Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Mr. Bridgens.”

“Sir?”

Captain Fitzjames paused in combing his hair, though his gaze remained fixed on his reflection in the mirror. “You’ve a medical background. Indulge me, if you will. Could one…” He paused. “Dryness of the skin. That could lead to bleeding, could it not?”

“I suppose, sir,” John replied. Lord knew his own skin was prone to it; the increased likelihood of nicking himself in the cold was why he kept his beard. “Around the knuckles, particularly, since the skin there is often stretched. And dry skin is certainly more apt to bleed when scratched or scraped.”

“Ah.” Fitzjames’s shoulders sloped beneath their epaulets as he exhaled. “Small wonder, then. I’ve been doing myself in with this.” He grinned and waved his comb in response to John’s raised brow. “My much-tormented scalp has become as much a desert as the wastes outside, and my efforts to groom life back into my hair are having the opposite effect.”

John had noticed no more dead skin than usual on Fitzjames’s coats, but the captain’s hair had always been Fitzjames’s own particular prerogative. “Shall I ask Dr. Stanley or Dr. Goodsir for an ointment, sir?”

“Thank you, Bridgens, but no need. My vanity is a poor use for medical supplies. Besides, you’ve your own appearance to attend to. You still haven’t told me what you’re wearing to Carnivale.”

John smiled. “I’d a mind to go as Socrates. Or a version of him, anyway.” He hesitated to maim a set of linens, but he’d found a set of blank Greek chorus masks in the trunk, which would let him be any tragic or comic figure he pleased. It was Henry who’d suggested Socrates. He’d declared that he himself—despite the acquisition of a decidedly non-Classical green velvet coat—would go as Phaedrus, with the caveat that he had no intention of shaving his own beard.

“I’m not that old,” John had protested. “And you’re not that young. Phaedrus is a boy.”

“You’re not that old, but you’re that wise,” Henry had replied, sweetly earnest in his flattery. “And as for me, would you rather me be Alcibiades? No, thank you. The man’s a mess. Whereas Phaedrus, through his studies, is on his way to wisdom.”

It was a pity that rank kept the officers apart from the rest of the men. Henry and Fitzjames would get on well as equals: similar age, similar propensity for reading, and—in earlier days, at least—a similar propensity for humor. John smiled to himself. Here he was, arranging play dates between his dear and his commander. They weren’t that young, indeed.

“Socrates,”Fitzjames said thoughtfully, bringing John out of his reverie. “Capital choice. I’ve opted for the classical influence in my own disguise as well.”

“Oh,” John said in surprise. “Did the gown not fit, sir?” When they’d taken stock of the costume trunk’s contents, Fitzjames had professed an unwillingness to take first pick of the costumes. He had been willing, however, to giddily snatch up a long, rose-colored dress and stash it at the bottom of the trunk for safekeeping until he could try it out later.

Fitzjames waved a hand. “No, no. It’s fine. I’ve found something more suitable.”

Something about suitable didn’t sit well, nor did the fact that Fitzjames’s attention was now back on his reflection, without the usual fidgeting that John had learned to recognize as a plea for follow-up questions. Hm. “Will you be needing anything else, sir?”

“That will be all for now, thank you.” Fitzjames ran a fingertip along his hairline. “Just see to it that all the men are prepared for tomorrow night’s festivities.”

--------------------------

The prelude had been glorious. Galvanized by purpose, the joint crew poured their hearts into the Carnivale preparations. Craft and imagination sprang forth in their own little icebound Renaissance. John had never seen the like, and had begun to regret not embellishing his own disguise for the occasion, for when would he have the chance again? The men sang and danced with faces flushed. Captain Fitzjames and the lieutenants whooped and gamboled like boys. Henry pressed his cheek against John’s own and wrapped an arm about his waist, claiming an excess of spirits as an excuse to lean upon him. In that moment, there was nothing to fear, not even their impending journey.

And then—

John’s recollections were a haze of stinging tears, of heat, of frantic bodies battering his own. In the crush to flee the flames, Henry had been swept from his side. That was what he most recalled: the blind panic as he lost his grip on Henry’s hand. The rest could have been a nightmare in his mind’s eye. A mercy, that. It made it easier to follow Captain Fitzjames as he sifted through the corpses, and to speak comforting words to the injured as Dr. Goodsir shepherded them to the infirmary.

The exception was the stench. Acrid smoke mingled with charred flesh had etched itself onto him. When at last he returned to Erebus for the night, John caught a whiff of cooked meat from the kitchens and nearly retched.

Henry had volunteered to stay back with Captain Crozier, re-apportioning men and supplies back to Terror. It was the proper thing to do, and John loved him for it, but as he trudged back to his bunk, John could not help wishing Henry had returned to Erebus. He busied his hands by blotting the soot from his coat.

After some time, he heard the sound of boots on boards. A flash of red passed by the curtain. John scrambled into the corridor and found Fitzjames, his scarlet Britannia cloak draped over his shoulders, unlocking the door to his quarters.

“I’m sorry, sir. I should have done that. Let me.” John angled past Fitzjames into the great cabin and began lighting the lamps. Fitzjames followed, the tattered edge of the cloak trailing over his arm to the floor. He tossed it onto his bunk and stood in the middle of the room as if he wasn’t sure what he’d come there for.

John awaited an order, or at least a gesture. When neither came, he cleared his throat. “I’ll take your coat for you. It’ll need to be cleaned.”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose so. Thank you.” Fitzjames pulled the cap off his head and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. John noticed a rusted smudge along the top of Fitzjames’s forehead.

“Sir, do you need a bandage? Looks like you’ve been bleeding.”

Fitzjames gingerly reached up to brush it. Red flaked off on his fingers and he let out a choked laugh. “Never mind. It’s nothing.”

John smothered the urge to check for himself and went to unfasten the brass buttons, now tarnished. Fitzjames stood still, but his hand twitched. “Have you read Froissart, Mr. Bridgens?” he asked lightly.

If this was an attempt at normal conversation, John would oblige. “Pieces, sir. My French isn’t up to reading him as he’s written.”

“He has a rather apt story. Some French king or other held a masque. He and his courtiers went in costumes and an errant torch lit the whole group of them ablaze.”

“The Bal des Ardents.” John did know the tale, and apt it was. Amid the personal tragedies and acts of chivalry Froissart had set down, the Bal des Ardents stood out for its sheer strangeness. There had been no buildup or resolution to the event; it simply stood on its own, a nightmarish tableau. “An awful thing for the French.”

“Indeed. Though I daresay, they could have done more,” Fitzjames said. “Those things don’t just happen.

“The king and his wife banned torches from the room, as I recall. It was the king’s brother—Orleans—who brought the torch inside, and he himself was drunk.” John extricated Fitzjames from the coat.

“Yes, but someone else should have been thinking, surely,” Fitzjames said, breaking away. “For one thing, someone should have stopped him entering. Imagine, casualties at a ball. I know it’s the medieval era, but really now, how hard is it to host one little celebration?”

His voice grew shrill as he began to pace. “Just think, amidst plague and a century-long war, they throw a party and somehow surpass all the other horrors around them. You know, one fellow survived by leaping into a vat of wine. And the king only lived because his sister shielded him with her skirts. Left to his own, he’d have burned like his poor friends. He went on to lose his country to England, of course, so I suppose it’s a suitably calamitous beginning. And I’ll grant you, he was a young king, but youth isn’t foolishness. No king worth his crown would tempt fate that way in the first place—”

John caught him by the shoulders. “An accident, Captain.” Laying hands on an officer was insubordination at best, but they could not lose a second commander to dark thoughts. He looked Fitzjames full in the face. “Froissart writes that the people blamed Orleans for it after. Orleans, not the king. It was a terrible accident, sir. They have happened, and they will happen.”

“Ours was no accident,” Fitzjames said quietly.

“No.” John shuddered at the memory of Dr. Stanley’s unblinking eyes as he’d raised the torch. “But it wasn’t your doing, or mine, or any man else’s.”

Fitzjames nodded and slumped heavily onto his bunk, both feet planted on the ground as his head tilted back against the wall. John hung up his coat. “Would you like something to eat, sir?”

“No. No, I’m not hungry.”

“Tea, at least?”

Fitzjames’s eyes squeezed shut. “I should like to be left alone, Mr. Bridgens. Please.”

He’d gathered the cloak into his lap like a blanket. Goodness, but the captain was young. “You’ve been out on the ice all day, sir,” John said hesitantly. “You must have something. I’ll make tea.”

Fitzjames said nothing, which was fortunate since John hadn’t quite thought through what he would do in the face of objection. John went to stoke the stove and put the kettle on. It was soothing, after the day, to do something regular. Soothing, too, to keep a fire contained.

“It happened far away, before,” Fitzjames said suddenly.

“Sir?” John turned back to face him.

“In China. The snipers. They—” Fitzjames’s mouth twisted into a line as he wrung his hands in the remains of his cloak. “All we could see was the fire and the smoke. I couldn’t smell anything but the powder. The air was so heavy, and it was too far to—but they must have—their skin—Christ, and I’ve laughed about it. For years now, I’ve made jokes. Committed them to writing, even. What monsters we are, after all. Perhaps we’ve deserved this, if there’s anything to deserve.”

His fingertips had begun to purple. John crossed the room and carefully placed his hand upon the captain's. The cloak went slack. John gathered it over his arm. “Tea’s almost on, sir.”

As if on cue, the kettle whistled, startling Fitzjames back to the here and now. “My apologies, Mr. Bridgens. You’ve had as long a day as I have and I’m dismal company.” He rose and gestured at the table. “Take a cup of tea yourself, will you? Chamomile, I think. Neither of us needs any help to keep awake.”

John gave him a slight smile as he retrieved two cups and saucers from the tea service. “Thank you, sir. A moment’s rest will do us both good. And you can be as dismal as you please.”

Chapter Text

As sunlight slowly reclaimed its share of the day, John found himself hurtled from steward capable of triage to de facto expedition surgeon. Dr. Goodsir held in his head a catalogue of every man’s malady—and every woman’s, too, now that the Lady Silence berthed on Terror—and sent John scrambling as his second, less adept pair of hands. Carnivale’s living casualties were in no danger of succumbing to their wounds, but the cracked bones and twisted ligaments needed to be back in working order for the journey ahead. Captain Crozier insisted that any man with a bone that needed setting take every care not to use it, and let the able-bodied pick up the slack.

That was the one stroke of good fortune—Crozier’s return to deck. Henry reported that he hadn’t seen their commander so energetic since they’d set sail.

“You’d have thought we were done for as soon as we cleared the Irish Sea, with his gloom,” Henry confided as he lingered aboard Erebus on an errand. “Like melancholy Jacques without the poetry. He’s lively now, all cheer, like he means it. Do you think he does?”

“I do,” John said, as he set about repacking medicines in the crates Henry had delivered from Terror. In all Fitzjames’s complaints about Terror’s captain, duplicity had never been among them. If anything, it had been the opposite—uncouth bluntness, a lack of congeniality. “Captain Crozier is not a man to mince his words. He’s been on polar expeditions before. He knows what he asks of us. If he says we have a chance, then he believes it so.”

Henry’s smile wrinkled the edges of his dark eyes. He caught John’s hand as John reached for another medicine bottle. “If you trust it, then that’s good enough for me.”

It was another story on Erebus. While Crozier had bloomed, Fitzjames had wilted. Whatever help their talk after Carnivale provided had been short-lived. The usual stream of chatter as John helped Fitzjames dress had dried. John prodded at him with questions and received one-word answers; inquiries about his welfare were waved irritably away. John had wondered if he’d done something to put Fitzjames off until he noted him giving the same treatment to Lieutenant Le Vesconte.

John let him be, after that, but he marked the circles that grew under Fitzjames’s eyes, and the dim orange glow that shone beneath the door of the captain’s quarters late into the night. Fitzjames bustled about the ship in focused silence, taking on any unclaimed duties he could manage.  The only man to rival him was Mr. Collins, intrepid as ever.

Half of John’s tasks as steward now seemed to involve brewing pots of strong black tea with lemon juice and nothing else, thank you. A man could have worse vices than tea, to be sure. John worried nonetheless.

On one such errand, John obtained the storeroom’s last remaining biscuits—hard, stale, but unspoiled—and set them on a plate alongside the requested teapot. He returned to where he had left Fitzjames poring over a stack of papers on the cabin’s table.

Fitzjames frowned as John nudged a chart aside and set down the tray.  “What are those? I know I didn’t ask for them.”

“Thought you could do with something to eat, sir,” John replied. “You’ve been at it awhile now.”

“We’ve precious little food left that isn’t tinned, spoiled, or both,” Fitzjames said irritably. “Take these back and save them for the men. We’re beyond special privileges in these extreme times, I think”

John longed to point out that his own presence and Fitzjames’s private quarters were also special privileges, but held his tongue. He opted for another truth. “That’s all there is left, sir. We can’t well play favorites. We may as well toss a golden apple into the mess as distribute these.”

Fitzjames grumbled, but he did take up a biscuit. He winced as he bit into it. As he swallowed, he bared his teeth and wiped them with his napkin.

“Shall I fetch a glass, sir?”

Fitzjames examined the napkin before refolding it. “No, no need.” He tapped his fingers along the edge of his saucer. “Bridgens, you hear things. What do the men say of me?”

Ah, here it is. “It wasn’t your fault, sir.”

“I did not ask that. I asked what they say of me.”

John considered. The answer a month ago would have been nothing. Even as Fitzjames acted as commander of the expedition, even as the majority of Terrors had flocked to Erebus after the flogging, the talk at supper had been fond remembrances of Sir John or complaints of Crozier’s dourness. Flashy Fitzjames, the center of attention in the wardroom, was a nonentity in the mess. Carnivale had changed that—not in the way Fitzjames had hoped, perhaps, but neither in the way he feared. The men did not know him well enough to wonder at his silence. They wondered only at his presence.

“If Dr. Goodsir is now Dr. MacDonald, and you are now Dr. Goodsir, and Captain Fitzjames is now you, does it follow that Dr. MacDonald’s poor ghost is Captain Fitzjames?” Henry had mused, compelling John to swat him.

“They mark what you do here,” John answered. “All the extra duties, whether they’re at your station or no. The injured men, especially. It encourages them.”

Fitzjames appeared startled. “It does? Truly?”

“Captain, with all due respect, I almost think you’re putting me on,” John said. “Why shouldn’t they?”

“The number of disasters we—”

John cut him off. “You and Captain Crozier have seen us through calamities the Admiralty will never believe. You’re set to walk us eight hundred miles, and now you’re scrubbing floors. I had to order one man back to his rest, because he insisted a captain had no place doing a seaman’s work.”

“Did you?” Fitzjames’s eyebrows quirked upward. “I almost think you’re putting me on now. Who was that?”

“Tom Hartnell.” The boy had taken it personally when Bridgens declared that his ankle wasn’t yet fit for service. “He’s come a long ways from insubordination, that one. He’s nearly mended if misplaced guilt doesn’t lead him to try carrying a load he’s got no business hauling yet.” John met Fitzjames’ eyes. “If I may, sir, he’s not the only one set to mangle himself carrying something that isn’t his.”

Fitzjames smiled and, at last, took a sip of tea. “Noted, O wise Phoenix.”

“I’m no Phoenix and you’re no Achilles, sir,” John laughed. “And I mean that as a compliment to us both. But keep out of your tent, sir, as it were.”

“I shall try.” Fitzjames broke the second biscuit in two and offered John the other half. “Sit, please. You’ve been running about as much as I have, if not more. How have things been with Mr. Goodsir?”

“Taxing,” John confessed as he took both the biscuit and his seat. “The Admiralty thought this much work could be handled by six, and we’re only two. Or one and a half, more like. I only do what I’m told.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Bridgens,” Fitzjames said warmly. “Goodsir tells me you’re capable, as I myself suspected. Besides, it’s comfort that the men need now as much as medicine, and you’ve an uncanny knack for providing that.”

John was touched by the unexpected earnestness of the compliment. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re more than welcome, as it’s the truth.” Fitzjames took another sip of tea. “Is the work itself agreeable to you, then?”

John nodded. Stress or no, it was cathartic doing something so immediately helpful. He couldn’t thaw the ice or spirit Henry and the others across the island, but he could help them mend. “It is. I wish circumstance didn’t require it, but it is.”

Fitzjames clasped his hands on the table in front of him. “I’m glad to hear you say so. I’ve been thinking—” 

John’s misgiving must have shown on his face, for Fitzjames stopped mid-sentence and let out a bark of laughter. “Don’t look so skeptical! I do think on occasion, I assure you.” He held up a hand as John began to protest. “I’m having you on, Mr. Bridgens. I only mean to say that I’ve been considering our circumstances. We’re in for a long haul, in the most painfully literal sense of the phrase. I don’t need to tell you that the physical toll on the men will be excruciating. Knowing that, a change of priorities is in order. Henceforth, if you agree, you are relieved of your stewardship duties. You will report first and foremost to Mr. Goodsir and answer to me in the same manner that he does. Mr. Goodsir will be master of your time, not I. He will use it well, I have no doubt.”

John’s heart swelled. With leave to shuttle between the ships daily, it would be easier to keep with Henry. And yet—Fitjzames’s reasoning was sound, but the timing felt amiss. “Are you certain, Captain?”

“Goodsir needs assistance saving lives more than I need assistance tying my cravat, particularly once we start walking. I can tend to myself, Mr. Bridgens.”

John thought of the lamp light in Fitzjames’s room at all hours, of the captain’s withdrawal. The deepening lines in his face were not all from the smile he currently wore. “You need to prove that to me, sir,” John said before he could stop himself. “If I don’t take care of you, you must give me your word that you’ll manage it yourself, because you’ve been doing a poor job of late. Begging your pardon, sir.”

Fitzjames clasped his hands again. An almost wistful look crossed his face.  “As I said, I shall endeavor to keep out of my tent. I will miss your companionship—but after all, we’re never far apart on a ship.”

“No, indeed,” John said with a smile of his own. “You let me know if you need anything, Captain. Anything at all. Even if it’s just a second pair of eyes on the knot you’ve picked for that cravat.”

For the second time, Fitzjames laughed—a welcome sound after the withdrawal these past days. “There is no set of eyes I trust more.” He rose from the table and extended his hand. It hovered awkwardly beside John’s shoulder until it dropped to a handshake. “Godspeed to you, Mr. Bridgens.”

Chapter Text

With one foot in the wardroom and one in the mess, John had thought he had a sound grasp on the state of affairs aboard the ships. He learned with Goodsir that the infirmary held its own secrets.

“You must watch for strange behavior. Not—not the regular sort of melancholy that comes from the darkness. This is something else—something more frantic. If you suspect a man has hurt himself, or will hurt himself, you bring him to me. Please.”

John nodded. What was it Mr. Blanky had told the captain? The mind goes unnatural with thoughts. Little else could account for Dr. Stanley save for the supernatural. “Is it an illness?”

“Yes, but not of the contagious sort. It’s…” Goodsir pursed his lips and hummed. “Forgive me. I do not know if—well. Captain Fitzjames said you’re to answer to me. That means you can know what I know.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “It’s the tins, Mr. Bridgens.”

“I know Mr. Diggle found some rotten.”

“Rotten is the least of it. It’s the tins themselves. They’ve been seeping lead into our food since we first set sail. Are you familiar with the symptoms of lead poisoning, Mr. Bridgens?”

“A bit.” John knew his history. “Weakness. Mental deterioration.”

Goodsir nodded. “And we’re both of those already from our circumstances. The critical sign is a ring of grey around the gums.”

“Like Mr. Morfin has, sir?”

“Yes. Anytime you see that, mark it and relay it to me.”

“I will, sir.” The revelation ought to be horrifying, he knew. Their food could be killing them--had been killing them. Nonetheless, John felt strangely unconcerned. Perhaps he had the wisdom not to fear a background threat they had lived with for years already. Or perhaps, as Shakespeare said, he had supped full with horrors and direness could not once start him. He hoped it was the first. “Do the men—”

“No,” Goodsir sighed, “and they must not. The captains know. Or at least, Captain Crozier does. He determines that the men must not know, so as not to dismay them further. Captain Fitzjames ordered the cooks to rely more on salted meats back when the tins came up spoiled. That will have to suffice until we can find fresh meat.” Goodsir’s eyes were downcast behind his spectacles. “There is no sense telling the men until something can be done, but I do not like keeping secrets, Mr. Bridgens.”

“Well, you’ve me to share it with now,” John told him. “I don’t suppose… the Lady Silence kept herself healthy when she camped near us. She must have eaten something.”

“She has not offered, and I will not ask it," Goodsir said. "She could not tell us now at any rate, with her injury. It takes her people years to learn to hunt the proper way, so I suppose it’s just as well. And I suspect… I suspect that she did not find all her food herself.”

John shuddered. Henry had refused to speak of what he’d seen on his trek with Lieutenant Gore those months ago, but John could guess. As John had read aloud from Homer after the party's return, a battle passage that sang of men hewn in two and gutted like fish, Henry had begun shake and weep. “If she has the creature’s affections enough to keep it from us now, that’s help enough. Is there anything else you’d like me to keep an eye on, sir?”

“Manage the medicines and other supplies as you have been. Captain Crozier wants a precise inventory and is quite adamant that no man medicate himself.” Goodsir pushed his glasses back up his nose. “And watch for scurvy, I suppose. Dr. MacDonald believed our lemon juice was losing its potency. Look out for the usual signs—bleeding gums, bruises, fatigue, joint pain. You know, I’m sure. You’ve sailed enough.”

John nodded. “I’ve felt the early stages of it before. It comes on slow and rights itself quick. That’s a mercy, at least.”

“Another problem that will be solved with food,” said Goodsir. “Focus on the men’s minds for now, I think. I fear after Carnivale that scurvy is the lesser worry.”

-----

John wasn’t sure if the problem had worsened or Goodsir’s talk had simply made him more observant, but the telltale ring of grey appeared more and more. Those afflicted seemed unbothered; indeed, if they asked about it at all, it was usually for fear that it was scurvy. Their relief when John assured them otherwise might have been unfounded, but morale was what they needed. If omission gave them hope, so be it. He almost gave up asking if they were fatigued, for the handful who would admit to it always insisted that the other men felt the same.

“We’re all tired, and we all likely have headaches, too,” said Henry after he’d confessed to having both. “Don’t fret over me, John. I’m fine.”

“Fretting over you is my duty on this expedition, Henry. Now show me your teeth.”

Henry obliged. John cupped Henry’s face in his hands and gently tugged back the edges of his mouth. He found the gums a reddened pink. “You’re fine,” he said, but his hands lingered.

“Told you.” Henry’s lips closed soft around John’s thumbs. “But if this is you fretting, I don’t mind.”

With John tasked with monitoring supplies, it was easy to arrange reasons for Henry to visit Erebus. Absolved of his stewardship obligations, it was easier still for John to steal time alone with him without worrying he should be elsewhere. John still had to quell the impulse to knock when he passed the great cabin, but Fitzjames had held up his end of the bargain. He greeted John brightly when they passed in the corridor. He spent as much time aboard Terror as Henry did on Erebus. The orange glow still shone from beneath Fitzjames’ door, but it was accompanied now by visiting voices—Lieutenant Le Vesconte’s or, with increasing regularity, Captain Crozier’s.

The broken bones in the infirmary mended, the captain was well, and Henry was his.

It seemed to John a suspicious amount of good fortune.

---

“It’s funny going from Herodotus to Xenophon,” Henry remarked.

They sat together on John's bunk--or rather, Henry sat. John lay with his head on Henry’s lap, his knees drawn up and feet braced against the foot of the mattress. “How so?”

“Xenophon’s so matter-of-fact. He writes like… well, like one of us, or maybe more one of the officers. It feels real.” Henry stroked John’s hair. “I mean, it was real, but so were the wars with Greece and Persia, and Herodotus doesn’t feel that way. And he wasn’t even there, was he?”

“You’ve a good memory. Yes, he wrote it all after. Xenophon’s writing memoir. Herodotus is writing chronicles of a sort.” John took Henry’s free hand and brought it to his lips. “I should give you Thucydides next. Thucydides wrote during. He didn’t know how his stories would end.”

“I’m still not sure how Herodotus ends even though I’ve read it. How much was real, do you think?”

“He saw some of the things for himself, but there’s a good bit of hearsay.”

“D’you mean to say that there aren’t giant fuzzy ants in Arabia?”

John laughed. “If there were, I’m sure Captain Fitzjames would have mentioned them.”

“Mr. Bridgens?”

John’s old muscles protested as he flung himself upright. Henry vaulted off the bunk and stumbled, nearly colliding with Fitzjames as the man himself poked his head around the curtain.

“Mr. Bridgens, could you spare a moment?”

John’s heart pounded. What had the captain seen? What had he heard? He cleared his throat to calm his voice before responding. “Of course, sir.”

“Mr. Peglar, as you were. You may wait here.”

“Yes, sir.” Henry shot John a worried glance. John gave a slight shake of his head. He could only guess what this might be about, and none of the options were good.

Fitzjames led him to the great cabin, closing the door behind them. “My apologies for taking you from your visit. I did not wish to interrupt your work with Mr. Goodsir, so I must impose on your leisure.”

He sat and motioned for John to do the same. Working for Fitzjames this many years had given John a decent read of the captain’s moods. His apology did not include sarcasm. John relaxed a bit and sat. “It’s no trouble, sir. I’m happy to talk. I miss the stories.”

Fitzjames laughed. “Really, Bridgens, you’re not obliged to flatter me anymore. It’s Goodsir you should worry about. If he decides to share with you his complete knowledge of the creatures he’s found under that microscope, then you are in trouble. How have you fared?”

“Better than expected. I’ve not cut off a limb yet, at least. What of you, sir? It’s good seeing you on merrier terms with Captain Crozier.”

“Francis is well. Very well.” A quiet sort of smile crossed Fitzjames’s face before he abruptly cleared his throat. “On an unrelated note, your Mr. Keats is not well. The man is all sentiment. I admire these Romantic fellows to a point, but his effusion is an excess. Imagine being that overcome by an amphora.”

“He writes from emotion, true,” John said. “He was always very young.”

“That much is obvious,” Fitzjames scoffed. “‘Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought as doth eternity.’ The sheer melodrama! It’s a vase.”

“It is. But melodrama or no, you did remember that line, sir.”

“I suppose I did. I shall persevere on your recommendation.”

John smiled. “I’m glad. But I doubt, somehow, that you summoned me to pick my brain about poetry.”

“You’re not mistaken.” Fitzjames drummed his armrest with his fingertips. “Before I continue, understand that I speak to you in your capacity as physician only.”

John began to rise. “Shall I fetch Mr. Goodsir?”

“No. Or rather, not now. I only…” Fitzjames clasped his hands together in his lap and directed his gaze at them. “I thought it best to notify you that the lemon juice, as dear Dr. MacDonald suspected, has most certainly lost its medicinal properties.”

“How would…” John’s question died as remembered the tea with lemon guzzled between each meal. “Are you ill, Captain?”

Fitzjames nodded slowly, his eyes still fixed on his hands. “Yes. Yes, Mr. Bridgens, I am ill.”

Panic surged back into John’s chest. Fitzjames had access to the best of their food stores and the most comfortable quarters. If he had succumbed to scurvy, there must be others, and there was no cure on hand. “Symptoms?”

“I first noticed blood. Not on my teeth—on my head.”

The red streak along his forehead. “Since Carnivale.”

“Yes. It’s under control otherwise,” Fitzjames added hastily. “Fatigue and headaches—though those could be anything, frankly. And these.” He unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up one of his shirt sleeves. Ugly, angry bruises stood out on his forearm. “They look worse than they feel. I don’t recall any injury that would’ve caused them, and their color’s consistent.”

John gingerly touched one of the marks. They were soft, not inflamed. “It’s something inside, yes. You did right in telling me. I’m sorry, Captain.”

“Well, there’s nothing for it.” Fitzjames rolled his sleeve back down. “I must hope we find game on our walk and keep my spirits up in the meantime, I suppose. But tell Mr. Goodsir that scurvy is now among us."

“He’ll want to see you himself,” John said. “Captain Crozier ought to know, too.”

Fitzjames shook his head sharply. “You must not tell Francis.”

“Captain Crozier will learn it from Dr. Goodsir if one of us does not tell him first.”

“There is no reason for Mr. Goodsir to know that I am the first afflicted, either. You will tell him you have a confirmed case of scurvy. You will tell him that the lemon juice is ineffective. Unless Mr. Goodsir has a treatment, there is no reason for anyone else to know of my condition. He and Fr—Captain Crozier—have enough to worry about as it is. Do you understand?”

Fitzjames’ eyes were wide and pleading. John relented. “I’ll keep your name out of it, sir.”

Fitzjames exhaled in relief. “Thank you, Mr. Bridgens. I’ll tell him at an appropriate time, I assure you.”

John wondered which him Fitzjames meant. “If it’s any help, sir, I had it once when I was younger. Our ship hit doldrums and sat for three weeks past when we were due to arrive in port. I’d started tasting blood around my teeth, but once we got moving again, fresh food sorted it all out.” John smiled at him reassuringly. “It’s slow to act and quick to cure. You’ll be fine if you take care, sir.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Fitzjames returned the smile, albeit shakily. “You may go.”

John emerged and found Henry in the corridor outside his quarters. “I felt strange sitting in your bunk alone, so I came out here. What was that?”

John recalled Goodsir’s words. I do not like keeping secrets, Mr. Bridgens. “You’ll tell me if you feel any different, won’t you, Henry?”

“Of course." Henry frowned. “Is everything alright?”

“I’ll walk you back to Terror. I need to speak with Dr. Goodsir.”

Chapter Text

Spring had come again, bringing daylight but no sign of a thaw. Possessions were packed away or discarded. Stores were set aside for the skeleton crew remaining with the ships. The time had come to walk.

It was not a moment too soon, John reflected as he shifted his harness. More and more men sported grey around their gums, and those who’d shown it first—like poor Mr. Morfin, now stumbling with the sledge ahead of theirs—complained more of aches and fatigue. The mandragora John had administered on Goodsir’s recommendation seemed to have little effect. Alongside all this, the scurvy had spread. Captain Fitzjames may have been the first case confirmed, but he was far from the only one. Captain Crozier, currently leading the party out of harness, remained hale and hardy, as did Mr. Blanky walking beside him. But the scurvy now afflicted both of Terror’s stewards, Lieutenant Hodgson, countless seamen—

And Henry.

John squinted against the sunlight to where Henry hauled beside him. Henry had never dealt with scurvy himself before, but he had watched men die of it. John reassured him as best he could, and told Henry in no uncertain terms to come to him if anything changed. All he had at present were headaches and bleeding around his teeth. He’d noticed his symptoms a full month after Fitzjames had first discovered his. Fitzjames served as a human barometer of sorts: as the first afflicted, he’d be the first to manifest symptoms.

Captain Fitzjames currently hauled to John’s other side. He stood tall despite the harness, his footsteps wide and sure. He had reported no additional ailments, which John took as a good sign. If the captain was active as ever, Henry had nothing to fear just yet.

“How long did it take you to make it to land before?” John asked.

“Three days,” Henry panted. “Going full-tilt, though, and we’re hardly doing that now.”

“You didn’t have a voyage’s worth of supplies with you, though.”

“That we didn’t.” Henry made a face. “And I would dearly like to know who decided we ought to bring a writing desk this time around.”

Across from them, Fitzjames snorted. “I assure you that I have been wondering that very thing myself, Mr. Peglar. My money’s on its owner reconsidering within the next two hundred miles.”

“I’d go in with you on that, sir,” Henry replied with a grin.

John looked at the sledges ahead of them, all packed to the gills. Henry’s point had merit. They’d been only been hauling half a day, and already their load seemed excessive. Food and medicines were one thing, but the heavier items they could do without. Henry had talked of cliffs created when the pack pushed against the mainland, like an arctic Dover. With this much weight…

“I shouldn’t have packed the library,” John said aloud.

Henry protested this loudly. “Blasphemy, Mr. Bridgens!” Fitzjames declared. “We’re shocked, the both of us. Absolutely aghast. It’s like hearing a man forsake his child.”

“Pity this dear child can’t learn to walk,” Henry teased.

“Oh, we do what we must for those we love,” Fitzjames said. “Captain Crozier has determined that every man may part with his own belongings in his own time. Do with the library as you will, Mr. Bridgens, but I believe more than one of us will take it up if you discard it.”

Henry tugged his harness higher on his shoulders. “Given what the sledges weigh, we might have just hauled Erebus itself.”

“Having once undertaken that very thing, Mr. Peglar, I can confirm that hauling a ship is worse.”

John could well guess what Fitzjames referred to. He chuckled as Henry’s eyebrows shot up beneath his cap. “Beg pardon, sir, but you hauled a ship?”

“Two, in fact.” Fitzjames turned towards Henry as much as his harness allowed, clearly delighted to have discovered a fresh audience. “When I was young—”

“Have a care for your listeners, Captain,” John interrupted. “If you’re no longer young, what does that make me?”

“Mr. Bridgens is correct, James.” Captain Crozier had fallen in beside their party to Fitzjames’s left. “You’re not grey yet and I’ll not have you giving one of my men a false notion of age. What story is it this time?”

John tensed. An upstart bombast in love with his own voice, he’d once heard Crozier mutter to Mr. Jopson as he arrived to an officers’ dinner, and based on Fitzjames’s reports, he’d said as much to his face. He hoped dearly that the captains’ late accord had moved beyond that.

Fitzjames rolled his eyes. “That preposterous scheme to navigate the Euphrates by steamship, all the way from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.”

“Ah, a good one.” Crozier flashed Henry a gap-toothed grin, and John relaxed. “You’ll think this is fiction, Mr. Peglar, but I’ve read the Admiralty’s reports. Every word he says is true.”

“But… the Euphrates doesn’t reach the Mediterranean, does it? And aren’t there mountains?” Henry asked.

“Congratulations, Mr. Peglar, you have shown yourself to have a stronger grasp of geography than our commander,” replied Fitzjames drily.

“I’ve read my Xenophon.” Henry beamed at John. “…Hold on, does that mean you had to carry the ships to the river?”

“Oh, indeed we did. It was the worst expedition I’ve ever had the misfortune of serving,” Fitzjames groaned.

“Present situation and company excluded, I presume,” Crozier said ruefully.

“Not at all, Francis.”

A pause lingered in the air before Fitzjames coughed and continued, “Because at least there are no mosquitoes in the Arctic. I had malaria twice.”

“You’re in for a saga, Mr. Peglar,” Crozier said. “Let me spell you for a bit so you can walk closer to your audience.”

A call was made to halt. At each sledge, a man swapped out with one who’d walked. John watched as Crozier helped Fitzjames out of the harness and cinch it over his own shoulders. The captains had reached an accord indeed.

Fitzjames moved to the right of Henry and launched into the tale of his ordeal with Colonel Chesney the instant they resumed walking. John smiled as the sound of their chatter fall into the background against the scrape of the sledge. His idle musing months ago had been correct; the two younger men got on well.

After some time, Crozier matched his pace with John’s. “I thank you, Mr. Bridgens, for your emergency service. Dr. Goodsir speaks highly of you, all the men feel safer knowing we have a second man with a physician’s touch.”

“Thank you, sir. What I know comes from books and experience, so I’m afraid I’d make a poor surgeon. We’re lucky to have Dr. Goodsir’s patience.”

“And your own as well, from what James tells me,” Crozier said. He stole a glance back towards the two younger men. Henry was now exclaiming over Fitzjames’ dramatic reveal of fraudulent maharajas. “You’d never know they were ill, listening to them now.”

John’s surprise must have shown in his face, for Crozier continued, “Dr. Goodsir keeps a thorough record of the men afflicted, and I make it my business to know. He had an omission in it for some time, however. A doctor cannot override a captain.”

You must not tell Francis.

“Captain Fitzjames told you, then.”

“Not exactly. Blood came off on his napkin one day at dinner. He tried to tell me he’d bit his lip, as though I haven’t been sailing since before he was born.” Crozier looked straight ahead, his expression inscrutable behind his tinted glasses. “But by your response, Mr. Bridgens, I take it that you knew before.”

John nodded. “I did, sir. We went to Goodsir straight away, but he ordered me to keep his name out of it. And he is—begging your pardon, sir, but he is my captain first.”

“I don’t blame you, Mr. Bridgens,” Crozier said gently. “I suspected as much. Lord knows you could fill a book with what I’ve told Lieutenant Little and Mr. Jopson to keep to themselves. But now, as the commander of this expedition and his friend, I am asking you—has he told you anything else?”

“No, sir. He showed me bruises on his arm, and I’ve seen bleeding on his head. This is the first I’ve heard of his teeth.” Henry’s teeth had been an earlier sign, or so he’d thought. John felt his heart constrict.

Crozier sighed. “I suspected as much. But going forward, you will come immediately to me if you learn anything new. Is that understood?”

It was less an order than a plea, and one that John had heard before.

You’ll tell me if you feel any different, won’t you, Henry?

“I will, sir. You have my word.”

Crozier clasped John’s shoulder. “Thank you, Mr. Bridgens.”

Crozier did not break his stride, but his hand squeezed just a moment too long. John looked back to Fitzjames, just in time to see him steal a glance at Crozier as he boasted to Henry of a broken leg.

John wondered what else he had missed.

-------------------

The scrambled state of affairs on the march meant a prolonged mingling of ranks. Henry and Captain Fitzjames became fast friends, with one as hungry for stories as the other was to tell them.

“Can you believe that he walked fifty miles in one day? You never told me Captain Fitzjames did all that!” Henry whispered accusingly in their tent the first night they camped.

“I didn’t hide it,” John said. “I’m not going to be telling you the captain’s business. He’s thrilled to tell you himself.”

“He ought to write a memoir!”

“Tell him that tomorrow and you’ll make his day.”

“Does he write?”

“He’s an officer; he must. And he draws.”

“Draws what?”

John laughed. “He’s stolen your admiration, I see.”

Henry’s eyes went wide. “Oh, John, no, I don’t—”

He looked so mortified that John took pity. “Shh. I’m having you on, Henry. It’s good to see you in high spirits, is all. Hold onto that.”

Henry nodded. “I’ll try. We’ll start hitting the rugged parts of the pack later tomorrow, if we have the pace I think we do. It’ll be hard going from there until we hit shore.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine, John. I’m alright. Only—” Henry rolled onto his side. “I don’t think we’re taking the exact same route as before, or I hope we’re not. Mr. Des Voeux and Mr. Hartnell would remember better than me. They’ve a better eye at orienteering. But if we are… the creature would remember, I think. It’s too clever. And you can’t see hardly anything in the crags.”

John raised his head to check that the other occupants of their tent were asleep before reaching across to take Henry’s hand. “Every man not in harness is keeping watch, and we have Lady Silence with us now. Dr. Goodsir thinks it won’t harm her, and if she wished to harm us, she’d have done so sooner. There’s nothing to do but keep going.”

“Like the Spartans.”

“Exactly like.”

If anything, the terrain they found was worse than Henry had thought; another year with no thaw, Fitzjames explained when John asked, had led to denser accumulation. As they shoved the sledges up over the ice, John thought of Hannibal bringing elephants across the Alps. Hannibal had the better lot, in his determination. At least elephants could move themselves.

Cheer was their saving grace. The men by and large were grateful to be on the move; arduous action was action nonetheless. There was also something to be said for the equality the march provided. Every man hauled, regardless of rank, and every man had his turn to rest. Henry and Fitzjames fell in besides each other every morning and the two kept each other entertained until Fitzjames was drawn away to conference with the other officers. Occasionally Lieutenant Le Vesconte cycled in at Fitzjames’ behest to give his portion of a story.

“Rest assured, we have enough stores between us to keep us supplied for the full eight hundred miles,” Le Vesconte said as they set up camp on the sixth night. “Particularly you, James.”

“Let’s all hope Lieutenant Fairholme meets us sooner than that. After a certain point, they become compromising on both counts, Dundy.” Fitzjames punctuated this with an elbow in Le Vesconte’s ribs.

“We should be on land soon, sir,” Henry offered with a suspiciously straight face. “The ice is steepest where it hits the shore. This should be it. Or at least, I hope so. If we’re going up anything worse than this, I’ll chop that desk into firewood.”

“That’s an unfortunate note on which to leave the both of you unsupervised,” Fitzjames said as Le Vesconte guffawed and slapped Henry on the back. “I trust there will be no destruction of property while Mr. Bridgens and I meet with our respective betters.”

“No, sir,” Henry and Le Vesconte chimed in unison, albeit with drastically different degrees of earnestness.

Fitzjames rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Brief me on what you hear from Goodsir tomorrow morning, will you?” he said to John. “If Sergeant Tozer’s report on the terrain agrees with Mr. Peglar’s supposition, we’ll need all the rest we can manage tonight.”

John nodded. “I will, sir. Take care you rest yourself.”

It was pleasant, he reflected, being able to trust that Fitzjames would do just that.

With Goodsir, John made the rounds to all the symptomatic men. Most had held remarkably steady through the journey—save Mr. Gibson, one of the Terrors stricken with scurvy, who asked for something to relieve the increasing pain in his joints. Henry did not share the deep circles that ringed Gibson’s eyes. John counted that a blessing, and immediately felt guilty for doing so. A doctor had no price prizing his own loved one’s life above another’s.

“I do hope we make it over the ice tomorrow,” Goodsir confided. “I’ll feel better when we begin hunting parties.”

“Another few days with the tins won’t make a difference after years,” John said uncertainly. “Will they?”

“Perhaps not.” Goodsir clasped his hands in front of him. “It is infuriating, to diagnose and know the precise cure, but be unable to administer it. Let us hope our rescue party greets us with fresher provisions whenever it comes.”

“At least we’re past the darkness now. The daylight’s helped our spirits.” John offered Goodsir a smile. “Maybe the sunrise will shed some light on things.”

His awful pun was rewarded with a quiet chuckle. “Get some rest, please. I’ll wait up for Mr. Morfin. He’s off with Sergeant Tozer and I’m not sure what’s keeping them.” Goodsir stifled a yawn. “Until tomorrow.”

John bid him good night and headed back to his tent. The sun had dipped low enough to cast deep shadows in cliffs formed by the pack. He took a deep breath. Tomorrow, if Henry had it right, they would reach land. And perhaps they would find rescue not long after.

Chapter Text

As a long-parted mother with her child
Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in meeting,
So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth,
And do thee favors with my royal hands.

Nunavut was no England, but John wept to see it nonetheless. Once every sledge had made it safely over the ridge, John took off his gloves and knelt upon the shale. He kneaded his hands in the gravel, relishing the feel of earth—sharp, rough, sun-baked earth—for the first time since they’d left Greenland years ago.

“Alright, John?” Henry’s hand squeezed his shoulder.

“It’s beautiful,” John murmured. He might also have called it desolate, for there was no trace of green, and that did not bode well for hunting. Fearsome, too, for the expanse of rock stretched to the horizon—and hundreds of miles beyond, if the charts held true. But it was solid, and thus, beautiful. Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hands. “I could lay down here and be content.”

“Save your rest for the moment, Mr. Bridgens. We’re not out of harness yet,” said Le Vesconte. He cupped a hand beside his mouth and shouted forward to where Fitzjames, leaning heavily on his walking stick, conferred with Crozier. “How much farther, James?”

“Another mile, to give us some more distance from the ice,” Fitzjames called back. “Then we’ll pitch camp. Give the word.”

Le Vesconte tugged his cap lower over his eyes. “Right, you heard the man. One last push!”

Henry helped John to his feet, though he stumbled himself as the sledge groaned forward. Despite Henry’s high spirits, fatigue had hit him like a rail car on the grueling ascent over the ice. The second they were released from duty, John planned to order him to sleep.

“That was only twenty-five miles, you know,” Henry said, panting for breath. “Twenty-five out of eight hundred.”

“But that terrain was the worst of it, the captains said,” John began, encouragement at the ready, though if they didn’t find food—

“Oh, I know!” Henry interrupted cheerily. “I was going to say that, put another way, we’ve done one thirty-second of the march already. Thirty-one more to go, and that’s if we don’t meet the rescue party sooner. Thirty-one’s not so bad. The Spartans had it worse.”

“And they made it.”

“And so will we, John. Provided my feet don’t fall off this last mile.”

Once tents had been pitched and a perimeter created, John and Goodsir were summoned to brief the captains on the crews’ health. Miraculously, there had been no casualties on the journey. A few more had taken ill, and they all were skinnier than when they had begun, but they all arrived intact.

“Good,” said Crozier. “Since there has been no sign of the creature, I believe we can stay here for some time in relative safety and rebuild our strength.”

“We must have fresh food, sir,” Goodsir insisted. “We cannot continue eating from the tins.”

At the table beside Crozier, Fitzjames looked as though he might slump forward and fall asleep were he not propped up on his elbows. John thought of Henry, now dozing in his tent. A proper rest would do them all good. But Goodsir was right; they needed food if they were to heal.

“My thought was to begin hunting parties first thing tomorrow,” Crozier said.

“Why not immediately?”

John raised his eyebrows. He had never heard Goodsir argue with anyone but Stanley. The doctor spoke respectfully, but he faced the captain head on.

Crozier spread his hands in front of him. “Dr. Goodsir, I am aware of the need. But the men are exhausted and I will not task them with putting in more miles until they have a night’s rest beneath them. One more tinned meal will make no difference. We begin tomorrow, no sooner. I ask your opinion, and that of Mr. Bridgens, on the wisdom of staying for an extended time.”

“We would, of course, move on from this place if we met with neither game nor rescue,” Fitzjames put in. He rubbed at the circles beneath his eyes, revealing a new bruise on the back of his hand. John frowned. Gloves would have covered it, but John didn’t recall seeing the mark before they’d abandoned ships. It was, therefore, unreported.

Goodsir exhaled stiffly. “Yes. Alright. So long as finding new food is made our top priority, rest would be beneficial for us all.”

“Agreed,” said John. “And it will give every man a chance to take stock of himself. They can come to us if anything’s changed.”

Fitzjames slid a bit lower in his chair.

“Thank you, doctors.” Crozier rose from the table. “Then it’s settled. We’ll stay, we’ll hunt, and we’ll mend.”

The landscape left the camp exposed from all sides, but the openness worked both ways. Their view was clear in every direction. Nothing could surprise them from without.

Within was another matter.

John Morfin lay still on the ground, blood pooling black beneath him. The scene did not seem real, somehow. Moments ago, John had lifted the man to his feet as he groaned.  He’d grabbed a rifle—how? How had he managed it, with two sets of hands standing by? Why had they let him?—and Goodsir had pleaded, and Crozier had coaxed him as though he were a skittish horse, and Fitzjames—yes, Morfin’s shot had doused Fitzjames’ lantern. He’d start there. As men came forward to bear Morfin’s body away, John moved to where Fitzjames stood with his arms stiff at his sides.

“Captain, are you alright?”

“Fine, Bridgens,” he said shakily. “Not a scratch, if you can believe it.”

“Show me.”

Fitzjames stepped into a pool of light and held out his hands. They were, indeed, unmarred save for the bruises. “It went right through the candle, nowhere near my hand. Morfin is—was—one of our best shots outside the Marines. If he’d wanted to wound me, he would have.” Fitzjames lowered his voice. “Was he one of the men afflicted with—”

John nodded. “One of the first.” He looked around for Goodsir, but the doctor had vanished. He hoped his own memory would serve. “He’s had signs for months, Goodsir said—headaches, weakness. I’ve been giving him mandragora, but it… well. It’s a tonic, not a cure.”

“I wonder if tonics are the best any of us can hope for,” Fitzjames muttered. “Only headaches and weakness, you say? No other indicators of something like this?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir.” In his mind’s eye, John saw the torch poised above Stanley’s head. At least Morfin hadn’t tried to take them with him. “If you ask me, it’s more something made him snap, though I can’t guess what.”

Fitzjames’ face remained neutral, but his jaw clenched. “Thank you, Mr. Bridgens. Comfort the men as you see fit, but not a word of the tins. Francis and I will… we’ll confer.”

“Yes, sir.”

The men not on duty had abandoned their fires and trickled back to shelter. John tried not to look at the dark splotch on the ground as he returned to his own tent. Henry was awake and waiting for him. They were mercifully alone, and John let Henry pull him to his close, one sack over them both. The steady thrum of Henry’s heart helped steady his own. He had not realized how shallow his breathing had become.

“He was my patient,” John whispered. “I was supposed to help him.”

Henry’s thumb stroked the back of John’s hand. “Was he ill?”

“Yes.” Not a word of the tins. “His head most of all, it seems.”

“Was he the only one?”

John swallowed. “No. But it’s not catching.”

“He said…” Henry hesitated. “He said something about cutting off heads. What was that?”

Finally, a question he could answer freely. “I don’t know where he got that. A nightmare would be my guess. His mind was confused.” John turned so they were chest to chest. “He wanted to die, Henry. He wouldn’t harm anyone. He made them shoot him. I should have kept hold of him.”

“John.” Henry cupped John’s face in his hands. “John. You did right. You helped him as best you could. I won’t have you thinking it wasn’t enough.”

“But still—”

“Are you calling me a liar, John Bridgens?”

Henry’s sheer indignation coaxed the ghost of a smile out of him. “Never.”

Henry pressed a kiss to John’s forehead. “Then be well.”

Be well, Henry said. Providence had other plans.

Hunting parties commenced with the dawn, as promised. The captains departed for the stone cairn to leave tidings of what had befallen in the months since Lieutenant Gore’s sledge party had visited. With fresh game sought for and the ice now at their backs, surely the worst had ended. Surely the blood on the rocks, baked brown by the sunlight, was the last of it.

Then they’d brought back Lieutenant Irving and Mr. Farr.

Farr’s stomach and chest were a gashed mess, and Irving… Caesar’s twenty-three wounds could not compare to this. Like a breach in nature for ruin’s wasteful entrance. He’d returned without his manhood or his fingers. The fingers were worse, somehow. It was Irving who’d sewn the little vest and slacks for Jacko; he’d passed them to John through Henry while they were docked in Greenland, to keep the little monkey warm as they passed the Arctic Circle. It was remarkable, deft work. If by some miracle he sat up now, he couldn’t do the same again.

When pressed for a motive, the lone witness—Mr. Hickey, Terror’s caulker’s mate—cited savagery. Lieutenant Hodgson confirmed that they’d found Irving’s telescope among the Netsilik’s belongings, suggesting theft. Goodsir had listened to all of this with his hands balled into fists behind his back.

“They wouldn’t do such a thing,” he’d hissed to John when they were alone with the bodies. “Not unprovoked, certainly, and maybe not even then.”

“But if not the Netsilik…” John’s voice trailed off as he gazed at Irving. Brutalized as he was, no bones were broken, and the width of the wounds did not match the broad multipurpose knives favored by these people. The smaller nicks on Irving’s body could only have been made by a finer blade. “What are you suggesting, Doctor?”

Goodsir glanced back to where Hickey sat with a captive audience at the mess tent. “I am suggesting only that it is highly unlikely for the Netsilik to act in this way.”

Lady Silence had confirmed as much when the captains returned to camp, and John was left the physician in absentia as Goodsir accompanied Lady Silence and Captain Crozier back to the scene of the murders. The noise of camp had fallen to a loaded whisper, tension smothered and stoked at once as the thick fog rolled in. It was in this atmosphere that Henry had come to see him.

Goodsir’s conviction and his own suspicions had kept John calm. Which is how, as Henry had shown him the mottled bruise pooling down his arm, John had been able to reassure him that they would not be attacked, and that his illness could quickly turn around. After all, Captain Fitzjames had taken ill a full month before, and he was active as ever. Short of breath today, yes, but he and Captain Crozier had sprinted the last half-mile back to the camp. That would tire anyone. Wouldn’t it?

If John were honest with himself, it was for this reason that he sought out the captain in his tent.

“Captain? Do you have a moment?”

A silence punctuated by rustling and muffled curses followed until, at least, a strained voice bid John enter.

John inhaled sharply as the tent flap closed behind him. Fitzjames sat on his wolf pelt, his slops, cap, and overclothes scattered on the ground around him. His cravat lay untied and askew across his shoulders, rising and falling with the rapid cadence of his breathing. “What’s the matter, Mr. Bridgens?”

What indeed? Lord, but the captain looked grey. “Men have come to me asking about the attack,” John said. “I know what I believe, but I wanted to check with you about what to tell them.”

“Tell them that Captain Crozier and I do not believe an attack on the camp forthcoming, and we will change course as needed once he gets back from surveying where the killings occurred. That should suffice, one hopes.” He fidgeted with the ends of his cravat, leaving dusty streaks on the black silk. “What do you believe, if I may ask?”

“I believe that history shows Englishmen more capable of butchery than we may want to admit. And I believe also that fear is the worst enemy we have.” We have too much fear, John, Henry had said, tugging down his sleeve to hide his illness. Present fears were more than horrible imaginings.

“Sage as always.” As Fitzjames pushed a clump of hair back from his face, red smeared across his forehead. He scowled and scrubbed his hand against his discarded coat. “Anything else?”

John let the question fly. “Are you alright, sir?”

A moment passed in silence as Fitzjames shut his eyes. “You know,” he said through gritted teeth, “I do wish doctors wouldn’t ask that. The options for reply render one either a liar or a malingerer, and I would be neither.” His eyes snapped open and he snatched up his cap. “Yes, I am fine because no, none of us are. Is that satisfactory?” He yanked the cap over his head almost violently, muttering in a singsong. “Yes, no; no, yes—”

“Ay,” John said absently before thinking better of it.

“What?”

“It’s ay, not yes. ‘Ay, no; no, ay.’ It has to match with the rest.”

A smile twitched at the edge of Fitzjames’ lips. “For I must nothing be. I’ll pretend the allusion was deliberate.” He uncurled his legs and stretched them in front of him. He still wore his boots, at least. “Forgive me, Bridgens.  It’s been… well, not quite what we had hoped our grand exodus would be, let’s say. Can you spare a moment?”

He and Goodsir had done their rounds before the hunting parties left. New maladies could abide delay. And it would be nice to settle back into old habits, if only for a moment. John returned Fitzjames’ smile. “Of course, sir.”

Fitzjames patted the fur next to him. “Then for God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. But not of King Lear.” With a grunt, he leaned over to his jacket and withdrew a book. “I kept going with Keats, per your recommendation, and I don’t understand why Lear, of all however-many options, was the play about which he chose to wax lyrical.”

“Not your favorite, is it?” John hoped a light conversation would calm him; Fitzjames was still breathing much too hard given the amount of time he’d been at rest. “Hen—Mr. Peglar gave up on it, so you’re in good company.” He did not add that Henry’s frustration had been, in part, because he could not decipher the text without help.

“Never you mind, Henry. It has dense language, is all.”

“Or maybe it’s me that’s dense.”

That had been years ago, back on the Gannett. John wondered how he would fare with it now.

“It’s been ages since I’ve read it, but I know the whole storm bit goes on much too long. I daresay Lear speaks more than Hamlet, but with even less to say,” said Fitzjames. “I couldn’t but take his daughters’ sides, quite frankly. Cordelia ought to have stayed in France and called herself blessed. Gloucester gave his children a fair shot, at least.”

John raised his eyebrows. “Did he? Banishing poor Edgar on hearsay?”

“Well, perhaps not Edgar,” Fitzjames amended. “But certainly Edmund. He raised Edmund.” He curled his lip in spite of his bleeding gums. “‘Edmund was loved.’ What a prat.  Indeed, Edmund the Base, you were loved, and you spat on it. We should all be so lucky.”

If it had, indeed, been ages since the captain had read the play, Gloucester’s bastard must have touched some sort of nerve. “Edmund was young, sir.”

“If that’s meant to excuse him, then you’ve a dim view of youth, Mr. Bridgens.”

“It doesn’t excuse, but even so, age didn’t hold up its end of the bargain,” John said. “And that’s the root of that tragedy, I think. My grey hair and I see it as a warning.”

“Hm.” Fitzjames picked at a stray thread poking from the book’s spine. “Well. Age is doing better than youth is, now. You and Mr. Blanky and Francis are carrying us, and you’re hale and hardy to boot.”

John’s throat tightened. He was hale indeed, as Henry decayed, and nothing about it was fair or right. How long until Henry’s hair began to bleed? How long until loosening teeth began to drop? “You never answered my question, captain, so I’ll try it a better way. How are you faring?”

Fitzjames thumbed the edges of the book’s pages, his eyes downcast. “Tired,” he said finally. “I am tired to my bones. And I look an absolute fright. I haven’t shaved since we left the ships and I can’t even grow anything worthwhile.” He gestured at the clothes around him. “I did try to fix it. That’s what all this is. My arms felt so stiff that I didn’t trust myself with the razor. I thought getting rid of this bulk would solve it, but…” He looked at John imploringly. “Do you have anything that would help? Some tonic other than the mandragora?”

“Dr. Goodsir has a few options for pain, but they all come with drowsiness—”

“No, no, I can’t do with more fatigue. I can abide the aching. I need something to keep me useful.”

John shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Ah.” Fitzjames’ mouth tightened. “Well, no matter. I’ll manage.”

John looked at the shaving kit lying open on the floor. Fitzjames had only made it partway through mixing up the lather. “I can give you a hand with shaving, sir, if you’d like. It’ll be easier to manage clean-shaven.”

“Would you?” Bare relief showed in Fitzjames’ face. “Only if you’ve the time.”

“I have the time,” John assured him. “And then I’ll help you with that cravat, for tradition’s sake.”

Fitzjames grinned, pulling the cravat from his shoulder and looping it around his hand. “Quite bold of me to assume a month ago that I could manage it alone.” He pushed himself to his feet, a hand braced against his chest, and resettled himself in the desk chair. “Set the kit on the desk. If we carried the damn thing all this way, it might as well get some use. On my word, it won’t travel an inch further.”

John chuckled as he retrieved the kit from the ground. “Mr. Peglar will be aghast to find out you were the writing desk culprit all along.”

“It was placed here entirely without my knowledge or say-so, I promise you. You know, Francis has one too. Tell Mr. Peglar they’re both his.”

John whipped the brush through the lather. “Two desks for one man? Now, that’s excess. A regular Louis of Versailles, our Captain Crozier.”

“Le Capitaine Soleil.” Fitzjames made a face as he removed his cap and placed it in his lap. “There must be a better pun there, but my tongue is failing me.”

“I think it works better in English. Collar down please, sir.”

Fitzjames obliged, revealing a collarbone far too pronounced. John began gingerly applying lather to his jaw. “The Sun Captain,” Fitzjames murmured. “Better. Sun Commander has the nicer ring to it, but lacks in rank.”

“That can be for yourself.”

“No, I’m no sun. Yet herein will I imitate it, or try my best.” Fitzjames let out a sigh. “I’m in your debt, Mr. Bridgens. I look abominable and Francis is so lovely.”

John paused. A flush of color rose in Fitzjames’ pallid face, reddening the tips of his ears.

Oh.

“What I meant,” Fitzjames said hastily, turning his head beneath the brush, “what I meant was—”

He winced as the motion scraped a sore too harshly against the bristles. John placed his other hand on Fitzjames’ shoulder to still him.

“It’s alright, sir. I know.”

“Don’t mention it. He doesn’t need to be—to be bothered, especially now. I don’t know what I was even—”

“It’s alright,” John repeated gently.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s alright.”

“Nothing, Bridgens.”

Fitzjames had begun to twist the cravat around his knuckles like a garotte. John held out his hand. “Let me get that out of your way, and then I’ll need you to be still for me please, sir. I’m out of practice.”

Fitzjames handed him the cravat and tilted his head back, his pulse visible in his neck. His eyes darted to every place John’s weren’t. John took his time whetting the razor. A year ago, had this come out, he would have counseled with historical examples. He would have advised the captain, in riddles and anecdotes and never in writing, how to conduct himself back on land, to have a life without suspicion if he chose. He would have sent Henry to make inquiries on Terror.

Of course, a year ago, it would not have been this man. And if it were, John would have reminded him that the thirty lashes meant for Mr. Hickey—a score and more beyond the two men guilty of kidnapping but not the added charge of “dirtiness”—spoke for themselves. Things had changed.  John remembered his exchange with Captain Crozier on their walk. He’d seen too much of himself in that.

You needn’t fear, John could say. He cares for you. Only ask him. Who can judge us up here?

But he could not risk being mistaken.

Instead, he stuck with what he knew.

“You know,” he said as he turned back to the chair, “Henry and I thought, when we joined up, that this would be a grand shared adventure. He’s dear to me, and I to him, and it’s been that way for years.”

Fitzjames’ nervous eyes settled back on John’s.

John held Fitzjames’ face still with his left hand, and with his right began to draw the razor across Fitzjames’ cheek.  “Commissions are funny things, and the timing got to keeping us apart more than we liked. We missed serving together, so we joined this expedition. You about broke our hearts when you assigned us to different ships, sir.”

Fitzjames’ eyebrows knit together.

“I mean no offense, Captain,” John told him. “You put us where we were most needed. And we couldn’t well have given you a practical reason not to. But it was a special type of vexation to see Terror behind us, and know Henry was right there less than a mile away, but not be able to cross that distance. Captain Crozier gave me fits when he’d come aboard in his old foul mood, because Henry would have eaten his own hat to have duty take him aboard Erebus.”

John wiped off the blade and continued. “When the ships became stuck, I felt very selfish, because the first thing I thought was, well, I at least I can walk to him now.  Now, in fairness, I thought we’d get a thaw. I wouldn’t wish this on us. But even as things got worse, and weeks turned to years, having him near made all the difference. It still does. With him, I could walk forever.”

“If I may be bold…” Fitzjames spoke out of the corner of his mouth, mindful of the razor, but did not finish his thought. John worked in quiet, leaving space for him to find the words. After some moments, Fitzjames finally asked, “How did he become dear to you?”

“Without me realizing.” John couldn’t but smile. “We met serving on the same ship. We enjoyed each other’s company, and we enjoyed books, and it came to a point where I couldn’t abide doing without either, but if I had to choose one, I’d choose him.”

“How did you know he would choose you?”

The first book John had lent Henry, before either of them knew where this would lead, had been a volume of Robert Burns. Henry stole it back without John knowing and recited to him one day when they were alone. “Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, and the rocks melt wi’ the sun; I will luve thee still, my dear, while the sands o’ life shall run—” and here, in place of the final stanza and it’s fare-thee-weel, Henry had pulled John close and kissed him—

“He gave me a poem,” John replied.

“So poetry does work on occasion. You’re fortunate, Mr. Bridgens.”

“In that way, yes.” John put the razor back on the desk. “There we are, sir.” John picked up a cloth and cleared the residue off Fitzjames’ face. The shave made Fitzjames look a bit more like his old self, and stronger by extension. “Less abominable by your standards, I hope.”

John handed Fitzjames the mirror so he could see himself. The captain stroked his chin approvingly. “Presentable, at any rate. Thank you for this, Mr. Bridgens. And for… the rest, too. I—”

“James!”

The tent flap flew open to reveal Lieutenant Le Vesconte, eyes wide and out of breath. “Little’s gone and opened the armory!”

John’s heart sank. The mirror dropped from Fitzjames' hand as he pushed himself to his feet, glass cracking on the shale. “On whose orders?”

“On nobody’s orders,” Le Vesconte said. “Unless you want half these men armed, you’ve got to quell this. Where the devil have you been?”

Fitzjames snatched up the cap and jammed it roughly onto his head. “Damn my eyes,” he hissed. “Damn it all.”

Chapter Text

Goodsir was right. Hickey had lied.

Irving’s gutted corpse lay on the table in the main infirmary tent, a formless lump beneath the tarp. Goodsir slung Irving’s pouch—laden with seal meat, as his stomach had been—over his shoulder.

Lady Silence, John realized, had gone without fresh fruit for as long as they had. Longer, maybe, given the face she’d made when Goodsir offered her lemon juice. And yet, she’d been in better health than any of them, her injury aside. Maybe seal meat had something in it that their beef and mutton did not. Maybe it could fix them, could fix Henry and the captain and the others who bled from their teeth.

Well, it was too late to know now. To ask for help after what they’d done would be the height of arrogance.

“Shall I come with you? To vouch?” John asked Goodsir.

“No. If someone’s taken the Peruvian, they make take more. Half of these are poison in the wrong dose, and some lend themselves to abuse.” Goodsir gestured at a small, nondescript vial. “The laudanum especially. You’ll never know you’ve had too much because you’ll simply drift off and not come back. That might be a mercy later. But it’s for us to give.”

“No second Morfins,” John said.

“Nor second Irvings.” Goodsir ground his teeth. “Hanging is too good. A child, Mr. Bridgens. A part of me wants the rope to take its time. Part of me wishes Lieutenant Hodgson were there right along with him, for being so quick to lift his rifle. If you’d seen…” His voice trailed off as he rubbed his face. “Forgive me. Another reason it’s better you stay here, Mr. Bridgens. A physician is meant to do no harm, and I can’t promise that now.”

Henry, too, was going to the trial. “I can ask for you to stay back with me,” John offered. “A second man might be a good idea anyhow, with how strange Mr. Collins has been acting since the afternoon.”

“I’m no doctor, and we’re all called.”

“Captain Fitzjames would let you stay, I’m sure.”

“Sure why?”

Fitzjames had made him swear no oaths, but the matter of their talk seemed… secret, somehow, even with direr problems at hand. It was not John’s tale to tell. “You were Mr. Hickey’s friend once,” he said instead.

“I think that’s why I should go,” said Henry. “To see it through. I don’t know—I don’t know how he’s come to this. But he was my friend.”

And so, as the fog rolled in and the camp cleared, John waited alone with Irving for the next two corpses.

--

He’d never encountered the creature himself. It had always been drawn towards Terror, never Erebus, and John’s station had never put him in harm’s way as Henry’s had. Henry and Goodsir had never spoken of its presence—only of its aftermath, of bodies rent asunder, of pounds of flesh taken and discarded like offal.

But when he heard the roar—part growl, part gale—there could be no doubt.

John moved on instinct alone. The fog smothered his sight, and the clamor of shouts and shots and groans assailed his ears. The shale shook with the creature’s heavy strides. John bolted between shelters when the vibrations quieted, guiding any living men he stumbled upon. He longed to call for Henry, but dared not risk drawing him out of safety. Once, as he ran, he glimpsed a flash of red peeking beneath a corpse’s slops. He diverted course with his heart in his throat, and felt a shameful wash of relief when he found a Marine’s coat and not a steward’s sweater.

The shale clattered to his right, and John recognized a lean, slouching shadow hobbling in the opposite direction.

“Captain?”

“Stay back!”

The creature’s cry sounded ahead. Fitzjames’ pace quickened towards it. Bridgens began to follow—

“Stay back and get down, damn you!”

Another roar underscored the order. John dove beneath an upended piece of furniture. The creature was close enough now for John to make out its bulk shifting through the fog like a landbound leviathan. Fitzjames dropped to his knees and moved no more. John pushed himself to disobey, hoping he could drag him back to shelter in time—

Then he saw the sparks.

They crackled from Fitzjames’ hand and erupted into radiance, shrieking eagle-like across the gloom until their vessel exploded against the creature’s side. The creature howled and charged, but a second rocket met it midway in a cloud of fire. It veered away. Its footfalls faded. Fitzjames dropped his spent match. He waited, as did John.

The quiet was broken by a delirious whoop.

“You shot it! You shot a monster with a rocket!”

The shout made John leap from his hiding spot. “Henry!”

“John!”

His aching knees protested as he sprinted towards his dear, who tore through the fog and smoke from up ahead. They collided in a tangle of limbs. John tangled his fingers in Henry’s hair and pulled him tightly against him while Henry kissed him on his jaw and cheek and any place he could land his lips as words tumbled out in a mad, giddy rush.

“You’re safe, we’re safe, thank God, I was so scared, but we’re safe and the captain—”

Henry’s voice died and he abruptly broke apart their embrace, turning towards the audience he’d forgotten they had. Fitzjames, shoulders heaving, knelt on the ground with his pile of Congreves barely more than an arm’s length away. “The captain shot a monster with a rocket,” he finished timidly.

Fitzjames regarded them with wide eyes and an open mouth that resolved itself into a smile. “Well, gunpowder worked so well before,” he said. “And rockets make for a much better story than cannon fire, don’t you think?”

“Saint George and the dragon for the modern era.” John put his arm back around an incredulous Henry. “You nearly gave me a fit back there, running towards it.”

Fitzjames’ smile stretched the lines in his cheeks. “It’s fortunate you didn’t know me in my twenties, Mr. Bridgens.”

“It was on us, you know.” Henry had regained his voice and pointed in the direction whence he’d come, where a cluster of other shadows were now moving cautiously. “Some of us were hiding beneath the sledge over there and it was practically on top of us when the first rocket hit it.”

“Was Francis with you?” Fitzjames asked. “Captain Crozier.”

His smile fell as Henry shook his head. “I haven’t seen him since the trial, sir.”

Just then, a shrill whistle pierced the air, followed by a welcome brogue.

“All able men, to me!”

Fitzjames let out a sigh and cast his eyes heavenward, mouthing what might have been thank you. “Well,” he said aloud, “to our work alive.”

The whistle sounded again. The three of them turned to follow it.

“Where were you, John?” Henry asked.

John gestured towards his hiding spot. “I ended under—oh, lord.” Now that he possessed a clearer head, he recognized his hiding place for the writing desk.

John stifled a snort. Henry and Fitzjames both burst into cackles.

“We owe someone an apology,” Henry said, wiping tears from his eyes.

Fitzjames thumped Henry’s back. “It’s true,” he wheezed, hand pressed against his chest. “How you get here isn’t as important as what you do.”

“To the desk,” John intoned somberly. If jesting amid the dead was deeply inappropriate, it was also deeply needed.

“To the desk!” they laughed, as the whistle trilled once more.   

Chapter Text

Survival’s heady rush quickly faded into dread. The remaining men huddled together like foundlings and slept in the center of camp. The tents—or what remained of them—could hide them no better than the fog, nor protect them any better from attack. If the creature returned, they would face it as one. If missing men returned, those in the camp would welcome them together—or close ranks as their actions demanded. Nobody had the stomach to determine who lay dead upon the ground and who was unaccounted for.

“We’ll tend to our dead tomorrow,” Captain Crozier decided. “For now, we’ll rest as best we can.”

The captains took the first watch alongside Mr. Blanky and Mr. Hartnell, the lone member of Henry’s onetime circle who hadn’t vanished into the fog. The rest of them gathered what sacks and furs they could find into a jumbled pile. Henry threw a blanket over John and nestled against him, pulling John close against his chest.

“Is that alright?” Henry whispered. His breath tickled John’s ear.

“If anyone marks us, I envy their eyesight,” John murmured. Yards ahead, Fitzjames’ shadow stooped towards Crozier’s. “I doubt anyone has the energy to mind now.”

“He must have run off. Cornelius and the others, I mean. Tom heard gunshots.”

“Yes. There’s a sledge missing as well.”

Goodsir, too, had vanished. John hoped that the creature had carried him off to wherever Lady Silence had gone. He doubted it, but he hoped.

“I hope they stay clear of us. I don’t know what they want. But I don’t want to have to fight. We’ve better shots with us, I think, but…”

“I know.” John found Henry’s hand beneath the blanket and interlaced their fingers.

“Are there stories like ours is turning out, John? Stories besides the Anabasis. It doesn’t have to be true. I keep thinking of Odysseus, but his men all die from vice or foolishness, every one of them, and I don’t—I don’t want us to be that.”

Sir John Franklin would have compared them to the Hebrews wandering out of Egypt, but the Hebrews hadn’t brought Egypt upon themselves.  “We’re in our own story now, I suppose,” said John. “Try and rest, dear one. The watch will wake us if trouble comes.”

“When, you mean.”

“When,” he amended. “But we’ll meet it then. For now, rest.”

In the morning, the survivors resumed their walk with lighter loads and heavier hearts than when they’d first begun. The writing desks, as Captain Fitzjames had supposed the week prior—lord, had it only been a week?—lay discarded, as did entire sledges’ worth of other possessions. Dread made them leave anything nonessential. When John abandoned all but ten books from the library, there was no protest.

The dead needed no provisions, so their belongings remained at the campsite as a slipshod memorial. Empty space within the sledges was set aside for the injured and the comatose. John could offer no explanation for that open-eyed somnolence, and he knew this would not be the last time he’d be of no use. Goodsir had always been quick to disclaim that he was a surgeon, not a doctor, but at least he was something of the sort. Now, all they had was John.

Once the dead were burned away, the living strapped into harness as they had before: John and Henry besides the captains, a lieutenant pacing nearby. They walked in silence save for the sledges grating along the ground, rattling the pebbles like bones.

“I can’t stand this,” Henry whispered to John after some time had passed “The emptiness, I mean. I don’t want to be in my own head right now. We need to get out of it or we’ll go mad.” Abruptly, he raised his head called out. “Captain?”

Crozier and Fitzjames both turned.

“Sorry. I meant Captain Fitzjames.”

“What is it, Mr. Peglar?”

“Tell us a story,” Henry implored. “You can’t be out of them yet.”

Fitzjames spoke over his shoulder. “Now that our entire company is in earshot, subjecting you to my droning on would be an act of grievous cruelty.”

“All due respect, sir, but I’d rather listen to you than the rocks.”

“You can’t refuse high praise like that, James,” said Crozier. “Lieutenant, come and spell him so he can spell the lot of us. We’re all in need of a laugh.”

Fitzjames looked ready to object, but Crozier had already called the group to halt. “So it’s laughter we’re after, is it? I’ll try my best.” With a grunt, he shrugged off his harness to Le Vesconte. “I can tell you… ah, of my time on the stage.”

Now this was a new one, even for John. “Shakespeare, sir?”

“Oh, no, much less refined than all that. But I was the lead.”

John raised his eyebrows. “What is this lead? A lover, or a tyrant?”

The traces of a smile played along Fitzjames’ mouth. “A lover, that conducts herself most ungallantly for love.”

Henry’s ha! echoed across the wastes, and he clamped his hand over his mouth. “Oh, excellent.”

Thus began the tale of Queen Fadladinida, Queen of Queerummania, and Henry got his wish. The somber mood lifted as Fitzjames interwove a summary of the ludicrous play with the equally ludicrous account of its performance.  Grimaces turned to smiles and smiles gave way to laughter—and none so vociferous as Captain Crozier, whose rapt profile ahead of John had split in the widest grin he’d seen on the man.

When Fitzjames concluded his tale with a breathless falsetto recitation of the play’s tawdry epilogue, there was muffled applause.

Fitzjames waved regally with his left hand, his right splayed daintily against his chest. “Since I’m nearly out of steam, I think it’s time we hear a story from our other captain. What do you say, men?”

The group of them hollered their agreement, John and Henry included. Crozier obligingly called another halt.  “I’ll be hard-pressed to follow that,” he said as Fitzjames took his harness. “I can’t believe you told us that sniper story more times than I can count but didn’t breathe a word of this one!”

Fitzjames fiddled awkwardly with the harness straps. “I… I didn’t think it seemed appropriate.”

“Ah.” Crozier’s face softened and he reached out help him with the buckles. “Well, I enjoyed it very much, James.”

Fitzjames’ ears were hidden by his cap, but John suspected they reddened as he smiled.  As they moved forward again and Crozier began to tell of his voyage to the opposite side of the globe, John caught Fitzjames’s eye.

“Is something amusing, Mr. Bridgens?”

“Just the tale, sir.”

One after another, men took turns sharing tales of happier days. Mr. Hartnell spoke of japes with his brother; Henry recounted the raucous night years ago that had ended with him flogged and clapped in irons. They continued until the aching in their backs bid them make camp.

“I see no point in keeping rank here,” Crozier said. “The infirmary and the kitchen will be at the center, along with the armory. Sleep two to a tent however you please. That includes us, I’m afraid, James.”

“Indeed. Well…” Fitzjames paused to cough into his sleeve.  “It would make sense to split each with a lieutenant, then. One on each end of camp. Dundy can pair with me, Edward with you.”

Crozier nodded. “As you say. To it, men. We’ll assign the watches once we’re settled.”

Harnesses dropped to the ground, and the walkers eagerly began unloading the sledges. Le Vesconte jovially punched Fitzjames in the arm. “Just like old times, eh?”

Fitzjames winced, rubbing his shoulder. “Minus the ill-advised pet.”

Henry clambered over the side of their sledge and handed a bundle down to Le Vesconte. “What sort of pet?”

“Ah, that will be my tale for tomorrow’s walk. Don’t spoil it, James!” He hoisted the bundle over his shoulders and headed off.

“I suppose I should assist Dundy, to keep tomorrow’s account from being too unflattering,” Fitzjames said as Henry tossed him a roll of blankets. “You’ve done a tremendous service, Mr. Peglar. We all needed a reminder of ourselves. Your idea’s done the trick.”

Henry beamed. “Glad to be of help, sir.”

“Set up the medical tent first, if you would. Your own should be nearby—which you must have understood already.” Fitzjames rubbed his face. “Forgive me; fatigue has rendered me redundant. Mr. Bridgens, tend the sick, then come find Francis or me once you’ve done your rounds.”

“Yes, sir,” John replied as Fitzjames shuffled off after Le Vesconte. John wondered whether the captain’s uneven gait was a limp, or a side effect of his unwieldy cargo.

Henry’s brow furrowed. “John, he said you.”

“Yes, it makes sense for the medical tent to go up first, seeing as I’m the one managing it.”

“But you, as in both of us, not just you yourself,” Henry said urgently. “He just—he knows we’re choosing the same one.”

Ah. A lifetime of relying on subtlety wouldn’t be so easily discarded. He reached up to stroke the back of Henry’s hand. “Yes, it seems so.”

“So do you mean—” Henry crouched down in the sledge and lowered his voice, which John opted not to tell him was far more conspicuous than continuing a normal conversation. “Do you mean that the captain knows? For certain?”

“He does.”

“Because of last night?”

John pursed his lips. “No,” he said carefully. “But I am sure he does not mind.”

Henry grinned. “Well, if that’s so, maybe this story we’re in has some cheer in it after all.”

The long December darkness had been a yearly torment, but John had never taken much notice of its obverse. The ships’ walls had stifled the summer’s ceaseless sunlight, and the crags of ice on the pack had shaded them. There was no shelter from them in the open. They rose with the sun whether they would or no, and every day grew a little longer.

Still, they kept their spirits as they walked. The stories sustained them. Le Vesconte began the second day regaling them with his exploits alongside Fitzjames aboard the Clio, giving special attention to the cheetah Fitzjames regretted bringing aboard. Crozier and Mr. Blanky chimed in with their own story of animals gone awry—reindeer, in their case.

“An entire herd of them, James,” Crozier had laughed. “Your cheetah twoscore over.”

“A deal gentler, I daresay,” Fitzjames replied.

“Gentler, perhaps, but a deal smellier too.”

In time, every man in the camp had offered at least one tale—including John, who chose the time he’d inadvertently convinced some wealthy Americans with no ear for accents that he was a gentleman scholar.

“You know, that’s rude of them,” said Henry. “Supposing that only a gentleman would know those things. Who do they think Mr. Shakespeare was?”

“Probably the Earl of Oxford,” Fitzjames quipped.

They couldn’t rely on the darkness to call them to halt, so John took to checking on the sick in the later hours of the day. Handling Fitzjames’s stubbornness had taught him a more subtle way to gage fatigue than asking outright. “Are you set for another hour?” he’d ask. If there was too much hesitation, or he noticed a man stumble more than seemed reasonable, he’d quietly advise Crozier to stop. He kept his own tabs on Henry and Fitzjames, or at least he tried. The two men shared a tendency to outdo themselves hauling and then try to deny it.

They were in their fifth day of marching when John had to deem a man unfit to walk. The ship’s boy was one of the earlier scurvy patients, and had been slashed in the leg during the creature’s attack. He’d already been excused from hauling because he’d struggled with his balanced. As he’d walked along, he’d paused, wavered on his feet, and clung fast to the side of a sledge. He burned with fever, and his legs, he said, didn’t want to bend.

“It’s his joints,” John explained to the captains. “The scurvy freezes them. His leg may be infected from the cut besides.”

“Will he be better tomorrow? After some rest?” Fitzjames asked.

“I’m not sure. Regardless, he can’t walk today.”

Crozier nodded. “Then we’ll carry him. Set him in one of the sledges and see that he’s comfortable.”

The extra weight didn’t make much difference, but John couldn’t help eyeing the other empty spaces between provisions and wondering what would happen if all of them were filled.

When they stopped for the night, Henry climbed up into the sledge to hand the officers their supplies as usual. As he moved to toss Fitzjames’s pack to Le Vesconte, the lieutenant held up his hand.

“Not tonight, Mr. Peglar.” He raked a hand through his hair, eyes fixed on the ground. “James, I’m terribly sorry to publicly denounce you like this, but you snore atrociously.”

“Do I?” Fitzjames said in surprise. John frowned.

“Atrociously,” Le Vesconte repeated. “And if I’m to get a half-decent night’s sleep on this journey, I’m afraid I must request change of accommodations. Am I granted it?”

Fitzjames looked rather like a schoolboy who had found himself with nowhere to sit. “I suppose so, though we’ll have to shuffle—”

“Nonsense,” Crozier interrupted. He took Fitzjames’s pack from Henry’s hands. “We’ll trade. You’ll be with me, Lieutenant Le Vesconte with Edward. Keep it simple.”

Le Vesconte tilted his head back and sighed with relief. “Thank you, captains.” Le Vesconte grunted as Henry threw his pack down a bit harder than was necessary, and departed with Lieutenant Little.

“Are you certain, Francis?” Fitzjames asked. “I don’t want to interrupt your rest.”

“As Jopson can attest, I sleep like the dead. Besides, we’re on separate watches half the night,” Crozier said. “I’ll start pitching the tent and Mr. Bridgens can give you his report. Mr. Peglar?”

Henry unearthed Crozier’s pack and presented it to him with almost gratuitous care. Crozier hefted both bags over his shoulder and strolled off in the opposite direction of Le Vesconte. Fitzjames watched him go, the corners of his mouth quirking upward in spite of themselves.  John felt a poke on his shoulder and turned to catch Henry’s eye. Henry exaggeratedly tilted his head from Fitzjames to Crozier and back again. In reply, John shrugged.

The unsubtle motion drew Fitzjames’s attention back to present company. “Well, Mr. Bridgens?”

John couldn’t resist. “That was very kind of him.”

“I mean the report of the sick.”

“I’m sick and I also report that it was kind of him,” Henry piped up.

“Christ,” Fitzjames sputtered. John swatted Henry in the shin.

“I’ll put a new dressing on the boy’s leg to see if that helps his fever,” John said quickly, saving the captain from his embarrassment. “And something to help him sleep, too. The dressing could get torn off if he tosses around in the night. Other than that, there are no changes in any of the men I’ve spoken with. How are you faring yourself, captain?”

“Same as ever,” Fitzjames replied, as he now did every day. “Let Francis and me know immediately if there are any changes. And whatever suspicions you have, handle discreetly.”

At this, Fitzjames shot a look towards Henry, who sobered. “Absolutely, sir.”

As soon as Fitzjames was out of earshot, Henry hopped down and whispered to John, “What was that about?”

“Henry, you heard him,” John said sternly. “Discretion.”

“Not that. Well, yes that, but also the lieutenant complaining. It isn’t right to turn a friend out like that. Imagine caring about snoring at a time like this. What, does he think he’s missing his beauty sleep?”

“I don’t know what to make of that,” said John. “Captain Fitzjames doesn’t snore, or he didn’t onboard ship. I hope he hasn’t caught something new. You haven’t yourself, have you, Henry?”

“The harness is making a sore mess of my back,” Henry replied, “but that’s to be expected, I think. It’s no worse than any other day, John.”

John found Henry’s hand and brushed his thumb against the knuckles. “That’s better news than it could be. Just remember to keep telling me.”

“Not much to hide given that we’re bunking together,” Henry said, linking his fingers with John’s. “Speaking of, I’ll take care of that. You go do your physician’s duty.”

As they entered their second week of marching, their pace began to slow. The shale stretched before them as endless as the ice before it. John didn’t dare ask the captains how far they had traveled; the only answer that mattered was not far enough. They found no trace of other life—no glimpse of the creature or Hickey’s band, thankfully, but no game either. The promised caribou were nowhere to be found, nor seal, nor even a hole in the ice along the shoreline fit to fish through. If God sent them a dove, John thought, they’d devour it.

The tins were all they had, and so they ate. John wondered where fate had taken Goodsir. He’d be beside himself if he knew they were still eating poison. But better a slow poison than certain starvation.

“Besides, every bit we eat makes our load easier to carry,” Henry said, trying to cheer him up.

“And the exquisite slop-like texture is a friend to those of us who must chew with caution,” Fitzjames added, provoking a snort from Henry and a wince from John.

The stories they told on the walk took a turn for the morbid on the eighth day, with each man sharing a tale of ghastly injury or grievous illness in gruesome detail. Mr. Blanky relished retelling his close encounter with the creature. Fitzjames eschewed the usual sniper story to describe his bout with malaria concurrent with a twice-broken leg. Crozier, with affirmation from Jopson, confessed with the truth of December’s long illness. He described the hallucinations and retching with good humor, casting it as a tribulation more for Jopson than himself. Still, John had seen his share of men try and fail to give up on drink. It was no small thing in the best of times. He remembered how harried Jopson had been when they’d crossed paths, how ashen and worn Crozier had looked when he’d reappeared at Carnivale. Fitzjames had groused during his solo command that he hoped Crozier felt miserable enough to learn something. He’d gotten his wish.

“You’re stronger than any of us, Francis,” Fitzjames told him quietly when he’d finished.

Crozier waved it off. “I only did what had to be done.”

“We’d be lost out here without you.”

“You were nearly lost with me, and it’s only due to you and Thomas and Edward that we weren’t.” Crozier offered a smile. “The Admiralty are a broken clock, right twice a day. One of those times was in appointing three captains.”

“And the other?”

“…Hm. Perhaps it’s less a broken clock and more a broken piano. Only one key in tune out of seventy-some.”

When they stopped for the day, John set about pitching the infirmary tent with Henry, as always. This time, Crozier joined them.

“Mr. Bridgens, when you have a moment, I’d like your assistance in setting the camp’s perimeter.”

“Sir?” Setting the perimeter was a job for marines or lieutenants. Defensive strategy was Greek to him. Across the half-pitched tent, Henry raised his eyebrows.

“We can conference as we do so,” Crozier said, inclining his head.

Ah. “Are you alright here, Henry?”

“I think so,” Henry replied. “I can start taking inventory of the supplies, if you like.”

“Thank you.” With a nod at Crozier, John followed him out.

“Where do we stand on supplies?” Crozier asked as John fell into step beside him.

“Well enough,” John answered. “We’re running low on the mandragora—that’s what Goodsir prescribed the most often for those afflicted with the lead, but it’s a tonic for other things too. I’ll try and figure out a substitute. And a few small things have gone missing—a roll of bandages, needle and thread, a bit of the ointment you’d use for dressing wounds. Nothing serious though, sir.”

“Good.” Crozier led them beyond the last of the sledges. “And the men?”

“They’re tired. I’m worried some of the wounded have developed infections. Nothing new from the lead, though, thankfully.”

“And the scurvy?”

“No new cases, but I fear it’s only a matter of time,” said John. “I had hoped we’d find game by now.”

Crozier sighed. “So had I, Mr. Bridgens.” He looked over his shoulder at the camp as they put more paces between themselves and it. “Do you know anything else of James?” he asked quietly.

“His walk is uneven, but he swears he’s fine.” The reply same as ever had become something of a joke, and John had kept himself from pressing back.  “Why do you ask?”

Crozier came to a halt. “Lieutenant Le Vesconte was mistaken,” he said, mouth pressed into a tense line. “James doesn’t snore, Mr. Bridgens. He cries out in his sleep.”

“Cries out?” John repeated. “As in a nightmare?”

“I don’t know for certain. But he doesn’t toss or turn when he does so.” Crozier picked anxiously at the raveled seams of his mismatched gloves “He knots himself up and whimpers like a child.”

John had never heard Fitzjames do anything of the sort—not listening outside Fitzjames’ door after Carnivale, not even in the days after Sir John’s death when he’d find the captain teary-eyed. Why now? “Does anything bring it on, or mend it?”

“He stills if I touch his hand,” Crozier said softly, with all the weight of a confession. He swallowed and continued, “Though if that’s a comfort to him or his own waking up, I can’t say. It comes anytime he falls asleep, it seems.”

“Have you told him of this?”

Crozier shook his head. “I don’t want him embarrassed. Knowing him, he’d keep himself awake to save his pride.” His eyes locked on John’s, bright and pleading. “Don’t tell him I spoke with you. You kept his confidence aboard ship. I ask that you keep mine now. But if you could find some way to look into it…”

Tell him yourself, John longed to say, and if it’s fear that ails him, he’ll settle, but instead he only nodded. “Put me on watch with him tonight, sir. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bridgens.” Crozier pressed his hand. “I’m already in your debt.”

Chapter Text

The midnight bell roused John from sleep. As he shrugged out of the blankets and into his coat, Henry propped himself up on an elbow.

“This is because of something Captain Crozier said, isn’t it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re never middle watch. It keeps you from the infirmary too long, and you’re the one who most needs to be rested during the day,” Henry answered. “So it doesn’t make sense for this to be regular duty. It’s personal.”

“Well deduced,” John said, fumbling with a loose button. “And unfortunate, because if you’ve puzzled it out, then Captain Fitzjames will too.”

Henry shrugged. “There’s no great secret, is it? The captain’s worried. You’re worried too, if you agreed. That’s that. I don’t see why you’re trying to trick him.”

“It’s not a trick,” John protested. “It’s just the best way to get the truth from him.”

“I’m too tired for that to make sense.” Henry pulled the blankets against himself and settled back to his pillow. John kissed him on the top of his head and left the tent.

Captain Fitzjames was waiting at the eastern edge of camp, two rifles slung over his right shoulder. “Mr. Bridgens!” He waved to John in greeting. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

John composed himself. “Captain Crozier’s idea, sir. You’ll have to ask him.”

Fitzjames arched an eyebrow. “I sense that one or both of you is up to something, but I’ll take it nonetheless. I haven’t had the privilege of monopolizing your time since we resumed our walk. Are you well?”

“Well enough,” John said. “And you?”

“Same as ever.”

He’d expected as much, but he’d figured he may as well try.

Fitzjames handed John one of the rifles. John hoisted it clumsily over his shoulder as the captain politely attempted to hide his amusement. “Would you like assistance?”

“We haven’t all gone through gunnery school, sir,” John said drily.

Fitzjames laughed. “Forgive me. I’d half expected you to harbor a secret talent for marksmanship.”

“I know how to load the thing and which way to point it,” John said. “Beyond that… there’s good reason I never aspired to be a Royal Marine.”

“Just as well. You don’t have the temperament for that lot. What about Mr. Peglar?”

Fitzjames asked it as casually as one would ask about work or a wife. John found himself grinning at that. “He might have tried for it when he was younger—he made gunner for a season on the Gannett. But he’d have been hard-pressed to make it with his record.”

“I’ll say. Twenty-four lashes!” Fitzjames exclaimed. “For drunkenness and mutinous conduct, no less. I still can’t quite believe that story. Either he was a different man or that captain brought something else out of him. I got up to my share of nonsense, as you well know, but I was never lashed for it.”

“You were more careful to keep your nonsense within the rules, it seems to me,” John replied. “And with all due respect, sir, it’s harder to be lashed as an officer.”

“True enough.” Fitzjames tugged at his rifle’s shoulder strap, resettling it in the center of his chest. “I remember looking over his papers and seeing him rated downward twice over when you were on the Gannett. What happened?”

“The first time was a mistake.” John hadn’t been there to witness that one, but he’d heard all about it afterwards: how Henry, who’d always struggled with orienting himself and keeping his place but had hidden it well, had hollered the wrong direction to the men under him as they’d scrambled to tack the sails. “He hadn’t meant it, but the error could have capsized us, so they took him off the foretop. The second time…”

Henry insisted to this day that it was his own fault—the priggish officer who’d spied them leaving John’s bunk together hadn’t seen anything he could prove, and if Henry had kept his mouth shut and his temper quelled, it might have all been fine. And indeed, it was Henry who was punished with a demotion, for there could be no denying the fury Henry had hurled back at the officer’s snide remarks. But John was the elder, John knew better, John should have been more responsible—

“The second time?” Fitzjames prompted.

It was Henry’s story to tell in full, for Henry had borne the brunt of it. “It should have been both of us,” John murmured.

“…I see.”

An uneasy silence fell. Fitzjames stared out to the horizon where the too-early sun would start to rise before middle watch had ended. John cursed internally. Consequence was not what the captain needed to hear of, not now, when the entire point of this watch was for John to coax some comfort out of him. Why hadn’t he lied? He could have claimed not to know, and that would be that.

But then, he had protested to Henry that this wasn’t a trick. And what right did he have to expect honesty he wasn’t willing to give himself?

“It didn’t end up mattering to his chances, when all was said and done,” John told him. “You know yourself that he made it back to the foretop soon enough. He did some good in Africa, serving on the Wanderer. He even shipped out to China, same as you.”

Fitzjames’s face twitched. “Without the same souvenir to show for it, I trust.”

“No wounds, but he spent the weeks lonely and sick from dysentery, according to his letters. I was worried sick,” said John. “You and he should compare stories. If you can recite that epic of yours from memory, he’d hear it.”

Fitzjames snorted. “Small fondness you have for him, wishing on him a fate worse than dysentery. As I recall, I was inebriated with spirits or medicine for half of that thing’s composition. That’s my explanation for those rhymes, at any rate, and I’m sticking to it.” As John chuckled, Fitzjames produced a thin, faded volume from the pocket of his slops. “Speaking of poetry…”

The blue cloth binding was tattered but still legible, and John recognized The Complete Works of Keats even in the starlight. “You kept it?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, he’s not much to carry—an effect of one’s career ending in one’s 20s, I suppose. I’ve finished him in his entirety.”

“Just now?”

“Three days ago.” Fitzjames’ brow wrinkled. “Three? Yes, that sounds right. It’s hard to tell anymore.”

“So you came ‘round to him after all.”

“Yes, in the end.” Fitzjames held out the book ceremoniously to John. “I’m indebted to you for the recommendation, Mr. Bridgens.”

John tucked it into his own pocket. “I’m happy to have someone new to talk about him with. Did you come away with a favorite?"

“Not ‘Hyperion’!” Fitzjames declared so vehemently that John laughed. “Good lord. I’m in no place to criticize, granted, given my 10,000 words of doggerel, but in my defense, I wasn’t trying too hard. Keats puts a frightful amount of effort into those longer poems, and the result is off-putting, It’s almost distressing. He has such talent, but it’s buried under… that.”

John quirked an eyebrow. “It’s just a vase?”

“Precisely!”

“The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is one of my favorites, sir,” John confessed. He waved his hand when Fitzjames moved to apologize. “Don’t you worry! It’s not for everyone, I know that--Henry agreed with you. Though it’s the one about reading Homer that I like best. I’m stuck reading him in English too, but the muse sings anyway.”

“I think I prefer the poems like that one,” Fitzjames said. “The little ones he hadn’t meant for anyone to see. Especially the one about the star. It’s sparse compared to the others. Melancholy, yes, but the melancholy is easy to find. He hasn’t dressed it up. Did he know he was ill when he wrote it?”

“Yes. For a long while, I believe.”

“What about the lady it addresses?”

“She must have known. He gave the poem to her.”

“How did she take it?” Fitzjames asked.

John knew works, not writers. “I don’t know. But they were engaged, the two of them, when he died.”

Fitzjames frowned. “Engaged?”

“I believe so, sir.”

The frown deepened. “Odd. I’d envisioned him languishing in some grove, praying for the gods of antiquity to make him a tree to pine forever, pun fully intended.” He dug the toe of his boot into the shale. “Knowing there was an engagement sours it somewhat. It’s unkind.”

“I don’t think I understand, sir.”

Fitzjames kicked at the rocks and sent them clattering away. “Well, what business did he have engaging himself to someone when he knew he was dying? That’s hardly chivalrous.” He stepped towards the horizon, concealing his face from John’s view. “The gallant choice would be to step graciously aside so his love can seek her lasting happiness.”

John followed. “Perhaps she sought it with him.”

“But it can’t  last with him!” Fitzjames’s voice rose as his pace quickened. “He’s condemning her to heartbreak, attaching himself to her that way. He’s fully aware that he’s not long for this world. He has scads of poems ruminating on it.” He swept his foot at another rock. “What gives him the right?”

“He did not force her, sir,” John said firmly. “He gave her a choice. Her heart was fated to break either way. All Keats did was let her choose the manner of its breaking.”

“That’s no choice at all. No man of honor would do such a thing.”

John placed a hand on Fitzjames’s hunched shoulder, turning him back to face him. His red-rimmed eyes glistened in the cold light. “Sir… Has your illness worsened?”

“All of us are worsened!” Fitzjames jerked away from John’s touch. “We’re hundreds of miles from rescue with no game in sight. The only way any of us has a chance is if we keep together, and I will not endanger that. We need Francis as he is. I will not risk breaking him, Mr. Bridgens. And I am selfish enough that I…” He swallowed, his breathing choked and shallow. “I won’t risk having him turn away. He’s become too dear, and for the rest of my days I will wonder how, but he has, and I can’t have him despise me now. And he might. He has before. I can’t go back to that. I can’t bear it.”

He’d twisted his shaking hands in the rifle strap. John carefully pulled away the leather cutting into Fitzjames’s gloved fingers. He took the rifle from the captain’s shoulder and set it gently on the ground beside them. “If he would despise you, then your esteem is misplaced.”

“He knows too much.”

“Then let him know this, too.”

Fitzjames wrapped his arms across himself, shrinking inward. “It’s more than that.”

Crozier had asked for secrecy, but John had not sworn it, technically. And besides, Fitzjames was his captain first. “I am on watch with you tonight, sir, because Captain Crozier asked me to check in on you.”

There was a sharp intake of breath. “Why—”

“He’s worried you’d taken a turn, but didn’t think you’d tell him yourself,” John continued, “and I see he was right about that. You cry out, he says. While you’re sleeping.”

Fitzjames was quiet for a long while, hands buried in the crooks of his elbows. Once again, John laid his hand on Fitzjames’ shoulder. This time, Fitzjames did not pull away. “I ask again, on his behalf, sir: are you well?”

 “I’m embarrassed,” he said. “No wonder Dundy fled to another tent.”

“You settle when he touches your hand,” John added softly.

Fitzjames raised his head in surprise, uncurling himself. “How do you know that?”

“He told me so himself.”

Fitzjames’s face softened. “I thought that was a dream."

John picked up Fitzjames’s rifle from the ground and handed it back to him. “Keats gave his love a choice, as Henry once gave me a choice. I don’t know Captain Crozier’s mind, but he deserves the same.”

“This isn’t the time, Bridgens.”

“I know, sir. But it’s the time we have.”

Fitzjames said nothing about their conversation when they broke camp the following morning. He bade John good morning with the same cheer as always, and set John to checking on the sick. The men unfit to walk now numbered three: the boy from before, whose cut had turned septic, and two who’d grown too frail from scurvy. A few others who could walk ought not to haul, but save for Mr. Blanky—whose wooden leg couldn’t be easily replaced—they were kept in rotation out of necessity.

Henry stuffed his pillow beneath the harness to provide more padding between the straps and his sore back. “Hopefully this does the trick,” he said. “If not, at least it makes me feel taller.”

Henry had awoken when John returned from watch, and to his credit, he had not pried. He’d simply rolled over to make space for John beneath the blankets, and saved his questioning looks the next morning for when Fitzjames wasn’t looking. Crozier had mercifully done the same. When they made camp that night, John would need to give a report, and there was precious little that he was within his rights to tell. At least he had the next few hours to decide upon a response.

They had begun to run out of personal stories worth sharing on the walk, so they turned instead to fiction. Henry dug into John’s pack and unearthed the salvaged books for the men eager to share but unable to speak by rote. Willing walkers read out what they chose, with the books changing hands as new men took their turns in harness. Mr. Blanky read an action-packed section of Ivanhoe with zeal. Lieutenant Le Vesconte kept them in stitches with “The Miller’s Tale.” John read from the first book of the Odyssey, willing that they’d share Odysseus’s fate rather than his soldiers’.

Henry volunteered to spell John when he had done, beaming so broadly that he could only be up to mischief, and withdrew the familiar leather-bound volume of Burns. He wickedly exclaimed his way through “How Can I Keep My Maidenhead,” taking full advantage of John’s inability to swat him while in harness by trotting just out of arm’s reach.  Mercifully, a combination of contrition and fatigue eventually made him temper both his speech and his gait, and he flipped to the more subdued “To A Mouse.” After making a heartfelt apology to the tim’rous beastie, Henry continued to their old bleak acquaintances, the wintry west and its evening squalls. By the time he’d finished “It Was A’For Our Rightful King,” bitterness had crept into his voice, and a dour mood had descended upon the party.

“Mr. Peglar,” Le Vesconte spoke up, “we’ve misery enough to spare. Cheer us up a bit, would you?”

“Sorry. A recitation, then.” Henry closed the book and looked over at John, eyebrows raised in question. John realized what he must intend. He nodded his consent, a blush starting to creep across his cheeks as Henry began:

“O, my Luve is like the red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June—”

“That’s true enough. Your face!” Fitzjames said under his breath, and John forgot himself and hissed “Hush!”

The words came surer than they had the first time Henry had recited them years ago, His pronunciation was perfect, his inflection thoughtful. If his voice cracked from wear, it also rang with confidence. John pushed aside Henry’s pauses to cough or catch his breath and focuses, instead, on how far Henry had come, and how his dark eyes shone as he whirled in step with John for the final lines.

“And fare-thee-weel, my only luve!
And fare-thee-weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were eight hundred mile!”

Some of the men hooted in appreciation of the substitution. No one marked, however, that Henry had taken John’s hand and kissed his fingertips—but no, that wasn’t right, was it? They must mark it, all attention on Henry as it was. They simply didn’t find it worth commenting.

A change, then, from the Gannett’s prying lieutenant.

“I’ll go next,” Fitzjames said suddenly. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Peglar. Please.”

On the other side of him, Crozier made to call for a halt, but Fitzjames cut him off. “No, no, thank you, Francis. I can’t do it if I’m free to walk away.” He glanced at John. “It-it won’t take much time.” He looped both his hands through his harness and took a deep breath.

“Bright star, would I were as steadfast as thou art,
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution ‘round Earth’s human shores—”

He sighed. “Moving waters. Imagine those. Imagine being clean, or—Or gazing on the new self-fallen mask/ Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—No!”   He spat the word so forcefully it set him coughing. Crozier reached over to thump him on the back. Fitzjames cleared his throat and shut his eyes.

“—Yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s sturdy breast—”

 John’s heart flipped in his chest. That wasn’t the word. Henry felt John startle and gripped his sleeve.

“To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest—"

Fitzjames’s voice stayed level, but tears had slipped past his closed eyelids and rolled down his cheeks.

“Still, still, to hear his tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.”

The poem gave way to stillness. There was no sound save for their boots upon the earth. John looked at Crozier. The captain’s face was unreadable. Please, say something, John pleaded. Please, say the right thing.

“James,” Crozier said softly.

“I will not sleep, Francis,” Fitzjames whispered. “I would dream, but do not ask me to sleep.”

“James,” Crozier said again. “Look at me.”

Crozier reached out his hand, palm up like a courtier. Fitzjames opened his eyes. Shyly, almost daintily, he placed his hand on Crozier’s palm. Neither broke their step.

“It was beautifully spoken,” Crozier told him, “but I’d have you closer than a star.”

John felt Henry tugging on his arm like an excited child and Fitzjames, for once, was at a loss for words.

“Mr. Peglar, you remain our of harness yet,” Crozier said, not dropping his hand. “Read us something else lovely, would you?”

Grinning from ear to ear, Henry re-opened the book and belted:

“Ca’ the yowes to the knows,
Ca’ them where the heather grows,
Ca’ them where the burnie rowes,
My bonie dearie!”

The remarkable thing after all that, after those small but monumental gestures, was how little things appeared to change.

They had finished the day as they began it, breaking up the monotony of the walk with songs and stories. John ended up back on the Odyssey—“You’ve the perfect voice for epics,” Fitzjames had said—and he read until he grew too weary to continue. They’d made camp, as always. John did his rounds and made his report to the captains, as always. Neither he nor Fitzjames were put on watch that night. All was as it had been.

And yet…

Henry amplified his little touches outside their tent. A thumb brushed against John’s knuckles became a deliberate stroke. Sitting so their elbows knocked at supper became Henry leaning flush against John’s side, his arm encircling John’s waist. Henry expressed disappointment later that the captains did not do the same, but John reasoned that they did, after all, have authority to maintain. But they, too, found ways to touch—clasps on the shoulder, a hand resting on the other’s back.

And both were quicker to smile.

“It almost seems absurd now, the mountain I made of it,” Fitzjames confided the morning after, as he helped John pack up the infirmary. “But it might have gone so differently. There are so many other ways it could have turned out, and each is worse than the last.”

“I know. Believe me, sir, I know,” John said.  “So now you get to be grateful that it didn’t.”

Fitzjames smiled. “Always.”

The walking itself grew harder. Many of the men lacked the breath for more than one turn or two at reading. The handful of frail men in the sledges seemed to double in weight as exhaustion took its toll. To keep them going, John was appointed designated reader and absolved from hauling so long as he kept speaking. John protested, but Crozier made it an order.

“This makes you better able to spot an injury or tend the sick. And we need a voice, Mr. Bridgens.”

The very next morning, John awoke with the too-early sun as a Terror AB staggered stiffly to the infirmary with joints too pained and rigid to haul. John rejoined the rotation of necessity. He’d only made it to Scylla and Charybdis.

Henry and Fitzjames tried their best to fill the quiet. Unable to read in harness and out of prose by rote, they sang. Raspy, off-key, sometimes with botched lyrics, but it was something.

“Way haul away, we’ll haul away together,
Way haul away, we’ll haul away, Joe.”

 Fitzjames now had a blot of red in his left eye. Once they’d assembled the infirmary tent that night, John called him in to examine it. He came without a fuss.

“This is just a precaution. It’s fine,” he said, as John peered at it through the magnifier.

“Is it bothering you?”

“It aches, I suppose, and my vision’s fuzzy—”

“That’s not fine, sir.”

“It is, because I went blind in one eye when I had malaria once, and it didn’t start like this."

“You’re feverish, too.”

“If you’re going to order every man with a fever to rest, we’ll never move again. I’m also bleeding from my hair and teeth, if you hadn’t noticed, and I’m in good company on that count as well.”

John put down the magnifier and looked at him sternly. “Captain Crozier would want you well.”

Fitzjames stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. “Why do you think I agreed to bother you?”

“Good. That means there’s two of us to hound you now.”

John was forced to admit on his rounds, however, that Fitzjames wasn’t entirely wrong. Over half the men were feverish. Some were spitting out teeth. All had deep circles beneath their eyes. John passed around compresses, cotton, and coca wine freely. He could do precious little else.

He returned to his own tent to find Henry sitting hunched on their blanket with his overshirt in his lap. “I’m sorry, John, but you’ve one last patient, I think.”

He hadn’t seen Henry’s body since they’d left the ships—it had been too cold for it on the pack, and on land, they’d wanted nothing more than to sleep. John had not realized how thin Henry had become while bundled up in his borrowed jumper. His collarbone protruded sharply from his chest. His arms had grown wiry, all muscle and softness gone. Most of all, John saw the bruises—red and mottled, spreading across Henry’s arms and stomach like ink stains.

John pushed the worry from his voice. “Is it your bruises?

“No. It’s my back. It’s not muscles, it’s…”

Henry turned where he sat. John hissed in through his teeth. Henry’s back was a maze of red welts, following the tracks left by Henry’s lashing scars. Some had scabbed. Others oozed a mix of blood and pus, blossoming into sores of their own.

“Is there blood?” Henry asked. “It felt sticky. Some of it came off on the shirt.”

“Stay there,” John told him. “Don’t move, and don’t touch it. I can dress it.”

John let the panic take him as soon as he’d left the sleeping tent. He tore into the infirmary, rifling through supply chests with little heed for organization. What would work? The dry bandages weren’t practical, and it wasn’t the bleeding the worried him; it was the infection. Besides, their supply of dry bandages was lower than it ought to be as it is. Someone must be taking them, but a man treating himself with something other than poison was a small worry now. Instead, John, grabbed gauze, alcohol and salt. That might work. That had to work.

John debated doing his work in the infirmary, where he could let his worry show, but he couldn’t leave Henry alone. John returned to his own tent to make the plaster where Henry could see. He deposited the ingredients on the ground and began shredding up the gauze.

“What’s wrong with me?” Henry asked. “Is it the scurvy, or something else?”

“I don’t know,” John admitted, “With any luck, it’s just the harness scraping. I’m hoping this gets them closed while we’re stopped.”

“What is it?”

“Gauze, salt, and alcohol. The last two are good for cleaning.” He did not tell Henry that he was making up the mixture as he went. He deposited the shreds into a bowl along with spoonfuls of salt and stirred in the alcohol until it made a plaster that stuck to the spatula. “Get on your belly for me.”

Henry gasped. “Now? With everyone still awake?”

“Henry!” John nearly dropped the spatula.

Henry complied, casting a wicked glance over his shoulder. “How can I keep my maidenhead…”

“Dear one, if you won’t be serious, you’ll have to treat yourself.”

“Alright, alright.” Henry pillowed his head on his folded arms and lay still. “But you have to stop fretting. If I’m still well enough to be a cad, that means you can stop fretting.”

“As you say.” John coated the spatula with the plaster. “This will sting.”

“That’s alright. It just means it’s working.”

Still, Henry winced when the first daubs of plaster went over an open sore. John stroked the unmarred spaces on Henry’s skin to steady him. No, he should not haul tomorrow, not if this is what the harness did. Once Henry was treated and had promised not to fidget, John made his way across camp to the captains’ tent.

“Sirs?”

Crozier answered, barely audible. “Enter.”

Inside, Crozier lay on his bedroll, wide awake in his shirtsleeves. Fitzjames, still in his slops, was nestled in the crook of Crozier’s shoulder, sound asleep. Crozier raised a finger to his lips and spoke in the same quiet voice. “Apologies for the impropriety, Mr. Bridgens. I dare not risk waking him. He sleeps seldom enough as it is. Come in closer, please.”

John came and sat down beside them. “How is he?”

“He cries out less now, though he’s burning up. How he can keep those layers on is beyond me.”

“Many of our men are feverish now, sir.”

“That’s what James said when I badgered him about seeing you. What else have you found?”

John folded his hands in his lap. “Mr. Peglar, sir. He’s got welts across his back and shoulder—bad ones. Some are scabbed, some bleed. I thought they might be from the harness, so I’d like him to have a reprieve from hauling tomorrow. Please.”

Crozier pursed his lips. “Are the wounds dire of their own accord?”

“No, sir. I’ve dressed them with a plaster that I hope will close them.”

“Good. Is he healthy otherwise?”

“As much as he can be.”

Crozier sighed heavily and shook his head. “I can give him more shifts with scouts, but I cannot take another man out of hauling rotation with the number of sick we have.” He looked at John, sorrow in his eyes. “I am sorry, truly. I know we need rest. Every day I consider stopping, but we must find game. Dr. Goodsir was right. It’s only a matter of time before another man snaps like Mr. Morfin. We must press on.”

John lowered his head. “I understand, sir.”

“I believe fresh meat will chase off the scurvy as well. The Netsilik don’t suffer from it. If we’re able to eat what they eat, it may cure us.” Crozier gently brushed Fitzjames’s hair back from his face. “That’s what I tell myself, anyway. There’s no rhyme or reason to this affliction. I’m old. My liver’s half-pickled. Why him and not me?”

“I ask myself the same thing,” John murmured. “I could be a grandfather. Goodness, my own grandda had fewer grey hairs than I do. But the sickness chose Henry.”

“How do you bear it?” Crozier asked.

John smiled ruefully. “He makes it easy to pretend he’s fine. He vexes me on purpose—but it helps, because the other men don’t. It means I can pretend their symptoms have nothing to do with him. That makes me a poor physician, I suppose, but I’m not meant to be one anyway.”

Crozier tutted. “You and Goodsir are a pair. If you know healing, you’re a doctor, and that’s that. I’ll draft you up a commission like I did Jopson if I have to.”

“If I manage to heal anyone, sir, I’ll take you up on that. And until then…” John shrugged helplessly. “We do our best to save them, sir. And we make them take care of themselves if we have to carry them kicking and screaming to do it.”

Fitzjames stirred, mumbling gibberish as he slung his arm over Crozier’s middle. John got to his feet. “Best get back before we wake him.”

“I truly am sorry I can’t let Henry rest.”

“It’s alright, sir. He’d likely argue his way back into rotation anyway as long as he was able to walk.”

Crozier placed his hand on Fitzjames’s arm. “That sounds familiar. Goodnight, Mr. Bridgens.  Let’s both pray tomorrow brings better tidings.”

By the time the sun hit its peak the following day, the group marched in silence. Henry and Fitzjames had begun a round, but their voices hadn’t been strong enough to maintain it long; Fitzjames dropped out after the first hour, and Henry followed not long after. Henry took John’s hand every time he wheezed or stumbled, reassuring him that he was fine. Too many men were stumbling now, with no way to relieve them. Perhaps, they could consolidate the supplies into viewer boats? Perhaps the scouts would turn up game at last and they could finally, finally rest—

A shout sounded from the sledge ahead.

Captain Fitzjames had collapsed.

Chapter Text

John flung off his harness and pushed his way in next to where Lieutenant Le Vesconte stood frozen. Fitzjames had shoved himself upright with Crozier stooped beside him.

“I’m sorry,” Fitzjames was saying as he clutched at Crozier’s outstretched arm. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s the heat. I can’t stand—”

Fitzjames tottered upright and tugged feebly at his harness. Le Vesconte regained his wits and joined Crozier in helping Fitzjames extricate himself. The strap out of the way, Fitzjames opened his slops. “No no no,” he mumbled under his breath. He let go of Crozier’s arm and made to cover his left side. “Yet here’s a spot, and that won’t do.”

His waistcoat fell open to reveal a ruddy blotch upon his once-white shirt. The spot radiated outward, edges frayed and spattered, like a—

Like a gunshot.

Crozier breathed in sharply. Fitzjames turned away and hurriedly drew his arms across his stomach. He stiffened as if to stand, and immediately toppled. Le Vesconte knelt to brace him as John caught him around his ribs. The cotton of Fitzjames’s shirt was hardened with half-dried blood. Sticky, as Henry’s shirt had been, and as the bandages had been this morning when John had chosen to leave them in place to staunch what he’d stupidly dismissed as sores. But they were wounds, years-old and long scarred over but bleeding anew, and they all knew well where Fitzjames had gotten those wounds, those mouthed wounds which valiantly he took, and it had been miracle enough that he’d survived them the first time—

“Clear out a boat! Make room!”

Crozier’s shouts halted John’s runaway thoughts and drove them back to now. Regret served nothing. All that remained was to do what he could. John held Fitzjames fast as Crozier climbed into their sledge to clear it. Fitzjames raised his head at Crozier’s voice.

“Dundy, help me up,” he rasped. He pushed against Le Vesconte’s arm.

“He wants up,” Le Vesconte repeated dumbly.

“Don’t let him,” John ordered.

“No, no, let me.” Fitzjames pushed again. Le Vesconte’s arm dropped, and John pulled Fitzjames back against his chest to keep him from falling over. Fitzjames fought against his grasp. “Bridgens, you will let me. I can stand now. Let me go. Let me go.”

Desperation made up for weakness, and John struggled to keep Fitzjames in place. Le Vesconte had stepped away, arms stiff at his sides. “Lieutenant, help me hold him!”

“But—but he wants to stand,” Le Vesconte said, his voice shaking. “He’s fine, surely. You can’t be that sick, can you, old boy?”

“I can’t!” Fitzjames’s boots kicked at the shale as he twisted in John’s arms. “I won’t be Ross. I won’t be a burden. I can stand.” His head whipped back and cracked against John’s nose. The jolt of pain made John loosen his grip, and Fitzjames tumbled forward.

“Francis? Francis, look, please come back, I—"

As he raised himself to his knees, his eyes rolled back into his head. John caught him as he fell.

Boots thudded on the ground, and Crozier was at John’s elbow. “What happened?”

John prodded beneath Fitzjames’s jaw for a pulse before he answered. “Fainted, sir. And that may be a good thing, because I’ll need to see how bad it is before we move him.”

“What do you require?” Crozier’s voice was taut as a bowstring.

“A blanket to start.”

“Here, John.” Henry had followed Crozier from the sledge, a sack bundled in his arms. “I thought you might need it to wrap him in.”

“Thank you, dear one. Lay it out. Captain, help me shift him.”

John pulled Fitzjames out of his slops as Crozier took some of his weight upon his shoulders. John and Crozier set him down together on Henry’s blanket. John’s calloused fingers unfastened the buttons on Fitzjames’s shirt as carefully as he could.

The stench hit them first—like carrion mingled with the iron bite of blood. John peeled the shirt aside and found a layer of bandages, soaked through and clumsily bound. He cut through them with his pocketknife and stripped them away.

“Christ, James,” Crozier hissed.

The old bullet wounds wept like stigmata. Pus and blood together dribbled from rotting flesh. A mottled rash had spread across jutting ribs. A crucifix poorly painted.

“Henry, I need a roll of bandages and alcohol for the wounds.” The wounds, not his wounds. Not the captain’s wounds. It was easier to think of the man before him as a set of maladies to be treated. He understood something of Dr. Stanley’s coldness now. “Do you remember where they’re kept?”

“Yes. Anything else?”

“Coca wine for the pain if he wakes.”

“A shirt,” Crozier said suddenly. “He can’t wear that one again. Take one from my pack.”

Henry nodded and dashed off.

“I’ll go inform the men,” Le Vesconte offered, and vanished without waiting for reply.

Crozier rested his hand delicately on Fitzjames’s breastbone, as if to reassure himself that the captain still breathed. John discarded the soiled bandages. When had he first noticed supplies missing? Days ago, at least. The bleeding had gone on for days. He’d sung as he decayed.

“Can you help him, Mr. Bridgens?” Crozier asked quietly.

John swallowed. “I can try and close up his wounds with the same thing I used on Henry. Some camphor, maybe, for the pain. Hartshorn may help him sweat out his fever.”

“Will that be enough?”

He couldn’t bear to meet Crozier’s eyes. “Please don’t make me answer that, sir.”

Henry returned with the requested supplies. John blocked out the souls around him—Crozier holding Fitzjames’s hand, Henry hovering with his own set of bloody bandages beneath his red jumper—and set to work. First, clean the wounds with alcohol, and ignore as best he could when Fitzjames groaned through his unconsciousness. Second, dress them properly, which necessitated stripping away his shirt and not acknowledging how frail he had become, and how mortified he would be to have that frailty on display. Third, cover him again, which John left to Crozier as he and Henry propped Fitzjames up and held the new bandages in place while Crozier guided the captain’s arms one at a time through sleeves that were too wide and too short. Last, move him.

“Get him to the boat before he wakes. We can’t risk him trying walk again.” John looked at Crozier. “Captain, if you can set him down, we’ll bring him to you. Henry, with me.”

Crozier climbed up into the sledge. Henry helped John hoist Fitzjames into his arms. Fitzjames’s long limbs made him unwieldy, but he weighed next to nothing. He could as well be stuffed with straw—a Pieta with a ragdoll Christ. As John passed Fitzjames’s listless form over the side of the boat into Crozier’s waiting arms, he wondered how it had been for Mary. What had her son weighed, a dried-out husk hanging all day in the springtime sun? At least he could pass Fitzjames to loving hands. No murderers casting lots for his garments.

Though of course, Christ had been fortunate enough to come back.  John was Thetis more than Mary: his charge yet living, but driven himself to ruin.

“Is there anything else to be done for now?” Crozier asked.

John shook his head. “When he wakes, I’ll administer the coca wine. If I could haul at this sledge—”

“Granted,” Crozer said swiftly. He jumped down from the boat, but continued to fuss with the blankets he’d propped up behind Fitzjames’s head. “I need to find Little and Le Vesconte and come up with some reconfiguration for hauling.” Crozier draped Fitzjames’s slops over him and gently tucked the sides around him like a blanket.  “Will you stay with him until I return?”

“Of course, sir.”

Once Crozier had walked out of earshot, Henry whispered, “It’s bad, isn’t it.”

“Yes.”

“Were… are mine like that?”

John found Henry’s hand and squeezed it tight. “Not as bad. You did right in telling me.”

“What if—” Henry began, but was cut off by Fitzjames tossing where he lay. Henry and John both reached out to steady him. Fitzjames’s eyes fluttered open, the red stark around his pupil.

“Where’s Francis? What happened?”

“He’s with the other officers. You fainted. We’ve placed you in one of the boats.”

“Well, help me back out. The men are loaded down enough as it is.”

He began to sit up. John gently but firmly held him down. “You need to stay put, sir.”

“I’ll not let myself be dead weight,” Fitzjames protested.

“We’ll not let you be dead weight either, sir, which is why you need to listen and be alive weight,” Henry retorted.

Fitzjames sniffed, wincing at the abrupt movement. “Well answered.”

“You also need to take this.” John held up the bottle of coca wine. Fitzjames squinted at the label and made a face. “The drowsiness is a blessing in this case,” John continued, not allowing Fitzjames to interject. “It will make the ride go more quickly and the extra rest will help you right yourself until we make camp.”

Fitzjames looked down at his chest, scratching at the bulk of the new bandages. “There’s nothing of myself to right.”

John thought about saying that he’d gotten the wounds to stop bleeding, or that the worst would end once his fever broke, but he couldn’t bring himself to lie. If the wounds closed, the infection would persist. If the infection cleared, there was still the scurvy beneath it all. Fitzjames wasn’t a fool.

“Then indulge Captain Crozier, sir,” John said, “and seize some more time.”

He handed over the bottle, and Fitzjames drank.

The coca wine had the desired effect. Fitzjames fell into a fitful sleep, and they resumed their walk. John and Henry monitored him as best they could from their harnesses. His breathing came far too rapidly for a man at rest, but it was, at least, consistent. They made it another couple of hours in uneasy silence. Then the drug wore off, and Fitzjames began to scream.

The cries still rang like tocsins inside John’s head as he stretched the canvas over the tent frame. They had begun as a whimper and swelled to a guttural wail that pulsed in time to the jolting of the sledge and chilled John to his marrow. After months and miles of stoicism, Fitzjames had made no effort to stifle himself. Crozier had shouted out the order to camp without hesitation, and left the task of organizing to the lieutenants while he stayed by Fitzjames’s side. John and Henry had set about the old routine of setting up the infirmary with pell-mell urgency. John’s mind knew there was no sense in rushing; they were well past the point where minutes meant anything. His gut, however, bid him hurry, and his fingers fumbled at their task.

“Does this look square?” Henry held the canvas taut at the tent’s opposite end. John had forbidden him from lifting any crates. Whatever John couldn’t lift by himself could wait for extra hands or be unpacked piecemeal. Henry had pursed his lips and nodded.

“Looks fine enough to me.”  John marked Henry wincing as he raised his arms above his head to lash the canvas to the frame. “Be easy, Henry. Mind your hurts.”

“I’m trying,” Henry said tersely, “but it all hurts, so let me be.”

John flinched, his watch with the captain echoing back.

“Are you worsened, sir?”

“All of us are worsened!”

And he had let it happen.

“I’m sorry, John. That wasn’t kind.”

“It wasn’t wrong, either. You don’t need me fretting along with everything else.”

Henry finished knotting the cord and came to stand beside him. “You’re frightened.”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t know that. I’m meant to be comforting. It’s the least I can do, but—” By heaven, I’ll hate him everlastingly that bids me be of comfort anymore! “—I’m doing a sorry job of it.”

Henry took John’s hand in both of his. “I’m frightened, too. It’s alright if we both are. That way I know I can believe you.”

John closed his eyes for a moment, shutting out the bruises, and letting himself feel only the familiar pressure of Henry’s fingertips.

“The tent’s all done. I can set up a bed and then move over some of the lighter things,” Henry continued. “You can go back and check with Captain Fitzjames.”

John squeezed Henry’s hand, and leaned in to gently kiss his lips. “Thank you, dear one. You are too good.”

He returned to the boat where he had left the captains. Fitzjames was quiet now, but his eyes were open and fixed on Crozier, whose hand rested on Fitzjames’s chest. Crozier said something that made him laugh, bleeding gums bared to the sky. John held back, loath to intrude, but Crozier spotted him and waved him over.

“Is everything settled, Mr. Bridgens?”

“Just about, sir. Mr. Peglar’s taken on the last bit.” John addressed Fitzjames. “We’re ready to move you now, Captain. One of us will pass you down for the other to carry.”

“Given our statures, I feel Mr. Bridgens is the better one to do the carrying, lest your toes be dragging on the ground the whole way,” Crozier said.

Fitzjames put on a pitiable expression. “Sorry I’m not more compact.”

“Nonsense, James. One of us has to fill out a greatcoat properly. Keep still, now. I’m coming up beside you.”

As Crozier climbed into the boat, Fitzjames turned his face towards the camp. “How far is it? The tent.”

John considered. “Twenty paces, perhaps.”

“Then I’ll walk it myself.”

John and Crozier exchanged a look.

“Not alone,” Fitzjames clarified. “I do have some awareness of my limits. You’d both need to help me. I’ll lean on you as much as you please.”

“I don’t know if that would be wise, sir—” John began.

“Most likely not, but I’d rather be spared the reenactment of Lear and Cordelia. I’ve always found that scene maudlin, and we’d both be terribly miscast.” But for the crimson backdrop to the wry glint in Fitzjames’s eye, he may have been quipping as he dressed for supper.

“Is it possible, Mr. Bridgens?” Crozier asked.

“It all hurts, so let me be.”

He was so far gone already. What more harm could come?

“We’ll need to be careful of his wounds,” John answered. Fitzjames flashed him a bloody smile in thanks. “Captain Crozier, heft him so his wounded side is towards me. Sir, you’ll need to make yourself as stiff as you can manage.”

Crozier slid his arms beneath Fitzjames’s back and knees, and did not lift so much as roll him into John’s arms. Fitzjames winced at the impact, but kept his lips stubbornly shut. John stooped low enough for Fitzjames’s boots to reach the ground. Fitzjames slid himself upright, his right hand shakily bracing itself on the gunwhale, his left hand holding a fistful of John’s collar. When Crozier vaulted down to join them, Fitzjames locked his arm about Crozier’s neck so unsteadily that he nearly overbalanced himself and John both.

Crozier anchored himself. “Are you sure you can manage, James?”

Fitzjames resettled his grip to John’s forearm, balancing his weight between the two older men as if they were crutches. “I’m determined to.”

Together, the three made their way across the shale. Fitzjames lurched forward on rigid legs, half-stooped like a stick puppet with his eyes fixed on the tent ahead. Every other footfall was punctuated with a gasp smothered in the back of his throat, which John deigned not to mention. He must know. They both must know, leaning cheek to cheek. Crozier straightened as Fitzjames listed towards him, shouldering as much of his weight as he could.  They’d gone from Pieta back to Calvary.

By the time they reached the infirmary threshold, beads of sweat stood out on Fitzjames’s brow. Henry heard them and held the door flap open.

“Told you I could do it. Best walker in the service,” Fitzjames wheezed, and stumbled onto the blankets Henry had laid out.

Crozier sat down on the ground beside Fitzjames and helped him roll onto his back. “The next time I’m trapped in a room with John Barrow, I’ll second your self-endorsement.” He passed him his canteen. “Here, drink something.”

As Fitzjames drank, Henry retrieved a basin from the far corner. It held a roll of bandages and a collection of glass bottles. “I went ahead and got everything I remember you using on me,” Henry explained. “Is that all? I can bring things in batches.”

“That’s all we need for now. You’ve done wonderfully,” John said with a smile. Henry responded with a proud grin. “Help me mix up the new batch, if you could. I’ll redress your wounds once Captain Fitzjames is taken care of.”

“May I?” Crozier asked, almost timidly. “The more of us who’ve had practice with this, the better.”

John recognized the need to feel useful. “Certainly, sir.”

With Henry and Crozier’s help, John shredded the gauze into fibers. Three sets of hands made light work, and John soon had enough for two batches.

“How much alcohol do you need?” Crozier asked as he passed John the bottle.

“Enough to saturate the cloth.” John unscrewed the cap and poured liberally. “In truth, sir, there’s no formula for this.”

Fitzjames grunted from his blankets. “So Mr. Peglar and I are at the forefront of medical innovation.”

“He’s right!” Henry said. “You’ll have to name it after me, then, if it works.”

“And you may use my name if it’s bilge water,” offered Fitzjames, eliciting a laugh from Henry and a reproachful look from Crozier.

Treating Fitzjames was far easier with him awake and cooperating. With help, he sat upright and was able to pull his right arm out of its sleeve. When Fitzjames hissed in pain trying to raise his left arm, he did not object when Crozier took over and eased the shirt off for him. The dressings John had applied earlier had held and, while damp, they at least hadn’t bled through.

“That does look a bit nicer than what I’d been managing,” Fitzjames commented.

“I should think so. Remember this next time you doubt your own skill, Mr. Bridgens,” Crozier said. “What next?”

“No sense cutting through them if they can be reused.” John said. “Arms up, so I can unwind them. Can you do that, captain?”

“Not for long, I’m afraid.”

“That’s alright. Captain Crozier, Henry, if you could.”

Crozier’s hands cupped beneath Fitzjames’s left elbow and wrist as if he were helping him down a staircase. Henry simply hitched up his knees and flung Fitzjames’s uninjured arm atop them. John unbound the dressing on his chest first, loosing the knot and letting the bandage flop down to Fitzjames’s lap. The innermost layer was splotched with brown and had stuck to the wound. John gingerly peeled the bandage back.

Fitzjames grimaced. “Just rip the thing off.”

“No, sir. It’ll take your skin with it,” John said. “Bear with me.”

“Bear with you? Where?” Henry joked, causing Fitzjames to snicker long enough for John to remove the bandage in full.

The hole in Fitzjames’s side was no better than it had been, but it at the very least didn’t seem worse. That was something. His body was drenched with sweat, and burned with fever still. John procured a cloth and dabbed him clean. “I’d like to wait a bit before covering them back up. I think some air will do them good,” John decided. He stood and retrieved the bowl of plaster. “Sorry for jostling you, sir, but you’ll need to lie down again for this. We’ll have you up again when it’s time for the new bandages.”

“I am the grand old Duke of York,” Fitzjames mumbled as Henry and Crozier eased him to his back.

Henry snorted. “You know,” Henry explained in response to Crozier and John’s blank expressions. “When he is up, he is up, and when he is down, he is down.”

“Precisely. Thank you, Mr. Peglar. Someone appreciates my wit.”

Crozier groaned. “Not your best pun, I’m afraid, James.”

John knelt at Fitzjames’s side and applied the first bit of plaster to his chest. Fitzjames exaggerated his grimace into an expression of keen indignation. “Francis, are you saying I’m not de-pun-dable?”

“Forgive me,” Crozier said. “That was puncalled-for.”

“Quite right. I’ll not have you pun-tificating to me while I’m convalescing.”

“I’ll try to be more punctilious.”

John and Henry exchanged a smile over the captains’ heads.

“Captain Crozier?”

The door flap rustled. Lieutenant Le Vesconte took half a step inside the tent and stopped. He stared at Fitzjames—or no, not at him, but at his half-covered wounds. John frowned and continued to work.

“Lieutenant?” Crozier prompted.

Le Vesconte cleared his throat. “We’re waiting on you for the command meeting, sir.”

Fitzjames tried to raise his head. “Are you coming here? Or shall I—”

“No,” Le Vesconte cut him off. His eyes darted back to where John pressed the last bit of dripping plaster over the hole in Fitzjames’s chest. “No, I thought you might stay here. To rest.”

“I agree,” Crozier said. He smoothed back Fitzjames’s hair as he rose to his feet. “Consider it a small repayment of all the times you had to run a meeting without me. Let Mr. Bridgens finish tending you, and I’ll brief you when we’re through.”

Fitzjames winked his unmarred eye. “Pun-derful.”

Crozier followed Le Vesconte out of the tent. Henry stood as well. “I can start carrying in the other things.”

“That’d be a great help. But light loads only,” John cautioned. “No crates of glass.”

“I’ll dig out the things you dole out the most. Bandages, vinegar, coca wine… what’s the thing called that’s stronger than coca wine? Peruvian?”

“No, that’s all out. Laudanum, perhaps. Bring droppers so nobody has reason to drink it by the gulp.”

“I’ll get the things you mentioned to the captain earlier too. The hartshorn and camphor?”

“Exactly. Bless you, dear one.” John tugged Henry’s hand to his lips. “Hurry back. When I’m through with the captain, it’ll be your turn to get fixed up.”

“Yes, do hurry,” Fitzjames added. “Misery loves company, as they say.”

Once Henry had gone, John propped Fitzjames’s injured arm upon his leg and unwound the dressing. The arm had gone more putrid than the chest had—perhaps from having two openings so close together—and the  tendrils of infection stood stark against his mottled skin, snaking scarlet over Fitzjames’s shoulder towards his heart. This time, when John first applied the plaster, Fitzjames cried out.

“Do you remember,” he said through a half-clenched jaw, “how I used to complain that visiting Terror’s wardroom weas torture? Providence is calling my bluff. This is the first command meeting I’ve missed.”

“With any luck, they’ll be brief.” John would need to check in with Lieutenant Jopson on his rounds, and Le Vesconte and Mr. Blanky might merit a look too, with their old amputation scars. Neither had the scurvy yet, and both had been treated by proper doctors those months ago, but who knew what walking like this did to sutured legs and feet? “There can’t be much to talk about unless Lieutenant Little sighted something.”

“Do you think we’ll move or stay?”

“I imagine we’ll do whatever Captain Crozier thinks is safest for us all.”

“Move, then.”

“Perhaps.”

John did not envy Crozier the decision. Staying put with no game was certain death. Moving would exhaust the able-bodied and worsen the sick. If they moved, Henry would need to haul again, and for longer stretches now that Fitzjames out of the rotation. John covered the remainder of Fitzjames’s bullet wounds, his fingertips pitting the fragile skin around them despite his care. As he crossed Fitzjames’s arm gently over his chest, mummy-like, he prayed he would not find Henry’s scars the same.

“Finished, sir. Take care not to move it while it dries.”

Fitzjames had closed his eyes. He did not respond. John watched until he saw Fitzjames’s ribs rise and fall. Good; rest would help. John made to stand.

“Are they still gone?” Fitzjames asked suddenly. “Just us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can I tell you something, John?”

It was the first time Fitzjames had ever used his Christian name. John’s throat tightened. He resettled himself on the ground, touching Fitzjames’s elbow to confirm his presence. “Yes, of course.”

Fitzjames was quiet for a long while. When at last he opened his eyes, tears trickled over his temples.

“It hurts,” he choked out. “All of me.  Whenever I move, it’s like knives, like nails, stabbing at my insides. Even now, just talking, my jaw—it’s as if someone’s stuck me full of pins. I can’t walk tomorrow. I can’t even ride, because lying there is too much with the jostling. I’m useless. My knees still feel shattered from walking from the boat.”

Surely they had a medicine for this. Surely there was something. “Henry should be back any moment now. Once he’s here I can give you—”

“No,” Fitzjames hissed. “I will not sleep. I’ll sleep soon enough. I’ll not do so a moment before.”

“You may—” surprise us yet, John started to say on reflex, but smothered it before it finished leaving his mouth. The matter of mending was out of the captain’s hands now. Indeed, it had never been in them. It may have been in John’s, once. Had he been more vigilant, had he done his due diligence in seeking out the truth beyond what Fitzjames presented, had he insisted those weeks ago that Fitzjames take the lion’s share of the seal meat as befit his rank with no man else the wiser—Howl, howl, howl, howl! I know when one is dead and when one lives. He might have saved him; now he was gone forever.

“You must not tell Francis,” Fitzjames ordered, his voice shaking. “Please. Nothing of what I’ve just said.”

John shook his head. “You had me keep that secret once already, and he found it out then, too. There’s no sense hiding anything now. He surely suspects already.” If John was honest with himself, he suspected it now of Henry.

“He may guess. He will not hear it from me. I told you, John, I will not break him. I…” He gulped air like a man drowning. “O, bright star, would I were steadfast!”

John had seen the captain weep once before, in the privacy of his cabin after Sir John was killed. That day, John had silently poured him cups of chamomile tea to replenish him, and replaced his handkerchief when it became too soiled. He had no fine, clean handkerchief today, but he had the bedraggled scarf he wore around his neck, and it was still soft if nothing else. He wiped Fitzjames’s cheeks, and gave him sips from Crozier’s canteen when he’d stilled enough to take them.

“You’re not a star, sir, you’re a man,” John told him softly. “And we’ll love you as one, long as we can.”

He offered Fitzjames another drink of water. Fitzjames swallowed, straining with effort. He met John’s eyes. “John, when—”

Fitzjames’s words were cut off by shouts from outside the tent.

“You son of a bitch!”

John’s stomach twisted. “Henry.” He hesitated. If Henry was in danger, he should go, but he couldn’t just leave—

“Go to him,” Fitzjames said. “I’ll be here.”

John emerged to see Henry, red-faced with anger, advancing on Le Vesconte outside the command tent. John hurried to him, remembering the Gannett, remembering what had happened the last time Henry had lost his temper at an officer. Henry shoved Le Vesconte backwards. John wrapped his arms around his middle and pulled him back, bracing himself for retaliation from the lieutenant. Le Vesconte, however, merely backed away once he regained his footing.

“Dear one, what is this?”

“He’s a coward and a traitor!” Henry snarled. He spat at Le Vesconte’s boots.

“Henry, please, calm down.”

“Not to worry, Mr. Bridgens. He has permission to speak his mind.” Crozier watched the scene coolly from the command tent’s entrance, his voice savagely level. “Proceed, Mr. Peglar.”

John let Henry go, but kept his grip on Henry’s jumper to keep him rushing forward again. Henry pointed at Le Vesconte with a stiff and shaking arm. “He asked to abandon us, John!”

“Not abandon,” Le Vesconte insisted, meeting John’s eyes and avoiding Henry’s. “Only go ahead to survey, that we might make progress—”

“Make progress without the sick!” Henry interrupted. “Without me, without Lieutenant Jopson, without Captain Fitzjames! You’d leave us to better your own odds!”

So that was the reason for Henry’s long absence; he’d eavesdropped. The hardness in Crozier’s stare and the guilt in Le Vesconte’s supported his retelling. John’s fingers curled into fists, nails digging into his palms through the jumper’s threadbare wool. “Why?”

“Lieutenant Little made the motion,” Le Vesconte said, dodging the question.

“Lieutenant Little agrees with whoever he spoke to last if you can make it sound like duty,” Henry scoffed. “This was your doing, and you know why you did it. What I don’t see is how.”

“I-in leadership, difficult choices must be made—”

“He’s your friend!” Henry cried, his voice rising. “He’s your friend, and you’d leave him like a broken crate!”

The confrontation had attracted a growing audience, and John recalled just how close they still were to the infirmary. “Henry.”

“It’s not that I don’t care!” Le Vesconte protested. “But one must… one must be pragmatic, and—”

“Why not butcher him, then?” Henry snapped. “Lighten the load and increase your rations all in one go.”

“Henry!” John tugged him back. “Captain Fitzjames can hear you.”

“Good! He can know the truth, then!”

“That’s enough, Mr. Peglar.” Crozier’s face had blanched.  He addressed the gathered crowd. “I have given my judgment on this matter. Whether we continue or stay, we will do it as one. There will be no more discussion. As you were.” As the other men dispersed, Crozier looked at Henry and Le Vesconte. “That includes you two. Mr. Peglar, if memory serves, you should be bringing supplies to the infirmary. Lieutenant, it’s your turn with the scouts.

Henry, now chastened, hurried away without a word. “Damn my eyes,” Crozier muttered. “God willing, he didn’t hear all.”

As John turned to accompany Crozier, Le Vesconte called out to him.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bridgens. I know it sounds monstrous. It’s just…” Le Vesconte ducked his head and shuffled from foot to foot. “You must understand. I can’t see him like that. I can’t bear watch him waste away.”

A proper doctor would reassure him A proper doctor, knowing the illogical horrors of death, would take pity on this young man who couldn’t stand look the specter in the face. But John was not a proper doctor. He was aweary of the world, and his scarf was still damp from drying Fitzjames’s eyes. “Nor can I, sir.”

“He would want us to go on, you know.”

“Yes, Lieutenant. I’m sure he would,” John said coldly. “And more’s the pity.”

The captains were already in conversation when John returned to the infirmary. Crozier knelt beside Fitzjames, Fitzjames’s cheek cradled against his palm. John entered as unobtrusively as he could.

“Dundy’s not wrong, Francis,” Fitzjames was saying. “If you split off, leave me and the others who can’t walk—”

“James.”

“Leave the brunt of the heavier supplies here as well, arm us so we can defend them—”

“Absolutely not.”

“It would let me be useful.”

“James.” Anger crept into Crozier’s voice. He let go of Fitzjames’s face and gripped his hand as if to swear a pact. “You listen to me. You are worth more than your usefulness. If we move on in the morning, I’ll carry you myself until you don’t need it anymore.”

“There’s no point, Francis.”

“You’re the point, damn you. Why don’t you see that?” Crozier cast a pleading look over his shoulder at John.

Because he can’t, John realized. Crozier could say Fitzjames mattered with all the sincerity his soul could offer, and the captain would not hear it. “I don’t see why you’re trying to trick him,” Henry had said once, and John had protested, but that’s exactly what it was. Even now, he had to be tricked into preservation. John chose his tack with care.

“What about Henry, sir?”

Fitzjames jumped; he evidently hadn’t noticed John come in. “What about him?”

“Henry has scurvy, same as you, sir,” John said. “Would you have us leave him?”

“Of course not,” Fitzjames replied, appalled. “That’s completely different.”

“How?” John demanded. “His back’s opened up, just like your own wounds have.”

“He can still walk.”

“Only for now.” The words were bitter hemlock, but they must be swallowed. John resolved not to choke on them. “He’ll collapse one day, sir. When he does, I intend to carry him. And unless you can look me in the eye and tell me that I ought to leave him behind, you’ll let us carry you, too.”

Crozier kissed Fitzjames’s fingertips. “You’re worth more than your usefulness, James,” he repeated. “Let us care for you.”

“Alright.” Fitzjames’s eyes glistened, but they did not spill over; some stubbornness remained. His fingers tightened around Crozier’s. “Alright, Francis.”

The corner of a crate poked through the doorway, followed by a timid Henry. “Here are the things I meant to fetch earlier.” He set the box down against the far side of the tent and grabbed onto John’s hand the second his own was free. John wondered exactly how much he had heard. “I’m here now. What should I do?”

“You may find a blanket and make yourself comfortable,” John replied. He forced as much cheer into his voice as he could manage. “It’s your turn for new bandages.”

Henry’s back had worsened; there could be no mistake about it. Last night’s plaster had absorbed enough of the blood that John could salvage the topmost layer of bandages, but the skin between the patchwork of scars shone red and raw. Peeling up the old plaster was like picking off a scab, and John gave up on trying to replace it when Henry began to bleed. He was grateful Henry could not see. Fitzjames, however, could.

“Twenty-seven lashes,” Fitzjames muttered. “Whoever makes it home should serve that captain the same.”

“If it’s not me, I’ll haunt him,” Henry said. “Can’t be mutinous conduct if you’re a ghost.”

“The man likely never thought twice about it. Which makes it all the worse.” A faraway look passed over Crozier’s face. “Haunt him as you please, Mr. Peglar.”

Once both Henry and Fitzjames had both received a fresh set of bandages—“beribboned like the two sorriest Maypoles that Britain has ever seen” Fitzjames remarked, as John walked circles around Henry to wrap him back up—John collected his supplies into a satchel and set off to tend the rest of camp. Henry tugged his jumper back on and trailed after him.

“You can stay back and rest if you like, dear one.”

“Later, once we’ve our own tent set up,” Henry said. “They should… have some time to themselves, I think.”

“I think so, too.”

They returned to the boats and dug out the last remaining tent. Waiting had left them with the most bedraggled one they had. Well and so; John doubted he’d be in it much tonight.

“He’s not leaving here, is he.” Henry kept his tone hushed.

John sighed. “If he’s in the same state in the morning, we can set him in a boat again if we dose him with something stronger. I don’t know how far we’d make it before he woke, but we could cover some ground, at least.”

“But he can’t walk out.”

“No. Not short of a miracle.”

“Mm.” Henry bundled the tent poles into his arms, staying clear of his back and shoulders. “I don’t want to be carried, John.”

John could have screamed. He could do nothing to stop them wasting away; must they waste themselves? “Henry, don’t you dare try and tell me to leave you. Not you, too.”

“I’ll let you carry me,” Henry clarified. “I wouldn’t have gone after Lieutenant Le Vesconte if I wouldn’t. Captain Crozier said that’s not our way, leaving people, and he’s right. But… but until I can’t go anymore, John, until I need it, let me walk. I promise I’ll know when I need to rest. Please. Let me walk till then.”

Henry’s load had begun to list to one side. John rebalanced it. “I’ll only promise that if you promise to tell me when.”

Henry nodded. “I saw your face when Captain Fitzjames fell. I saw Captain Crozier’s, too. I don’t want you looking at me like that ever. Yes, I promise.”

John entrusted Henry with pitching the tent while he did his rounds. Every man he saw took something from him today: a bandage for an opened sore, a dose of coca wine to sleep, vinegar to better keep down the last of the Goldner’s tins.  Men who had previously waved him away spoke about their ailments. John did his best to speak soothing words, and received smiles of thanks in return. Only Le Vesconte refused to speak with him; John left a folded bandage soaked in alcohol outside his tent nonetheless.  Gratitude. Honesty. Solace. That was all anyone had to offer now, and it would have to suffice.

As John passed by the infirmary, he heard a low voice singing within:

“Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,
    Which I gaze on so fondly to-day,
Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms,
    Like fairy-gifts fading away—”

Henry had pitched their tent within easy earshot of the infirmary. He now lay fast asleep within, sprawled out on his stomach with his head resting on his crossed arms.  There was no pillow or blanket to be found.

“Thou wouldst still be ador'd as this moment thou art,
    Let thy loveliness fade as it will;
And, around the dear ruin each wish of my heart
    Would entwine itself verdantly still!”

That’s right; they’d brought all the bedding to the infirmary earlier. He would need to intrude on the captains after all. Meanwhile, John covered Henry with his coat. Henry didn’t so much as stir.

“It is not while beauty and youth are thine own,
    And thy cheeks unprofan'd by a tear,
That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known,
    To which time will but make thee more dear!”

John crept back to the infirmary, holding his satchel tight against his stomach to keep the bottles from clinking. Crozier had gathered Fitzjames into his arms, anchoring him against his chest with his coat spread over them both. Fitzjames leaned his head back on Crozier’s shoulder with half-lidded eyes. Crozier swayed gently as he sang:

“Oh! the heart, that has truly lov'd, never forgets,
    But as truly loves on to the close;
As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets,
    The same look which she turn'd when he rose!”

Crozier kissed Fitzjames’s temple as his voice trailed off. He glanced up at John. “Is all well, Mr. Bridgens?”

“Well enough, sir. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” John awkwardly dropped his satchel on the table. The blankets could wait. “I’ll come back.”

“Nonsense, John,” Fitzjames murmured. “Stay. You’re to thank for this.”

John smiled. “Only a little, sir. If you insist.”

No longer an interloper, John set about unpacking and organizing the supplies—the first step he’d have taken on an ordinary day. He sorted the medicines by function and potency, pushing the most severe the farther out of reach.

Fitzjames resettled himself so he could see John out of his periphery. “Where is Henry?”

“Sleeping.”

Crozier adjusted the coat. “You should sleep too, James.”

“Later. Not now.” Fitzjames gave John a pointed look. Not a word. “I trust you know the poet Francis has been singing.”

“Thomas Moore,” John replied. “But I can’t read the music, so I’d never heard the melody for it before.”

“Never heard—the tunes are half the point!” Crozier exclaimed. “I’m sorry you had my squawking as your introduction. You and Ireland both deserve better.”

“Shh. You’re lovely.” Fitzjames turned his head, clumsily nuzzling Crozier’s neck. “I’d hear more.”

Crozier smiled, a blush showing faintly on his cheeks. “If you insist.”

Welcomed or no, John would give them time alone. He gathered up the blankets and pillow not currently in use and returned to his own tent. As he settled in beside his love, and Henry pulled him close without waking, he could faintly hear Crozier’s voice:

“Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer.
Though the herd have fled from thee, thy home is still here;
Here still is the smile, that no cloud can o’ercast,
And a heart and a hand all thy own to the last.”

They lay peacefully for some hours, perhaps. It was impossible to tell in the near-unending daylight. All John knew is that, when Crozier’s cry awakened him, the sun had given way to stars.

He had expected Fitzjames to deteriorate. He had not anticipated how quickly it would happen. John dosed him with hartshorn, but though Fitzjames’s borrowed shirt soaked through with sweat, his fever surged. He began to moan in pain, even with Crozier at his side, even when John rubbed his skin with camphor oil. Fitzjames’s muscles stiffened and twitched beneath his touch. Eventually, John lay the medicines aside and simply let the captain grip his hand.

“Drink, James,” Crozier urged. He held his canteen to Fitzjames’s parched lips. As the water trickled into his mouth, Fitzjames choked and spat it out. Crozier drew back.

“I’m sorry, Francis.” The words came out strained. “I tried. I tried.”

“It’s alright, James.” Crozier grasped Fitzjames’s good shoulder with one hand, and slid the other beneath Fitzjames’s palm. “I’m here. We’ve got you.”

Crozier’s voice was calm, but his eyes were wide with panic. Help, he mouthed at John. John wiped the water from Fitzjames’s neck. Help. John had none left to give, but could not bring himself to say so.

“The camphor and hartshorn is having little effect,” he said instead.

They both understood.

As Fitzjames offered up his body to be consumed, determined to be useful to the grave, John scanned the table in vain hope that some overlooked balm of Gilead would reveal itself. His eyes fell on a brown bottle that had long since lost its label. Laudanum.

Fitzjames convulsed where he lay. John set his hand on Fitzjames’s neck and found it rigid. “The muscles are in spasm, sir.”

Fitzjames was weeping now as he pleaded with Crozier to help him in the only way that remained. As Crozier ordered John to leave, Dr. Goodsir’s voice from a lifetime ago echoed in his memory.

“That might be a mercy later. But it’s for us to give.”

Perhaps he could help, after all.

“Sir, if I may.”

John handed Crozier the bottle with shaking hands, and kept himself from recoiling as he showed Crozier what he must do to help Fitzjames swallow it down. Better send him to sleep at last than to force Crozier to smother his breath himself. That done, he rose to go, as Crozier had bid him do. He could provide the means, but he could not bear to witness the end.

Fitzjames’s fingers tightened around John’s hand. “It was an honor serving you, sir,” John began, but that wasn’t right. This wasn’t a time for formality, not with Fitzjames staring up at him, helpless as a child.

“You’re a good man.”

God willing, the captain would at last believe it. He’d know his worth and know himself as those around him did, and would go into the hereafter unburdened and bright as that star.

“There will be poems.”

Henry was wide awake when John stumbled back into their tent. John collapsed against him, burying his face in Henry’s jumper. Henry held him as he broke down.

“It’s alright, John. I’m here.”

Crozier’s voice floated through the air, a familiar tune with words John couldn’t parse.

“Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún.
Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin.”

Henry lay back, pulling John to his side. He pressed his lips to John’s forehead. “You did what you could.”

“Siúil go doras agus ealaigh liom,
Is go dtí tú mo mhuirnín slán.”

Henry’s heart beat in time against John’s ear as the refrain repeated. He rose and fell with the swell of Henry’s ribs. The jumper was threadbare enough that John could feel the shape of Henry’s bandages, which would never close Henry’s wounds no matter how carefully he dressed them. These arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet.

“It’s alright,” Henry repeated, though it wasn’t, and couldn’t be, and his voice now trembled.

“Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún—"

The singing stopped. A low, ragged sob tore through the night.

John wrapped his arms around Henry as tightly as he dared. “Promise me, Henry,” he whispered. “Promise me you’ll let me carry you when it’s time.”

“Yes.” Henry kissed him fiercely. John cupped Henry’s face in his hands and felt moisture on his cheeks. Henry took a deep breath. “I don’t want to go, John.”

“I won’t let you go alone, dear one. Though it were ten thousand mile. I promise you that, too.”