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'You mustn't wait until all the best ideas are snapped up!' says Commander Fitzjames, animated by the prospect of his party. The cheers of the men have really put a spark back into him that's been missing since Sir John was killed - it's nice to see again, though Edward thinks the whole business a little... he'd hesitate to say dangerous, but something along those lines.
'I've a plan,' he says, though he truly has no clue and has already passed the trunk on to the few remaining men on board Terror, sitting as an open maw on the mess deck.
'Do you, now? I haven't yet - there's a lot to be considered about it, of course.'
'Is there?' says Edward, nervously; he hadn't thought so -
'Well, yes - it has to: one, fit one's personality; two, fit the image he wishes to portray to the men; and three, be tremendous fun.'
'Ah,' says Edward.
'I see I've scuppered you,' Fitzjames laughs, 'what had you planned? Lady Shelley's monster? You’ve the hair for it; I’m not sure you’re quite tall or sallow enough, though.'
‘The monster does end up in the Arctic Circle,’ says Edward with a grim smile -
‘Yes, but he was planning on incinerating himself! Frightful! It won’t do at all.’ He pats Edward’s shoulder with the back of his mitten again, ‘Worry not, you’ve got a week to figure it out.’ Edward must be grimacing, because Fitzjames laughs again -
‘If you’re truly stumped, you can always ask me for pointers! Are you stopping in at Erebus on the way back? You should ask Mr Bridgens for a tip - now that’s a fellow with more ideas than he knows what to do with.’
'Perhaps,' says Edward attempting a warmer smile, and pretends to spot someone waving him over to one of their sledges, quite ready to muscle in on whatever task those seamen are performing in order to escape this conversation - 'pardon me, sir, those Terrors need some help -'
'I say,' says Fitzjames, searching around as Edward backs off with a hand to his hatband, 'alright. We'll discuss later, yes?'
'Yes!' Edward agrees, every cell focused on not breaking into a sprint. He can hear Fitzjames call as he retreats -
'It's going to be fun!'
Somehow, he doubts it.
-
It's absurd to be thankful for the crushing pressures of Acting Captaincy, but there is something to be said for how it has shielded Edward from engaging in idle chitchat or even thoughts about Commander Fitzjames' damned Arctic Ball for a whole three days, no matter how monumentally stressful they were.
'Have you a plan?' asks Lieutenant Irving over their supper, 'For the Carnivale?'
'Of course,' Edward lies smoothly, hoping to banish the topic, but John looks thoughtfully into his Superior Turtle Soup.
'Oh,' he says, then, 'yes, of course you have.' He sighs hard enough to cause ripples across the surface of his soup. 'I haven't.'
'You haven't?' Edward repeats, cursing himself.
'We ought to have discussed it together. The three of us, I mean. We could have been a group effort. That's what our Marines are doing - you as Robin Hood and us as Merry Men. Or - George could be Maid Marian… I think he's quite chomping at the bit to wear a gown. I'd be Little John… but it wouldn't make sense on its own.'
'I suppose not.'
They lapse into silence.
'Friar Tuck?' Edward suggests, after a moment. There's no reason John couldn't be Robin Hood himself, of course, but Edward knows him well enough now to know that the mere suggestion that John could be the main character of a legend would send the man into apoplexies.
'Wouldn't do alone. I'd not mock a man of the cloth.'
‘Was Friar Tuck a real Friar?’
‘Friar Tuck was not a real man,’ says John, his tone as close to sarcasm as it’s possible for John to get, ‘but the costume’s the same. I’d look a mad monk. Besides, I’m too vain of my hair for a tonsure, and that’s the most important bit.’
The unexpected mental image of John's shiny pate shocks what feels like the first laugh in a year out of Edward -
'Oh, are you sure, John? It would be very funny.'
'No doubt,' says John, and the corner of his mouth has quirked up just a little. 'But I shan't, no matter how you encourage me. I'll think of something else.'
-
'You should go as someone you don't like,' says Lieutenant Hodgson, 'someone you find so intensely annoying that what you must do is mock them.'
'I couldn't dress as you,' says Edward, taking George's pawn with his knight, 'it would look as though I were dressed normally -'
'You wound me,' says George, clutching dramatically at his chest - 'what I meant is that perhaps you could dress as, say, Úr Liszt -'
'You know how I feel about that Hungarian Lunatic.'
'Well, precisely! Vent your anger, sir - or perhaps... who was the fellow you were whining about a few weeks ago -'
'I don't whine -'
'- you were whining. Lord Byron. I daresay you'd look the part. Mad, bad and dangerous to know.'
'I'm none of those things.'
'That's the joke,' George says, sagely, before taking Edward's queen.
Edward curses internally, and puts another pawn in the path of his king. He says, 'If I went as you I suppose I'd have to shave off my whiskers -'
'- I am bewhiskered!'
‘Of course,’ Edward concedes, squinting, ‘they’re just so hard to see -’
‘Tuh!’
‘You know John wanted to do a group costume.’
‘Well he ought to have asked earlier,’ George says with a haughty sniff, still playing at hurt, and leaving his bishop open.
‘So you’ve got it settled?’ Knight takes bishop.
‘Indeed. Damn. I liked that bishop.’
‘Well?’ Edward prompts - George’s mock-affront only grows stronger.
‘It’s a secret! You should never ask a lady her age nor a gentleman what he’s wearing to a costume party.’
'That doesn't sound right at all.'
'So you would tell me your costume, then?'
'I…'
'Didn't think so,' George smiles, running a rook up the board, 'Check and mate, old fruit.'
-
'Oh!' says Mister Jopson, almost knocked off of his feet as Edward barrels into the Captain's sickroom. It's terrifically musty and feverish in the great cabin, and the Captain himself is laid out along the window seats, apparently asleep and looking worse than he smells, which is a feat.
'Good God, Jopson,' says Edward, steadying the poor fellow, who seems about ready to topple over without Edward's help, 'I am sorry. You must be exhausted.'
‘I’m alright,’ Jopson says, allowing himself to be steered into a seat nonetheless and stifling a yawn into his cuff, 'I'll catch a second here -' his eyes flutter closed, then jerk open. 'The Captain's sparked out.'
'Hm,' says Edward, still holding Jopson's shoulder as he sways in his chair - 'he's doing well?'
'Almost over the worst of it,' Jopson says, 'I hope he'll be upright… this time next week. He'll miss Commander Fitzjames' Carnivale… I'll miss Commander Fitzjames' Carnivale.'
'Oh!' says Edward, sighting a chance and jumping at it, 'I'll spot the Captain that night, if you'd rather go. You deserve a party more than the rest of us.'
Jopson's queasy smile goes oddly smug. 'Thank you sir,' he says, 'but there's not much there for me. I don't mind. Saves me getting dressed up, too.'
'You don't know what to wear, do you.'
Jopson gives a tired laugh - 'Neither do you, sir.'
Edward bristles. 'That's not true. I'm full of ideas.'
'Of course,' says Jopson, in the same soupily indulgent tone Edward's heard him use on the Captain for years now, 'meanwhile I am much more inclined to getting others dressed up.'
He's closed his eyes again, his chin propped sleepily in his hand -
'I'd cast you as a knight, sir. Arthurian. Lancelot or -' he breaks off into another yawn '- Sir Galahad. The Brave.'
Edward flushes at the unearned compliment, shields his face - but there's no need, really. Jopson's fast asleep.
-
'Your disguise ready yet?' asks Mister Blanky, 'For the Commander Fitzjames' do -'
'Quite ready!' says Edward; it isn't, and having bargained with John and George not to use the trunk's contents weighs heavy, now. His creativity had been pushed just naming childhood toy soldiers; to think up and then make a disguise for Commander Fitzjames' do by tomorrow evening seems as unlikely as walking upon the moon.
With the Great Cabin out of bounds, indoor smoking has been moved up to the wardroom, which has the effect of making Edward feel a great delinquent, as though a schoolmaster or train conductor might be through at any minute to give him a talking to. Blanky swaps his pipe to his other hand and says -
‘Worried that your lieutenants are going to show you up?’
‘Hardly.’
Blanky smirks, ‘I don’t know about that - I’ve seen what Lieutenant Irving’s up to; very flash.’
‘Really? John?’
‘Oh yeah. A man on a mission, that one. And Hodgson’s hoarded every unclaimed sheet on the ship -’
‘That doesn’t have anything to do with a costume, necessarily. He does have a bit of a draught coming up under his bunk…’
Blanky chews his pipe stem and gives a full-throated chuckle, ‘That’s put the wind up you -’
‘It has not,’ says Edward, much as a man with a wind up him might, ‘I’m prepared. Very nearly finished, actually.’
‘Of course,’ says Blanky, clearly convinced otherwise, ‘if I were you, with your dark hair, I’d have gone as Blackbeard. Pistol bandoliers and your tall boots, lit tapers in your hair -’
‘Hardly safe,’ Edward mutters.
'Not loaded! My God, what kind of fool do you take me for -' he pauses, and his smile goes sly, '- say, fancy a wager? Which Erebite do you suppose will bring a loaded pistol?'
'I meant the tapers!'
'They needn't be real. Quick dab in Lieutenant Irving's paintbox and -' he wiggles his fingers around his pipe expressively. 'Now, are you a betting man? I'd put money on Le Vesconte.'
'Augh,' Edward says, cradling his forehead, 'Mr Blanky, you'll forgive me if I just pray that every terrible thing stays in our imaginations.'
'If wishes were horses, Lieutenant -'
'- we'd all be at home.'
'Hm,' says Blanky, 'yes. That too.'
-
Edward, for his part, wraps the paper about his head and glues it together with some of John's gum arabic before carefully cutting points into it. The first attempt, sticking straight up from his head, seems a little lackluster - the second, with its gathered peaks, is a lot more daring. When he checks himself in the mirror over his berth he's quite proud of his handiwork. In the cabin next door, George drops something heavy, and curses heartily. Edward pokes his head out.
'Oh!' says John from inside the wardroom, 'Edward! Are you ready?' John creeps around the door frame and they take stock of one another for a moment. Edward suddenly feels deficient, faced with an Angel of the Lord, while John is clearly grasping for some way not to say "Is that all?"
'Lovely hat!' he says, eventually, 'Very festive!'
Edward looks away, slightly ashamed, and calls out - 'George, we have to go soon!', and receives another crash by way of reply.
'Get ready, boys -' says George from behind the door, and then '- are you out there? Prepare to be astounded -'
Edward is astounded.
'How on Earth -'
George bows deeply, and the top of his wig brushes the floorboards, pushing off and over the back of his head.
'That's cheating,' says John, 'we said nothing from the trunk!'
'There isn't a thing from the trunk here! I've spent all week on this, look -' he hikes up his skirt (John closes his eyes) to reveal a pair of baskets strapped to his breeches, flaring the skirt about his hips, '- I borrowed these fish baskets from Mister Weekes!' he drops the skirt once more (John opens his eyes when he hears it hit the ground), 'And the rest of this is bed sheets!'
‘Indecorous,’ John sniffs, as though he is not also wearing a sheet skirt. George nudges his shoulder.
‘Well, I think you look lovely, mon ange -’
‘Oh, don’t be funny,' says John, though he smiles as George turns his beam on Edward -
'And see here! Le Roi - you ought to have said, we could have matched!'
'It's not a crown ,' says Edward, putting a self-conscious hand to it, 'besides, I recall you being very jealous of your ideas not two days ago -'
'Ah,' George puts a hand to his chest, 'what's done is done. Now -' he extends his arm to John, who hooks his own into it with a fond roll of the eyes '- I believe we have a prior engagement.'
'We were waiting for you,' says John, leading them away - they both duck at the doorway, miscalculate, and laugh as they adjust their headgear. The matchstick battleship atop George’s wig hits the floor behind him, unnoticed, bounces once, and loses a mast. Edward crouches to pick it up, cradling it in both hands.
How queer, he thinks, how fragile - all of it; the Arctic, the ship, the strange brotherhood he's made here - that if wishes were horses he'd not wish for it gone.
'Hold up!' he calls ahead to his lieutenants, waving the now single-masted ship at them as he approaches - they turn, arms still linked, wave him forward with their spare hands. Yes , he thinks, though it baffles him, warm too.