Brethren
Page 75
A thin, reluctant smile twitched at his lips. “Will, can I truly do no wrong in your eyes?”
“I would duel Saint Peter for your honor. Yet since neither of us profess to believe the gates of Heaven follow the final night, it is not cause for concern.” I cupped his cheek and held his gaze steady. “Forgive yourself.”
He captured my hand and kissed my palm. Then he shook his head.
“I do not know how. I think of all the things I have done.” He touched my bandages.
“That was an accident.”
His eyes slowly returned to mine; and once there, they seemed to gaze into my soul. He found something to his liking in the depths or shallows of my being, and he gave me the ghost of a smile.
“Oui, it was. I never wish to hurt you.” He shook his head, but not before I saw panic shadow his eyes.
“What?”
“You cannot trust me when I am mad, Will,” he said sadly.
I sighed. He had been doing well for a time there, despite the letters.
“We have paper. Would you write him tonight? We could leave it for someone to post before we sail.”
He took a steadying breath and nodded slowly. “I would tell him of you, and that if he must remand me to someone’s custody it should be yours.”
“If he must, and if he will, I would rather it be me than any other. Though I would rather it not be a necessity at all.”
He retrieved paper and pen and began to write, passing the pages off to me as he completed them. The letter was terse and concise. He told his father he had only recently remembered the events of that night, that he forgave him, that he had severed ties to Doucette after the man had tortured him in the name of treatment in disregard of the father’s wishes, and that he was with me. Unlike my euphemistic words to my father, Gaston made the depth and nature of our relationship very clear, and he named me by title. Then he told his father how to reach him, in that letters could be sent to Pierrot’s French agent here in Cayonne, or to Theodore in Port Royal. He signed it simply, Gabriel.
I dusted and folded the pages, and he addressed the packet. The only seal we had was mine, and so he used that.
Once this task was completed, he ventured from the cabin to give it to someone to take ashore. As he trusted himself on this, I did not worry. Still, I was relieved when he returned a few minutes later.
“Striker said they would have it rowed to the Josephine,” he said. “I am sure Pierrot will post it for me.”
“Now what?”
He packed the other letters away, and stowed the satchel and chest under our hammock next to the medicine chest.
“I am tired,” he said when he sat at the table with me again.
“Then sleep. I will watch over you.”
“More than sleep can cure, Will. I need to be alone, but I do not wish it. When I have been gripped to this degree before, I have retreated to the woods to clear my mind and find my soul.”
He had slipped away to the Haiti. “Then let us go.”
He was startled, and then he released a great sigh of relief. “You would go with me?”
“Oui. Try and stop me.”
“Non. I would not, but you cannot go where I would in your condition; and perhaps I should not, as it is French territory. And…” He regarded me sadly.
“Do you feel I would hinder the process?”
He nodded. “I must be… human while about you.”
I tried to fend off the panic. I was terrified of letting him out of my sight. “Could you retreat in the woods of Jamaica? Perhaps we can go somewhere there, and you could wander about alone as the need grips you, and I could stay by and be there for you.”
He considered the table and thought on it, for several excruciating minutes. Then he met my eyes again and smiled.
“Oui. Let us do that.”
It was my turn to sigh with relief. “Sleep now. You did not sleep while I did and…”
“You should…”
“I will. But I wish to think for a time, myself.”
His eyes narrowed, but he shook it off and smiled anew. “I love you.”
“And I you.”
He stood and kissed me gently. Then he climbed into the hammock. He dropped into slumber far sooner than I would have thought possible.
I sat and watched him sleep. I could hear the water lapping the hull and the murmur of quiet conversations on the quarterdeck overhead. My side ached dully, but I was loathe to take any laudanum, and Gaston had suggested I drink nothing but good water for a time. I was weary, so that sitting was a difficulty. Yet I watched him sleep and mused on love.
Yvette’s short missive had been dated. In about a fortnight, it would be one year since the day I watched Alonso sleep that last time. Irony gripped me. Here I was watching my lover sleep, whilst contemplating the immortal mysteries, whilst on the threshold of escaping a city I was no longer welcome in, and being given traveling money by a whore after fighting a man. There were many differences to be sure, but I found the similarities I discovered in my reverie amusing.
I would watch Gaston grow old and fat. I could not conceive that I would ever be forced to watch him marry. And yet, I was shackled by a sense of responsibility that eclipsed all other brushes I had experienced with such confinement of my whimsy. I wondered what Alonso would think of my acceding to this version of maturity. The Devil with title and family; I now gazed upon a man I would live and die for and, perhaps more importantly, spend my days caring for.
This was the love I had wondered at. This was the stuff of poetry, play, and myth. It was equally transcendent and harrowing. There was no condition that could be placed upon it. It was enduring and conquering. And I had never felt its like before.
Or had I?
I had loved Shane with no condition or boundary. I had been incapable of throwing up walls to protect myself.
The thought was troubling. Yet, like any comparison of this night to that one a year ago, comparing my love of Gaston to my love of Shane was truly more a matter of justification than realization. There was one very crucial difference between the two.
Gaston loved me. Shane never did.
And, of course, Shane was an utter bastard who did not deserve to live; and though my matelot was not an angel, he was worthy of love in ways Shane would never achieve.
And Gaston loved me. Me, above all others. I had never stood so very high.
I eased out of the chair, and gingerly crawled into the hammock.
He shifted and woke at my presence. “You sleep now?”
“Oui.”
“Where is the rope?”
I sighed. I had forgotten. “On the floor.”
He leaned out and scooped it up. I stopped him as he began to present his back to me.
“Lie as we usually do,” I instructed.
He curled beside me, his face admonishing. “Will…”
I put fingers to his lips. He sighed but said nothing. I bound his left wrist to mine.
“This arrangement will do little to protect you,” he warned.
“Will it anchor you?”
He nodded sincerely.
“Then it is enough. You will not hurt me.”
He shifted until he was more comfortable and kissed my temple. “You are my fool.”
“I surely am.” I smiled.
I felt the Gods smiling, or perhaps smirking. I was too tired to tell.
End - Volume One
Continued in
Matelots: Raised By Wolves, Volume Two
Bibliography
The following titles do not represent the entirety of my studies; but they were the most useful, and the ones I would recommend for anyone interested in doing their own reading about the buccaneers and this period of history. To that end, they are ranked in order of usefulness to my research.
Exquemelin, Alexander O., The Buccaneers of America (translated by Alexis Brown, 1969), Dover Publications, Inc., 2000. Original publication, Amsterdam, 1678.
Har
ing, C.H., The Buccaneers of the West Indies in The XVII Century, New York: E.P. Hutton, 1910.
Burney, James, History of the Buccaneers of America, London: Unit Library, Limited, 1902. First edition, London, 1816.
Burg, B.R., Sodomy And The Perception of Evil: English Sea Rovers in The Seventeenth- Century Caribbean, New York: New York University Press, 1983.
Pawson, Michael & David Buisserat, Port Royal Jamaica, Jamaica: The University of the West Indies Press, 1974.
Buisserat, David, Historic Jamaica From The Air, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 1996. First edition, 1969.
Marx, Robert F., Pirate Port: The Story of the Sunken City of Port Royal, New York: The World Publishing Company, 1967.
Briggs, Peter, Buccaneer Harbor: The Fabulous History of Port Royal, Jamaica, New York: Simon And Schuster, 1970.
Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713, New York: W.W.Norton & Company, Inc., 1972.
Apestegui, Cruz, Pirates of the Caribbean: Buccaneers, Privateers, Freebooters and Filibusters 1493-1720, London: Conway Maritime Press, 2002.
Marrin, Albert, Terror of the Spanish Main: Sir Henry Morgan and His Buccaneers, New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 1999.
Pyle, Howard, Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1921.
Cordingly, David, Under The Black Flag, New York: Random House, 1995.
Kongstam, Angus, The History of Pirates, Canada: The Lyons Press, 1999.
About the Author
I, W.A. Hoffman, am a reader who wishes to know nothing about the writers of the books I enjoy. I wish to regard another artist’s work on its own merit, as an entity unto itself, unattached to the mundane world by threads of minutiae and expectations born of labels. I don’t want to know how many dogs another author has, or the state of their conjugal bliss at the time of a novel’s publication. And what matters an artist’s bona fides, their talent and skill either blossoms on the page or it does not.
I realize my opinion on this matter is not widely held. I am aware of the customs of publication. I choose to follow my own path through this life, however. That is why I started my own publication company, Alien Perspective; so that I might be free to write what my muse and the Gods inspire and desire; and freer still to send the fruits of my labor out into the world in any form I choose: to find readers who simply wish to immerse themselves in art born of my love for my characters and their stories.
About the Cover
The illustration used for the cover of this book is a detail of Howard Pyle’s, Attack on a Galleon. The piece was painted in 1907, as part of a series of paintings and illustrations for Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates. The original painting now resides in the Delaware Art Museum.
Howard Pyle is regarded by many as the father of American illustration. There are numerous books and web sites devoted to his work and legacy, so I will not waste words here saying what many others can tell you. I do have this to say, though. Pyle seems to one of the few illustrators who have ever read Exquemelin or Burney (see bibliography). In his art and writing he accurately depicts what we know of the buccaneers in terms of dress and tactics. He essentially represents buccaneers, circa 1630-1680, and not romanticized notions from later centuries about “pirates” from the Golden Age of Piracy, 1680-1720. The first time I saw this piece I knew it had to be the cover of this book.
For more information, please visit
www.alienperspective.com