Better You Than I

  Better You Than I

  A Raised by Wolves Short Story

  by

  W.A. Hoffman

  Smashwords Edition

  Published November 2016

  Alien Perspective, LLP

  Copyright 2016 W.A. Hoffman

  ISBN: 978-1-936619-05-4

  Raised by Wolves series

  Brethren

  Matelots

  Treasure

  Wolves

  For additional information please see

  W.A. Hoffman’s Smashwords or Facebook page and

  AlienPerspective.com

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  The author reserves all rights to this work granted by United States copyright law and applicable international copyright law. No part of this book may be altered or excerpted without the express permission of the author, except for brief excerpts used solely for the purposes of publicity or review.

  This book is a work of fiction written for the purposes of entertainment.

  Author’s Note

  This is a short story about the children of the characters from the Raised by Wolves series. I wrote it as a coda to the series for the more avid fans: a last(?) chance to visit with Will, Gaston, and their sprawling family, an opportunity to learn something of what their life became, and a chance to meet their children on the cusp of adulthood. It is not a promise of books to come, but it does show the directions those stories would take.

  Better You Than I is Uly’s story and not either of his father’s, but it is not meant to stand on its own. It is densely packed with references to the RBW series. For a discerning reader of the parent books, I intend for it to be a pleasant enigma filled with echoes of the past taking voice in a new generation. For someone who has not read the original books, it could either be an introduction to the RBW world, full of unanswered questions about how the parents managed to tangle their lives so immutably, or it could be a difficult slog through a bunch of names and spoilers. You, dear reader, presumably know yourself well enough to decide if you need to read the parent series in order to enjoy this story.

  I have included the following chart for both the haves and the have nots. It does not include a number of children with roles in this story, but it should suffice to assist in deciphering the aliases and relationships of the main characters.

  London, England

  March, 1685

  “Is Uly prepared?” Apollo asks from the doorway.

  It is good he asked Heinrich and not me, for I am never prepared.

  “He looks as well as he ever will,” Les says, not looking at me; instead, regarding his profile in the dressing-room mirrors and fussing with how his hilt and scabbard interact with his justacorps.

  “He is ready, Lord Marsdale,” Heinrich says with an effusive smile, while plucking at my shoulders as if I were some clay figurine and his ministrations could make them wider. Then he sees what my brother is about and plucks at his justacorps. “I assure you, Mister Sable, this coat is cut and fit the same as the king’s.”

  “And if you think you’re going to engage in any fencing tonight, I’m staying home,” Apollo says with little humor.

  Les snorts with amusement. “They only invite you because of your title. They invite me because I enliven the party.”

  “Then why do they invite me?” I ask and sigh.

  “Because I might die and then they will wish they had been nice to you,” Apollo says with a grin and puts an arm around my shoulder, nearly pulling me off my feet in an embrace.

  I chuckle and respond, “Better you than I.” It is an old joke between us, ever since we learned the true nature of our parentage.

  “We look fine, Heinrich,” Apollo says. “Thank you.”

  Heinrich smiles and bows. “Indeed, three fine young gentlemen. I bid you a lovely night.” He snaps his fingers imperiously at his assistants and they scurry from the room.

  I regard the three of us in the mirror, feeling we are off to a masquerade in our cascading golden wigs and powdered faces. Our thigh-high boots, gloves, and hats are in always fashionable black, and our hose, pantaloons, shirts, waistcoats, and justacorps are in varying shades of this season’s fashionable blue.

  I am the tallest, though only by an inch or so. I am as skinny and gangly as a six-month colt. Since my father is lean and my mother tall and fine-boned, I despair of ever fully growing into manhood. Dada says he feared the same at my age and it gives me some hope—until I look at Les: he is the image of our father’s build, and yet, six weeks my junior. Apollo makes me feel worse yet: he already has the evidence and not just the promise of the manly body into which he will mature. Though he is three inches shorter than I, his shoulders seem twice mine in width.

  “As always—with the wigs—we share a resemblance,” Les says with a frown and small approving nod.

  Apollo snorts. “With the wigs, paste, and powder, every gentleman in the damn city looks alike.”

  I shake my head and grimace. I am an artist and I have drawn us. I share a father with one brother and a mother with the other, and I feel none of us appear to be kin. Les looks like his and my father, our Dada, rakishly handsome with a fox’s grin, hazel eyes, and blond hair. I look nothing like our father, seeming to only take after my mother, being fine-boned, long-nosed, and wide-mouthed, with pale skin and dark brown hair and eyes. She is also Apollo’s mother, but he looks nothing like her and everything like his father, our Papa, having a compact body, evenly formed handsome features, and red hair that is fire in sunlight and blood in shadow. He only differs from Papa in his eyes. Papa’s eyes are the most amazing green, while Apollo’s are merely hazel. Our sister, Athena, inherited Papa’s eyes. Sadly, neither Les nor I inherited Dada’s azure blue.

  “We appear sufficiently related to keep the nosy crows at bay unless we drop our breeches,” Les says and wags an admonishing finger in mimicry of our Aunt Chris, who concocted the scheme of our only appearing in public while similarly wigged when we were four. She added the last bit about our breeches when we became old enough to sprout hair about our cocks.

  We have all heard the rumors, though, and know the ruse has failed. Dada and Papa are too well-known to hide the truth of their relationship or the question of the parentage of Dada’s heir, Apollo. I have even heard—whispered loud enough for me to hear, but softly enough it could be denied—that Dada’s love of men made him incapable of siring any of us, even our older sister, Jamaica. Most of the family knows he did not father Jamie upon his first wife, but it still is a matter of consternation—and a thing we try to hide from dear Jamie.

  I do not know what will occur if public claim is ever made of our deception. I suppose Apollo would lose the title—both his current as Viscount Marsdale and his future one as the Earl of Dorshire—but would I, my father’s actual firstborn son, be allowed to inherit? It is a thing I pray to the Gods never comes to pass. Sadly, I sometimes feel it is a thing Apollo prays will happen. Even more sadly, Les, the only one of us who would wish for the position, is also Dada’s actual son, and yet he will never be allowed to inherit because he has the wrong mother—a problem that also plagued our late king, Charles the Second, and his bastard son, the Duke of Monmouth.

  “Who is throwing this fête again?” I ask as I follow my brothers into the hall.

  “Rickensdale,” Les says, “It is his birthday, and as he is now betrothed, his last party before his marriage.”

/>   “As if that will change his ways,” I say, recalling the plump, loud, lordling’s behavior at previous debauches.

  An explosion of anguish billows into the hall from the door of the girls’ suite.

  “Why can’t I go?” Jamie roars at someone.

  After our start of surprise, we realize she has not seen us and we try to hurry by without her notice. We fail.

  “You can’t go without me!” Jamie wails and dives into the hall to grab Apollo’s arm.

  She is wearing nothing but her shift, a thing that causes grimaces of consternation. She is our sister in name, but the nubile body barely clad in thin cotton before us is not related to any of us by blood—a thing we have discussed while sipping brandy and hiding in the stable loft. We do not often see naked women, and Jamie is comelier by far than any whore we have seen.

  Our parents say no one knew her father or his appearance, and her mother was pretty but no incredible beauty. Whatever their coloring or features, the match was apparently blessed by Venus. Jamie has cascading black curls longer and more luxurious than even the king’s wigs, pale and pure skin, violet eyes, and large but finely formed features. And her body… Gods, she has the largest breasts in the house—well, with the exception of the old women among the servants—but unlike theirs, Jamie’s sit high and move about as if they have little weight. And her waist… Apollo and I have discussed whether we might be able to wrap our hands about it and have our fingers touch in the back. Below that, her hips swell in a way we also find mesmerizing. I am sure every boy in the house—save Les, who favors boys—has had unbidden night fantasies about her.

  And yet, she is our sister, and thus forbidden. And, though Venus blessed her parent’s union, the Goddess Athena surely did not. Jamie is stupid and willful and thinks only of her own needs. Even if I did not love another, my mind and heart cannot conceive of ever loving any woman such as her.

  Eliza and the girls’ maid, Muriel, hurry into the hall, one carrying a smock dress and the other a robe. “One or the other!” Eliza growls and proffers a garment.

  “How am I to find a husband?” Jamie wails.

  “No one will be seeking marriage prospects at this gathering,” Apollo tells her kindly. “No ladies will be present.”

  Jamie turns her huge, lambent eyes on each of us in turn, and finding no quarter, releases Apollo and snatches the robe from Muriel’s hands.

  “You’re all bastards,” she whines as she shoves one arm into the robe before dragging it behind her into the girls’ suite and slamming the door.

  Almost everyone sighs in relief: Only Eliza watches her go with thinly masked angst. Eliza inherited her dear departed mother’s demeanor and dark Jewish looks and her father’s wit and penchant for caring for our family, but her love for members of her own fair sex seems to have sprung from the ether, as it surely came from neither of them. A little older than the rest of us, and the keeper of many secrets, her attraction to, and unrequited adoration of, dear Jamie is a thing I think she has not voiced to anyone. I have seen the signs of it often enough, though.

  Eliza hands Muriel the dress and schools her face to a pleasant mask of teasing scorn before turning to us and jingling the key ring she keeps tied to her bodice with a braided ribbon. “Father is busy. He asked me to insure our young gentlemen are prepared for the evening.”

  I shake my head. I am more concerned at these parties about one of the whores lifting my purse than I am about having it full and ready to spend. I cannot imagine there will be books or art supplies for me to purchase, so the few coins I have should be more than sufficient.

  Les, hefts his thin purse and sighs. “Does part of that preparation entail your father’s usual lecture?”

  Eliza snorts with amusement. “Never for you, dear Les.”

  “But he is the one who always needs it,” Apollo says and links arm with her to lead us down the corridor. “He spends money as if he is royal.”

  “Nay,” Les says with a laugh. “I spend money like a noble wolf. It is the two of you who pretend to be members of some puritanical sect.”

  We descend the grand stair into an empty hall and cross it to our Dada’s office. It, too, is empty, and I wonder why until I recall that Dada and Mama were going to some event at court. King James has only had the throne for a moon and he has already proven to be a hundred times as demanding as his brother. Between the new king restarting parliament, and his political need to keep supporters such as Dada close, our father has rarely been home this month.

  Eliza pulls the cash box and ledger from a drawer in my father’s great teak desk and sits in his chair to write the sums she pulls from the box.

  “I do not need anything,” I say as she pushes coins toward me.

  “Then save it,” she says without looking up as she replaces the box and ledger.

  “For what?” I ask. They look at me with bemusement. “I have no need.”

  Apollo shrugs. “Then give it to someone who does.”

  “GiveItTaMe,” Art says from the doorway. He can enunciate; he just enjoys speaking like his father, who delights in being as indecipherable as possible.

  Art is dressed in the house livery and good boots, so I assume he is going with us. He will spend the night as he always does at such affairs, playing dice or cards with the coachmen and stable boys and learning a great deal about their employers.

  “You will gamble it,” I say.

  “IAlwaysWin.” He holds out a long-fingered hand as I near the door. It is clean: in honor of escorting us, I am sure.

  “Then you will just keep it.”

  “Gods, Uly, You’reAlwaysWhinin’.” His strangely pale blue eyes are full of teasing.

  He is as slim and tall as I am. Which is embarrassing and ironic since he is a girl and a year younger than I. Giving him half the coins, I quickly stuff the rest in my purse. He makes his deftly disappear into the leather pouch hanging from a thong around his neck.

  Henri is waiting behind him in the hall. His long blond hair is clubbed with a black ribbon and he looks handsome and mature in his coat and breeches. He gives us his usual affable smile.

  I suppose it will be the five of us plus the Striker boys, unless some of the men are waiting outside in the courtyard. I have grown accustomed to our Praetorian guard since the old king died. Though they publicly and politically support him, our parents have been fretful since King James took the throne. He is Catholic and there is some story about my father killing a priest and being named a heretic, and our Papa may still be considered a French citizen by the Catholic church—and possessed by the Devil and in need of exorcism.

  Aunt Chris enters from the foyer, speaking quietly with Henri’s father, Uncle Liam. She is wearing a dress today, but with a loosely fitted justacorps over it to hide the pistols and knives at her waist. She looks us over critically and utters the words she always says: “Don’t get into any trouble.”

  Considering their pasts—and present—it is hypocrisy of the highest order.

  “Artemis, Henri,” Aunt Chris adds as we head for the door. “Priswold purportedly has a new mistress. See what you can learn.”

  “Aye, Mum,” Art says and darts in to give his mother a quick peck on the cheek. For the moment their profiles mirror one another, I can see Art’s beauty matching her mother’s, but then she’s away and it’s gone and he’s back to being his father’s son.

  Our horses are waiting with four of Uncle Pete’s men, former buccaneers who have served our family for years without ever becoming part of it. I have often wondered at the distinctions. What was it that occurred in those years before and during our birth that made all who adventured with our fathers brothers in a way others can never hope to earn? Will I ever make such friends? My life seems full of my family, and I cannot see how I will have time or need for others unless I must let those dear to me go and thus find the need to replace them. I am gripped by the anxiety I often feel when contemplating my current age and impending manhood. I am surely at chi
ldhood’s end.

  I let a footman help me don a cloak against the frigid March night, mount Gigi, my favorite little Barbary mare, and fall in beside Apollo. I know he shares this anxiety. I am sure it is worse for him. There has been talk of him marrying. It is a thing a lord must do. There has been talk of my going to Cambridge: it is a thing a lord’s second son often does, but I need not if I do not wish it. I do not know what I wish—on that matter at least.

  We canter to the Strikers’ and find Pike and James mounted and waiting by the road, both as fashionably wigged and dressed as we are. Pike greets us all sincerely before falling in beside Les and ignoring us completely as they ride side by side and talk. I do not favor men, and yet, I can see how Les finds him handsome. Pike purportedly looks much like his father at our age, long before Uncle Jim became plump and red-nosed from too much drink.

  James, not as dashing as his older brother—nor enamored of any of us—falls in beside Henri; with whom he would rather spend the evening in the kitchen, instead of being forced to attend the debauch in the house’s front rooms. He takes after our Aunt Sarah in appearance, being small and pale, but thankfully, he takes after neither of his parents in demeanor, being generally sober, sensible, and yet friendly.

  What will the Gods have of us? Apollo will become the Earl of Dorshire. Henri and Art will mature to become replacements for their parents in Apollo’s household; somehow always figuratively bound to us by our parents’ blood, and yet, never able to enjoy the privileges of having that noble blood in their veins. James, not enamored of the sea like many of his siblings, will likely grow to become a master of trade and manage their family shipping concerns as his mother does; though, being male, he will not need to hide his business acumen. Pike has already been to sea and wants nothing more than to captain a vessel and fuck my brother. I see nothing to stop him from achieving those goals in perpetuity. Les is able—and presumably willing—to go to sea with him. Of all of us, Les is perhaps the freest; being a nobleman’s son who will never be in danger of inheriting a title; skilled with weapons and anything else he puts his wit and will toward; and unafraid of the world.