“The chevalier de Clermont didn’t tell me he had a father,” Marcus said, daring to reveal his ignorance.
“The chevalier de Clermont?” Gallowglass tipped his head back and roared with laughter. “Christ’s bones, boy. He’s your maker! I understand your reluctance to call him Papa—Matthew is as paternal as a porcupine in full needle—but you might at least call him by his first name.”
Marcus considered it but found it impossible to view the austere, mysterious Frenchman as anything but the chevalier de Clermont.
“Give it time,” Gallowglass said, patting Marcus on the shoulder. “We’ve got weeks to share stories about your dear dad. By the time we arrive in France, you’ll have far more colorful names for him than Matthew. More fitting, too.”
Perhaps the journey would not be as tedious as Marcus had feared. He felt the slender, familiar outlines of Common Sense in his coat pocket. Between Thomas Paine and Gallowglass, Marcus could spend the entire voyage reading and figuring out what it was going to take to survive as a vampire.
“I saw—felt—some of the chevalier’s history.” Marcus wasn’t sure whether this was something he should discuss.
“Bloodlore is tricky. It’s no replacement for a proper story.” Gallowglass ran a gloved finger under his nose, which had gone watery in the rising wind.
This was another unfamiliar word—like “wearh” and “maker.” Marcus’s curiosity must have shown.
“Bloodlore is the knowledge that’s in the bones and blood of every creature. It’s one of the things we crave as wearhs,” Gallowglass explained.
Marcus had felt that hunger to know—along with the urge to hunt, to drink blood, and to fight. It was comforting to realize that his lively curiosity—a curse, his father Obadiah had called it—was now a normal, acceptable part of who he was.
“Didn’t Matthew explain how the world really works and what you were about to become before he made you?” Gallowglass looked concerned.
“He might have. I’m not sure,” Marcus confessed. “I had a fever—a bad one. I don’t remember much. The chevalier told me I would be able to go to university, and study medicine.”
Gallowglass swore.
“I have some questions,” Marcus said hesitantly.
“I imagine you do, lad,” Gallowglass said. “Fire away.”
“What’s a wearh?” Marcus asked, his voice low in case a member of the ship’s crew was nearby.
Gallowglass buried his face in his hands and groaned.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said, rising to his feet with the practiced grace of a man who had spent his life afloat. Gallowglass extended a hand to Marcus and lifted him up. “You’ve a long journey ahead of you, young Marcus. By the time we get to France, you’ll understand what a wearh is—and what you’ve taken on by becoming one.”
* * *
—
ONCE THEY WERE ON OPEN seas, Gallowglass had all the flags lowered save one that was black with a silver snake carrying its tail in its mouth. This kept most vessels at a respectful distance.
“The family crest,” Gallowglass explained, pointing up at the standard that flapped and crackled in the wind. “Granddad is more gruesome than any pirate. Not even Blackbeard wanted to be on his bad side.”
During the voyage, Gallowglass told Marcus a story about what it was to be a wearh that finally made sense of the weeks since Yorktown. At last Marcus understood the nature of not only wearhs, but witches, daemons, and humans, too. He was fairly sure, looking back over his life, that the healer at Bunker Hill had been a witch. And he knew for certain that John Russell—the man he first knew as Cole—was a wearh. As for daemons, Marcus didn’t think he knew any, although Vanderslice was the most likely prospect.
Gallowglass also impressed upon him what it was to be a de Clermont. Oddly, it seemed that becoming a blood-drinking, nearly immortal, volatile, two-legged creature was the easier task. Being a de Clermont seemed to require knowledge of a great many prickly characters and mastery of a list of rules a mile long. Based on Gallowglass’s description of the family and how it operated, it did not seem that the de Clermonts had read Common Sense. There was certainly no hint that they had embraced the new world of liberty and freedom that Paine outlined in his work. While Marcus lay in his berth, reading and rereading the worn pages of his treasured book, he had time to wonder what his new family would think of Paine’s assertion that virtue was not hereditary.
After more than a month of blockade-running, stiff winds, and rough, frigid seas, the Aréthuse arrived in the French port of Bordeaux. Gallowglass had made excellent time in the crossing, thanks to a combination of utter fearlessness, an encyclopedic mastery of the currents, and the fact that the de Clermont standard frightened off every privateer and blockade-runner in the Atlantic, as he had promised it would.
As they sailed down the Gironde, Marcus eyed the French countryside with a mixture of relief and trepidation, now knowing what awaited them on terra firma.
Marcus had never strayed much beyond the Connecticut River growing up, and though the varied origins of the Philadelphia Associators had introduced him to a world beyond the colonies, he as yet had no direct experience of it. The air in France smelled different, and the sounds that came from the shore did, too. The fields were bare, except for rows of vines held up by wooden supports that would bear the fruit for the wine wearhs drank to quench their thirst when blood was not available. The brilliant leaves that had still been on the trees in Portsmouth were nowhere visible in France in late December.
Marcus had grown accustomed to seeing nothing but canvas and water, and to being in close quarters with only Gallowglass and the crew. Bordeaux was a bustling port like Philadelphia, filled with creatures of every description—including females. Once they had docked and filled out all the paperwork that was required to unload the Aréthuse’s cargo, Gallowglass led him off the ship. His cousin’s hand was firm on his elbow. Even so, the press of warm bodies, along with the bright colors and strong scents of the port, left Marcus dazed and a trifle confused.
“Steady on,” Gallowglass said in a low murmur. “Stop and take it all in. Remember what I told you. Don’t be following wherever your nose leads, like a boy trailing after every pretty girl.”
Marcus swayed on unsteady legs, feeling the ground moving beneath him and his full stomach sliding along with it. Stefan, the Aréthuse’s plump cook, had fed him that morning while they were anchored outside the harbor, waiting for the customs men to inspect their wares. Stefan not only provided sustenance to the warmbloods in the form of hardtack and grog, but fed the wearhs from his veins, too.
“à bient?t,” Stefan said cheerily as he passed, carrying the ship’s last remaining chicken down the ramp, clucking and scolding in its wicker cage.
“Until next time, Stefan.” Gallowglass handed him a fat pouch that made a satisfying clinking sound. “For your trouble.”
“Non,” Stefan demurred, though he was already weighing the coins and calculating how much he could buy with them. “I was paid before we set sail, milord.”
“Consider it a boon, then,” Gallowglass said, “for taking care of young Monsieur Marcus.”
Marcus’s mouth gaped. He had never dreamed of being worth so much money.
“Monsieur Marcus was a gentleman. It was my pleasure to serve him.” Stefan bowed low, sending the chicken hurtling forward in his cage with an angry squawk.
Marcus bowed in return. The cook’s eyes widened. Had Stefan been a chicken, he would have squawked, too. Gallowglass hauled Marcus upright and steered him away.
“Don’t be bowing to the servants, Marcus,” Gallowglass muttered. “You are a de Clermont now. Do you want the gossips noticing your strange ways?”