SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Sixty-Four
The journey lasted far longer than Guccia planned. In each place we stopped, the lycan there would not have us. Our bid to find shelter in the non-Christian world proved fruitless. Alexandria, Tripoli, and Tangier wanted nothing to do with a pair of nameless Europeans, and packs threatened us at each port. It was not just that we were strangers—we kept the truth of our identities from them, and sensing our deception, they wouldn’t tolerate us doing more than to anchor for supplies.
The two lycan who managed the ship, Bastiano and Callimus, pushed for us to leave the Mediterranean altogether and try the coastal cities of West Africa. But Guccia ordered them north.
We came across lycan packs in Cadiz and Lisbon, but trying to satisfy their chilly receptions no longer interested Guccia. Instead, human sailors who had returned from Caribbean colonies captured her attention. I translated stories about the hardships of crossing the Atlantic and the many challenges of trading in the new world. But all Guccia heard in my translation were descriptions of opportunity. It took a month to cross, but we realized we’d found a proper home after arriving in America.
New York had erected churches of various creeds, and the population modeled itself as Christians, but it was the most secular place we had ever known. There was even a synagogue, for these people had uniquely welcomed Jews and their wealth into its fold. The English colony, taken from the Dutch, kept its original promise of freedom of religion. But though everyone claimed to be religious, few cared deeply about it. Instead, they cared about their survival in this wild new place.
New York was not Venice. Its architecture was based on utility rather than beauty. And all of it seemed built only a short while before we’d arrived. More so, little of the neighborhoods appeared better than commonplace. It was a foundling of a city that seemed to be on the cusp of either flourishing or failing altogether. And Guccia found that indecisive energy to be intoxicating.
Like Venice, New York was an important trading post, with ships coming and going each day, and this distinction spoke to Guccia’s sensibilities. This was a place where she felt we could thrive if we took the chance. And when she saw large homes being built on State Street, she set upon a plan to make New York her new world.
Guccia struggled with the language, so much unlike her native tongue. But she craved to understand its rhythms and relied upon me to tutor her. I’d learned enough grammar to communicate years earlier in Gabrielle’s study, though many gave me a queer look when the prose of Shakespeare crossed my lips. But just as with the languages of Rome and Venice, the modern English dialect all around me expanded my vocabulary like wildfire.
In weeks, I’d learned enough to conduct proper business. At my insistence, all of us, including Bastiano and Callimus, adopted the family name of Van Duren. We needed to facilitate the sale of Guccia’s ship to Dutch traders. More importantly, we needed to open bank accounts with names unknown to the English bankers and unsuspected of fraudulence. I convinced Guccia that, donned in our satin, the larger our family was in numbers, the greater chance we’d have to achieve the transformation among these people.
And my instinct proved correct. When I registered the name with His Majesty’s courthouse, I spoke the language well enough that, in my gentleman’s wig and fine clothes, the recorder didn’t question my application at all.
And more intriguing, nearly a year passed before we came across a single other lycan.
New York City, 1752
Guccia was the first to sense him, though her eyes struggled to find him.
I saw the plain riffraff staring at us, but I couldn’t believe this ordinary man for whom our eyes searched. On Bloomingdale Road near Ann Street, men and women of every variety passed through the square during mid-day, attracted by the cultivated beauty of City Hall Park. Upstanding citizens strolled while others moved through with a determined rush to meet the day’s needs. But neither of us had seen a lycan in such poverty.
Even as outcasts, Maximilien and Gabrielle had lived in splendid finery. And those lycan I’d met since being abducted from the Forteresse du Roussade had lived in nothing but obscene wealth. Even in New York, a child still surrounded by wilderness, our comfort since setting up residence here couldn’t be questioned.
Good morning, I said telepathically.
To this, the man gave a muted nod.
I was stunned by the response because of the man’s condition. Though he appeared to be my age, he was filthy: his face was unwashed, and dirt was under his fingernails. He was a laborer, and his worn clothes resembled little more than a beggar’s outfit. Perhaps he was some renegade, alone without a pack to support him? It made no sense to me, but I was sure he’d heard me.
I bid Guccia to stay behind and stepped forward to approach the man.
“Good morning, sir. My name is Rudolf Van Duren. That is my sister, Lotte,” I said, nodding back at Guccia.
The man’s eyes tightened with suspicion, and he shook his head.
Forgive me, I said silently. Van Duren is my American name. My birth name is Esprit Lenoir of the House Roussade, and I mean you no harm.
I took the chance to reveal myself, but stopped at offering Guccia’s name. The man seemed taken by my words, as if he didn’t quite understand them.
“Willem Hilst,” he answered with a crisp voice that bore only the slightest Dutch accent. “From where do you come?”
“We arrived last year from Europe. Our elders hail from several places, but I’m from the region of Burgundy in France, and Lotte and our brothers come from the Kingdom of Venice. We’ve come to start a new family in New York. From where to you come?”
At first, Hilst seemed unsure of his answer.
“From here,” he said.
“Where do you live?”
He nodded down Ann Street toward the Hudson River.
Are there others like us here? May we meet your family? We’d be grateful to know you, I promised.
For the first time, I realized the man was anxious. He’d hidden the emotion at first, but it slipped out now. He feared us, suspicious of our tailored clothes with their fine, pressed fabrics.
“You have my word,” I said, lowering my head again. “We only wish to know you.”
From off up the path, a policeman approached. Several patrolled the City Hall Park grounds to keep beggars out, and my exchange had caught one’s attention.
As if sensing my notice, Hilst approached Guccia, nodding his acknowledgment, and led us to Vesey.
It’s all right, I said to her, taking Guccia’s hand in my arm to follow.
Hilst moved slowly to make sure we kept pace, looking back several times to see that we still followed him. The pavement ended near Greenwich, and Guccia gave pause. The women of our class were forbidden from walking on dirt pavement, even on the arm of a gentleman. (Especially on the arm of a gentleman!) But this was a pointless boundary. None of our human peers would be caught dead this far from State Street to notice her misstep, and I pulled her along with me.
Hilst led us to a burgundy building of roughly sawn timber and stepped inside, holding the door open.
What’s this? The question came silently in Dutch from one of two men seated at a work table.
They are one of them, Hilst answered, then turned his gaze on me.
The other man stood up with alarm. I sensed deep agitation at our presence.
Good afternoon, friend, I said to make sure he knew I, too, was lycan. “We mean you no harm or disrespect. I go by the name Rudolf Van Duren, and this is my sister, Lotte. They are not our given names, but we are hiding in the city from enemies back home. It would be better for all of us if you allowed us to keep that privacy. We only wanted to meet your family and assure you our intentions are harmless.”
The man didn’t respond. He was robust—tall with a short beard and brown eyes under soft hair of the same color. And he appeared to be in his early thirties, though I couldn’t guess his actual age. He looked older than Maximilien ever did.
I felt menace from his mind for a moment, and my wolf took notice. But he soon receded with a sigh and ambled to approach me.
“Henry Beaufort,” he said, extending his hand to me. “Hendrik Von Beaufort to my parents, but just Beaufort here now that I’m alone. It’s better for business. The English are strange about Anglifying names, and I find giving into their ways solves needless problems.”
The man spoke perfect British English without the slightest trace of a Dutch or American accent. Even after a year in this land, people still asked me about the sharpened consonants of my French tongue, which now and then arose as I spoke. But Beaufort sounded like he grew up in Kensington, which I presumed was impossible.
“It helps me secure better work,” Beaufort said, sensing my confusion. “The well-off English families are more comfortable hiring one of their own. And those who wish they were expatriates take comfort in the appearance of conforming to their rulers’ ideals.”
“What line of work?” Guccia asked.
“Exporting,” he answered. “Lumber and furs, mainly, but other items when they come my way.”
And you are the elder here?
I am, he replied to her with a nod.
Guccia stepped forward, as if to get a better look at him.
“Are there no other lycan in New York?”
Beaufort’s eyes tensed as if he didn’t understand her. It was the word—he’d never heard the word lycan.
That’s what we are called, she answered him silently, we who can speak with our thoughts.
Beaufort exhaled as if the word changed something tremendous for him.
“There were, once, when I was a boy. They came to me in a dream—two women and a man. Dark-skinned, just like the Cayuga. But these were from some other tribe. They argued over whether to allow me to join them. The man insisted they would not. He thought my filthy people were a plague.
“After the dream, I could sense them. They lived across the river, and I could call to them with my mind. I begged them to tell me more, to allow me to come to them, but their answer was always no. And in time, they left altogether.”
Beaufort sighed as if the memory brought him great anguish, though he held his composure. He had grown up alone with no one to explain what he was or give him a purpose.
“Then I found Willem as those people had found me.”
“In a dream,” Hilst said in agreement.
“Then I found Jacob, and we’ve lived here together as brothers since.”
Guccia stared with wonder, having realized what I hadn’t.
“You are unchanged,” she said, touching Beaufort’s face with her gloved hand.
And then I understood it all. The three lycan men she stared at were precisely as old as they appeared. Beaufort was in his thirties, just as the fine lines on his face declared. Having come to America without lycan from home and shunned by the natives whose presence awakened his lycan nature, no one had ever released his wolf. He hadn’t the slightest clue about the full extent of our nature. He’d grown up thinking himself mad until the day another lycan came of age. The three men had gravitated to each other purely out of their need for kindship.
“Then we shall all be friends,” Guccia smiled.