Chapter 2 – Chapter 2

Two years hence, Arnaud was to congratulate himself for keeping Henri with him—by that time having convinced himself that neither an old gypsy crone nor his own slight superstition had a jot to do with his decision. While Arnaud lolled on the veranda of the Gentlemen's Club in Dakar, Henri had found and brought back an amazingly large cache of uncut rough diamonds.

Arnaud's own efforts, however, had not been totally absent. For one, he had managed to woo, bed, and acquire another young man, by the name of Bertie, who had been left adrift at the Gentleman's Club by an inconsiderate titled British ne'er-do-well, who had, through no effort of his own, outlived his hardnosed father and been begged to return to the side of his indulgent mother in a cold castle near the Scottish border.

Arnaud took Bertie for a young man abandoned, innocent, and vulnerable, which is the way Arnaud liked to take young men. In this particular case, it was also just how Bertie wanted to be taken.

When Bertie's titled momma's boy was saying his good-byes and his somewhat shallow regrets to Bertie at the coach entrance of the club, Bertie made sure all saw the plight he was in by morosely climbing the steps, entering the bar, and collapsing at a table in suppressed sobs.

Although Arnaud wasn't the only one who was quite willing to give Bertie succor, he was the first one to the table. He sat down by the young man and put a reassuring palm on his shoulder. "There, there, are you all right, young man? Have you lost someone? Nothing is worth those tears on such a handsome face. Anything I can do to help? May I stand you a drink at least?"

"You're too kind, Monsieur," Bertie responded in a weak little voice. He placed a hand on Arnaud's knee. "Yes, if you wouldn't mind. Maybe a small sherry—or a beer. So that I can think about what is to become of me."

Arnaud signaled to the bartender, who didn't need to be told what Bertie liked to drink. He took only the best Scotch, and he took it neat.

Arnaud was running his fingers through the thick, blond curls of Bertie's head. He'd wanted to do this for weeks, ever since the young man and his self-possessed sponsor had arrived.

"My . . . friend has been called home—back to England. He is in grief over his father's death. And when he was in that condition, I couldn't possibly tell him that my own funds haven't arrived as scheduled. Oh, I don't know what I'm to do."

"Perhaps I can be of assistance," Arnaud murmured. "You could stay in my rooms if you wish . . . just until your funds arrive, of course."

"Oh, Monsieur, I couldn't possibly―"

"Well, perhaps we can talk to the hotel management and see if there are other possibilities—extension of credit, perhaps," Arnaud said as he started to rise from the table, but Bertie clutched at the older man as if in desperation.

"Oh, Monsieur. I feel so faint. Perhaps we could just sit here for a while more."

"If you feel faint, why don't you come to my room just for a lie down?"

"Well, perhaps."

Once in the room, Arnaud helped Bertie to his bed and stretched him down on his back.

"Air. I could use some more air," Bertie murmured in a breathy voice.

"It's these tight clothes. Here, let me help you." Arnaud unbuttoned Bertie's shirt and exposed a fine young chest. He also loosened Bertie's belt.

"Oh, you are so kind, Monsieur. My heart is still palpitating so. Here lay your hand on my breast, you can feel it beating madly. This is such a nice room. Is this the only bed?"

The rest unfolded as it naturally would, both Arnaud and Bertie willing it to move in that direction, and Bertie proved to be an expert at the fuck—to Arnaud's great delight, although Arnaud hadn't been fooled for long concerning the nature of Bertie's "friendship" with the departed Englishman.

Bertie cried out best in passion when Arnaud laid him sideways on the bed, on his back, and spread the young man's legs and crouched over Bertie's torso with his own and pumped his ass hard and deep at the side angle. And they tried several positions before they arrived at this "favorite."

Now when Henri returned on his brief visits from the diamond fields, he was made to sleep on the floor of Arnaud's room, as there was room in the bed only for Arnaud and Bertie. Still, if Arnaud was feeling especially affectionate, after he'd fucked Bertie to sleep, he'd slip out of bed and pull Henri up on all fours on the oval rug in the center of the room and take him like a dog.

All of this changed when Henri brought his first handful of large, rough diamonds back to Dakar. Then Arnaud booked a separate room for Bertie—and when Henri was in town, he slept with Arnaud and was attended to when Arnaud returned from Bertie's room.

When Henri had collected a small fortune in diamonds, the three of them booked for a return sail to France. Bertie and Henri registered as Arnaud's two sons—for Arnaud's convenience.

Arnaud hadn't been a complete lump while Henri was gathering him a fortune in the diamond fields. He'd spoken enough with the gentlemen at the club—many of them diamond merchants or assessors—to have picked up some knowledge of the diamond trade. He'd learned at least enough to bluff his way in the diamond trade as he—and, indeed, his whole family back through generations—had done in all of the trades and skills they had dabbled in.

Thus fortified, Henri was enlisted to sew the raw diamonds he had collected in the seams of Arnaud's great coat and decided that, along with Henri, who served him, and Bertie, with whom he was now totally sexually besotted, Arnaud would rejoin his family and set up a diamond merchant operation in Paris.

* * * *

"But surely you've seen them, Monsieur . . . with the sheik who came onto the ship in Morocco . . . and his son."

"Nothing of the sort, Henri. Stop speaking of Bertie this way this very instant. You've had nothing good to say about him from the start. You're jealous, that's all. Stop it this instant and go fetch my tea as I asked."

Not only had Henri seen Bertie with the two Arab princes, but he stopped along the deck en route to the kitchen and looked into the porthole of the sheik's cabin now, and he saw them at it still. The sheik's son was reclining on the fainting couch and Bertie's head and shoulders were invisible under that robe-like tunic the Arab was wearing and a globular orb could quite clearly be seen between the young prince's legs were his crotch was, bobbing up and down. The expression on the young Arab's face left no doubt what Bertie was doing under there. And there was even less doubt what the old sheik himself was doing. His pelvis was presented at Bertie's bare behind and he was holding both of Bertie's hips and was thrusting at Bertie with his midsection.

But no matter how often Henri tried to tell Arnaud that Bertie was not being loyal to him, Arnaud just was not willing to listen to that.

Nor did he claim to believe it once they were at the Van Briand chateau outside Paris and Henri espied Arnaud's older brother pumping his meaty pelvis in and out between Bertie's spread legs at the edge of the brother's bed one afternoon while Arnaud was in Antwerp.

That Arnaud was getting wise to this himself, though, could have had something to do with his sudden decision that he wanted to be a diamond merchant in the Americas—in New York City, he hoped—rather than in Paris after a mere four weeks of trying to ply his trade in France.

There were other contributing factors, of course. Arnaud had hoped to enjoy some backing from his family, but as soon as he had stepped foot in France, they had all tried to borrow money from him. The Van Briands hadn't been completely honest—or clever enough in this generation, for that matter—in their own business and financial dealings. And the French had reached the end of their tolerance of these erstwhile nobles.

And beyond that, Arnaud had found the diamond traders of France, Belgium, and Holland to be far more knowledgeable than he had hoped.

"I can get three times that amount for this stone in New York," he had told one merchant in Bruges, having had to search that far afield in short order as he quickly exhausted those who would deal with him.

"No doubt you can," the man had said dryly. "The Americans aren't the brightest stars in the sky concerning the diamond trade yet."

It had been meant as an insult, of course, but Arnaud saw opportunities wherever there was a glimmer of them, and he started planning his move, with his two "sons," to America. Arnaud could not bring himself to part with Bertie and the possibility that Henri was to be his lucky charm someday just could not be shaken out of the back of his mind.

There was another factor that impelled Arnaud to move on from France, but he was so enthralled with Bertie that he hadn't seen the real danger of that factor until he was almost run down on his horse in the Cherbourg forest and murdered by a man he recognized as a relative of Henri's but, too late, saw the hate and murder in the man's eyes.

It had been twenty-three years since Arnaud had hurriedly left France for Central Africa three steps ahead of Henri's father and the suddenly combined ire of the families of the many young men Arnaud had debauched in his early sexual career. And although Arnaud considered himself a new man when he returned to France after an absence of two decades, the young men he had debauched—some mostly because he had then cast them off and deserted them—had not left France or escaped the gossip about what they had let another man do to them.

Thus, there were families and no-longer-young men aplenty ready and willing to take their long-festering revenge on Arnaud Van Briand.

Four weeks after arriving in France, Arnaud and his two "sons" were on the move again, booked on the maiden voyage of the passenger liner "of the century," which departed from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, and would pick up passengers later that evening in Cherbourg, France, and push off ultimately for New York from Queenstown, Ireland, on the afternoon of the 11th.

At 10:00 p.m. on the 10th, after a hectic two hours of boarding at Cherbourg and the bands-playing, confetti-flying steam away of the new passenger ship from the pier at Cherbourg, Arnaud called Henri to him.

"Bertie is in the bar at the lounge, Henri. Kindly fetch him to my side, please."

"Bertie is not in the lounge, Monsieur," Henri patiently replied.

"I left him there myself."

"Bertie departed right after you left. He went with one of the ship's officers to the crew's quarters. I am quite sure that the ship's officer is already fucking Bertie right now—and that Bertie is quite pleased that he is doing it."

"Henri!"

"I'm sorry, Monsieur. I can't take watching you being taken for a fool anymore. You must wake up to the fact that Bertie opens his legs for anyone who he fancies or who can provide him advantage."

Enraged, Arnaud unbuckled his belt and drew it out of his trousers and began beating Henri with it. Henri sank to the floor under the blows and cried out but did nothing to try to stay the hand of the man who had been his master from childhood. In the process Arnaud's trousers fell off his legs and his rage turned into lust and he set upon Henri and fucked him hard and roughly on the floor of the slightly pitching ship.

Finished, Arnaud fell back on one of the ship's bunks and stared expectantly at the door of the cabin as he panted until his breathing became regular and, at length, he slept.

Henri dragged himself up from the floor, moaning, and collapsed on the bunk opposite to Arnaud's and kept vigil on Arnaud through the night. He didn't bother to look at the cabin door, as he knew it wouldn't open—or, if it did, Bertie would be full of spice and unapologetic. Henri also knew that whether or not Arnaud flew into a rage over this, it would be Henri, not Bertie, who would get the beating.

Now, twenty-two years after Arnaud had first debauched him, Henri was ready to accept that nothing would change here. And suddenly he had no desire to go to America whatsoever. In the wee hours of the morning, as the ship docked in Queenstown for its short, last stop in the old world before sailing to the new world, Henri stood, took up his great coat and bag, and left the cabin.

When Arnaud awoke, he was alone in the cabin. He staggered up and went in search of his "sons." Bertie wasn't hard to find. He was breakfasting at the captain's table and was receiving close, jolly attention from more than one of the ship's officers, who had their arms around Bertie's shoulder and hands on his crotch. Bertie waved jauntily at Arnaud when their eyes met, but his eyes immediately slipped off to devour those of yet another hearty blond in pure whites who had a hand possessively on Bertie's thigh.

Arnaud rushed back to the cabin to see if there was any sort of clue where Henri might have gone. Seeing Henri's bag and great coat gone, it dawned on Arnaud that Henri must have left the ship.

"Well, all right, you ungrateful cur," Arnaud muttered to the four walls of the cabin. "After all of these years, you desert me. Just see if I care."

But then he took another look at the two great coats hanging on the hook on the wall, and his eyes opened wide in fear and consternation. There was Bertie's flamboyant one and there . . . there was the one slightly too small for Arnaud.

Henri had taken his great coat by mistake. Or was it a mistake at all? All of those raw diamonds sewn into the seams of Arnaud's great coat—by Henri himself. What were the chances that Henri had taken the wrong coat?

Arnaud's mind was screaming, "Thief!" His fortune was on the run.

Instinctively, without a thought to any consequences, Arnaud ran out of the cabin, along the deck, and to the gangplank leading down to the Queenstown dock. Scrabbling down the gangway, he ran into the streets of Queenstown and started searching high and low through the pubs and hotel lobbies near the docks for Henri—and, more pointedly for his great coat.

At a bit beyond 2:00 in the afternoon, Arnaud found Henri in a pub, drinking his third beer and trying to stitch his circumstances back together again.

"Henri!" Arnaud cried out accusingly.

"Monsieur Arnaud," Henri said in surprise, clutching his coat about him. "Why have you sought me out? You have said I am nothing but bad luck and a nuisance for you. You have your Bertie and your new life in America. You must get back to the docks. Your ship will―"

"My coat. You took my coat, thief," Arnaud cried out. "The diamonds. You took the diamonds!"

"Your coat? This is my . . . oh, Monsieur, you are right this is your coat. In my haste . . . I did not know."

Henri's last statement came in a totally silent drinking room that, until Arnaud had cried out the word "diamonds," had been filled with boisterous talk and raucous laughter.

All eyes were turned to Arnaud and Henri, the interest of all was piqued, lips were wetted.

And above all, floating out over the sounds of the street outside, was the great blast of the horn as the greatest passenger ship in the world, the Titanic, cleared the Queenstown harbor for its momentous maiden—and last—voyage to New York.

Elsewhere in the world there was an old gypsy woman who stopped suddenly in the process of threading her needle, inclined her head at the knowledge that her fortune for Arnaud Van Briand had finely come to fruition, and then cackled a happy laugh and returned to her sewing.