I nodded. The subject troubled me, and so I teased with a grin, “If you feel yourself mortally wounded, you will take me with you?”
He sensed my mood and smiled slowly. “Oui, with my dying breath I will kill you. Will you do the same?”
I let myself think of it, and immediately regretted it. “I do not know if I could.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Neither do I, and if I knew I would die I would want you to live.”
I sighed and chuckled ruefully. “And I cannot imagine it without you. So we are back at the beginning.”
“Let us not die.”
“Even I, who do not like to trouble myself with the consequences of things, know that we should most probably change professions then.” At that thought, I felt the brush of melancholy. “What did you intend to do with your life before I so rudely interrupted it?”
He was playing with my earlobes. “Did you realize your head is not symmetrical?”
I laughed. “Oui, I know. Neither is yours. An artist once told me that no one he ever saw was truly symmetrical, and he thought that if any man were that perfect, they would appear ugly to others.”
“He was probably correct.” Gaston smiled. “You look fine as you are.”
“I am glad to hear it.” I grinned. “What did you intend to do…?”
“Before I met a drunk Englishman on a street reading Plato?”
“Oui.”
He looked away somberly and regarded the lamp. I watched the flame flicker in his eyes.
“I lived because I could not die,” he breathed. “I gave no thought to the future. I was not careless with my life, but not careful either. Living here was no different than… before. I was happiest when I did not have to consider such things. When I was young, it was always a new school and a new battle, and here it has always been a new ship and new battles. I was mad before and I am mad now; it merely takes a different form. I was always alone.” He frowned. “Except for when I was very young, and then I had my sister. Here I have occasionally found those who cared, but not enough to…” His gaze returned to mine. “I think I hoped that eventually I would be unlucky and it would end.”
I held him and buried my face in his neck. I remembered the first bout of madness I had witnessed, wherein he was enraged with me over saying I had sometimes wished for death. I was once again overcome with emotion; but this time it was not guilt or shame. If forced to name it to another, I would have called it responsibility. I had never been this important to another being, ever. And no one had ever been this important to me.
He pulled my head up; and I kissed him deeply, which he allowed. Then he pulled my head back again, and looked into my eyes.
“What do you want to do?”
I thought on it, discarding all manner of orthodox goals as they never held meaning for me.
“I want to be with you. I want to exorcise both our demons. I want to be happy.”
He smiled. “How?”
“Is not this moment enough?”
He increased the pressure on the sides of my head to hold me still, and his eyes bored into mine.
“You began this. I want the same things, but there are a number of decisions facing us, are there not? What will we do? We have money. We can catch a ship and go anywhere in the world. We are free to do as we please, if we choose to be. Do we wish to rove again? Do you care what happens on the plantation? Do you wish to inherit your father’s title? Tell me what you wish, and I will do everything in my power to help you attain it.”
I could see myself in his eyes, and it was disconcerting. I did not know if he realized this; though it fit well with his intent, which was to prevent me from evading the issue – which I was doing by thinking about his intent and not the questions facing me. Why did I not want to think on it? Why did I pose the questions if I did not want answers?
I smiled. “I want someone to tell me what to do.”
He released me with a bemused sigh, but I stayed where I was and continued to gaze into his eyes and the little me watching me from within them. He started to speak, but I quickly placed fingers on his lips. He held still and waited. I was experiencing an epiphany of sorts. That one admission had brought it about. I did not only want someone to tell me what to do, I expected it. Someone always had, and I had always defied them. Events in my past were revealed in new ways; and I shuffled through them, seeing a connection for the first time in this new light.
“I… have never known what I wanted,” I said. “I have always known I did not know what I wished for in life, but it… Damn, I do not know if I can explain adequately. My life has been defined by what I did not wish, or the avoidance of it. My whole life has been spent… running, with the wolves nipping at my heels in one form or another. I have been herded throughout by fortune and circumstance. Every which way I have turned, I have seen another obstacle I either did not wish to surmount or I found insurmountable. And instead of staying put or facing the things pursuing me, my wayward heart has always led me further afield looking for greener pastures. And so I run from one paddock to the next.
“Alonso angered me, when he said we needed to mature and accept our fates at the hands of our families and become responsible. I still do not wish to do that; but I do not know whether it is because I am so familiar with running that I can conceive of nothing else, or because I am afraid of being locked in some small paddock for the rest of my life, when I now have seen so many others. Though from what I have witnessed, in some ways all of the paddocks are very much the same.
“I feel I am truly thankful Shane drove me out. If it were not for him, I would be married now to some god-awful twit like my sister, with a number of children and a mistress in London. I would be drunk every night at one court party or another, because I would not be able to bear myself or my life. Instead, I have seen some of the world and I have ended up here, and I know much more of whom I am. Of course the fences and wolves here just drove me out to sea, but I found you, and now I am not alone.
“But are we truly free to do as we wish? We could catch a ship to anywhere, but where? As we discussed, we do not wish to return to the Old World. However, if we go many other places in the world, we will not fit in amongst the natives and we will be in greater danger than we are here; unless we remain with our own kind, at which point we may as well be in Christendom for how we will be expected to behave. So for now I wish to stay here with you.
“As for roving,” I sighed. “It suits me. Though it is dangerous and I do not wish to lose either of us. Yet if we do not rove, what will we do with our time? Plant? I find myself seeking to justify it, so therefore it must be something I want to do yet feel will be denied me, or should be denied me.
“As for the plantation,” I sighed again. “I truly do not know. That is some Gordian knot in my mind that I do not know how to untie as of yet. It is all wrapped about my father, and Shane, and the title, and who I am supposed to be and…” I trailed off with another sigh, as he was watching me patiently and I knew he understood. “So I believe, despite my new understanding of my life, that we are where we were before, as in tomorrow will be much as it was before.”
He shook his head. “That new understanding makes all the difference in the world, Will. Are you still running?”
“As with all things, it is a matter of perception, is it not?” I smiled and returned to lying partially atop him. “I am not running at the moment. I am standing here with you looking about in a somewhat calm manner at the paths available.”
“How do you perceive me?” he asked. “Am I an obstacle, or…?”
I stopped his words with my lips.
“Oui,” I whispered with a grin when I pulled away. “You are an immovable object in my life now, yet I do not perceive you as being confining, but rather offering protection. I see us as two centaurs standing in a field with fences we can jump; and we are surrounded by wolves and sheep. Yet we tower above them, and we are well-armed.”
He chuckled. “That may be a s
omewhat grandiose interpretation of the situation, but I will accept it for now.” He sobered and frowned. “I can see it, but I see one of us as being lame.”
I nodded. “I see both of us that way. We will overcome it.”
“What color are we?” he asked. I regarded him quizzically. “The horse part.”
I frowned. When I envisioned the metaphor I allowed myself to see, it but I had not regarded it in that degree of detail. I let my imagination flow freely about it and grasped upon the first thing I saw. “Like the hair on our heads. Your horse part is sorrel, and I am tan.”
He thought on this and played with my hair. “I saw us as black and white. I wanted to be a black horse because you like them.”
It was very sweet, and I kissed him for the image but I asked, “Why am I white? Do you like white horses?”
He shrugged. “I do not like horses, remember.”
I rolled my eyes and he laughed at my discomfiture.
“Non, truly,” he said, “I see us as the dark and the light. Two sides of the same thing. You are bright and shining and I am a thing of shadows.”
“I will be your white horse and you can be my black,” I murmured and held him closer. He smoothed my hair, and we lay together comfortably as the candle burned down.
I pictured him as a black centaur. I had never paid particular detail to what I thought the horse part of a centaur should look like. I had seen representations before, but they had not been my own. I thought of various black horses I had owned; Hercules, Goliath, Alexander, Gwidion and others pranced through my memory. In shape, Gaston would do best with Goliath’s body, as I saw him as compact and strong; yet that body would have to be a great deal smaller to fit his torso upon it as it was now.
My mind strayed as I pondered these images, and I tried to remember Goliath more clearly, until I saw him as I last had, bloody and broken in his stall. Unbidden and unwelcome, the centaur image of Gaston replaced the first in the same scenario and I shuddered. He had already been whipped bloody in his life, and it had broken him. In my vision, he pleaded with me to kill him, and he was reaching for me through the bars of one of the asylum cells I had seen in Florence.
I woke with a cry. Gaston was eyeing me sleepily, but he was already reaching for a weapon, which was not there as we had not placed it at the head of the hammock.
“What?”
I took in the room and lay back upon him, and willed my heart to calm.
“A dream.” I forced myself to look upon what I could remember of the images. “We must never return to Christendom.”
He rubbed my shoulders reassuringly. “What did you dream? And move. We drifted off unprepared.”
I did not wish to speak of any of it. I rolled onto my back, and he slipped from the hammock to retrieve weapons and place them in the netting. He returned to lie partially atop me.
“Will?” he queried my chest.
“I saw you in an asylum, and you were begging me to kill you. I could not bear to see you in pain. I will never allow anyone to hurt you. I would rather see you dead than tortured.”
I gasped at my last words. “That is awful. I am sorry. How selfish of me.”
He was very still. “I would rather be dead than suffer again; and if my madness ever does bring me to such a state, I would rather you kill me.”
“It will not come to that.”
He sighed. “I have night horrors, too. I dream of harming you while mad.”
I had dreamed of that myself, many times. “It will not come to that.”
He raised his head to regard me. “Do you speak from faith or defiance?”
“Delusion?” I proffered with a smile.
“Go to sleep.”
I prayed the Gods truly granted dreams of hope and paid little heed to ones of fear.
Twenty
Wherein We Chart A New Course
I thankfully had no more memorable dreams that night. We woke to voices and the smell of food wafting though the window, as our room was at the back of the house. I found myself piss-hard as I often do, especially with his naked body pressed against me. I knew he would have none of it, and I quickly rolled out of the hammock and donned my clothes to go to the latrine.
I discovered Cudro and a few other men sleeping in the front room. I left them to their snoring. I wondered just who slept here. I knew the wolves had a room and we had ours. I guessed Julio and Davey had the third. Perhaps Belfry, Tom, and Dickey had the fourth. I wondered if any of them were helping with the cost of food and water.
In the yard, Striker was sitting in the bathing tub with his breeches on. He was staring at some distant point in the sky that I was sure only he could see. I passed him without comment and used the latrine.
When I emerged he asked, “Did I say anything of interest last night?”
I walked over to him and discovered the tub did contain water. Several possible retorts and jests occurred to me, but I opted for kindness of a sort.
“I do not know. I heard nothing, but then I did not hear more than three words from you all night, as you were quite inebriated when you reached our table. You could have said all manner of foolishness to Morgan and Bradley.”
“That is what I’m afraid of. I was hoping someone of a more sober nature was there. Pete was as drunk as I, and he never remembers things.”
I surmised that, to some degree, Striker was still intoxicated. “You should return to your bed.”
“Nay, Pete’s snoring.”
“Well, you should at least cease sitting in a bucket of water.”
He regarded me quizzically. “I rather enjoy it.”
“Later today, when you are not inclined to sit in tubs of water while clothed, we need to speak of matters of import regarding things I do remember being said last night.”
Striker nodded. “Where can I find you?”
“I do not know, as of yet. I know we shall go by the gunsmith’s, and then there was talk of meeting at the new ship.”
“The new ship?” he blinked comically for a moment, and then rose from the tub in a soggy rush. “That… that… aye.” He frowned and nodded to himself. “I shall rouse Pete. After the smith’s, please return here and gather us, and we will accompany you.” He leaned on the cistern and continued to collect his wits.
“We can wait until later in the day.”
“Nay, I would see her.”
Gaston had emerged from the house, used the latrine, and joined us. “Who?”
“The ship they returned on.”
“Have you…?” he began to ask in French. I shook my head. He looked toward the cookhouse. “Will we be fed?” he asked in English.
“When Pete rises,” Striker said. “She’s only nice to him.”
“Oh bloody Hell,” I chuckled. “And how does he regard this?”
“He is still wary of her, as if she were a wild dog that might turn on him at any moment.”
“That seems wise,” Gaston said.
I regarded my matelot. “I am of the suspicion that you are not very fond of women, either.”
“I am not familiar with them. Except for the maids and governesses of my childhood, I have met few, and I did not like the maids and governesses. I do not dislike women in general.”
“Nay, because then you would be forced to like horses.”
He smirked.
I must admit I approached the cookhouse with a small amount of trepidation. I found Rachel cooking a large pan of eggs. There was a heaping platter of broiled fish. She started when she turned enough to spy me.
“Sorry, I came to inquire as to food. It smelled quite lovely upstairs. May we eat it?”
She nodded pleasantly enough. “Aye sir, will you be wanting to eat out here, or at the table?”
I considered it. “Here should be fine.”
“Will you be sharing it?”
I nodded. She pulled a good pewter plate from a shelf, ladled eggs on it, and added fish. I accepted it happily.
“Can you get
him out of that tub, sir?” she asked.
“He is standing now. Please forgive him; he is still intoxicated from last night.”
She nodded. “I am not used to men indulging in strong drink.”
“I assure you he is a sober and industrious fellow when at sea; we all are.”
“Will he ever be sober when he is in port?”
“Has he been drunk every night?”
She nodded with a grimace.
I nodded thoughtfully, “I truly do not know if there is much I can do concerning that.”
“And I should not complain, as it is not my place. I realize that, sir.”
“True, but… Has there been issue?”
“Nay, nay.” Then she shrugged. “They’ve retched in the house a few times and…” She flushed. “They do not seem overly concerned about where they are when they do a number of things, when they are intoxicated.”
“Ahhh,” I said as understanding dawned. “They are not overly concerned with where they do that when they are sober. I will speak to the others, and we will attempt to be more discreet about the house.”
I returned to Striker and asked, “Did you bugger one another in front of the housekeeper?”
He thought and then his eyes went wide. He chuckled and looked over his shoulder to the cookhouse. “Not with malice. Is that what she’s bothered about?”
“Aye, and I said we would attempt to be more discreet.”
“I can attempt to do many things,” Striker said. “My matelot on the other hand…”
I could see his point.
Gaston was chewing thoughtfully on a piece of fish. “This is not bad, but I would prefer bacon.”
“She is Jewish,” I said.
He swore flagrantly in French. When he calmed he said, “I had forgotten. However, she does not have to eat it.”
“I think there are prohibitions about it cooking in the same pan. So I feel we will not eat pork at all while she is with us.”
Gaston appeared ill-pleased with all things religious. In contrast, I thought it likely she thought us silly over the boiling of the water.
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