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January
“It’s a good deal more advanced than what I’ve given you thus far, but there is a remarkable story behind the hexameter. One of adventure and honor and strife, and of love.”
John weighs the book in his hands. The leather is worn, the gilded letters on the spine flaked nearly off. A backstreet antiquarian find, well cared for since the ha’penny rescue.
“No,” he recants. “Not behind the meter.” he raises his head to look at Mr. Peglar where he stands in the door to John’s cabin. “The story is not in spite of the form. Poetry is the essential element.”
Mr. Peglar tilts his head a little. He peers at the book, curiosity and expectancy alight in his heavy-lidded eyes.
“It’s a poem?” he asks.
“An epic poem.” John holds it out to him, and Mr. Peglar takes it. For a brief moment their hands are close, they almost touch. Then John lets go, leaving the book with its lender.
Mr. Peglar turns the volume over in his large hands, sculpted first by God, then by years in the rigging. He holds it up to what dimmed light on the lower deck can find its way past him. He wets his lips, a quick, pink dart of tongue. He squints at the letters.
“The A-” he tries. “The Ah-eh-?”
“The Aeneid,” John says. “A-nee-id.”
“The Aeneid.” Mr. Peglar looks pleased, a mystery satisfactorily solved. “By Virgil. That’s a name I know.”
“He captured the human spirit in all its passion and resilience so well we still name children after him.” John settles back against the edge of his bunk, his hands clasped before him. “The book tells of a man called by destiny to undertake a great sea journey. In the end, it brings him to what will be Rome, and to glory, but first he must struggle. Against the world, and himself.” He lifts his shoulders in apology, and admits: “It might be better to read Homer, first. This story follows a veteran of Troy. You know Troy?”
Mr. Peglar nods. “The horse.”
“Yes. I would have liked you to meet Aeneas there, first, but-”
“You didn’t expect me to have come this far with the reading,” Mr. Peglar. He smiles as he says it, down at the book, a little private thing of a smile, coyly perched beneath his mustache.
John smiles, too. “I underestimated you. I should have packed Homer first of all.”
Eyes downcast, Mr. Peglar’s eyelashes sweep over his cheeks like the wing pens of a gull taking flight. His face is tinged red from the sun, a tan never quite settling comfortably on his pale skin, and his dark hair falls down his forehead, curls over his brow. He has the freshness of a clear morning, the heartiness of bearing wind.
Mr. Peglar looks up. He catches John’s gaze before John can guard it.
“Do you like it?” Mr. Peglar asks in his soft way. His thumb runs along the spine of Aeneid.
“Very much.”
That same little smile is still there, playing over Mr. Peglar’s lips. He half turns in the doorway, giving the light access to more of the space. A ray of sun has found its way down unhindered through the hatch, shines without restraint over Mr. Peglar, traces out the hairs on his bare forearms and lends them its glow.
“Thank you, Mr. Bridgens,” he says. “I’ll treat it well.”
The book basks in his gentle grip. What traces of gold yet cling to the scuffed and timeworn covers gleam.
April
“It took me a long time to read through,” Mr. Peglar says.
He’s apologetic. There’s a slight slope to his shoulders, furrows on his forehead, he stands straight in the threshold instead of leaning his shoulder against the wall, hips at an angle, as he would. John puts his mending down with some urgency, and gets to his feet.
“That’s quite all right,” he says, eager to reassure. “It’s a story worth giving time to.”
Mr. Peglar’s face brightens. The change is small, but John can trace it as sure as he can trace the clouds across the sky. A different set to the jaw, another glint deep within his pupils, a looser curve to the long, elegant brushstrokes that are his eyebrows. A smile follows. It gives his cheeks a roundness and his mouth a sweetness that renders him boyish, no matter the fullness of his beard or the wiry strength apparent in his build.
“Thank you again,” Mr. Peglar says, returning the Aeneid to John.
“My pleasure, as always,” John says. He takes the book and puts it on his bunk, but doesn’t sit down, doesn’t resume the mending of the worn out sock. A vexing clumsiness sneaks up on him with Mr. Peglar. He needs to make movements with a measure of deliberateness, expend conscious thought on how to conduct his limbs or else he fumbles with his things, bumps into corners. It’s a difficulty only in the body, not the mind. With Mr. Peglar, his spirit is always light, his tongue nimble.
“Did the hexameter give you trouble?” he asks.
Mr. Peglar shakes his head, then stops, frowns. “Not trouble,” he says. He has crossed his arms, relaxed against the doorframe. “But it needed to be sounded out inside my head. Out of it, too.” He pulls his chin into his collar, a hint of embarrassment. “I began reading out loud without realizing. Mr. Jansson and Mr. Hallman ribbed me for it.”
“It’s only natural that you did,” John says. “Though it wasn’t written to be sung, it’s in the style of the great songs that came before it.”
“I felt that,” Mr. Peglar says. He puts a hand on his chest, fingers splayed over the wool of his jacket. His eyes go searching, soaring towards the ceiling and beyond it, looking to the wonders of the ancient world. “Like it wanted to be sung.”
“‘It wanted to be sung,” John repeats. “That is very well said, Mr. Peglar.”
A bright young man, he is. They’ve has some seasons together as shipmates, and John has come to know Mr. Peglar as such: as a young man with a bright mind and disposition both. His letters were lacking when they met, but his interest was keen. Only some guidance, some encouragement, and he solved the riddle of literacy all through his own efforts. Now, he reads the Aeneid, and feels it sing within him.
How proud John is. What joy he takes in having a companion join him between the pages of his library.
Mr. Peglar reels his faraway gaze back into the cramped mundanity of the lower deck. The cabin door is open and behind him the aftermath of supper plays out to the accompaniment of the boister of seamen with their bellies full, and the jaunty polkas of Mr. Jansson’s badly tuned fiddle. The sound fills John’s cabin, too, but between him and Mr. Peglar sits a silence he has come to treasure as much as their conversations.
John stands on the small bit of floor there is to his his quarters, still, a couple of feet between him and Mr. Peglar. He regards him, watched the thoughts form behind Mr. Peglar’s eyes, their expression shifting as his brain works its own wonders.
“Mr. Bridgens,” Mr. Peglar says, capping off the silence they’ve shared. “When we speak like this. Would you call me Henry?”
What joy, indeed, in the friendship of this bright young man.
“Henry,” John says, low, takes his friend’s fine name in his mouth and finds it agreeable to his tongue. “Then you must call me John.”
Henry draws a breath, his smile goes lopsided and hesitant.
“Mr. Bridgens-” he begins, but John takes a step towards him, puts a deliberate hand on his arm, just above the elbow.
“No,” he says. “John.”
Under the light of the whale oil lamps, Henry’s hair is darkened to a glossy black and the lines that go from his nostrils and frame his mouth are filled in with shadow. In this, from out of the dusky cove that is his face in the evening, his eyes glitter.
His gaze goes down to his arm, where they touch, and lingers. He parts his lips. “John.”
A joy.
“Very well said, Henry.”
May
Shortly after they turn to first name address, Henry reveals the fact of his journal. He takes it with him to John’s cabin one evening, fishes it out from under his vest and hands it over with some shyness.
“It isn’t anything clever,” he says. He has folded his arms, as is his habit, but drawn them closer to his chest than he normally would. His posture is a tight and bashful knot. “I put down some things that I like, that I’ve read. Some things that have happened. A poem, sometimes.”
It’s a simple book, with covers of brown paper and pages unevenly cut at the corners. It’s still warm from Henry’s body.
“You write?” John asks. He didn’t know. They practiced letters a little, when they started, but after that they’ve only read. John had been careful not to occupy too much of Henry’s time, to not impose his presence, to give him ample room to form his own opinions on the books he reads, to mingle with his peers. That Henry seeks him on his own, without prompting, is a gilding over his days, time and again.
Henry shrugs, a quick hitch of his shoulders. “Scribble.”
“Scribble?” John protests.
Why should the notebook astound him? Men write. Many men write, with steadier pens and bolder innovation than Henry. Why should this pell mell collection of curios and quotes be so tender to his eye?
“Do not devalue your efforts,” John says, with full knowledge of the answer to the why. He holds the journal open, Henry’s shallow cursive in sparse lines before him. “Nor your progress.”
Two bright pink spots crest the edge of Henry’s beard. “I wanted you to see,” he says. “I can only do it how I want because of you.”
“No, Henry, this is not me.” John feels his voice rise with passion, above the low tone that is natural to him. It could carry outside of his cabin, it could pierce the thin wood of the bulkheads. “You are the most clever man I know, you would-”
He has a sudden vision of his own self. Of an old, graying fool having sprung up from his bunk, clutching at a notebook, an impassioned break in his voice and a gaze heavy with want and greed turned into the man in his company.
John has lived a long time with himself. A love like his can be a joy, and it can be a burden. Over the years, he’s known it as both.
He takes a breath. He sits down, folds himself back like a shirt into a tidy drawer, rearranges his composure more suitable to a man in his fifth decade who has the friendship of a man just coming up on his third. One who is grateful for the gift of attention, mindful of his presence, careful not to overstep, assume or disturb.
“Henry,” John says, calm now, and honest. “had you not met me, you would have come to this some other way. All your capacity for learning springs from within. You would have found your way here. Your spirit would have led you.” Henry blinks, his eyelashes clipping rapidly, like shutters in a gale. John presses his palm against the open page. “The most clever man I know.”
“Not so clever as you,” Henry says.
“Give it time. That is my only advantage. You will live, and you will learn, and you will surpass me in all things.”
Henry breaks into a small and quiet laugh, barely more than a pronounced exhale. His mouth is open, his eyebrows raised. His eyes are flowing with mirth, with warm surprise. “I just wanted you to see.”
John lifts his gaze off Henry. He knows a bright young man. This is a joy, alone.
Deliberate, he turns the page.
July
They have some time ashore. They spend most of it together.
Henry catches up with him and falls into step on the very first day. John’s had his share of worldly pleasures in his life and is seeking his way to the country, away from the heat and stick of narrow alleys and cellar bars, a city braising in its own filth under the Mediterranean sun. He wants the grass, the trees, the flowers and the green. He wants to wander. Henry wants to join him.
So they walk, dressed down to their shirtsleeves, out of the city and into the fields. Henry laughs when John asks him if he’s sure this is what he wishes to do with his precious leave. He’s brisk, he’s merry, his grin crinkled the corners of his eyes. He breathes deeply of the fresh air, rich with the scents of lavender and fertile soil. He believes this is the best way one could spend a cloudless summer day, he tells John. He could walk all day like this, he assures.
By noon, sweat has soaked Henry’s hair and plastered it to his skin. When he sweeps it back, perspiration runs freely over his forehead, gathers in his brows, sneaks into his eyes any chance it gets. Henry wipes and wipes at his face with his cuffs. He was dressed quite smartly when they came ashore, with a crisp collar and vibrant red neckerchief. Now his vest hangs open, stained at the armpits, and the buttons of his shirt are undone at the neck - though he looks no less charming for it.
John fares easier in heat. He could walk all day, was he so inclined.
Nevertheless, he stops in the shade of a cypress where the dirt road they’re following intersects with another. He makes a little show of catching the breath he never lost, rests his hands on his thighs and declares himself defeated by the climate. Better to turn round, he says. The air will be cooler by the shore, he explains, more agreeable to a man his age.
Henry pants through his half open mouth, regarding John with suspicious, narrowed eyes. Has the deception been discovered?
Yes - now Henry laughs at him, at his attempt to spare the dignity of a friend who doesn’t need the rescue, who is more than happy to admit he has been done for, that he’s ready to throw in the towel - and his kingdom for a towel! He makes another pass at wiping the sweat off his face with wet sleeves. It works at clearing the droplets there, but more fall immediately from his hairline to trail down his temples, to the angular jut of his cheekbones.
They glisten there like dew.
Neither of them are keen to return to the city, so John and Henry don’t retrace their steps to the main road. Both comfortable enough to navigate by the position of the sun, they reroute in the direction of the sea, hoping to find a nice, breezy spot to eat the lunch of bread and cheese and apples they buy from a farmer’s wife in a village made up of little stone houses cuddled together like eggs in a nest.
A small pathway takes them through a shady glade where birds salute them from the treetops in high, flutey trills. Here is a part of the land not cleared and plowed. It’s too rocky, the earth too meager to yield. The ground begins slanting upwards; soon they’re walking uphill. Henry goes in front when the pathway narrows to where they must proceed single file. John follows, Henry’s solid back leading the way. His vest is off now, too, and his cotton shirt has gone slinky and transparent with sweat, fondling his muscles where they play as he swings his arms.
John looks down at his feet, tracks his dust-matted shoes over the hard, trodden earth. In his peripheral vision, the fabric of Henry’s trousers strain over his buttocks with each step, shifting around his legs to hint at the outline of his thighs.
The path comes to an end, abrupt. The uphill trek hasn’t been too arduous, but now a slope rises steep before them, a stony ridge on which grows a scattering of little trees with maple-like leaves.
They stop. The ridge stretches in each direction. The sea isn’t far, they can feel it in the air, but to go round would take time, no way to know how long.
Henry shades his eyes with a hand, squints up towards the top of the ridge. “Can we climb?”
They do. It takes some effort, though not overmuch. Still, John must wipe at his forehead as well when they reach the top and reap their reward.
Beneath them lie a cove, a little bay of oval shape, its inlet narrow between sandbanks. The water is a brilliant turquoise, so clear they can count each rock on the stony bottom, see the seagrass sway with the motion of the lazily lapping waves. The shores are narrow beaches where sea birds pick their dinner out of the gray sand. The ridge arches round one side like the eyelid over an eye, a concave wall sheltering this little treasure of a place from inland view. On the opposite side, a little brook ripples cheerily down the gently rolling hill the ridge has mellowed into. Beyond are rows and rows of young grape vines.
No person there in sight, no houses. There’s only the sun’s golden gleam on the waves, the smell of salt in the air, the jubilant cries of the gulls in the sky.
Henry puts his hand on John’s shoulder. He has an always open face, always with a generosity of expression, and now exuberance is bubbling forth, his eyes twinkling, his cheeks blooming. He squeezes John’s shoulder before taking off down the ridge, skidding part of the way. He waves up at John from the bottom and motions for him to follow.
John drinks the image of him in: grinning, waving, waiting for him. Then he makes his way down, a good deal slower.
Their lunch is well seasoned with hunger; their thirst easily slaked by the brook. Once sated, the afternoon is theirs to spend in leisure. They don’t need to discuss whether to stay in the cove. The agreement is unspoken, unquestioned.
The hottest part of the afternoon is spent discussing Ausonius in the shade of a shrub. Though Henry’s voice is dozy and his hands languorous, his thoughts are unfalteringly alert, associations darting to and fro with the quickness of fry in a pool. Once the sun eases up as the day begins to falter they stroll around their little haven, first together, then apart. John goes all the way around the beach, hands on his back. The wind tugs playfully at his hair. At the innermost point of the cove he digs a whitish, tapering shepp out of the sand and marvels at its even spiral. A little thing of beauty on a beautiful day. He takes his shoes off, walks barefoot back.
Henry has sat himself down a little higher up on the beach opposite the ridge. When John comes to join him there he has a stick in his hand. He has drawn something with it in the sand.
An eye, John sees. An eye without pupils but many long lashes, and a curious pair of protrusions on one end. It isn’t until Henry points to the jutting twin sandbanks at the inlet and the maple leaf trees lined up on top of the ridge that John recognises the cove in the image. The shape is stylized, but it’s there.
On a whim, he bends down and places the shell in the middle of the image, giving the eye a pupil.
Henry stands as John straightens. They’re stood there, side by side, before the eye in the sand, in the lidded bay. The waves murmur wordless phrases while the evening slowly falls.
If they want to make it back to port before it’s too dark to find their way they have to hurry. John begins to brush the sand off his soles and put his shoes back on, but Henry touches his shoulder again.
“John?” he says. “Can we sleep? Here?”
And why not? Instead of the hassle of searching their way to the city and finding lodging, why not rest here and let this peace and quietude last a while longer? After a day this hot, the night won’t be so cold as to be troublesome. They have no supper, but one night of sleeping hungry scares neither of them. It will only make breakfast taste twice as good.
They settle down in the lee of that same brush under which they rested in the afternoon. John folds his jacket as a pillow and Henry does the same with his. They bid one another good night and lie down back to back, an appropriate measure apart.
The wind whispers. The moon rises, nearly full.
John has almost fallen asleep when a stir behind him pulls him awake. He knows it’s Henry before he’s turned around to see his friend, sat up in the dark, features aetherial and indistinct in the moonlight. He has unfolded his jacket, holds it in his lap.
John turns, too, to face towards him. He raises up on his elbow.
“Are you cold, Henry?”
Henry looks at him, unreadable in the gloom.
“Can we-?”
He holds out his arm with the jacket spread like the wing of a bat, a gesture John can’t immediately interpret. John lifts his own arm, to perhaps accept the jacket, but it isn’t given to him. Instead Henry scoots closer, joins him in his space, comes to John as into an embrace.
Henry lays his head on John’s arm. Henry wraps his arm round John’s waist. Henry drapes his jacket over them both, lays his whole shapely body next to John, face to face, knee against knee.
John freezes. His arm hovers, inches over Henry’s form.
He feels a great agitation, an anguish of emotion. He’s drawn up tight as a clenched fist, strained like a line in a storm, teetering on the edge of a quiver that will rattle his core, shake him out of all sobriety and poise.
Henry heaves a small, contented, sleepy sigh.
The agitation dissipates. A great calm descends to take its place. The night is mild, the cove at peace. The gulls sleep sheltered in crevices among the rocks and the cicadas serenade the moon and stars. John lets his arm come down to rest, to relax around Henry’s figure, to hold him gently, without restraining. He doesn’t weigh Henry with the burden of his gaze. John keeps his eyes closed, allows himself this indulgence of sensations.
Henry’s breath tickling his neck. The steady rise and fall of his chest. The warmth where his thigh presses lightly against John’s. The scent of his skin, the musk of his sweat. The dear pressure of his forearm over John’s waist, his fingers resting against his back, his thumb against the spine.
The dew falls as they sleep. When they wake, the world sparkles as new.
September
Caution curdles so easily into fear. John never asks Henry where he's headed next.
He signs off in Plymouth, lugs his books and belongings into sailortown alone, takes his usual path to the lodging house where good Mrs. Martin keeps her tenants in as lice-free environs a man on his salary can reasonably expect. He pulls up his coat collar as he walks. England can be a fair and doting motherland when in a sunny mood, but today she's a foggy, sodden wretch, with no warm welcome for a returning son.
Mrs. Martin is kinder. She has a room just made up and is as always glad to lease it to him, have a steady, older fellow around.
"Had nothing but young lads lodging with us for months," she says, leading the way up the narrow stairs to the second floor. "Can't say I'm not glad to get someone in the house I won't need to remind it's one pair of legs to a room!" She tuts. Mrs. Martin takes pride in the respectability of her establishment, despite the reputation of sailortown. "Here you go, Mr. Bridgens, and welcome back."
John thanks her, pays the whole fee in advance. She's given him a room facing the street, with a little window framed by yellow, sun bleached curtains. The straw mattress is hard but the linen is fresh, the only dirt on the floor is in the corners, and the enamel wash bowl on a three-legged stool has just a little rust, and this on the outside.
He takes off his coat and puts it on the bed. From down the hall comes the sound of a door opening, a man laughing.
It was different with Henry, after the cove. John hadn't expected that. He'd thought of Lid Bay as an exception, a moment of folly passing quick, a parenthesis in the text, possible to skip and still get the full story. The appropriate distance between them would re-establish itself. Necessity would demand it.
In some ways, it did. The lower deck of a ship is a place where privacy exists merely as an illusion upheld by shared agreement; two men can only be so close under the eyes of a hundred more. In physical respect, in matters of touch, the status quo remained intact.
But Henry would come to him often, eschew other company and seek John out at times where before he might not. Between them, the silences would grow, silences with a greater meaning shifting like leviathans in the depths. John would find Henry looking at him over shoulders, through crowds. When their eyes met he would get a smile, small and gratified, and each one would burrow into him and make a home in his flesh, in his vital organs.
At night, the memory of Henry's body would flood him, fill him, beat against him and erode the shores of his resolve.
A gust of wind throws a scattering of raindrops against the window pane in the lodging room. On the wall beside it hangs a cross-stitch where, between stout daisies, an even-sized row of stubby letters spell: True modesty is ashamed of everything that is criminal.
John puts his coat back on, and goes back outside.
He's not a man who lives in shame. He has his nature, knows it well, has never tried to change it. He's never wished for his life to be anything but what it is, has never been unable to find happiness in the space the world has allotted for him. He doesn't believe with the devotion of some, but if God can see into his heart then He knows John strives to live as well and as honestly as he can.
No, John isn't ashamed, but he's cautious. So he must be. To be seen, truly seen, is a risk. People are flawed, without the insight of divine omniscience. They can't peer into his heart and know his moral mettle, they only know the tawdry words for his desires, the twisted notions that surround his affections. They only know his likes as criminals, his likings as a crime.
The laws of man may declare their judgment. John knows he has no reason for self-reproach. He's no seducer, no corrupting influence. What few connections he's had in his life have been conducted on equal footing, been of a temporary nature and ended on friendly terms. He's never tried to lead anyone astray, off the beaten path, only joined up with those already walking there.
When he came upon Henry drawing the eye from the cove in his notebook, the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he formed the shape of its white shell pupil, John's caution flared into fear. He saw the tenderness in Henry's pen, his care with the lines. He felt the surge of want and greedy longing in his own heart, felt the strength of it, the maelstrom pull.
A little nasty weather doesn't deter the inhabitants of Sailortown from crowding the streets, neither the transitory nor the permanent. John follows the dirty streets between boxy wooden houses, in the direction of a bar where, if his memory serves, one can buy a bottle of decent rum for a pittance.
He only wants what is good for Henry. John only wishes him the joy, without the burden. He wants the world to know him, and for him to know the world, to live in it fully and fearlessly, to never hide, to never watch his step, for caution not to be his leading principle.
Therein the fear. That if he lets Henry catch in his current, the power of his want won't allow John to ever release him, that he will drag him under, cause his spark to flicker and dim.
Bright young men do better without graying old fools. John pays the boy behind the bardisk a shilling for the bottle, tucks it under his arm and ventures back into the rain, the water running in rivulets now around his feet, splashing up against the hems of his trousers.
Henry came to him on the evening of that same day John saw him with the drawing. He took his usual place in the doorway, his shoulders sloping slightly as he relaxed against the wall, breathed out the tension from a long day of work as though to stand himself there in John's cabin was akin to sinking into a bed of eiderdown.
"I'm not very far with Parnell yet," he said. "But I read 'The Hermit' yesterday."
John didn't look at him, couldn't do so without catching on the line of his hips, the artful symmetry of his jaw, the expressiveness in his long and nimble fingers. It had been so, since the cove. His eyes wouldn't find enough satisfaction in regarding Henry simply as a hale and wholesome lad, they would wander, roam.
"That's a fine poem," John said.
Normally, John would follow with a question, there. He could see Henry waiting for it, for their pattern to unfold. Henry with an opening opinion, John picking up the discussion with a question or comment, gently guiding Henry in collecting his thoughts, the spool to his mind's thread. Instead, he got up from his bunk, turned away.
He heard the rustle of pages, then Henry's voice, euphonic in reciting: "'Far in a wild, unknown to public view, from youth to age a reverend hermit grew." Henry paused. "The images are strong. 'Thus stands an aged elm in ivy bound; thus youthful ivy clasps an elm around.' I can just picture that."
Henry loves poetry. You can hear it when he reads, the way he sounds it out. He tastes each word, weighs his emphasis with care. His tone goes dreamy, mellifluous, he lets the poet lead him where he wants, soaks in the words, takes pleasure in the craft of the verse.
John had made no reply. He busied himself with something - now he can't remember what - feeling Henry's eyes on his back, the seconds sloughing past.
"It isn't affected," Henry said. "It's more beautiful because of that. Because it's plain, and simple. It feels close to you." He paused again, longer this time. "I felt strongly that Parnell felt strongly about what he wrote. Even if..." A breath of laughter. "I don't know if piety and peace has to be so lonely."
John, still quiet. A bulkhead settled with a creak.
"I..." Henry began, but faltered.
John closed his eyes. Stood still.
"I look forward to reading more," Henry said, at last.
John had said: "I'm glad to hear that. Just return it, when you're done."
A new silence grew between them, stretching wide and desolate. John's feet planted heavily on the floor, his neck taut, tongue like a piece of dead meat in his mouth.
“Well, I’ll… I’ll treat it well.” Confusion in Henry's voice, not well hidden. "Good night, John."
It hurt to push him away that time, as it did all the times after, but he set about the grim task knowing it must be done, that this was his duty, his burden to bear.
He regrets it now. How he regrets it. There hadn't been a need to hurt Henry, to squash their friendship to where there was no close farewell upon leaving the ship. John could have tempered his fear, allowed his emotions to settle. Why should he believe his feelings so past the point of no return? He has flared with fire only to cool before, the world is filled with men of sound minds and bodies both. Why should Henry, alone, so unmoor him?
John steers his steps through the rainy Sailortown streets down towards the wharf, where Needle-Niall will mark his fellow sailor's bodies for a cheap penny and what rum is left after the clean-up. Niall's room is a grubby corner and his face a pool of grease in the light of his tallow lantern, but his needles are boiled afresh for every request and there is, miraculously, no dirt under his nails.
One day John will think of Henry, and he'll feel no violent stir. He'll remember only the friendship, the pride, find true comfort in knowing Henry's out there living just as he was meant to: unburdened, unbothered, and free.
He traces the lines for Niall with a pen on his forearm himself, while Niall mixes India ink and water in a chipped blue porcelain cup. John helps Niall stretch his skin taut, and doesn't wince when the tightly bound bouquet of needles pierces through his epidermis.
The eye, Henry's eye, the eye of the cove is etched into his skin, prick by prick, sting after sting. John breathes through his nose, watches the image weeping ink and blood that Niall wipes off with a rag as they go.
Soon, the oozing lines will dry and peel - scab, if he knows Niall's work. The tattoo will heal, settle into his skin, become a part of his being.
He knew a bright young man, once.
John returns to the lodging house a little after dark. Niall rinsed the tattoo with a third of the rum John brought him, the burn sharp enough to make him squeeze his eyes shut against the pain, and John washes it again with water in the enamel basin, carefully pats the feverish, smarting skin momentarily dry.
He lies down on the bed, on the lumpy straw. He waits for the scabbing. He bleeds.
August, eleven months later
"Mr. Bridgens?"
John is in the middle of getting himself situated in his cabin; he's already seen to his preparatory steward's duties and now has time to make sure his own quarters are as he likes them, to put his belongings and the tools of his trade - sewing supplies, razors, pomade - in order before the journey. He's saved arranging his books for last. To map out his reading, the mental route he’s about to undertake alongside the physical journey, is a small and private pleasure. When his own name spoken in familiar tones finds him, he has just opened his library trunk.
John spins round, bumping the trunk with his leg. "Henry!"
He is there. Cheeks rosy with the early winter cold, knit cap pulled down over his protruding ears. The wisp of trepidation fluttering over his features whisks away at John's response. He smiles. "John."
Henry has his sea bag over his shoulder. He must have just come onboard. There's been no change to him in the time since John last saw him, he still has that same swoop to his hair, the sun-shy hue to his skin, the straight, strong back of a hard-working man. He looks fresh. He looks hearty.
"You look well," he says to John.
"As do you, Henry." John returns the smile - he's been gaping, he realizes at last. "As do you."
The ship is bustling with activity, people passing to and fro on the lower deck, shouts coming down from above. Their eyes meet. John's heart picks up speed, thrums a jaunty rhythm inside his chest.
"Are you-" John starts, just as Henry says: "Would it be-?"
They both stop. For a moment all the awkwardness of a year ago threatens to overtake them, to seize its old place in the pit of John's stomach, cut their meeting off.
Then Henry laughs.
He laughs small and quiet, one of these little breathy laughs he once kept in reserve for John. His eyes are crinkled and glittering, his mouth wide and open. Like a gust of wind over still waters, that laugh pulls John with it, sweeps his mood inexorably with it. He laughs, too. They share the laughter, passing it between them like a scrounged bottle of grog, savoring the warmth, the giddiness instilled in it.
"How have you been?" John asks once the laughter dissipates. He still feels it within, an airiness under his ribs.
"Good," says Henry. "Though I haven't been reading much."
"Well..." John gestures to his trove.
Henry shifts the seabag on his shoulder. "I haven't been reading much," he says, and now John hears the apology in his voice, the hint of sorry wistfulness. He understands, fully.
"Don't worry," he assures Henry. "You'll find your way right back into it, it's not the sort of thing one forgets."
"No. You don’t."
Henry's eyes steady, meeting his: deep, wakeful, sincere.
A great hope comes into John’s body. To have a second chance at their friendship, to be this time a steady comrade, mend their bond. If he can have it, he won’t squander it. This time, he’ll do it all right.
"I need to-" Henry throws a look over his shoulder.
"Go, go," John says, waves him off, swallowing down the impulse to keep Henry with him. "Go to your work. Don't get yourself a reprimand on my account."
Another smile from Henry. "I look forward to reading together again."
John clasps his hands, leans against his bunk, the motion deliberate so as not to bump into his trunk again.
"This time, I've brought Homer."
September
Henry purses his lips into a thin, thoughtful line. He scratches his chin, fingertips disappearing into his beard.
“But,” he says, “I think it maybe doesn’t matter how true it all is. To history.”
“You prefer Homer as a forger of fictions?” John says.
It’s getting to be late. The workday fatigue has a steady hold on John’s muscles, and his cuffs are still damp from the washing he did earlier. Outside his cabin the after supper clamor is dying down; they’ve lowered the volume of their conversation accordingly. Still, he has no thought of extinguishing his lamp and going to bed. Not as long as Henry is there, posted in his usual spot by the door, frowning softly as he gathers his thoughts into words.
“‘Forger of fictions,’” Henry says. “Is that what it would make him?”
“If Homer didn’t write as a witness, or a keeper of history, isn’t that what he would be?”
Henry takes a deep breath through his nose, as if he’s inhaling John’s question like smoke, and turns his eyes towards the ceiling. John lets him think in peace. He’s not quite done with the Iliad yet, but they’ve been discussing the subject of its author, Henry having come to John with questions on the historicity of the epos, many of which John hasn’t been able to answer with satisfactory certainty.
It never disappoints Henry when John can’t provide him with instant clarity. Rather it seems to excite him to open an area up for speculation, to be free to plot his own course over literary seas.
John watches Henry in the yellow lamp light, the lines on his face moulded deeper by it, emphasizing the fine character of his face. They’re as much a joy as ever, these talks with Henry. To be sat on his bed, comfortable in good company, and have his soul rejuvenated after a long day - he will never stop being grateful to have this restored to him.
“I suppose he would,” Henry says reluctantly. “I just don’t know if I feel that’s… I don’t know if that would be all he was.”
“There will be excavations yet to come, I’m sure,” John says. He tugs at his damp cuffs. The sensation of wet fabric against his wrists has always bothered him. “I doubt all there is to know about Ilium has been discovered.”
He unbuttons his cuffs and folds them up over his forearms, while Henry pensively shakes his head.
“I think I’m all right with not knowing.”
“Oh?” John smiles. “You wouldn’t want to be able to visit Troy? Walk where the mighty walls once stood?”
“I already have,” Henry grins, taps his hand on his chest, over his heart.
“Now, that’s a fine notion.”
“That’s your way of calling me silly.”
“Not at all!” John protests with zeal, even though he can very clearly see from the curve of Henry’s mouth he’s not being taken that way in earnest. Even so, he holds his open hands out in front of him to ward off the accusation.
“Then how is it that-”
Henry starts speaking, then stops.
“How is it that…?” John says, but gets no reply. Henry isn’t meeting his eyes, he’s looking at John’s arm, at-
In a sudden burst of motion, Henry spins round to throw a quick glance through the open door, one to each side, then, with as much hurry but also some care not to be loud, he slides the door shut, enclosing the two of them within John’s cramped cabin.
The door has never been closed before. This is new and John is reeling, the situation having shifted too fast for him to follow. He starts getting up from the bed but doesn’t manage to before Henry sinks to his knees before him.
Henry, at his feet. Reaching for him, taking John’s left hand in both of his, turning it palm up and pushing John’s left sleeve all the way up to his elbow.
The eye tattoo, laid bare, inky lines stark and black.
John’s heart slows, his thoughts go hazy. Henry stares at him, his eyebrows raised in arches of surprise, his mouth half open. John doesn’t know what to say, how to explain, how to regain his equilibrium, not with Henry there, not with Henry so close, not with Henry touching him and seeing what was never meant for him to-
Henry leans in and kisses the tattoo.
There’s the tickle of his beard, first, the sensation neither silky nor coarse, just soft, just a half second of his mustache touching down before his lips meet John’s skin to press warm and pliant against him. The kiss lingers, like he savors it, his exhale through his nose like a caress. There is both firmness and delicacy to it. It leaves the faintest imprint of saliva behind, a lingering impression of moisture that somehow is more striking, more intense than every prick of the needles that marked John.
Henry looks up at him. There’s momentous seriousness in his eyes, grave and dark in the dusky light, a multitudinous shift of greater meanings: a question, a statement, a plea.
In John’s body, there is a great calm. Henry’s hands holding his are steady, don’t tremble or flinch.
He cups Henry’s cheek. His fingers reach towards his ear, he feels the smooth earlobe against his fingertips, the raspy hairs on the back on Henry’s jawline against his palm. Henry’s pulse throbs under his touch, the driving force of the strong, exquisite machinery of his body, quick and palpable.
Henry runs a hand up John’s arm, the scrape of his calluses in contrast with the lightness of the movement. John watches him, watches Henry watch him, take in his long and graying hair, the sideburns he’s careful to keep neat and trim. Henry’s gaze slides down the arch of his nose, rests on his open lips, traces the lines and wrinkles etched into his skin, embraces him wordlessly, holds his image in their depths, reflects it back.
He sees; he is seen.
May, years later
The sunlight casting the HMS Erebus in as brilliantly triumphant light as an expedition on this caliber could hope for makes the brass of the buttons on Henry's uniform gleam as if golden. John sees the scattering of the golden flecks that is their reflection cast over his luggage before he feels Henry squeezing his arm. They said a sort of goodbye in private earlier this morning, undressed and unrestrained in both gesture and word, before boarding on separate ships for the journey. Still Henry has come around on his way to the Terror to give John another, more subdued token of his affection. John turns and catches Henry's smile, as dazzling as the May sun, as his lover hurries to his post.
“Henry?” John calls after him. Henry turns mid-step. He throws a cautious look around the crowded pier, by now a habit, and near skips back.
Henry’s never in as good a mood as when casting off. He loves the sea, the freedom of it. He loves this life. Their life.
“I have something for you,” John says as Henry joins him.
“Voltaire? Finally?”
John chuckles. “No. I thought to start you off with Tibullus’ ‘Elegies.’”
“Elegies?” Henry says, raising a brow in amusement, and John can understand why. ‘Lamentations’ don’t strike one as suitable to ring in what is sure to be a grand adventure.
“You may find them gayer than the title suggests,” John says, knowing Henry will love them, that Tibullus will speak to the parts of his soul that are the most tender, most glad, “but that’s not what I wanted to give you.” He reaches under his vest and takes out the journal he’s kept there. “I thought, a new logbook for unfamiliar waters.”
It’s a fine book, leatherbound and brand new, with a great number of thick, cream colored pages. It cost John a pretty penny and has been a giddy little secret of his for several weeks, hidden under the mattress of the bed they share when both on land.
Henry’s bright grin of delighted surprise is worth every coin and subterfuge.
“John,” he says, soft. His eyes gleam as he extends a hand to accept the gift.
A sudden cheer goes up from the crowd; Sir John Franklin waves from the deck. A couple of excited onlookers shoulder past, making Henry leap out of the way, into John.
There’s plenty of space to back away, put an appropriate distance between him and Henry.
John stays. He feels Henry’s whole, shapely body against his, one arm looped around his waist for support. John puts a hand on his back, rubs his thumb over his spine. For a brief moment - a second, less - it’s just the two of them, face to face, breaths mingling.
The warmth of Henry's body lingers with him long after they part.