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The knock at the door was expected, and the unique thumping step left no doubt of who it must be: Horatio was ready with an, “Enter, Mister Bush,” almost as soon as the knock came. Bush opened the door just enough to peer around the side. It gave him the charming air of a boy peeping into his headmaster’s study, and if the grey in his hair made him less a boy, his sparkling blue eyes and merry look made him all the more of one.
“I’ve had the carpenter’s report, sir,” he said, and when Horatio put down his quill, entered fully, closing the door behind him. “The shot holes are repaired. We’re as sound as ever.” He was smiling, at peace again after the anger and brisk mood that had consumed him for a while before. Horatio understood him; Nonsuch was his first command and Bush loved her from her uppermost spars to her copper bottom. He was indisposed to forgive when Swedish batteries sent shot into her, splintering her wood and holing her mainsail.
“Excellent,” said Horatio, and stood, stretching out his back and coming around the desk. The Baltic sun through the skylight painted pictures around his cabin, caught half of Bush’s familiar face and made his eyes shine like the ocean at the equator. It put Horatio in mind of when they had first met, years ago, the heat of the West Indies and the clear, warm sea there. That sent his own black mood to shreds like fog. Bush was not an irritant to him as he might have been an hour ago; now he was a balm, and he thought Bush must know that, must have timed himself well. “We are fortunate.”
“Aye, sir. The Harvey’ll be ready to sail by the evening; Mound’s lifting the mast now.” He tilted his chin toward the cabin’s window, and at the gesture, Horatio could see it being done, the men swarming over the deck of the little bomb ketch and slowly levering the new mast upright.
Bush did know that his mood had changed, after all. He looked frankly at Hornblower’s face, reading it like he might a lead line, and did not immediately retreat. “You can come see the repairs if you like; she’s in nearly perfect order, you’d never know she’d been under fire.” There was pride there, and more love; it brought forth an echoing feeling in Horatio. He had loved his ships just as well, and also his good friend, who was proving himself as fine a captain as he been a first lieutenant.
“Perhaps later. But please, stay.” He was conscious that they had only spoken in the guise of Captain and Commodore this entire mission-- and this was the first time he had seen Bush nearly since they returned to England some year and a half back. A part of him recalled what it had meant to be Bush’s brother officer on the Renown, his friend in Portsmouth, and a friend as well as a commander on Hotspur. Bush was his best friend in the world besides Barbara, and he had barely let himself spend fifteen minutes talking to the man on any subject that was not directly related to the mission at hand.
“Aye-aye, sir,” said Bush, his tone softening a little, as if he read the turn of Horatio’s thoughts on his face. He might very well have. Save those first days on the Renown, when all officers had learned quickly to hide behind wooden expressions and detachment, lest Sawyer’s mercurial moods swing towards them, Horatio had never been able to keep much hidden from Bush.
Bush shifted his stance, obviously setting in to stand comfortably for as long as he needed to, and a fresh rush of fondness welled forth in Horatio. This was Bush, his oldest and dearest friend, who knew him as well as any man could hope to know himself, never mind another, was not fooled by a show of nonchalance, could read his inner thoughts as cleanly as if Horatio had set them down with ink and paper.
He stood as well, made restless with emotion, turned to look out the window more fully at the Harvey, the men busy on the deck with their repairs.
“You did well today,” he said, peering out at the cold Baltic sea. He had wanted to talk to Bush as his friend, not as his Commodore, and he struggled to put that into his voice. “It felt good to be serving with you-- and on your ship! A Ship of the Line is a pretty fine first command.” He was soft towards a frigate, too-- his early days on the Indefatigable no doubt still strongly coloured his opinion, and would continue to do so, but he did not consider this a disadvantage.
“Very much, sir,” said Bush, and he could not hide the pride in his voice. “Although you did well on Hotspur, and if I may say so, those days remain some of the finest I have ever served.”
Ignoring the flush of bad temper praise always brought forth in him as best he could, Hornblower could not take the grimness from his voice entirely when he replied, “Better than on the Sutherland, I would say. But no,” he added, before Bush could reply, and turned back to him. Bush was as stalwart as ever, still standing as he had, a gentle, obliging expression on his face. “These are happier times.”
There was the monumental problem of Russian involvement in the war with France-- but a commodore’s life might be a series of monumental problems, and as much as he was capable of doing so he was trying to forget them for five minutes in his cabin, in the afternoon sun, in Bush’s company.
Yet now it was Bush who was spoiling the mood, looking out at what could be seen of Harvey with a pensive expression that did not fit well on his honest face.
“Something the matter, Captain?”
“Nothing to do with the mission, sir.”
“Devil with it, man, aren’t we friends? Can’t you tell me?”
Bush looked at him, momentarily uncertain. “It gives me a queer fancy, seeing a ship put to rights like that. In Sheerness I saw a good deal of it, had my time to think on it. That’s all. You probably don’t want to know about it.”
He was hinting at something. Horatio tried to think what-- it proved not to be so difficult to imagine after all. There had been a time, before the Lydia and the misery of South America, when he had had a rapport with Bush so deep and natural that they had been able to speak very easily of the odd fancies that could take a man at sea. Or in a dockyard, it seemed.
“I should like to hear about it,” he encouraged cautiously, not sure he had the knack still of sharing so much with anyone.
Bush opened his mouth, and shut it.
“William?”
That address got Bush looking round sharply at him, surprised and hesitantly gratified.
“I shouldn’t mind to hear it,” Hornblower said a little more firmly. “I should be… honored.”
Bush considered this. “It was a bitter kind of a thought, a strange one. It dogged me a while. That ships can be rebuilt so easy and a man can’t.”
Horatio frowned. “But ships are things of wood and metal and cloth, where men are living flesh. Wood can be replaced, cloth too, or stitched, and metal mined and smelted. A man is a much more complicated creature.” Hornblower was all too aware of this fact, of the fragile nature of men, and the many ways there were to die, at sea or on land. “A ship is not a living thing-- it has no humors or healing, and we must do it. Better to be alive.”
Bush gave him a faintly appalled look. Hornblower matched him back stubbornly. He knew the superstitions of the sea, but he did not subscribe to them. A ship was not alive, except by analogy.
“All right,” Bush agreed reluctantly, “but we aren’t so different, are we? Men and ships? A ship’s got her sails, we’ve got our muscles, don’t we both run? Is there so much sea room between a surgeon and a carpenter?”
“Well, I know which I would rather work on me!” Hornblower said, but Bush did not see the humour in it, looking down at his peg leg, and Hornblower instantly fell silent under a heavy weight of guilt.
“You may not be a carpenter, or a surgeon, but I know I’d prefer you. You did a fine job on my leg.”
It had taken him and Brown half a dozen tries to readjust the fit, after Brown and Bush had made the thing themselves, but misdirected as Bush’s words may have been, they still filled Horatio with overwhelming regard for his friend, and he resolved to give Bush his full attention, to listen without judgement or interruption.
“Pardon me,” he said. “Please continue. I would like to hear your thoughts, William,” he added, trying to convey with his awkward tone the truth of it.
Bush must have understood. He stepped forward, a little closer, his tanned, solid face drawn in serious thought, but his blue eyes were warm, worried as they sought out Horatio’s. “Don’t let me trouble you,” he said. “I know how thoughts take you; I don’t want to be the cause of it.”
“And you won’t be,” Horatio promised, and moved forward, sitting on the desk before Bush, within easy reach if either should wish it.
Bush smiled at him, but the expression was wan. “They are queer thoughts, Horatio. But-- you know how strange a fancy can take you. I imagined it could be done. How it could be done. Refitting a man, as you’d refit a ship.”
“Yes?” said Hornblower, his mouth gone quite dry. His stomach protested, knowing better than he from the state of his nerves just what Bush might say.
“You would have to take off the skin,” said Bush, “to get at anything below. I’ve wondered whether it would be better to take it off in strips, or remove it whole. Strips would be easier, I think-- it could be done with the lash, there’s poor devils who’ve nearly had the skin off them could say. It would be ruined, and need to be replaced. But good canvas would suit as well as skin if that were the case.”
He sounded peculiarly like he was giving a report, his stance squared, his tone betraying nothing of his thoughts. Horatio tried to copy his easy regard, to not fixate on the images he’d conjured. That it was Bush who was planting such terrible thoughts, Bush, whom Horatio would have long swore had little imagination to speak of! But a man repaired his ship out of love-- a captain, or the crew who sailed on her, or handed her over to the care of the dockyard, like a mother her only child to the surgeon. Horatio thought of that love, of what he would do to see a friend or lover repaired, and steeled himself to imagine as Bush did.
“Bones can break, go weak, the meat around can catch the rot. To replace bones, wood would be best,” said Bush soberly. “Good and solid, not brittle. Smoothed and sanded down a treat. Replace them all, one by one, fit the joists together. A man has a good number of bones, but a skilled crew could replace them all, build him up top to bottom! Rope and line for muscles and tendons, why, you’d have him refitted in no time.”
“And the blood?” Horatio’s voice was steady, but behind it, his mind was unmoored, caught in a maelstrom.
“Pitch, if it couldn’t be saved.” Bush’s tone had not changed, but there was something a little despairing in his face, as he searched for revulsion on Horatio’s. “Some tar to keep the water out of the canvas when it was done, and you would have a man as good as new again. I think I’d like it,” he added, still watching Horatio’s expression with concern. Horatio stared at him, mind flitting from image to image, too uneasy to land on any. “To be rebuilt, in such a way. It would be queer, wouldn’t it? To hear ropes creaking each time you moved! But if a man could be refitted... yes, I think I would like it.”
“If a man could be refitted,” said Horatio, and the images had taken root in his fertile imagination now. “If he could, it would be a painful thing.”
“But a man can live through pain. And then when it was over.”
“Once it was over, you would be mended.” He could see in his mind’s eye Bush’s back opening under the lash, red lines as even as splitting deck seams, the old skin torn away like ruined planking. The ribs would be replaced with new planking, carefully curved and slotted into place. Bush would shudder and cry out, his very dearest heart exposed; it would be painful. But then he would heal, strong and hearty and something not quite human any longer, something clean and durable. The image both revolted and yet stirred a dark thing in him, the thrill it sent coursing through him not sexual but still very like pleasure.
There were parts of Bush already made of metal and of wood: the rings pierced through his nipples that he concealed, the wooden leg he used nearly as spritely as flesh and bone. Horatio loved him as dearly with them as without, and if his loyal Bush needed another leg, a hand, anything, he would fix them to him himself.
“If a man could be refitted. I would see it done. I would have you in apple-pie order in no time. I would oversee it myself, because men of weaker stomach might fail.” Ridiculous. His own stomach was notoriously delicate. If he were ever to see Bush stripped of his skin he would vomit, he would scream, and he would murder the man who had done it with his bare hands, with his own teeth if need be.
Yet in the poisonous world of hypothesis and if-so-then he could conceive of taking Bush to pieces, knocking away broken bone like a rotted spar, setting smooth, strong wood into its place. Cutting old, worn sinew, unspooling it, knotting taut cordage into its place. He was too familiar with the wreckage that shot and splinter could make of the human body-- the senseless piles of meat and blood, never to be mended.
Now he caught the current of Bush’s thoughts and it drew him along. If a man could only be repaired as cleanly, as neatly as a ship! How Bush would deserve such a thing, what care Horatio would take to see him sanded and rigged and joined. He had been the cause of the damage-- how tenderly he would repair it. He had pulled ligatures from the stump of Bush’s leg, in an inn in France. Had held him feverish and afraid. Had heard his moans of pain at the jostle of the road, of hands and careful touches, had witnessed the bravery he had presented at every new challenge and hurt. He saw Bush in his mind’s eye, feverish and frightened as he was laid into dry dock, but trusting, always trusting.
“I would stitch the canvas onto you myself. Every inch of it, where your skin had been, clean and sail-ready,” said Hornblower wistfully. And then he blinked and came back to himself in horror. “My God-!”
Outside the world of hypothesis it was monstrous, so utterly monstrous.
“Commodore?” asked Bush, following his thought, looking dismayed. “I shouldn’t have said, sir, I hope I haven’t planted a strange seed.”
“No. Yes, you should have told me. I-- I thought of your blood, William. Of your meat. Of mending you.”
“I’ve thought of it before too, sir. Of you doing it.” Bush met his eyes and smiled a bit sadly. “I know you’ve got limits, sir, if you’ll pardon me for saying so. That you can’t actually refit a man, not even you. But it gives me a comfort to imagine.”
“I. Pardon me, Mister Bush,” he said stiffly, overwhelmed with this remembrance and not sure how it was to be expressed. He was meant to be comforting Bush, not thrusting his own self-loathing onto the man. He must remember the words for it.
“Pardon you? Of course, sir. Always,” said Bush tenderly, as he struggled with himself, and stepped forward to touch his shoulder in a manner not at all befitting a captain in the presence of his commodore, but which seemed quite natural in the moment. At that, it also seemed natural-- seemed perfectly right-- that Horatio should lean in to touch his shoulder in return, and then should lean in closer, and kiss Bush quite chastely.
Against his lips he murmured: “I do not blame you for having idle thoughts, Mister Bush. I think you are perfection despite them.” There, that was simple and honest and Bush looked at him with suspiciously gleaming eyes and kissed him again, more deeply. “And if it could be done-- I would, William, I’d do it for you, I’d make you new out of rope and timbers and sailcloth, just as you wanted. So you musn’t feel ashamed if you wish it could be done, from time to time.”
Bush nearly melted against him and they kissed again-- sweetly, like friends after a long meeting, yet unmistakably as old lovers. It was so good to be loved, to unspool the grim shadows of his mind out and not be rebuffed, to be trusted with the precious detritus of Bush’s mind in return. He had to smile. “Why has it been so long, since we were able to talk to each other like this?”
“You hadn’t the stomach for it, it seemed.” Bush drew back, looking uneasy to be speaking so frankly. “When you first took the Lydia, you treated me like a stranger, and I thought-- you must not want to hear from me any longer, sir.”
He was right, and Hornblower hated it. It was not his fault for being right. Bush was always more perceptive than Horatio gave him credit for; it must have been as plain as night and day, to one who knew him so well, how on that first sail of the Lydia, the captain had been not himself at all.
That voyage had been an experiment in strength of will. He had rejected all the flaws that he saw in himself: that he was too talkative, too free with his wit, too openly human before the crew. And more than that-- the specter that haunted him with humiliation and ruin and the noose, the inescapable knowledge of his preference for men. He had thrust Bush from him for being a man he loved; had thrust poor Maria from him for the sin of accepting his sins and loving him despite them and for them when his feverish mind had wanted her to demand a proper husband.
All of that he had thrust from him and he had carelessly sacrificed the moments that had once been so dear to him, when he and Bush bared the darkest parts of their sexual beings to one another, and found them not so frightening after all.
“I didn’t, you’re right. Perhaps I needed to despite that!” But that was unkind-- if he had not let himself confess, that was not Bush’s fault, and he would have treated the man badly for suggesting that he should try. He mitigated any implied rebuke with a kiss of his own.
“I think perhaps you did need it,” said Bush against his lips, and it might have been mutiny coming from any other man, but not Bush. Never him. “You can have it now, as much as you need it.” Bush took his hand. It was inexcusably sentimental; it was undeniably pleasant.
“Oh, William.” He was smiling. “You are the best of men, the most perfect of officers. If I have ever told you otherwise I was wrong.”
His hand was lifted: salt-chapped lips brushed his knuckles. “You’ve said this and that. But I think I’ve known your meaning.”
They stood close like that a few moments more, rocking with the ship, Horatio’s arm bent and his knuckles resting against Bush’s lips.
“It was good to tell someone,” Bush said, when he finally released him. The worry had cleared from his face. “It plagued me, Horatio. It doesn’t seem so bad now.”
“These things are never so consuming as one thinks,” said Hornblower pompously, and quite ironically, because he knew that he had spent sleepless hours and nights and weeks caught in self-loathing and self-analysis over his own thoughts-- a loose string of fantasy, a plan of attack, fear for the future, any of these might be seized and gnawed at and made into a looming demon.
Bush caught the irony; Bush was laughing at him silently, looking at him, his kind blue eyes dancing with all the affection Hornblower hardly knew how to accept. “You won’t let it bedevil you, Horatio?”
“No, William. I think-- I think it won’t at all.”
A knock at the door set them apart, the routine of turning from lovers to officers a practiced and instinctive one even after all this time, and the seaman who came in at the bark of ‘Enter’ found the captain on one side of the desk, the commodore seated, and both of them intent over a chart.
“Begging your pardon, sirs,” the young man squeaked, a bit cowed at this show of unified authority. “Captain’s requested above deck, sailmaker’s report to be made, sir.”
“Give’m my compliments and I’ll be up directly,” said Bush shortly, as befitted a captain, and the seaman fled. As soon as the door shut, he smiled, and took Horatio’s hands again, kissing the knuckles of both like a young romantic with his first lady-love.
Horatio gripped his hands for a moment and then let him go. He could hear him climbing the stairs to the quarter deck, and then the characteristic irregular thump of Bush’s peg leg striking the wood-- how quickly that sound that had plagued him was coming to mean that all was well. The dark visions that had seemed so hot and close in his mind faded away like foam.
Was this what it was like to be Bush? To be untroubled by the shadows of the mind, the strange fantasies?
Men had those fantasies, it was inescapable. He knew he did, after too long at sea-- and even his Bush, his unimaginative, splendid Bush, had them as well. But Bush was a rock jutting out of the sea; the strange tides could dash around him, but they could not bear him away, and he let them foam about him and subside, as much the same man after the nightmare waves struck as he had been before. Hornblower had not nearly the same strength, too adrift in his own head. But there was Bush: Bush was his anchor, mooring him to reality.
Now he had been Bush’s anchor, had in some small way provided aid to make up for all that Bush had sacrificed for him. It left him feeling warm and wonderfully useful, united with his junior captain as close as any two men could be.
Immediately, worries about the situation in the Baltic closed in again-- but now he could chuckle at himself even as thoughts of Sweden and Russia and shoals and reefs and politics loomed up and promised more sleepless nights to come.