Raised By Wolves 2 - Matelots (69 page)

“And if it does not?” I asked.

He sighed. “We’ll probably be forced to share our beef.”

“At gunpoint?” I chuckled.

“By Morgan’s order,” he said.

“I well imagine he will claim forethought, then, in sending us to Cow Island to provide the victuals,” I said.

“I imagine he will, at that,” Striker said with little humor.

“Why do we do this, again?” I asked.

He chuckled sadly. “The gold, Will: if we find a rich prize, it will be more than we can earn in a year of honest labor.”

Though I understood well what he meant, I felt compelled to tease.

“Do you feel this is easy and you do not labor at it?”

“Nay,” he snorted.

“Do you feel it is dishonest to any but the Spaniards?” I added.

“Shut up,” he said with amusement.

“Do you still hold some notion of being a pirate?” I continued.

He laughed and spoke effusively as if witnessing to the Heavens.

“Aye, I still hold such romantic notions. But nay, I am a mercenary in the employ of the Crown. I am married. I own land. I have legal claim to this vessel. I have strayed far from my father’s path.”

“Have not we all?” I laughed.

As all remaining aboard the Queen were men we had sailed with before, either on prior raiding or to Cow Island this year, we made short work of the elections.

We were anchored close enough to the Mayflower to see the results of her elections. Bradley was Captain, of course, but I was quite dismayed when Hastings, the one-eyed former Naval officer, and presumed murderer of our former cook, Michaels, was elected as quartermaster. I still thought it likely we would have need to deal with him in some fashion someday.

At long last, we began to chase the sun toward Negril Point, where we would turn North-Northwest toward Cuba. As Port Royal slid away behind us, it occurred to me that I had arrived here almost a year before, this being the last week of February, 1668. I had arrived on Jamaica during the second week of March, 1667.

Gaston and I retreated to the cabin to rest until our shift on watch in the night. We found Pete there ahead of us. He had been above deck for the elections, but he had presumably slept through most of the transferring of men and other business of the morning. Now he lounged in his hammock.

“IBe Takin’The Night Watch With Ya,” he pronounced, as Gaston and I settled under our table.

I shrugged. “That will probably simplify the sharing of that hammock.”

He snorted. “Makes Lots Simpler.”

I was not sure if this would be true for Striker and him, but I knew it surely did not simplify matters for Gaston and me. Gaston lay with his hands clasped behind his head, glaring up through the table at the place in which Pete hung suspended in our minds as well as the cabin.

The constant crowding and bustle that had gone on all morning had left my matelot quite tense, and though I could obviously think of one ready way to ease him, I did not feel sufficient calm in my own heart to do so with Pete hanging above us, awake and listening.

The whole of it made me angry. It was not our fault they were apart.

They would not rob us of our pleasure.

I rolled up onto my knees astride Gaston. His gaze met mine and he shook his head. I obdurately shook mine in response. He frowned. I dug around in our bag above his head and produced the scented oil. I anointed one fingertip and ran it the length of my matelot’s nose.

I leaned down to whisper in French, “Let me make it all go away, nothing more.”

His eyes narrowed in challenge and devilment. “Nothing more?” he hissed.

“You would need to eclipse all else,” I breathed, with a shrug that implied I doubted he could.

Soon thereafter, I heard the cabin door slam shut. I took pause in my panting and squirming and opened my eyes to look about. I saw no one but Gaston above me, and I had not needed eyes to know where he was or the expression upon his face. And at the moment, I would not have cared if the entire crew had crammed into the room to watch us.

In the aftermath, we found we were indeed alone, and I felt little guilt as I fell asleep on Gaston’s shoulder with a grin upon my lips.

That night we joined the others on the quarterdeck. Pete was not among them. When I asked, Liam pointed up the ship.

“Ee’s been sittin’ on the bowsprit all day.”

Nearby, Striker shrugged.

“I feel we might have driven him from the cabin,” I said.

This elicited several chuckles from our companions.

“Good,” Striker said, “and thank God he’s on night watch with you so I can sleep.” He frowned at us. “Don’t be driving him off the deck tonight.”

“We will endeavor to keep our mind on the task at hand,” I said with a happy smile.

“See that it’s sailing the ship,” the Bard said, and went below.

Gaston glared, and Striker followed the Bard and Dickey below with a laugh.

There was little for us to do. One of the Bard’s men, Topper, was at the whipstaff, and Ash was querying him of sailing. We ran with the wind off our starboard quarter, having already adjusted our course from Southwest to Northwest as we rounded the point on Jamaica’s belly known as Portland. Gaston and I settled in with our legs through the aft quarterdeck railing, and watched our wake in the moonlight.

I felt restless, and kicked my feet idly. After spending autumn and winter ashore, I now faced months of sailing once again. Though we were purportedly to raid on land, unlike our short voyages from Negril to Port Royal or from there to Cow Island, I now felt the great press of the days upon the open sea before us, and not that we were upon another short jaunt. In one way, we were free at last of the land and civilization; and in another, we were trapped upon a chunk of wood with a great many men. I needed to re-accustom myself, not just to the roll of the waves or the size of the cabin, but to the utter boredom of sailing. I knew in time it would become mesmerizing in and of itself again, but tonight it was not; and I was decidedly disheartened by my sudden lack of enjoyment in it. Gaston was calm and contemplative beside me. I did not wish to burden him, and so I tried to sit still and hope the itchiness in my legs would pass.

Pete joined us without word. He sat beside me and dangled his legs through the railing. I waited for him to speak, but he said nothing.

I reclined back upon the deck to watch the sails eclipse the stars.

For some unknowable reason, I found this more calming than watching the dark waves behind us. I mused that perhaps I would feel better still if I went forward to watch the unbroken darkness we sought to cross.

And then I realized that perhaps that was it: I was thinking of only what we sought to leave, not where we sought to go.

My reverie was interrupted when I noted how very orange and red a certain star was. It continually emerged and retreated behind the corner of the aft sail, as we rolled gently over the swelling sea.

“Is that Jupiter?” I asked.

Gaston turned to frown down at me, and then reclined to lie at my side and look where I pointed.

“It is likely,” he said. “It is upon the correct path in the heavens.”

On my other side, Pete reclined as well. “What’sJupiter? It Be A Star?”

“Nay, it is a planet,” I said. “Gaston has seen it through a fine telescope.”

“IHeard O’Planets. Don’Know Their Names Is All,” Pete sighed with a touch of annoyance. “What Be The Difference?”

I grimaced to myself. I thought it likely the conversation would go the way of my attempting to explain latitude and longitude to Davey, even though Pete was far more intelligent.

“Well,” I said carefully, “Earth is a planet, and both Jupiter and Earth orbit the Sun. Or so it is theorized, though the Papists would deny it, and many others uneducated in the ways of the sciences. Many would continue to place Earth at the center of all Creation and decry anything else as heresy. But, from my limited understanding of such things, planets orbiting the Sun can be proven with mathematics and observation. It is a thing of the world and not religion.”

Pete was still looking at the red dot. “So There Be People On It?”

“Perhaps.” I had not thought of that. I looked at my matelot and found him smiling.

Pete was still studying the heavens. “Would They Be Like Us?”

“I would imagine… Nay, I would imagine nothing at all,” I sighed. “I have never given the matter thought.”

“Non,” Gaston said. “They would not be like us. The living things on one side of this world differ from those on the other. I would imagine that the living things on another world would be very different.”

Pete smiled. “How Do We Get There?”

“We have to develop a means of flying,” I said with some enthusiasm as I let my mind mull it over. “I have seen the little models that da Vinci made of flying contraptions. Someday, someone will build one or something like it. Someday, man may well fly through the air as easily as we cross the seas. Once we have mastered that, then I would imagine we can sail through the heavens and reach other planets.”

I imagined sailing up into that darkness in search of only-the-Gods-knew-what with enthusiasm. It would not be like sailing off as we were now, in search of other men from which to steal gold. It would be much as the Spanish had once done in coming to the West Indies for the first time; but they had been seeking a way to easily reach the riches of India; and then, upon discovering the riches of the New World – well, we had all seen how that had turned out.

“Why would you want to go?” I asked Pete.

Pete shrugged. “Ta See It.” He pointed at the Moon. “People There Too?”

“I hope they are nothing like us,” I said. “I can think of no voyage of discovery that was ever made just to see anything. All exploration is suckled on greed. If the inhabitants of the Moon or Jupiter are like us, let us hope we reach them before they reach us. Otherwise we may likely end up as the Indians did in this New World.”

“You think the men of the Moon would come here and enslave us all on plantations and in mines?” Gaston asked with wry amusement.

“If our wolves do not find a way to do it to them first,” I sighed.

“Why Would Ya Go?” Pete asked seriously.

“To see it. To gaze upon the unknown with wonder. I am not driven by greed. But I am not a wolf.”

“Ya Got Teeth. Ah. But Ya Said Ya Be A Horse Man.”

“Aye, a centaur,” I said, surprised he remembered.

“So Wolves Be Greedy Noblemen. INa’ Be AWolf Then.

I looked to Gaston and found him nodding.

“Nay,” Gaston said. “You are not a wolf. You are not a centaur either, though.”

“IBe ACat. Great Big One. Cats Be Meaner Than Dogs.”

I thought of a lion I had seen in a menagerie once. It had looked sickly and pained to be in a cage, but it had been a great tawny thing with huge paws and teeth, and sleek muscle beneath its mangy pelt and clumped mane. It had looked upon all of us with noble disdain. I had envisioned it running across a great meadow or stalking through mighty forests, and then I could see the true glory and understand why it was emblazoned on so many king’s standards.

“You are a lion,” I said.

Pete grinned. “Aye. ISeen Pictures O’Lions. They Be Proper Cats.

Wolf Killin’Cats.”

“We named you wrongly,” I added.

He shrugged. “Only Needed The Name Fer The Land. Never Live On It.

Good Ta Confuse The Wolves With AWrong Name. ICan Be Pete The Lion.”

“Pete the Lionhearted, like good King Richard of old,” I said.

“Nay! Want More Than The Heart. Want The Whole Thing.”

Gaston and I were amused.

The three of us whiled away the rest of our watch talking of stars and planets and what the people on Jupiter or the Moon might look like, and the appearances of other mythical creatures like centaurs and satyrs. I felt at ease, and though I still did not know what we sailed into, I no longer felt constrained by what we sailed from.

When Striker came on deck before dawn, we were halfway through recounting the Illiad – in a less than poetic fashion that I was sure would have appalled Hesiod – and Pete had taken a distinct dislike to the Gods meddling in the affairs of man. Gaston was hoarse and I was exhausted. We told Pete we would finish the tale that night.

“Why Would Ya Go Ta The Moon?” Pete asked Striker challengingly.

Striker stared at him dully for a full minute, but held up a hand before Pete repeated the question. I was not sure if Striker was struck dumb over Pete’s asking him anything or the nature of the inquiry. And of course he was half asleep, which in my experience is the worst time to be queried on things esoteric.

“Do you want to go to the Moon?” Striker asked.

“Aye,” Pete said.

“Then I would go to keep you out of trouble,” Striker said.

Pete considered this, and a slow smile overtook his features.

“Ya Be An Arse,” he said at last with little rancor. Then he stood and went below.

“What the Devil was that about?” Striker asked as he sagged down beside us.

“Pete wishes to be known as Pete the Lion,” I said with good humor.

“Truly? And what should I be known as?” he asked.

“You might come to be known as Striker the Crafty Mule if you win,”

I teased.

We left him chuckling and slipped below to sleep.

The following seven days passed with sleep and the nights with mythology, until Pete was able to name the constellations, and we at last reached the selection of cays Morgan sought. Then we began to search for our fleet. We sailed about by day and anchored at night.

One morning, Gaston became pensive in the hours before dawn.

When I noted this, he frowned with annoyance – not at me, but at his thoughts – and asked, “What do you feel the date is?”

“I know not,” I admitted. “It is March.”

“By which calendar?” he sighed. “You damn English.”

“The proper number of days in a year is a Popish thing, and the work of the devil,” I teased. “Though why a Pope would ascribe more to the science of the matter…” I grinned.

“Damned if I know,” I said, after giving the matter thought. I had last seen a date at Theodore’s, and it had been from the Julian calendar, of course. I rarely bothered to attempt to reckon the date on my own, always choosing to take the word of others as I traveled. And now, while roving, I did not mark the days: the Bard did, in order to chart our course, but I did not.