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“Oh Francis, do stay,” said Fitzjames.
Crozier, halfway out of his seat after an interminable meal aboard Erebus, froze like a prey animal that had attracted the interest of a hawk.
“I regret I cannot,” he said, thinking with fond longing of the trek across the ice, of a nightcap with Blanky and his dog and, at the end of it, his waiting bed. “I have duties on my own ship.”
“The last time we officers of Erebus had to entertain ourselves alone,” Fitzjames went on, “we played Proverbs with verses from the Bible and it was—begging your pardon, Sir John—a gruesome business. An ignominious rout.”
“I admit,” said Sir John with a magnanimity Crozier was beginning to find insufferable, “that I often forget my fluency in scripture is hardly common.”
“Hardly common! It is a fluency, sir, which would surprise no one in a doctor of divinity or a canon professor, but which one is astonished to find in an explorer,” said Fitzjames admiringly.
Crozier wondered if he could claim he was seasick in an icebound ship.
“Humbug, James,” said Sir John, but he smiled as he lit his pipe, as pleased as he always was to be flattered. It had been different before, in Van Dieman’s land when Sir John’s face had lit happily to hear a kind word. Then Crozier had been pleased to say them.
“The rest of us unfortunately have a deplorable command of the ecclesiastical dialect,” Fitzjames continued, as if he didn’t see that Crozier was still standing above his chair, unable to break into the conversation even to excuse himself. “One night some years ago Henry and I had occasion to dine with a minor canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The fellow introduced himself and stated his office, and Henry—his manner as sober and serious as ever you have seen it—Henry said to this unfortunate: ‘A minor cannon? How many pounds is that then, and what type of shot?’ ”
The room erupted into laughter, and even Crozier gasped a little, amusement taking him by surprise.
Lieutenant Le Vesconte waved them quiet and replied, “I say he spoke uncommon soft!”
Fitzjames raised a glass and explained: “For a graduate of gunnery school ‘uncommon soft’ describes the full range of civilized conversation. HMS Excellent is not called HMS Say Again? for nothing! But Francis desires me to come to my point—I mark your impatience, sir, and implore you to stay for a game or two. We are very sad party on our own, after being squashed together all day long.”
“Please, Francis,” said Sir John. “It has been so long since we have had your company.”
In the end it was sentimentality about the friendship he had once shared with Sir John that did him in. Crozier raised his hands in surrender, awkward in the face of so much attention, and took his seat.
“What shall it be, then?” Sir John asked. “I suppose I dare not say Proverbs.”
“Snap-dragon!” suggested Sergeant Bryant of the marines, to the cheers of his fellow officers.
“A charade,” said Lieutenant Gore.
“A tableau vivant of naval officers at dinner,” said Dr. Stanley.
“A tableau vivant of my making the very respectful submission to Dr. Stanley that his idea is dull indeed,” countered Fitzjames.
“Courtiers,” said Lieutenant Fairholme, an idea that made the marines groan.
Apparently the officers of Erebus had all grown bored of a dozen or more common parlor games, but eventually with Sir John’s urging settled on a round of The Minister’s Cat.
They went through the alphabet quickly, accumulating forfeits just as quickly for words that had been used in previous weeks.
Good-natured Gore was obliged to play the learned pig, snuffling up to Dr. Stanley when asked who in their company had the worst temper and—to everyone’s amusement—affecting great confusion between Sir John and Fitzjames when they asked him who was the handsomest. Collins stood on his chair to be posed as a Grecian statue, and Le Vesconte spelled ‘Constantinople’ backwards so easily that he must have come prepared.
Finally it was Crozier’s turn to pay his forfeit, and after much conspiracy among Erebus’s officers it was decided that he would choose one of three signs from Fitzjames, a very eager volunteer. It was a game for happier circumstances and mixed company. The idea was that the gentleman faced a wall while a lady determined the order of three signs: a kiss, a pinch, or a box on the ear. The gentleman selected a number and put himself in the hands of chance. He had played it with Sophia once, on some long afternoon in Hobart, and won a kiss from her while Ross only got a pinch so ferocious it had brought tears to his eye.
Crozier sighed. “I choose the first sign,” he said, turning around. The group laughed helplessly for almost a minute and he stood with his arms crossed, facing Fitzjames, who grinned back at him.
“What awful luck,” said Le Vesconte. “That man pinches like a lobster fighting his way out of the trap. It is a good thing we have the surgeon with us.”
“I do not have a remedy,” Dr. Stanley said archly, “for pinching.”
“Captain Crozier your luck has run from bad to worse,” Le Vesconte said then, “as Dr. Stanley thinks himself above treating even the most calamitous of pinchings.”
Dr. Stanley frowned at him.
“It is within my prerogative to be merciful,” said Fitzjames, “and to say that we have it wrong, the first sign was in fact the kiss.”
Crozier felt embarrassment burning from his collar to his ears. He hated the whole room for making him the object of their ridicule, and himself for the moment of softness that had invited it. He could have left the ship. Resolved to endure it, he kept his eyes forward where Fitzjames’s smile had become far kinder, as if he thought he was doing Crozier a sincere kindness.
“For God’s sake,” said Crozier, reaching over the table for his glass and downing it.
Erebus’s wardroom found this so extremely comical that one of the marines, laughing energetically, overturned his own glass of Madeira into his neighbor's lap.
“Bon courage, Francis,” Fitzjames said, taking hold of Crozier’s shoulders, “and for God’s sake hold still.”
The kiss, when it came, was probably somewhat better than a lobster fighting his way out of the trap; a brush of warmth on Crozier’s burning cheek, and then Fitzjames was patting his face cheerfully to signify he was done.
“Not so bad, I hope?” Fitzjames said quietly, without a blink at the others calling out and slapping their knees. One of his hands was still on Crozier’s shoulder, and the scent of macassar oil lingered in the air between them. “You have a very close shave, sir.”
And Fitzjames’s lips had been so soft they might not have touched him at all. Perhaps it was a warm exhalation of breath that Crozier had felt, though his skin remembered it well. He knew the room was waiting for him, hoping for once he would say something clever, so they could all continue laughing. He cleared his throat and proclaimed: “I wonder if I shouldn’t have chosen the pinch, after all.”
Fitzjames removed his hand, drawing himself up and away. Something that was not his usual bluff confidence flashed on his face as he sat down. “Then we are of one mind,” he said, “for I wonder the same thing.”
The boisterous wardroom parties died, more or less, with Sir John. Crozier’s command began in emergency, and with every day they felt the pincer movement of their situation close in tighter on their flanks.
By the time a late snow covered the ashes of the Carnivale masque, there was no appetite left at all for dinner in courses, or society, or Madeira. Most of the ships’ officers took their meals in the gun-rooms. Crozier dined aboard Erebus with Fitzjames, who passed the time smiling dully and spinning his napkin ring between his fingers. As Crozier grew stronger and more animated after his illness, Fitzjames withdrew. It was as if there had only ever been enough energy for one man between the two of them.
But things stood easier between them than ever they had. Each had misjudged the other, and badly. Each regretted the years they had lost to enmity, when it was clear Providence had meant them for friends, even brothers. Crozier had not stopped thinking about the game, long ago, when Fitzjames might have kissed him. Had ever a man touched another so lightly? Surely it had been his breath on Crozier's cheek.
“Have you played the Laughing Game?” Crozier asked him one night.
Fitzjames’s eyebrows leapt up and his fingers went still. “Francis,” he said, with a huff of absolute bafflement. “Have you been holding out on us? I had thought you preferred the tortures of Hell to any parlor game.”
Crozier wet his throat with a sip of water and leaned back in his chair. “I have no skill whatever for most of them, it’s true. But not laughing—well, it is a singular talent. I have been so much the object of laughter that I have overcome the instinct, and I never lose. Once James Ross threatened to have me thrown overboard. Do you know the game?”
“Well yes, of course. We used to play all the time at Rose Hill, where I was—” Fitzjames shook his head. “Well, where I grew up, anyway. Though from your report I am in for a damned drubbing whether I know the rules or not.”
“I’ll give you the first turn,” said Crozier.
Fitzjames composed himself, preparing for the game. “Very good of you,” he said gravely. “I shall fire then as I bear: Ha .”
Crozier nodded. “Ha, ha,” he said slowly, as if the words were a very profound statement of philosophy.
One of Fitzjames’s brows twitched. “Ha, ha. Ha,” he said without affect.
Crozier stared him down and spoke very slowly: “Ha.” He paused, and saw another muscle move in Fitzjames’s face. He resumed: “Ha, ha. Ha.”
By the end of it Fitzjames was laughing, doubled forward so his face was almost in his plate, the sight of which took Crozier’s own composure, and then the lonely wardroom was warmed with laughter.
When Fitzjames came up for air he saw Crozier’s face and was lost again. “I am done for, Francis,” he managed in between eruptions of laughter, “I am put to flight. When I said I was in for a drubbing I admit I did not quite think how fast it would come! Forfeit, forfeit. I owe you a forfeit. Now what will you have of me?”
“It contents me enough to see you laugh,” said Crozier truthfully. “It has been a long time.”
“Nonsense, honor demands a forfeit. What shall it be? I warn you I can spell Constantinople in any direction you require—forwards, backwards, upside down and right side up, north by east, or two points astern.”
Crozier heard himself swallowing hard in the quiet that preceded his answer. “I had not that in mind,” he said. “You see, I have come to think that we have tempted fate.”
“More than anyone else alive we have,” Fitzjames agreed, the cheerfulness leaving him as he spoke, “and more often—but to what incident do you refer?”
“One night at Sir John’s table, my forfeit was to receive a kiss.”
“It was a pinch, as I recall,” said Fitzjames, “had I not been over-merciful. It was not meant to be a penance, you know. Only you seemed so damned lonely in that crowd, I thought you might do with it.”
“I did not see it as a penance. But neither, I think, did I properly receive it. I mean—you didn’t kiss me, James.”
Fitzjames tapped a finger on the table. His face was flushed. “Of course not,” he said. “You wouldn’t have kissed you either, only to be made sport of a moment later on.”
“I ask for another opportunity then, so we may settle our account on this score, at least.”
“Our account with whom, the Parca of household amusements?”
“As you like,” said Crozier.
Fitzjames chuckled at that, measuring the distance between them and sliding to the side of his chair. He took a sip of his gin and then, looking abashed, followed it with a drink of water. “Well, the drill is the same, hold still for a moment.”
Though they sat very close to one another at the corner of Erebus’s table, each of them had to lean well forward, and it was an ungentle collision. There could be no mistake this time. Their lips touched, and though Fitzjames’s were certainly in good condition they were mortal flesh, nothing like a whisper of air at all.
Crozier had not kissed very many people in this fashion—like many he’d had more opportunity when he was young, and then learned to do without. He had not the habit of doing this, opening his mouth on another man's, so no one could call it a vice. But he hardly did it temperately. Fitzjames had a hand on his neck, and Crozier gripped his shoulders. The vacuum between them alluded to something more base, and it made a crude sound when finally they separated.
“So we are square with Fortune now,” Crozier said. He felt no shame, and saw none from Fitzjames whose eyes never left him as he sat back into his chair.
“The old debt is paid, Francis,” said Fitzjames, practical manner giving way to his occasional roguishness, “but tonight we have incurred another.”
Crozier half rose from his seat and reached out. “Then we must take no chances," he said.
Fitzjames had lost the thread of their conversation again. He stared relentlessly ahead as they walked, his focus so absolute that it seemed to require neither his intelligence nor the force of his personality. Crozier wondered if he still saw the monotonous landscape of shale and slow sunset, or something else entirely—the horizon of someplace where he would cast off the particulars of James Fitzjames at the threshold like an old coat.
“The minister’s cat is an able cat,” said Crozier suddenly.
Fitzjames shook his head, heaved in a breath and then inhabited himself once again. He looked at Crozier and offered him a crooked smile.
“Able indeed,” he said. “And the minister’s cat is an audacious cat.”
Crozier smiled back at him, relieved to hear his voice after so long a lull. The answer came as quick as Fitzjames’s wits had always been. Enough remained, Crozier told himself. Enough to recover. Men endured worse than this without even taking to bed. It was only that the day's walk was long, and they had each been hauling.
“The minister’s cat is a bumptious cat,” Crozier said.
“The minister’s cat is a—brave cat,” said Fitzjames, and had to catch his breath afterwards.
“And lest we praise him too high, the minister’s cat is a conceited cat.”
“The minister’s cat is a capable cat.”
“The minister’s cat is a dear cat.”
“Francis,” said Fitzjames.
“Shipboard education is not what it was,” said Crozier, on some instinct fearing what Fitzjames would say, “if you think ‘Francis’ is a word beginning with the letter ‘D.’ A forfeit, sir, an early forfeit.”
“Francis,” said Fitzjames again. “I beg you do not cry the forfeits now.”
“And why would I? James, we have only got through three letters.”
Fitzjames shook his head, breathing hard. “Not now, I should say, not anymore. I would—” Crozier saw his throat clench as he swallowed “—I would kiss you again, happily, in some other place or time. Sailing through the Passage. In seven-gated Thebes, on the isle of Shalott, or even in Arcadia. But not here, not as we are.”
“James,” said Crozier, alarmed.
“Not here,” Fitzjames went on, struggling for breath. A blink wet his cheek. “That—manner of love—is beyond us now.”
“Come now,” said Crozier. His body felt weak with a fear he could not describe. “Come now. Be easy. The letter ‘D.’”
“'D.' The minister’s cat is,” said Fitzjames, wiping his cheek with a glove, “an uncommonly determined cat.”
“The minister’s cat is an excellent cat,” said Crozier.
“The minister’s cat is an esteemed cat.”
“The minister’s cat is a frustrating cat.”
Fitzjames was looking at the horizon again, not answering. Crozier reached out for his arm and felt him start at the touch. “James,” he said. “It’s ‘F,’ now. Do stay with me.”