Chapter 11: the Choice

 

Kathyn opened his eyes and came.

His first, hysterical thought was that he had been out for only a few minutes and the ordeal was still going and Willym was still raping him.

But then he realised whatever was inside him was too small to be Willym.

He clenched around it, feeling it out, though it was like touching something with burnt fingers.

It was Willym's scrimshaw. The sharp point had been rounded down, but it still had a curve to it, which dug into Kathyn's special spot.

Biting the pillow against the agony that was to come, he dug his fingers between the flared base and his hole and pulled. It came with a feeling like he was pulling away part of his flesh, and a sucking sound like water going down the drain of a bath. But it came.

He brought it gingerly up to his face, feeling the distress in every limb, and waited several minutes for the bleariness to clear so he could look at it.

As he had seen before, the flat end of the tooth had been smoothed down to a wide disk joined to the rest by a narrower stem. There was a design carved on the head, and this he had not seen before. He had to blink slowly, several times, ere he could make it out.

It was them again, Willym and Kathyn—not a mermaid now, just his ordinary self. But Kathyn was holding a little child in his arms, and Willym was holding both of them in his. In the carving Kathyn had breasts: large, full ones. The babe was suckling at one of them, and Willym was fondling the other. It was only when one's eyes slipped down to their lower bodies that you saw Willym's prick was sliding into Kathyn's hole, as if no matter what the scene Willym just couldn't leave it out.

Kathyn reached down between his legs to touch the real thing, and had to bite his lip to keep from mewling in pain. He must be badly bruised, maybe even cut. He didn't want to look.

He focussed on the carving, which was such a queer mixture of wholesome sweetness and erotic depravity. Kathyn didn't know if it was some marvel of the design, or just his own overwrought mind, but all three of them seemed to look right at him, as if saying, this is what you could have, if only you weren't too afraid to lose what you've got.

It shall seem love, a love of having, yet it is but fear, a jealous and suspicious fear, a fear of losing...

There was a stirring on the other side of the bed, and Kathyn remembered he was not alone.

Willym turned his head woozily, blinking red-rimmed eyes, looking as discombobulated as Kathyn. `Kathyn? Love? What—I don't remember...'

Without even consciously meaning to Kathyn found himself sliding back over the bed, away from Willym.

`Kath?' He took Kathyn's arm—an instinctive motion, but Kathyn cried out when Willym touched him, and his brother released him with a start, confusion coming over his face as he took in his battered form and the belt around his neck.

His expression was blank but his eyes widened as something—some remembrance or comprehension—dawned. He reached out again, moving faster when Kathyn backed away. `Oh no, love, no. Dearling, don't—I won't...' His voice trembled, and so did his hands as he loosened the belt and tugged it off, as delicately as he could. He knelt on the bed, holding it in his hands with tears coursing down his cheeks, and Kathyn knew he was sorry, too sorry to say so in words.

Willym never cried, not even as a boy. When he was hurt it only ever made him angry. The only thing that could put tears in his eyes was seeing Kathyn hurt.

Kathyn couldn't stand to look at it, so he looked around the room and sniffed the air. The `moss' was gone. So was the storm. The forenoon sun looked in cheerily through the window and Kathyn felt like dying.

He closed his eyes against the light, and this diminished the throbbing in both his body and his head. He lay still, just breathing, since that was all he could manage for the moment, while Willym silently moved around him, doing his best to get him cleaner and somewhat comfortable.

Willym's hands were almost incomprehensibly gentle on a body that still quivered with the memory of their blows. But even their light, efficient movements elicited winces and sharp bitten-off hisses. Every tear that spilled was answered threefold in Willym's eyes; every whimper, with a deep biting of his lip and creasing of his brow. When his fingers probed the tender spot on his jaw and Kathyn hissed, Willym looked like he had been punched. But he did not stop; he accepted Kathyn's pain as his penance and the knowledge that he had caused it as a just damnation.

Finally Willym left, promising to bring Kathyn some warm milk for his throat.

Kathyn lay half-propped up on the pillows, breathing shallowly so it hurt less, focussing all his will on staying awake. To distract from the aching of his body and the anguish in his heart, and the turmoil in his mind, which was only just beginning to grapple with all that had happened the night before, and what it meant, his gaze slowly wandered once more around the room.

There was a piece of crinkled paper on the bedside table, a poster or leaflet of some kind. Willym must have left it there.

It was too much effort to raise his head or his arm. He could only make out the block-print words at the bottom of the bill:

AN ACRE OF LAND FOR EVERY MAN

While he was pondering what the significance of this might be, Willym came back and sat on the side of the bed. He held Kathyn's ankle, thumb circling the bump of bone. His grip was soft but unbreakable, asserting his proprietary claim, letting Kathyn know that nothing was going to keep him from touching, or taking, what was his. No matter what had passed that night.

`They'll be wantin us back on ship in a day or two. There'll be repairs t'do, no doubt.'

His speech was as subdued as his countenance; his eyes were a wan, almost colourless blue. He kept them downcast as he spoke.

`If I'm to give my notice, it must be now. Otherwise...' He took a deep breath, as if to fortify himself. `Otherwise it could be years, Kath.'

Or never. If there's to be war...

Willym slid to the floor and knelt by the bed, now kissing the foot he held. `Should I go away, Kath?'

Kathyn shook his head minutely against the pillow. It hurt to move more.

Willym's voice was small, almost childlike. `Should I throw myself into the harbour? If you told me to, I would.'

`No.'

Willym drew another long, unsteady breath. `I wish I felt bad enough to leave thee. Or, no, I wish I loved thee less, so I would be able to. But I could not stay away, not even for thine own sake. As bad as I feel, and am. That's the difference between us, isn't it, love? It always was that way. I love thee too dearly to let thee go, even if I should kill thee. Thou'rt all that's good in me, but almost all that's bad, as well. And I know thou did not mean it so, but so it is. And God help me, I can't regret it. Not though all our nights should be like the last one. I'm mad for you, Kath. And madmen never made easy lovers.'

He rubbed his cheek against Kathyn's leg, and Kathyn shivered from the rasp of the short fine bristles he had not yet shaved off. `Can't even stop touching you, though I know it hurts you. I wish to God it were not so.'

`I don't.' Kathyn's reply was hardly audible, a rustle of dry leaves through cracked lips.

But Willym heard, and looked up. His eyes now held the beginnings of a wounded hope that as yet scarcely dared own itself. `Will you hate me forever, love?'

`I can't even hate you now.'

Willym bent over the bed and soundlessly pressed his face against Kathyn's white foot, until it was glazed all over with tears, like the foot of a China shepherdess.

`I wish I had words for you, my love. For what a miracle you are. But I'm too stupid. You know so much--more of the world than me, I'll wager, though I've sailed it over and you've hardly left this room. You have so much in that gorgeous head and that precious heart. But for me it was always just you. And her.'

And her. Always her. And how should a boy win the heart of a sailor from the sea?

`Everything I learnt as a child, I learnt not for love of learning but to make thee happy. Every voyage I sailed, I sailed to make thee rich. But we are not rich, and you are not happy.'

Willym moved up the bed, carefully sliding an arm around Kathyn's back to help him sit higher. He touched Kathyn's belly, where he by force had planted his seed, and Kathyn felt a sob building in his throat. But Willym calmed him with a steadying hand on his throat, looking him direct in the eyes. His face was sombre, beautiful, dauntless, resolute and to Kathyn as loving, as lovely, as lovable as ever. And whatever else betide, this Kathyn knew: not for an instant since he first saw that face had he stopped loving it.

Away over the town seabirds were calling, their cries harsh and plaintive, yet they did not shiver Kathyn's blood as they once would have. He was past minding such little things.

`I know ye hate the sea', Willym said. `But, if it were just one trip, and you knew at the end of it we could be happy forever, together and never parted, would you do it?'

Kathyn looked at his brother for a long time. At the end of it his answer came, soft as a whisper, but rough, as if dredged up from the seabed of his soul.

`Of course I would.'

Willym gave him a gentle, closed-mouth kiss, then picked him up very carefully and set him down on the floor amid the strewn tangle of things he'd pulled out of the wardrobe and chest of drawers.

`You take your time love. But I want them all put away, and properly. Can't have me house bein messy.'

So, the baby wasn't going to tidy up after his tantrum. Mummy had to do it. Willym's eyes were sorrowful but certain. It was an old song, one Kathyn knew all too well. Willym was a man and Kathyn was his wife, and that meant he didn't apologise and he didn't clean up messes, not even when he had made them. Some things were important, and this was how it had to be, the way it had started, the only way it could ever be between them. Kathyn had been a fool to imagine otherwise.

Willym sat behind him to support him, lifting him or just his arms when he needed the help. But it was Kathyn who actually had to pick them up and put them in their proper place.

Willym had to prop him up to use the chamberpot, too. When he urinated he felt a rib of pain along his perineum, the cracking of some inner buttress--for some reason what came to his mind were the bared, fragile bones of a plucked chicken; the wishbone, before it was pulled apart. He finished making water and the pain stopped.

Afterwards Willym carried Kathyn back to the bed and gently—so gently Kathyn could hardly believe it was the same boy who'd been bashing him about last night—sponged him clean with a wet cloth, methodically taking his time, dropping kisses every time Kathyn hissed and everywhere it stung.

Then he got the special salve Kathyn used mainly for chapped lips, but which could be used for almost anything, and worked it delicately into Kathyn's cunt, starting from the outside and swirling in, pausing when Kathyn sobbed, but not for ever, dabbing at the blood with a piece of rag, continuing round and in, until he was knuckle-deep in his swollen passage, smoothing the ointment into the torn walls. Kathyn had to bite the pillow then, and by the time Willym was done it was sodden with tears.

Willym took the ivory plug off the bedside table and considered it. Kathyn waited in dull, exhausted dread.

But in the end he shook his head. `Once you're all better down there. Once your wee thing has healed. But then you'll wear it all the time, except when I'm fucking you.'

Kathyn clenched his arse involuntarily at the word `fucking', making a mewl of fright.

`Don't worry, sweet. There won't be none of that till—till you're ready, and you say so.'

Though there was nothing in the world Kathyn wanted less just then than sex, Willym had not even finished speaking before Kathyn was reaching for his crotch. Because he knew this coddling was too sweet to last long, and at least if he started it, it was someway under his control, whereas if Willym had to force it again he would be angry, and Kathyn knew now (had always known, but spoilt bitch he was he had forgotten) how terrible Willym could be when he was truly angry.

But Willym pushed his hand away. `No, Kath, you don't have to. It's all right.'

`'I want to, Willye. I need to. Please let me.' And he found as he said it that it was true. This was the first and last thing between them, the beginning and end of their relationship, and it had to be made right; it couldn't stay a tainted thing of punishment and fear as it had become for the first time (in a long time) last night. Kathyn had to unlearn his terror of Willym's prick as swiftly as he could, for Willym's sake as much as his own. Otherwise, if the fear was left to fester, Kathyn could see all too easily how the bed would never again hold anything but horror for him. And then, since Willym, despite his newfound respect for Kathyn's refusal, could not be expected to stay perpetually celibate, it would have to be rape every time. It would ruin them. So he groped toward the terrible, wonderful thing in Willym's trousers, though every particle of his being was shrinking away.

Willym considered him, his face uncharacteristically pensive, as it had been all morning. The calm after the storm. This time he did not push Kathyn away. `All right. What do you want, your thighs? Or I can fuck yer mouth? Or just toss off on yer face?'

`Just--my hand...'

`All right.'

Willym sat on the edge of the mattress, staring out the window as Kathyn slowly stroked him off, arm so weak it trembled with the effort. His thumb grazed idly over Kathyn's hip, unconsciously inflaming the deep bruises that were imprinted there.

`I can't say I'm sorry for the belt. And I can't promise I'll never use it again. The best I can say is I hope I won't have to. But I will never ever, ever do that against your will again. That I do promise. I swear it, love. I'll cut me own dick off before I do. But you will carry this child. And the rest of my children, as many as—as we want. It had to happen love. Sooner or later. Surely you must see that. I—'

His breath hitched as he came in a long clear spurt that forked like a dowsing rod and left twin dewy trails in the carpet, a path divergent at the source.

But there had only ever been one path for Kathyn, his doom as set as if written in a witch's book. Ever since this bright-eyed boy came in through the door with the wild North wind at his back.

Willym shifted on the bed to straddle Kathyn's waist. He twined his fingers through Kathyn's, cupping his hand around his cock as he oozed out the final spurts onto his chest.

His gaze was anguished but earnest. `Just wear the plug and—and have my babies, and drink my piss and if I want ye in kirk I'll have ye in kirk—have ye on the dammed altar if I want, and if I want to walk ye down the street collared and nekkid I'll do that and you'll take it all and kneel for me and thank me, like the sweet dearling thou art, like the perfect big brother God made thee to be for me, and then I won't have to hit you.'

Kathyn looked at his brother tiredly, trying to think of how he could explain to him what was wrong with what he'd just said, that this wasn't how it worked, or at least, wasn't how it was supposed to. He tried to imagine Willym understanding and failed utterly. Why do you think you can treat me this way—like a thing you own?

`Because you're mine', he would say, unmalicious but uncomprehending, seeing nothing beyond the claim and the right it bestowed. Knowing nothing but what he'd known as a six-month's child, what Kathyn had taught him every day of his life—that he was Kathyn's and Kathyn was his. He would follow Kathyn to the worlds' end if he left. And who did Kathyn have to blame for that, if blame it deserved? It wasn't the three years away that had made him like this. It was all the years that came before.

And where could Kathyn go, what could Willym do, that would make Kathyn stop wanting him? To leave him would be to leave his life—the only one he'd ever desired. In the end it came down to a choice between two needs and two fears: to be with Willye, or to be safe. The fear of the sea, and of never seeing his brother again.

He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth...

In the end, it was never a choice.

 

Kathyn walked carefully down the stairs, settling both feet on each step before moving to the next one. Willym was out, down at the docks, preparing their new life. He might not be back for the rest of the day.

The house looked alien to Kathyn's exhausted eyes, but exactly in what way he couldn't identify. It was as if someone had come in the night and replaced every ornament and piece of furniture with a different, but identical object. Or maybe it was just that he knew it was no longer his home.

When he opened the door into the parlour, something sleek and dark flashed between his legs and across the carpet toward the aquarium, which he saw was open, leaning against the wall. He hadn't closed it after the last feeding, or maybe it got knocked off in the fight with Willym. It must have been open all night.

His rush forward turned into a hobble, so he hobbled as fast as he could over to the tank, stumbling around and over fallen furniture and smashed ornaments. The same dark sleek shape splashed out of the water as he approached.

It was Mortimer.

The rat twitched its head toward Kathyn in time for him to see the merdle's webbed tail disappearing between its slim pointed chops. He never even gave the poor thing a name.

He turned around and looked bleakly over the wreckage of the parlour. Probably Willym would make him clean that up as well. He was too tired to cry.

He limped into the kitchen. He was so weak. He'd have to lie down after this, and he knew he wouldn't rise again for a long time.

But there was one thing he had to do. One thing before anything else.

He walked over the sink. For a while he simply stood in front of it, swaying slightly on his feet. Every part of him throbbed, and his hole was already stinging again. But he had to do this.

He reached into the pocket inside his apron and took out the little unlabelled bottle of medicine. He held it up to the dusty light that slanted through the kitchen window, which was long and narrow, like the opening in a letterbox.

Then he pulled the stopper out and upended it over the sink and watched the colourless, odourless, nameless liquid inside swill around the drain and disappear.

Above the slit of window was a calendar he had got from the Chapel Bookroom, which had a psalm instead of a picture on each page. It was the one he had been memorising, the psalm which began They that go down to the sea in ships and ended then are they glad because they are at rest; and so He bringeth them unto the haven where they would be. It called to mind a passage he had read in his meditationer, which said that safety was in the captain, not the ship. That comfort was in the destination, not the voyage; in the harbour and not the ocean. That home was the sailor, and not the sea.