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Stephen thrust a book into his shirt and, shepherded above and below, climbed the mainmast, his feet placed carefully by sure hands. He planned to read aloud passages for Bonden to copy, silently enjoying the text at his leisure while Bonden slowly wrote, but when they settled to the lesson Bonden ducked his head, and Stephen surprised a look of dislike aimed at the book.
"What's wrong, Barret Bonden? I would guess you had no love for the birds of the Indian Ocean."
"I have all the love for birds I should have and more, sir. Especially the ones that taste best. Where would we be without birds?"
"Where indeed," said Stephen. "Though your love of them apparently precludes writing about them, yes?"
"Eating birds is more interesting than writing about them, and since I'm here to write and not to cook, I would rather copy something else, if you please."
"If it is not to be birds, what do you propose?"
"Since you're asking, I'd prefer verse if we could," he replied, "sir, like we did yesterday."
"Would you?" Stephen settled his shoulders more comfortably, squaring them to Bonden's earnest expression. "Why?"
"I just like it, sir. The cadence, and the turn of phrase. It's a clever cove who can string 'em along so pretty. Like yesterday -- that was lovely, what you said, and I prefer it to anything you might read about ducks, unless it were a recipe."
"Verse." Stephen hooked a finger round his chin and thought. He didn't have a head for remembering long quotes, and the snippets of poetry that came easily to mind were bleak: epic tales of heroic sacrifice, mournful laments about pain or death, artful monographs on the vagaries of women. "Verse," he repeated, at a loss because when he canted a look at that sunny face he had no intention to inflict his darker musings on Bonden.
Bonden held his pen ready over his book, waiting patiently, and Stephen was struck by the young man's enduring cheer that shone beneath the surface, like now, when it didn't blaze out on a smile or a laugh. There was something of Jack's open manner about him, a sailor's trait, perhaps, or more likely Bonden's own reflection of Jack's more agreeable characteristics acquired from spending years in his service. Unlike Jack there was no cloud on him, no veil of heartbreak suffered or grievances endured, though Stephen recognized his conviction skated close to presumption. Not all men were as transparent as Jack, and Stephen was not the only person to walk the Earth with secrets hid on a face clear as water, nor were they the only to have suffered injury and heartache during this life. Yet Stephen also trusted the skill of his observations. Bonden was, like as not, what he seemed: an agreeable man, smarter than he knew, competent, loyal, discrete, well-knit, and boyish in a way that would keep people guessing wrong for many years his age.
Stephen mourned those parts of Jack's boyhood burned away this past year. Bitter experiences, not age, had struck the kindling, but neither wearing age nor charring experience could lessen his love for Jack, wiser, yes, and older: weathered, scarred, earless. Stephen recognized a tangent to that loss: the simple affectionate lust he had once held for Jack in the unexplored territories of his heart. It had been an impulse assuaged with private fantasies and an easy hand, which seemed the most prudent course at the time, until he discovered that laudanum quelled carnal desire even as it fueled better fantasies. Having recently eschewed his favorite vice for fresh air and uncomplicated companionship, his libido had returned. Perhaps he could have engaged in a casual liaison, once, before the landscape of his heart had proved so complicated, before Jack, before Diana. He could recall when the indulgence of passion was as easy as sunlight on a bright face.
"No white nor red was ever seen / So amorous as this lovely green," murmured Stephen, noticing not for the first time Bonden's pretty eyes.
"I'm sorry, sir; could you say that again?"
"Try this; there is mention of the sea in it:
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.”
Bonden's head bowed over his book, the pen laboring across the page. Stephen opened and clenched his hands with the same deliberation. They had healed enough that he could write as well as his student, though no better. Not yet. He wondered suddenly how long he must continue to miss the ease of his duets with Jack in the calm evenings. Just as quickly he thrust from him all thoughts of music before they could coalesce into tangible want, and he looked away from Bonden as well; Bonden with his mouth shaping the words silently, his long hair sun-streaked, his collar open.