Matelots

by W. A. Hoffman

  He laughed. I had forgotten what a rich, musical sound it was.

  “So just the one?” he asked as he sobered. “How did he win you?” His eyes had grown quite serious in the torchlight.

  “We share a commonality of the spirit,” I said and shrugged.

  I looked to Gaston and thought of how best to say it. He felt my gaze upon him and turned to me. I smiled, and so did he. His eyes were coals that warmed my heart, and I once again found myself filled with the ache of loving him. He stood and approached, and I heard Alonso sigh, most probably with frustration that our talk would be interrupted. But Gaston came and handed me a bottle, kissed me lightly on the cheek, and went back to the others. I wanted to jump atop him and smother him with kisses.

  I took a pull on the bottle and handed it to Alonso.

  I shrugged. “We saw one another and were mutually smitten.”

  “I thought you said he does not favor men.” There was the hint of challenge in his tone.

  My grin widened. “He does not favor men, he favors me.”

  “So you feel you have found the love you sought,” he said sadly.

  “Si, I feel that very deeply.”

  “You left me because I could not love you… without discretion, did you not?” he asked carefully.

  I wondered if I need say more.

  I shrugged again. “That was the main thrust of it, si. I have since learned that… after my cousin… I am resentful… was resentful, of all those who came into my life before who… could not place me above the imagined sin or disgrace.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, but it was something of a feint. I could not see his thoughts, but I could see his movements as if we were sparring. He had changed so very little. I wondered at myself and what he saw.

  “And if you were in Christendom somewhere with this Frenchman,” he asked, “do you feel he would behave there as he does here?”

  “Alonso,” I chided, “I well know it is different here.”

  “Is that why you came to the West Indies?” he asked quickly.

  I shook my head slowly and considered what I would say on that matter. “No. I came because my father would not allow me to kill that cousin, and I realized there might be merit in inheriting from him, though it will never occur. So when he wished for me to oversee the venture of a plantation, I agreed.”

  “And then the Frenchman enticed you into becoming a pirate,” he said.

  I grinned. “I was enamored of the idea before I met him.”

  “And then you were enamored enough of him to follow him anywhere,” he said with a trace of anger. He sighed and shook his head. “I am sorry. I am somewhat bitter still over your leave taking. I… Uly, I would have gone elsewhere with you. You were correct, you would have lived as a servant here; that is all that would have been tolerated, and you would have been miserable. I was wrong to ask it of you. But, it need not have…”

  He shook his head irritably this time and met my eyes. “I miss you. I miss the life we had. I am… miserable.”

  His confession cut deep, well past any armor about my heart that time and the new understandings of our relationship had built. I had given him more than two years of my life quite happily once.

  “I am sorry, Alonso. I…” would not lie.

  I smiled sadly and pushed myself up to sit on the crenellation of the wall. “Let us talk freely this night. You will not reclaim me, and it is likely we will not see each other again. I would not have us harbor confusion as to motive or… matters of the heart.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, and the tension left him in a prolonged sigh. He came a little closer and joined me in sitting on the wall.

  “Why did you leave?” he asked. “Were you so truly unhappy with what we had? Did I give you great misery?”

  Everything I had said to Gaston about him tumbled through my head, and I suppressed a grim smile. I would not speak that freely. Yet there were things I realized Alonso had never really known.

  “When I left my father’s house… I carried a wound, a deep festering wound, that even now is not fully healed,” I said carefully.

  “Your cousin?”

  “Si,” I sighed.

  I struggled to remember what precisely I had told Alonso about that matter. I had not discussed it with any lover I took prior to him, but I had spoken to him of it; however, my telling him of it had been under the aegis of strong drink, and I did not remember it well and wondered if he did, either.

  I shrugged. “I am not sure what I told you. So I will tell you this now. My second cousin, Shane, with whom I first learned of love, reviled being a man-lover and blamed me for his lust. He abused me often and took me by force on many occasions.”

  “I do not recall you putting it so bluntly,” Alonso said.

  I smiled. “I doubt I did. I have only learned to speak of it of late. I… You were the first I told. And as I believe you know, you were the first I allowed to take me after him. Not that I allowed him… though.”

  I shook my head at my folly in feeling the need to explain that.

  “I did not believe you,” he said quietly.

  “What?” I asked with more surprise than rancor.

  “I did not believe you,” he shrugged apologetically. “I am sorry. I thought… Many claim a lack of experience and…” He met my eyes sadly. “Things occur when one is intoxicated that we wish not to remember. I thought you paid me honor by insisting upon it, that I was the first since the tragedy had befallen you. Though, damn it Uly, I did not truly understand that, either.”

  “What did you think had occurred?” I asked.

  He shrugged with his hands and sighed expansively. “I thought you had a bad affair and it ended poorly, and that in your youth he had been a bit forceful with you and you had found you liked it little. Receiving is seldom pleasant and…”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Receiving is very pleasant, if… one is properly prepared or well used to it.”

  He appeared stricken and a trifle embarrassed. “I have not experienced it and… my lovers have…”

  “Expressed otherwise, as you have not prepared them as you did not know you should,” I said. “You did much to gentle me down, but nothing to prepare my hole.” I recalled my disappointment the first time he spent a luxurious hour massaging me into compliance, only to undo it all with a demanding thrust; and then think to smooth it away with ridiculous reassurances and admonishments. “So you thought I had been startled by… Well, that explains a great deal. I thought you just an insensitive arse.”

  He winced.

  I shook my head. “But I truly did not speak of it in a way to make you understand, and without knowledge imparted from me, how were you to know otherwise? Alonso, my cousin would beat me until I was too stupefied to fight him, pin me face down on my own bed, and take me by force with little lubrication save my own blood. In thinking back on it, I am not sure how he stood it. I know my member prefers to slide rather than grate.”

  He was stricken. “Oh God, Uly,” he sighed. “Oh, God. I am so sorry. I used you poorly in many ways.”

  His distress was genuine, and I felt pity for him.

  “It was not your doing alone,” I said. “I could not tell you. While I was with you I… knew it should not hurt. But I thought it a thing that applied to others, and that I was merely tight and perhaps damaged by Shane, and therefore it could not feel for me as it should. So I said nothing. I would get drunk and let you and I said nothing. And I could not discuss the cause of it all, either. I knew not how; my shame was so great. The first time I told Gaston, I vomited profusely. I have since learned that it is a thing that occurred and I must face it. I cannot dissemble about it, especially to myself.”

  “Still, I am sorry for being blind and stupid,” he said sincerely. He glanced to Gaston. “Does it still pain you?”

  “No. Only if I am tense,” I sighed. “But you must understand. We put great effort into preparing me. We spent weeks lying about pleasuring one another with him
atop me and his fingers up my arse. Now I feel it a natural thing, and I do not fear intrusion there or the weight of another. Weeks, Alonso, and we spent months talking first. When I said Gaston and I possessed a commonality of spirit, I meant that we tend with equal fervor toward what you always considered sophism. We talk a great deal, such that I am sure we would bore any who listened.” I held his eyes with mine and smiled kindly. “You and I never talked, not like this.”

  He smiled sadly in return. “No, we did not. I have never spoken of such things with anyone.” He looked to Gaston again and sighed. “I understand why you are with him now. I understand why you left.”

  I shook my head but I smiled. “No, I do not think you do, yet. I am sorry I left as I did. It was cowardly. Truly cowardly. Yet I knew if I stayed until you woke, and told you of my decision, you would have persuaded me not to go, or wished to accompany me, and I did not feel that would have been best for either of us. Alonso, I left because your words of that night touched me and made me think. You said that it was time for us to mature and put aside boyish pastimes and accept being men. I realized I needed to banish the demon that haunted me, and face my father for whatever it was worth, and… I returned to England to kill Shane.”

  “Did you?” he asked sincerely.

  “No,” I sighed. “My father kept him from me, and an old friend instructed me on the folly of it. I would have hanged or been running from the law in a manner I had not before. So I came here, thinking if I could gain my father’s good graces, perhaps I could supplant my cousin in his heart somehow. It was a foolish thing, and one I am embarrassed to admit. Yet, I feel there was perhaps a guiding hand in all of it, as Fate surely smiled upon me. I am far more content with life than I have ever been. I am not at peace with myself, but I am at least allied.”

  “I am truly happy for you in that regard,” he said sadly. “I was a fool then, and I have been a fool since.”

  “Alonso, as I said…”

  “No, no.” He waved me off. “Not for that alone. There is the thing you did express displeasure to me about, and I did nothing to assuage that, either.”

  “It is different here,” I said.

  I grinned. Pete and Striker were kissing. I gestured to them.

  “Very different here,” I continued. “And I asked much of you there. And my need hinged upon… the tragedy that had befallen me, as you so aptly named it. I could not have conveyed it well to another, but… in addition to the idea that sodomy was painful for me, I labored under the conceit that if a man did not feel he should be with me, in that I was a man, and yet he chose to bugger me anyway, then that was love. And I have since learned that is not love. So, in a manner of thought, I truly did not leave you because you could not love me without discretion, but because I would not have recognized you loving me at all. Was that intelligible?”

  He smiled. “I did not understand love, either.”

  “It is not an easy thing to understand,” I said. “It has destroyed nations and brought all manner of fools to ruin.”

  “So you truly have found love here?” he asked.

  “Si, though in all honesty, if I had known what true love entailed, I would have run screaming in fear from it as well. But I am a fool.” I smiled.

  He chuckled and frowned, not at me but at the others. I followed his gaze. Pete had mounted Striker and they were storming the gates quite happily. I chuckled at Alonso’s discomfiture.

  “You see this all the time?” he asked.

  I laughed. “We live upon very crowded ships for months at a time. You become inured to it, both the seeing of it and the being seen.”

  I looked to Gaston and found him watching us. I remembered what he wished to do that night, and my gut churned. After the discussion Alonso and I had held, I no longer wished to wave anything under Alonso’s nose. Yet, with Gaston’s current mercurial disposition, I was not sure how I could avoid it without an argument I wished for Alonso to witness even less.

  “I have never seen… They are quite…,” Alonso was muttering while still watching the lovers.

  “Si, they are quite.” I grinned anew. “Made even more amazing in that none of us have slept in more than a day, we rowed and marched through all of last night, took a town today, including rowing about the harbor, and still they go at it with enthusiasm.”

  Alonso chuckled. “So are all of you pirates sodomites?”

  “No. We have just long been plagued with a shortage of suitable women and we live like sailors. And we do not perceive ourselves as pirates as you so freely use the word,” I teased. “We are buccaneers, the Brethren of the Coast of the Haiti, and we sail under a marque granted by the Governor of Jamaica to make tacit war against Spain. As you must know, there is no peace beyond the Line.”

  He nodded soberly, though to my amusement, his eyes did not leave Pete and Striker.

  “No, there is not,” he said at last. “There are many here who would drive you English out, and the Dutch and French as well.”

  “We intend to stay,” I said. “And as the King will not spare troops or ships, we are the English military force in the West Indies, horrifying though that may be.”

  He nodded. “You are correct; I have been naming you wrongly. You are mercenaries.”

  “Just so,” I said.

  Pete and Striker finished with mutual grunts and barks; and Alonso shook himself as if waking, and turned away from them to look out over the water again. I chuckled.

  He was thoughtful when he looked to me. “None here thought you would be so bold or be able to amass so many, though this is a small number to take a town such as this.”

  I shrugged. “Si, we have a very ambitious commander, and an even craftier governor.”

  “Are you the same force which attacked a town in Cuba in March?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “What next?” he grinned.

  I gave a disparaging snort and grinned. “As if I would tell you if I knew. I truly do not know. As it is mid-summer, I imagine we will return to Port Royal. Many of us have plantations to attend to, and there are wives and businesses and the like, and none of us like to be sailing about during the storm season.”

  I studied his profile and thought about the future. I supposed I had much to look forward to. “Are you truly miserable?”

  Alonso shook his head. “It is… tedious. I miss the way we lived. I missed the ever-changing string of lovers, the parties, the intrigues, the money…. My family is not so very wealthy. There is wealth enough; but Uly, we lived very well indeed in Florence.”

  I chuckled appreciatively. “Si, that we did.”

  “What with the marriage, and coming here, and establishing a household, and investments needed in the plantation and… taxes.” He swore softly. “I spent much of what Teresina gave me. I am not poor, and yet even if I felt wealthy, there is little to do with it here. Gambling and whores to be sure, but it all lacks allure for me now. Not much to do but hunt on occasion, and check on the doings of our overseers. My brother did not need me here to help with the plantation’s management as he claimed; no, he needed additional capital, and his shrewish wife was bored and wished for the company of another. She drives poor Maria to distraction, and there is nothing I can do for her, or me. I find myself snapping at her because she is not… She is simply not what I would wish. She is a simple and virtuous girl, raised in a convent. Carnal activities are to take place with the lamps out and the covers tucked all about.”

  I laughed, and he regarded me sharply. I waved my hands in supplication.

  “She sounds quite unlike, yet like, my wife, though that is a long story,” I said.

  He smiled. “Not like the women we were accustomed to, si?”

  “Si.” I chuckled.

  He sighed and shook his head sadly. “If I attempt to please her, she becomes quite distraught and thinks it is improper and we must confess to the priest.”

  “And so,” I teased. “Mistresses?”

  “It is not
so easy. All know one another’s business, and there is little I could do in that regard unless I had the tacit consent of my brother or some of his friends. My going off by myself would be tantamount to having an affair, no matter the destination. And my brother frowns upon such things.”

  “Men?” I asked.

  He chuckled ruefully before sighing and considering the water thoughtfully. “There is an officer who may have desires such as ours. I have been leery of pursuing the matter.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why? I would think a friendship with a man might be easier to explain.”

  He snorted. “It would; but I am afraid, in the absence of all other excitements, that… I will become easily and sincerely enamored with any I may dally with. And I fear I will lose them as I did you, because here, I surely cannot love them as they may wish, or allow them to love me as I may wish. So you see, losing you has stripped me of much of my callous disregard for anything but my own pleasure.”

  “Oh, Alonso,” I sighed. “Truly, I do not know whether to applaud or pity you in that.”

  He grinned. “For the good of my soul, applaud me. For all else, I will take whatever pity you feel you may bestow.”

  The entendre was strong in his voice, and I shook my head sadly.

  “I can offer you ought but words,” I said. “Gaston would kill you if I were to but touch you.”

  He took a sharp breath, and nodded his bemused acquiescence. “I see.”

  “See that you do,” I smiled reassuringly. “Though he is behaving such that he has earned my undying admiration this night, be aware that he takes his jealousy very seriously, as do I. We do not toy with one another.”

  “God, I envy you,” he sighed. “And you can tell your Frenchman I am jealous, too.”

  “Let us not,” I said.

  I looked to Gaston again. He had stood, and was now watching us with arms crossed and hard eyes. I wondered at the change, especially on the heels of my praising him for his forbearance, and then my gut churned. How was I ever going to make him understand that I could not do as he wished?