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Chapter Text

I would come with a towel in my hand
And bend your head beneath my knees;
Your ears curl back in a certain way
Like no one's else in all the world.
When all the world shall melt in the sun,
Melt or freeze,
I shall remember how your ears were curled.
I should for a moment linger
And follow the curve with my finger
And your head beneath my knees---
I think that at last you would understand.
There would be nothing more to say.
You would love me because I should have strangled you
And because of my infamy;
And I should love you the more because I mangled you
And because you were no longer beautiful
To anyone but me.

The Love Song of St. Sebastian - T.S. Eliot

Chapter 1

“Are we convinced of the benefit of throwing ourselves upon the mercy of the Esqimaux? Would not Fort Resolution be the surest guarantee of deliverance?”

Lieutenant Little’s tentative question piles rocks upon the load Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier carries on already burdened shoulders. It is unlike Little to be uncertain - was unlike him, before the miseries and deprivations upon the ice - and Francis wishes for a return of his usual steadfast, unquestioning willingness to be led. He sighs heavily and leans an elbow on the table to ease his back, aching after a day in harness. 

“It would, if by some miracle Back’s River were to thaw and allow us to float there,” says Blanky, saving Francis the trouble.

“With the creature unaccounted for -”

Francis shrugs. “It will make little odds whether we’re halfway to Great Slave Lake or Repulse Bay, if it finds us, or halfway across Boothia, for that matter.”

Little lapses into silence as those gathered at the table contemplate this grim prognosis.

“The Aivilik hunt walrus; there will be meat, and if leads are to open in Hudson’s Bay, there is the greatest possibility of escape via boat. It is five hundred miles less for us to haul these goddamned sledges, with no risk of rapids and the associated portage.” Francis looks around at the burned, pinched faces of his remaining command. “Ultimately, I can promise nothing, except that it will make the journey shorter.”

“What of Hickey, sir?”

Jopson’s lips peel and crack when he speaks, and have for the last three days. Francis has watched him spit out blood onto the shale when he believes himself to be unobserved; something within Francis is bowed by the weight of his sorrow at the damage this wilderness has wrought on Jopson; good, kind, Thomas Jopson, who will die in this godforsaken place, if Francis cannot somehow prevent it. 

“No doubt Mr. Hickey is satisfied in having devised a plan of his own, Thomas. I cannot account for him.”

Beside him, Francis feels James Fitzjames rouse himself from his mute exhaustion. “For Repulse Bay, then,” his second says, voice ragged with disuse and heavy with fatigue.

“For Repulse Bay,” the officers respond. 

Francis sighs, relieved, and releases the men to their duties. They nod to he and James, then commence shuffling from the tent with their mufflers raised around their ears and their Welsh wigs pulled down hard against the wind.

Francis sinks his head into his hands; it has been pounding, of late, aggravated by the unrelenting Arctic sun. It is the most he can do to allow himself a moment to rest his aching head upon his hands and attempt to scrub the grit from the corners and the lashes of his eyes. 

“Francis,” James says. “Have you slept?”

Francis snorts, rubbing the last of the shale dust from his eyes. “Well enough, under this cursed sun.”

“You’ll long for her, in the interminable winter,” James replies lightly, then coughs, glancing at Francis in apology. “I forget, sometimes, that we won’t see another winter here.”

One way or another, you are right, Francis silently agrees. 

It is evening, or what passes for it in these benighted summer months, and the men are making ready to set watch and attempt, in their canvas and bags, to sleep for the few hours before the journey must begin again. 

“How are your teeth?” Francis asks. It is unkind, and he regrets it immediately; it is no way to greet James’ concern, by reminding him so bluntly of his own afflictions. “James. Forgive me -”

“I will still have my teeth in the morning, and at this rate you will still be tired,” James says. 

Francis scoffs, because what are any of them, here, except tired to the point of exhaustion? 

“Leave the watch to those whose duty it is,” James suggests, ignoring him, “and come to bed.”

It hovers between them like a held breath. Exhaustion makes slips of the tongue inescapable, and it can only have been a poor choice of words, but the tenderness of the request looses something within Francis before he can fully batten it down. Loneliness yawns wide, sickening and vertiginous; he cannot afford to tumble into melancholy now.

“Forgive me, Francis, I’m sure you’ve no need of my nannying,” James murmurs, looking suitably abashed. He laughs weakly. “I, too, am more tired than I would care to admit.”

“In that case,” Francis replies, lurching to his feet, “we shall bid each other good night.” 

He extends a hand and heaves James to his feet, noting with displeasure how slight he has begun to feel. The weight falling from him has left him sharp-edged and drawn, in a way Francis manages to avoid in times of privation, there being a doughtiness to the Crozier stock that has always left him depleted but solid, where other men are like to waste away. 

“When we next make camp,” he says, before he can think better of it, “we might spare a tent and the labour of erecting it, if you and I were to berth together.”

James’ gaze flickers over his face in that impassive way of his, and Francis swallows the urge to explain himself. It ought to be obvious that the tent might be warmer with two bodies within it; it ought not to be necessary to put words to his loneliness, nor the desire for company to stave off the madness that swarms over him in the never-ending sleepless day-nights. 

As always, it would seem that James understands. He inclines his head, the corners of his eyes a map of fond, familiar contours. “An eminently sensible and agreeable suggestion. Good night, Francis.”

He dons his cap once more and stoops beneath the canvas to make his exit, making a sterling but unsuccessful effort to conceal his worsening unsteady gait. Francis turns back to the map spread on the command table and resigns himself to sleepless hours of fruitless calculations and re-calculations of miles and provisions and men.

The miles towards the coast of the mainland crunch under foot at a dispiriting, sluggish pace. There is a sighting of Hickey and his party by the scouts, far to the west, and Francis wonders whether Hickey has realised that the greater body of the men have changed course; he imagines he has, because Hickey’s own scouts, Manson and Hoar, had harried them for days before the decision to make for Repulse Bay was made. It is unclear yet whether he has decided to follow. Of the creature, there has been no sign.

For miserable weeks, the days and nights meld into one, implacable, endless cycles of watches and trudging, trudging and watches. When not on watch, Francis retreats to his bed roll with the dead-eyed gratitude of the truly exhausted, too tired even to be relieved when the pounding in his head abates and allows his eyes to slip closed. 

“Francis,” James mutters often, on the verge of sleep, and dissolves the space between them with an out-flung arm. By the time the coastline rears before the sledges, they have taken to sleeping side-by-side, pressed like sardines in a can against the cold. The men, too, are two-to-a-bag, by then. 

Their drawing together, the inexorable melding of two minds into one, of two bodies, same as the days melt indistinguishable into the nights, ought to have been confounding, but Francis is too tired and too glad of the warmth and the comfort of lying beside another body, the way he never has at any point previous in his solitary existence, to question it. They are two days onto the mainland when James stumbles before the sledges and falls, grasping blindly for Francis’ hand to be hauled to his feet. 

Now, they have made camp on a spit of shale indistinguishable from that they left behind on King William Island, and Francis is allowing himself the luxury of a few moments in which to fall fully into despair. 

I’ll not have a picture, he thinks, gazing grimly at James’ drawn, damaged face, the realisation crawling through his ribs and taking sickening hold around his heart. I’ll not have a miniature to tuck inside my breast pocket, or a sketch made on a winter’s evening by the fireside. It will be my own burden to remember him, until such a time as this cursed land takes me, too. 

He knows, from bitter experience, that absence often makes the heart fonder, but the mind’s eye inexact. It has been months since he was last able to recall with clarity the slender column of Sophia Cracroft’s long, white neck, or the precise shape and colour of her lips. Perhaps it is not even true about the amplification of affection; perhaps the beloved face which had once been inscribed behind his closed eyelids with daguerreotype exactitude has faded not through the length of their separation, but through inattention. It has been months since he last attempted to recall it. He has not, in truth, thought of Sophia Cracroft at all, in these past few desperate weeks. Not, perhaps, since the decision had first been made to set out across the ice.  

“Francis?” James’ tone is verging on querulous and when his eyes open, he seems to be frowning at the sound of his own petulance. “Forgive me. You need not sit up relating tales of Pitcairn indefinitely, I am near asleep.” 

“Hush,” Francis scolds and James’ eyes slip closed once more. “I’ve talk enough left in me, if that is what you’d have of me.” 

James laughs thickly. “That it should come to this: Fitzjames the invalid and Crozier his nursemaid and jester.” 

Francis lifts his hand to James’ temple entirely without thought and James turns towards it, tucking his face against the palm. He smooths aside the dull hair that lies there, and James’ laboured breath falls against the cuff of his slops, some of its fetid warmth slipping between his mitten and sleeve. 

“Francis,” James murmurs, a second time, and Francis suspects with excruciating foresight what his next utterance is likely to convey. It is exactly this that they have avoided, the two of them, negotiating a complicated quadrille, during which sentiments have been approached and deftly side-stepped, with brushed hands speaking eloquently where words might be vulgar, inelegant intrusions.  

He is saved having to hush James a second time by footsteps on the shale and the canvas at the mouth of the tent being flung back. Without announcing himself, Lieutenant Little tumbles inside the tent.  

Francis draws back his hand and settles himself into a pose befitting the expedition’s commander, though there can be little between he and James, surely, of which Little and Bridgens are not already sensible. Just as the men cast a forgiving eye on Bridgens stroking Peglar’s hair as he reads to him from that damnable tome of poetry in the hushed, repugnant air of the sick tent, so the affection between their commanders has passed without comment. Perhaps it is that the men approve, because surely men so devoted to one another will be doubly committed to leading the party to safety; perhaps it is that the men are too weary to remark on their captains’ preoccupations, preoccupied as they are with their own struggle against this cursed land which hates them so.  

“Captain,” says Little, attempting to draw himself to attention, though it is a sorry sight and Francis could almost have laughed at the absurdity of the ways in which man will cling to his certainties and petty conventions of rank, even in times of such great extremity. Looking more closely, he sees that Little has been weeping, and that where his tears freeze they make a wreath of diamonds in his beard, as though he were garlanded in fine chains of jewels.  

“What is it, man?” he demands, conscious that, at this moment, James might be, behind him, breathing his last, and that these moments’ inattention might have cost him the duty he has guarded so assiduously for the long hours of this last Arctic day and night.  

“Captain,” gasps Little, through his tears. “Captain, we are saved." 

John McLean cuts a curious figure at the bow of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Marten, where he is engaged in conversation with a newly-upright Thomas Blanky, whose fresh wound is bound in bandages , and who has taken to propelling himself around the ship at speed upon a set of crutches newly fashioned for him by the Marten’s carpenter. They have been muttering between themselves about the state of the ice since the ship left Aivilik territory and made a break for the leads in the Bay, but any man aboard can smell the thaw in the air; there is a great possibility that the Marten will make clean progress down the eastern shore, dodging bergs to reach Fort George by mid-August.

McLean is a man Francis knew already by reputation, before the expedition even set forth from Greenhithe. John Henry Lefroy, with whom Francis had corresponded at length on the subject of magnetism and the Pole, had been guided by him on his voyage into the Circle in ’43, the same year Francis had made sponsorship into the Royal Society, and had recommended McLean heartily to anyone who might find themselves in need of such a guide. McLean is three years Francis’ junior, but appears ten years older at least, with a weathered face and wiry frame betraying a life spent traversing the open wild, and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the inlets and harbours of the Inuit Northwest. Captaining the Marten, despite what Francis is given to understand is a good five years in comfortable retirement in Ontario, comes to him natural as breathing.

How he came upon their desperate party, in the midst of the wilderness north of Aivilik land, Francis can scarce comprehend. All he knows is that, without the arrival of McLean and his party of Esqimaux braves, their fur parkas making them appear as a troop of diminutive white bears as they trudged into the expedition’s pathetic camp, James and a number of the men would not have lasted another day. Peglar, he knows, owes his survival to the walrus meat Bridgens had him choke down, while Francis had tucked slivers of walrus liver behind James’ teeth and stroked his throat, as Bridgens had shown him how to do, to encourage him to swallow it. 

“Lieutenant Jopson is asking for you, sir,” says Bridgens, ducking out of the hatch to join Francis upon the aft deck. 

“How is Peglar, John?”

Bridgens smiles as though without meaning to and inclines his head. “Coming along well, thank you, sir.”

Francis claps a hand to the steward’s arm, and passes him to go below deck. It is as well, he thinks grimly, that they are so few, for the Marten is not a large ship, and with her Hudson’s Bay Company crew and the men of the expedition she is badly overcrowded. The smell below decks is one Francis had missed on the ice, of bodies and piss and pork fat: life itself, to a ship’s crew. 

The sick bay has been rigged with a great number of hammocks, and in each of them an expedition man dozes, in various states of repair. Young Couch has lost an arm to putrid sores; Terry’s ulcerated feet are swathed in sulphur bandages and stink to high heaven in the corner they have stationed him in. 

“Thomas,” says Francis, rounding the blankets that have been slung up in an attempt to provide the officers with a measure of privacy.

“Captain,” Jopson replies, smiling wide, a much happier picture now that his split lips are healed and there is colour returning to his cheeks. “It’s good to see you, sir.”

“Likewise, I can assure you. You’re looking well, Thomas.” Francis lays a hand upon Thomas’ blanket-covered ankle, patting it for the reassurance of the boy’s solidity, relieved that the wan, ghoulish transparency that he’d taken on in those last miserable days of hauling has fled.

“You as well, sir. I wished to ask when I might resume my duties.”

Francis laughs. “I shall have them make you a medal, when we return home: ‘Lieutenant Thomas Jopson, Indefatigable to the Last’.”

Jopson flushes and looks abashed. “I only thought I might do some good, now I’m recovered.”

“Recovering,” Francis corrects. “And what duties do you think need to be done? We are invalids, Thomas, on another man’s ship. For once, we may have earned a goddamned rest.”

Jopson smiles. “I hope you are right, there, sir.”

Francis taps the lad’s ankle once more for good measure and makes to continue on his way. “Is there anything else I can get for you, Thomas?”

Jopson shakes his head. “No, thank you, sir. Unless - well, I have wondered how Captain Fitzjames is getting along? Only, John - Bridgens, that is - has been reluctant to say.”

“Has he.” Francis sighs, his eyes drifting to the bulkhead separating the sickbay from the lieutenant’s berth in which James has been sequestered. “Captain Fitzjames is as well as can be expected. Your concern does you credit, Thomas.”

“Please pass on my regards, and those of all the men.”

“I will,” promises Francis. “And now, you’re to get some more rest. No more talk of duties until we’re bound for London.”

“Aye, sir,” Jopson replies with a smile, and settles into his hammock once more. 

Francis pushes aside the awning and steps inside the temporary Captain’s berth, which is the size of a modestly-proportioned cupboard and dimly lit by a lamp set upon a shelf above the bunk. The bunk itself is barely of a size to accommodate James’ prodigious long legs, and he is propped upright against a bolster borrowed from Captain McLean’s cabin, his chin upon his chest, eyes closed. Francis hesitates to think of him as asleep; it is an unnatural deep sleep, the kind from which James only wakes occasionally to croak requests for water or cough sputum of virulent and concerning hues. 

“Good afternoon, James,” Francis says, taking off his outer layer of furs, a parting gift from the Aivilik in return for a brace of shotgun, and depositing it over the back of his usual chair. 

He sits, taking a moment to cast an eye over James’ wan, glistening skin. He has been sweating for three days, now, and the ship’s surgeon claims this to be an auspicious sign. It is difficult to see his face, tucked as it is against his shoulder. It cannot possibly be comfortable to sleep at such an angle, but when he had been laid recumbent he had started to gurgle and choke alarmingly, so that Francis and Bridgens had sprung to wrestle him upright, and Francis had held him there, propped against his side, until Bridgens returned clutching the borrowed cushion.  

Francis draws from the inner layers of his outdoor attire a slim, well-thumbed book and sets it carefully upon his knee. “I have a new volume for you today.”

In the early days, he had restricted his conversation on these visits to commentary on the ship’s progress through the ice outside Aivilik harbour and the recovery of the men in the sickbay behind the bulkhead at James’ feet. Later, when it became clear that the pneumonia which had claimed the lives of Wall and Best before they could be brought onboard might take hold of James as well, he had no longer been able to bear the one-sided quality of these exchanges and had asked, instead, if he might take advantage of the Captain’s library. 

“Not a one of them’s mine,” McLean had confided, casting a rueful eye over the shelves beside the great desk that occupied a full half of his Captain’s quarters. “I had not the luxury of outfitting the ship to my own tastes, before we sailed. Help yourself.”

Francis is given to understand that it was as a personal favour to Lefroy and concerned acquaintances among the Royal Society, that McLean had been persuaded out of retirement and into command of the Marten. By all accounts, it had been a fraught and hastily constructed plan by which the Hudson’s Bay Company had been prevailed upon to act, encouraged by missives from London on behalf of Francis’ few friends in the Society.

On perusing the Captain’s shelves, he had passed over a surfeit of poetry, which he could not imagine the doughty McLean to have indulged in much on the outward journey from Fort George. He had skipped over Pilgrim’s Progress and thumbed past Shelley’s Adonais with a shudder at the thought of reading to James: stay yet awhile! Speak to me once again, while memories of James’ fluttering pulse beneath his fingertips were still too vivid to be comfortably recalled. Yesterday, he had attempted a page from Nicholas Nickleby  and James had roused himself sufficiently to groan, “Dear God, not Dickens,” and Francis had been so grateful to hear him speak that he had relented and talked instead about McLean’s connexion to Lefroy, giving a succinct lecture on the difficulties Lefroy’s party had encountered in attempting to ascertain the position of the magnetic pole, five years before. 

Today, James is in a much worse state, and unlikely to complain if Francis were to start reading to him a list of provisions from the ship’s manifest, so he has chosen Gulliver’s Travels, because it is many years since he read it himself, and he distantly recalls an affection for it, which had prompted he and his sisters to rampage about the hills above Banbridge, play-acting the Brobdingnag.

“I thought something adventuresome might appeal,” he says, holding the book closer to the circle of yellow light cast by the hurricane lamp. “‘My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire. I was the third of five sons…’”

It is quiet in the cabin, and only the overhead tattoo of boots upon the deck gives the lie to the feeling that they are entirely alone; the occasional cough from the sickbay next door confirms it. After not many pages, Francis finds the lamp is insufficient to allow him to read without incurring a headache and he rests the book upon his knee, casting another glance at James’ sickly complexion. 

By the time Wall and Best had died in the sweltering hut of the Aivilik medicine man, the rest of the men had been so anxious to set sail that they might have left their compatriots to be buried according to the Aivilik’s customs, had Francis not insisted on holding a brief funeral service before consigning their bodies to the barren ground of the foreshore. James had stood beside him, propped upright by the use of one of Blanky’s newly-fashioned crutches, a trembling phantom only recently relieved of bleeding from the sockets of his remaining teeth. 

That so many of the men had survived to board the Marten was nothing short of a fucking miracle. Between McLean and the Aivilik and Goodsir’s account of the final hours of Mr Hickey’s mutineers, it was down to sheer bloody fortune, in Francis’ opinion, that any of them had made it at all, even in such ragged shape as they were. 

As Goodsir told it, Hickey’s downfall had been brought about by hubris, by his attempt to make himself what Lady Silence and her father had been, and by his lack of God-given sense in offering his hand to a creature like the Tuunbaq. His description of Hickey’s lunatic speech atop his boat-sledge carriage and Tuunbaq’s rejection of Hickey’s offering to it, had made the hair on Francis’ neck stand on end. Goodsir had admitted in tones of horror to acts of butchery and poisoning, some tale of unspeakable things done to the body of William Gibson, and failed to entirely explain his own survival, or Silence’s part in it. 

Francis has been pondering Goodsir’s story since almost the moment it was related, turning it over in his mind, this way and that, in an attempt to discern what his own choices might have been, had he found himself in Goodsir’s unenviable position. Perhaps, if James had not - but this is an avenue of thought down which Francis has no wish to travel, on this summer afternoon which Thomas Blanky has declared a sign of the easing of their passage back to safe harbour at Fort George. 

“Begging your pardon, sir; I was coming to offer the Captain his broth,” says Bridgens from the doorway, shaking Francis from his glum reverie so suddenly that he starts and nearly drops the book upon the floor. “I’ll come back.”

“For God’s sake, man, stay. I’ll not deny him his supper for the sake of my rambling.”

Bridgens smiles and enters, bearing a tray upon which there sits a bowl of steaming soup - caribou, Francis would reckon from the smell of it - and a mug of tea. He sets it upon the table at Francis’ elbow. His eyes alight on the book in Francis’ lap and his expression softens into a species of understanding that Francis feels it fraudulent to acknowledge. James talked so often, during their conversations in the privacy of the shared tent upon the ice, of honesty, and here is pitiful Francis, allowing Bridgens to presume a connexion between he and his second to which he has no legitimate right or claim.

“Gulliver’s Travels,” Bridgens notes as he sets out a spoon beside the soup. “Has the Captain enjoyed it?”

“Me, or him?” Francis mutters, not entirely in good humour, watching James’ chest fall and rise shallowly beneath his blanket. 

“Shall I attempt to wake him, sir, or are you to persuade him to take some soup?”

Francis clears his throat. They have nursed James between them, he and Bridgens, for so long he cannot remember what it is to be free from this consuming worry over how much James has eaten of the sustaining liquids trickled into his mouth from the side of a spoon and what volume of tea he has consented to swallow.

“You may have the honour today, Bridgens,” he says, standing, shuffling out of the way of the chair so that Bridgens can take his place. “I cannot, in good conscience, put off writing my report any longer.”

The report stymies Francis from the coast of Southampton Island, to the haven of Fort George, across the torturous miles overland to New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and finally aboard the Royal William, which sets sail from Halifax on 18^th September 1848 with the full, sorry complement of the expedition’s twenty five surviving men. 

Jopson had taken Francis at his word and left off his duties until the very day the William set sail, but now that he has resumed them he appears to have extended his care to encompass both of his captains. Francis suspects it is out of kindness to Bridgens, for Peglar was one of the men carried aboard the William on a stretcher, and Bridgens spends most of his day in the hold, tending to him like a hen to her chick. Currently, Jopson is hovering at James’ elbow as the commander embroils him in conversation about a rare species of Atlantic seabird he thinks he might have spotted on his turn about the deck the previous day.

With a muttered curse, Francis leaves he and Jopson to their contemplation of the fauna of the Atlantic coast, and shuffles into the close air of the lower decks, peeling off his muffler as he goes. His cabin, the one afforded him by the first lieutenant who is now sharing quarters like a midshipman to make room for two additional captains, could hardly be compared to the coal hole in which he used to hide as a boy, but its gloom and its silence suit his mood just as well. 

James is recovering. He has lost teeth and hair. He has a gaunt quality, as though one ill-timed gust of wind might sweep him overboard; Francis lives in terror of such a wind. He watches for signs of it: for symptoms of infection, of consumption, of further pneumonia. “You must not hover so, Francis,” James scolds, when he is tired of Francis’ fussing, but is it to no avail. Francis watches and waits for the next thing that will try to remove James Fitzjames from the world, so that he might be the one, this time, to kill it.

As regards the report, it is the walk that has Francis most concerned, and the necessary accounting for his own decisions. How to explain that which he is at a loss to comprehend himself, in a satisfactorily rational manner? Beyond that, when he sits down with the intention of putting pen to paper, he finds himself dwelling more often than not on the matter of Goodsir. 

When he and the Esqimaux woman had come upon the rescued party near to Aivilik, Goodsir had related his tale of Hickey’s demise to the best of his ability, and Francis had embraced him and thanked God that this brave, good-hearted man should have survived. Questions of how he had managed it had been met with furtive glances between he and Silence and an embarrassed, apologetic smile, as Goodsir explained that he could not explain, at least, not in ways that Silna - for that, it transpired, was her name - would like him to share. He hoped the Captain would find it within himself to respect this. 

Francis had held him at arm’s length and studied him carefully. The man’s face - what was visible of it beneath his fur hood - had glowed pink with the pleasure of being unexpectedly clasped to Francis’ bosom, as though this token of comradeship had come to him as a great surprise. 

“We shall make McLean’s ship by nightfall tomorrow,” Francis had told him. “We’re to sail for Fort George, and then on to home.”

Goodsir had smiled at him from the depths of that fur hood and said, in the gentlest of tones, “I regret, Captain Crozier, that I shall not be accompanying you on your voyage.”

The company about them had been appalled. James, revived sufficiently by the liver and not yet in the grip of his ague of the chest, had spluttered from his position on the sledge that this was, of course, preposterous; Jopson, beside him, had looked as though he might begin to cry. 

“We are to go into the wilderness,” Goodsir explained, patiently. “It is Silna’s fate, having lost Tuunbaq, and I am happy to accompany her. It is, perhaps, fitting that I, too, should suffer exile.”

“Why, in God’s name -” Francis had begun, but he had halted when he had looked into the depths of that fur hood and realised the scope of the horrors communicated in Goodsir’s small, kind, brown eyes. 

“We have trespassed, here,” Goodsir said quietly, perhaps only for Francis to hear. “I should not care to return to England, now. I must, in some way, atone for what we have done - for what Mr Hickey had me do -”

“Peace, man, peace.” Francis laid a hand upon Goodsir’s shoulder while he collected himself. “You’re certain?”

Goodsir nodded. Behind him, the woman waited. Francis wondered what they had been up to together, on the ice, and then felt it unworthy of him to speculate. If Goodsir had attained the state of matrimony with an Esqimaux, it was nothing that Englishmen before him had not done in other, hotter climes. Going native, turning their back on Queen and country. In a previous life, Francis might have thought such men degenerate; standing before Goodsir and his taciturn bride, he felt only the faintest stirring of envy at Goodsir’s soft, contented look. 

“Get word to a whaler,” he said in earnest when they departed, clapping Goodsir on the shoulder one last time, “and I’ll do my damnedest to see there’s a rescue for you.”

Goodsir smiled, looking for all the world as though he were greatly at peace. 

“I do not think I shall be in need of rescue, thank you, Captain.”

It is at times like these - morbing, as James would say, on the memory of Goodsir, and of he and the woman blending into the snow until it seemed they had disappeared, two furtive white creatures becoming one with the ice -  it is at times like these that Francis longs for the numbing embrace of the whisky. James is no longer in the sickbay, and he and Jopson and Peglar and the other fortunate few are regaining their strength, day by day, and yet Francis’ old melancholy creeps in at the edges of his thoughts. James is no longer in the sickbay and they are bound, at last, for home, and Francis finds that he is grieving, already, for what is lost.

He is contemplating this, and sinking further into grim recriminations on account of it, because his grief ought to be reserved for the men lost, not for the fact that James Fitzjames no longer requires a nursemaid, when there is a knock at his cabin door. He has lost track, it would seem, of the time; it must already be the end of the first dog watch, and still the blessed report sits unfinished beside his ink pot. He puts down his pen and presses his hands into the tops of his thighs beneath the writing desk to quell their trembling.

“Come,” he barks, and the door opens to reveal James’ long face, his expression enquiring, his smile soft.

“Francis,” he says, in that pleased, languorous way of his. Francis marvels, sometimes, that James should regard him like this, with such open appreciation. On any other man, it might betray a dull lack of judgment, but James seems, always, to be in earnest. “Are we to expect you at dinner?”

 It is unfortunate that Francis has spent the last hour contemplating his own melancholic shape, and thinking of that old coal-hole of his childhood. This little cabin has begun to take on something of its cave-like quality, becoming a hermit’s abode in which he longs to pass the last torturous weeks of the voyage, alone, unmolested. 

“Francis?” James’ face has folded itself into an expression of ludicrous concern, and he is making to come inside, despite Francis’ lack of invitation. He stoops to enter, then hovers, peering at Francis solicitously. 

Francis’ chest aches, suddenly, with relief, that it should be James - of course it should - to breach this self-imposed exile of his. No other company would do, in this state, but perhaps James might sit upon the bunk, his hands folded between his knees, and be a beacon, of sorts; a welcome source of levity and warmth. 

“Apologies, James. I’ve been staring too long at my papers. Dinner, you say? What time is it?”

James smiles and settles himself upon the edge of the Lieutenant’s bunk. “Well past the time that you have been missed. Mr Blanky sent me to fetch you, lest you spend another evening shuttered here in the dark and settle again for cold cutlets; Jopson is beside himself with concern and regretting his promotion, in no longer being able to impose himself upon you under the guise of stewarding.” 

Francis sighs. He inclines his head towards the pages spread before him on the desk. “I have been writing letters.”

“Well, you’re to miss Mr Berry’s flute again, if you insist on staying here.” James casts a cursory glance over the papers at Francis’ elbow. He raises an eyebrow, seeing among them the list of the names of the dead. “That burden isn’t yours to shoulder alone, you know.”

“Until ten days ago, you were insensible and in no state to sign your own name, never mind composing letters of condolence.”

“Well, no longer. I should like to do my part, especially for the Erebus men.”

There was a time when James would have referred to his erstwhile crew as Erebites, with grating jolly bravado, as though picking a team to cheer for in the coxless fours. 

“I should also like to write to Lady Jane,” he continues, solemnly. “I suppose you’ve already -”

“I have kept it apart, that you might add your own letter. They can be parcelled up and put out to the steam packet at Boston; should arrive in London well before we do.”

“Thank you.”

James has extended a hand to clasp Francis’ arm and Francis acknowledges his gratitude with a nod of his head. The subject of the letters to be forwarded to London via the Cunard Line’s fastest steamer has been weighing heavily on him for some days.

“Might I enquire whether a letter to Miss Cracroft is to be included for the packet?” James asks softly. Francis gazes at him and wonders at the extent of the connection forged between them on the ice; surely James cannot truly be able to read his thoughts, but it is damned near uncanny. 

“You might enquire,” he replies stiffly.

James’ face falls. “Forgive me, Francis, I did not mean to intrude -”

“Hush,” Francis says ruefully, nudging the edge of the blotting paper with the tip of his finger to reveal an envelope already addressed to Sophia. “We’ve had few enough secrets these last months, I suppose you might as well be party to this, too. I have written to express my condolences, and to provide a brief account of our survival. I have assured Miss Cracroft that I shall not be renewing my suit a third time.”

James’ frowns. “But, Francis - surely you might expect soon to be knighted.”

Francis eyes him again, wondering at the sensitivity in James’ hushed tones, as though he fears his enquiry might inflict damage of some kind; he appears to flinch in anticipation of Francis’ response, presumably anticipating a rebuke. It is remarkable, indeed, that Francis has no intention of bestowing one. He sighs. 

“Perhaps. It doesn’t signify. How are any of us to explain the changes we’ve undergone out here?”

“How, indeed,” murmurs James. “All the same, I’m sorry for it.”

“Don’t be,” Francis replies. He takes up the pen once more, loathe though he is to dismiss James from his company. Always, there is the blasted report to be completed. “I shall see you at dinner, after all, I think.”

James hesitates, but after no more than a moment he offers Francis a warm smile. “I’m surpassing glad to hear it.”

He departs, ducking the lintel, and Francis is conscious of a feeling in his absence, as though James has taken the lantern with him and plunged the cabin into darkness. It is just as well he has gone; as greatly as Francis covets his company, it would not do to pull James down into this pit with him. He is too fair and too fine for that, now that his good health and spirits are recovered. Better, indeed, that Francis lurk in his cave, and then suffer to be dragged to the captain’s table and endure the after dinner entertainments. Second Lieutenant Berry’s flute will be accompanied tonight by James’ baritone and, when he can be persuaded to abandon his natural reserve, Little’s tenor, and Francis will put on his most obliging face and slap his knee along with the rest of them. 

The Cunard steamer America does her job well, conveying Francis and James’ letters to London in one third the time it takes the Royal William to chug her way from Halifax to Boston - where the parcels of letters, along with Francis’ unsatisfactory preliminary report to the Admiralty, are loaded from one ship to the other - and thence onwards in the direction of home. As a consequence, at Portsmouth, the scene which greets the William as she lumbers into dock is something akin to a jubilee. 

From the deck, as the William makes her way up the last stretch of the Solent towards the dockyard, the sound of a band can be made out in snatches, carried this way and that by the wind. Cheers rise at the first sight of the William’s masts beyond the headland at the mouth of Portsmouth bay and do not abate.

Francis, standing at the rail with James at his side, makes out joyous faces beneath a sea of waving pennants and flags as the ship ploughs closer to the quay. The crowd is singing Rule Britannia with little regard for the solemn rhythm set for them by the band. It puts Francis in mind of the awful spectacle of the ebony room. He shudders deeply, despite Hampshire in October providing a balmy breeze and a haze of thin, clear sunshine. 

“Would that we’d slipped into Chatham under cover of darkness,” James murmurs, eyeing the crowd, his lip curling in distaste. “Do they realise we are limping home in disgrace? Better to steal home like pirates than whatever manner of spectacle this might be.”

Francis glances towards Jopson and Little, finding them ensconced in murmured conversation of their own. 

“I’ll not disagree, but we might let the men enjoy it,” he chides gently. “Let the dead come home heroes, for their sweethearts’ sakes.”

James grimaces. “My apologies, Francis. I did not think.”

“Don’t apologise on my account, I’m of the same mind as you, and you know it. Three years at sea, and we return home to a damned circus.”

“I have been keeping out an eye for Lady Franklin,” James murmurs, squinting at the crowd. “Do you think -”

“Christ, I hope not.”

Francis thinks of Sophia, and of the last time he had seen her on the quay at Greenhithe, watching Terror’s embarrassing tussle with the tugs with her face pale and solemn. He had wanted to leap over the rail and swim to her. Thank God he thought to write. He had hoped, above all, to spare her this; to advise her to try to keep her Aunt away, while the ragged survivors of Sir John’s expedition limped into port, thinner and poorer and missing limbs and teeth. It would be too easy, surveying the pathetic specimens hobbling down the gangways, to read in their condition some measure of the horrors they had endured. He had wanted to spare her that. 

“Oh,” James groans, his hand on Francis’ arm. “There!”

Francis follows James’ outstretched hand and makes out a platform, raised a little above the crowd, on which there stands a resolute figure which could only be that of Lady Jane Franklin and, beside her, Sophia. At their side stands a figure in dress uniform, its tricorn hat held casually beneath its arm. The sun on the burnished thatch of hair confirms it to be James Ross.

Francis grasps the rail before him; James glances at him, his expression grave.

“Goddamn and blast it.”

As the William draws closer to the shore, the smaller ships moored in the harbour raise a great clamour, their rigging dressed with pennants and flags, their crews waving caps and halloo-ing and welcoming her home. 

Francis breathes deeply, taking in the salt and rot smell of a ship long at sea. These last few moments of quietude, Francis at the rail with his remaining officers at his side, seem to have settled over all of them heavily. Jopson, he sees, is positively ashen, his mouth at an anxious slant, and Little has clasped a hand around his elbow as though to steady him at his side. 

His own horror at the thought of disembarkation into the tumult and clamour of the crowd must be apparent, because James nudges him to recall his attention, and then extends a large, thin hand between them. It is still so strange to be presented with a bare palm, unencumbered by mittens or gloves, that Francis stares at it blankly for a moment before remembering himself and grasping it in a handshake, James’ palm sliding warm and dry against his own.

“Francis, I must thank you,” James says, looking him steadily in the eye. 

Francis feels himself wilt beneath that calm regard, in horror at the thought that it sounds very much as though James is making some manner of parting declaration.

“What for, man?” he demands, gripping James’ hand tightly. 

“Every last thing,” James replies, with a tremulous, tender smile.

He turns away, then, and Francis is prevented from trapping that hand within his own again and insisting that James explain himself by the order to prepare to drop anchor. In the ensuing flurry of activity of ship’s hands around them, the opportunity to ask just what James thinks he might be playing at is lost.

Chapter Text

Blackheath, March 1849

When Francis and Ross returned from the Antarctic with nerves shot to pieces by the hellish dash between the bergs and with palsied hands that trembled like leaves in the wind and had to be kept tucked inside one’s coat in company for fear of giving an impression of cowardice, Francis had believed them to have survived the worst the polar regions had to throw at hapless captains of Her Majesty’s Navy. He had not been grateful for it. He had slunk off to the continent to nurse his grievances and recover his health far from thoughts of Sophia Cracroft and spent three months trying to expunge from his memory the croaking laughter of the frogs in the Governor’s gardens in Hobart.

Ross had written to him in Ravenna, and again in Florence, to inform him that he had put forward Francis’ name for the next polar expedition, as requested, but added in the second, I wish in all good conscience they see the folly in it and turn you down. Francis had been incensed; he had, by that time, struck upon a plan that advancement might achieve what earnest appeal to Sophia’s softer sentiments had not. He had insisted on his fitness for command; he had beleaguered Ross with his insistence on it. 

He massages the knuckles of his right hand with the thumb and forefinger of the left. It is early; the maid has not yet risen to lay the fire in Ross’ study, which Francis knows because he has been awake to hear her soft footsteps on the boards outside his room on each of the last five mornings. There is enough thin, grey light seeping between the curtains to have allowed him to find tapers and light the lamp upon the writing desk. There has been a chill in the air this last week, though no sign of snow, thank Christ. 

Francis has taken to wearing linens beneath his nightshirt, and still wakes in the small hours before dawn, shivering and cursing London’s chills and fogs and attempting to coax his swollen, aching fingers into attending to his correspondence. He writes to escape the torturous, wakeful hours of darkness before the rest of the household rises. As soon as he is able, he flees to the breakfast room and applies himself to the coffee, in the hope it will carry him through another day in which he is ragged with exhaustion. 

The Rosses, James and Ann, have taken to sharing looks of pity - here, Francis realises he is being uncharitable, but it is early and his hands are paining him - when they think him occupied, casting sorrowful glances at the disfiguration of his digits and the tremors which overcome him unexpectedly and send coffee cascading into his saucer if he does not try very hard to suppress them. He had written, in that last letter to Ross from Disko: in truth, I am sorely lonely. To find himself in the bosom of the Rosses’ charming, affectionate family and discover that the loneliness is worse than ever is a body-blow. 

The cause of his distress lies in the blank sheet of paper before him on the writing desk. It is not entirely blank, addressed as it is, My dear James - but here, Francis has stalled, and has been ice-bound for some time, while the sky beyond the curtains grows pink and the blackbirds begin to chatter. He will hear the maid, soon, and then it will be time to dress and make his pretence of civility before James and Ann and the little Rosses, whose chatter fills the house and is wont, on his worst days, to set him onto thoughts of Banbridge and his father’s irascible mornings, when the ghost of the gin made him intolerant of any sound louder than a whisper.

He cannot possibly, now he has started it, finish the letter to James. Quite apart from anything, the pain in his hands precludes it. Worse, and less forgivable, is the shameful memory of the content of his dreams, of late. In them, he whips Hickey, but it is James beneath the cat, the skin flayed from his back in vivid, scarlet tongues; he flings down the whip and stoops to take James into his arms; he cradles him, but soon finds his fingers digging gouges into James’ weeping flesh. Every morning this week he has woken fevered and sickened and hard as a rock beneath his inadequate underclothes.

Why should he dwell on James, in this abhorrent manner? Oh, he knows the answer, of course: Francis Crozier is a veteran of such things, after all. A man who fled to both ends of the globe in want of Sophia Cracroft could hardly be ignorant of it. He ought to abandon the letter, for want of elegant words. Francis’ sentiments are a blunt instrument, always have been. He will only manage to let on that he is heartsick for King William Land - for which he cannot forgive himself, for what monster would prefer James broken, for his own selfish ends? - and James will be repulsed by him and by his unwholesome needs, and the matter he has been meaning to address - James’ silence, James’ abominable absence from London - will be settled, once and for all, by James withdrawing from his company entirely. 

Francis curses and sets down his pen. There is an unopened letter beside the candlestick, which he had been saving until he was in better humour, but hope of such eventuality has been scarce, of late. Ned Little’s earnest, scholar’s script and bashful petitions on behalf of Jopson can hardly put him in a worse mood, in any case, on this cursed frigid morning. 

He tears the letter open, not minding Little’s precise seal and habit of filling every inch of paper with crosswise lines. 

Captain Crozier, it begins, I shall be pleased that this letter finds you well.

God bless Edward for writing. There follows some news of his having finally left the family home to set up in Herefordshire at the house of an uncle while waiting for a commission, which coaxes a smile to Crozier’s weary face, for he has always struggled to imagine sombre Ned Little at home and beset by sisters, as he himself had been as a young man.

I beg your indulgence, Little continues, in raising once again the matter of Lt. Jopson’s situation and trust you will with all discretion enquire into the likelihood of a subscription being raised on his behalf. He is too proud - and I am sure he would not forgive me for owning it - to write to you himself in hope of the same; indeed, he is steadfast in refusing the help of friends and I have lately resorted to subterfuge in order to settle certain bills, for which I fear he will likely not forgive me, either. It is only that I am uncertain of my continuing facility in securing his affairs, being limited in means by the delay in my achieving another commission. It is my hope that you will forgive this entreaty on Lt. Jopson’s behalf, and furnish me with whatever you might be able to spare, to pay for the doctor. His brother’s condition worsens, and I know not what he will do if he is bereaved of him, such are already the depths of his despair.

“Ah, Jesus, Ned,” Francis mutters, reaching into the drawer of the desk. He extracts another blank sheet and scribbles a note to be delivered to Cunliffe, Brooks and Co. at Lombard Street, giving instruction for the forwarding of one pound and six shillings as soon as it can be arranged.

What is to be done about Jopson has been the other matter to keep Francis and sleep as strangers to one another, these last weeks. It cannot be long before Cunliffe and Brooks begin to express concern at the depletion of Francis’ funds, between slipping money to Little for the settlement of Jopson’s expenses - here, Francis winces, for it is too long since he wrote to Jopson himself, to look into his recovery, and to make careful enquiry about the health of the consumptive brother - and the stipend sent to Banbridge for Fanny and Eliza.

Francis reaches for another sheet and worries at his swollen knuckles, red from his rubbing and aching fiercely in the chill. He must write to Jopson; that, by far, is a better use of his time than bothering at James, who cannot be blamed for withdrawing from London, if all London has to offer him is Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier and all his attendant miseries. 

Francis wakes with a start at the distant clanging of the breakfast bell, with one cheek pressed to the letter upon his desk, its ink smeared intolerably and, he sees, when he glowers at himself in the mirror above the basin brought in for his toilet, smudged upon his face. Swearing, he scrubs at it, waves away the manservant’s attempt to help him dress, and sets to making himself sufficiently presentable to appear downstairs for breakfast. 

When he stumbles into the breakfast room, Ann is reading the Times and raises an amused eyebrow at him above its pages.

“We’d near given up on you,” she says, casting a glance in her husband’s direction. Ross takes in Francis’ rumpled and disreputable appearance and says nothing, sipping at his coffee.

“Forgive me,” Francis says, slipping inelegantly into a chair at the opposite side of the table. “Carried away by my correspondence.”

“It must have been diverting indeed to transport you so utterly as to almost miss breakfast,” Ross says, mildly. 

Ann casts a glance between them and sighs.

“I’m sure Francis’ letters are his own affair,” she says, laying a small hand on her husband’s sleeve. He bestows upon her a look of such naked affection that Francis is obliged, as always, to busy himself with filling his plate to spare the pair of them his blushes.

“Forgive me, then, in return, Francis,” Ross says, setting down his coffee cup. He offers a smile, and Francis nods, dredging up a smile in turn. It must appear more like a grimace, for James and Ann’s expressions become comically alarmed, the pair of them frowning at him as though he might at any moment collapse face-down into the porridge pot.

“Have you been awake in the small hours again?” Ross asks. 

“If I have,” Francis grumbles, reaching for the coffee, “what solution do you propose? I’d stupefy myself with wine after supper every evening, only you would have an even sourer look about you, then.”

Ross says nothing, watching while Francis’ cup rattles against its saucer. Francis scowls and throws back its scalding contents in three gulps, then sets the cup onto its saucer rather more clumsily than he had intended, earning himself a murmur from Ann and a reproving, “Steady, old man,” from Ross.

“James is to the Admiralty to-day,” says Ann, tentatively. “You might accompany him, to ensure he won’t be drawn into business and miss luncheon again; I’ve almost come to despair of having him at home.”

“I’m expected at that damned audience of Lefroy’s at the Society,” Francis replies, quite without thinking. He realises his mistake almost as soon as the words have fallen from his mouth and curses himself for forgetting, yet again, that he is not at the table in the Great Cabin, exercising his ill temper upon Little and Hodgson, while Irving makes nervous faces at his language.

There is a delicate silence, in which Ann takes an embarrassed sip of her coffee and Ross sets his down sharply beside his plate.

“Francis -”

Francis draws a quivering hand across his brow. He smiles at Ann in apology. 

“Forgive me,” he says. “I’m a surly rogue after a sleepless night; let me get some breakfast inside me and I’ll be more agreeable company.

“Dear Francis,” Ann says, in a tone of great kindness, “your company is always agreeable, even at its surliest.”

“Hear, hear,” says Ross, though his expression retains some of its reserve, a familiar measure of concern it has failed to shake entirely for the length of Francis’ sojourn at Blackheath. 

Francis sighs inwardly at once again having burdened such eminently good people with his ill-temper and resolves to do better at refraining from hanging as a black cloud in the corners of rooms and at the edges of dining tables.

He applies himself to the coffee, and then to a helping of kedgeree, though his stomach rebels at the notion of eggs and fish. He resorts to pushing his breakfast around his plate in a display reserved for the dining table in the nursery; James Ross the younger would be ashamed of such clumsy subterfuge, and he is not yet five years old. Above him, Ann makes pretty conversation on the subject of something found within the pages of the Times, and Ross responds, offering an opinion Francis might well have been expected to second or refute, only he finds that mention of the Admiralty has subdued his mood still further.

It had been a frigid morning like this one, at the start of the second day of the court martial, and icy fingers of mist rising off the river had swirled in the doorway when Little had entered the hall with his head bowed to take his place before the Board. He had been offered a chair, but had chosen to stand, straightening to his full height to face Admiral Cockburn with an expression of intractable disapproval. Francis had known, then, that he would owe Little his gratitude for the rest of his days.

“Commander Little,” Cockburn had said in his opening remarks, his small, beetle eyes averted disdainfully from Little’s face, where a permanent slash of badly-healed skin upon his left cheek bore witness to the ravages of frostbite and windburn. “In light of the failure to recover any log book of HMS Erebus or HMS Terror, by which the court might otherwise have made account of the circumstances leading to the abandonment of both ships on the twenty-second day of April in the year 1848, it falls to such officers as returned with the expedition to enlighten this court as to the means by which such decisions were reached, and the manner in which those orders were given and received. It is the expectation of the court that you will do so truthfully in the sight of God, and without withholding any information which might be material to our understanding. Do you comprehend the scope and gravity of the duty before you?”

Little nodded solemnly. “I do, sir.”

“And will you give honest account of what transpired, to aid us in our task?”

“To the best of my ability to recall the circumstances, I will do so, sir.”

Cockburn’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Your ability to recall them?”

Little blinked, taking on that familiar expression of his, which had always suggested that he was conscious of giving offence and at a loss as too how to retract it. “I was not always privy to discussion between the captains, sir.”

Cockburn had not liked that, not at all, and had turned to his fellow members of the Board to mutter to them darkly, while Little twisted his hands behind his back and cast apologetic eyes at Francis.

Had Cockburn had his way, the court martial might have been an ugly prospect for Francis indeed, for the Lord Admiral had endeavoured to engineer a rigged Board, made up of those with known prejudices against Irishmen and commoners in general, and men who held grudges against Francis in particular, of which there existed a regrettable number. Fortunately, there had been some scrambling necessary to assemble the requisite number of post-captains to reach a quorum, with the Mediterranean fleet on manoeuvres at Gibraltar and three ships delayed on the return from Santiago, such that Cockburn had been forced to accept both Rosses, Sir John and Sir James, and Admiral Lord Berkeley to the panel in the days before the trial began. 

The Rosses were not the only friendly faces in the hall, for Francis had had his hand pressed swiftly by Sophia as she went by to take her place amongst the assembled crowd of onlookers and newspaper men. She sat, now, her steady gaze intent upon Little as he gave his evidence; Francis rather wished she had not been there, to hear the details which were bound to come out, about the circumstances of his disagreement with Sir John, and the fabricated account of her uncle’s demise. He and James had cooked up a plausible story between them, in the final days aboard the Marten, and sworn Little and Blanky and the crew to secrecy on the true events of that awful day. They had none of them protested; there was not a man among them who did not know of a sailor telling tales of monsters and witches to whomever could be induced to buy them a measure of rum, a figure of fun in the inn of every port town from London to Shanghai. 

“On the matter of communications, if you please,” said Cockburn, to the diminutive barrister engaged for the prosecution of the case.

“On the matter of communications, Commander Little,” repeated the lawyer obligingly. He had an air not unlike that of Harry Goodsir, Francis thought, watching him turn his watery gaze upon Little, if Goodsir had been possessed of a single spiteful bone in his body. “Your orders were to take a daily measurement of latitude, to be sealed in a brass cylinder and cast overboard, so that they might be returned to the Admiralty on recovery. How many cylinders for this purpose was Terror supplied with, on leaving Greenhithe in March 1845?” 

“Two hundred.” 

“And how many aboard Erebus?” 

“A further two hundred.” 

“How many of these cylinders were put to their intended use, during the voyage of the Erebus and Terror?” 

Little cleared his throat. “I cannot say, sir.” 

“You cannot say?”

“I cannot say,” Little confirmed, shifting a little from one foot to the other, “because I was not aboard Erebus to witness their disposal.” 

“There is much you cannot say, Commander Little,” Cockburn had interjected, fixing Little with his dark, narrowed eyes. 

Francis had winced for Little’s prospects, in the aftermath of these wretched proceedings. Had he been at liberty to speak with him privately, he might have urged Little to abandon this endeavour and declare Francis guilty of whatever crime Cockburn wished to accuse him, for the sake of his career. 

“Perhaps we ought to confine ourselves to decisions taken once Erebus and Terror had been beset by ice,” Berkeley suggested.

“As you suggest, my lord,” conceded the lawyer. “We must consider a number of extraordinary measures taken by Captain Crozier in the exercise of his command, once he had assumed the rank of senior officer. To whit, in determining that it was necessary to abandon HMS Erebus and Terror and to make attempt at marching his surviving crew to safety on a South Easterly bearing, with the aim of awaiting rescue at Repulse Bay. What was your role, Commander Little, in the formulation of that plan?”

“I was consulted by Captain Crozier, as were we all, those of us remaining to make up the command.”

“Those of you remaining,” repeated the lawyer, in a tone of enquiry.

“Seven,” interjected Cockburn. “Seven of twenty four officers, who remained alive.”

“Nine, at that point, sir,” Little corrected, frowning. 

Francis had become intimately acquainted with the nuances of Little’s disapproval over the three and a half years he had spent staring down the barrel of it. If he did not conceal it better from Cockburn, he would find himself on charges. 

“Nine?” Cockburn snapped.

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Le Vesconte yet lived, and Lieutenant Jopson had recently been promoted.”

Cockburn waved a peremptory hand. “You take it upon yourself to bestow a rank the Admiralty has not seen fit to uphold, Commander Little. Reference to Mr Jopson’s irregular promotion will be struck from the record,” he instructed the clerk of the court, who nodded and made a swift amendment to the pages in front of him. 

Cockburn’s narrow eyes searched Little’s face for a moment, and Francis hoped to God he was worse at reading the sentiment conveyed by Little’s scowl than Francis was. 

“Did Captain Crozier explain to you the method by which he determined that the greatest hope of rescue lay to the south east of your position?” the lawyer continued.

“He did not, sir. Nevertheless, I was satisfied in the soundness of his judgement.”

“Satisfied?”

“Aye, sir. Captain Crozier proved an exemplary commander on the ice. He had the trust of his commanding officers in all things.”

“And there was no period during the expedition during which your captain’s judgement was held to be in doubt?”

Little paused for no more than a moment. “None, sir.”

Francis had no desire for Little to perjure himself; had it not been for the certainty of making things altogether worse for the pair of them, he might have stood and protested it. 

It was at this point that James Ross, the most junior of the members of the Board, being Rear-Admiral of the Red, sat forward to interject in the proceedings. “Captain Crozier was indisposed due to ill health for a length of fourteen days in the spring of 1848, according to your own testimony, Commander Little.”

Little nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“And at no point did you receive the impression that he had behaved in a manner which placed his crew or ships in danger?”

“At no point, sir. The Captain, recognising his incapacity, appointed me in his stead as acting captain of HMS Terror and Captain Fitzjames as acting senior officer and retired for the duration of his illness. I was relieved of command of HMS Terror on his recovery.”

“And could you enlighten the court as to the nature of this illness?”

“I could not, sir. It was a matter between Captain Crozier and Doctor MacDonald.” Little cleared his throat, shifting again from foot to foot. “I should like to add, though, sir, that Captain Crozier’s conduct in transferring command to capable hands while he was indisposed, and in rallying as he did in recovery, led those of us in close conference with him during that time to hold him in the highest esteem. Were it not for Captain Crozier’s subsequent diligence and judgement, neither I nor any of the men under my command would have returned to England alive.”

“That,” said Cockburn dismissively, “is for this court to determine. You will henceforth restrain yourself, Commander Little, to responding concisely to questions put to you by representatives of this court. We have no need of biographical flourishes.”

Francis comes to his senses at the sound of his own name.

“Francis.” 

Ann has placed her hand upon Francis’ sleeve, a dainty but insistent weight, which recalls him to the breakfast room and the mound of kedgeree he has been absently shovelling from one side of his plate to the other. “Are you certain you are quite well?”

Francis clears his throat, then folds his napkin and lays it neatly beside his plate. “Forgive me, I’m away to the Society, for this audience with Lefroy. I don’t expect to be back for luncheon.”

“Of course,” she replies, while Ross frowns and sips his coffee. 

“Good morning to you, both,” Francis says, as he affects a swift escape.

Somerset House is a great hulking edifice which Francis has come to regard with weary antipathy, since his return to public life. It rises smartly from the Thames where once there might have been a stretch of busy foreshore and malarial marshes, and sprawls there, recumbent. Between his election to a Fellowship, his miserable tour of Europe in the wake of Sophia’s first rejection, and his appointment to the Arctic expedition, Francis had barely had time to set foot in the place before he departed London to join Terror at Greenhithe. Since his return, he has rebuffed all manner of invitations imploring him to give talks on Arctic exploration, on his observations on magnetics, and on the use of steam to power heavy ships. He has turned down as many as he can reasonably decline, and would have turned down more, were it not for Ross and his growing concern once he had taken note of Francis’ resistance to venturing abroad from Blackheath.  

“Crozier! Good morning to you!” calls Crum, the diminutive Scotch chemist, upon Francis’ entering the great courtyard.

Francis raises a hand in response. He has spoken to Crum on a total of two occasions: once, upon Crum’s election, two weeks after Francis’ return from Paris that terrible winter; the other, at one of the ordinary Thursday evening meetings, some four weeks past. 

“Damned good to see you,” Crum says, coming closer to shake Francis by the hand. “You’re here for Lefroy, I imagine? Capital, I shall see you for luncheon, I expect.”

Francis shakes Crum’s hand a second time, murmuring his own platitudes about the luncheon, and watches the little man hurry away in the direction of the river. He realises, absently, that his shoulders have risen around his ears, squared as though in anticipation of a fight; hackles down, Frank, he knows Tom would be saying, were he here, jabbing at Francis with a sharp elbow, his pipe between his teeth, wearing a knowing grin. 

“Bugger off,” Francis mutters under his breath, wishing he’d left for Yorkshire, after all, when Tom last wrote, offering him a bed and a measure of peace and quiet away from London and its inconsequential engagements and society tomfoolery.

The Royal Society occupies the North Wing of Somerset House, which necessitates passing beneath the archway leading off the Strand, and climbing a wide flight of stairs to the second floor. The wing is shared with the Society of Antiquaries, and Francis is forever having to tip his hat to the men Ross has nicknamed the Fossils, who hurry about the place in clusters, earnestly discussing some pit or other they have dug, and the crumbling treasures they claim to have found therein. Francis has little time for their predilection for scrabbling about in holes in the ground; it strikes him as a macabre business, and something about it - the idea of digging into some ancient tumulus and grubbing around in another man’s bones - repulses him. 

When he has finished dodging antiquarians and reached the Society’s meeting chambers, Francis spies the cause of his reluctant visit immediately, holding court in the ante-room of the meeting chamber, and looking as pleased with himself as a cat who has found an open window to a dairy. 

John Henry Lefroy is a curious fellow, made no less curious by Francis’ recent better acquaintance with him after years of sporadic correspondence. He presents a dour countenance to the world at large, on account of a face which falls into a dolorous expression when left idle for a second. Lefroy finds this, by his own account, to be a great joke at his expense on the behalf of the Creator, for strangers are often terribly in awe of his severe demeanour, until inevitably disappointed upon discovering him to be a jolly, even ridiculous fellow, fond of scurrilous conversation and practical jokes. He puts Francis rather in mind of James and Le Vesconte, who used to carry on like varsity boys and concoct tiresome japes for the amusement of the crew with the indulgence of Sir John; it is not a happy comparison to make, these days, and Francis attempts to pilot his thoughts into safer waters.

Lefroy has been in London for some two months, having arrived shortly after the resolution of the court martial, and for the duration of his sojourn in London Francis had been favoured with his particular attention. It has been like being pestered by a stern-looking golden retriever, and Francis despite himself has found himself thinking not-unkindly of the jolly young man, not least because his expertise in magnetics makes him an excellent primer on developments in the discipline which Francis has missed during his four years’ absence. 

“Ah, Captain Crozier!” 

Spotted, as those conversing with Lefroy turn to look at him, Francis has no choice but to raise a hand in greeting and submit himself to interaction.

“Gratified to see you, indeed,” Lefroy says, taking him firmly by the arm and shaking his hand so heartily that Francis is concerned he might work it loose. “Now, Sabine, do you think this matter of Toronto might wait until after my lecture? You’ll have your chance to press Crozier about everything to be found up there in the Circle at your leisure; I’m for Halifax within the week, and must make the most of him while I may.”

Edward Sabine, who peers down his aquiline nose at Francis in some impatience, acquiesces, shaking Francis by the hand as he goes.

“He won’t let up about the damned observatory,” Lefroy confides, not quite sotto voce, as Sabine departs.

Francis glances at him, bemused. “I beg your pardon?”

“Won’t forgive me for giving it back to the Canadians. Oh, forgive me, Crozier; I do forget you’ve missed such a lot.”

Francis shrugs. “I’ve not been gone long enough that Sabine has lost his jealousy of other hands upon his variometers, it seems.”

Lefroy chuckles. “Good job you’re back now, eh, and not a minute later? I’d have been damned sorry to have sailed back to Newfoundland and missed you.”

“Not as sorry as we might have been.”

Lefroy looks briefly startled, as though Francis’ black humour should still come as a surprise. “Well, quite.”

The first time they had met, they had been standing side-by-side in the Rosses’ drawing room, in the aftermath of a dinner which Francis had been obliged to push around his plate in a most ungrateful manner thanks to his stomach’s rebellious reaction to the richness of the food, and Lefroy had been clutching a glass of brandy whose fumes had made Francis fingers clench around the stem of his glass of ginger ale. 

“It was the concerns about the tins that did it,” Lefroy had confided, leaning closer.

“Did what?” Francis enquired, distracted from his contemplation of his own misery. 

“Got you saved, of course,” Lefroy responded, in a voluble whisper which hinted at his overindulgence where the brandy was concerned. 

Francis raised an eyebrow, catching sight of James at the whist table with Ann Ross and the Coninghams. He raised his glass and James did so in return, an amused, sardonic tilt to his thin lips, while Lefroy touched Francis upon the arm in a manner that was, to Francis’ mind, decidedly over-familiar.  

“There was a consignment on the London when she sailed for Gibraltar,” Lefroy reported, in the tone of a coffee-house rake relaying gossip to his associates. “Five sickened before she put in at La Rochelle in distress, and a further five thereafter. All ten dead, within the week. Some bright young medical officer in the port thought to requisition the tins - the French have orders with Goldner for their America brigs, you know - and sent a report of their putridity to the Admiralty post-haste. You’ve your Captain Fitzjames to thank for it, that Berkeley saw the import of it, when he got wind of the French and their complaint; it didn’t take long to dig up that request of Fitzjames’ for proper testing of the tinned meats and vegetables before the contract was made. All that guff about five years’ rations went up in smoke, the moment Berkeley marched in waving that report of Fitzjames’ in Cockburn’s face. When Lady Franklin failed to persuade the old walrus to act, your friends of the Society were only too glad to send to McLean and enquire into the possibility of his raising a rescue. Thank God for McLean, eh? Fellow’s a damned odd fish, but the sort on whom one can rely.”

Francis had felt certain his expression must have been one of foolish astonishment. That James should have been the cause of their miraculous deliverance, and that no word of it should have reached either his or Francis’ ear before now… James Ross had explained the tins, of course, and the Admiralty had made a great fuss of seeking redress against Goldner for the inferiority of his provisions, but this final link - that James had detected the issue and been sensible of its import, and by his diligence provided the means by which they had been saved - that was entirely new.

He glanced over at the card table and watched James laugh at something Will Coningham had said to him, and wondered whether James might have known of it, after all, and kept the knowledge of his role in their salvation to himself out of modesty.

Are you aware, James, that it is you who saved us? he had thought of asking, but he had had to leave the engagement early with a throbbing head, dashing into a cab and back to Blackheath to escape the babble of conversation and the droning of the string quartet, and it had seemed too pointed a question to fling at James in the guise of a letter.

“I say, Crozier, are you with us?”

Francis startles, realising Lefroy has been speaking to him, unheeded, for some time. “Apologies,” he says, rubbing at his temple distractedly. “I was wool-gathering.”

Lefroy laughs. “You are a remarkable droll fellow. You must promise to write to me again, when I am exiled in Toronto, once more. Now, I am reminded: Crum was enquiring as to the circumstances of Lady Franklin, and whether she might grace us for Sir James’ dinner next week.”

Francis shrugs, perplexed. “I’m afraid I could not say.”

“You have not seen her?” Lefroy peers at him as though astonished. “Oh, but I assumed -”

“I have confined myself to Blackheath since our return, with few exceptions.”

“Quite understandable, I’m sure,” Lefroy says, nodding, his shrewd eyes searching Francis’ face. “It’s simply on account of the book; I had naturally assumed that you had been in conference with Lady Franklin in discussion of its contents.”

Francis frowns. There have been mutterings of a biography of Sir John; Sophia had intimated as much during their last conversation, but he had not imagined Jane might deign to consult his own recollections of Sir John’s final years, when James was so much the better spinner of yarns and flatterer of Sir John’s character. 

“Naturally?”

“Well, it’s to be an account of the expedition, Crozier. I’m confounded you can be ignorant of it; I hear from Sabine it will be an examination of what caused the endeavour to end in such terrible tragedy. Surely, Lady Franklin has sought your account of it?”

Francis thinks of the last time he and Lady Jane had shared a room. There had been a great deal of heaviness between them, as though Lady Jane’s grief were a pall of sadness which threatened to engulf the room and everything within it, and Francis had been at a loss for what to say in the face of it. It had seemed she accused him, with every leaden moment of silence between them, of being the cause of her husband’s failure to return. The whys and the wherefores had gone unspoken, but it was palpably so. Francis had, to his shame, found himself making bald excuses, uttering a brief farewell to Sophia, and fleeing for the safety of Blackheath.

“She has not,” Francis says drily, “no.”

Lefroy possesses the grace to cease his questioning, and Francis is glad, for he would have disliked to create a scene by upbraiding him for his sniffing for gossip like a truffle pig. Instead, Lefroy untucks a pocket watch from his waistcoat and rocks back and forth on his heels.

“Well, I had better attend to my lecture, if we are to get to luncheon before the afternoon. It’s a damned shame we shan’t see Ross, but I am very grateful for your presence, Francis; very grateful, indeed. I hope you, yourself, are thinking of publishing,” he adds, as Francis trails him towards the meeting chamber. “Three years’ observations so far within the Circle; an opportunity nonpareil!”

Francis says nothing. He shudders to recall his jealousies over James’ appointment to the observations, his spite in allowing the debacle at Disko, as though such a thing would make them even for the slight Francis perceived himself to have suffered. It all has come to naught, in any case. Whatever notes James made, whatever readings taken and recorded, lie now at the bottom of the sea, or are perhaps scattered across the tundra, where the Netsilik might find them and cast them aside as yet more utterly useless debris left behind by the pitiful qallunaat.

Francis seats himself, once Lefroy has patted him on the shoulder and left his side to take his place at the lectern, beneath the portrait of the Earl of Carbery, whose fleshy visage has always reminded him unpleasantly of his Grandmother Graham, whom Francis had loathed as a child on account of her habit of beating the backs of his legs with her walking cane when he displayed any of what she termed a boy’s savage proclivities. Ahead of him, Lord Rosse and Sabine and the luminaries of the Society have taken up the plum seats; Francis is happy to leave them to it and lurk at the periphery for the time being. 

Lefroy’s voice is melodious enough - not one for a monotonous trudge through scientific papers, he - and the lecture is well-attended, for an extraordinary meeting of the Society, and Francis is glad to sink into his seat and allow Lefroy’s tales of travails in the Canadian wilderness to wash over him. Still, he wishes he had not come. It is six years since his election to his Fellowship, and Lefroy and the other youngsters have outstripped him, during his long absence. They have answered the queries Terror and Erebus set out intending to examine, and added codas to them, posed new questions, novel avenues for exploration. The mysteries of magnetic variation are all-but solved, and with them Francis’ worth to science exhausted. There is a new melancholia that steals over him, now, when he thinks of his pride and his hope in announcing to Sophia that he had been elected Fellow, as though it should have elevated him in her affections.

His mind wanders to the drawing room of Lady Jane’s gauche, expansive residence in Kensington, stuffed to the gills with nautical charts and strange, exotic taxidermies. The last time he had been there, before Lady Jane had returned home and surveyed Francis with every iota of her disdain, he had asked, somewhat hesitantly, for Sophia had not liked this line of questioning in the past, after Sophia’s designs for her future.

“Aunt Jane is determined to see Florence again,” she had said. “For myself, I had rather Egypt, but I suppose I may be able to persuade her to it.” 

Francis found himself diverted by the clear blue of Sophia’s eyes with the light shining on them just so through the drawing room window. Once, he had considered it the most beautiful and unique hue and rhapsodised on it foolishly in the privacy of his own imagination. He realised she was frowning at him with an expression of mild impatience. He marvelled at what had become of them, in the four years since he bade her a stiff farewell, with Sir John looking on, on Erebus’ foredeck.

“You mean to accompany her?” he asked.

“I accompany Aunt Jane on all her travels,” she replied, dismissively, as though this ought to have been obvious, and of little worth remarking upon. 

There should have been nothing remarkable in it, of course. They were each other’s helpmeet, now, it would seem; and why should a respectable widow not take her spinster niece along with her as a travelling companion? It was only that he had imagined such a great deal more for Sophia, somehow, than trailing along at Lady Jane’s coat-tails. Some small part of him had not been surprised in the least by her refusal to accept his proposals, because he had rather expected her to announce that she was taking up adventuring and exploration of her own, or setting out as a writer of reformist literature. It was a sadness to realise he had overestimated her in that regard. 

He had wondered, then, at the love he had once believed himself to feel for her. It would not have been excessive to say that it had possessed him. Indeed, it had seemed so vital in its maddening, all-consuming agony that he had convinced himself that without Sophia, life could only be meaningless. This, he had decided, must have been what poets meant when they spoke of love. His erstwhile, lingering feelings for Ross, his private avowal to honour him by the steadfastness of his friendship, had been swept aside in the fever of Sophia Cracroft’s fleeting attentions and forgotten. For a long time, all of Francis had been for Sophia, and Sophia had been all he had dreamed of aspiring to possess.

His heart thumped sickly behind his ribs, thinking on this with Sophia frowning at him over the rim of her teacup. James Fitzjames, it occurred to him with a sickening flash of clarity, did not possess him, and he could never dream of possessing James in return. James was bone and viscera, rank beneath Francis’ fingernails. He was the tattoo of Francis’ heartbeat in the stink of the igloo while coaxing him to choke down slivers of walrus, weeping as one by one they disappeared down James’ straining gullet. James was the solidity of a body beneath a sealskin, and the desperation of holding onto him, fearful in case letting go meant that he might feel free to abandon the effort of drawing another rattling breath. For all that Francis wanted James, he did not need to possess him; he wanted only for James Fitzjames to continue to exist in the world, to know that his own sorry life had not been lived entirely in vain.

He blinked slowly at Sophia as she set down her cup in its saucer and placed it upon the table between them. It was like watching a mirage disperse before his eyes, some great mountain range dissolving into clouds and mist and bergy bits. He wondered briefly, hysterically, whether this was how Sir John Ross had felt, when the Barrow range had been excised from the map and Barrow Sound marked there in its place. 

“Francis?” Sophia said with the air of someone irritated by her companion’s lapse in concentration. 

“Forgive me,” he muttered. 

“You are preoccupied today, it seems. Perhaps it would be best to put off the remainder of our conversation for a later date.” 

Francis sighed, rubbing at his eyes. He had slept no more than four hours the previous night, and three the one before that.

“Sophy, please. There is no place I had rather be on a dingy morning than here, allowing you to incite my jealousy of your plans for a Grand Tour.” 

Her mouth pursed at the nickname - she had never borne it from Francis the way she did from her Aunt - and she tossed her head with such delicacy that it might have been overlooked, by someone less well-versed in her impetuous gestures. “I do wish you would give a greater deal of your attention to it, then.” 

“Of course,” he said, smiling a little to himself. “Go on.” 

Later, when cakes had been brought, and Francis had thought it best to speak before courage deserted him, he had said, carefully:  “In my letter from the William, on our journey home, I spoke bluntly to you of my intentions.” 

Sophia put down her cup and met his gaze straightforwardly, in the way he had always found so tormenting, when he had mistaken it for love. “Quite bluntly. I was astonished.” 

“Then I must apologise. I was tired almost out of my wits, it was never my intention to-“ 

“Oh, Francis, hush. I meant that I nearly applauded, when I got to the bit about your having no intention of renewing your proposal. It is good, is it not, to have things settled between us?” 

Francis cast about for some remnant of the despair he once would have felt at the notion of Sophia Cracroft never becoming his wife. 

“It is good,” he agreed. Sophia took one of his hands between her own and patted it with every indication of affection, but an affection that did not venture beyond the closest species of friendly esteem. 

“Now,” she said, eagerly. “You must tell me about Florence, for if I am to travel there, I should like to know all the best and most scandalous diversions to be found there.” 

Lefroy concludes his remarks on the progress made in Toronto, and the Fellows applaud him heartily. Francis joins them, glad on Lefroy’s behalf that he should have made such a favourable impression during his visit. The man is a puppy, still, and it would be churlish to resent him for his enthusiasm for the North; he has, after all, travelled there extensively himself, and it is this which prevents Francis from taking umbrage against it. If not for Lefroy’s letter to McLean, and the entreaty on behalf of the Society which swung the Hudson’s Bay Company into sending him out on the Marten, God himself knows where he and James might be, now. Francis recalls Tom Blanky’s recollections of his sojourn at Fury Beach, and all his talk of bones bleaching in the endless sun. 

He is about to summon the will to venture forth from his spot beneath Carbery’s portrait when a voice behind him murmurs, discretely, “Captain Crozier, sir? A message for you.”

He turns to find a boy in Admiralty colours standing to attention and holding towards him a sealed letter. He takes it, perplexed, and tears it open to find a brief missive, in a neat, clerical hand.

Captain F.R.M. Crozier,

In light of necessary Discovery Service business, your attendance at the Admiralty is required forthwith. Attend at your earliest convenience.

Berkeley.

Francis sighs. A summons from the Second Naval Lord is not a thing to be ignored in the cause of luncheon; he cannot say, in any case, that he is sorry for the excuse to desert the occasion prematurely. 

“Any reply, sir?” the boy asks, his eyes on the wall over Francis’ shoulder, transfixed in horror, perhaps, by hideous old Carbery. 

Francis sighs a second time. “I’ll see the Lord Admiral myself. No reply, be off with you.”

The Admiralty, with its semaphore pennants fluttering high above its mechanical weathervane, and its brutish, brick-laid facade squatting over Whitehall like a fat, sullen spider, is a place Francis loathes entirely. He has always loathed it, only he used to be able to make a better show of hiding it. This bastion of conceited authority, this cradle of privilege, he thinks as he surmounts its marble steps, which denied me the command that might have been due to me, and might have seen Erebus and Terror in safe harbour and then home before the cursed spring of 1848.

He had complained, in those miserable weeks before he and James departed for Terror Camp with the last of the sledges, of the Admiralty’s distaste for him, and James had listened to him with sympathy.

“When I was a midshipman on the Fury, a well-meaning officer attempted to elevate my prospects by advising that I moderate my accent,” Francis had told him, with a wry smile, while they peered at the maps for the third time in as many hours, in search of an elusive and miraculous route that might mitigate the miles between their current position and the mouth of Back’s Fish River.

James had raised an eyebrow at him over the charts and sat back in his chair to enquire, “What on earth did you say to that? Did you attempt to heed him?”

Francis snorted. “Hardly. I thanked him for his concern and made a private vow to get myself promoted above him, that I might consign him to swabbing the orlop in perpetuity.”

“And did you?”

“Bugger had the impudence to die from pox contracted in an Argentinian stew before I had the privilege.”

James laughed, and Francis warmed himself beneath it, basking shamelessly like a lizard in the sun, though he is not sure that he had recognised it, at the time. 

“I think a brogue a charming thing,” James had said absentmindedly, and then frowned, hauling himself more upright in his chair. “Forgive me, Francis, I did not mean to make fun. I rather think I meant ‘honest’. The cadence of your homeland is more authentic than this hum I have worked so assiduously to cultivate.”

“It has certainly been less help in negotiating my way into the graces of the Admiralty.”

James waved a dismissive hand, as though the Admiralty entire might be swept away with one imperious flick of his wrist. “Not a jot of discernment among them. As though you were not the better of any of them! Such men are fools, Francis. How can you face it with equanimity?“

“It has been a long time since I made my peace with it,” Francis said wryly, amused by James’ fervency in his defence. James had simply frowned at him, his handsome face folded into an expression of such sincere sorrow in injustice that Francis had, in the end, cast his gaze to the maps once more in confusion. 

“Long though I do for the comforts of home,” James had murmured, as though expecting Francis to challenge him on it, “there are some parts of England that I cannot claim to miss.”

Francis had watched him quietly for a moment and thought of making a snide remark on the miraculous transformation of James’ former snobbishness into this concern for an Irishman’s welfare, but something about their exchange had moved him disproportionately and he had allowed the silence to grow between them rather than risk the clumsiness of his words upsetting it. 

He collects himself and snorts inwardly at such self-important drivel. As though Irishness were the whole of the reason for his lack of preferment. It had taken two weeks of misery, sweating the whiskey from his blood, to admit that to himself, at least. 

Berkeley, when Francis is admitted to his office, is seated at his desk and surrounded by parcels of documents, piled this way and that in such a manner that they might give an impression of chaos and confusion. Francis is not such a fool as to be taken in. He clears his throat and stands neatly to attention, awaiting enlightenment as to the reason for his being summoned so peremptorily hence.

Berkeley looks up for the briefest moment, before returning his attention to the document open before him on the desk. 

“Ah, Crozier.” He waves a hand at the seat opposite. “Good of you to come in such haste.”

“I confess, sir, I was not much sorry for the diversion,” Francis replies, taking his seat, watching Berkeley’s narrowed eyes make their way across the page.

“Very good,” says Berkeley, as though to himself, and then sets the document to one side, raising his head to fix Francis with a shrewd, narrow regard. “Well, then, Crozier. I’ve brought you here to enquire as to your intentions with regard to publishing.”

“Publishing?” Francis thinks of Lefroy and his glib assertion about three years in the Circle, and braces himself for the necessity of disappointing Berkeley in that regard.

“On the expedition, man.” Berkeley removes the pince-nez which had been perching upon the bridge of his nose and squints at Francis more keenly. “You’ll have heard Jane Franklin is planning on it. Had you not rather set matters straight aforehand?”

“I have only just this hour heard of it.”

“It’ll be some mawkish hum on Sir John and the whole thing trussed up as a grand noble adventure, no doubt,” says Berkeley with an expression of distaste. “Not what is needed, I think.” 

He sits back in his chair and steeples his fingers, regarding Francis steadily. 

“It would be beneficial, if others were to be able to learn from your experiences upon the ice. Your initial report left great room for interpretation and far too many questions unanswered in a technical regard, despite your testimony made clear that your preparations for the journey were thorough and the design of those sledges well-tested. Future expeditions may depend on it.” 

Francis wonders, briefly, whether his disbelief might make his expression one of outright rudeness, his knuckles white upon the arms of his chair. “Tell me there’s not more men to be sent to that godforsaken place.” 

Berkeley appears tired about the eyes. He pinches the bridge of his nose briefly between forefinger and thumb. 

“We may be thankful that the mania for the open North died with Barrow,” he says, in a tone of impatience. “But the Admiralty - the Crown - won’t rest until the passage is charted, never mind King William Island and the question of who was right on that score. The thinking, in some quarters, is that it will have to be done by sled.”

Francis is aghast. “Man-hauled? It’s insanity. You’d condemn those men to a death worse than starvation, far worse than scurvy.”

“Yes, you need not beat the drum with me, Crozier. It is a view to which many more might also be forced to concede, if you were to present your evidence of the difficulties of undertaking such a journey to the public.” 

“Why in Hell’s name would credence be given to my objections to it?”

“Because you did not die there,” Berkeley says plainly, “despite most expectations to the contrary amongst those who know their business about the Arctic. Because, unlike Sir John Franklin, you returned. And because, thanks in no small part to your friends’ performances at your court martial, there is the ring of the heroic to ‘Francis Crozier’, these days. Your words might carry weight, where it mattered.”

So, that’s it. Francis had been aware of the antipathy between Berkeley and Cockburn, but never dreamed - why should he? - that he might be expected to make himself the lever between the two. He longs to scoff at the notion of it. Damn the Jameses for the profits of their schemes. 

“There is nothing of the writer in me,” he says honestly. “I’ve as much skill with a pen as I might with a knitting needle.”

Berkeley lays his hand upon the sheaf of papers upon the desk; glancing at them, Francis sees that it is his own cursed report. 

“You do yourself a disservice. If I were in need of a peddler of morality tales, I might have engaged the services of Mister Dickens. Stuff of this sort will do nicely; there is a bald, fervent utility to it.”

Francis snorts. It is the first time anyone had accused Francis Crozier of anything more exalted than indifferent spelling and pedantry over the particulars of magnetometry. “You’d have been better setting Fitzjames at this.”

Berekely’s expression darkens, his mouth becoming a thin line of displeasure. “You had best discourage Fitzjames in writing altogether, Crozier.”

Francis stares at him. “In what cause?”

“In the cause of his not being drummed from the Service. The Admiralty does not take kindly to having its faults catalogued with such exactitude.”

“The Admiralty’s faults -?” Francis echoes, bewildered. 

He cannot imagine what it might be, that has deepened Berkeley’s scowl until he looks ready to strike Francis’ head from his shoulders with a sweep of his pen nib. Francis would need to seek James’ help in compiling any such manuscript, in any case; after all, it had been James who devised the series of prototypes for the cursed sledges, and put them through trials to determine their fitness for overland travel. It had been James who had steered Francis clear through the planning of it, with his rocketeer’s calculations and his pig-headed methodical experiments, while Francis had brooded over that goddamned map and tried to reason with the insidious voice telling him a march to Back’s Fish River, or on Bridgens’ route over Boothia, would see them all dead on the shale before the summer was out. 

“It is no concern of yours, Crozier. Better to focus on the task in hand: the Arctic Council must win the day on the issue of the sledges, or God help the next ship sent off there. You’ve been sniffing after a knighthood for years, man: this will see you get it.”

Francis bristles, recalling Sophia’s pitying look when he had told her the expedition would bring him home to her more worthy of her preferment. 

“I thank you, sir, but I’ve abandoned my ambition in that regard. The price of my doing this thing for you is Thomas Jopson’s lieutenancy.”

Berkeley’s expression folds itself into a look of scorn and, with a sinking feeling, Francis knows himself to have showed his hand too soon.

“Thomas Jopson may pass his lieutenant’s exam like any other rating, though with that leg of his I should not like to see him try,” Berkeley says calmly. He replaces the pince-nez upon the bridge of his nose and returns his attention to the papers in front of him. “I will have your manuscript before the quarter day, and you shall have your knighthood. Good afternoon to you, Captain Crozier.”

Thus dismissed, Francis dredges up a perfunctory salute. He quits the room before his outrage might find its expression in the upending of the desk and all the piles of papers amassed upon it and stalks off in the direction of Whitehall to hail a cab.

Chapter Text

Francis quits the Admiralty burning with such a force of temper that, in days of old, it would have taken half a pint of whisky to calm him. 

Goddamn and blast Rear Admiral Lord Berkeley. Goddamn and blast him to Hell. What on God’s Earth has James got himself embroiled in, now? There will be a reckoning to pay, if Francis has anything to do with it, for the man who stands to accuse James Fitzjames of - what? A failure of judgement? Disloyalty? One thing is clear: Francis will have to get to the bottom of it, for any prospect of a decent night’s sleep has vanished, now he knows James to have earned Berkeley’s personal enmity, for the Second Naval Lord is a regular Wellington and underestimated at great peril.

“Damnit, James,” he mutters, extending a hand to summon a cab from the throng on Whitehall.

He instructs the cab to take him back to Blackheath, and spends the journey seething over the gross presumption of men who have known nothing of the cold and the terror of the North instructing him in the conduct of his affairs now he has contrived to survive it. 

On returning to the house, he hands off his hat and coat to the Rosses’ timid maidservant, a girl named Betsey, whom Ann treats with great kindness, though she is forever dropping things and making a great racket with the coal scuttle on mornings when it is her duty to lay the upstairs fires.

 “Is Sir James at home?” Francis demands.

Betsey curtseys and stumbles with eyes downcast; no doubt he has scared her.

“In the library, sir.”

Feeling poorly for his treatment of the girl, Francis thanks her and sets off for the library at once. The house is quiet, meaning the children and their mother must be occupied, or perhaps taking a turn about the Heath; it is for the best. Francis expects his conversation with Ross will occasion an argument, and he does not like to distress Ann with the notion that he and her husband are at loggerheads.

Francis finds Ross at his desk beside the library window, its curtains drawn, bathed in the light of a single lamp and making notes from a volume open on the desk in front of him.

“Good afternoon, James,” he says, by way of greeting.

James looks up at him with an expectant smile.

“Francis! We didn’t expect you from the Society so soon.” His smile dissolves into an expression of consternation. “I say, what’s the matter, old man?”

Francis advances into the room and flings himself into a wingback chair beside a hideous bust of Alexander the Great, whose prominence in the library of a Rear-Admiral of the Navy he has never quite understood. 

“The Admiralty is the matter,” he spits. “Damn Berkeley and Cockburn and every last one of them.”

“Present company excepted, I hope,” Ross says lightly, setting down his pen. “What has happened, to provoke this bout of ire?”

“Berkeley thinks he has me over a barrel. Wants a pamphlet from me - on the sledges, of all fucking things! There’s to be another expedition. Did you know about this?”

Ross nods. “There’s been talk of it, Francis, of course there has. The passage -”

“To Hell with the passage!”

“The Crown is hardly likely to concur. Come on, man, you know the expeditions won’t stop until it’s charted, or some fool makes it clean through.”

Francis sags hopelessly in his chair, weary beyond measure. 

“More men will die, James.”

“What role would Berkeley have you play in it?”

“Some guff about preventing men from being expected to man-haul to Adelaide and back - as though any sane commander would agree to it! - but it’s all fucking politics with that man. I’ll not be his means of clambering his way over Cockburn, James. I’ll not do it!”

Francis sinks heavily into his seat and glowers at the flame dancing within the oil lamp over Ross’ shoulder.

“Steady, Francis,” Ross says, frowning. “No one would expect you to accept a command -”

“I’d sooner die than let any one of my men out there again under anyone else,” Francis declares, grimly.

Ross says nothing for a moment. His silence holds a delicate question, and his tone when next speaks is perturbed. “Francis -”

Francis raises a hand to deflect his concern. “It was in jest, James. Christ, I didn’t crawl out of that nightmare just to toss myself off Westminster Bridge out of petulance.”

“A comfort to all of us, I’m sure,” Ross replies, in a dry tone.

“Ah, boil your head,” Francis says without rancour. “I’ve greater concerns than Berkeley, in any case. He mentioned Fitzjames in tones that made me think the man’s seriously fallen out of favour.” 

Ross again says nothing, only pursing his lips in a frown of disapproval. Francis stares at him, aghast. 

“Well, if there’s substance to it, why in God’s name am I only hearing of it, now?”

Ross shrugs. “There’s a little substance. A few letters to a small number of publications -”

“On what subject?”

Ross sighs, looking at Francis as though bracing himself for a disagreement. “I had hoped to keep it from your notice for a small while longer, but I see there’s no use in it. Francis, in truth, Fitzjames has been making quite the fool of himself.”

“On what subject?”

“On any subject he likes,” Ross says, rolling his eyes heavenward. “On the inferiority of the Admiralty’s victualling; on the superiority of everything the Esqimaux has to offer, from his sleeping bags to his shoes to his fishing poles. There’s been a raft of letters arriving across Cockburn’s desk. And then there is this -” Ross picks up the copy of the London Illustrated News which has been sitting, open, beside him on the desk, and indicates that Francis should take it. “If he keeps this up, there will be a general assumption that he left his wits at the bottom of Hudson’s Bay.” 

Francis seizes the paper and sees immediately that Ross has had it open to a particular page. A letter occupies half a column and has, he surmises, on scanning its contents, been expunged of its more egregious rhetorical flourishes, for James would never be such a concise correspondent as this. But it is James’ work, alright, despite its brevity: Francis would have known his florid indignance in any context, but here, expounding on the superiority of the Esquimaux in all matters relating to the Arctic, it is baldly unmistakable, and renders James’ attempt at signing his letter by that old nom-de-plume of his an utterly laughable attempt at subterfuge. He can have had no real intention of concealing his identity, at all.

Francis stares at the page before him in disbelief.

“What in God’s name…?”

Above all, he cannot fathom when James can have had the time to make a survey of Aivilik practices with regards to survival on the ice, having been insensible with scurvy for the better part of their time amongst the Aivilik, and afterwards, when his lungs began to bubble and wheeze, plunging headlong into pneumonia too swiftly for him to have conversed with them much before he was loaded aboard the Marten. Francis thinks of him secreted away in Brighton, scribbling off letter after letter in that elegant chicken-scratch of his and raises a hand to rub distractedly at his forehead, where a headache is beginning to make itself known.

“It seems the experience of marshalling the tide of public opinion stoked a fire in him, after your court martial,” Ross says wryly. “He’d do better to march down to Whitehall and call the Board a pack of  imbeciles to our faces.” He adds, more seriously, catching Francis’ appalled gaze, “He’s one more letter from a court martial he’ll not escape so well as the last one.” 

“Why in the hell didn’t you tell me any of this?” Francis snaps, furious.

“You’ve barely left Blackheath in weeks, except under duress. Is it any wonder you should be ignorant of it?” Ross watches him carefully for a moment, his expression folded into one of deep regret. “When was the last time, Francis, that you made it through dinner without your thoughts wandering?”

Francis flounders unforgivably. The retort that might have sprung forth remains lodged behind his teeth, in the face of Ross’ look of pitying concern.

“It is getting worse,” Ross says gently. “There’s not a mealtime or a card game in which you don’t slip away to some inner realm in which we cannot reach you.” 

“Poppycock,” says Francis scornfully.

“It’s true. I have endeavoured to keep it from you for that reason,” Ross continues. “I’d not have you dwelling on the ice, anymore.”

“Dwelling -?” Francis is appalled and rises from his chair to stalk the floor before the fireplace. “Goddamnit, man. What of Fitzjames? He’ll ruin himself if he carries on! I’ll have to go to Brighton, make him see sense.”

Ross watches him pace, his expression one of helpless alarm, until at last he says, in a tone of weary defeat, “Peace, Francis - peace. We can do better than that.”

In the end, the missive Francis sends to Yorkshire after dinner is a mean and petty thing, and Tom will upbraid him for his churlishness in his reply. To Little, he adds a postscript that he will see all of Jopson’s accounts settled - he does not enquire as to the nature of these bills, for he imagines them to pay for doctors and medicines, and the thought of it makes his mood low. What was the good in bringing Jopson from the brink, he wonders, only to condemn him to this life of poverty as an invalid? 

The thought occurs that he might, by writing to Sophia, divine the truth about this book of Lady Jane’s. She cannot mean to write an account of the expedition’s failures without consulting him. Has she consulted James in his stead? She will have no claim to authority on the subject, if she intends to leave out the expedition’s commander. If the events of the last months have proved anything, however, it is that the public would pluck a hair for authenticity, nor for honesty, nor truth.

Might not he do as Berkely has suggested, and write his own account? The little celebrity he’s gained of late would be sufficient to attract a publisher. But Francis is not so foolish as to imagine himself to have anything of a way with words, and the thought of combing through his remembrances of that place, and setting them down on paper has him shuddering in horror; any tale of the expedition could only be a frightening and bitter thing, and England does not care to be frightened by her heroes.

His thoughts settle on Lefroy’s glib suggestion of a scientific paper. There is a gulf between men like Francis, made Fellows by dint of toil and exploration, and Lord Rosse and his ilk, whose fortunes support a lifetime of indolent intellectual enquiry. No gentleman scientist is Francis; the thought of spending the rest of his days growing fat on Royal Society dinners is enough to make him consider taking a dive off Westminster Bridge, after all. 

Folded upon his desk is the London Illustrated News, purloined from Ross’ desk without his permission and secreted here so that Francis might read James’ letter again at his leisure, as though poring over its printed type might reveal something of its author and become a window into James’s soul. 

He pushes the newspaper to one side and scribbles a further postscript to the letter to Little, writing, I have had quite enough of London and had been hoping I might impose upon your hospitality - please advise as to convenience. 

Orbiting Sophia, in the aftermath of her rejections, had been an exquisite form of torture; Francis had ached to become her satellite and always be within her grasp, but she had never allowed it, preferring him to come to her in private, while she span her way around a ballroom on the arm of one officer or another, bestowing her arch smile and her sharp wit upon them while Francis loomed on the periphery and smouldered with jealousy. How he had resented it, even as he understood that his earnestness made him inexcusable in company. 

If he had worried, dimly, that it would be similar, coming face to face with James after these past weeks of separation, he is relieved to find his fears unfounded. He watches from the dimly lit portion of the Rosses’ reception room as the Coninghams are announced, taking in the shape of James silhouetted against the candlelight, a long, elegant cursive pen stroke beside his shorter brother. James is smiling, murmuring something to his sister-in-law, and smoothing down his hair. The dull ache of James’ absence, which Francis has long ceased to find remarkable, subsides somewhere within him.

James is accompanied by both Coninghams, with whom Francis knows James Ross to have cultivated quite the friendship during the period of his and James’ absence. It is they who are responsible for Ross’ newfound interest in landscapes, and for the number of dour pastoral vistas in which stand lonely, tumble-down Grecian ruins, which came to adorn the walls of the house in Blackheath in Francis’ absence.  Ann has formed quite the attachment to Mrs Coningham, it seems, for they take one another by the arm immediately and leave the men behind to take their view of the reception room. Francis sips his cordial and watches them. The fourth member of their party, whom Francis does not know, is a slender, bearded fellow with a jutting lower lip, whose expression Francis deems to betray a certain arrogant disdain for the occasion. 

Despite Francis’ relief at seeing him, the sight of James is alarming, as Francis watches him shake Ross jovially by the hand and accept a glass of amontillado. It is shocking in the way Francis supposes the sight of each of them must have been shocking to the crowds of well-wishers and relatives gathered at Portsmouth to witness their limping return to England. Francis has been at fault for assuming that James’ recovery would have continued apace since last they saw one another, now that he finds himself among friends and relations, and that he should by now have been returned to health. 

It is obvious, watching him take uneven steps into the room to hand his coat to the waiting servant, that Francis’ confidence has been utterly misplaced. James’ frame remains so slight, his movements so stiff, that it is painful to look at him; his hair is undoubtedly greying, now, having grown back unevenly where it had fallen out in dull hanks during those sorry final days before the Aivilik came upon them.

There had been a sketch of James - a ready likeness of his daguerrotype before Erebus sailed from Greenhithe - in the newspaper in the aftermath of the ridiculous denouement to the court martial. Francis thinks of what the sketch could not show; the bullet-holes so recently closed over, the missing teeth, the skin so pale and translucent as to look like so much wrinkled tissue paper. Francis had passed miserable, terrifying weeks thinking of James’ many wounds as stigmata, in defiance of James’ insistence, one awful night in the igloo, on his not being Christ. Watching him hobble into the Rosses’ party, and recalling a mention James made, once, of the artworks his brother collected, of the picture of St Sebastian that Will had been so proud to bring home from Antwerp, it is all too easy to realise his mistake and instead picture James pierced by the shafts of a hundred arrows, his face turned towards heaven in a moribund ecstasy. Francis watches him smile and nod in response to something his companions have said, and cannot put his finger on what else it is about James - the uneven gait and the gaunt cast to his features aside - that unsettles him, so.

In a moment, James has noticed him, and that tight smile of his has bloomed into something he does not appear to be able to contain. He murmurs something to Coningham, does not bother to take his leave of the bearded stranger, and slips away to join Francis in his dim little corner beside the punch bowl. 

“Francis,” he says, in a tone of evident pleasure. 

Francis feels his own expression curling into one of helpless delight and reaches to shake him by the hand.

“James.”

“It is damned good to see you, old man,” James says in earnest. “I feel like the ancient Egyptians on the bursting of the Nile. You’ve seen Carlyle, over there?”

Francis glances at the bearded stranger, who is casting a sour eye over the gathering. Of course; Carlyle. That great bore on all manner of topics, and a great friend to the Coninghams; he curses himself that he should have forgot. James had been a great and vocal admirer of his, once.

“You are a veritable breath of fresh air,” James mutters darkly, scowling as Carlyle makes a comment to Will Coningham from the side of his mouth.

Francis regards him in amusement, relieved as he is to have James before him once again. “You have had my letters; you can’t be so desperate for my company.” 

“Oh, letters,” says James dismissively. “Letters are wretched things.” He shoots a vaguely wounded look in Francis’ direction and murmurs, “There have been few enough of them, besides.”

Francis realises, with a jolt, that James is smiling at him with a perfect row of teeth. Or not, he realises, quite perfect; the missing ones have been replaced with carved simulacra; not quite human, thank Christ, but cleverly carved from ivory, or bone. They do not fit quite as they should and lend the faintest lisping quality to James’ speech. He hauls his gaze upwards out of politeness and watches James notice and look away, as though embarrassed.

“I hear you’ve more than made up for my slovenliness in writing,” Francis says wryly. “The editing in the News did you an injustice, I think.”

James’ expression becomes at once penitent and defiant, as though he expects to be congratulated or scolded, and cannot decide which one to be the more likely. “You saw my letter.”

“I saw it, you bloody fool, and was pressed into service as messenger boy to the Second Lord of the Navy, to tell you to cease such endeavours immediately.”

“Francis -”

“What in God’s name did you hope to achieve?” Francis demands, taking James’ elbow in hand and turning him a little from the rest of the room.

James’ expression has faltered, and he gapes at Francis forlornly for a moment. “I had thought you might approve, Francis. I had intended -“

“Well, whatever you intended, you’ve succeeded in making an enemy of Berkeley, so that’s a tally of two for two Naval Lords wanting your head on a platter.”

“Francis,” James protests miserably. “I hadn’t the slightest notion -“

“Oh, very likely,” Francis snaps, wishing to God, for the first time in weeks, that he had succumbed to the numbing embrace of the whisky in the aftermath of his meeting with Berkeley, after all. “You had to know how they would be received.”

“Well, I didn’t imagine they would win me a knighthood,” James admits. “But, Francis, you must have heard the rumours of another expedition - Ross must have told you -”

The sting of Ross’s lack of candour still pricks Francis enough for him to snap, “I’m aware of the rumours. But, James, why, for the love of Christ, would you court the wrath of the Admiralty so assiduously?” 

James is frowning in earnest, now. “For the sake of Silence’s people,” he says, as though it ought to be obvious. “For the Aivilik. I owe those people my life, Francis. I’ll not have more men traipse into the Arctic and behave as Hickey did, as we all did in our arrogance.”

“A noble cause, to be sure,” says Francis. 

He throws back the remains of his ginger ale, intending to abandon his glass and draw James away to a private room, where they might have the matter out properly.

“Francis,” James begins hotly, but Francis is prevented from discovering in what manner he intends to defend himself by the clanging of the dinner gong.

“We’ll continue this later,” he says, placing his empty glass upon the table beside the punch. “Try not to pick a fight with anyone over the flavour of the soup in the meantime.”

The dinner table is long, and Francis is seated far away from the Rosses - who are occupied at either end in attending upon Lefroy and Countess Rosse - and from James, who is sat near the head of the table and directly opposite Thomas Carlyle, to both parties’ visible displeasure. It is possible for Francis to catch James’ eye as he escorts his companion to the table, and James shoots him a sharp, rebuking look before turning his attention firmly to the lady seated on his right. From Francis’ seat at the far end of the table, he looks wan and thin, and Francis feels a pang of guilt, at having harangued him so roundly.

He, thank Christ, has been seated between Acland, an affable Devonian with little conversational range, being limited to discussion of botany and horse racing, and Elizabeth Sabine, whose husband occupies the prestigious seat beside Lefroy, and appears to be pursuing him, still, on the subject of the Canadian observatory.

“Captain Crozier,” Mrs Sabine says, while Francis settles into his seat beside her, “it is a pleasure indeed to find myself in your company. It is too long since you attended the salon and spoke to us on your discoveries.”

“Indeed,” says Francis distractedly, but he is by no means disappointed to find himself beside her for the duration of dinner, and so makes an effort to dredge up a flattering topic of conversation. “Your Cosmos is soon to grace us with its publication, is it not?”

She smiles. “Certainly, now that Humboldt has said he approves; I am gratified to hope it will be published before the summer is out.”

The ring of cutlery against crystal stymies further conversation as, at the foot of the table, Ross rises to his feet with glass and fork in hand. 

“Friends,” he says, casting his gaze around the table. “We are grateful indeed for your attendance this evening to send on his way to Toronto one of the luminaries of the Society, and to bid farewell to a great friend to us all. Lefroy!”

The table raised its glasses in Lefroy’s direction, with a chorus of ‘Hear, hear!’s and ‘Lefroy!’s. Francis refrains from pounding the table as he would have at the table in the Great Cabin. It is all too easy to find himself picturing James leaning back upon his chair to regale the company with tales of the China war, his eyes sharp and narrow upon Francis’ whenever he sallied forth to puncture James’ inflated sense of self-regard. 

As dinner gets underway and rich food is piled onto plates before them, the murmur of conversation swells above the clink of cutlery against porcelain. Francis finds himself in the middle of Acland’s attempt to divine Elizabeth Sabine’s views on volcanism and Buch’s theory of mountains’ creation, and keeps up by interjecting every now and again with a word of avowal or agreement, depending on the speaker. 

The better part of his attention is soon arrested by conversation near the far end of the table, where James has been engaged in a volley of questions by Lefroy, and is required to raise his voice to be heard by those seated opposite. 

“ - hadn’t given any thought to a future beyond the Service,” he is saying. He gives a deprecating smile with that wry, ironical twist of his lips that Francis had come to so despise during that endless winter trapped at Beechey. “Alas, the frailty of the form betrays the will of the spirit.”

“A loss to the Service,” declares Ross, and glasses are raised solemnly on all sides.

“What do you intend, then, Fitzjames?” enquires Lefroy. “I hear we might expect a volume of collected correspondence from you, before long!”

There is a ripple of amusement around the table, and Francis watches that old, wary expression of affront slide across James’ face.

“I’ve a mind towards politics,” he announces, with that novel, tight smile of his.

Francis glances at the faces of James’ audience and makes himself a silent, fervent vow to strangle each and every one of them who smirks at him or is so bold as to laugh behind their hand. He is relieved to see his fears unrealised, as James’ neighbours nod and murmur politely, until his eyes alight on Carlyle, whose lip is curled back in an expression of utter, profound contempt. 

“There is a surfeit of impassioned young men in the Commons, these days,” Carlyle says, taking a sip of his wine, his eyes coldly upon James. “One would not like to see enthusiasm usurp wisdom, nor fame supplant deserved renown.”

James balks at his insolence. Francis sees it clearly in the same, distracted turn of the head that used to be occasioned by Francis’ barbs across the dinner table. He watches James swallow his offence as though it pains him to do it. 

“I shall endeavour to apply the little wisdom circumstances have occasioned to bestow upon me to every aspect of the task,” he replies, smiling in a manner that might be remarkably close to a snarl, were it not for the laboured amusement evident in his tone. 

Francis should have liked to wrap a fist around the knot of Carlyle’s cravat and slam the man’s impudent, sneering face into the surface of the dining table. Unfortunately, his attention is demanded by Acland, who calls upon him loudly to settle a dispute between himself and Mrs Sabine as to the name of the fellow whose latest work in Vienna has refuted Humboldt’s arguments regarding the formation of the Alps. Francis has no more idea about the matter than Acland does, and submits to Mrs Sabine’s expertise, she having corresponded with the man for a number of months the previous year in the course of the compilation of her manuscript. He keeps a troubled eye upon the distant end of the table, wishing James would not adopt that sorrowful expression of his, staring glumly into his wine glass after the conversation moves on to a discussion of Lefroy’s imminent journey from Bristol aboard the SS Great Britain.

By the time a great pudding has been cut open and heaped bowls dug into with relish - with the exception of Francis, who pushes his suet sponge and dried fruit about his plate and finds his stomach turning rebelliously at the notion of custard - he has lost sight of James altogether, as Acland has launched into a story about last week’s Aintree National and is demonstrating an incident during the steeplechase with the aid of the pepper pots and his own perilously filled glass of wine.

When it is time for the party to withdraw from the table and Ann Ross and Lefroy rise from their seats to lead them, Francis takes Elizabeth Sabine by the arm and escorts her from the room, though he would greatly have preferred to trail alone near the back of the procession, for the the insidious claws of a headache have begun to grasp at his temples and he would like to avoid further conversation altogether, if such a thing were possible.

“Ho, there, Crozier,” says Lefroy genially as Francis passes him in search of another glass of cordial. “Stop a moment and convince Sabine that I am right.”

Francis casts a glance at Sabine, and is relieved to find the man smiling for once, albeit looking somewhat puzzled to have found himself embroiled in this discussion with Lefroy to begin with.

“You will do no such thing, Crozier,” Sabine says firmly. “I have no notion what this young devil is attempting to persuade me to; I beg you, do not assist him.”

Laughing, Lefroy releases Francis’ arm and allows him to continue on his way. Damn the chandeliers and the thousand candles Ann seems to have arrayed on every surface of the room; his head is throbbing, and it is unlikely to let up, once it has started. 

“Cordial, if you please,’ he says to the serving boy, whose name he has never been able to remember. The boy nods and slips away, and Francis leans heavily against the mantelpiece, his eyes closed and his hand pressed to his brow. 

“As you might recall I have written,” says Carlyle sharply, somewhere over Francis’ left shoulder, “no man is a hero to his valet.”

Francis turns, squinting against the inferno of the candelabra, and sees that Carlyle appears to be holding court, in a group consisting of the Coninghams, the Aclands, and sundry other guests. Beside Will Coningham stands James, his face drawn, his eyes sharp upon Carlyle’s haughty face. 

“We shall never know, in Sir John’s case,” says James tartly, “since his steward did not survive to make the journey home from the North.”

“Peace, James,” says Will Coningham, his lips still curved in a smile that looks, to Francis, obscene. “Don’t take it amiss.”

“How am I to be expected to take it?” James snaps, jerking his arm from his brother’s grasp. 

Francis recalls Sir John’s extensive library aboard the Erebus. He hopes to God none of the men had bothered salvaging Carlyle’s dreary tome on heroes for their long trek to Terror Camp. He remembers with little fondness James’ affection for that damned book, and his propensity for holding forth on it, in those early months at Disko Bay. It had been Francis’ avowed opinion that any man claiming to be able to define and prescribe the meaning of heroism from the comfort of a Bloomsbury sitting room was deserving of nothing other than scorn.

He watches James raise a hand to smooth an errant lock of hair, and sees that his hand trembles as he does so. James notices it, too, and drops his hand to his side, his expression taking on a hunted, miserable look.

“Excuse me,” he mutters, and Francis watches him flee, leaning heavily upon his cane. 

“You cordial, sir,” murmurs the serving boy, at his elbow, and Francis takes the glass from him and sets off in pursuit. 

He follows James to the library, pushing open the door to find him slumped upon the window seat, a hand clasped tightly over his eyes. 

“James,” he says, alarmed. 

James looks up at him, startled, and, when he sees that it is Francis who has come to disturb him, sags against the window frame in apparent relief. 

“Francis. Please, convey my apologies to Sir James. I found I was in need of air.”

“No apologies needed, I came to see if you were alright.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

Francis raises an eyebrow at the petulance in James’ tone. “Well, if I’d had to endure that Scotch prick’s needling, I’d have been needing to excuse myself to save the bastard the inconvenience of a broken nose, never mind needing air.”

James smiles thinly despite himself. “You overheard Mr Carlyle’s volley, then.”

“I could scarcely help it; damned keen on the sound of his own voice.”

James’ smile widens and then flickers and dies. “I am sorry, to have abandoned the company so rudely.”

Francis shrugs. “Don’t worry on Ross’ account. I can’t believe he has the stomach for all that guff about heroes, either. He’ll be envious you’ve the means to escape.”

“Believe me, there is no escape at Kemptown,” James says wearily, sinking further into his seat, leaning against the window in the melodramatic manner of a heroine in a novel, much to Francis’ amusement. “Carlyle and Will are great friends, and I have sat through interminable lectures on faith and art and all manner of such lofty notions. Dickens is right about his being a frightful opponent of the Jews, you know, and the man’s quite unhinged on the subject of the Indies.”

“How are the mighty fallen,” Francis comments wryly. “I recall hearing nothing but praise for his Heroes over dinner, for most of the duration of our sojourn at Disko.”

James has the grace to look abashed. “As I recall, you opined then that the author had as little comprehension of the meaning of the word as anyone and, I assumed, by extension, you meant as little as me.”

Francis’s smile falls, his good humour overcome by guilt at James’ downcast eyes. “Ach, James -”

James waves a hand dismissively. “In either case, you were hardly wrong. I am growing weary of being suffered to play the audience.”

“So, that’s the root of it?” Francis ventures, coming closer. “The reason for your hiding in the library, I mean.”

James laughs, though his expression soon returns to its melancholy arrangement. 

“I’m sorry, Francis. I am not quite myself, of late. Christ, I wish Dundy were here.” 

He grimaces, and Francis wonders whether he can believe it a sufficient disguise for the grief that falls briefly and baldly across his face, before he tucks it away behind his scowl. 

“Are you well, James?” Francis asks, as gently as he is able. 

James looks up at him helplessly and gives a louche, expansive shrug. 

“Do you perceive something about me this evening that would have you suspect otherwise?”

Francis hesitates. He sets his glass upon the reading table and advances slowly, not wishing to impose himself upon James, if he truly has come to the library in search of solitude.

“You have been hiding yourself away, all evening, though you are doing a pretty job of play-acting your old self to those who do not know you. I have hardly heard you tell one of those blasted stories of yours. That self-satisfied smile used to dance, on occasions such as these.”

James’ hand darts briefly to cover his mouth before falling away, and his eyes upon the carpet.

“Did you think it would somehow contrive to escape my notice?” Francis asks softly.

James appears to mull the question over, and then says, with an even greater air of petulance, “I hadn’t thought you’d be paying sufficient attention to mind it.”

Francis is unused to this thrust and parry of conversation between them, anymore. James’ smile is tight and vicious, as though he would like to run Francis through. Francis remembers that smile well from the days at Disko Bay; he cannot say he has missed it.

“James,” he says, in a tone indicating he intends to lay down his arms. “It wasn’t meant unkindly. It isn’t a matter of minding. Do we not understand one another well enough, that it should be clear to me when you’re unhappy?” 

James blinks at him slowly, as though something about Francis’ words is nonsensical. He sighs and relents, the hand returning to cover his eyes once more. 

“Forgive me - Francis. Of course. Forgive me, I am overtired -”

Francis takes the opportunity to draw up a chair, pulling it close enough that he is able to see that James is trembling, again.

“Tell me,” he says, and then adds, lest it sound as though he were ordering James to comply, “Tell me, if you wish.”

James sighs, and lowers his hand to regard Francis’ face for a long moment, as though pondering a weighty decision. He must reach whatever resolution is necessary, for he throws back the remaining dregs of his ratafia and begins to turn the empty glass between his hands as he talks. 

“How do you stand it, Francis?” he asks, quietly.

“Stand -?”

James fixes him with a look of agony, reminiscent of a look they had last shared on a clear morning beside a distant cairn. 

“Any of it. The dinners and the engagements, the complacency and bovine stupidity with which these ladies and gentlemen conduct their affairs. I went to the Foundling Hospital, to a performance of the Messiah - one of Elizabeth’s charitable endeavours - just after Christmas, you know, and I thought to myself: what separates me from them, except that I had the good fortune to have been sired by a drunken oaf who happened to be the cousin of an admiral?” James gives a wan, bitter smile. “We are orphaned bastards, all of us, except I happened to be wearing a frock coat, and they were dressed in rags.” 

“James -"

“Francis,” James continues desperately. “This is a nation of coalfields and factories and miseries beyond measure… There is, in this world, a great and rising tide of suffering, and men like you and I are its cause. There are people, now, at this moment, men and children and women, chiselling coal from seams deep underground, the coal we shovelled into those damned engines, to fuel our hubris. To plunge our way further through the ice, until at last Nature rebuked us for it. I want no further part of it, Francis - I cannot bear to be a part of it, any longer -”

Francis is lost for words. He flounders, appalled at the depths of James’ anguish. “Is this the general shape of your thoughts, of late?” 

James nods miserably. “All too often. I am sorry, Francis. I am so very, very tired.” 

Francis draws his chair closer still, and James looks at him pitiably, his mouth a downturned moue of sorrow.

“I must confess, Francis, before it eats away at me,” James continues, then, in the tone of one marching towards his own grave, “I have an invitation to visit Lady Franklin, on the morrow, while we are in town.”

Francis thinks of his own recent visit to Lady Jane’s rooms in St James’ and can well understand James’ reluctance to enter those overstuffed, stifling rooms in which every last cushion and morsel of food is saturated in grief. 

“It is hardly a crime, James -“

“It will not be the first time I have called there,” James continues, gazing at Francis as though imploring him to understand. “At first I thought it was to assist her in the writing of that thrice-damned book of hers, but I fear - blast it, Francis, I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’ve begun to suspect her of ulterior motives in summoning me to St. James’ with such regularity.”

The ice which rings Francis’ heart these days, and has barely let up since he set foot on the dockside at Portsmouth, presses closer and he feels his boards creak under the pressure. “You can’t be serious.”

James nods grimly. “It is not just society at large that has been taken in with the notion of my heroics. Apparently, despite my lack of family, connections or any money to speak of, I am become, through our failure, a desirable match. I assure you,” he says, before Francis can interject, “that I am as bewildered by it as you are, and I have no intention of pursuing it.”

“And Sophia - ?”

“Miss Cracroft has been perfectly charming, and asked all manner of polite questions about the expedition, and about you, Francis. She has no intention of fulfilling this fool wish of her aunt’s either, I am certain.”

“Christ,” says Francis, reaching for his glass and disappointed to find it absent of whisky. 

It it appears sensible, of course, on the face of it, that James - handsome, dashing James; Sir John’s erstwhile protegé - whose promotion to Captain has been gilded with fame and public renown, should make an advantageous match. They’d make a handsome couple, even despite James’ lingering afflictions. Francis is not sure he has it in him to stand best man and watch his hopes at happiness be taken from him a second time; for it to be James stolen by Sophia, surely that is cruelty he hasn’t earned, despite his many failings in the intervening years.

“Francis, please,” James says, sounding pained. “Please, don’t you begin to entertain it, too. I have made my intentions - my lack of intentions - perfectly clear to Lady Jane. I fear I have proved a disappointment, in any case, since our return. You must not think that she prefers me. She talks a great deal of Sir John, and I am afraid I am not the facsimile she had hoped for on that front.”

“I’d not deny you happiness, either of you,” Francis murmurs, disturbed by James’ distress. He pats him upon the hand, which James has curled in the fabric of his trouser leg, its fingers twisting the wool anxiously this way and that. 

“Well, I shall certainly not find it there,” James says abruptly. “You may have no fear of that. I could not find happiness there, Francis, I pray you must believe me.“

“Hush, of course I do. James, you’ve had too much to drink -”

“I have not,” James retorts. “Damn your eyes, Francis, if you humour me now, I shall be wretched, indeed.”

“There’s no need for wretchedness,” Francis assures him. He sighs, rubbing at his throbbing temples. “It’s not drink, that afflicts you, in any case, but a species of melancholy. It’s common, among those of us who’ve been long at sea. James and I felt similarly, when we returned from Antarctica - my miseries exacerbated, of course, by matters with Sophia, and his alleviated by his happiness with Ann.”

“You did not lose men, in Antarctica.”

“No, we did not. The worst then was becoming, once more, a creature of the land, rather than the sea; thawing out sufficiently to make an attempt at a life ashore. I did not make the best attempt of it.”

James nods in understanding, gazing at Francis beseechingly. “I am struggling, Francis. My memory - and likewise, oftentimes, my mood - is inconsistent. It is difficult, sometimes, to maintain a conversation, or follow the thread of an argument to its conclusion. I cannot sleep -”

“Peace,” Francis says gently, “I understand. I have lapses.”

“Lapses?” James says, frowning.

Francis waves a hand, dismissing his concern. “Of attention, when I drift off into memories for a time; it is nothing. But, James, you must not think you are alone.”

James nods again, blinking as though against tears. Francis reaches for his hand and grasps it firmly.

“This is the only time in weeks I have not felt alone,” James says. “I have wished some person - Will, a Brighton acquaintance - might touch this loneliness, but there is no one else who knows what it is to endure what we have endured. I have missed the William. I have missed our miserable last dinners aboard Terror, hunched over the maps with you at my side. All I have wished to do, Francis, all evening, is retreat here away from the clatter of knives upon plates and the interminable chatter of conversation, and pass a peaceful hour in your company.”

Francis’ heart is in his throat. If he were to strain his hearing, he might catch the distant croaking of the frogs in the garden of the governor’s mansion in Hobart. 

“I will make our excuses,” he says, his voice rough, James’ fingers curled tightly against his palm. He is remembering with exactitude the feeling of brushing the dirt from the knees of his dress uniform’s blue trousers. “We will take a cab to that club of yours in Bloomsbury -“

Francis’ words are swallowed by the rapping of knuckles on the library door. Francis lurches in his seat and turns to stare at the intruder; except it is not an intruder at all, but James Ross, peering into the gloom of the library and running his gaze over the pair of them with a grim, stony-faced lack of surprise.

James’ cheeks colour quite magnificently and he removes his hand neatly from Francis’ grasp with a swiftness that leaves Francis feeling as though he has been burned. 

“My apologies, Sir James,” James says, gathering himself from his sprawl in the library window and getting to his feet. He clears his throat and casts a fleeting glance in Francis’ direction. “I was in need of air.”

“Are you quite well, Captain Fitzjames?” Ross enquires, his eyes fixed firmly on James’ flushed face. 

“Quite,” James agrees, already beating a retreat towards the open door. “I believe I shall rejoin the proceedings. By your leave, gentlemen.”

Chapter Text

In Memo Moira’s church, as a boy, Francis had been transfixed by the crucifix, unable to tear his fearful gaze from the ecstatic suffering carved into the lines of the dying Christ’s anguished face. He had thought, there is a state to which I can aspire - to suffer, and have it attain some meaning.

He had been ashamed to find that his prick rose, in contemplation of the crucifixion. It had not, in truth, been so remarkable; at twelve his prick had begun to rise unreliably at the slightest provocation. He felt sure, however, that to have it happen while on his knees before the altar, a strange, painful euphoria swooping in his gut while he contemplated Christ’s upturned, exultant visage, was a certain sign that he was destined for Hell. His plan to become a priest, from which Memo Moira thankfully dissuaded him, had been inspired by his desire to reach inside himself and grapple with that aberrant feeling, to understand its source and subdue it, so that it might trouble him no more.

He had not been troubled by it, very often, in the forty years since. The sea had quieted something in him. In the company of the fragrant Sophia Cracroft, contemplation of his aberration had not entered his besotted head. And then the ice had taken hold of him, as had the whisky, and he had ordered the flogging of that sly fucking beast, Hickey, and he had felt it, coiled, waiting.

James Ross, Francis has always thought, is a great, handsome spaniel of a man: bright-eyed and good-natured, and constant in his friendship to a fault. As Ross moves silently to close the library door behind him, he fixes Francis with an expression of such severity that Francis wonders whether all this time he has been mistook.

“I was concerned that Carlyle might have caused Fitzjames some offence,” Ross says, advancing into the circle of light cast by the oil lamps. “I see that you already had taken steps to remedy it.”

“I had need of air, too,” Francis replies, wincing at such a paltry excuse. “My head’s ready to split in two.”

Ross says nothing for long, pregnant moments, and Francis begins to believe he might have been better to confess his sins and fling himself at once out of the library window, than endure such passive, reproachful regard.

“You had ought to be careful, Francis,” Ross says, quietly, in the end.

Francis considers his response. Damn Ross for seeing through him, as usual; damn him that he should sit in judgement in this matter. Better that he come out and call Francis a lecherous old drunk, than stand in his own library and regard Francis with a look of such despair. 

“I could hardly abandon him,” Francis retorts. Then, because he cannot help himself, he adds, “What I lack in the number of my friends, I make up for with the constancy of my affection. You should know that.” 

The old, familiar reeling and unravelling between them spins on for long, heavy moments, before Ross inclines his head, a put-upon smile on his thin lips. He always did hate to be reminded of Francis’ erstwhile affections.

“I’d hardly reproach you for it,” he murmurs.

“Is this a species of resentment, then, that you find my attention engaged elsewhere? That I might choose to hurl myself at alternative means of assuring the continuation of my misery?” 

It is a low accusation and Ross’ mouth thins further. 

“You’re a damnable romantic,” he says, low and disappointed, “and you’ve never had the first bit of good sense about it.” 

Smarting, Francis considers leaving the library on James’ tail and drowning himself in the punch bowl. 

“Why not just call me a fool, and have done with it?”

 “You’re not a fool, Frank. And for all your play-acting the curmudgeon, it’s not a deficit of finer feeling that makes you so determined to fix yourself on ill-considered targets; sometimes I think it’s that you feel things more deeply than anyone.” 

This last is said with an air of admission, as though it had stolen from Ross’ mouth at the last moment, quite without his meaning it to. He frowns deeply.

Nine years ago, Francis had paid that damned artist to sketch the pair of them in the garden in Hobart, with Sir John between them, pleased as punch and full of pride to have the two captains at his table, in the days before their departure for the South. How curious to think that this James had wanted the other James for Erebus, in ’39, and only been thwarted by the designs of that damned fool Reynolds, who stole Fitzjames away to Syria.

Had he first met James Fitzjames then, and had they become acquainted over dinner in Erebus’ great cabin, when Francis was not entirely washed out with drink and wretched with thoughts of Sophia, what might have been, then? Had he had space within him for a third, jealously guarded, privately stoked flame of passion for a beauty too lofty for the likes of him, what would have been the result? Ross is not incorrect; Francis is a romantic, indeed, and the sight of James Fitzjames in that greatcoat of his might have been enough to turn an old fool’s head.

The fact is that young Lieutenant Fitzjames might have caught Francis’ eye the way this first James had - with him it had always been the warm humour and the slight air of conceit; with Sophia, the way Sophia had teased him and driven him half-mad with wretched devotion - but the James Fitzjames who strode from the library moments ago and left Francis’ fingers grasping the empty air after him? It is more than his eye, more than his treacherous, foolhardy prick, that Francis is caught by. Perhaps Ross is right to be concerned. 

Francis glances at Ross’ long-esteemed face and sees that he is frowning, his eyes sad about the corners. 

“Well?” he demands, discomfited. 

“It’s not merely your heart that concerns me,” Ross says, at last. “Not yours alone, leastways. And not merely hearts, but reputations, too.” 

“You can leave off the worrying,” Francis says, shortly. “I’ve no intention of pursuing it. For Christ’s sake, James, what sort of bloody halfwit do you take me for?” 

Ross’ expression shifts knowingly. He sighs. “I wish to God, Francis - I wish to God I had not let you persuade me to get you on to Terror a second time.”

He clasps Francis’ shoulder firmly for a moment, as though in commiseration, and then slips away, leaving Francis alone beneath the halo of dim, yellow light.

Francis spends the rest of the evening in agonies, one way and another. James has contrived to insinuate himself into conversation with Lefroy, meaning he is surrounded by well-wishers, and Francis is forced to brood beside the mantelpiece, clutching his cordial and regretting his sobriety. What’s more, his head is caught in a vice, his temples hot with pain, as though knitting needles were being driven into his skull with croquet mallets. He explains this, miserably, to Ann, when she approaches to see whether he might be unwell, or simply suffering from one of his usual fits of ill temper in the face of a party. 

“If you wish to retire,” she says, “I will put it about that you have been called away on business; you will emerge from the night looking terribly mysterious and important.”

He shakes his head. James, he knows, would once have accused him of morbing, but he refuses to be driven from the party by his own immoderation of feelings. 

Finally, it appears that Carlyle has had his fill of conversation with Lord and Lady Rosse, and is making as though to leave, the Coninghams following behind him with James trailing solemnly in their wake. Francis marks his opportunity as James halts inside the reception room to don his coat and gloves, having disengaged himself from Lefroy with a round of hearty handshakes and promises to write, and slips from his position beside the mantelpiece to accost him.

He insinuates himself at James’ side, making himself a solid barrier that might not be neatly sidestepped or circumnavigated, and grasps James’ elbow in his hand.

“Write to me, James,” he murmurs, “for God’s sake.”

James stares at him for a moment, his eyes wide and considering, and then a carriage arrives to whisk the Coninghams and guests away to Brighton, and Francis is forced to watch James depart, for the third time that evening.

Francis dreams that night of the second day of his court martial. He is filled with dismay at the sight of James striding into the hearing to take the stand, a walking cane bearing most of his weight, his gaunt frame betraying a continuing frailty that made Francis wish to deposit him in a cab and send him home to Brighton immediately. 

They had met, the previous night, at the Coninghams’ rooms in London, and agreed somewhat fractiously on the necessity of discretion, after James had argued that the full horror of Hickey’s plans ought to be revealed, and Francis had said, “Those poor men had families, James, and I’d not have any mother think that of her son for the sake of painting my decisions in a better light.” 

James had sighed deeply, his frown etched so deeply it might as well have been carved from stone. “Very well, I shall do my best to conceal it.”

“You’d better,” Francis had replied, “and I had too, for Harry Goodsir’s sake.”

James had been instructed by Cockburn not to incriminate himself ahead of his own court martial, and then went about, that day, disobeying the order by every means at his disposal. He spoke in penitent tones of Carnivale and named himself as its progenitor; he joined his name with Francis’ repeatedly, in recounting the events that followed: we decided, we set out, we gave orders. Francis might have strangled him with his own cravat, had he been within reach, to stop the flow of honest, damning confessions unraveling from him like so much rope.

On the third day, when James appeared before the court looking weary and drawn, and had needed to be provided with a chair so that he might sit while he recounted his evidence, he had begun his account of the making of the decision to change course for Repulse Bay.

“You say you had complete faith in Captain Crozier’s judgement,” the lawyer had said in a tone of some scepticism.

“Complete faith,” James confirmed. “I did not doubt the wisdom of his decision to change our route for a second.”

This, Francis knew, was a lie. He still could not understand why James had agreed to the change of course so readily. At the command meeting, one word of opposition from him would have lost Francis the men, and when James declared himself for Repulse Bay the tent had released a great sigh of tension while those who had been waiting for James’ word suddenly joined in chorus in approbation of the plan. Francis was not fool enough to be ignorant of the ease with which it might have gone the other way.

“I am compelled to speak of another of Captain Crozier’s decisions as commander, one with which I wholeheartedly was and am in accord, and signed my name to that effect. Lieutenant Thomas Jopson, in his service to Captain Crozier and myself, and in his steadfast execution of his duties - ”

“Strike reference to Jopson’s rank from the record,” snapped Cockburn, glowering at James from his seat at the bench.

Francis wondered how the members of the Board did not flinch from James’ tone when he continued, “Lieutenant Jopson, when the camp was under attack, conducted himself with valour and with a clear-headedness that saved the lives of a score or more men -”

“Strike it, I say!”

“Captain Fitzjames, Mr Jopson’s irregular promotion is not the matter of our examination to-day,” said the lawyer.

“Well, it ought to be,” James replied, rising to his feet with the help of his cane. “Goddamn this hall and everyone in it, if the Admiralty exists simply to vilify brave men and deprive competent officers of their well-earned honours.”

“Captain Fitzjames,” said Cockburn coldly, “you will moderate your language, or you will be found in contempt.”

“Your pardon, Lord Admiral, but I was under the impression that I had been brought to the stand to relate the truth of my experience of the expedition; I find, to my dismay, that this court is not interested in the truth, at all.”

“Captain Fitzjames! If you have nothing more of sense to say, then I will release you from the stand.”

Francis had watched James hobble from the room, his mouth a thin, furious slash across his furrowed face, and wished to weep for him, that he had tried to do right by Jopson, even then.

He rises late the following morning with a sore head, despite Ann’s judicious hand with the laudanum in a cup of hot ginger water he took before bed. In the morning room, James and Ann have nearly finished their breakfast; he takes his seat without meeting Ross’ gaze, for he does not wish for an argument, and Ross looks ready to start one, even at the breakfast table.

“I have been telling James of the Coninghams’ latest contributions to the Academy,” Ann says, as Francis slumps into his seat and casts about for the coffee pot. “They’re to be shown in exhibition, Friday next. Would you accompany us, Francis, do you think?”

On the table beside Francis’ plate, there is a letter. It is addressed in James Fitzjames’ elegant scrawl, but looks written in haste, trailing messily across the envelope, in a manner that puts Francis in mind of the note left at Victory Point. Ross’ expression is sour enough to suggest he might lean across the table to snatch the letter and cast it into the fire, so Francis puts his hand upon it and slides it from the table and into the pocket of his waistcoat.

“Francis?”

Ann is looking at him expectantly, apparently ignorant of the letter’s import. Francis thanks Christ there are some things, between man and wife, that Ross has seen fit to keep secret.

“An exhibition?”

“At the Academy, on Friday next,” Ann repeats. She places a hand upon his sleeve. “Does your head still trouble you? I’ll send for Dr. Ogilvie, if you require him.”

Francis grimaces. The dour ministrations of Dr Ogilvie, who regards Francis as a medical inconvenience for having survived the Arctic in the first place, would be the very last thing to put him in better spirits. 

“Forgive me,” he says. “No need to trouble the doctor.”

“Then, you’ll come to the Academy?”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Francis replies, which is a bald-faced lie, but Ann merely smiles at him, as she always does when she has cajoled him into attending a social function outside the confines of the house. 

 Ross shoots him an admonishing look, his eyes darting to Francis’ breast pocket, while Ann talks happily of Elizabeth Coningham’s recent visit to the National Gallery and the disappointment with which she had viewed the collection.

“It is all old, and Italian, and there is sadly little from the Dutch masters, whatsoever,” she says, while buttering a piece of toasted bread.

Francis, who knows as little about art as he does about horse racing, nods and issues what he imagines to be the appropriate noises, and steadfastly refuses to meet Ross’ eye, until his coffee is drained and he has picked his way through half of a plate of kedgeree. 

It is only once he has made his escape, and the door to his chamber is safely closed behind him so that he might be sure of privacy, that he feels for the fold of paper and untucks it from its hiding place. He holds it in his hands for a moment, sick with the memory of that blurted proposition, with James’ hand in his own upon James’ knee. Dear God, what if James has written to renounce his friendship?

There is nothing to be gained in attempting to divine the letter’s contents by staring at his own address written in James’ hurried scrawl. He rips it open with a sense of dread.

Francis, it reads.

I have not attended church these past three months. You might wonder why I write to tell you this, but I beg you to indulge me, while I set matters out as best I can, for they are as disordered in my own mind as they are upon the page. 

In truth, I have suffered a crisis of faith since we last corresponded. Not that such things have figured greatly in my life up to this point, but I have found myself unsettled by it, nonetheless. How can man venture where we have been, to the very limits of endurance, and cleve, as Sir John would have had us cleve, to the notion of a benevolent, omnipotent Creator? It has been said of our expedition, by mightier pens than mine, Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit, but I own I saw none of God in it; none at all, in our striving for survival. 

Lately, therefore, I have pondered the limitations of the dull Wesleyan sentiments with which I was raised, and having rejected the pompous ministrations of Sir John’s High Church, I briefly turned to Papism, wondering whether the faith of my natural mother might better suit my temperament. I confess - you will forgive my baldness, here - it touched me not at all, and even disgusted me in its insistence on the consumption of the body of the Host. I am not like to follow in Oxonian footsteps and make myself a convert. I even read Carlyle on the Prophet Mahomet, if you can believe it! In search of solace, I submitted myself to one hundred dreary pages, in which I saw nothing of the vibrant faith of the Mohammedans with whom I became acquainted during my travels in Mesopotamia. Perhaps in my breast there is no room for faith, any longer. I am a Godless man in a Godless world, and there is little I can do to alter it. 

I cannot put out of mind Blanky’s words to me, when I asked him of John Ross. You know the conversation; I related it to you, in my delirium - in the igloo, I think. I find it difficult to be sure; my memories of those dark days are not at all sound. I recall with clarity, however, the curious expression in Blanky’s eye when he related his experience of the darkness that comes to a mind in a time of hopelessness, when the end appears nigh. His was the look of a man who had seen more than I could e’er imagine. He spoke of notions, such as might come to a man at the end of his long journey, facing certain death. Suppose, Francis, you were a notion of mine. Suppose I dreamt you up to comfort me in my last days.

It is in this regard that I write to you now to beg you, Francis, to explain to me how it was that you were able to affect our rescue, how you knew to change our course. For if you do not, I fear I am in danger of inventing my own reasoning, and of concluding that it was because you possess some manner of supernatural power it is beyond my ability to comprehend. For you knew me, Francis, as one knows one’s own soul; and yet, I find now that I know nothing of you. All that I knew is fled, and we are left here in this godforsaken city as strangers to one another. Like the men when they fashioned fetishes and charms for Lady Silence, there is a similar awe growing in my mind regarding you.

You will have to forgive me the ill-expression of these sentiments. I cannot imagine what other life there might have been for me, had Sir John Barrow not seen fit to set me high in the firmament of the Navy; I cannot fathom what other life there might be for me, now that I am fallen and cracked and smeared around the edges. I do not sleep, but when I do sleep, I dream of that terrible night of Carnivale. Memories evade me, and occasionally words slip beyond my grasp and I fumble for their meaning in the middle of conversation. My friends know not what to make of me. All this is to say, I am lost, Francis. I am adrift, and liable to run aground - it is my greatest wish that you should be the one to steady me. 

Sincerely and entirely yours,

Jas. Fitzjames.

The Royal Academy - one week later

James’ letter is folded within the inner pocket of Francis’ frock coat; he dare not leave it amongst his belongings, for fear one of the servants - or, God forbid, Ross in a particularly meddlesome mood - might happen upon it. He wishes to shield James from the embarrassment of having his sentiments pawed over and condemned and, shamefully, he is jealous of James’ sincerity, wanting the words only for himself, to hoard and cherish and abhor at his leisure.

Francis once, as a midshipman, saw iron forged into ships’ anchor chains, watching in horror while men with blister-red faces hammered link after enormous link onto the chain hanging above them, while the sawdust beneath their feet caught and singed in the heat. The letter is one of those links, a dead-weight inside his jacket, burning through waistcoat and shirt and underthings to brand itself onto his skin. He feels like one of the forge-men, bruised and tender and at constant risk of setting himself alight. 

He has the Royal Academy’s exhibition catalogue clamped in one hand and the handle of his cane in the other. He detests the thing, and often refuses to use it, despite the ice having taken a toll on his knees that it will never repay, but is using it today because he has found it expedient to be able to lean heavily upon it at times of great boredom at these events and feign the need to retire to the house in a Hansom cab.

The catalogue bears a quotation from Pope upon its cover: Art is like a prudent Steward that lives on managing the riches of Nature. Francis casts an eye over it while waiting for the Rosses to conclude their conversation and snorts in an ungentlemanly manner. He’d like to see any one of these so-called artists reckon with the majesty and cruelty of the manifestation of Nature that has made itself his mistress these last thirty years.

The exhibition is a perfectly unremarkable example of its type; that is to say, it has required Francis to stand about scowling into his glass of orgeat, rebuffing those who might prove foolish enough to enquire after his opinions on a particular work or other. It is precisely why Francis has always made it his business to avoid these damned engagements of the season like the plague. The only times it has been enjoyable - catching Sophia’s arch, amused glance across a particularly hideous portrait, or muttering cruel commentary on the insipid landscapes of some unfortunate prodigy - have been for reasons entirely unconnected to the merit of the works on display.

Francis casts a glance over his shoulder and sees that the Rosses are still engaged in conversation, Ann’s polite, interested frown indicating that she will be occupied for some time to come.

The painting before which he has found himself is a Medievalist’s nightmare of some poem of Keats’, in colours which, to Francis’ heathen eye, are brash and coarse and displeasing. The figures are huddled and confused, and there is an obscenity disguised as a shadow in the foreground, a juvenile prank which Francis finds distasteful. 

He shuffles closer to the next painting in the row, a smaller piece with a much simpler composition and judders to a halt. Good Christ, if the last painting had been vulgar, then this is enough to make the angels weep.

He leafs furiously through the catalogue, searching for an attribution, and finds that he has stumbled, by cruel coincidence, upon one of the Coninghams’ donations: an Italian Baroque masterpiece in muted tones of turbulent blue, at the centre of which stands Saint Sebastian, his hands tied above his head, his loincloth slipping perilously low on his boyish hips. This must have been the picture James spoke of, all those months ago aboard the William. Francis casts a surreptitious eye about the room, as though he were engaged in an illicit endeavour, aware of the idiot racing of his pulse at the mere suggestion of this connexion to James.

He looks up again into the face of the painted Sebastian. Long hair disarrayed around that rapturous face, sheet wound low around his punctured body, ribs protruding. He fancies there is the bloom of a bruise upon the saint’s sallow cheek and knows, with certainty, in that moment, that he is the one to have put it there. 

By Jopson’s report, the bruise that bloomed on James’ jaw had faded slowly, but by the time Francis had surfaced from his alcoholic torpor, it had turned stale and yellow, no more than a shadow under James’ alabaster skin. He had lived in horror of its return, those miserable last weeks on the ice, wondering whether the sight of his fist’s mark upon James’ face reemerging as the scurvy strove to drag him away would be the thing to drive Francis to genuine distraction, the final miserable straw that broke the camel’s back and sent him plunging headlong into insanity.

He shudders deeply. It is base, this need of his for James. It is base like the slide of Sophia’s cunt upon his thigh in the cradle of the tree roots in the platypus pond; he is a man, after all, and James is beautiful, and Francis has always wanted - just as badly as he has lusted after dainty fingers and round arses and small, pert breasts - a firm, broad chest cradled against his own, and a strong thigh thrust hard between his legs. He is too old, now, to pretend otherwise. 

It worries him that this need of his might tarnish James by virtue of his acknowledging it, for it had not been like this on the ice. On the ice, in that confounded tent - in the igloo, with James’ breathing becoming laboured and the sheen of fever beading on his brow - they had neither of them had the heat to spare to enable passion to ignite. Francis had longed for him, certainly, with a need that had felt both wretched and absurd, even when James was lying beside him upon a pallet of seal skins and white bear furs. But he had not needed to be so close to James as to peel off his smooth skin and climb inside; he had not been able to name his desires, then. 

Instead, Francis had clung to James’ achingly thin hand and muttered as fervent a prayer as any he had ever had cause to make. He had clutched James’ hand and pressed his face against it, first his forehead and then his lips. 

“Don’t leave me,” he had begged, choking around tears that froze later in his beard. “Christ and Mary and all the fucking saints, don’t leave me now, James.” 

When he was a boy, on his knees on the tiled floor of Memo Moira’s papist church, he had learned to screw up his eyes against the terror of imagining the Hellfire that awaited him. He had done so then, curled over James’ sleeping form, shutting out the sweltering stink of the igloo, muttering his prayer into clammy, burning skin. 

“Ah, Francis!” Ann appears beside him, startling him from his contemplation of the saint’s rapturous, sensuous face. “I see you’ve found the Reni. One of Will and Elizabeth’s collection. Magnificent, is it not?”

Francis makes a noise of indistinct agreement.

“Where are the Coninghams?” he croaks, his throat dry.

“Expected,” Ann replies. “Though without Fitzjames, I’m told, for he has a prior engagement. A shame, for he was such a compliment to our dinner and I should have liked to have seen him again.”

Francis cannot bring himself to reply. 

Curse his luck. It has been a week with the damned letter burning a hole in his coat pocket. Finally, Francis has screwed his courage to the post, and has been anticipating seeing James here. He has been rehearsing a response to James’ letter that might make James look at him as though he were not a utterly a madman. 

“My apologies,” he finds himself murmuring, while Ann’s gaze hovers anxiously on his overheated face, “I cannot stay. The crowd -” he waves a hand at the assembled throng, attempting not to notice the way Ann’s expression slides towards comprehension and pity.

“Of course. Shall James and I accompany you home?”

“No, stay,” he says, indicating the pictures she has yet to enjoy. “I insist. I will see you both at home.”

Little writes the following week. He confines himself mostly to the subject of Jopson, which Francis cannot help but find amusing. He had not thought Little to be a certain type of man - but then he has never considered himself a certain type of man, either, because he has never needed to slake his thirsts anywhere other than the cathouses of the ports and, occasionally, when permitted to worship at the altar of Sophia Cracroft. If three years in the ice have brought certain proclivities of his to the fore, then who is he to say what it might have done for Little. 

In any case, Francis suspects it was not the ice that did it, but returning from the ice, and the peculiar loneliness of enduring it. If this proprietary concern for Jopson stems from a deeper well than that of comradely fellowship in arms, Francis is certainly wise to the hypocrisy of his being amazed at it. 

Meanwhile, Tom Blanky writes letters in which he speaks of his missing leg as though it were a long-lost friend; he says he feels it, still, sometimes, itches it in the middle of the night before he wakes to realise it’s gone. Francis wonders how he should describe his own missing pieces in return, for Tom would be the only one he might express it to: Tom, I am in love. He cringes to think of it, having already made himself a fool on that account twice over. 

The truth is, he cannot provide James with the reassurances he had spoken of in his letter. 

Francis’ visions, on the endless night before the course was altered and the sledges were turned in the direction of Repulse Bay, defied description in terms that were anything other than lunatic. He had seen, that night, in his waking dreams, a ship at anchor in Hudson’s Bay; a trading ship, not a gunboat or Navy brig. He had seen John McLean and his Aivilik party; he had seen Jopson, insensible upon an Esqimaux sledge, and felt the weight of James’ emaciated frame in his own arms. He had seen the skeletons atop their whaleboat, its bow turned towards Erebus, and had known - though he could not account for how - exactly what would become of Hickey, in the end. 

“The books, man,” he had said to Bridgens, the following morning, on stumbling from his tent. “Did we bring Sir John Ross’ account of the trek to Fury Beach with us?” 

Bridgens shook his head. “Nor the volumes on Sir John’s Coppermine expedition, sir.” 

“Christ,” Francis had said. “Get me a map; the coast north of Hudson’s Bay.” 

“Aye, sir,” said Bridgens. “Shall I rouse Captain Fitzjames?” 

Francis had thought of James’ scattered attention, when he had asked him, the previous evening, for his opinion on the fitness of the sledges for the dash across the mouth of Back’s River. He had long resigned himself to the failure of the hunting parties, by that point, and it was only for James’ sake that he had not spoken of it. After Morfin, James had taken on a rattled, distracted air, and Francis had not liked to trouble him with his own particular species of gloom.

“Not yet, Bridgens. Just the maps, if you please.”

Francis shudders. Is it any wonder, after his letter that spoke of Francis’ uncanny powers, of being bewitched, that James should fear him, the way they had learned to fear the unnatural spirits on the ice? If that is the case, then it is as well that Francis does not write. Let James have his Brighton and his home amongst the Coninghams. Let him try to find peace there. 

Chapter Text

The journey from Euston to Abergavenny has provided Francis with ample opportunity for brooding on the circumstances which have brought him to his current situation. That is to say, hunched in the first-class compartment of a steam train - a contraption which Francis has not yet learned to love, and whose engines had been able to save neither Terror nor Erebus - while making a cowardly retreat from the city.

“Good God, Francis,” Ross had exclaimed in horror, when Francis had revealed his plan to journey to Herefordshire and throw himself upon Ned Little’s charity. “You can’t mean to impose yourself on the man. It would surely cause him embarrassment.”

Francis had decided it not worth his time to explain to James, yet again, that the bond forged between the survivors of the march to Repulse Bay had dissolved rank and fashion, until all men were pared to their essentials; that Little would no more turn him away, than he might spit in the face of the son of God.

“Then he may turf me out and send me on my way to a coaching inn,” Francis had replied, putting on his hat and taking up his walking cane. “I am only going for the weekend, not to set up house.”

“Then you do intend to return?”

Francis had looked away, for this was not a conversation he had intended to embark upon with a cab waiting outside to take him to the station and his baggage beside him at his feet. “I had thought I might take rooms in town, on my return,” he said.

Ross had said nothing for a moment. “For God’s sake,” he muttered, in the end, “come back to us, first, before you send for your things and set up in some hovel in Marylebone. I know you too well to think you’d give up such a plum opportunity to make a martyr of yourself.”

Francis had smiled, and Ross had shaken him sincerely by the hand. 

The journey has been long, and the view Francis might have had of rolling Chiltern hills has been obscured by a unhealthful fog, which has clung to the locomotive ever since it departed London and no doubt carries with it a miasma which presages influenza and consumptive disorders. Francis has been brooding for some time on Harry Goodsir, whose talk of animalcules had so entertained James during that miserable winter at Beechey Island. 

Where was the gentle doctor, now? Had he and Silence traversed the frozen North, and found places they might settle in winter and summer season? Might Silence have conceived a child? Would there be a line of curly-headed, blue-eyed Esqimaux established, thanks to Francis’ decision to leave Goodsir behind? He wished, for once, that his visions would return, so that he might peer through a distant window and be assured of the rightness of that decision in leaving Goodsir to his devices. 

Memories of the court martial rise again, unbidden.

“That you would now condemn a man for throwing himself on the mercy of the natives, as Sir John Franklin did and was celebrated for,” James had spat in Francis’ defence, “when it has resulted in the return of twenty-five good men -”

“Twenty-five!” thundered Cockburn. “Twenty-five of one hundred and thirty, sir!”

“Sir John Franklin had the fortune to return to England with nearly half his party in ’22,” interjected Berkeley, addressing James directly. “The arithmetic is not so favourable here, Captain Fitzjames. How do you account for the loss of such a number of your officers?”

James faltered, only for a moment, and Francis found his fist was tight about his cane, wishing to box Berkeley’s ears for posing this question in so punctilious and forensic a manner. To speak to such things as though they were mere matters of record, when each of those officers, each of those good men cut down had been a friend, a comrade in arms - He shook with fury, as he listened to James’ admirable attempt to make reply. 

That evening, James had taken it upon himself to call at Blackheath, and Ross had ushered him into the drawing room, where Francis had been slumped in an armchair with his aching head resting heavily in his hands.

“Francis, forgive me, I had no thought of intruding -“

Francis had striven to raise a convincing smile and welcomed James with a weary shaking of his head. 

“Whisht, James; if there’s anyone whose company I can be induced to endure this evening, it’s yours.”

James had nodded, though he was frowning, and limped closer to perch himself stiffly upon the edge of the chaise longue. There was a chair he might have taken, but it would have put him a greater distance away; Francis found himself grateful to have him close at hand. 

“How are you faring, Francis?”

Francis had chuckled. “As well as might be expected. Yourself?”

“About the same,” James replied with a wry twist to his lips. “I have had to resort to brandy to steady my nerve, having bearded Cockburn in his den all afternoon.”

“Ah, James. It’s a lovely thing, but a fool’s endeavour, if you’ve a mind to salvaging me. I am sunk in Cockburn’s eyes; I’d not have you scuttle yourself on my behalf, too. Nor Little, nor Blanky, neither.”

“Hush, Francis,” James had said. He had taken Francis’ hand in his own, briefly, and pressed it. “Your men love you. The least you could do is allow them to prove it.”

He had left, shortly afterwards, departing in the cause of a mysterious and inexplicable need to speak with Ross, and Francis had sunk into miserable contemplation of the loyalty his men might mistakenly believe they owed him. 

From Abergavenny there is a stagecoach, and from the stagecoach a journey by pony and trap, hired at the inn, up the narrow track that led to the address Little had supplied in his first letter to Francis from Herefordshire. The cottage, he sees, as it emerges through the fog, is in the manner of houses called cottages by those with money enough never to have set foot in a residence comprising fewer than a brace of reception rooms and five times as many bedrooms. It possesses a handsome portico and mullioned windows and an air of stolid, dilapidated elegance which Francis thinks must suit Little rather well. He can well imagine him loping about here, the solitary master of his rural domain.

He knocks while the driver takes down his trunk and sets it by the front step, and is gratified to hear footsteps hurrying to greet him. The door swings open to reveal, not a servant as he had expected, but Commander Edward Little, dressed in an assortment of unfashionable country clothes, and gaping at Francis in utter astonishment.

“Captain Crozier!”

“It’s Francis, by now, I think. Or, Crozier, at least.”

Little appears to swallow his own tongue. “Francis, then. Sir. I am - I’m afraid you have caught me ill-disposed. Have I mistook a letter - ?”

Standing upon Little’s porch, with the trap driver waiting impatiently behind to know whether he might depart, Francis begins to feel the creeping suspicion of his appearing unannounced having been a foolhardy plan. 

“You have not,” he says, with a sigh. “Forgive me, I come as a supplicant to throw myself upon that offer of hospitality you made. I see, now, that perhaps it was in jest -”

Little rouses himself from his surprise to extend a hand and clasp Francis’ warmly. “Not at all, sir. Please - allow me to bring in your baggage.”

“Thank you,” Francis says, in all sincerity. “Thank you, Edward.”

Little hefts Francis’ trunk into the house with an ease that leaves Francis vaguely green with envy and abandons it at the foot of the stairs to usher him into a pleasantly-appointed reception room. There is, he notices with some amusement, a set of gardener’s shears upon the occasional table, and beside them a whetstone and a pot of whiting oil. Little hurries to tidy them, his eyes wide with embarrassment, and begs Francis to take a seat upon an overstuffed armchair. 

“May I offer you tea?”

“No, Edward; don’t trouble yourself - I’ve been well watered on the journey.”

“There is a cake,” Little continues, hovering anxiously beside the table. “It will be some hours until supper, though there is cheese and a little bread -”

“Peace. You might sit with me. So long aboard a train has made an old man’s knees sore indeed.”

“Of course,” Little says, sitting abruptly on the corner of an armchair. He has the distracted air of a midshipmen caught in the midst of ill behaviour. His hands are still occupied with the garden shears, and he fiddles with them awkwardly, glancing every now and then in the direction of the door.

“How have you been, Edward?”

“Well, sir. As well as could be expected, or so I am told. And yourself?”

“Old. Worn of knee and worse of eyesight. You might well ask what I think I’m about, arriving upon your doorstep,” Francis continues, feeling the need to explain himself, but he is interrupted by a voice calling from the passageway beyond the closed door. 

“Have you the shears, Ned? Thought I might have another go at the hedging -”

The door opens to reveal Thomas Jopson, leaning heavily upon a wooden crutch, his warm expression disintegrating into a jagged, hunted look as his eyes dart between them. He flashes Little a sharp, wounded glare, his face shuttering. Oh, Thomas, Francis thinks ruefully, before Jopson’s eyes snap to regard him reproachfully. 

Little’s gaze is wide and appalled. “Thomas, I meant to -" 

“Hullo, Thomas,” Francis interjects, taking pity on him. “I’m afraid I have taken it upon myself to impose upon Commander Little’s hospitality.”

Jopson flashes Little a look that might have set the entire cottage aflame, and then turns to Francis to perform a stiff, ungainly bow. “If you might excuse me, Captain Crozier, sir,” he says. 

Francis nods, and Jopson disappears the way he came, the drawing room door closing quietly in his wake. 

In the aftermath of Jopson’s abrupt departure, it is as though Little has been struck quite dumb. He stands, staring after Jopson’s retreating form, clutching the garden shears before him like a shield. The colour has drained from him entirely, and he looks, for all Francis wishes not to remember it, like one of the men whose bodies froze in the night and had to be left on the shingle unburied the following day.

“Here, Edward,” Francis says, taking the shears from him carefully and setting them down once more upon the table. Little flinches and darts a startled glance at him, his expression one of mute, miserable fear. Francis urges him to sit and rocks back on his heels. “Now, I will see about that tea you mentioned.”

He bustles from the room feeling certain he has stumbled upon something he was not intended to see. If he had not thought Little to be a particular type of man, he had certainly never dreamed of his being bold enough to send for Jopson and install him here, in his uncle’s house. There had been no mistaking the familiarity in Jopson’s look, before he had realised he and Little were no longer alone in this isolated house.

It certainly makes sense of the absence of servants, Francis thinks ruefully. There are tea leaves, it transpires, in an urn above the kitchen range, and a kettle is easy enough to locate and fill with water from a jug which has been left to keep cool upon the kitchen windowsill. The kitchen is only a little room; a hearth and range, with a scrubbed table and a sideboard bearing a set of Delftware plates and cups. Has Little - have Little and Jopson - been living like crofters, cooking and cleaning and doing for themselves the way Francis had seen Memo Moira carry on in her dotage?

He returns to the little drawing room with tea balanced inexpertly upon a tray and a slab of the cake Little had mentioned, which Francis had found beneath an upturned basin on the cellar step, and which he supposes might make good ballast for whatever conversation is imminent between them. Little, when he pushes open the door, is ensconced in his armchair, his elbows upon his knees, his clawed fingers clasped in his hair, which has grown so long it curls over his collar and spills onto the shoulders of his well-patched shirt. 

Francis busies himself, while Little collects himself, with pouring tea and cutting each of them - he, Little and Jopson - a thick slice of cake. He remembers, distantly, chaperoned teas with Sophia, during the stultifying days of his courtship in Hobart, before she had whispered to him wickedly that she was allowed greater lassitude than most young ladies, and that they ought to go riding, alone together, that afternoon. 

“Well, I’ll say this for you,” he says, when Little shows no sign of rallying himself, “one of the pair of you makes a damned fine cake.”

Little lifts his head to fix Francis with a disbelieving, despairing stare. 

“It was the housekeeper,” he says tonelessly. “It is a lardy cake - it is -” here his expression crumbles minutely, before he wrestles it under control, “it is Thomas’ particular favourite.”

“You did not mention -”

“I enjoined him to come,” Little says swiftly. “After his brother - I could not bear to think of him enduring it alone.”

“His brother?” Francis bows his head, ashamed of himself for not having enquired. “Christ, I didn’t ask. Why in God’s name didn’t he make mention of it, in one of his letters?”

“He is opposed above all things to suffering to be pitied,” Little says, with a small, unhappy twist of his lips. “I have learned that, through my clumsy attempts to be a friend to him.”

“How long has he been here?”

“These last three weeks,” Little says, in a tone Francis recognises from his time contemplating confession in preparation for his confirmation. “He had sunk into a state of such despair that I offered him a place here, in the hope that it might elevate his spirits. He has found it difficult, on his pension, and with his injury prohibiting his being taken into service.”

“It was kindly done,” Francis agrees.

Little’s impassive face takes on a cast of agony. 

“On the contrary, it was done with the most selfish of intentions. I persuaded him to follow me here for my own selfish ends.” 

Francis considers this for moment before asking, “He’s taken up work?” 

Little nods miserably. 

“Carpentry. He is turning chair legs, now, at almost as fast a rate as Mr Honey, and he keeps us in game with my uncle’s shotgun.” 

“Whatever Thomas turns his hand to generally has the habit of turning to gold,” Francis notes wryly. 

This raises a wan smile, though it is swiftly smothered. 

“He earns a modest amount, and I make do about the house on half-pay. I am waiting for a commission.” 

“You mean to go to sea again,” Francis says mildly, attempting not to betray his surprise. 

Little gazes at him blankly. 

“What else am I to do? I know what manner of man I am, sir. Thomas, he - he proved himself to be the best of all of us, I think. But I -“ 

“Hush, Edward.” Francis places a hand atop Little’s and stills the nervous picking of his fingers at the loose threads upon the arm of his chair. “You’ll not hear otherwise from me where Jopson’s concerned. But the rest of us cannot hope to measure ourselves by that same lofty standard.” 

Little nods, though his eyes are wet. 

“He will be so grateful to see you,” he says earnestly. “You must not think him ungrateful. It is his pride -”

“I know enough about pride, don’t you worry about that.” 

Little appears to consider his next statement with something akin to terror, but he resolves himself with a sigh and charges onwards regardless, his eyes cast to the floor. 

“I ought to make plain to you, sir, before you choose to lodge here, that Jopson - Thomas and I - we do not lead a conventional life. He is... he is trying, in vain, to keep me from my melancholia, and I - well, I’m unsure what purpose I have here, except that he won’t hear of our separation.”

Edward is crimson, looking for all the world as though he would prefer the ground to open and swallow him, than bear Francis’ disapproval.

“And are you happy, Edward?” Francis asks gently.

Little’s eyes dart briefly to meet Francis’ gaze in surprise. 

“I am less unhappy than I might be.” 

Francis cannot claim expertise in the field of human happiness. He pats Edward’s hand gently as he considers his reply.

“I am glad for you, then,” he says, in the end. “Less unhappy than one might be is a great deal in our circumstances, I should think.” 

Little’s face colours and he looks steadily at Francis in bewilderment. 

“You do understand, sir, that I meant to explain that there is an understanding between Jopson and I -“

“Peace. You needn’t explain yourself to me,” Francis says, sitting back to stir his tea. “By Christ, I would be a hypocrite of the highest order, if I condemned you or Thomas on that score.” 

He chooses to busy himself with adding milk and sugar to the tea to avoid Little’s expression of startled comprehension.

Jopson absents himself for the duration of the tea and, when he has not returned by the time the afternoon’s clear light has started to turn golden, Little excuses himself for the purpose of persuading him to return to the house for supper.

“It is stewed rabbit,” he says before he steps out, with an air of apology, as thought he has not seen Francis choke down the gizzards of seabirds offered to him by the Aivilik, on the days between feeding James the last of the walrus and the hunting parties’ late return.

“I’ve spent five months in London society adrift on an ocean of jellies and blancmanges; an honest stew will be a blessed relief.”

Little’s lips twitch into a minute smile and then he slips from the room, his footsteps hurrying down the passageway to the kitchen and out of the door to the garden. 

He is gone for some time. Francis wonders, despite himself, at the manner of the conversation taking place somewhere beyond the walls of the cottage; whether Little is standing aloof and attempting to marshal Jopson’s temper with the air of a naval officer, or bending himself to nuzzle Jopson’s cheek and coax him into kisses. He imagines it with a particular unbecoming pricking of jealousy, cursing his arrogance at imposing himself here between them, when it is clear he is neither welcome nor needed. 

“Stop it, you old fool,” he mutters, pouring himself another cup of tea, despite it having long gone cold. 

At last, the door opens and Jopson enters the room, with Little hovering behind him looking pale with worry. 

“Captain Crozier,” Jopson says, warily. “Will you take a little toast with your tea?” 

“That I will, Thomas,” he replies, unable to keep himself from smiling. 

Jopson has a keen eye, he knows from humble experience, and he doubts he will be able to keep him from divining the reason for his unexpected visit for long; for now, it is simply a pleasure to see him again, and Francis places himself with pleasure into Jopson’s capable hands, allowing him to bring bread and toasting forks and fuss at the optimal positioning of their chairs around the fire. 

“I have dismissed the servants,” Little confesses, some time into the evening, when toast has been consumed and his face is pink and shining in the glow from the fireplace. “Except a woman who comes in to lay fires and keep the house in order -”

“- and keep us in Lardy Cake,” adds Jopson, with a grin.

“And that,” Little concedes. “Apart from that, we have been doing mostly for ourselves.”

“We have been managing well.” 

“I’m afraid I have had little to do with it,” says Little ruefully.

“That is not at all the truth,” says Jopson. He shrugs in that familiar, neat way of his. “In any case, I’ve practice enough at doing for you, Captain, that I can do for both of us just as well.”

“I must confess to coveting this existence of yours,” Francis says. “If you were to behold the gaggle of fools and sycophants with which we’ve been beset in London, you’d piss yourselves with laughter, imagining me and my surly manners amongst them. I am envious, truly.”

There is a lull in the conversation, during which Jopson stokes the fire with practiced use of the tongs and adds another log atop the embers. 

“The ice has changed me,” Little says quietly, some moments later. His gaze is on the flames licking about the edges of the new wood, his expression grave. “My sisters say my joy is gone.” 

“It is not true, sir,” says Jopson to Francis, with a stubborn set to his jaw. 

“It is true often, and it is Thomas who bears the brunt of it,” Little chides softly. Francis senses it is an argument that has been well-rehearsed.

“I do not mind it,” Jopson insists. “And I have not accepted these circumstances with gratitude at every turn.”

“I had to take Tom into my employment,” Little explains, with every appearance of great embarrassment. “It was the only way I could think to keep up supporting him. There was talk amongst the family of my squandering what little inheritance I had been given. I told them I required solitude, after what we endured… it was only natural I should require a manservant. I am only sorry it has condemned us to scraping along in this manner.” 

“It is what could be afforded,” Jopson breaks in, in his gentle, wry tone. “And he is not sorry at all to hide away, like this,” he confides to Francis. “It’s me who chafes against it.” 

Little frowns. 

“It is not that you chafe against it, and if it were then you needn’t apologise - you’ve a right to demand more than this -”

Jopson shakes his head firmly and lays a hand briefly upon Little’s where it lies upon the arm of his chair. Little darts a glance, aborted almost immediately, in Francis’ direction, and colours extravagantly, becoming the shade of stewed rhubarb in a flash. He sighs, his mouth set more unhappily. 

“Come, Captain,” Jopson says, levering himself from his seat with the help of his crutch. “Let me show you the grounds; I am attempting to make myself a gardener."

The cottage’s gardens are not extensive, but they afford a pleasant view of the surrounding valley and, Francis sees now that the fog has lifted, the distant slopes of mountains, beyond which must lie the border with Wales. 

“Are you well, here, Thomas?” Francis asks as they stroll along the line of a neglected box hedge, part of which has recently been clipped into a more orderly shape. Before them there is a fine vegetable garden, with neat beds of cabbages and young, feathered leaves of carrots set out beneath the garden wall. 

“Edward cares for me,” Jopson says, having divined Francis’ true meaning with his usual cleverness. “And I for him. We do well, sir, after our fashion.” 

Within Francis, some coils of guilt loosen their hold. He considers the things that might be said between men on such a hazardous subject, and settles for the same question he had asked of Little, over their tea and cake earlier in the afternoon. 

“Are you happy, Thomas?” 

Jopson fixes him with a queer, tentative smile. 

“Lieutenant Little - Edward - is the kindest man. He did foolish things, at first. Buying me gifts, and such; things we can ill afford, if we’re to stay here until he’s next called away. Had to talk him out of it - explain why such gestures between us might make it seem that he was attempting to purchase something I was willing to give freely. Besides, it would have meant spending your money, sir.” He gives Francis a sharp, censorious look. “He had already settled all the bills relating to William’s funeral with that.” 

“I was sorry indeed to hear of it, when Edward told me,” Francis says. “And I’ll not have you think of it as charity. It’s nothing less than what you’re owed, and would be what you’d receive if I had managed to keep your rank for you.” 

Jopson turns away, busying himself with the pretence of re-tying the twine holding a pear tree’s espaliered branches to its wires upon the wall. When he speaks, his voice is low and expressionless. 

“It wasn’t your fault, sir. I’d never dreamed of seeking promotion, as you know.” 

Aye, Francis thinks, for love of me, you’d have carried on as steward until I was dead or retired. But you’d have made the kind of lieutenant a captain comes to lean on. 

Francis watches him continue his inspection of the pear tree and turns over in his mind Little’s anguished assessment of their respective characters. What a mess that treacherous place has made of each of us, in our way.

Dinner is a modest affair, with plates of stew and coarse, dark bread which tastes of treacle served with thick slabs of primrose-yellow butter. Little colours spectacularly when Francis enquires after the cook, and Jopson says, not without a hint of pride, “Ned’s handy in the kitchen. We eat like kings, thanks to him.” 

“Thomas flatters me,” Little mutters, eyes on his plate.

“I don’t,” says Jopson. He throws a warm glance Little’s way, occasioning a further bout of embarrassed shuffling with the cutlery, which he stills, briefly, with one still-too-thin hand. “It’s good,” he says gently, “to have a means of bringing happiness to others. It’s a blessing.”

Francis butters his bread and eats it in contemplative silence, thinking with concern of quiet, solemn Edward Little, who finds joy in these simple pleasures, putting on his uniform and setting out for London. Pity Little, when he is next aboard ship and talk in the wardroom turns to home, and he is forced to demur or fabricate tales of an unremarkable, conventional life. Might he invent a wife, a handful of children, to deflect suspicion? It is a sad thought.

After dinner, Little apologises that there is no means of entertainment to be had, besides conversation and perhaps a hand of cards. While they ate, the purplish hue of evening had given way to a sky the colour of India ink, and a full moon now hangs heavy over the garden, spilling enough light that it turns the pasture behind the cottage’s garden silver. 

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Francis says, sitting back in his chair, stomach happily full for what might be the first time since the William nosed her way into Portsmouth dock. 

In the night, ensconced in an aged bed heaped with blankets which must have borne witness to generations of Littles and their guests, he wakes thinking he hears the distant sound of weeping.  When he swims towards consciousness he detects only the murmur of low voices behind the closed door of Little’s bed chamber. He listens, except he does not listen, only to the distant hum of their voices. He falls swiftly back to sleep.

Francis wakes the next morning to the bucolic symphony of birdsong and the determined crow of a nearby rooster. There is syrupy light spilling under the curtains, and he is warm, truthfully a little too warm, so that he pushes his feet into a foreign section of the bed in search of a cool stretch of linen.

He has dreamed of the court martial again. He knows this because his dreams have the unpleasant habit of swarming over him, in the lull between waking and rising, and he has been left with a lingering feeling of sick humiliation, the after-effect of reliving that appalling fourth day of the trial, in which Cockburn had accused him of complacency, of degeneracy, of dereliction of his duty as Second and abandonment of his faculties in the execution of his duties as First. 

He had staggered home to Blackheath after that day - during which Ross had attempted time and again to interject on Francis’ behalf and been shouted down in a most disagreeable manner by Cockburn, and even Berkeley’s sympathetic questioning had felt like needles beneath Francis’ increasingly thinning skin - to find James waiting for him, his face sickly with concern, its lines even more deeply drawn than was usual. 

“Hold fast, Francis,” he had urged, his fingers clenched around the brim of his hat. “Do not lose hope.”

Francis had laughed, a bitter, repellent sound that had made James flinch from him. “Ach, if I didn’t lose it on the ice, I’ll not lose it in the face of George fucking Cockburn.”

The following morning, the final day of the trial had begun in much the same vein as the day before. Cockburn had raised, again, the issue of the cylinders, instructing the lawyer to divine whether it was incompetence or craven jealousy of Sir John Franklin’s reputation which had led Francis to disobey the Admiralty’s orders.

“You did not raise cairns,” said the lawyer, punctuating his points with little taps of his hand upon the desk. “You did not leave word of your route; nor did you use the canisters supplied for that purpose as anything other than postcards between ships.”

Francis had refrained from reiterating the uselessness of the cylinders while the ships were stuck in the pack; he refrained from pointing out that the deviation from the Admiralty’s orders had been John Franklin’s to make; and he declined, with great forbearance, to enquire as to the point of cairns, when there had been no intent to send a rescue party, until John McLean had been prevailed upon to lead one.

“We have heard Captain Crozier lay responsibility for the decision to continue west of King William Land firmly at the feet of a man who is not here to give his own account,” the little barrister continued.

“Indeed, in the absence of any ships’ log, all we are given to rely upon is Captain Crozier’s word,” commented Cockburn, with a malicious glint in his small, dark eyes. 

“Perhaps we might turn, once more,” said the lawyer, “to the matter of Surgeon’s Assistant Goodsir.”

Here, Francis’ resolve had flagged. He had answered question upon question during the previous day about his judgement concerning Goodsir. He did not, in honesty, know that he possessed the strength to defend his actions a second time, when the memory of Goodsir retreating that last time into the empty landscape haunted him so frequently in his dreams. 

Before the lawyer could open his mouth to begin his questioning, there arose a clamour and a number of raised voices at the rear of the hall beside the great carved wooden doors of the chamber.

There swelled a murmur of voices and a rising susurrus of movement as a figure pushed its way through the assembled throng of newspapermen and members of the public. Francis turned to see James Fitzjames striding through the crowd, his face glorious, grim and resolute, a sheaf of paper clutched in one upraised fist. 

“What is the meaning of this?” Cockburn demanded, glowering at James as he strode forth. “Explain yourself at once, Captain Fitzjames.”

“My Lord Admiral,” said James, coming to an abrupt halt before the bench. “I have here a letter setting out, in clear facts, the truth of Captain Crozier’s command of our doomed expedition. I have set out the clear-sightedness with which Captain Crozier foresaw the necessity of our party’s change of course across the ice, and the horrors to which we should all, every man of us, have succumbed, were it not for his genius in identifying the charity of the Aivilik people as our only hope of survival.” 

James turned to brandish the paper at the assembled audience. The newspapermen were scribbling furiously in their notebooks. Francis helplessly sought out Sophia. Goddamn and blast James and his meddling; she did not seem at all surprised at this extraordinary turn of events; nor, he saw, did Ross, watching the proceedings calmly from his seat behind the bench.

“This letter,” James continued, “is signed by every man among us, all who lived to return home to England, and each man of them has added a line of his own to express his gratitude for the care shown to him by Captain Crozier. A facsimile has been conveyed to the editors of the Times, the London Illustrated News, the Manchester Guardian, and the Glasgow Herald.” 

Francis’ eyes snapped to seek out Little, seated some way back upon the benches, whose gaze was fixed on the spectacle before him while his face turned slowly livid with embarrassment. 

“I, personally, owe my life to Captain Crozier,” James said, turning to Cockburn once more. The old man’s quivering countenance betrayed his outrage at such extraordinary conduct. “Along with this letter, I have come to tender my resignation from my rank of Captain. I have with me similar letters from Commander Edward Little, Petty Officer John Bridgens, Petty Officer Henry Peglar, and all surviving crew of H.M.S. Erebus and Terror. The men should like it known, sir, that should Captain Crozier be made to bear responsibility for errors not of his making, and should he be denied the acclaim he is due for bringing them home safe to their wives and families, it is their desire, and my own, to share his fate.”

“Hear, hear!” cried a voice near the back of the hall.

Francis turned, aghast, to spy Peglar, his face bright and defiant, waving his cap in the air. Beside him stood John Bridgens, his kindly face stern, and Tom Blanky, perched upon his crutches. Francis’ vision began to swim, tears springing at the corners of his eyes.

“Have all of these men charged!” thundered Cockburn, thumping his fist upon the bench.

“Well, good luck charging me, your Lordship,” called Blanky. “I’m nowt but a humble Yorkshire publican, these days!”

Titters broke out amongst the assembled crowd.

“Captain Fitzjames,” Cockburn spat. “You will remember yourself, sir, and remove yourself and your men from this place, at once!”

“I’m afraid Captain Fitzjames will not, Lord Admiral,” said James Ross, coolly, leaning forward in his seat to address Cockburn directly. “And I should also like to add my own name to the list of those willing to share Captain Crozier’s punishment, should he be found guilty of anything other than committing himself with the highest degree of courage and fortitude.”

“This is not to be borne -“

“Indeed,” said Berkeley, who had been regarding Fitzjames with an air of reserved calculation. “For with Cadogan and Malfiche out on Mediterranean duty, and Herbert halfway to India, and the damned debacle in Argentina, it would seem that without Rear-Admiral Ross, we would be without the quorum of post-captains, and the current proceeding should be found to be unlawful.”

“Unlawful,” Cockburn spluttered. “Captain Ross, you will be cashiered, sir -“

Laughter broke out a second time, and Ross smiled, his handsome face turned towards the public gallery. “To be cashiered from an honorary rank might give some men pause, my Lord, but I’m afraid to say I have this morning already written to your lordship to resign my position, in the event of Captain Crozier’s conviction. It is with the greatest regret that I must inform you that the Admiralty, and indeed the Arctic Council, would henceforth have to do without me.”

A babble of conversation erupted, and Francis sought Sophia’s face once more. There were tears upon her cheeks, and she smiled at him tremulously.

“It would seem, Crozier,” said Berkeley, regarding Francis coolly, “that these extraordinary actions of your Second, and the loyalty of your men, have conferred upon you a veneer of divine protection. It would be remiss of the Admiralty to refuse the petition of so highly-esteemed a crew, for England holds her heroes dear. Court is adjourned that the Board might confer.”

Francis had been swept from the hall upon a wave of approbation, catching Ross only fleetingly to take him by the hand and exclaim, “You’ve schemed on this with Fitzjames, you old devil!”

Ross had grinned widely in reply, and Francis had found himself shaking hands with John Bridgens, while Tom Blanky laughed loudly in his ear upon the steps of Admiralty House. 

In his bed beneath Edward Little’s roof, while he listens absently to the sounds of the household below - the clanging of the coal scuttle, and the clucking of the hens in the yard as Jopson calls each of them by name and flings them handfuls of barley - Francis reflects on the memory of the gathering the evening of the triumph at the court martial. He had clasped James to him, he remembers, now. They had both been laughing, and he had tugged James into an embrace and soundly kissed his cheek. James’ eyes had shone brightly in the light of the candles upon the Rosses’ mantelpiece.

“Goddamnit, James!” he had said, his hands upon James’ lapels. “Goddamnit. You shouldn’t have done it.”

“On the contrary, Francis,” James had replied, grinning. “Had I not done it, I should have deserved to be cashiered, or whatever else tomfool punishment Cockburn threatened me with.”

“You’re a bloody marvel,” Francis said, in furious joy. “Of all the incautious acts of stupidity - to bring Little into it, and the rest of the men - goddamnit, James, I should box your ears for putting them in such peril.“ 

Here, James had the decency to be chastened. “On that score, I am sorry, indeed,” he said, sincerely. 

“What in God’s name possessed you?” 

“My memory is not what it was. The events - they were jumbled, somewhat. I had need of Little’s testimony, and that of the rest of the men. In recompense they insisted on being undersigned, and would brook no refusal.” 

“Your memory,” Francis said, frowning, momentarily distracted.

James’ waved a hand as though it was of little importance. “Since the Marten - my doctor assures me it is to be expected -”

“You’ve seen your doctor? Why did you not think to mention it, any of the hundred times I have asked how you are?”

“My inability to recall the exact date on which we trudged between two particular indistinguishable points on the ice is hardly a matter for concern,” James scoffed, rolling his eyes. “It is - trifles, here and there, that I cannot quite put together.”

“And that is all it is, an inability to recall trifles?”

Tom Blanky had burst in, then, and Francis had never quite got his answer.

Francis spends a day, once he has hauled himself out of bed and descended the stairs to enquire how he might best be put to work, engaged in the sort of quiet, happy labour he remembers from his days as a boy, when he had thought he was helping the drovers to bring the cows down from the hills to the milking sheds, and can only have been a nuisance, the Croziers’ soft little boy, to be indulged for his papa was a friend to the nobility. He hammers fence-posts, digs trenches for the sowing of peas, and drinks warm, foaming cider from a stone jug Jopson brings out to them at midday, after which Little succumbs to Francis’ attempts to persuade him to sing, and gives them a red-faced round of ‘The Oak and the Ash’, while Francis and Jopson provide a cacophonous harmony.

Laughing like this with Little, observing the simple care with which he and Jopson manage each other, is a simple, happy gift. It has been three weeks since that bewildering, alarming letter of James’, and it is suddenly as though being here, in this fleeting utopia, has illuminated its meaning. A long-neglected, shuttered window has been cast open and light cascades into the attic recesses of Francis’ breast. Through the dust dancing in the sunlight he perceives that his creaking old heart has indeed begun to keep time once more. 

There is an excitement within him, too; an ungentlemanly fire that has been stoked into waking, and now smoulders beneath his skin continuously. He had burned his fingers while tending this passion in regards to Sophia; he sees now that she had never been able to want him the way he had hoped to be wanted, and he had been too foolish, too green in the ways of headstrong, frustrated young women to comprehend it. What burns beneath his breast, and in the pit of his gut, and in the bold swell of his cock beneath his linens in contemplation of James’ hand upon his in the proprietary way Jopson’s had lain upon Little’s on the arm of his chair, is nothing like the ruinous flash-fire of his bewildered desire for Sophia; instead, it is a fierce furnace made for the melting of chains and cogs and gears and all. He has been unmade by it. That night, as he guiltily takes himself in hand beneath the bedcovers, he shivers to think what form James’ long, clever fingers might fashion him into, if only he were to be persuaded to take Francis to the anvil. 

The following morning, Jopson sends for the pony and trap, and Francis packs his nightshirt and meagre belongings into his trunk. 

“You needn’t look so glum,” he says to Jopson, when Little has lugged the trunk down the stairs and positioned it beside the door. “You’ll scarce be able to keep me away, now I know what a fine cook you’ve made of Edward.”

Little colours, and Jopson smiles. “We will hold you to it, sir.”

The trap is due at eight, to carry Francis to his stagecoach in time for the afternoon train. Little, with an apologetic smile in Jopson’s direction, clears his throat as the minutes tick by, gesturing with a nod of his head to the garden. 

“May I speak with you, sir, before you depart?” 

Francis gives his assent, though he cannot think what Little might wish to speak to him about with such a need for secrecy, and follows him outside. 

The sun is up and a morning mist is rising over the fallow field beside the garden wall. Little leads him to the gate and pauses there, looking out over the land. These are large fields, reminiscent of those with which Francis had been familiar in Banbridge, where flax had covered the hillsides from Drumnagally to Tullyear and the Bann had been flanked on both banks by bleachgreens. 

“It has been brought to my attention that this house, and the land in which it stands, might be mine to purchase, should I be in a position to raise the capital,” Little says, quietly, gazing out over the waving rye grass. “It is fertile land, though much of it has been turned over to sheep. There are growing numbers of men who have bought land such as this and set up working it for profit: there is a ready market for such things as we might cultivate, here. Oats, barley, and so on.”

Francis considers the landscape. It is as alien to him as that Mongolian desert of James’ might have been; a rippling ocean of long grass which only puts him in mind of the sea, and the reasons he had been happy to leave Banbridge for the Navy. 

“You’ve no farming stock in your family that I didn’t know about?” 

“Not a bit,” Little says seriously. “But I have acquired a number of books on the subject. There are some that are very detailed, that teach the manner of learning the ground and the tending of crops and livestock. And Thomas has kept pigs, before.” 

There is a fervency in his tone as he waits for Francis’ reply. Francis realises that Little cannot have spoken to Jopson of his plans yet, that he has been waiting to seek Francis’ approval before doing so. He is proud, so very proud, of these men of his and their courage in the face of all they have endured. The envy he’d suppressed rears its head once more while he looks out over the land Little intends them to farm together. 

“Have you the means?” he asks. 

Little’s mouth thins. 

“I’ve money,” Francis explains, swiftly, before Little can take offence. “It’s tied up in investments, but it could be made available. You would be my tenants, but no doubt you would turn a tidy profit once you got yourselves established. Enough to repay me, and to live well on the remainder.” 

“Thank you, sir - Francis - but I could not. I wish to - I wish to make this land my own, if you see what I mean.“ 

“Thomas would never mind it,” Francis says, in case that might also be the problem. 

“Nevertheless,” Little says, shaking his head resolutely. “I intend to take up a commission; with Berkeley ousting Cockburn as First Lord, I’ve a little hope of preferment. And I intend to petition my uncle for the balance of my inheritance. It is no shameful thing, to set up as a gentleman farmer; my family would have no reason to prevent it.”

“And you’ll get by, will you? The pair of you, working the land, and running the house?”

Little smiles.  “I have a youngest sister, Kitty. Since we were children, she has been resolved not to marry. We have always shared an understanding, in that regard. I had thought to ask her to leave my parents’ home and live with us, here. It is not unheard of for a bachelor to set up home with his sister. For propriety’s sake, it would allow the both of us to go about our lives as we should like, and I think she and Thomas would find much in common. She is a melancholy soul, on occasion, like me, but she is kind.”

“You have the whole thing sewn up,” Francis says, approvingly, laying a hand briefly upon Little’s arm. “I wish you joy of it, the both of you, with all my heart.”

Chapter Text

Francis’ lodgings are situated in Kensington, in rooms similar to those he has always managed to find for himself, in-between ships. It is the sort of place to which Sophia would have once taken delight in allowing him to lead her, after a well-mannered stroll around Kensington Gardens, where there would have been neither sufficient furniture nor sufficient light for the rooms to be considered fashionable, but sufficient privacy for her to goad him into curling clumsy fingers inside her, while she gasped and writhed upon his small bed and left livid crescent moons in the flesh of his back. 

The small Rosses had cried to see him leave, when he had his trunks packed into a cab and stood to take his leave on the steps of the house in Blackheath. He had kissed them and given them each a shilling, and promised James and Ann that his departure to the other side of the river would not make him a stranger. He has not entirely broken his word in that regard, though he will own that in the week since his removal he has relished the peace and quiet of a set of rooms that are entirely his domain.

The walk from Kensington to the Admiralty is short and takes him through St James’, but the weather is too sullen to make the journey enjoyable. The meeting he is obliged to attend has been called in deference to Lady Jane, that she might hear the outcome of the Board’s decision regarding the awarding of the prize for the discovery of the Passage. How it can remain a mystery to any of the parties involved eludes Francis; the thought of the Admiralty handing over ten thousand pounds to Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier is enough to make him laugh until he is sick. It is a shame; for the men, whose Discovery Service pay is poor recompense for their privations and slow enough in coming, it is a tragedy. 

The steps of the Admiralty are deserted at such an early hour, and Francis tips his head to glimpse the semaphore fluttering its message against the leaden sky before he steps inside. He is half-way across the great atrium when he hears footsteps behind him and a familiar voice calling his name.

“Francis!” 

He spins on his heel and spies James’ tall figure hurrying towards him; he is favouring his right leg, a cane to match Francis’ own clicking smartly against the marble floor. A smile comes to Francis’ face unbidden, despite his nerves all morning at coming face to face with James again when that damned letter still sits unanswered, tucked inside the pocket of his frock coat. 

There was a sketch in the London Illustrated News this morning of James Fitzjames, imagining him as Antony at Caesar’s funeral, giving an oration in which he lay waste to the penny-pinching of the Admiralty provisioning board. Friends, Romans, Navymen, it was titled. Francis had studied it, trying to make out whether it was a thing done in earnest admiration, or whether there was an element of poking fun in its depiction of James in all his strident glory. The caricature had not done him justice, in any case, lending him an equine aspect he did not deserve. There have been relatively few sketches of Francis, thank Christ, so it is difficult to know what the cartoonist’s pen might make of him; he cannot imagine it would be complimentary. 

“Good morning, old man,” James says, with a sardonic smile. “You did not disappear to Herefordshire for good, then.” At Francis’ look askance, he adds, “Ross confided your whereabouts, when I had not had word from you for some weeks.”

“Alas, no,” Francis replies. “I’ve washed up in Kensington.”

James pulls an amusing face and Francis aches at its familiarity, for it is one of the expressions he recognises from James’ efforts in the Great Cabin over dinner, when he had donned masks as easy as breathing, before Francis had flattered himself to have cured him of the habit. 

“James,” Francis says, but he is stymied by the approach of an ensign in livery, who announces the readiness of the Lord Admiral to receive them. They follow the boy towards the Board room in oppressive silence.

“Ah, Crozier, Fitzjames,” says Berkeley, from his new position at the head of the table. “Capital. It is as well we should make a prompt start.”

“Lady Jane,” says James, and Francis copies him in greeting the lady with a bow. She bestows a distant smile upon the both of them, and Francis supposes it is a small mercy to be spared her disdain. He adds a bow to Sophia, seated at her aunt’s side, and she smiles at him in that anxious manner she reserves for him, lately, as though she were always on the brink of asking in low tones after the state of his health. 

“Gentlemen, we are gathered to report the judgement of the Admiralty as regards the awarding of prizes vis a vis the charting of the Nor’West Passage,” Berkeley says, with a cursory glance about the table. 

Francis clears his throat.

“Begging your pardon, Lord Admiral, but the prize was to be for the finding of, as opposed to the charting.”

Berkeley’s eyes narrow as they consider Francis for a long, poisonous stretch of moments.

“The terms of the prize, Captain Crozier, are dictated by the Admiralty.”

“Perhaps that ought to have been made clear, sir, to the men who risked their lives in pursuit of it.”

James shoots Francis a sharp look, which he chooses to ignore. They are seated beside one another, across the table from Lady Jane and Sophia, and he is conscious of the proximity of James’ sleeve to his own; they might hold hands beneath the table and Berkeley would be none the wiser.

“Regardless, Crozier, I am sorry to say that it is the decision of the Admiralty to withhold the awarding of the prize until such a time as the straits between King William Land and Victoria Land have been charted and traversed.”

Francis begins to laugh, startling James, who gives a jolt in his seat, and causing Lady Jane to turn on him a face of such disgust he is spurred to even greater amusement, while Sophia fixes him with a pleading look and folds her gloves between her anxious fingers.

“It is King William Island,” Francis says, in the end. “James and I can assure you of that, having hauled sledges fully around the back end of it.”

“A remarkable feat,” Berkeley concedes, “but not the proof of a navigable route on which the prize depends.”

“Forgive me, Lord Berkeley,” says James. “If I might interject, if there is to be no prize, then the matter of the men’s pay becomes of paramount importance.”

“Yes, Captain Fitzjames, we have all read your letter to the Times on the subject,” replies Berkeley with a tight smile. “It is a wonder you have not taken it upon yourself to feed and clothe these men yourself, and loaves and fishes do not cascade from your coat tails.”

Francis feels James tense beside him and sits forward in his chair. He is recalled from incivility by a sound from the other side of the table; he glances at Sophia to find her having coughed politely into her glove. She is gazing at him imploringly again. He clenches his fist upon his knee and sits back in his chair. James’ shoulders are slumped, his chin cocked in that preposterous, offended way of his, as it used to be when Francis strived to cut the legs from under him at Sir John’s dining table. 

“There is also the matter of the funds,” continues Berkeley, “raised by Lady Franklin to finance an expedition in search of her husband’s ships, before news of your rescue reached us.”

“The sum amounts to some seven thousand pounds,” says Lady Jane, casting a proud glance around the table. “I was gratified by the generosity of Sir John’s friends, and particularly by the subscription raised in Van Diemen’s Land; it was a great marker of their affection and respect.”

“A remarkable endeavour,” agrees James, with a bowing of his head in Lady Jane’s direction. 

Francis refrains from noting that it was the same inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land that had sent Sir John packing from their colony with his tail between his legs, and that Sir John had made himself ridiculous with his insistence on circulating his pamphlet on the subject among the officers, that first cold winter at Beechey. 

“I had thought it would be rather fine to erect a monument,” Lady Jane continues, having bestowed James with a smile of considerable warmth,“to the memory of the men lost, and in remembrance of Sir John’s noble legacy.”

“And what form would such a monument take?” James asks, casting an unreadable glance in Francis’ direction.

“I thought a statue,” she replies. “Sir George Grey has been so kind as to suggest a plinth at Waterloo Place. Sir John will look very fine there -”

“Give it to the men, to their families.”

The eyes of Lord Berkeley, of James Fitzjames, and of Lady Jane and Miss Sophia Cracroft slide to regard Francis with astonishment.

“Captain Crozier -”

“That money was raised to mount a rescue that would have come too late, and the one that did come was too late for most. To give it to those men’s families, that they might live out their lives in some comfort, would be a fitting memorial.”

“The men’s families will receive all pay owing, Captain Crozier,” says Berkeley, with a narrow, chilling stare.

“When?” Francis demands. “Before or after their wives and children have been sent to the poorhouse? And will their names be on this monument? The men, who gave their lives in pursuit of the passage?”

Sophia leans forward, fixing Francis with a look that beseeches him to take care.

“Surely, Francis, the monument will stand for the sacrifice of all -”

“Indeed, the men will be pleased,” interrupts Lady Jane, “to see their commander commemorated thus.”

Francis snorts.

“The men are too dead to be pleased, Lady Jane.”

“Francis,” James murmurs, with a hand on his sleeve. Francis shrugs it away and the hand retreats as though scalded.

“If there is money to be had,” he snaps, “it had best be spent on the widows and children of those good men we buried. Good Christ, James, would you have their families take out subscriptions, and beg for their survival? Those men gave their lives for the folly of their commander -“

“Captain Crozier, you will be silent!” 

Francis comes to an abrupt and irrevocable decision. Lady Day has come and gone, and Francis is not one word closer to having produced a manuscript on the subject of the expedition. With a great scraping of chair leg against parquet, he hauls himself to his feet. 

“I am happy to report, my lord, that the Admiralty may have my captaincy, after all.” He looks Berkeley in the eye and does not offer a salute. “And you may keep the knighthood, too; I’ll have no need of it.”

“Francis!”

Francis has marched nearly half the way across Horse Guards Parade by the time James catches up to him, and he is halted by a hand on his arm, and by James’ imploring tone as he says, again, “Francis. Please, wait.”

Gone is the cool detachment, and in its place Francis sees the well-beloved, familiar face he spent miserable weeks nursing in the frigid hold of the Marten. He lifts his eyes towards the heavens in an application for strength in the face of that ridiculous, handsome visage. 

“Goddamnit, James, you’d do as well to leave me here to fling myself into the canal. Go back to the meeting.”

“Don’t be absurd,” James replies, his breathing uneven, leaning heavily upon his cane. “Where else would one find such marvellous entertainment on a grey April morn such as this, than in your company?”

Francis croaks an honest laugh. 

“Damn you, I’m too full of spleen for your jokes.”

James chuckles, a low sound Francis has missed to an unconscionable degree.

“I had a mind to tell Lady Jane,” he says, a wry smile upon his face, “that is you who saved us, and you who warned us of the danger in the first place and were shouted down. If anyone ought to have a monument to their endurance, surely it is you, Francis.” 

Francis stares at him, aghast.

“Well, you can get that idiot idea out of your head, immediately. You sound like Jopson, you know. Promote a man to Lieutenant, and he gets notions you’re the Lord Jesus himself.”

“Jopson has no illusions there, I’m sure,” James replies. “After all, no man is a hero to his valet,” he adds, in a credible impression of Thomas Carlyle’s Scottish burr. 

Francis rolls his eyes.

“Don’t you start with that. If Lady Jane wants a statue, let her have it. If she’d have Sir John supplant Nelson on his column, what would it injure us? But I’ll be damned if Hartnell and Le Vesconte, and the whole damned, sorry lot of those men don’t get what’s due to them. I should have given out those ten golden guineas a man from Sir John’s silver tableware, and said to Hell with that fucking bear.”

“Hear, hear,” says James, sincerely. Nevertheless, Francis berates himself for raising the spectre of Le Vesconte, for James is suddenly downcast, his eyes unbearably sad.

“James, your letter,” Francis says, thumbing at the corner of his mouth and casting a surreptitious glance about them, lest they be overheard.

“We need not mention it, Francis.”

“No, we must. I was never my intention to abandon you. In truth, I don’t know what help I would have been to you; I’ve been adrift myself, marooned in Blackheath, these past months. I have been little use to anyone.”

“Francis,” James says, his head bowed. “I am not in the least surprised you did not reply; I had not been sleeping, and scribbled my note to you after a long, miserable night’s brooding by the fire. I had had quite a quantity of brandy at Ross’ party. It was shameful stuff I wrote to you, juvenile in its entirety.”

“I’ll admit I was concerned by the bit in which you invested me with some fantastical, supernatural capability.”

James gives him a shrewd look.

“On that point I am yet to be fully dissuaded.”

Francis considers confessing everything. His second sight is a secret he has guarded assiduously for as long as he has been conscious of it; perhaps in setting it in the light, he might deprive it of its power. Perhaps it power is already spent. Those first terrible visions, during his battle with delirium tremens, had proved false, after all. 

“The superstitions of my old grandmother, and the fever while I wrang the last of the whisky from my blood, conspired once to make me think I had an uncanny power of that nature,” he says. “In the end, it was that blasted book of Bridgens’ that put me in mind of Repulse Bay; his talk of Sir John Ross’s time at Fury Beach, and my own remembrances of tales of the Aivilik, perhaps, too. There’s nothing magical about me, James, you have my word on that.”

James looks as though he has more to say on the subject but raises an eyebrow as though to indicate that Francis should consider himself fortunate he has acquiesced to let the matter lie. They have begun to cross Horse Guards in the direction of St James’ Park, and Francis finds he is happier than he can say to put the Admiralty at his back. 

“You reside in Kensington, now?” James enquires, as they stroll beneath the plane trees lining the entrance to the park. Francis remembers, distantly, when the park was replanted, and that he had walked here after meetings of the Astronomical Society, feeling a giant amongst a miniature forest of saplings.

“Yes, I’ve taken rooms. And you?”

“Likewise; I returned from Brighton last month. One wouldn’t like to rest entirely upon the hospitality of one’s friends.” James smiles, then, his missing teeth no longer replaced by the clumsy pegs of the ivory dentures. He catches Francis’ look and says, not without a certain air of wry mischief, “I suppose I shall have to get a Waterloo set, one of these days, but it does bring me joy to see Berkeley shudder at the wreckage the Arctic has made of me. It lends a useful species of sincerity to my tub-thumping on behalf of the men, at the least.”

Francis chuckles. 

“You’re the very devil.”

James laughs, his eyes creasing in pleasure. 

“If it disgusts the Naval Lords and frightens society, then I’ve had quite enough of both for a cat’s worth of lifetimes. My greatest joy, these days, is retiring for the evening and shutting the world behind a heavy pair of curtains.”

“Well, none of that tonight; there’s the gala at the Society,” Francis says. “Which reminds me, have you given thought to my offer to stand sponsor?”

James pales and runs a hand over his face. 

“Dear God, Francis. I haven’t the stamina for a gala.”

“Well, you may blame Sabine; he wants his brace of Arctic heroes in attendance. You’ll consider the fellowship?”

“In what regard could I be said to have earned it?”

“Your work on the observations -”

“Oh, yes,” says James drily. “Very like a whale. Francis, my work was barely worth the attribution of the word, and would have been completed sooner and better had you been let at it, the way you ought to have been in the first place. Let us not hash it out again.”

Francis holds up his hands. 

“I relent, I relent!”

“I hadn’t thought to hear you fling a knighthood in Berkeley’s face,” James comments, after a moment’s pause. He is looking at Francis with curiosity, and Francis regrets his conversation with Berkeley all those months ago, which had been the root of this mess, one way or another. 

“It was offered in return for services rendered,” he confesses, with a sigh. “But Berkeley ousted old Cockburn without any help from me, and I was in earnest when I said I have no taste for the knighthood. I did not want it for myself, at any rate.”

James looks at him levelly, with cool amusement. 

“It’s true!” 

“I was under the impression that thoughts of impressing Miss Cracroft had been put to sleep,” James says, slyly. “Was I mistook?” 

“Ach, boil your head, James. It was not for that reason I wanted it!”

“Come, now, Francis, you may be honest. It was for pride, as much as any other man.” 

Francis lets out a huff of frustration, stopping clear in the middle of the path to fix James with his full regard. 

“It was with half a mind to supporting Jopson, if you must know. He can’t go to sea again, his health won’t allow it. Little has been near impoverishing himself to see him well accounted for, on his half-pay. I have sent what I can, but Jopson has made it clear he will not accept charity.”

James’ amusement has fallen away entirely and he looks stricken. 

“Surely all the men would see him -”

“He will not accept it. I had thought -”

“What?”

Francis sighs. “I’d half a mind to taking him into service. If I were to be knighted, a gentleman should need a manservant of some kind. Christ knows I’d have told me to shove it up my arse, in his position. It was a foolish idea to begin with; I’ve not the money to pay him the wage he deserves, in any regard.”

James says nothing for a long moment, his mouth twisting unhappily. 

“Forgive me for enquiring, Francis, but how will you fare, without standing pay, if you mean your promise to Berkeley and are determined to retire?”

Francis considers Fanny and Eliza and sighs heavily. He begins to walk again, because he has always disliked to speak of money. 

“I’ll fare well enough. I’ll have my pension, and there’s a sum I’ve squirrelled away over the years, don’t you worry about that. I’ll not end my days in a pauper’s grave.”

“For myself, I find I have rather more money than I know what to do with,” James confesses, sounding painfully ashamed. “I have a generous inheritance from my aunt and uncle, safeguarded for me by Will in my absence. I confess, I do not know what I should spend it on. Rich food revolts me; to clothe myself in modern fashions no longer brings me the pleasure it once did. I believe without a good, sturdy gansey between myself and the English weather, I shall never feel warm again.”

Francis recalls the honey-sweet golden light spilling across his bed in Little’s cottage, and the luxurious feeling of burrowing beneath the weight of the blankets. 

“I think I shall intend to leave London,” he says, apropos of nothing, having reached the decision in the space of the thought passing across his brain from one side to the other. “In search of pleasanter climes and more healthful air than the miasma from the river and these damned noxious fogs.”

A haze of mist has begun to hover above the canal, almost obscuring two pelicans which stand preening their feathers with their oversized bills at the water’s edge. Francis halts, realising that James has stopped in his tracks. 

“To Ireland?” James demands.

Francis snorts. 

“Good luck to the man who looks to find warmer climes, there. No,” he continues, shaking his head. “Ireland is convulsed. I’ll not bear witness to this nation’s lack of care, nor become a burden on my sisters.”

“Then, where?”

“I’ve no notion,” Francis lies, thinking of Little in his shabby country clothes, and the quiet smile upon his face in contemplation of his scheme to work the land. “Perhaps I’ll make for the Sandwich Islands, finally. See what we were deprived of.”

James’ expression eases at the humour in Francis’ tone and he falls into step beside him once more. 

“I long to be free of London,” he confesses, moments later, as though admitting guilt for a crime. “That I should tire of her… I am a stranger to myself, these days, Francis.”

“What of the Brighton cure?”

James grimaces. 

“Much polluted by the quality of one’s relations’ friends. Would you believe I find myself nostalgic for canvas and shingle?”

Francis thinks of the close, rotten smell of James’ breath, his face no more than a matter of inches from Francis’ own. He thinks of the weak grip of a be-mittened hand, and the feeling of being of one mind, indivisible, and the desperate terror that James would be taken from him, and that the loss of him would finally be the thing to make Francis lay down upon the ice and never get up again. 

“No,” he says, quietly, “I would not.”

James pauses once more, his eyes on Francis’ face. 

“Would you - would you care to accompany me to my rooms, Francis? I thought to talk further, but there is the fog rolling from the river -”

Francis recalls James’ embarrassment at his proposition in the library at Blackheath and is careful to temper his expectations accordingly. He inclines his head and allows James to lead the way to Whitehall in search of a cab.

Chapter Text

Francis is familiar with the reward of return from an expedition: namely, half-pay and no prospect of a knighthood. James Fitzjames, for all his shined buttons and macassared hair and fine turns at parties, lives in a tired, shabby set of rooms in Chelsea. He has done his best to furnish them tastefully. There are touches, here and there, which speak to a homing instinct Francis has never possessed. A printed silk thrown over chair; a chinoiserie screen which must have cost nearly an entire month’s pay. Once, Francis would have sneered at such affectations and diagnosed unchecked profligacy; now, it softens something in him to think of James bringing these small touches of beauty into this drab, dismal cave of his, as though creating for himself a world which treats him better and more comfortably than the Navy ought to allow. 

“I did not speak entirely in jest, though it was in poor taste,” James says, folding himself into the silk-adorned armchair, “when I spoke of my nostalgia for that Godforsaken tent.”

Francis is slumped in the chair at the other side of the fireplace. James has made tea, and they have each eaten a stale digestive biscuit, found by James after searching in a number of tins and offered with a whiff of embarrassment, which Francis had found deeply endearing.

“You can’t be serious.” 

“There was an honesty, there,” James says with a shrug. He holds a hand briefly over his eyes; Francis knows it for a melodramatic gesture, but fears it masks real exhaustion. “What virtue is there, here, in the social circuit and the gala dinner?”

“Don’t tell me you’re yearning for a life of honest labour?” Francis murmurs, affecting amusement, watching James’ eyes describe the shape of the mantelpiece as though he were peering through the fog that curls along the window panes.

“Never fear, Francis, I’m not about to cast off these trappings of rank and run away to become a farmhand,” James replies, with a bitter smile. “Doubt I’ve the mettle, anymore.”

“Oh, bollocks -”

“I am old before my time,” James insists, with a queer, wry twist to his mouth. “I would be a wizened Cincinnatus, hobbling about the field. Of little use to anybody, I should think.”

“James,” Francis says, frowning. He leans forward, intending to capture James’ hand between his own. It is all he can think to do, and he must do something, for this black mood of James’ cannot be borne. 

“Enough of this,” James says, shifting so that Francis’ hand hovers in the air between them. “I fear this mournfulness will see both of us throwing ourselves out of the window before supper.”

He gets to his feet and begins fitfully to make up the fire; there is kindling set there already and a small supply of coal in a scuttle beside the grate. Then, Francis watches, appalled, as James judders to a halt and stands, frozen, a hand pressed tightly to his open mouth. 

“James?”

“How I loathe myself, sometimes, Francis,” he murmurs, his voice like the cracking of the pack as Terror nosed her way along a lead. He gazes at Francis desperately, as though expecting him to agree. Met only with Francis’ bewilderment, he turns away, grasping at the mantelpiece as though to steady himself against a hurricane. “I am sorry. My apologies, Francis. I’d not make myself the albatross around your neck.”

“Why should you believe you have?” Francis says, in disbelief. “This is some brown study, indeed, if you’ve worked yourself up into an albatross.”

James gives a watery laugh and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. He attempts a smile. There is heat curling in Francis’ belly as he watches James regard him sadly, for he is silhouetted gloriously against the oil lamp on the table behind him, and he makes a beautiful, melancholic tableau. He cannot hope - but he does not think he has imagined James’ intentions, in bringing him here. They are both of them perhaps brave enough, now, to put action to the feelings -

“I have been meaning to tell you,” James says, interrupting Francis’ sordid line of thought. “With all our talk of pensions and retirement. I had been considering it, in any case, but our conversation has me resolved: that is to say, I do mean to seek another command.”

All thoughts of James’ possible intentions fly quite out of Francis’ head, and he gapes at him, aghast. 

“Of a ship?”

James’ mouth thins in irritation.

“No, Francis, of a hobby horse. Yes, of course a ship.”

“And you think Berkeley will have you, do you, after your antics of the last months?”

James laughs again, a horrid, rattling thing which makes Francis want to seize him by the shoulders and shake him. 

“I have made the pair of us heroes, Francis; he had rather have me serving within the Admiralty than whipping up public opinion without.”

For long moments, Francis finds himself entirely incapable of speech. He rises from the armchair and makes to bear down on James to remonstrate with him, before thinking better of it and veering off course to stalk the worn patch of carpet between their armchairs.

“What in the hell happened to talk of politics?” he asks, pacing in agitation.

“Rot,” James replies, his face hidden. “Utter drivel. The ravings of a lunatic.”

“If this is down to that fucking lickfinger Carlyle -“

“It is not a matter relating to anyone other than myself,” James says, calmly. “What am I without the sea, Francis?” 

“What are you -?” Francis can scarcely believe his ears. “Well, if you haven’t the mettle for farming, I’d wonder you’ve the strength to take on a command. Good Christ, after all this, I’m to lose you to your own damned pride!”

"Francis,” James says, frowning, shaking his head, as though Francis is deviating from his anticipated script.

“Ross stopped, after Antarctica,” Francis says. “And I ought to have done. You spoke of wreckage; well, see what the Discovery Service has made of Francis Crozier: I’ve hands that shake so badly it’s an effort to piss straight, and a mind that wanders so incessantly it’s a wonder I can tell whether I’m awake or dreaming.”

James flinches from the trembling hands Francis has flung towards him as evidence of his decrepitude. 

“Francis, if you would listen to reason, you would see -”

“What?” Francis demands, outraged. “That you’ve survived the arrows, so you’ll spit in the emperor’s face and see if he won’t beat you to death, instead?”

James winces. 

“Even I would balk at calling myself a saint, Francis.”

“‘Even I’…!” Francis echoes with a hollow laugh. “I’d thought the need for this self-effacing charm had long passed between us, James.”

“It was you who accused me of making myself a martyr.”

“It is you who has agreed to it!”

James looks away, colour high on his cheeks. 

“It is a matter of need. I have need of an occupation, and the Admiralty finds itself in need of a commander.”

Francis suffers a horrifying moment of not knowing whether he will crumple to the floor or destroy the ridiculous Chinese screen in his outrage. 

“You might milk cows for a living, or publish the goddamned book the public clamours for, before you took on another expedition,” he reasons, appalled to find himself abject, pleading.

“Damn your eyes, Francis, I am a Captain of Her Majesty’s Navy! Your concern is - it is gratifying, but unnecessary.”

“Then damn necessity! I did not haul you halfway to Halifax across that fucking ice, for you to throw yourself into the jaws of the Discovery Service a second time -“

“I cannot remain here!” James looks abashed when Francis relents immediately, shocked by the vehemence of James’ outburst. “I cannot remain here, in this state, without causing great damage to the both of us.”

“Damage? What state? James, for fuck’s sake, talk sense, man -“

“I know you see it,” James interjects a second time, a note of desperation in his voice which speaks of incipient tears. He has turned his eyes to the ceiling as though in search of divine assistance, and when he lowers them they are glassy and distraught. “You’re too good to rebuke me, and I can only think it’s because you’ve somehow contrived to remain ignorant of the depth of my attachment, despite my clumsy overtures.”

“Overtures?” Francis echoes, in some desperation.

“That fucking letter,” James spits. His expression turns anguished and appalled. “Francis,” he pleads. “You are a harbour in which I might easily sequester myself, for the rest of my days, if you only were to let me. And your letters - our conversations - have made it clear that you would permit it, out of brotherhood and friendly affection, and it would be to the ruin of us both. I have decided it best, therefore, to put myself at a remove, for my own heart’s sake.”

Francis is astonished. 

“Friendly affection,” he repeats, to ensure that he has not misheard. 

“Did you not do the same,” James asks miserably, as though Francis had not spoken, his voice a thin, derelict thing, “in flight from Miss Cracroft, when your heart was broke?”

Francis stares at him. 

“Why ask me to your rooms,” he says dumbly, “if you’re so determined to abjure my company?”

“Because I am weak, Francis. I am flesh and blood, not a saint at all, and I am as prone to temptation as any other man.”

The notion of temptation is, frankly, preposterous. There is nothing of temptation about Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier; true, in his youth, he had possessed a certain measure of stocky good-looks, but whisky and the sea air have left him pock-marked and ruddy. The notion that James, who manages despite his missing teeth and thinned hair to outshine any of the preening coxcombs to be found at an average Admiralty dinner, should actually have been tempted to attempt a seduction is unconscionable. 

“Do you remember, Francis,” James whispers, as though unable to stopper his mouth now it has been opened, its corners pulled into such an expression of misery that Francis can hardly bear to look at him directly, “those last days on the ice? Before the Aivilik came upon us?”

“Remember it?” Francis spits. “Christ, James - ”

“I believed us to be of one mind - of one soul, in my more delirious hours, I think; I realised my folly during that awful voyage home, and since then, when you’ve kept yourself distant from me. I don’t blame you, Francis. You saw nobility in my suffering, and now it is at an end there must be much less about me worthy of admiration -”

“You fucking impossible man,” Francis says, no longer able to keep himself from being dashed to pieces. “I didn’t care for you because you suffered! I loved you through it, and I rejoice that you survived, but if you think me so inconstant that my esteem could be lost because you ceased to need my care, that I would prefer you were still broken - what sort of loathsome animal -”

Here, he must halt himself, because there is exactly that dark joy within him that speaks of a cruelty he would have had himself cast out many years before. Part of him adores James precisely on account of his missing teeth and his thin hair. Have they not mauled one another, in the course of their acquaintance? Have they not ripped from one another the inessentials of their existence? It pleases Francis that James should bear some outward mark of it, as much as it makes him wish to hold James close to his breast to keep him safe from further harm. 

“Tell me you haven’t hid yourself away in Sussex, all this time,” he pleads, in the end, “because of some addle-headed notion of my indifference.”

They regard one another steadily. 

“Francis,” James says, in a tone of cautious hope, having lurched towards him with his new, unsteady gait. 

James’ mouth opens beneath his with a feeling of cresting a breaking wave; there is a precipitous moment in which Francis marvels at himself, at the pair of them, in utter disbelief - his use of quayside doxies has never allowed for kisses, and Sophia had quickly tired of his attempts to make love to her, preferring to pursue a more determined form of gratification. The need surges and roars and threatens to rend he and James into pieces. 

“How can this be?” James demands, as though utterly furious. He shoves Francis bodily in the direction of the mantelpiece and then applies himself assiduously to the knot of Francis’ cravat. “I have been in agony, Francis - you cannot imagine -“

Francis catches his fingers and stills them, holding them to his chest. “Imagination is no part of it; I have wanted -”

James brings their hands to his lips and kisses Francis’ aching knuckles. Francis watches, in a crisis of desire, as James turns their hands and presses his mouth to both of Francis’ palms in turn. 

“Your great tenderness,” James says, his voice tight, “when I lay dying on that fucking shale, is one of the things I do remember with any clarity, before my mind began to wander. All I’ve thought of, for months, is repaying it.” 

“James -”

James shakes his head, smiling crookedly, in that earnest, soft-eyed way of his, in spite of his damp cheeks. “No more pretence, Francis. Let us be honest about what we are to one another. I’ll begin: Francis, dearest Francis; one half of my own soul.” 

Francis swallows the inveterate urge to scoff; to assure James that he must be mistaken, for there is nothing worthy of such devotion to be found, here. He grasps James’ long, clever fingers between his own. He expected - no, expected is too strong, he had never considered such a thing as this to be truly likely. But he had, perhaps, imagined, that should this situation arise, it would necessitate a certain amount of hesitance on his part; that there would be conflict between his better sense and his desire. As it is, he considers the clumsiness of his thick fingers upon James’ fine skin and damns good sense to Hell.

“Dear God, James,” he says, desperately. “I thought you’d cultivated some fear of me; detested me -“ 

James scoops his face between his palms and presses ardent kisses to his ravaged skin. “No, never; Francis, you must believe me, fear was the furthest thing - wonder, perhaps; the greatest admiration -“ 

“Christ,” Francis mutters, unable to help himself from returning the kisses James now presses to his mouth. “Jesus Christ, James.” 

They stagger, crashing clumsily into James’ mirror upon his dressing table and sending it on its end with a clatter; James prevents Francis from breaking off to right it with insistent hands upon his wrists.

“Touch me, Francis,” he pleads, startling Francis with his urgency as he draws Francis’ hands towards him. “Please. I’ve waited -” 

“James,” Francis protests. “Steady, man - I can count your fucking ribs. I’ll not hurt you. I can’t bear it, I can’t - James - ” 

They lurch to a halt in the doorway to James’ bedroom, and James squints at him, breathing heavily. 

“Peace, Francis,” he murmurs, kissing the delicate skin at Francis’ temple, drawing him in against his body. “Peace.” 

Francis draws an unsteady breath and splays his fingers on James’ back. Beneath his fingertips, through layers of cotton and silk, James’ flesh clings sparsely to his bones. 

“I’ll not put bruises on you,” he mutters, shame-faced, as James’ fingers stroke his hair.

“Gently, then,” James says, taking one of Francis’ hands in his own. He appears far more frightened by this turn of events than their previous frenzy, but presses Francis’ fingertips to the buttons of his waistcoat nonetheless. 

It is short work to peel James from his waistcoat, and Francis glories in it, having been granted permission to unwrap him piece by piece. There is a flush high on James’ cheeks that Francis is glad to have put there; his blood sings with it, and it makes him clumsy, slower than he would like to be.

James stills him, fingers upon his where they are curled in the hem of his shirt. “What beauty I once possessed is fled, Francis,” he says, quietly. “I am - I am not what you might be expecting.”

Francis stumbles towards him and seizes those beloved hands to his own mouth. The fingernails have grown back; they are smooth, now, and the pads of James’ fingers are soft and warm beneath his tongue. He presses kisses to them, puts James’ palms to his lips. “As though it were possible for you to be no longer beautiful,” he scoffs. “I expect nothing of you. I demand nothing. The very fact of you -” Francis pauses, overcome. He huffs a breath at his own inarticulacy. “You are here, James. There is no disappointing me.”

James makes a sound, so small Francis might think he had imagined it were it not for the clutch of James’ long fingers in the folds of his shirt and the insistent press of his mouth. 

James was not incorrect, in one respect: there can indeed be little beauty in it. Francis is an old man, made older by the Arctic, and James is thin and his belly protrudes and sags and there is a dullness to his skin which Francis would scrub from him with holystones if he thought it would burnish him again to the shine he once possessed. But James peels away his own clothes, then sets about freeing Francis of his shirt, pressing slender fingers to the shape of him, leaving bruises in the meat of his back, and Francis is afire with a joy so profound he worries he will set James alight at all the places their skin collides. 

Francis guides them towards the bed, laying James down upon it in an ungainly manner. James tugs at him regardless, until they lie together, one atop the other, stacked like the stones of a cairn. He shudders at the heat of James’ breast against his own; it makes tears spring unbidden to the corners of his eyes. 

“You’re a furnace,” he mutters, when James lifts fingertips to collect them, and James nods, smiling in understanding. What it is, Francis thinks, in this moment, to be known. 

What follows dredges every ounce of feeling from Francis and heaves it out into the light, splitting him in two and leaving him open for James’ perusal. He shudders under it, buries his face in James’ side when he cannot bear to be looked upon, and presses kisses into every thin, shining scar, tasting them with his tongue. There are more ways than with words to describe beauty, and Francis finds they come easily to him, with James beneath him, fingers claws in his flesh and mouth gaping and raw against his own. 

“Dear God, Francis,” James gasps, appalled, eyes wide and head pushed into the pillows, when Francis takes him in hand. It is not nearly enough, and Francis allows himself to be pushed and pulled until he is thrusting between James’ thighs, his teeth gentle in the damp skin at James’ neck. James moans like a man possessed when Francis surges against him. There can be little beauty in it, only the carnality of a coupling such as this, between men such as they are, but there is a purity of purpose to it that Francis has not known since he gazed from one horizon to the other and saw nothing but ice in between. 

He finishes with James’ softening prick in his hand, James having spent himself some moments earlier with a shuddering and gasping that had driven Francis wild with need, and spills between James’ thighs, surging against the hot furrow of his arse. 

Some moments later, Francis remembers himself enough to gentle his hold on James’ hip, slipping an arm about his waist, his hand sliding through the evidence of James’ pleasure on his soft belly.

“Well, now we’ve gone and done it,” he says, quietly, meaning it as a joke.

“Do you regret it?” James replies in a low, sated tone.

“I regret that I cannot marry you,” Francis retorts, biting it into the skin at the nape of James’ neck, mouthing aside his limp hair to trace his tongue along the raw lines left by a cheetah’s claws, so recently reopened and healed again. “By Christ, I swear I would, if I were able.”

Such an admission has laid him open, in the past, to such disappointment it hollowed him and left him hopeless. Now, it garners only a small sound of feeling, and then James grasps for his hand and raises it to his lips, his face hidden, and presses kisses to it ardently in lieu of words. Francis is glad; it is better this way. 

Chapter Text

Memo Moira once read the fortune of her favoured grandson. That is to say, she stared into his eyes for long, silent minutes while Francis tried to wriggle free of her bony grasp, and then sat back to chew the stem of her pipe, a satisfied smile splitting her ruinous face. When Francis asked what it was she had seen in his future, she barked an odd laugh and told him nothing, except that the Church was not for him. 

If Francis had ever harboured a suspicion that, on achieving contentment, his night wakings and perplexing, unsettling dreams might cease to trouble him - if ever he had been tempted to subscribe himself to Memo Moira’s philosophy that the mind plays tricks until the soul receives its succour - then waking in the warmth of a bed containing James Fitzjames and finding himself still unable to succumb once more to sleep makes fools of he and Memo Moira, both. 

With a sigh, he drags himself from the bed, taking care to ease his carcass free of the sheets, and stumbles to the toilet stand beside James’ dilapidated armoir. There, he pours water into his hands and uses it to cool his face where the skin of his jaw has been rubbed pink by James’ stubbled cheek pressed against it. 

There is a stirring from the bedclothes and James’ voice, ragged with sleep, mutters, “Fr’ncis?” 

“I’m here,” Francis says softly, feeling unutterably foolish. “Get your sleep.” 

It must provide the reassurance James requires, because he turns his face into the pillows and sinks into slumber without further complaint. Francis’ heart is suddenly a mad, fluttering thing; it beats the way it did when Terror’s rigging had tangled with Erebus’ mainmast, the way it did when the ships plunged together into the trough between the waves. 

There is a long, silk dressing gown hanging from a hook on the back of the bedroom door and Francis takes it, wrapping himself in it so that he might be less self-conscious of his state of undress. Then he wanters to the window, which is a tall casement set low in the wall, so that he can prop himself in James’ armchair and look directly out of it, watching the fog thicken. 

Earlier, with his body curled around James as though if he tucked himself close enough they might become one indivisible creature, Francis had cleaned them both, using a corner of the bedsheet, ignoring James’ wrinkled nose, and then wondered at what point James might be expected to want him to take his leave. 

“Stay, Francis,” James had urged drowsily, after a while, and Francis had buried his nose in the long hair curling over the nape of James’ neck and closed his eyes, too sated and heavy with contentment to think anymore of leaving.

Perhaps he should not have done it. Perhaps he had allowed his inexperience in these matters where one party might wish to invite the other to linger, and the other party might be at liberty to reciprocate, to lead him astray. The problem, he reflects, as he watches the fog obscure distant rooftops, is that he feels he is happy, for the first time in as long as he can bear to remember. 

The visions had shown him death, again; his own death. But it had felt right and peaceful, and he had been lying upon a soft bed, with that golden sunlight bathing his tired bones, and he had heard James’ voice, itself thin with age, saying, “You may sleep, now, Francis. All is right with the world, and you may sleep.” 

Francis tugs the flimsy dressing gown more tightly about himself, rolling his eyes at James’ preferment of beauty over practicality, and settles in to think - truly meditate - on the shape of his future. 

When James wakes, he stretches extravagantly. Francis watches him, drinking greedily of each marble limb extended from the bedcovers. 

“Good afternoon,” he says, as James peers at him blearily, stifling a yawn.

“Francis,” he says, a smile breaking over his face. It is an expression Francis is embarrassed to witness, in its utter lack of artifice.

“I have been meaning to tell you, I still have your letter,” he says, clearing his throat, standing to retrieve it from his coat. His garments are flung haphazardly about the place, and he blushes as he rifles through them, searching for the square of folded paper. 

James watches his progress hungrily, propped on his elbows upon the bed. It is in Francis’ best interest not to pay him direct attention, for the dressing gown will conceal nothing, and he has no desire to endure the humiliation of standing at the foot of James Fitzjames’ bed swathed in silk and sporting a cockstand. 

“I ought to have persuaded you to wear my clothes much the sooner,” James says, his voice warm and low and appreciative. 

Francis’ sporting a cockstand might be a matter entirely outside his own control. He throws James a look over his shoulder and James flings a hand over his face, collapsing to the bed behind him. 

“Forgive me, Francis,” he mutters, sounding mortified. “It is my exhaustion talking; we may forego the pretence of romance, if you wish -“ 

“Hauld your whisht,” mutters Francis. He has located the folded paper within his coat’s pocket and returns with it to the bed, seating himself heavily on the side of it. “It is a pretence I happen to enjoy,” he says, aware that his fair colouring does little to hide his embarrassment. 

For lack of anything else to do, he picks up James’ hand and raises it to his mouth, pressing a fleeting kiss to his knuckles. James watches him, all the world melting in his expression, and Francis is forced to look away. He lets go of James’ hand and taps the paper. 

“Here it is; your letter. I am sorry, James, for neglecting you.” 

“You did nothing that drivel did not deserve. You may thank your stars I did not attempt to write you poetry, or you’d have been beset by doggerel of the worst kind, too.” 

Francis clutches a hand to his breast. 

“No poetry, James?” 

James laughs. 

“Perhaps a little, but I shall never show it to you. I shall have to burn my papers.” 

“What about this crisis of faith of yours? Does it still trouble you?” 

James lies back on the bed and smiles enigmatically at the ceiling. 

“I am resolved that there can be no God in this world, Francis, but that need not mean it is devoid of wonders.” 

Francis is seized by the desire to kiss him, there amongst the pillows. Sophia had never liked to be pawed at, in the aftermath of their encounters. It is an unwelcome thought that steals across his mind for the briefest of moments, but it checks him, and he busies himself with folding the letters once more and placing it into the pocket of the dressing gown. 

“Were you watching me for very long, before I woke?” James enquires, then. He catches Francis’ eye and smiles. “Am I on display?” 

“Hush,” Francis says, abashed. “You can’t blame me for liking to look at you.” 

There is vulnerability written in the twist of James’ lips. As though despite his better intentions, he asks, “Even now?”

“Especially now,” Francis replies softly, “with your many marks of distinction. I’m mostly berating myself for not making it clearer the sooner.” 

There is a sadness in James’ expression that Francis is loathe to have put there; he imagines there is a matching one upon his own face, and that the two of them are sitting there, mirrors of each others’ misery. 

“Come back to bed, Francis,” James implores, in the end.

“You have already had me once; there cannot be much here to sustain your interest.”

“You have had me by the Greek method,” James says conversationally. “There is more to discover of pleasure, and I would be delighted to reveal it to you, were you to be induced to coming back to bed.” 

“I am not some wet-behind-the-ears cabin boy in need of instruction,” Francis grumbles. 

“But it would bring me pleasure to carry it out,” James murmurs. “I had thought such joys lost to me. You know how it can be, even after the antiscorbutics. To find it is not the case...” 

“I’m glad of such a sure sign of your vitality,” Francis says wryly. He lays a hand upon James’ calf beneath the bedclothes, seeking the solidity of him beneath his palm. “I’d thought to leave you here to sleep, but I have been thinking on something, and I would have your opinion, so it’s as well that you’re awake.” 

James sits up, at ease amongst the drapery in his nudity in a way that stirs Francis’ cock again. 

“Consider me intrigued.” 

“It occurs that you may have thought me peacocking, this morning; caught up in the moment, and making sailors’ promises.” 

“I thought no such thing, though I’m gratified to have been the cause of your distraction.” 

“Shameless creature,” Francis mutters gruffly, stifling his smile. “In any case, I’ve been sitting up this while, thinking on the surest means of assuring you of my sincerity.” 

He studies James carefully for a moment; there is a great feeling within him of cresting a wave, knowing he is about to plunge down the other side of it, and that the outcome will be entirely outside his own control.

“Well, Francis?” James murmurs. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

“I’ve been wondering about a house.”

“A house.”

“By Christ, yes; a house. Four walls, a roof, and the requisite number of windows. Will you let me finish? I’ve a notion of a house in the country, and that we might live there, together.”

James regards him steadily for a long moment. 

“Is this what you’ve been thinking on, while I’ve been snoring into my pillow?”

“This, and other things.”

“Save me the other things; the house is more than enough for a first course. Allow me to digest it.” James smiles. “You’ve seen it, have you? In one of your entirely mundane, unremarkable visions.”

Francis balks at visions. James appears greatly amused and not at all taken in. 

“What if I have?”

“Well, then you shall have to tell me about it in greater detail before I’m to commit myself to anything.”

“There’s little enough to tell; it’s only a notion. It would be a modest existence; my pension and a small sum invested in bonds a long time ago. You spoke of having money, and little to do with it. I should like to be able to invite guests. Jopson, in the main; I should like to see him well-provided for. You could write. You could do whatever it took your fancy to do.”

“Francis -”

“Do not answer now,” Francis continues hurriedly. “You should take time to consider. It would mean living apart from London.”

“A fig for London,” declares James. 

“It would mean a great many other things besides, not least saddling yourself with me, in my dotage.”

“Your dotage? Steady on, old man, that’s a distant prospect.”

“James.”

“You would have me by your side, then.”

“I would.”

James lapses into silence as he weighs up Francis’ proposal. Francis endeavours not to press him, and settles for tracing the shape of James’ ankle beneath the bedsheets.

“Francis,” he says, eventually, in that familiar preposterous haughty manner, “if you keep that up, I shall not be able to give you a sensible answer. It’s an entirely horrendous proposition, in any case - for you, I mean, not for me. I do not sleep well, and my memory -”

“You can see how well I sleep, these days, and as for your memory, I’ll soon be as blind as a bat and as old as the hills, and then we shall see whose memory is the worser.”

“Francis.”

Francis’ heart begins to thud sickly against his ribs, familiar, ugly shame pooling there within his chest. “If you’d reject me, James, I’d ask you to spare me my pride and make it swift.”

“I’ve no desire to reject you, except that I must. Where on earth might we go?”

“I haven’t a clue,” says Francis.  “It would be a queer thing, indeed - no doubt, it would attract gossip, wherever we were to settle.”

“Is that your only reservation?” James asks, his eyes intent on Francis’ face. “Scuttlebutt and propriety?”

Francis watches him, his heart pounding. He nods.

“A pinch for gossip, then,” James says decisively. “And hang propriety. You make it sound as though we were planning to open a molly house. What business - what concern - is it of those who cannot know who we are, to judge us?”

Francis smiles. “A fine position, for the darling of fashionable press. Some of us have not the force of public opinion on our side.”

“Let them talk,” James insists. “Let them all fucking talk, and I - and you, and Jopson, and the entire remaining crew of Terror and Erebus, if you wish - shall have our happiness.”

“I must say, you’ve become a great deal coarser, in the time I’ve known you.”

“It is your influence upon me,” James says, entirely unrepentant. “And it is my new resolution, not to say anything, ever again, that I do not mean. Let us retire to the country, Francis. I should like to be no more than I am at this moment, for the rest of my days.”

The afternoon trickles towards evening with James on his knees between Francis’ parted thighs, the dressing gown having been set aside as though James were peeling open a Christmas present, and with Francis afterwards in reciprocation, tears springing at the corners of his eyes at the joy of being overwhelmed by James in this manner; drowned in his taste, his smell, his weight and heat. 

Afterwards, when James has tucked Francis back inside the gown and fashioned a comical toga for himself from the bedsheets, which Francis declares has no right to look so well upon him, James draws him towards the window and asks whether he can make out the distant dome of St Paul’s through the fog. Francis replies that he cannot, and James stands close and points to it, describing its shape in the air with the tip of his finger.

As the light fades, James makes sure to extinguish the lamps so they might not be spied as silhouettes, and returns to stand beside him. He is a long, warm bulwark at Francis’ back, his two elegant hands clasped on Francis’ shoulders. Francis breathes deeply for the joy of it, to feel James so solid and whole, and indisputably alive.

“I’ve no right to such contentment,” he murmurs, despite himself. James’ fingers tighten on his shoulders minutely. “You’ve made a foolish old man undeservedly happy, James.”

“We’ll have less of the old, henceforth, I think,” James says, in a reproving tone. “And I think we can abandon the pretence that your professed foolishness has me taken in, in the slightest.”

Francis’ lips curl upwards. There is a contented purring beneath his breastbone; the cruel, jealous creature has been sated by James’ hands upon his skin.

“I’ll always maintain a nostalgia for what London was to me, once,” James murmurs, his voice a low rumble in Francis’ ear. “But I do not think I shall miss any of it, truly.”

“If you were in earnest about Westminster, you’ll get your fill of it, in any case.”

James makes a pleased hum. “If you were in earnest about our running off to the country together, perhaps I shall take up Gladstone’s invitation to the Reform Club and see about a seat. You will be the man of leisure, and I the dour old radical. I think I should like that.” 

Francis raises a hand to curl around the back of James’ palm, where it lies over his collarbone. “You’ll find me steadfast, James.”

James’ mouth is warm against the scarred, frostbitten stripe above his cheekbone. This is tenderness of a sort Francis is entirely unused to, but in which he thinks he could learn to revel; James can have no idea of the monster he is creating.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” James murmurs. “You sat up all night thinking on our future, conjuring it into being.”

Francis watches the fog shift. “I will tell you, one day,” he says, “about my grandmother. She put me off the priesthood and set me thinking of the Navy. Perhaps she saw all of this, one day, and that is why she set me upon this path. She was a terrifying old hag, for all that.”

“I should like to hear you speak of her,” James says. He kisses Francis’ pitted cheek and lets the matter lie. 

Outside, street lamps are being lit. They flicker to life when the boy raises the taper, ghostly wraith-lights appearing through the mist. 

“Is this an end to the talk of your taking a commission?” Francis asks, though loathe to remind James of their argument. “I’ll beg you not to take it and greatly embarrass the both of us, if I must.”

James draws back to shoot him a rueful glance. “It transpires that my need to absent myself from England has happily resolved itself.” His lips thin ruefully. “It was in desperation I spoke of it; there has not been an offer, and I ought not to have made you think there was. Would you weather it, truly, if I were to seek retirement? If I were to take up a seat in Parliament?”

“Weather it? I’d thank Christ.” Francis clasps James’ hand. “We shall have to invite Ned Little between voyages, you know, if we’re to have Jopson to stay. He has him installed on his uncle’s farm; they are living there, together.”

“Indeed?” James contemplates the scene outside the window, as though configuring this new information into his understanding of the world. “Well, then we should offer them both a room.”

“We would indeed be in suspicion of opening a molly house,” Francis says wryly. 

“A house nearby, then. Little is at Hereford, is he not? Might we not live in Shropshire, then, or even Herefordshire, if you have a particular desire to maintain a friendship?” James’ grasp tightens on Francis’ fingers and he says, his voice low, “Is this madness, Francis? To imagine ourselves to have earned such contentment?”

“We’ll have no talk of madness, if you please,” Francis murmurs. “You frightened me with your talk of Blanky and Fury Beach. Thought you’d finally succumbed to the plumbism.” 

“I thought so, too.” 

“James,” Francis says softly, concerned. 

“Oh, hush.” James murmurs. “I tumbled into love with you in a fog like this, with your hand upon my sleeve. I was already half-convinced of your receiving some form of divine inspiration and quite determined to follow you even unto death. The tender feeling was really the least remarkable aspect of the whole business, and the least lunatic thing I think I could have done.”

The business of dressing is an unwelcome necessity; Francis has barely the time to return to his rooms and dress for the evening engagement, but it has been demonstrated that, despite James’ insistence that he try them on, it will not be possible for him to wear James’ clothes and make himself anything other than a figure of ridicule. James watches him dress, and Francis bathes in it, his face aflame, as he tucks himself into his trousers and buttons his shirt. 

“Here, Francis,” James says, watching him fiddle with the cufflinks. “Allow me.”

Francis extends one wrist and then the other, and James sits up to slip the studs through the buttonholes. When he is finished, he keeps hold of Francis’ hand, cradling it between his own.

For long, quiet moments there is only the sound of their breathing. Then, James looks up at him with a tentative, ironical smile upon his face. 

“Is this what you meant, Francis, when you spoke of marriage? Some notion of yours to make me your wife?”

Francis watches him carefully. 

“It might have been,” he allows, watching the slow, pleased smile unfurl across James’ flushed face. There is an unsteady glee curling within him at the thought of this; at his recognition of the shape of James’ desires. “Would you be a good wife to me, James?”

In answer, James lifts Francis’ rough, frostbitten hand and applies his mouth to the laving of his forefinger, sucking it onto the pad of his tongue. His eyes are dark and intent upon Francis’ face. He envelops the first and then the second knuckle, and then draws Francis’ hand away to turn his attention to the next digit; Francis watches, his heart hammering a fevered tattoo, as James takes him in a second time, eyes steady and intent upon his. 

“Sweet Christ,” Francis mutters, feeling himself flush. James may as well have tied a cord around his prick and tugged on it. “James, have mercy. We’ve a gala to attend.”

“Hang the gala,” James says, removing Francis’ fingers from his mouth, his breath hot on Francis’ damp skin. “I’d rather consummate the rather fine set of vows you’ve made me.”

“A one-sided vow is a proposal. And we know how well they’ve treated me, in the past.”

“Well, then.” James inclines his head and presses his face into Francis’ fingertips. They trace the contours beside James’ mouth, following them to their source. “Francis, I do.” 

“In which sense?”

James smiles against his palm, kissing it. “All of them.”

It has never been apparent to Francis why men should choose to follow him; many of them have not, only bound to his authority by the Articles and the fear of the lash. And yet, here is James; a man with kindness and joie de vivre and honour to spare, and he is affording Francis a gaze of such implicit trust, such devotion, that Francis thinks he could propose that they sell all their possessions and take to the highways as hedge-preachers, and James would fall in beside him and match him on their journey, step for step. 

He sinks onto the mattress, in the hollow made by James’ drawn-up knees, and says, most sincerely, “Perhaps this is madness, after all.”

James’ mouth turns down, his eyes wide and sad and far away. “We have both seen what madness may do to a man, Francis. There is nothing here I can recognise as lunacy; nothing of danger, or fear.”

Francis takes James in his arms, then, the way he had thought to do in the sick tent before the arrival of the Aivilik. He is hot beneath Francis’ palms, though not with the fever-heat that had rolled off him, then. 

James kisses him, hitching his knees further up the bed and coaxing Francis into settling between them.

There are complicated matters to attend to: where they are to live, two bachelors with more to hide than many, considerably more fame than most, and a need for a housekeeper of utmost discretion; what James will do, if a parliamentary seat cannot be procured for him; what is encompassed by the vows they have already made, and what promises there might be to come. Perhaps James Ross ought to have accused Francis of arrogance, rather than incurable romanticism.

“We have a gala to attend,” he insists, against James’ thin lips, whose expressions he has learned to read better than all Terror’s charts of the Arctic currents.

“Very well,” James replies. “You may press me down upon this marriage bed on our return, I suppose.”

A hot, guilty thrill steals over Francis at the notion of it. James, spread out for him here, and the pair of them, as close as man and wife; closer, so close as to never be put asunder. He watches the lovely lines of James’ face shift, and takes a gamble, considering it a calculated risk.

“You may count on it, wife of mine.”

James’ gaze darkens and his mouth falls open. 

“Francis, it was only meant in jest, you needn’t -”

Francis kisses him, slow and promissory. 

“We will speak on it, or not, at your leisure,” he assures him, his voice low and certain. 

There are questions and possibilities spinning in his imagination and not a one of them leave he nor his errant prick unmoved. James is staring at him, his gaze dark and heavy on the shape of Francis’ mouth. 

“I suppose,” James concedes, slowly, “it is not as though we shall lack for time.”