Chapter Text
You wish you had fought back.
This is a thought that comes to you often as you work the fields. The work of turning over the soil is not enough to chase those questions from your mind. You had been so sure that if you did not go meekly to your fate, they would have hurt Miranda and Peter and – unthinkable – taken worse measures against James. Now, you are not sure it would have changed anything.
Your hoe cuts through the soil, and you imagine what would have happened if you had pulled every scrap of anger out of yourself and at least punched one of them. Where would you be now? Most likely in the same place, but it would have felt good.
But what if…
You shake your head. No use in thinking of that.
In your first week in this place, you stole a pencil from one of the overseers and hoarded the pamphlets the local church sent to remind the convicts of their place in their imagined hierarchy of God’s kingdom under your mattress. On their blank backs, you wrote a long, passionate letter. Though all the forces of Hell and Heaven and England stand in my way, I will find my way back to you. I swear this to you, my love. You folded it up tightly and wrote the address on the outside and gave it to the pastor when he came, begging him to see it delivered to its destination.
When they dragged you before the plantation owner so that he could remind you that, despite the privileges offered in this place, you were still a prisoner, you quoted scripture at him in your rage. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. You called him a coward, a liar, a hypocrite, and worse words that you learned from James. He will take some work to reform, the people in the house said, shaking their heads and laughing. That’s what the boss gets for taking from Bedlam, the overseers muttered.
Your hoe hits a root, and you kneel to work it from the dirt. The warm soil feels good on your hands.
You did not try to send another letter, but you kept writing them. Every single piece of paper you could get your hands on is now under your mattress, covered in words meant for one man’s eyes only. They are like prayers, your letters. You pour the things you would tell him into your little scraps of paper. Someday, you tell yourself, you will give them to him.
One of the men who lived in your cabin found one of your pages. You were careless; you did not see it fall to the ground in the faint light of the candle stub. He read it out in the middle of the day, his mocking voice taking your words and mangling them into something unrecognizable. I saw a robin this morning. They are different here; their breasts are red all the way down, and their songs sound different. I wonder what the birds in Nassau sound like. O my dearest, I dream of you, as I know you must dream of me.
You did not know what to do. You knew what he would have done, if he were there, so you strode across the fields and hit the man square in the nose. In the aftermath of the resulting battle, you did not feel any better. That hot rage that had simmered in the pit of your chest since those men had stormed into your home was still there. You were not sure if it would ever fade. In any case, when the overseers who took you to the place where men were hauling rocks out of the riverbed laughed at you and said, You’d best forget about that’un; he’s most likely hanging from a Charles Town gibbet or swimming with the fishes, you imagined exactly how you would push them into the river and hold them there. It was a horrible thought.
You know deep in your soul that he is alive. It is impossible for you to conceptualize a world where he isn’t.
The root comes free. You stand up and brush the dirt your hands off onto your breeches, then continue the work.
When they first took you, you were terrified that you would forget the curves and angles of his face. You would sit at the tiny window looking out over the city and trace, painstakingly, the outline of him onto the frost with your finger. Like the letters, it was a desperate prayer. This is my beloved , your drawings said. Watch over him. In the belly of the ship that took you to Savannah, you carved a crude outline of him with the jagged bolt that stuck out of your manacles, and on those stolen pamphlets, you finally were able to draw him in full.
You had never been good at realistic portraits, but your pictures of him were the closest thing you had ever done to a true likeness. Sometimes, you would give him shorter hair, or a different mustache. You had no way of knowing what he looked like now. He must have kept the beard; that was certain. On the last night you made love to each other, that blessed night before your world came crashing down, you stuck your nose in his beard and told him that it made him look like a ruffian. He told you he would shave it if you asked, and you assured him that you liked it, that it made him look less like a proper naval lad and more like the kind of man who could tame pirates. You had kissed him then.
You could not forget the feeling of his kisses. You thought of them at night in the oppressive darkness of your cabin.
It worried you that he might not recognize you when you saw each other again – and you would. You would . You had let yourself go, just a little. They didn’t have fine razors in Savannah, not for convicts. It was a silly thought, though. He had told you once that he would know you if he lost use of all his senses. You had teased him at that – how could that be? Are you some kind of magician to be able to know something so profound? – and he had kissed your lips and told you that love had unfathomable powers.
Of course he would know you. What were ten years between lovers?
Your hoe hits a rock. You sigh and toss it aside.
The pastor will be coming tomorrow. You dread these weekly meetings like you have not dreaded anything since you were a schoolboy sitting Latin exams. It is not just the poor understanding of scripture, or the fact that you will have to sit on an uncomfortable bench in the hot sun with nearly a hundred other men. It is the way he looks at you, and the way he speaks to you.
The first time you went to the mandatory service, the pastor pulled you aside to speak with you. He had been told of your story, which went against everything that was claimed to be practiced at the plantation. Were they not anonymous, building a better life within the confines of the walls? You were a special case. There was no regard for the feelings of those perceived as mad. You had learned this in Bethlem.
The pastor had looked at you with all the pity in the world and asked if you would like to confess your sins, and you had looked him directly in the eyes and told him that you had no sins to confess. He had laughed at that. Surely, there is something? What brought you here? You answered him simply: the things you had done that had brought you to this place were not sinful. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. He stared at you, and you stared right back. You had decided long ago to not be ashamed of your desires.
Your back has started aching, so you straighten up and roll your shoulders. The sun is burning the back of your neck.
There is someone watching you.
You stand there, calculating. You can see out of the corner of your eye that there are several people at the edge of the field. What good has ever come from being watched in a place like this?
You turn around.
It takes you a moment. You were not expecting this. Ten years of visualizing this reunion, and this was the one you had never imagined.
He has shaved his hair off. There are new lines imprinted into his face, new scars. The beard is still there. You knew it would be. Of course you knew it would be.
You want to run to him. You do not.
You will wait for him. You have waited ten years; what is a mere moment in those oceans of time?
He walks towards you. His expression is one of someone who is looking at a ghost.
He is, isn’t he?
They said you were dead, didn’t they?
You stand in the furrow, looking at each other.
The hoe falls from your hand.
You do not know what he has done to get here. He will tell you, in his own time. All you know is that you are holding him, that the stubble of his hair is soft under your fingers, that he is clinging to you as if he is afraid you will disappear, that he smells like the sea. He is crying into your shoulder.
You kiss him. It is just as sublime as the first time.
When you reunited last, after he was in the Bahamas for three months, you hid your reunion away in a dark corner of your house, but now the sun beats down on your heads. It is unclear if any of the other men out in the fields are paying attention to this, but it does not matter. His hands are warm against your back, and you can taste the salt on his lips. You never want to let go of him. Never again.