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Lieutenant Little has a bite mark on his back.
It's unmistakable. Halfway down on his right side, over his ribs. Too small to be from a dog, even if Neptune was a biter. Too large to be from a monkey, even if Little had, quite uncharacteristically, taunted it. Even with his spotty knowledge of anatomy, Billy knows this bite came from a man.
A voice, which sounds suspiciously like Cornelius, whispers in his head. You should say something. 'Oh, sir, have you seen the doctor about this nasty bruise?' Let him know you know he's in your debt. But Billy was never as mercenary as Cornelius. Never as courageous, maybe. He says nothing. He pulls down Little's fresh shirt and smooths out the cloth, then reaches for the lieutenant's waistcoat.
A steward's mind stores many secrets. Little's lovebite is one more, filed away in Billy's mental bureau, along with the identity of the man Billy is certain put it there.
William Gibson and Thomas Jopson are dissimilar in more ways than they are alike. Jopson's a hard worker, Billy has to give him that. He never shirks, and the Captain runs him ragged. But, while the officers see Billy as a useful tool, helpful of course but unremarkable in and of himself, Jopson is the kind of man they let themselves admire.
Billy watched it happen. He's seen it before. After a year at sea, two at the outside, a good many well-born officers start to see a man like Jopson, with his pretty eyes and rosy cheeks and flopping hair, as every village girl who ever sat on their knee, every housemaid their mothers ever forbade them from fucking. It's all right for them, they seem to think, to tease him, to look at his face and his hands and his arse, maybe to picture him “serving” them as they toss themselves off at night, because nothing will ever come of it. It can't.
Except, in this case, something did. Billy finds himself looking more closely at Jopson, wondering why he let one of them have him. That's not how it's meant to work. These men, the ones like Jopson, are usually intelligent enough to know that, and Jopson is no young boy. He must have been playing the game for years.
Now that he knows, Billy wonders how he could have missed it. At dinner service, Jopson smiles at all of them, serves all of them, but it's Little who gets a lingering look as Jopson fills his glass. It's Little whom he brushes against when taking his plate, subtle but in a way no properly trained steward ever touched an officer. Jopson is expertly trained. That is no possible excuse.
Billy wants to ask him what the devil he's doing, but they aren't friends, not of the type that could speak plainly about such a subject. So they carry on. Billy finds no further evidence on Little's person, but the looks and the touching continue. Sometimes, in quiet moments, Billy wonders about them, about their coupling. He knows from intimate experience there isn't time or space aboard ship for leisurely encounters, but he wonders where they go. How far they've gone. Who does what to whom. Who started it.
He gets a hint of it one afternoon. He's with Jopson in the wardroom, jointly polishing the silverware for no reason other than that it's something to do. Jopson is a good conversationalist, entertaining to speak with, but Billy avoids the topic he's most curious to discuss. He's at the cupboard, returning the spoons and forks they've already finished, when the door opens.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Jopson says, loudly and what feels like unnaturally quickly. “Might Mr. Gibson and I be of some assistance?”
Billy looks over. Little is there, casting a glance in his direction. “No. Thank you. As you were, men.”
“Of course, sir.” Jopson beams, like this exchange was at all meaningful. “Thank you, sir.” Little's countenance is as dour as always but Billy just knows that if the two of them had been alone, the silverware would have been pushed to one side and Little would have kissed Jopson, and perhaps done more, atop the table. Although Little leaves at once, and Jopson returns to polishing without comment, Billy feels distinctly like a cart's third wheel.
***
When the captain takes ill, all semblance of normalcy and routine goes by the wayside. It's anybody's guess whether Jopson will turn up for dinner service on any given day, or even show his face outside the captain's cabin. Billy doesn't mind. It's been a long time since he's been so genuinely busy, and he doesn't envy Jopson, mopping the captain's brow and holding his sick bucket for hours on end. The officers are understanding and accommodating. So accommodating, that when Billy arrives at Lieutenant Little's cabin one evening to ready him for bed, he finds the lieutenant already in his nightgown.
“I'll be dressing myself while the captain is indisposed,” he says, in his usual low, stoic tone. “You are occupied enough as it is.”
Billy blinks, taken aback. “I will always have time for my duties, sir.”
Little shakes his head. “I can manage perfectly well on my own. If I need any help, I'll see Mr. Jopson at the captain's bedside.” And there it is. This is less offering a generosity, and more taking advantage of an opportunity. Billy should have known it.
“As you wish, sir.” Billy goes. He wonders, just for a moment, what it might be like to have a senior officer so eager to have you. It doesn't matter. Given the consequences if you were to be found out, it's a game not worth the candle.
He's finally pressed to spell this out to Jopson when he catches them in the storeroom.
Billy hasn't seen Jopson in three days. The first evening, Billy brought him a cup of tea in the captain's cabin. Rather, he tried to, but when he opened the door, he saw Captain Crozier weeping like a baby in Jopson's arms, while Jopson patted the captain's back and crooned like a mother. Billy backed away without a word, and didn't return.
Now, Billy goes to the storeroom with a view to getting a fresh bottle for dinner service. As he opens the door, there's a brief flurry of activity, and he sees Jopson and Lieutenant Little standing barely a foot apart.
“Mr. Gibson,” Jopson says. His voice is breathless, his hair in disarray. His collar is askew, and Lieutenant Little's jacket is unbuttoned. “I was just updating the lieutenant as to the captain's condition.”
Nobody would believe that. Well, Billy thinks, perhaps a young child, or maybe a nun, although not any nun Billy ever knew.
“Thank you for your report, Mr. Jopson.” Little says. He leaves, squeezing his wide body past Billy, who remains in the narrow doorway. He's close enough that, when Billy glances up, he can see a shiny trail of saliva leading from Little's lips up his flushed left cheek.
Billy hopes he takes a moment to compose himself before anybody else sees him, but his solidarity lies elsewhere. “You can't trust them,” he says, looking at Jopson. “Get caught, and guess who'll bear the blame?” It's not news. Jopson may be Captain Crozier's favourite, but he's also a steward and, in his own words, “Marylebone muck.” If it came down to a first lieutenant's word against his, they wouldn't even bother asking him to speak.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“So it's a love match is it? Wedding as soon as we get home? Baby within a year?” He sounds like Cornelius. Billy thinks of the ring, hanging on a chain beneath his shirt. He regrets how things ended between them, but he had no choice. He hadn't set out with the intention of making Cornelius a scapegoat, even to a man who just wanted to lecture him about scripture.
“Excuse me, Mr. Gibson, you are in my way.” Jopson pushes past him. Billy sighs and takes the bottle from the shelf.
It's not that he doesn't understand. He knows what it's like to want a man, both in the abstract and specific senses. There are others like them, too. There always are. Cornelius once showed Billy a diary belonging to the captain of the foretop, Mr. Peglar. Amid the nearly illegible poems and backwards sentences were drawings easily identifiable as copies of tattoos belonging to a steward on Erebus, Mr. Bridgens.
“Rumour has it they've been at it since the Beagle,” Cornelius said. He always knows all of the rumours. “Dirty old bugger. Must have a cock like a fucking elephant to keep a young bloke like Peglar entertained that long.” Cornelius wanted to tease Peglar about it, but Billy convinced him to put the diary back and leave the man alone. Still, Cornelius laughed so loudly when Peglar eagerly volunteered to berth on Erebus that Billy is sure Peglar knows his secret is no longer entirely private.
Most would call their mutual affliction a moral failing, or at best an illness. Billy doesn't feel that way. It doesn't seem like Jopson does either. Still, it is a dangerous quality to possess, and they are brothers in it. Billy worries for him.
Then comes the fire, and the abandoning of the ships, and Billy is too busy worrying about himself to care much about anybody else.
***
It's Cornelius who tells him about Jopson's promotion.
“That's what comes of sucking Crozier's cock,” he spits, rubbing his arms against the cold wind only partially blocked by the tent. That's what comes of being Crozier's nursemaid, Billy thinks, but he doesn't say it. Cornelius leans in close, so close that Billy almost expects a kiss. Instead, he hisses: “Mark me well, Billy. The time is coming when we'll need to make our move if we want to survive.”
“Make our...”
“I'm gathering a group that thinks likewise.”
Ah. Billy knows the word for that.
“Watch me,” Cornelius says. “And be ready.”
Billy does. He is.
He's not ready, however, for the newly minted Lieutenant Jopson to seek him out that same afternoon, as Billy sits alone eating a ship's biscuit harder than the rocks around them.
“Lieutenant Jopson, sir.” Billy stands. Jopson waves him down. He's ill, Billy can see, but that's nothing remarkable. They're all ill, to one degree or another. Billy wonders if he and Lieutenant Little are still carrying on their affair, now they're nominal equals. He doesn't see how they could have the energy for it.
“I want to thank you,” Jopson says, surprisingly. “For not saying anything.” He doesn't need to clarify. For a moment, Billy considers telling Jopson to keep an eye on Cornelius, to join them when they make this move of theirs. The moment is fleeting. The Admiralty would never approve it in England, but out here, in no man's land, Jopson is a lieutenant. On the other side. He has less in common with Billy now than ever.
“It's nothing.”
“All the same, we owe you our gratitude.” So he's still speaking of “we”.
“Look after yourself,” Billy says, because no matter what Jopson may think, he doubts Lieutenant Little will do it for him. Jopson walks away, and Billy finishes the last of the tooth-cracking biscuit.
They may be sewn on a similar pattern, but Billy and Jopson are cut from quite different cloth. Different in their backgrounds, different in their tastes. Different in the type of men they admire, different in the type of men they place their faith in.
Billy just hopes they don't both end up dead regardless.