Raised By Wolves 1 - Brethren (4 page)

“You said you were not abandoning me.”

His eyes conveyed hope again. “I want you to accompany me.”

I blinked, as he had grown foggy in my vision for a moment. “To Madrid?”

He nodded.

“Are you mad? Our nations are at war.”

“I do not think so,” he said with a perplexed frown.

“Perhaps not at the moment, but they are always on the brink, and nonetheless they like each other little.”

“Your Castilian is excellent.”

“For an Englishman. Alonso, I am blond, pale, and skinny. You are robust and swarthy.”

“We have skinny and blond Spaniards.”

“Do tell? Who speak Castilian like Englishmen?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes.

“I would look like a scarecrow left in the sun too long,” I added.

“I did not think you would pretend to be Spanish. You have several personas, with documents.”

“Si, I do.” In truth I was already considering various means of enacting his plan. “I could assume an Austrian identity, unless I ran afoul of someone with an ear for languages.”

He warmed to my seeming acquiescence. “We would not remain in Spain long.”

“Truly? Then what?”

“My family wishes for me to join my brother in the New World and assist with our interests there. We have a plantation in Panama.”

I was vaguely aware of Panama’s location. I believed it to be on the Main itself and not in the West Indies. I was curious about the New World, yet there were many things troubling me. I took a long breath, relieved him of the bottle he held, and finished it.

“That is wonderful. Perhaps I shall pay you a visit, if my travels ever lead me there.”

He stood with annoyance and went to the window to peer into the night, presenting me with his back.

“I thought that,” he said carefully. “I knew that you would not want to leave here until forced. That is why I did not discuss it with you. I harbored the hope that you would wish to accompany me because… at least you would still have me.”

I was seeing things in a truly harsh light, as I recognized his tone and gesture as one of calculation and practice. But all that really meant was that he truly wanted me to go and he was willing to play everything in his hand to achieve it.

I loved Teresina with a boyish romantic fancy. Alonso, however, had been my companion for more than two years. He was not an unreachable destination, but a fellow traveler on the journey. I studied the lines of his back and wondered how I would live without him.

Alonso had been gifted by many a god: Adonis, Mars, Apollo, and even Jupiter when one considered his birthright as the son of a Spanish count. Alonso was all any man should want to be, and as such he was attractive to me in every facet. I loved Alonso in a manner that I would never love Teresina, or be loved by Teresina, or any woman for that matter. And I was not merely thinking of carnal delights. Alonso was a man, and I am one of those men blessed or cursed to favor men. I prefer their company, and their bodies, but mostly their company. Alonso and I had shared plans, schemes, homes, beds, weapons, jokes, friends, women, and wine. He was my lover, and brother in all but name and blood.

So there were two questions hanging betwixt us. How could I let him go without at least trying? And how could he have been so close and yet know me so little?

“And what would we do there?” I asked. “Who would I be?” My thoughts floated along in the wine, and I did not like where the river was leading. “Would I be posing as your manservant?”

He turned back to me and eagerly closed the distance between us.

“It would not be like that.” He did not seem convinced by his own words.

“Then how would it be, Alonso? You say I do not think things through; you are correct. Let me rectify that now. What would we do?

What is this plantation like? What does it grow? Would we while away our days hunting and drinking?” Something else tickled at my mind.

“What else does your family expect of you? Marriage?”

He nodded glumly. “They have already found me a wife.” He threw up his hands. “But it is nothing. You know women. I will need to bed her until she gets with child, and then leave her alone until well after she births it. If I am lucky, I will only share her bed a few times a year.”

“Will you be able to share mine the rest of it?” I asked.

Alonso grimaced. “Uly… You know… We would need to be discreet, even more so than here. And you do not like me to share your bed every night.”

“And you would not want me chasing boys; so if I am your servant, what does that leave me, your maids?” I asked.

He was taken aback by this. I realized he had not thought everything through.

“Alonso, I have seen men like myself living lives of that nature.

Always… outside… watching and waiting for their lover to come to them, when it is safe, or convenient. I do not want that.”

“It will not be that way,” he said doggedly; but I knew he could see what I spoke of. He knelt beside me, his face earnest. “Uly, I want you. I care for you more deeply than I ever imagined I would. And these last weeks have been very hard on me, knowing we would come to this discussion. I do not want to be without you. I am willing to do everything I can to keep us together.” His eyes were pleading, moist and bright in the dim candlelight.

The wine had finally truly dulled my senses and my heart. My arm even throbbed less. I was in a distant place, observing him through a lens that brought him closer yet kept him out of reach.

“Alonso, I love you, and I will miss you terribly. Yet, I could no more live in your shadow for the rest of my existence than you could live in mine.”

His shoulders tightened. Then he sighed before regarding me with a new resolve. “Maybe we could travel elsewhere, then?”

Those words pushed through the fog of wine and grasped at my heart. I found myself nodding, yet there were reservations in my soul. I could feel them rustling about, though I could not name them. It did not matter: we were beyond further discourse. He closed the final distance between us, and his lips covered mine. I returned the kiss and urged him to deepen it. When we pulled apart a breathless minute later, I whispered, “Your room.”

He smiled and shrugged. I still disliked sharing a bed with anyone in the aftermath of passion, even him. I stood on shaky legs and let him lead me down the hall.

We took turns pleasuring one another for hours, until what remained of the night was spent and we along with it. He performed every trick he knew to convince me that I could not live without him.

My body surrendered to his ministrations time and again, until he had verily wrung me dry more times than I could remember. I even allowed him to do that which he always most desired and I usually refused.

With my ankles on his shoulders, I watched him through the haze of pain, both real and remembered. I knew he loved me, but I felt little of that lofty emotion, and it was not solely due to the wine.

At last we lay in the grey before dawn, he sleeping and I watching him, wondering how deeply asleep he truly was. I was not sure when I reached the decision, but reached it I had. It must have been the carnality; it always makes me think. He was correct. We had played the fools too long. It was time we made amends with our birthrights and accepted the yoke of duty. I would go home. I did not know what awaited me there, and perhaps I would not stay; but I would at least make the attempt.

And more important than concerns of familial honor and the like, I could not run from Shane forever. There was much to resolve. I was no longer the boy who had run away in the night. I owed it to myself to exorcise that demon.

It had taken Alonso months of patience and persistence to induce me to yield to our mutual desires and overcome the fear that haunted me. Yet finding peace in his arms had not healed me; it had only made me aware of how very wounded I still was. In some utopian version of the world that only existed in my dreams, I would return to England with Alonso, confront Shane and say, “Here, this is what it can be.”

But that was the stuff of fantasy, and fantasies are like brightly painted eggs. They are beautiful to consider, but if you grasp one it shatters, and you are left with a most unholy stench.

I pushed a strand of hair from Alonso’s brow and told myself that it was better this way, as I would never see his beautiful body sag and turn to fat. I would not be forced to watch him wed. Or worse yet, and even more probable, watch him slip away from me in the manner of people everywhere as they grow and age. He would always be perfect in my mind as he was at this moment. Except that was not true. At the moment he was no more perfect than Teresina had been in that last conversation. I was angry, and as a result my memories of them now held a taint. I hoped that would pass.

Love, so far, had not proven to be an invincible gem of beauty, but rather an ephemeral ray of color in the morning mist, something easily seen until one turned one’s head. It had not been a thing that could easily be lifted and transported in all its glory to another place or time.

This wispy, momentary quality of love had permeated every relationship I dared label as love. I wondered at the words of poets and philosophers who professed of loves that transcended all earthly concerns and bound the participants with unbreakable chains of the heart. Perhaps they had only been dreaming, too.

I slipped from his bed and padded on bare feet back to my room. I almost tripped on a small bag at his door. There was another at mine, which I hefted with surprise. Teresina had been generous in funding our travel. My bag contained a fortune in florins. I was thankful, as I had little else to call my own, save my weapons and horse. I had lived ten years through the beneficence of friends and the misfortune of adversaries. Now, I supposed, I would throw myself upon my father’s goodwill, as was my birthright.

I began to pack. The growing loneliness did not burn so much as it froze. I grew numb. Even though it was Alonso I was deserting, it felt as it had with many of the women I had taken as lovers. It was morning and I wanted to be away with the changing of the heavenly watch. I wanted Florence behind me, since there was nothing in it to hold me anymore. I left everything except the money, my weapons, and a few changes of warm clothing.

Many would think me mad to consider crossing Europe alone on horseback carrying a small fortune, especially while riding a fine horse.

I may be rash, but I am not naïve. I would avoid the inns and well-traveled roads. The hardships of the journey would serve to buff the mettle of my soul. This would serve me well, as I would need to know what I was made of before entering my father’s house again.

Less than an hour later, I sat upon Hercules and chewed the remains of my hurriedly-snatched repast. I rode to a bridge over the Arno and watched the sun rise. The angle was wrong, due to the difference in direction from the night before. The river did not glow gold as it had burned red. I rode west anyway.

Perhaps the Gods had been trying to tell me something, after all.

II: England - November, 1666 to January, 1667

Wherein I Return To England

To my dismay, I was apprised in a little market in Turin that France was at war with England. I abandoned my identity as Ulysses, adopted Austrian papers and accent, and headed for Paris anyway, as I had little recourse.

Once in that fair city, in which I had spent several years after first leaving England, I located a fine horseman I had known and made him a gift of my Moorish stallion. He was pleased to have so beautiful a horse for breeding, and I was content to know that Hercules would spend the rest of his days frolicking in green pastures and mounting mares.

I, on the other hand, was forced to make a choice between a long barge ride down the Seine to the sea, where I would have to place myself at the mercy of smugglers or pirates to reach England – or a miserable coach ride north to Antwerp to book legitimate passage across the Channel. As I knew smugglers would have little incentive not to slit my throat, even if I gave them all of my money upon boarding, I chose the least comfortable route. I bought a pillow to give some comfort to my arse, and a bottle to make the conversation and odors of my fellow passengers somewhat palatable.

I finally arrived on English soil at London in the last week of November, 1666, per the Julian calendar: which, now that I had returned to my native soil, I was forced to adopt once again. A storm had harried the crossing and it had been quite violent, remarked upon by even the sailors. The following ride up the Thames had been exceedingly wet and cold, as the storm had delivered copious amounts of sleet. I hoped fervently I would never have to board another vessel, but I knew that to be folly. I could not imagine staying in England for the rest of my life, and since she was an island, some amount of sea travel would be required to escape her yet again.

Though it was amusing and comfortable to hear and speak English again, England was much as I had remembered: cold and wet. The sight of London sank my spirits even further. As I traveled, I had heard that much of London burned on September second: which had been a mere week before I departed Florence, even with the difference in calendars.

Hearing and seeing are two very different things, though; and I was absolutely stunned at the devastation still in evidence when I arrived almost three months after the event.

Acres and acres of the city were missing, the buildings reduced to heaps of rubble. I almost expected them to be still smoldering; but no, we were well past that. Despite the missing buildings, or perhaps because of them, the streets were filled with activity. Wagons rumbled by, loaded with debris to be removed, while others arrived with building supplies. Not everything was being replaced immediately, but the sound of saws and hammers was an omnipresent din muffled by the low clouds.

I wondered how the people who had lost everything were getting on.

I doubted the King had opened the treasury to feed and house them all.

Thankfully fewer had been displaced than might have been, due to the plague having paid England a visit this year. The wealthy had escaped the city to avoid the Black Death, and the poor had been decimated by the reaper well before the fire.