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It has been more than a half-decade since James Fitzjames had last applied a false beard to his face, but he is pleased to find his facility undiminished with time. In fact, his hands do not shake as he lays on the spirit gum, as they are more likely to do than not when grasping a fork, or pouring wine.
As James tugs on a wrinkled shirt and ties a threadbare cravat above it his mind flies, involuntarily, to Francis.
How often on his voyages as a youth had he wished for a magic mirror, to see Will in the garden, Louisa in her study? To have glimpses of Rose Hill that would sustain him through storms and sicknesses?
That was nothing compared to his fevered wish to be aware of Francis now, of his every movement, of his face upon waking, of his sighs and smiles and scowls.
Is he alone? Surely, he is, otherwise James would’ve heard tell of him. Thomas Blanky would have said He’s well enough, never you worry now or Ned Little would have nodded in that serious way of his, told James We spent a day together just this Monday last. He is the same as ever, and plans to call on you within the week.
Is he surrounded by bottles? Does he drink unendingly, to forget the hardships of King William Land? Is there a woman there, some trilling young thing, only too eager to take up with the famed Captain Crozier, returned hardly victorious but alive and in dire need of the company of one who doesn’t know port from starboard? Does she resemble Sophia, enough so through the dimmed vision of inebriation for Francis to believe her to be that very woman?
But James has no magic mirror, and cannot know.
To round out the disguise, he shrugs on a coat some twenty years out of fashion, which he found in the back of a dusty shop two days prior and which gave him the very idea for this evening’s entertainment in the first place.
The middle-parting of the hair is the piece de resistance, as far as the plainly visual elements go. It always awes James, no matter the circumstance, how a mere greasing-down of his normally buoyant and glossy hair does the work of a thousand masks, transforming him totally.
Quartered as he is in the heart of the City, it does not seem likely that he can have gone six months without seeing Francis Crozier, who he knows to be living close by, renting rooms near Whitehall instead of staying, as everyone had expected him to, with the Rosses at Eliot Place.
But six months it had been since the court-martial, a comical formality that was over practically before it had begun, with James hardly having had a moment to speak to Francis away from the elder ears of the Lords of the Admiralty, let alone sit down with him, in a quiet anteroom, and propose— well. He doesn’t know what he would have proposed, had he gotten the chance, but it would have surely led to something other than this, this untenable rift.
If the next time James is to see Francis is at the ceremony, to be announced any day now, when they are to be honored by the Queen for their services to the Crown, then he fears the distance between them will have grown too great to bridge, forever.
His letters have not gone unanswered; they have merely gone unsent, for fear of not receiving a reply. They’ve piled up on his desk, sealed and useless, marked with the address James had wheedled out of a secretary at the Admiralty. Full of plaintive nonsense and sentimentality. Nothing Francis would tolerate even if he cared enough to open them.
Just as James cannot be sure a letter would receive an answer, he cannot be sure he would be received, if he called upon Francis. He cannot be sure the door would open for him, should he arrive bare-faced and ardent.
And besides, it has been far too long since he last played a joke like this. Not only will it cheer him to perform it, but more vitally it will cheer Francis to be distracted so expertly. It will puncture quite effectively the pomp of these last few months, which James is sure has worn him thin to the point of ill-temper by now.
Perhaps he’ll send a letter, at last: My dear James, I must tell you of the strange encounter I had just last night, for I think you of all people would find it amusing… the most ludicrous fellow, come to my door…
James adds dark circles underneath his eyes and shadows his temples, all atop a layer of grease that gives him a sallow, unfortunate look: not sick, but weak, pathetic. Easy to mock; in fact, practically demanding it. A pair of ugly, round spectacles perched on his nose is the last accoutrement to be added.
Still, there is yet more to do. When he looks in the mirror he merely sees— as anyone else would, if they were to gaze upon him now— James Fitzjames, famed polar explorer, bedecked in a ludicrous getup.
That can change in a moment, and does: he brings his shoulders down into a hunch, lets the corners of his mouth sag, juts his neck out and effects a birdlike, crooked posture.
The upright naval man vanishes without a trace, effaced by a feeble, prim fellow. He— that is to say, James— has disappeared wholly from his own reflection, replaced with the unfortunate Hezekiah Thorne. It’s all in the back, he remembers telling an awed Edward Charlewood, two inches lost to a stoop and I was a stranger even to you, do you see now?
As much as he’s enjoying this self-appraisal, it’s hardly proof enough. He must proceed with an objective evaluation, before bringing the performance to its final stage.
On the way he practices his walk: loping, creaking, slightly favoring his left side, for Mr. Thorne had endured a rough childhood, all workhouses and drudgery. Such was his abjection that he found salvation in his suffering, becoming a God-fearing man of great intensity.
By the time he arrives at the door of the Pincushion he knows the name of Thorne’s dead sister, the reason for his limp, the man’s fear of dogs and his childish love of simple number puzzles.
“And what can I do for you, sir?” says the fulsome Mrs. Mullings upon his entrance, and James must tamp down a grin of pride at her clear lack of recognition. To this woman he’s seen so many an evening, joked with over pie and ale, he is a stranger.
“I’ve come in just this morning on the stage,” James says. He’s chosen a broad West Country twang for Mr. Thorne, derived fairly directly from a messmate of his on the Excellent with a penchant for piety in direct disproportion to his poor grooming. “My first time in the City, ma’am, and it is not the bastion of depravity I have been led to believe it is, a pleasant surprise, indeed.”
“I see,” Mrs. Mullings says, narrowing her eyes. “Well, what brings you in? If I may ask?”
“I am, ma’am,” he says, in that reedy, nasal voice, miles distant from James’ practiced, polished day-to-day dialect, “a man of letters; a writer, if you will. My aim here to visit famous explorers, and seek their testimony for a pamphlet on the Northwest Passage, endeavoring to spotlight their heroic acts in the name of the Almighty.” This parodic yarn he spins off spontaneously, the story taking shape as it leaves his tongue, as easily as one of his own tales of embellished bravery.
“You’ll be wanting to visit James Fitzjames, then.”
“Oh, yes,” James says, wide-eyed. “Most certainly, I will.”
“He’s in here half the week,” says Mrs. Mullings with a smile, “charming man, lovely man, the greatest stories you’ll ever hear, could fill on a dozen pamphlets on his own, bless his heart…”
He speaks with Mrs. Mullings a little longer, basking in her adulation of that honored customer, Captain Fitzjames, and after she bustles away he drinks perhaps more ale than he should, shoring up his spirits for the journey ahead.
And then he walks, keeping to his false stride, to the lodgings of Captain Francis Crozier.
A part of his mind, the part that had never left the North, is expecting Jopson at the door, and the part that had never been to the north at all is expecting a stately manservant or a starched maid, befitting a man of Francis’ stature, his account swollen with double pay.
But when the door creaks open, a long minute after James’ insistent knock, it is just Francis. Francis, unchanged, the lines of his face carved deep by the angles of the late afternoon sun, his eyes furiously clear as he squints past the lintel at James’ stooped silhouette. He is human and breathing and looks rather annoyed to be disturbed; annoyance suits his elastic face just as well as determination or kindness or rage, makes him no less handsome, no less entrancing.
The breath goes out of James at the sight of him and he remembers Mr. Thorne just in time to recover with a cough and a wheeze, an elaborate shake of the head to disguise his expression until it resolves.
“My good Captain Crozier,” he says, extending a weak hand and giving Francis’s a palsied shake. “My name is Hezekiah Thorne. It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Mr. Thorne,” repeats Francis, confused.
“I have here… a letter of introduction, from a good friend of yours, a Mr. Thomas Blanky, regarding my visit, if you’ll just take a look—” From inside his frayed jacket he removes the prop he’d prepared earlier, a letter in a fair facsimile of Blanky’s distinctive scrawl as best remembered from the many ice reports he’d looked over, progressively more dire as the dark months passed. It is a happy coincidence that not only is Blanky’s penmanship easily imitable, but also that the fellow is the most likely out of all of Francis’s trusted companions to find humor in James’s caper, should word get back to him, which James expects it might.
“Hm,” Francis grunts as he reads. Perhaps in some far-off, distant era, decayed at last to incivility, a man would not be obliged to welcome in a stranger accompanied by such a letter, but even a man like Francis at his crossest must honor the mores of his society. He hesitates for just long enough to worry James, but at last steps aside to allow Mr. Thorne entry.
“Much obliged, much obliged,” says James, sweeping in past Francis with that loping, uneven stride, so unlike that of Captain Fitzjames.
“How is Thomas, then? Well, I hope?”
“You’ve not seen him? Why, but he proclaimed to be a great friend of yours, the greatest, in fact. I would think you would know how he fares, far better than I.”
“I’ve been busy,” Francis says, gruffly. He shows James into the parlor, which is dusty and dim, thick curtains drawn, lit only by a single lamp. It has the feeling of a tomb, hermetically sealed. Like Francis has been buried here. “Not had a chance to pay a visit… But you met him, then?” This, in a tone of deep skepticism.
James makes a play of lowering himself stiffly into the armchair offered, with a theatrical groan he draws out far longer than necessary, before answering, “I met him, yes. Fine fellow. Fine fellow, if a bit coarse... Missing a leg— prattled on about his wife—”
“Yes, yes, that’s him,” says Francis, seemingly satisfied enough. “Er. May I offer you anything? I’m afraid I keep no alcohol, but I have tea, seltzer water…”
Relief settles, in a warm gush, about James’ heart. So he has not taken up the drink again, then. It is a bone-deep emotion he must hastily translate to its devout equivalent in Mr. Thorne’s mind. “A temperate man,” he cries plaintively, “ah, I am glad to see it, Captain Crozier, for drink is one of the vices on the road to damnation… Tea, if you will.”
Francis leaves, and returns with two cups, which he sets down on the bare table between their chairs before taking his own seat. “Tell me about this project of yours, then,” he says. “Who sponsors it?”
“Ah, why, of course. We are a mere private society of fanciers, based in Bournemouth—”
“Fanciers?” scoffs Francis. “What is there to fancy?”
James casts his mind to the many articles on Parry’s expeditions he’d read, the story of the discovery of the north magnetic pole, the captivating engravings of icebergs, cathedral-high; the fervor with which he followed news of Ross’ expedition to the Antarctic, devouring stories of penguins, auroras, volcanoes.
That pure awe he felt is buried, now, under more recent, less pleasant memories, but he finds his way to them some effort, puts real earnest emotion in his voice as he proclaims, “Very many things! Oh, so very many, Captain Crozier. Bravery in service of the Empire. Discovery in service of God.”
Francis scoffs. “And what do you know of God?”
“Certainly not as much as you,” bleats James. “God was with you in the North, was He not, ensuring your safe return!”
He expects to draw a round of healthy ire from Francis at this, a spitting rejection of some kind, but instead Francis merely leans back in his chair, stares into his cup but does not sip from it. “Believe what you must,” he says.
In the silence that falls, James makes a show of looking around at the parlor, the shelves mostly empty of books, the walls mostly empty of frames. No mirrors. None of the chintz and clutter of his own lodgings, the farrago of material things that had begun to accumulate immediately upon his arrival.
“It is rare, I hear,” he says, at length, “for a man to return from such a voyage and not resist the worldly temptations of his homeland, trinkets and comforts and such, all the things one wanted for so dearly during the voyage. You have performed admirably, in this regard.”
“The things one wants at sea, Mr. Thorne,” says Francis uncomfortably, “are easily put to rest once one is away from the place in which one wanted them.”
“And what did you want?” James pauses. “For the pamphlet, you understand. Research.”
“Tell me,” Francis says, avoiding the question, “will your research note the lack of thought put into preparing the expedition? The rotten food, the unsuitable clothing, the untested engines?”
“I—” James had not been prepared for the change of subject. “I suppose— no, I hadn’t considered such things—”
“I recommend that you do consider them, Mr. Thorne. Before you turn your pamphlet into an unintended endorsement of the Admiralty’s many blunders, using dangerous fantasies to turn a profit.”
“Do you accuse me of exploitation, Captain Crozier?” James blusters. “I assure you, I am no such malcontent. I have only respect for your bravery. And as I said, this will be a private publication.”
Francis settles, minutely. “Good. Very good. With all due respect to you and your fanciers— truth is what is needed, now.”
James takes a deep breath, and increases his stoop a fraction, deepens his cover, before he removes a notepad and scrap of pencil from his jacket.
“A few things to confirm, Captain Crozier. Just basic details, you understand. A more extensive interview can be conducted over correspondence, if you are not otherwise occupied, for I do understand you to be a busy man, make no mistake, no mistake at all.”
“Very well,” Francis says. “Go on.”
James clears his throat ostentatiously, pencil poised above paper. “You are not a Papist?”
“No.”
“You are not a Freemason, a crypto-Jew, or a Fenian?”
“No.”
“You do not subscribe to any obscene magazines?”
There it is, that creak of a laugh, suppressed but present, enough so to bring forth memories of meals shared, walks over the slate, just the two of them under the cold Arctic sun.
“No, Mr. Thorne, I do not. I also have no connections to Rosicrucians, nor do I have time for foolish Spiritualists, before you ask.”
“Very good. Very good indeed. We keep strong morals, my group, you see. In our every action we aim to glorify Queen and Country.”
Francis shifts in his seat, the movement hypnotic to James. He’s not gained back as much of his lost weight as James had thought he might; has he even anyone to cook for him?
James comes back to himself with a blink, in time to ask: “And, ah, your fellow explorers? Their whereabouts, if I could attain them from you, for my research…”
“I am not their keeper,” Francis says. “No. Not anymore. You’ll have to go to the Admiralty for that.”
“So— you’ve not spent time with them, since your miraculous return?”
“No. I have not.” Francis sighs. It is a heavy, leaden sound, one that tugs insistently at James like a strong wind in a mainsail not sheeted to hold it. It overwhelms him.
“Not even your second? Captain Fitzjames, isn’t it? Would not two men who shared such an experience be inseparable, after the fact?”
The glare he receives, unmodulated by either whiskey or affection, is utterly alien to James. It thrills him to see a side of Francis he hasn’t known. He wants to tease more of it out, take it all in before he must inevitably take his leave.
“We return again to wants, Mr. Thorne,” Francis says, “and you find me reluctant as before to reveal them to you. Let your focus be on the details of the voyage, for the edification of your group, not the sordid dreams of an old man.”
“But, is Captain Fitzjames not—”
“He is back where he belongs,” Francis interrupts emphatically. He does not meet James’s eye. “Here, in this fine country. I would not burden him with my… melancholy.”
“Well, no matter,” James says, his voice’s disguise betraying no ache, “for I shall be speaking with him as soon as Friday, most likely.”
“Godspeed,” says Francis, “I wish you the best in that quest. He will be a difficult man to corner, that is, if he is even in London at all. He likely has a full social calendar, and no time or desire to sit and talk to anyone not offering wine or good company in exchange.”
Is this truly what Francis thinks, then? That James has done nothing but dance and drink and be merry? Of course, he has been socializing— he has been to see Will and Elizabeth, he has visited Edward, he has spent hours with Dundy and Fairholme, drinking toast after toast to Sir John and Graham and the rest. He has been visible at Admiralty parties, telling sanitized, practically fictional tales of the Arctic, in order to meet the raucous demand for them.
But how could Francis believe, so easily and without any proof, that James does all of this with a free and light heart, that he does it for any reason other than if he does not, his nights and days will collapse, and he will find himself back in that eternal winter, lit only by murderous flame?
“You have no… concern for him, then?”
“No, none at all. Captain Fitzjames will go on to a great and happy career. No man deserves it more.”
Something hot and wretched is brewing in James’s gut, now. If you truly think so highly of me, Francis— why not visit? Why not write? Your hand in mine, the only warm thing for miles around. Was that a dream, then, to be forgotten as soon as you had England under your boots again?
“I don’t know about that,” he says.
“No? What do you know, then?”
James scratches at his false beard. “I have heard… rumors. Unfortunate ones. Yes, perhaps you may help me put them to rest. Is it true what they say? That he is… of unnatural leanings. Immoral desires.”
(He has never actually heard such a thing, not at the Pincushion nor any of the naval establishments he frequents. He is far more careful than that, has been his whole life, could write the damned book on how to keep such a secret, has taken many a midshipman aside with gentle tips on how better to hide in plain sight— but Francis doesn’t know this.)
“Lies,” says Francis. The way his mouth curves around that ugly word is beautiful. James wants to hear it again. “Someone has been telling you lies, Mr. Thorne.”
There are better ways to go about this, James knows. More jokes about Catholics, a round of comic misapprehensions about naval traditions, begging to be entertainingly corrected.
But James is lost too deep in the smug, intolerable Mr. Thorne now, unmoored within the brittle grip of the character’s crooked frame around his upright one, contorting him this last hour far more severely than he could have foreseen.
“Is that so? You see, I don’t wish to include un-Christian men in my pamphlet, Mr. Crozier, but I must present as accurate a portrait as possible, so I must know…”
“He is the finest commander in the service!” Francis says sharply. “I know him better than any man alive— we were on the expedition together for three hard years, he was my second for one of them—”
“Yes, three years, and yet no Passage found... Perhaps such a man should never have been put in a position to command,” says James, his false accent growing more exaggerated, higher in tone, practically a squeak. “Perhaps Captain Fitzjames’ inversion is what doomed the voyage from the start, his wickedness an invitation for the horrors that beset you, that prevented you from making the Passage!”
A fist slams down on the chair’s arm. Oh, yes, Francis is alive, now, clawing at the lid of this tomb, and it galvanizes James to see him so animated. “I’ll not hear this talk, Mr. Thorne!”
James ignores him. “It’s no wonder you choose now not to associate with your shipmates, if they were full of such sin, all profane reprobates like James Fitzjames—”
“You take his name out of your mouth,” hisses Francis, “or I’ll not speak another word for the benefit of your pamphlet, private or not.”
“If you know something of his background, Captain Crozier,” James says wildly, “perhaps you might reveal it to me, and I can investigate—”
“I’ll do no such thing!” Francis cries, madly. “You can tell your bloody society that I’m the sodomite, that out in the ice I desired the company of another man, that I wanted him, but don’t you dare say a word against James!”
James, wild eyed, raises a finger like a vicar speaking of brimstone. “You, sir, I’d never slander, but him, oh, him I will expose for the agent of Satan he is—”
Francis, sober as a judge and yet seething with an intoxication of spirit the likes James has never witnessed, lunges forward and lurches across the rug to where James sits. He claws into James’ dirty collar and hauls him up, James scrabbling for purchase on his chair, but Francis has the sea’s strength to him, and that of sheer outrage atop it.
“Out!” he bellows. “Out of my house, you scoundrel! I’ll have Thomas’s neck for bringing you here— disturbing my peace, bringing your cowardice, your abuse, your lies—!”
“Let me go—”
Francis overbalances, tips; and they go down together, brawling on the floor like ship’s boys. Francis’s hands find James’ throat, and James’s glasses fly off onto the rug, as his fingers fumble uselessly at Francis’s arms.
“Captain Crozier!” chokes James, and then, abandoning pretense at last, “ Francis!”
Surely it is only providence that allows him leave to reach up, and in one ragged movement, rip the false beard from his chin, to bare his face in view of his captain, his friend.
“It’s me— ” he gasps out, before everything goes dark—
He comes back to himself mere seconds later, gasping, and finds Francis hovering above, panicked, his palms pressed warm and urgent to James’s face, drawing them quickly away as James shakes himself sensate.
“Good Christ, James— I thought I’d killed you!”
“I’d have deserved it, no doubt,” says James hoarsely, after the coughing subsides.
“What in God’s name possessed you to— to—” Francis breaks off, unable to give words to the madness James has just put them both through.
“Wanted to see you,” croaks James, pushing himself weakly up onto one elbow, and with the other hand disturbing his slicked hair, combing it out of its affected parting so that it hangs down, limply, into his face. “I’m sorry.”
Francis is silent. James waits, patiently, to be slapped, shown to the door, or both, in any order.
“.... Obscene magazines?” Francis says. His face cracks wide open into a disbelieving smile—
And then they are both laughing, a preposterous cacophony, there on the ground in the splash of lonely light at the center of Francis’ dim cloister. They laugh so loud and so large and so long that by the end of it they’re both sprawled back, shaking, utterly overcome with absurdity.
“Oh, what a fool I’ve been,” James says, staring at the ceiling, as Francis’s giggles resolve into hiccups.
“I’ll not contradict that,” Francis replies, breathless.
“Please, don’t.”
After a moment Francis sits up, his knees up in front of him, and he wraps his arms about them, as if to protect himself from something. Guarding his heart.
“Was it true?” James asks.
“So the interrogation is to continue, then,” says Francis, though all the acid in his voice has been neutralized now by laughter.
James sits up in full as well, leaning forward, trying to convey apology in every inch of him. “Francis. Look at me.” He does, and James sees the storm roiling in his gaze. “A confession under false pretenses is no confession at all. Will you tell me, as myself? … Francis, do you desire me?”
Francis shakes his head, and for a moment James goes cold, thinking he has somehow misread it all. But then he tips his head back, as if to draw tears back into his eyes, and says: “I did. Christ, I do. But I am… I am afflicted. Look at this place. I can’t keep you here. You belong as much in the dark as you did in the cold— not at all. You’re a warm thing, James.”
“Not all dark places are tombs,” James says. “We keep fresh water in the hold. We plant seeds deep in the earth. There is no light inside a body, but life comes from the womb, does it not?”
Francis just stares at him, that wide slash of a mouth held tight, stubborn as ever. James bravely reaches out, and places a hand atop his where it rests at his knee.
And then: a nod. Almost invisible, imperceptible, but James sees it clearly— he is attuned to Francis, deeply so. He can read the man’s inclination, far better than he could ever interpret that damned Fox dip circle.
Oblivious, in this moment, of the grease and spirit gum still caked to his face, James cups the back of Francis’s head with his hand, and leans in.
And Francis meets him halfway, and kisses back with a desperation he did not expect. A starving, searching kiss, hot and frantic, as the miles between them evaporate like fog at the sunrise, like it had never been there at all.
Francis bears James back down to the ground in an echo of their earlier tussle, his solidity atop James a miracle, a reminder, you’re alive, we’re alive, we’re here. We have made it, at last.
James hums into Francis’ mouth, little disbelieving murmurs, as his hands roam Francis’s back, his sides, pulling him closer. He hooks one leg around the back of Francis’s ankles, a possessive gesture he’s dreamed of for nigh on a year now, and Francis lets out a happy huff, James feeling his smile where their mouths meet.
He winds his fingers into Francis’s hair and finds it soft and light, the perfect length to tug gently as he moves for a better angle, finding in every minute new delights in the way Francis moves against him, each press in hungrier than the last.
At last they part, panting, sated for now, and James has the pleasure of seeing Francis red-mouthed and dizzied, his hair in disarray.
He reaches out behind James’s head to pick up the eyeglasses from his disguise from where they’d fallen, and examines them with a disbelieving look.
“You are a madman,” he says.
“And you, a hermit,” James responds. “I mean to break you out of this cave.”
“And I mean to cure you of this strange compulsion to dress up like a mendicant and go around knocking on doors.”
“You’ll have a hard time with that, I’m afraid,” James says. “It’s a lifelong affliction. Haven’t you ever heard the story of the missionaries of Sir Moses Montefiore?”
Francis raises an eyebrow. “I have not.”
The armchairs are still standing, and surely there is a bedroom just up the stairs, but James has no wish to move from his position, held safely here, in the arms of Captain Francis Crozier. So he simply rearranges them gently on the dusty carpet, in order to have a hand free to gesture, and begins:
“It was the summer of 1840, and I was gunnery lieutenant on the Ganges, flagship of the blockade of Egyptian forces at Beirut. The heat was unbelievable, like a hot, dry blanket suffocating the entire fleet, and in Damascus a Franciscan abbot had just mysteriously disappeared… ”
***