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James always thought the first time his hands moved in their odd patterns in front of someone else was when he was twelve, in front of Hennessey as he quizzed him in preparation for his midshipman’s examination. But later on, he realizes he was wrong.
As a child in Padstow, his hands were always moving. Picking stray thatch that had fallen from the rooftops, turning over shells from the seaside in his hands, squeezing his palms together when he was especially excited about what his grandfather had prepared for dinner that night. His hands had always moved, but he hadn’t noticed them then, because his grandfather would bring him fish scales and pebbles and let him stroke the texture of his beard and laugh. His grandfather would always laugh when James laughed.
James realizes this one day when he is in the gardens with Thomas, and Thomas brings him a sprig of lavender in his outstretched palm. The sun is perfectly warm on his cheeks and the garden in bloom smells lovely and sweet without being overwhelming.
“A flower for my flower,” Thomas says, and James takes the lavender and feels its cool, wet weight in his hand, and for a moment he is back in Cornwall, taking a slimy piece of fish skin from his grandfather. He looks down and finds his hands have done their movements without his even knowing it.
Ordinarily this would bother him, this loss of control, but he finds that it doesn’t. Thomas smiles at him, and James tucks the lavender in his pocket. He realizes he has been like this for a long, long time, but with Thomas he finds he doesn’t mind that fact.
***
What James does remember clearly, though, is the first time he behaved in this way in front of Thomas. Before he does, he is sure that Thomas has grasped inklings of it, that Thomas has collected clues of his not-rightness like breadcrumbs, and for a while James fears that Thomas will follow that path right into the ugly truth. Thomas encourages him, says things like “You should not restrain yourself” and “You should do what makes you happy” but James knows the only reason Thomas says such things is because he does not know, has not seen, has not followed those clues to their inevitable conclusion.
Even so, James says things to Thomas like, “You make me happy” and he knows these things to be truer than anything in the world. As he is around Thomas, he feels himself relaxing, even as shame pokes at his heart and his old fears cling to him like a vice. It is as if Thomas can sense this, and he presses James close, grounding him.
They are in the study when it happens. They are supposed to be working, and they have been for hours, but they have had wine and the afternoon is wearing on them and now Thomas is joking about the play he had recently been to see with Miranda and a fellow peer. He has a way of making James laugh until he cries, and James takes an odd pleasure in the breathless feeling.
“After a play like that,” Thomas says, voice hoarse and eyes streaming, “the best noise in the world is the sound of applause at the end, setting you free.”
James can’t say exactly what it is that makes him do it. Perhaps it is the way Thomas glows slightly pink after his raucous bouts of laughter. Perhaps it is because his muscles feel a bit less like they are going to snap. Perhaps it is the wine. But whatever it is that makes him, James decides then to open his mouth and say, seriously, “I think the best noise in the world is the unfurling of the fore topsail on the Gloucester.”
There is a beat in which neither speaks, and it must be the wine, for James flaps his hands and rushes onward. “It’s the cleanest, crispest sound I have ever heard. There must be something unique about the Gloucester’s construction that makes it so, because I’ve never heard another topsail quite like it. Not on any other ship I’ve served on, though the Ruby has a floorboard that creaks and that is rather nice. Perhaps the shipbuilders made some sort of mistake on the forestay, because even the topsails on the main and mizzen masts don’t have as nice a sound. Whenever I could, I looked up at the lines and the rigging to see if I could spot some mistake, though if it is indeed a mistake, it is a happy one because the sound is so–”
James realizes, then, that Thomas is not looking at him, his eyes fixed on some point elsewhere in the room. Immediately, James clasps his hands rigidly behind his back, allowing his fingernails to dig into his palms as punishment. How could you allow yourself to behave like this? James thinks, and the voice in his head sounds a bit like the Admiral’s. He has someone now who finally cares for him, and he has ruined it with his inability to be normal, his inability to just follow a conversation and not direct it towards him because no one cares about these things like he does and–
“Show me which one is the topsail.” Thomas has gone to the bookshelf and retrieved a little trinket, a small carved wooden ship the likes of which might be found in a bottle. He holds it out to James. “I want to have a better understanding of what it is you’re describing.”
“This one,” James says, pointing, his voice small. Could it be? James has never dared to hope but now, something warm and fluttering grows in his chest. “But this is a different ship than the Gloucester. This is a brig and she’s a full-rigged ship.”
“What’s the difference?”
Thomas is looking at him like James holds the key to some ancient unexplored knowledge, and he can scarcely bear it. James blushes and turns away, the familiar tightness squeezing at his throat. “It isn’t important.”
But Thomas’ fingers dance lightly across his cheek, guiding him back. “Oh, but I think it is, my love. Tell me.” He places the miniature ship in James’s hands. “Show me.”
And so James does. He tells Thomas the difference between a ship and a brig, between a vessel that is square-rigged and one that is rigged fore-and-aft, between a main mast and a mizzen. Thomas asks and asks, and James tells and tells, all the while turning over the little ship in his hands and feeling the smooth wood of her hull beneath the pads of his fingers.
***
“You’ve never told me how you’ve come to sound the way you do,” Thomas says one night as they take tea and exchange poems by the fire. For a moment, James stares into his cup and says nothing, watching the leaves float like debris from a shipwreck.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“You have no formal education and you come from a fishing village in Cornwall,” Thomas continues, sitting forward on the sofa. “So tell me, James, how it is you have come to sound like any other man I’ve met in Whitehall?”
The story spills out from him like a gushing stream, and James did not realize quite how freshly he remembered it, quite how sharply it still stung, like an open wound dipped in saltwater. He tells Thomas of the way he was always alone, the way the other midshipman hunched over their bowls and turned away from him when he joined them in the berth for dinner. How he spent his meager allowance on books and candle wax so that he could stay awake long into the night, reading aloud and biting his tongue when the harsh drawl of the West Country slips out. He thinks of how the other boys sound, how their voices float high in their mouths, and he copies them. He copies them in everything he can, from their rigid posture to their dinner discussions of Herodotus. He studies them just as closely as he studies his trigonometry, and finds the latter infinitely simpler.
“Still,” James says, “I suppose I proved moderately successful. Hennessey was pleased with me, at least. Said I was finally beginning to sound cultured.”
But Thomas, by contrast, looks anything but. “Do you mean to tell me you’ve been putting on an accent this whole time?” From the mouth of any other man, James would have taken the statement as an accusation, and even though it is Thomas, James feels his hackles begin to rise involuntarily. But Thomas does not look angry, rather he looks and sounds devastated, his eyes dragging downward at the edges.
He takes James’ hands. “There is never a need for you to make yourself into someone you are not. Not around me.”
But there is, James thinks, and he doesn’t know how to explain to Thomas that he isn’t sure he could speak with a West Country accent even if he wanted to anymore. Doesn’t know how to explain that he can’t tell the difference between the person he has built himself into being and the person he is , or whether the latter still exists or has ever existed at all.
***
Since Hennessey and the doctors first threatened him with Bedlam, James has become adept at hiding the worst manifestations of himself. He has learned how to ignore his desires, or else how to transmute the most unbearable urges into things that are smaller and less threatening. The urge to wring and flap his hands becomes the curling of his fingers into the cuffs of his shirtsleeves, the urge to rock back and forth on his heels becomes the surreptitious locking and unlocking of his knees. When all else fails, he has become good at holding the madness inside of him, of finding ways to excuse himself to a private place to come apart when the world becomes too much .
But James has been spending more and more time with the Hamiltons, and they have given him permission to do what he wishes to. More and more James allows himself to accept such permission, to allow the happy noise to bubble up at the back of his throat when Thomas’ forehead presses against his, to allow his hands to do their movements when he discusses Milton with Miranda. He hides away when they hold their salons, and unlike Hennessey, they do not demand that he mingle with anyone he does not wish to. He sleeps more soundly at night, his muscles looser and more relaxed than they have been in a long while. The world is still a lot, but with Thomas by his side, it ceases to feel too much . He thinks, maybe, that the time Miranda found him rocking in the garden will be the last time he goes fully mad.
****
It is not.
It is a Thursday, and Thomas asks James to join him and another couple to see a play at the Globe Theatre. James bites his tongue before he can ask why me and not Miranda? She has been laid up in bed by a headache since the previous evening, and so is in no state to be going out for entertainment. Briefly, James wonders if he is in any better state to be doing so himself.
“Please know, James,” Thomas says, placing his hand on the nape of James’ neck and stroking over the skin there with his thumb, “that this is only an offer. If you would prefer to spend the evening alone, I have no aversion to joining them on my own. Or if you would prefer we spend the night together here, I am more than happy to do that as well. It’s no trouble. I have seen the play before.”
Slowly, James nods. “I’d like to go,” he says, because he does. He has wanted to see Much Ado About Nothing performed since he first read it, and while the thought of all the people and the smells and the noise at the theatre still makes his stomach twist, he thinks that perhaps he will be able to manage it with Thomas at his side.
The couple they are meant to accompany arrive late in the afternoon for drinks and sandwiches before the four of them leave together for the theatre. The man, Henry, is an old schoolmate of Thomas’ from Eton, and while boisterous, he seems polite and kind. He and his wife seem much more keen to exchange stories about their school and courtship days with Thomas than they are to engage with James, and he enjoys watching them laugh and joke in front of him, like his own private theatre show. When they do ask James questions, he answers them fully and even makes them laugh as well. He is proud of himself. He feels almost normal .
They elect to walk to the theatre, since the distance is short and passes a park, and the weather is unseasonably pleasant. They are walking and chatting and James feels almost light when suddenly, not far from the theatre, a distant scream cuts through the air. They all pause. James feels his spine grow cold.
There is another scream, wretched and wailing like the yowl of a cornered cat, and even though it is far away James feels his posture tense. He has heard a desperate, awful sound like this once before, and the memory of it makes him tremble.
“Oh, what an awful noise!” the lady says.
“Must be coming from Bedlam,” Henry says and waves a hand in the direction of the noise. “Just down the road there.”
“Poor thing. Madness is an awful curse, isn’t it?”
“Equally a curse to let the rest of us hear it. Chills you to the bone, that sound, does it not?”
Bedlam. The buzzing begins, low in James’ ears. He cannot go mad, not here, not when it is just down the road here and they could cart him off easily, without a second thought. But the buzzing rapidly crashes into a crescendo and it feels as though his head will burst with the pressure and soon he is making that noise, the noise Hennessey cuffed him for making.
A curse. That is what this is. That is what James is.
There is a hand on his arm and he shakes it off like it has burnt him and presses his palms over his ears to guard against the loudness that is everywhere. He needs to go, needs to leave but where can he go? He doesn’t know the way back to the Hamilton’s, he has never been to the theatre, and he cannot ask for help because no sound will come out when he opens his mouth, he can tell because of the trapped gurgling feeling at the back of his throat.
“James?” Thomas says, his hands hovering near him but not touching, and he looks afraid. There it is, James thinks bitterly. This is the end.
Thomas asks him what is wrong, asks him how he can help, but of course James cannot answer because he is useless, he is mad, he is rocking now and making noise and his muscles have gone painfully rigid because everything is too much and he is suddenly back in the boardinghouse listening to the little girl scream as they take her away, he is in the back alley being sick, knowing that it could be him next and it will be him next because he is sure the whole street is gawking at him now, and worse than the whole street he is sure Thomas is gawking at him, and there is screaming (so much screaming) and it could be his but he doesn’t know how to make it stop.
***
Later that night, when they are together in bed and when he can speak again, James tells Thomas how the threat of Bedlam has been hung over him since he was a little boy, how Hennessey knew even the word struck more fear and compliance into James than any whip ever could. He tells him of the little screaming girl, dragged from the boarding house that night and how he became keenly aware of how easily they could come for him next.
The whole time James speaks, Thomas does not say a word, does not move . But then James says, “Hennessey was doing what he could to protect me. Another man would not have been half as lenient on a mad, incorrigible little boy like me.” And Thomas begins to cry.
“God, James, if I had known…” Thomas’ voice trails off and its choked sound hurts James more than he has been hurt in his whole life. “I know that you have been told terrible things about yourself, I know that believing them has bound you up with shame. I knew that, and I’ve been trying to fix it, James. Trying to set you free, to help you. But God… if I had only known how deeply you have been hurt…”
For a moment, James’ heart seizes in his throat, and he thinks, This is it. This is where Thomas finally understands the depths of James’ brokenness and he turns away. He remembers when he had found out that Thomas knew of his affair with Miranda, when Miranda had told him, Look me in the eye. Look me in the eye and tell me that you truly think Thomas would intentionally cause you harm.
And of course James couldn’t look her in the eye, he couldn’t look anyone in the eye when he gets like this, and now he is glad that he didn’t. Intentionally? Perhaps not. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. The intent of those who have hurt him, of those who have ripped pieces of his flesh aside and left James to try to sew the pieces back together—their intent does not matter in the long run, not when it is he who is left to bear the scars.
He can’t say he would blame Thomas, though. He would leave himself behind, too, if he could, crawl out of his body the way a snake sheds its skin.
But then Thomas takes him by the arms, pulls him close, and presses them together so tightly, and Thomas’ body is a weight that grounds him, that tethers him down to the earth when it feels like the world is spinning and he could just float away. This is what love feels like. A warmth spreads outward from James’ chest.
“My darling, I promise you I will never let anyone hurt you like that again. I will never let anyone take you to Bedlam. You are safe with me, always. I promise you that. I promise. ”
The words stir the same warmth and James nestles deeper into Thomas’ embrace, who holds him close and strokes his hair. James wants to believe it, he tries to, with every fiber of his being, and he is almost successful but for the niggling, dark corner of James’ mind which says, There is no way you can promise me that.
***
Soon after that day in the gardens when Thomas deposits the flower, fresh and wet, in James’ palm, they are at James’ rooms, and Thomas gives him something else to turn over in his hands. A silver signet ring, and James’ thumb knows the pattern on it as deeply as he knows his own name. It is Thomas’ pattern, the one embroidered in his shirtsleeves, and James can merely press the flesh of his fingers into the cool metal and be flooded instantly with images of Thomas dressing him reverently, of Thomas holding him tightly in bed, of Thomas kissing him and laughing, of Thomas. Of all that is good and right in the world.
They stay awake long into the night making love and talking and just savoring the closeness to one another that they will not have again for three months. James lies awake even longer still, pressing the ring to his lips and twirling it on his fingers and wondering how he will survive so long away from this man who has rapidly become his reason for living. James has weathered many a hopeless voyage before, and he thinks that perhaps it is the hope which now makes it so hard.
***
Every night thereafter, for the duration of the voyage to and from Nassau, James lies down to sleep and is haunted by the words he wanted to say to Thomas, haunted by the way they stuck in his throat that last night in his rooms, even as his chest felt like it would burst with emotion.
But three months has given him ample time to prepare, ample time to rehearse, ample time to press the signet ring to his lips and pretend he has just kissed Thomas’. Every night he speaks to the ring, showers it with the words that had gotten caught but that he needs Thomas to know. Foolishly, he feels sometimes that Thomas knows what he is doing, even across an ocean.
He plans to say it when he returns to the Hamilton’s home and sees him again, when he melts into Thomas’ arms and all the pains and horrors of the war and Nassau fade away into the distance for a blessed moment. The whole carriage ride he bounces his leg, spins the ring, but he is smiling. This will be the most right thing he has ever done.
But when he arrives, Peter Ashe is there and he has to settle for feeling the warm silk of Thomas’ hand on his in a handshake, rather than drawing him close, caressing his cheek. Has to settle for meeting Thomas’ eyes and hoping he sees the words hidden behind his lips, but James is tired of hoping. When he returns again, when he has finished with his meeting with Hennessey at the Admiralty and making his case there, he resolves to tell Thomas. To speak the words on his heart at last.
I love you, he will say, and Thomas will wrap him in his arms and kiss him tenderly on the cheek. A warmth settles in James’ stomach as he steps out of the carriage and onto the marble steps of the Admiralty, where Hennessey is already waiting for him. For the first time, James can envision a future in which he is truly happy.