Matelots

by W. A. Hoffman

  “It is infected,” Gaston pronounced after examining the long, ragged wound on Mally’s upper thigh. “Though it only appears a little red upon the skin, feel how hot it is beneath the stitches. There must be something left inside the muscle that is causing it. I would suggest it be opened and another search made for debris, perhaps a piece of his breeches. Then, if the putrefaction has not seeped through all of the surrounding muscle, it could be cauterized. It will scar badly and leave him deformed, but it will save his life. This kind of infection will not turn to gangrene and take his leg, but slowly kill him with fever.”

  “What are you speaking of?” Farley asked. His pinched features took on a keener edge as every muscle in his face seemed to tighten, and his voice became unpleasantly shrill. “He fevers because he lost a great deal of blood, and thus upset the balance of his humors. A poultice will draw the heat out, and I have been seeking to bring the humors into balance with a broth of…”

  “Men fever when the body is diseased,” Gaston said gruffly.

  “I was taught, at a fine school of medicine, that a fever is the result of an excess of ...”

  “That is incorrect,” Gaston cut him off with a sigh. “Men are comprised of bone, muscle, organs, and blood, and it is all flesh.”

  Farley snorted: it was meant to be derisive but came out a bit more incredulous. “Sir, then what of phlegm? The body has a great deal of phlegm in many forms.”

  “Phlegm is a secretion of organs,” Gaston said, “much like excrement is a product of the bowels. It does not comprise the body, any more than a cow is made of milk because it produces it.”

  “That is not as many learned men…” Farley attempted to continue doggedly.

  Mally’s matelot had been listening to it all, and he cut Farley short by grasping Gaston’s arm and saying, “Save him, please.”

  Gaston nodded, and I handed him his bag before he could reach for it. I went to the cook fire and began heating the iron for cauterizing in the coals, and set a cup to boil to cleanse the instruments he would use.

  I thought Farley would argue with Mally’s matelot, or retreat in a huff; but instead, he stayed silent and watched Gaston with interest.

  I was, of course, familiar with the humors and the theories as to their balance and function. I found it odd that, until Gaston had spoken just then, I had not truly known he eschewed them. I had simply assumed it was a part of his repertoire as a physician that had not yet had cause to be put to use in my presence. In thinking on it, I knew that many would ascribe aspects of his madness to those theories; and yet he had not made mention there, or with any of the ailments suffered by the Spanish in the church. Nay, truly, I had not once heard him mention the humors, nor had Doucette.

  As this had occurred in the afternoon, all about us had been awake to hear the exchange; and the rest aboard quickly knew of it, as whispers were passed all around. Soon the vessel was quiet except for the omnipresent creaking of the rigging and wood, and the rushing of wind in the sails and water beneath her hull. Thus, Gaston had quite the audience as he dosed Mally with enough laudanum to keep him still and reopened the wound.

  There were indeed bits of fabric deep within the cut, and around them were pockets of pus. Once they were removed, Gaston drenched the area in rum and then cut away the swath of flesh that had previously been sewn closed. When he finished, Mally had a short trench on the outside of his leg, which Gaston cauterized. I fought the urge to retch at the smell.

  Throughout it all, Farley observed in silence. When Mally’s fever subsided a day later and it appeared he would live, the young physician came to sit with us.

  “I was taught…” he began hesitantly, “to not question what I was taught.” He grimaced.

  Gaston nodded, and then he spent the remainder of our voyage teaching while Farley questioned. I thought it all time well spent, as I learned much in the bargain, and I felt we had made new friends. After his success with Mally, many another man asked for Gaston’s opinion about his own wounds, or the wounds of his matelot.

  On the morning of the seventh day of our supposedly-short journey, I sat with Pete and watched Gaston work. Since my matelot was instructing Farley, the man was always at his side and Gaston did not need my assistance. So I had taken to sitting with the Golden One, who had been quite morose since we left the fleet. He had the demeanor of a man being taken to his execution, and he had expressed little humor at my attempts to cajole him from his melancholy.

  “AManShouldDo What’EBeBornTaDo,” he said after we had been sitting silently for a time.

  “You mean Gaston?” I asked. “You feel he was born to be a physician?”

  He nodded. “Aye, ButAllMenToo.”

  I agreed with him about Gaston: teaching and healing appeared to bring such peace to him that I found it hard to believe it a mask his Horse fretted to shed.

  But Pete’s words made me think of other things as well.

  “What were you born to do?” I asked.

  The question seemed to pain him, and as I felt turmoil in my own soul at asking it of myself, I well understood.

  What had I been born to do? I had been bred like a fine hunter, with the best possible sire and dam, to be a lord. But nay, I was a centaur and not a wolf. Since that was the truth of my heart and soul, then was that what I was born to be and not the other? I supposed the answer lay in who decided upon the destiny, and not in what one was destined for, as that would vary based upon the decision-maker’s perspective. I chose my soul as the seat of power in the matter.

  “IBeBornTaKillMen, NaHeal’Em,” Pete announced at long last.

  Pete’s far less esoteric rumination reminded me that I thought too much; but then, perhaps, that was a matter of perspective as well.

  But when I regarded the matter as Pete had done, as a matter of vocation, I was once again left with a thing I had often thought: that I possessed few skills but those used to harm or exert control over others by way of might or wit. Which, sadly in my opinion, made me very much a wolf. Whatever my soul might profess, I was suited to the trade my parents had intended: I possessed little talent for creation, and no other skill of any practical import.

  “Me, too,” I told Pete.

  He nodded sagely.

  “What other thing would you be if you could choose?” I asked. “I would be an artist.”

  H shrugged. “Don’WishTa BeNothin’Else.”

  I studied his profile, and remembered our naming him a lion and not a wolf or any other creature. He was the master of his domain. As Gaston had once said, Pete was all Horse. And with that thought, I was blessed by a moment of epiphany regarding his mood.

  “You feel that doing this thing… taking my sister as wife, is a thing you were not born to do?” I asked.

  “Aye,” he sighed.

  “How so?”

  “ThereBeThoseMen ThatLiveAsTheyShould, ThatMarryAn’MakeBabies, AnLiveInOnePlace, AnWorkAtATrade, An’… INa’BeOneO’’Em.”

  “And Striker has tied himself to her and all of that, and therefore tethered you as well,” I said.

  “Aye,” he said with a truly heavy sigh.

  “And it chafes,” I said.

  He nodded, his gaze somewhere past the bow.

  “Gaston feels the traces of love chafe as well, at least he did,” I said. “I found their weight reassuring. We have come to view it as we are not chained together, so much as we are harnessed to a cart, or chariot, which is the embodiment of our love for one another. It is a thing we haul about. We have found it is sturdier than expected, and light enough in design as to not be an encumbrance. Yet it is ever there, and we have a tendency to load it down with things, such as his need for children, or the requirements of my inheriting. So sometimes it is heavier to haul than at others. I once envisioned all matelots as teams pulling chariots across a vast plain. I thought of Striker and you as wolves, but I think now that you are a well matched wolf and lion.”

  He had turned to me with a contemplative frown a
s I talked, and when I finished he smiled. “ILikeThat.”

  Then he shook his head and sighed. “IWish’EDid Na’HaveTaGoAn’ Load AWomanInTheCart.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “Aye, like our Damn Wife, and my damn inheritance, it makes it harder to haul; but as we have chosen to be hitched together, we share the load.”

  He gave me a rueful smile. “Aye, IMadeMeChoice, An’SheBeAThing HeSaysWeMustHaul.” He shrugged with insouciance, but his eyes were somber. “INa’Make’ImDoItAlone.”

  He looked to me and his smile broadened. “YaNa’BeBornTaKillMen. YaBeBornToThinkThe ThoughtsOthersCan’t.”

  I was perplexed by this; even more so, when Gaston awarded me the look he gave me when I was an utter fool, upon my relaying the entirety of it to him that night.

  “You are a physician,” Gaston said. “You are as compelled to heal as I, but whereas I tend their bodies, you seek to tend their hearts and souls. You have surely saved me from certain death.”

  I frowned at that. “I do not…” Then I felt it foolishness to attempt to gainsay him. I did seek to mend and aid many I encountered, and perhaps likening what I considered philanthropy to my attempting to heal hearts and souls was correct.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I have not viewed it as such.” I smiled. “You are gifted in the art yourself.”

  “Only if you say so, and only with you.”

  “Do you wish for more?” I teased.

  He grinned. “Praise, or an expansion of my curative abilities?”

  “Both.”

  “You may shower me with the former, but I do not wish to be encumbered by the need to heal any other of woes of the heart or soul,” he said seriously.

  “I would not have you do so,” I said in kind. “I find great reassurance that I will always have a personal physician well-versed in healing all that might ail me.”

  Then I asked, “Do you feel you are called to be a physician?”

  He sighed. “Oui.”

  “What do you wish to do about it?” I asked.

  “Nothing, now, except that which I am already engaged in,” he sighed as he looked about his deck full of patients. “Once we reach Port Royal, it will cease, and I will think on it.”

  I decided that was such a great stride I would not ask him for more.

  Several days later, the men crowded upon the Lilly cheered mightily when we at last caught sight of Jamaica. Sadly, it was Negril Point, our land, and our home, that we spied first.

  “I am gripped by a compulsion to dive over the side and swim ashore,” I told Gaston quietly as we stood at the rail and watched it slide by.

  He sighed. “As am I.”

  “But…” I said for both of us.

  He sighed again and shrugged. “But. We must do what we must do.”

  As if conceding defeat now that we were in sight of familiar land, the winds relented in their effort to impede us as we sailed along the southern shore of the island; and at last we were able to make good time in the final leg of our journey. However, since we had spent so much time reaching our destination, Captain Norman warned us that he wished to sail quickly after our arrival, and those of us with business ashore should best tend to it within a day. I had rather gotten used to attending to business in Port Royal quickly. It always seemed to be the way of it. I knew not what I would do if I were ever to spend more than a week in the place.

  We finally anchored in the Chocolata Hole on an evening late in April.

  Pete, Gaston, and I made our way directly to our house. We were greeted warmly by the dogs – once they got a good whiff of us – but little else. We walked in and looked about. The front room had new furniture: a nicely-carved sideboard, some graceful chairs, and a set of shelves. However, by the look of the legs, the table gracing the center of the room appeared to be the old dining piece we knew well, though it was now covered by a fine cloth and a crystal vase with fresh flowers. Theodore’s old desk, which Bella had used as a den, had also been moved back into the front room and placed against the wall. It was filled with neat stacks of papers.

  The back room had been converted into a sleeping chamber behind a clever screened wall. There was a cot, with stacks upon stacks of books about it. I was minded of Rucker’s room at his sister’s, and realized that this must be where he now lived.

  We glanced at the small servant’s room at the back of the house, and surmised Agnes still inhabited it, unless they had let it to some other artist. Then we made our way upstairs and discovered that one room was occupied by a woman, presumably Sarah, and the other by a man, presumably my Uncle. I was pleased to see they had settled in here. I was not pleased to see that my uncle was sleeping in a great bed wrapped all about by heavy hangings, as if he sought to ward off the chill of an English winter. Sarah’s bed was thankfully hung with fine netting to keep the bugs at bay but not the breeze.

  I wondered if my Damn Wife still lived in the King’s House. Surely there had not been enough time to complete the dwelling planned for her.

  “Your uncle has been ill,” Gaston said from that doorway with a wrinkled nose and a grimace.

  I looked again at the room. I was relieved to see that he did not appear to be dead: his things were not packed away. Upon closer inspection, I could smell what Gaston had, a certain sickly odor lying beneath a nearly viscous stench of vile excrement. I thought it likely he had contracted the flux. I opened the shutters to let the air flow through and whisk some of it away. I thought the bedding should most likely be burned, though. I doubted it could be cleaned sufficiently to ever seem fresh again.

  I stuck my nose in Sarah’s room and sniffed. It smelled fine.

  When I turned, I found Pete behind me. He frowned at me and then peered into the room.

  “We feel my uncle is or has been ill, but Sarah has not,” I said.

  The hard lines that had been drawn on his face relaxed somewhat, and he appeared relieved.

  I left him standing in the doorway and joined Gaston downstairs.

  “There is a fire banked in the cookhouse,” he said.

  “So they are out but briefly, perhaps,” I noted.

  I sat in a comfortably-stuffed chair in the back room and petted a curious dog. Our puppies had continued to grow tremendously; and now, though they were still less than six months of age, they were larger than my father’s hunting dogs.

  Gaston settled to the floor, and Bella came to greet him with greater thoroughness than she had shown at the door.

  Peering around her huge head, he frowned at Rucker’s things. “Was not the other fool to guard your sister?”

  “Ashland? Oui, he was,” I said as I too peered about.

  We had seen no evidence of where he would be sleeping if he were living here.

  “Damn him,” I muttered. “I wonder if he has left her.”

  The front door opened, and the dogs rushed off in greeting.

  “Who is here?” Sarah’s voice called firmly.

  “Your brother,” I said.

  She was in the room and flinging herself upon me before I could stand.

  “Are you well?” she asked.

  “Well enough, no wounds,” I said. “We brought you…”

  She pulled away and looked about. “Where is…?”

  “’ENa’Be’Ere,” Pete said from the base of the stairs.

  “Why?” Sarah gasped. “Is he…?”

  “’ENa’BeDead.”

  She frowned with consternation. “Is he well?”

  “He was quite hale when we sailed here,” I said quickly. “He sent us. He is a captain. He could not come away.”

  “Oh,” she said with great disappointment. “I see.”

  “The first town we raided did not yield much,” I said to fill the silence that followed. “And now the fleet is careening and preparing for another target. We came to see to any business here. We will sail the morning after next to meet up with them again.”

  “So soon,” she sighed, and gave me a wan smile. “And the
n how long?”

  “Months,” I sighed.

  She nodded sadly. Then she smoothed her skirt and tried to compose herself. “Well, it is good you are all well. Gaston, Pete, I am pleased to see you. We will do what we can for you as guests in your own home. As you can see, we are somewhat tight on accommodations.”

  Beyond Pete, Agnes stood carrying a wrapped parcel. She nodded at all of us. I was pleased to see she was well.

  “We see that.” I said. “I assume that our Uncle and Mister Rucker reside here. What of Ashland?”

  Sarah sighed heavily. “He died of the flux. Uncle nearly went with him.”

  “We… smelled that,” I said.

  She groaned. “He will not listen to me about any of the instructions you left regarding water or sleeping with adequate breezes. He says it is all nonsense.” She gave a grim and somewhat sarcastic smile. “We have been well and he has not, though. And Ashland also called it poppycock, and look where that left him.”

  “Where are our uncle and Rucker?” I asked.

  “Uncle Cedric is at Ithaca, and Rucker is who-knows-where,” she said with a dismissive wave. “One makes the habit of going visiting planters, the other makes a habit of strolling off and sometimes getting invited here or there for dinner, and sometimes neither of them return home for days; and when they do, they are full of tales of some new acquaintance they have befriended. I swear between the two of them they shall know the life of every man in town before long.”

  “You are left here alone?” Gaston asked with a touch of the ire I was feeling. Of course, we had left her alone, too.

  She sighed and nodded. “It is not quite a matter, yet. There have been letters, not only from Father, who cannot be trusted, but from others we can trust. Shane will not be traveling here this year, if at all. He is disfigured and can barely walk.”