as if he is battling both relief and bitterness.
“It is strange,” he tells me. “Such a strange thing for someone to die and then live. She has no idea who she is…what she is.”
I ache inside, the pain of eighteen years breaking open inside me and leaking bottled emotion into my blood. As long as we have sought her, sought Olivier Vauquelin, searched for Benjamin, we have finally made headway. I feel a fresh flood of anxiety and worry trip me up in my mind. I wanted to find her for so long. Now I must keep her safe from the Bone Woman and make sure that she can exist in this world without sloughing away again.
“It was as you said,” I state. “He bound her to himself.”
Alphonse knows that this is true. We followed Vauquelin’s trail from Paris to his new life in Saint Domingue. He’d abandoned Alphonse’s father once he’d learned of Giselle’s death and I am sure he became paranoid after the ransacking we had done. Now he lives a cushy life growing sugar for trade, using the backs of others for his infinite profit. I wanted to kill him when we found him. Of course, Alphonse with his rationality explained why that choice would have been pointless.
He led us straight to her.
“I want to go to her and explain everything,” I burst. “It was…beyond difficult to pretend as if she was new to me like we had never been sisters.”
“You cannot think of her that way anymore,” he jabs. “Remember in this life, she is not Giselle. Did you even listen to the way she spoke? She is nothing like her.”
I feel my eyes narrow and I jerk upright, facing him on. I crouch and shuffle my way closer to him on the bed.
“You do not know this. It is her soul. Her blood. Those things will carry through and though she is different, we will see the similarities. I have faith that…”
I feel hostile. My anger simmers and I want to scream. Everything has been wrong for so long and now we have found her. We’ve done as we said we would. I feel triumphant but fearful, as if this has unlocked a secret twist that I was unaware of and that now I will have to manage the repercussions, whatever they are. In this moment I want to slap him.
“Why can’t you be happy for me?” I seethe. “For yourself? This has been the one thing we’ve been working towards in our lives and now we are here. This is the threshold.”
“Yes,” he nods, speaking in a simple way that grates upon me. “This is what we’ve worked for. It is the first in many acts in how we would like the future to go. We have found her. What now?”
“We go into hiding,” I utter, flipping my hand wildly. “We hide. We go back to the cabal’s tombs in Switzerland. We find out how to break the tie between Giselle and Sidra. We help her remember. There is only one option that will bring us further to what we want, and it is right at our fingertips!”
Alphonse’s eyes are dark and disbelieving as if he is mildly amused by my words. I think back, all the years, it is as if we are now a slow-moving machine, comfortable in our affluence. Alphonse has cared for me well. He’s taught me much about life without asking anything of me. I know how to play with swords now, how to load a matchlock gun and shoot. I know much, and I did not pay any sort of price for the lessons. Or, maybe I have. I’ve lost the family I knew and grew into him. Alphonse and I are one skin almost. We are tied in ways that I never understood in my youth. Yes, we enjoy sex occasionally. I feel no guilt for it. If I wanted to fuck another man he would not care.
I reach out my hand and touch his jaw and he stiffens.
“What is it I see lurking beyond your eyes? I want to know,” I say.
He turns away and settles himself, facing away from me, legs hanging off the bed.
“You know all of me,” he sighs. “And you are right. We will do as you said. Take her back and try to unravel it all. I just…I am wary. The last few times we have tried anything it has done nothing. It has set us back and broken us down.”
I nod. I feel the effects of the faulty rituals and experiments gone astray. We’ve tried to create the elixir to recalling past lives, tried to enact the ritual that burns the memories into your soul so that you never forget. It has not worked for us.
“How many lives did he have? He had mentors. He had others to teach him. We have nothing but the ramblings of a madman,” I feel passion rising in my voice. “We will continue, and we will not fail.”
Alphonse knows this. He is aware of our reality, but I know that as usual, I have tremendous belief that we will succeed if we keep trying and he does not. I feel it in my bones and it lives there urging me on. But he? It seems that despite his success as a merchant, as a tradesman, as a seller of charts- that he is swallowed up by his pessimism and an iron regard for hating everything. Hating Benjamin for killing his father.
“We will have our vengeance,” I whisper at his back.
“We’ll never be able to find the Island,” he answers sternly. “And you know that is where he is. He’s hiding. We’ll be hiding. You think our paths will cross?”
Alphonse glances back, his tone thick with heat.
I grab at his neck and pull him back to me so that he is resting against my chest.
“Everything will be well,” I attempt to soothe him, and rake his unkempt chestnut locks, “You have to keep hope.”
He sinks into me and he is heavy. I feel his shallow breathing, the desperation in his being. It annoys me, but I stay. I must. I kiss his forehead and let out a sigh.
“We have her,” I tell him, and feel my heart flutter.
Shall I go to her now? Shall I listen to her breaths? I should set men outside her door. I think of it now, remembering how tenuous the tie really is. She could die for nothing and we’d lose her again. How long would it take the second time? My own life is in the balance. I could die just as easily and then she would be lost, and our goals would be dust. Food for the wind.
“Our greatest chance of achieving everything we want is to go back to the cave. We will find a way to make her join us and then when we know how to facilitate her remembering…all will be well.”
“You say it like it will be so simple,” he croaks. “Nothing ever is.”
“What about our men? I don’t have enough of the potions to cause their blind commitment to us.”
He speaks of the potions that Vauquelin doused his father in. We found the potions and their direct explanations, but no formulae, no recipes or guides. I think about the pottery we found it in and I remember the silvery liquid that poured out as we carefully rehomed it within a sturdy wineskin. We used it on men. Our deckhands. They’d follow us to the grave if we asked them. They’d sacrifice themselves for us without a blink of thought.
“We need only the ones we have,” I am emphatic. “And if we need more…Alphonse, I am sure we can think of something. It is not hard to lie to others.”
He snorts.
“I have businesses in France, the colonies, and the West Indies. What am I going to do? Abandon my life�
�s work?”
“You sound like an imbecile,” I let my hand fall from his hair. “Like a sniveling little boy.”
He jumps to his feet, “You will not speak to me this way.”
I laugh.
“Are you really so far gone? Can you not think outside the here and now? You were the one who taught me to think this way. You’re a miserable creature in this moment, Alphonse. You knew this was going to happen. You knew that we would reach this point and all else would be managed by our committed men. You set it up to be this way!”
He rubs a hand across his face and shakes his head. “You’d do well to go to your rooms. We are finished here.”
I giggle in a spirited way. How else am I to react?
“You don’t tell me when to go. This is as good as my room,” I spit.
“How else do I say it? I do not want you here. Go.”
“What is wrong with you?” I utter in disbelief, “What about her changed this for you?”
I am flushed with anger. I feel as if he is betraying our entire existence; everything we have worked for.
“Nothing has changed!” he yells, “Nothing. We will do this as we planned. I only…I wanted to be better prepared, that is all.”
“Eighteen years and you are not yet prepared?” I cock a brow and smirk, “You are a funny, funny man.”
He shakes his head as if to counter what I say.
“You are. Truly. It hits me right here,” I point to my gut. “So funny that you make me sick.”
“Claire,” he is broken, exhausted by our conversation. “Please leave.”
Instead of doing as a woman should, I go to the bed. I maintain eye contact with him the entire time. He will not control me, and he knows this. It is something we’ve tested many times. We have similar wills, but I own him. He will always give in to me, always as men do.
I change quickly into my night robes and allow my hair to be free and flowing down my back. I look at him to see that he is deeply offended but unable to speak.
“Your bed is my bed,” I state as if it is fact. “We are family. You are my lover. We cannot separate now. Not now that we have found her. We must keep our heads.”
Benjamin
There is a ship I want to take. I noticed it on the horizon a few days ago. It was dawdling along, heading down the coastline, bearing items that stand out to me, a gold mine in the distance. I know that it will have general rations and a surplus of merchandise. These things men like me always need.
I dress myself stiffly, my body aching from labor. Life on the ships is always rigorous, and even if I still do look all of twenty-four, my body has become hardened and weathered from life and the years that have passed. Even with my men operating the ship at all hours, watching and waiting, knowing what I want and will be happy they sought, I still do not sleep. When I sleep the hours are restless and I dream always. I feel numb and ill all the time. Yet, I am strong. I have kept my fitness but lost my mind. It takes too much rum to make me tired, too much to give me the slight connection to sleep that I used to feel.
I have a feeling that this ship will be the one we need and then we can return and go back into hiding for a while. It takes so much now to feed my people. But I have others out doing their rounds. When I think about it I try not to become annoyed. So many men. So many lives. They all want a taste of what I have, and I do not blame them. Still, it is not for everyone.
Sometimes I contemplate cutting some of them out. How could I not? I’ve gotten myself into a hole. I’ve taken too many in without thinking of the consequences. Yes, the spoils are good. I have that to appease myself. I have everything and nothing all at once.
“Captain.”
I hear a knock on the wood door to my quarters. It is Idalgo, my first in command. He’s been at my side through the roughest of waters, the hard smuggles, the times where we’ve tested our lives.
“Come,” I say.
He enters, his face harsh with fatigue. They’ll have been loading the cannons and rounding up weapons, preparing for the siege to come. He wears clothes that we’d taken from a rich Spaniard. I even see a peek of a gold chain around his neck. Perfect for him; it brings him back to the roots of his nationality. His black hair hangs long and wet-looking on his forehead. We look near brothers.
“Are you ready, or what?” he lifts his arms a bit, his eyes wide and irritated.
“In a rush are you?” I smirk back at him and slide a rapier, a long dagger, and a matchlock pistol into the leather loops at my belt.
“No, we’ve only been ready for a few days now,” he smarts. “Waiting for your command.”
“And you’ll keep waiting,” I say, coiling my hair back into a low tress and placing a feathered hat upon my head. “Unless…are you wanting to give the orders now, friend?”
I see him catch himself and roll his eyes in frustration. I know how to handle his temper. He’s always been this way. Always jumping into things, always trying to be the hero. It could be admirable if he thought things through beforehand. But he’s been the most loyal. I haven’t had to question whether he’d follow me into hell or not because as far as I’m concerned, he already has.
“I’ll tell the men you’re ready. We’ll start to close in.”
“Let’s get this done quickly,” I tell him.
___________________
I squint my eyes against the bright lower Atlantic sun, its rays keen to break us into sweats. I clap men on the backs as I pass them, shouting words of encouragement. I want to lift their spirits. It’s always better to build up the anticipation before the plundering of a ship. Some of them know they’ll be fine. The others don’t. The young ones mainly, the ones who have yet to prove themselves.
“Come on then!” I bellow when I reach the helm.
I give Idalgo the signal to start prepping the smaller boats.
We’re gaining quickly on the ship. At the top of its mast’s there are merchants’ flags. It’s a large one, fat with cargo and sellable items; valuables. Our sails are plump with wind as we rage forward through the choppy waters. When I look through my spyglass, I can see that the ship has spotted the coming breach. The men flurry around likes monkeys, throwing themselves around with no direction.
“Yes, you know we’re coming for you,” I mutter, shoving the spyglass into my coat pocket.
My men clamber about, working on the rigging, keeping the ship at optimal speed. My other men are waiting patiently below for the call to fire the cannons. I stand where I always stand before the storm of gunfire and slashing of swords. Then, when we are close enough, I give the call.
The hot breath of cannons give smoke up into the air and the thunder of the ejecting metal echoes in my ears. I jump down the steps and lope to where Idalgo releases a small boat into the water. Men toss grapeshot’s at the ship's deck.
Then I feel a whistle past my ear and hear the hit of a bullet in the wood of my upper deck. I look across to see a fat man aiming straight for me, standing still with barrel in position, his eyes blank stone in his skull. I brush the tip of my ear and shrug, and he sees me. I have to smile. I appreciate the effort, I really do.
“I’m going in first,” I decide, and Idalgo blows out a breath.
“I’ll come with then,” he says and then shouts back. “Hear that, men? You’re on your own loading the next boat. The Captain and I are going to have some fun!”
We exchange wicked grins and then howl with excitement.
“Fuck if we’ve done this in a while,” I yell above the din of cannons, guns, and screaming people.
Idalgo chuckles and takes the oars. There are ten men to a boat. I grab hold of the second set and we muscle our way out from against our Brigantine, heading for the open waters that lead to our prize.
“You’re getting soft!” He calls.
I laugh in good spirits and hear the cry of a dead man and then a thump as he tumbles down into the water. Perhaps I have. I have gotten accustomed to my men bearing the weight of it al
l, doing my killing, bloodying their hands, bringing home the gold. But its for themselves, not only me. I am generous. But, it’s always good to shock them with moments like this when I can stretch my skills in combat and show them that there is a reason that I am their leader. A reason that they call me “Brother Death.”
We draw near to the ship's broadside and toss up our hooks, water sloshing loudly beneath the din of cannon-fire. I thwack a skinny lad on the back to scurry up the rope and secure the top.
As soon as he hits the top he’s run through with a blade.
“Damnit!” Idalgo roars.
The young one falls back into the boat, rocking us heavily.
“Everyone up!” I command.
We throw our grapples up and over. They won’t be able to stop all of us. We just need one to succeed and then the rest may follow. My boots hit the wood side of the ship and I pull myself up, jumping quickly so that I am able to thrust myself over the edge to the deck.
Idalgo is a second or so behind me and we are greeted with raging sailors with swords at the ready. They play offensively, railing themselves against us. I draw my sword and clash with some of them, pushing them back. We have a few ladders secured when I look back.
“Brother Death!” the sailors scream. “Kill him! He’ll bleed just like the rest of us!”
I hear this and I glance at Idalgo who has a simple bemusement on his mouth. I thread my blade through one man and then dagger another, twisting myself out from between them as they are thrown to the ground in sprays of crimson blood.
More of my men fly over the edge and enter into the thrall with hollers of inflated exhilaration and ego. We’re beating the sailors back and the cannons have stopped. When I note that most the men are occupied in melee, I free myself of my last opposer with one last slash and then jog up towards the stairs. I am guessing, from previous experiences, that their Captain will be waiting for me here.
“Round them all up!” I roar back at the men.
There is always a certain point where they give up and throw down their weapons. When I reach the upper decks there is no one. I double back, swinging myself down the steps to greet the remainder of the people.
The Bones of Broken Songs: A Historical Mystery Romance (Mortalsong Trilogy Book 2) Page 2