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The first thing that Francis did when he finally let himself into his old rooms, which were drafty and smelled like something had died under the carpet, was walk straight out. The next thing he did was donate the remaining bottles of liquor in the sideboard to the kitchen maids. The third thing he did was set about finding new rooms for himself.
He felt like there was a ghost sitting in his armchair. Sir John’s, perhaps. Or maybe even Cornelius Hickey’s, all plague grin and lolling eyes in the noose. The space he had longed to see since boarding HMS Terror now filled him with a shaking sort of disgust. It took him two weeks before he found rooms to let on the ground floor of a house in South Kensington.
The sitting room was cheerfully papered with blue rosettes, and there was a window seat that looked out into the garden. Two mismatched armchairs, one short and green, the other highbacked and yellow, bracketed a stone fireplace. The walls were hung with rather crude anatomical drawings (the last tenant had apparently been a surgeon), one of which included a man pierced head to foot by all manner of sharp objects. When he moved in a week later with his clothes and personal effects, the prints had been replaced by a series of cheerful watercolors.
There was also a lean, three-legged cat with fur the color of pancake ice who lived under a magnolia tree in the garden. At night, she would climb up to the windows and scratch, asking to be let in. When he had asked his landlady about the creature, the woman had shrugged like such domestic things were above her concern. The cat soon became a permanent fixture in his rooms; unnamed, but present.
In the months since their “miraculous” return, it had been all parties and speeches and men with thick mustaches and arched brows who called themselves members of the press. The inevitable court martial had been particularly unsavory.
Through all this, he could count on one hand the number of times he had seen James. The last instance had been a party given by the Admiralty on a sweltering evening in mid-August. All of the French windows in the ballroom had been opened. Francis had stood with his back to the humid paneling, just close enough to see James out on the balcony, but not close enough to hear every charming half-truth that escaped his lips.
His second was surrounded by a tittering crowd composed of equal parts officers and society ladies. Buttoned up in a waistcoat that did nothing to hide the months of emaciation on the ice, his expression was all teeth and charisma. His stories of past exploits unburdened themselves easily from his tongue, loosening his demeanor with an ease that now betrayed years of practice.
Not so much the latest expedition. When asked to recount, Francis had watched the proud line of James’s back stiffen and his mouth go slack as he resorted to a glass of port. The transformation was horrible and fascinating all at once.
James looked across the room then, eyes moving through the heads of several couples until they had slowly found his. He quirked his eyebrows ever so slightly. A plea? No, an entreaty. For God’s sake, get over here. Francis’s polished boots answered, taking him across the shine of oiled wood. Another rescue party, then: one much more treacherous than crossing a pressure ridge.
He had stridden up to James, casual as you please, and placed one hand on the small of his back, the other on his collar, and whispered a falsehood low into his ear.
James nodded, the cord of his spine softening under Francis’s palm. “My apologies, ladies and gentlemen. It appears there’s urgent business for me elsewhere. If you will excuse me for a moment. I’m sure that Francis would be delighted to entertain you.”
“Do hurry back, Commander Fitzjames,” a stern-faced woman in a chartreuse-colored gown had said.
The cheeky bastard. James bowed, the picture of courtesy, and kissed the fingers of her evening gloves. He had touched a hand to Francis’s elbow in thanks and then made his exit. The less-than-pleased crowd soon dissipated into the night air when faced with the prospect of the sullen Captain Crozier for company.
He didn’t see James again that night, or any other night after that. It had been nearly five months since the soirée, all told. James had written him, of course—short missives on cream paper that spoke of the autumn in Brighton, soaking up the sea air. They usually followed the same formula: greeting, a lengthy story of some expedition or other, and then a call for visitation.
Yesterday, I saw a murmuration of starlings at dusk. I don’t think I had realized how much I had missed birdcall—they came pouring out in a single, shifting mass—small dark bodies against a crimson sky. I stood entranced for I know not how long until the sun vanished, and my path turned home.
Francis wrote back, more often than not. The letters would come every week in blue vellum envelopes, the C of his surname embellished with far more swoops than necessary. But by January, the succession of weekly envelopes had slowed to a trickle, and by mid-March, they had dried up completely.
The truth was that he missed James. Something had developed during the long walk: unnamed, but as warm as anything that could be had there. Maybe they had never talked about it because it wasn’t something that had required the same attention as hauling the boats or charting a course. They had fallen into each other’s arms as easily as sails catch a gust of wind on a summer’s day.
By the time they had been rescued, it was all bravery and survival and making sure that James and the other men didn’t die. On the boat back to England, they drifted slowly back into roles that were simpler to assume: the dashing commander and the cantankerous captain.
Perhaps they had never made it home in the first place, and he was simply a ghost communing with another ghost in icebound purgatory. There was a simpler answer, of course.
Perhaps James was finally finished with him.
---
It was raining the morning Francis finally decided to shove down his pride and write to James. He opened the window to let in the cat, her short fur soaking and mouth letting out a series of disgruntled mews. Francis went to fetch a tea towel to dry off the poor thing, but by the time he came back, the cat’s fur had ballooned into a fluffy mass, and there were small droplets of water on the upholstery and carpet. She leveled her yellow eyes at him and mewed angrily.
“Better the carpet than the magnolias,” he said, not sure if he was speaking to himself or the cat. If the cat could frown, she would have. Instead, she jumped into the yellow armchair and settled in for a long nap.
He spent the rest of the day decidedly not writing to James – drinking endless cups of tea and sitting in the window seat, his legs stretched out across the cushions like a pampered lapdog.Like James, his mind supplied. Except James wasn’t pampered – he had pushed his way forward, same as Francis.
When he finally set ink to paper, it was about an hour before dusk, and the sun finally appeared in a break between the clouds. He stirred up the coals in the fireplace, rung for more tea from the housemaid and went to sit at his writing desk. He had gotten as far as the greeting when the knock at the door to his rooms came.
“Enter,” he called out, not bothering to turn around, head bent over paper. He could hear the rustle of the maid’s skirts, the heaviness of the many layers of fabric. “Set it down there, if you please.”
He waited for a moment, but there was no more movement.
“Francis,” came a low, unmistakable voice.
Francis very slowly tilted his head and saw that the blue ink had pooled in the center of the paper like a fat teardrop. “You’re not Elizabeth,” said Francis, for lack of anything better to say.
“No, I rather think I’m not,” said James. “I ran into her in the hallway: she said your tea is almost ready.”
Francis turned his head. James stood in the only patch of sunlight in the room, the shadow from the window panes casting soft lines over a peacock blue frock coat. Ostentatious, as always. A smile creased James’s cheeks, less gaunt than the last time Francis had seen them.
“I thought you were in Brighton.”
“I was,” James said, teeth worrying at his bottom lip. He didn’t wear nervousness as well as he wore a uniform. “But there is some business for me here that will keep me occupied for the next fortnight.”
“Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark?” asked Francis, finally standing and crossing the short distance of the room to embrace James. A few motes of dust hung about his former second’s head. He was glad to find that James was warm. It was an old habit from the ice: waking up in the middle of the night and reaching over to make sure that the body curled next to his was still breathing.
“You have no idea,” said James. He stepped aside and Francis gestured for him to take one of the armchairs near the fireplace.
The cat, woken up by their conversation, stretched out all three of her stout legs. It gazed up at James and meowed loudly before jumping out and turning tail.
“You never mentioned keeping an animal,” said James, settling in the vacated spot. He folded one carefully pressed trouser leg across his knee. “Is she a ship’s cat?”
“Captain of the HMS Magnolia Tree,” he said, pointing to the garden.
James laughed companionably, giving the joke more than its due.
As soon as Francis sat down in the chair opposite, a knock came at the door. The maid Elizabeth entered with a silver tray containing a teapot and a pair of cups and saucers. A squat seed cake was nestled in between the sugar bowl and a stack of sliced bread.
Francis busied himself with pouring the tea while James speared one of the pieces of bread with a toasting fork and poked it towards the fire. When they were on King William Land, the officers had drunk a brew that Jopson had conjured with thrice-steeped leaves. It had tasted like shipyard mud. He knew that James liked cream in his tea, but not sugar: it was one of the many mundane conversations they had that kept them from falling apart on the ice.
Here they were again, sharing tea and dancing around each other like they had done before Sir John died. They were quite a ways away from the officer’s wardroom aboard Erebus.
When the toast turned golden brown, James spoke at last.
“Ross wants me to serve on a committee,” he said carefully, not looking up at Francis. One hand wielded a knife and spread golden butter across the crannies of his toast.
“A committee?” asked Francis, taking a sip of his tea, dark as polar night and sweet as a kiss.
James looked up from his work and nodded. “For the Discovery Service. There’s talk of planning another expedition for the passage, sometime in the next year even. I thought he would have come to you”
Francis felt his face grow hot. “He did, and I asked him, hasn’t the ice swallowed up enough men yet? Christ, you’d think they’d wait at least a full mourning period for Sir John before trying again.”
“Two years is a long time for Her Majesty’s Royal Navy.”
“Evidently not long enough.” He paused for a moment and let himself look at James properly for the first time. His hair was hair longer and shinier than when he had seen it last. “Where are you lodging while you’re here?”
“Lady Jane wrote to me offering to set me up for the duration of my stay.” His brow furrowed and he reached for his cup.
“I take it you haven’t seen her since—”
“Not since the memorial service for Sir John,” James broke in. “I’m not sure I could face her again so soon.”
Francis remembered it—standing next to James on a noxiously sunny day and wondering how many bottles of whiskey it would take before he became as flammable as Dr. Stanley. The gaze that Sophia had sent his way was equal parts grief and pity.
“I don’t blame you.” He groaned internally. “You know, you could always stay here,” he said, immediately regretting it. It came rolling off his tongue too much like a plea. Like a two-bit wharf doxy offering a piece of flesh in a darkened alleyway. I’ll make it worth your while if you stay for just a bit.
“You are a kind man, Francis,” said James.
Francis snorted, which turned into a cough. When he caught his breath, the sunset was pouring in through the windows, illuminating the back of James’s head. “There’s a spare bedroom across the hall from mine. I’ll have Elizabeth set you up there.”
“Truly, Francis.” James stretched a hand out across the space between them. He placed his palm on Francis’s knee and let it rest there.
Francis felt something bubble up within him and go sour. James had broken the careful waltz between them, and now his feet were shifting to find the floor. It was always he who had reached out to James since their return. Now that their positions were reversed, he felt unmoored. How easy it was to slip from camaraderie back to…whatever this was. This unspoken thing that had been birthed on the ice, and had now come crawling back into Francis’s sitting room.
“Why are you here, James? I haven’t heard from you in months.”
A frown engraved deep lines into James’s forehead, but he didn’t remove the hand. “You last wrote me in January. I thought you were brooding over something I’d said.”
“Something you said? All you wrote to me about was damned birds and the seaside, James. Yet you come roaring back here and expect—”
He cut himself off before anything too embarrassing could come out. He lowered his head and shut his eyes, the pinprick of something sharp forming on the right side of his skull.
“Expect what, Francis?” James’s voice came out low and level.
The silence stretched between them like pack ice.
After what seemed like an age, the hand lifted from his knee silently. He thought that James would leave then; take his bags and run to the mercy of Lady Jane and Sophia Cracroft. Instead, a palm encircled his left cheek, lifting his head. When he opened his eyes, James’s brows were knit together fiercely like a newly sown field, and he leaned forward to place his cool forehead against Francis’s.
“I apologize,” began James, his breath a tickle against Francis’s nose. “I should have been honest with you. I had thought that you had been avoiding me since we arrived back in England.”
Francis pulled away. “You thought I had been avoiding you?”
“I never saw you except at those insipid fêtes. And your letters were always brief. Even when I asked you to come visit me, you never responded.”
Francis didn’t have an answer for that. Instead, he pushed their foreheads apart and brought his own hand up to cover James’s.
“I thought you were finished with me,” he said finally, voice thickened.
“Finished with you? Good lord, Francis. Why? I would have thought that after all that we had been through, you would have gotten it through your head by now that I hold you firmly at the center of my affections.”
Francis let out a hiss of breath, putting his hand away. “Are not men different on the ice then they are with each other at home?”
“Why should it be any different?”
“You know perfectly well why.” He didn’t have to voice the rules for men like that; for men like him and James. They were both well acquainted.
“Francis,” said James, voice soft around the final consonant. “We are not at sea.”
“No, but we are in England. I’m not sure which is worse at this point.”
James looked at him oddly for a moment, and then burst into laughter. “Melodrama again,” he asked, and then leaned in to press their lips together.
It wasn’t like any of their stolen, hasty kisses on the ice. This one was all the more indulgent for its brevity and warmth. Francis’s anger evaporated, leaving only a raw, anxious husk behind.
“Before you barged in here,” began Francis, when James pulled away, “I was going to write you a letter. I couldn’t get it out of my head that you had died on the ice and I was speaking with your spirit.”
James’s voice turned light and teasing. “And what objects would you use to summon my ghost?”
“I’d only have to slip up one of the details from your war stories before you came howling back to torment me.”
“Torment you; I doubt that I would make such an intolerable phantom.”
“Do not jest,” he said, louder than he meant to. James quieted at that, gaze drooping. Francis reached out and placed his hand on James’s shoulder to feel the solidity of it.
The cat meowed dully at them from the corner of the room, startling them out of their embrace. She stretched and came across the room, purring as she moved between James’s ankles.
“You should name it after Mr. Blanky,” said James, lifting his hand from Francis’s face to bend down and run his fingers through the cat’s fur.
“What, the cat? That’d be a very pleasant surprise for him next time he comes around. Besides, it’s a girl. I can’t very well call her Tom.”
“I have no doubt he would think it the highest honor.”
Outside, the sunset had faded into the deep purple of twilight. James stood and stepped towards the window pane, hands clasped behind his back. He tilted his head up towards the vault of the sky.
“There’s a waxing crescent tonight, Francis. Come see.”
Francis stood from his armchair and went to join him by the window. He took James’s hand from behind him and laced their fingers together. He lifted his chin, unable to find the moon until James pointed it out to him.