than for a chatron, it would be paid in advance, no matter how he turned out.
Mama had followed them down to the field and she stood leaning on the fence, taking no part in the conversation. It was not a woman’s place, after all, to enlighten her son to the facts of life. Still, she was near enough to hear him when he cried:
“Trained for a Hunk, Papa? A Hunk?”
“Where did you learn that word?” said Mama, spinning around and glaring at him. “We do not talk filth in this family….”
“Shh, shh,” said Darbos, tears in the corners of his eyes. “The word is the right word, Madam. When we are driven to this dirty end, let us not quibble about calling it what it is.”
At which point Mama grew very angry and went swiftly away toward the house. Papa followed her a little way, and Mouche heard him saying, “Oh, I know he’s only a boy, Eline, but I’ve grown fond of him….”
Mouche had seen Hunks, of course—who had not?— riding through the marketplace, their faces barely veiled behind gauzy stuff, their clothing all aglitter with gold lace and gems, their hats full of plumes, the swords they fenced with sparkling like rippled water. Even through the veils one could see their hair was curled and flowing upon their shoulders, not bound back as a common man would need it to be, out of the way of the work. Their shirts were open, too, and in the gap their skin glowed and their muscles throbbed. Hunks did not work. They smiled, they dimpled, they complimented, they dueled and rode and wrestled, they talked of wonderful things that ordinary people knew little or nothing of. Poetry. And theater. And wine.
Mouche wondered if they talked of the sea, which is what Mouche talked of, to himself when there was no one else by to speak to, or to Papa, when Papa was in the mood. Not to Mama. Mama did not understand such things, even though it was she who had given him the book of sea stories, and she who had told him about going to Gilesmarsh when she was a girl, and how the shore had looked and smelled, and how the little boats came in full of the fishes that swam there, and how the ships sailed out and away into wonderful places. The seamen didn’t even wear veils, except in port. Mama didn’t mention that, but the book did. Of course, out at sea, there were no women to be tempted and corrupted by the sight of wanton hairs sprouting on a male face, so veils weren’t really needed.
Mouche’s dream of going to sea when he was old enough was not pure foolishness. The books were full of stories about boys who ran away to sea and ships that took them, sometimes with no apprenticeship fee. Poor as Mouche’s family was, he knew it would have to be without a fee. He would have to have something else to recommend him, like knowing things about ropes and nets and repairs and suchlike. He asked his teacher if he could get Mouche a book about all that—which he did, and followed it with others when Mouche was through with the first one. Mouche practiced knots in his bed at night, and learned all the words for the parts of the ship and the pieces of the rigging and how it all worked. “Seaman Mouche,” he said to himself on the edge of sleep. “Captain Mouche.” And he dreamed.
But now it seemed he was not to go to sea. Not even without a fee. He was to be a Hunk. Hunks did not go to sea, did not pull at nets, did not look out to far horizons and distant ports, did not smell of fish. They smelled of perfume. They pranced like ponies. And they fucked, of course. Everyone knew that. That’s what they were for. Though they did not father, they fucked.
Some very wealthy women were known to have several of them. When a woman accepted a dowry from some man she did not know—might never have seen, might grow to detest—thereby making him the sole begetter of her future children, it was her right to include in the contract a provision that after five or seven or ten years, whether she had any daughters or not, she was to have at least one Hunk. This was common knowledge. It was also common knowledge that many of