Captain's Surrender Page 18

  He remembered that it had been Josh’s voice which startled him out of despair during the duel, gave him strength to fight for his honor and win. Where would he find that strength if Josh deserted him? “But we could still be friends?”

  “I don’t know,” Josh said unexpectedly and came back to sit by Peter’s side once more, putting his head in his hands. “What would it mean to be friends, if I was there and you were here? Opichi and Giniw…they’re good people. I wouldn’t mess them about. So I think…I think it’s this or goodbye. I can’t carry on being what I was, not now I know there’s something better.”

  This, too, was an intolerable thought. Peter had grown used to Josh simply being there, as little to be remarked upon, as indispensable and, he had supposed, as inseparable as his own soul. Turning to reassure himself that Josh was in fact still there, he found the younger man with his fingers underneath his wig, clutching at his hair.

  “So, that’s a ‘No, let’s just be friends’ then, sir. Is it?”

  It should be. Peter knew it should be. How would he ever be able to look himself in the eye again, knowing now how the world would condemn his sordid secret, if they knew it? Better not to have a sordid secret. Perhaps among savages such things might happen, but that didn’t make them possible for gentlemen. He must say no.

  Opening his mouth, a white star of panic burst beneath his breastbone at the thought and rose to choke off the word unsaid. He could not—physically—force it out.

  Peter did not like being dictated to by his feelings. Making a tactical retreat, so that he could consider, approach the problem from a different angle, he shook his head to dislodge the obstruction in his throat. “I’m…taken aback, Josh, I need to…”

  Josh took his hands out of his hair, without tearing too much of it out, and looked at him with a puppyish expression that made him feel accused and—in consequence—angry. “You need to get her back before the wind, before you set a course? Fair enough. I know it’s an awful lot to ask, and I want you to think about it. I want you to be sure.”

  He stood up, paused, looked down at Peter’s upturned face with a smile almost comically hopeful, sweeter than any expression Peter had yet seen on his face. “I’ll leave you to contemplate, then. Goodnight, sir.”

  He faded into the dark, his footsteps drawing away. Calmly drawing away, after having shaken Peter’s world to splinters. Damn him.

  Damn him! Peter thought viciously, launching himself out onto paths lined with colored lanterns he didn’t see, through boiling groves of hot, tropical flowers he did not smell. Damn Andrews. This was all his fault. All his fault that Peter’s dream—of a son to follow him in the service, of a daughter whom he would cherish and live to see with a loving family—seemed now as beyond his grasp as the moon. A clean conscience. Was that too much to ask? Other people seemed to achieve it… Other people who had not been exposed, early in their lives, to the temptation, to the contagion of a man of Josh’s sort.

  Maybe that was why the sodomites had to be executed—because if you let them live you ended up…you ended up loving them. And then…and then your life was ruined, and you became a living mockery of everything you stood for, everything you believed in. Maybe, instead of extending the hand of friendship, he should have turned Josh in. He should have…

  Seen him hanged.

  He reached the wall of the gardens, threw open the door and burst through. Breathing hard, aware that—pursued by love—he had fled in panic, he tried to touch that thought again. He should have turned Josh in, seen him hanged? Just when he thought his own mind could not appall him more he thought, And you still should. If it was your duty then, it is no less your duty now.

  The thought had a black plausibility. He knew that he was being given a final opportunity to repent. No—no, not that. For he had already repented, had he not? He had repented, and his life had been returned to him, during the duel. Now he was now being given the chance to prove his new righteousness. If it was wrong to say yes to Josh, then it was also wrong to continue to allow him to live.

  “No,” he said aloud to the night, as he throttled on his own conscience, on the merciless certainty of what he had to do to become the man he thought he had always been. “Oh God. Oh God! Josh!”

  He stood transfixed, spitted by horror and heartbreak. But you had to do what was right or what kind of man were you? Nothing was more important than that. Nothing. The greater the sacrifice, the more he could be sure of the purity of his motives—and this, this would be the ultimate in obedience. It was, surely, required of him. His restored life was proof of that. Restored to do good, to be a good Christian, to be zealous against the enemies of the faith and to…

  But I can’t.

  It was like drowning—the more he thrashed, the more it closed over his head, the harder he found it to breathe or to think. Before he was aware he was moving, he had set off back up the street towards the mansion. He needed advice, impartial, compassionate, worldly-wise advice. Advice he could trust, and Summersgill…

  How could he possibly go to Summersgill with this?

  He stopped. The wall of the gardens was high and gray at his shoulder, on the other side stood featureless houses with fan windows making downturned mouths against the darkness. Farther down the street the looming stone shape that was All Souls Church broke the skyline with an Anglo-Saxon square tower and a weather vane in the shape of a two-masted ketch.

  Need drove him to it. Pushing the door open brought him into a thicker, more private darkness, a smell of frankincense and dust. The whitewashed walls were bare of ornament and the roof invisible in the gloom. His heels rapped sharply on the tiles, making him feel as if he was intruding. There was an inhabited aura about the soaring vault of the room, as though he was trespassing in someone’s bedchamber and, if he was too loud, he would wake them.

  Choosing a pew at random, he sat down. “I can’t,” he said.

  As if the darkness had been a sleeping dragon, he felt it wake and curl around him. Its gaze was heavy. “I can’t,” he said again—trying to make it understand, trying to make God understand that he was too weak, to plead that this cup be taken away from him…

  Except that it hadn’t turned out so well the last time someone prayed that.

  All his life he had tried to do what was expected of him. He had been happy with that, certain of what was right and wrong. Love was unimportant—the law was the law. The sodomites must hang, and he must start with Josh, for personal grief and personal anguish must not be allowed to prevent one from doing what was right.

  At the thought, he imagined it; he imagined the look on Josh’s face when the troops came for him, Peter’s statement in their hands, and the pain made Peter double over, shaking his head, his teeth gritted against the hot, shameful tears that threatened to spill. “I can’t!”

  He could, though. Nothing, physically, prevented him from doing it. Weighty, substantial men in the community would shake his hand and thank him for rooting out corruption in society’s midst, for protecting their children. Josh would be hanged and go to Hell—as though there could be anything worse for him than receiving such an answer. And Peter would be feted as a champion of morality, who did not scruple to spare even his friends in the cause of justice.

  Was that really what God wanted of him? It was…abominable.

  If the darkness was a dragon, it now had a claw on Peter’s back, pressing him down. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t.”

  He was struggling for air, fighting against something he was suddenly not sure he understood, for something that seemed incredibly precious and strong—but under this relentless onslaught he could feel it fracturing, and he was terrified of what would happen next. The very fabric of his life was buckling beneath the weight.

  Then it broke. “I can’t,” he said again, forced beyond the point where he could prevaricate, forced into pure honesty, into decision. “I won’t.”

  It was as though his head had broken the surface, and he co
uld breathe again, after an eternity of suffocation. “If that’s what everyone wants of me, I won’t do it. It’s wrong.”

  Nothing had changed. He was still a small, hunched figure in the gloom, in a church stripped of anything remotely valuable by the local thieves. But everything had changed.

  “I have to do what I think is right, not just what society expects of me,” he told the darkness, realizing that this was what his heart had tried to tell him all along. He might have given it lip service before, but now he understood. “And I cannot believe what I feel for Josh is wrong.” He gravitated towards the huge book chained to the lectern as the world inclined towards its sun, searching for the words that would help him crystallize this understanding into something that could be thought.

  The pages were heavy. He skimmed the black print until he found something he could match to his revelation, and when he had found it, it was so basic, so simple that he could not believe he had not thought of it himself. “Love is of God: and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is love.”

  He stroked the edges of the book, then closed it reverently, looked up at the still flame of the hanging lamp, feeling enveloped in literal revelation, and said, “Thank you.”

  Not like Jesus’s test after all, but like Abraham’s—who thought God wanted him to sacrifice his son and found out at the last moment that God was not like that. God would provide his own sacrifice, and Abraham could take his son home and watch him grow up, just as he so desperately desired.

  But, Peter thought, sitting down on the steps of the pulpit with a smile on his face, Abraham had at least offered. He, on the other hand, had said no. He had found a duty he could not do—he was weak and no saint.

  He was no saint; he was no more righteous than the next man—he had only thought so for a very long time, making him a hypocrite as well as a sinner. It felt undeniably freeing to admit it, like taking off all the gold braid at the end of a long evening and stretching the kinks out of his back. Closing his eyes, he leaned against the curving surround of the lectern, carven eagle feathers digging into his spine.

  He had been a hypocrite even in contemplating his “repentance”, he realized. Standing in judgment on Josh? Who was he trying to fool? He had started the affair between them; he had insisted on it becoming physical. He was the one who could not go to an evening’s dancing without admiring Josh from a distance, without seeking him out and finding excuses to touch him. All this time he had thought himself merely yielding to Josh’s desire, generously giving Josh what he wanted because of course he could have no sodomitical tendencies of his own. He was too good a man for that—too normal, too perfect.

  Appalling, appalling hypocrisy.

  Getting up, he pushed open the door. The night had deepened while he sat thinking, the scent of fireworks and the blazing stars making him think of Bonfire Nights in Britain—parkin held in gloved hands, steaming spiced punch and near-painful bonfire heat on his upturned face. And the inevitable anti-Catholic riot that would follow. It had always been such fun—as long as you were not a Catholic. This was similar. In saying yes to Josh, Peter would remove himself from the mob. He would voluntarily place himself among the victims. The thought held more than a little terror.

  If he said no, he knew he could disappear back into the crowd. The rumors Walker had started would be forgotten, in time. If he said yes, however, if he said yes to loyalty and love, yes to honesty, yes to fidelity, they would not hesitate to destroy him and congratulate themselves on doing it.

  The street led down towards the harbor, a dark tumble of houses and cobbles, and then the sea, stretching out like a great sheet of mercury beneath an elegant curve of moon. He walked down to it, while his revelation seeped into more of his thoughts, making them grow and fit together—like seawater seeping into a dried-out hulk, making her timbers swell and the holes close themselves up.

  The fact was that whether society would forgive him or not, he didn’t have to decide to break his country’s law, to earn himself execution—he had already done that. If a future with Josh was a future that ended in the noose, it was no more than he had already deserved.

  Going down onto the dirty sand of the beach, he walked along the forlorn shape of HMS Dart, her masts unstepped, lying on her side. Her bottom was being scraped and covered with tallow against the attacks of shipworm, but it was still sad to see her, looking so hollow and abandoned. He patted her on the keel and thought about the folly of expecting things—people—to work in ways for which they had not been made. As well expect to sail a ship on dry land as expect Josh to fall in love with a woman. As well make laws to tell a cannon ball to float.

  At the thought, he glanced over to the pier where their too-brief affair had come to its bitter end, and there moonlight struck glimmers on gold braid, the cockade of a hat tipped up to look at him. He could see, in the darkness, only the gold and white sketch of a man, but it was a man he would know at once from the merest glimpse.

  Peter swallowed, feeling suddenly exposed—as though they were the only two standing on the round earth, the only ones in all that sky of stars. He began to walk towards the tall white figure, each footstep another jolt to a stomach that was jumping with nerves.

  Beneath the wooden walk, leaning against one of the pillars, still barely more than shadows and faint lights, stood Captain Andrews, as neat as a new pin, perfectly turned out as for a surprise inspection, but with half circles of shadow beneath his eyes and a faint smell of rum on his breath.

  “Drink, sir?” He offered a stoneware bottle of the stuff. It seemed clear that Josh was expecting a negative answer. Peter was struck by the quiet anguish of Josh’s over-controlled gestures and the sullen pride of his appearance. He was armored with braid, with hundreds of carefully done-up buttons. But Peter had not come to talk to Captain Andrews, and he did not appreciate the defenses.

  “Take the damn wig off, Josh. I’m not here to be sirred—you know that.”

  Josh gave him a hangdog look, but he took off his hat and set it carefully on the nearest boulder, wig inside it. Then he passed both hands through his hair, leaving it standing up in distressed hedgehog spines.

  It hurt to watch. “If you were so sure I’d say no, why did you ask?” Peter asked, torn between anger, pain and guilt.

  “I wanted to know where I stood,” Josh said quietly. “I was offered a future, better than I’d imagined possible, but God forgive me, I didn’t want it with him. I wanted it with you.”

  Above, clouds drew away from the moon. Peter drank a mouthful of rum and watched as Josh’s hair slowly relaxed into tousled curls, bronze in shadow, and in the light that extraordinary, beautiful shade of cinnamon that made Peter want to bury his face in it and feel its softness on his lips.

  No one could say that hair was second best. Nor the downcast eyes now watching the ground—so startlingly dark against such fair skin. The curve of Josh’s cheek was dear to him. It made Josh seem so young and vulnerable, when in truth, he could be such a bastard. But Peter could no more do without the bastard at his side, than he could bring himself to finally give up the whole-hearted, wanton, grateful lover.

  “Suppose I had come to say yes?”

  Josh looked up, fiercely. “And have you?”

  Since he physically could not say no, and no more wanted to go on with this charade of half-hearted nothingness than Josh did, it must follow that he had indeed come to say yes. “I have,” he said—and oh, God, the relief! The sense of a burden dropped, a long, fruitless, wearisome battle finished at last. Victory or defeat—it didn’t matter. It was just over, and he was at peace. “Yes, I have.”

  Beneath the relief, joy stirred. He met the startled, hopeful gaze with a smile that began as a mere twitch of the lips but spread until his cheeks ached and his eyes watered with delight. This was going to be quite a challenge, and challenge had always excited him. Who needed a tame course—a course so charted, so well trodden, when on
e could strike out into the unknown, risking the danger? No boy ever ran away to join the navy because he wanted to be safe.

  “With respect, sir.” Josh leaned forward, his capable, strong hands splayed on the pillar behind Peter, trapping him in the circle of his arms. “I’m not sure I believe you.”

  Behind Josh, Peter could see the sea moving lazily and the moonlight sliding over its swelling curves. The moist air was hot and the pier’s timbers gave out a faint scent of pitch and sunlight. The moment was too sweet for argument, so Peter took hold of Josh’s cravat and dragged him forward by it. Josh’s lips parted in surprise, and Peter covered the gasp with his mouth, and for a moment it was all metaphors: it was coming home, it was the first drink of water after days of pitiless heat and thirst, and it was also taste, heat, the mad, animal frenzy with which they both scrabbled to get closer. Peter’s elbow snarled in wet spider’s web. Josh’s shoe landed on Peter’s toe as he made desperate whining noises at the pressure of Peter’s tongue—pleading, demanding. And Peter’s answering certainty that he too was allowed to want this, to need this, as much as he did.

  Allowed in a moral sense at least. Not allowed in any sense that made it wise to make love in a public place where every courting couple and their mothers might see. “Josh… Oh… Wait… Stop.”

  Josh separated himself briefly from the tight knot of limbs, the possessive triumph in his eyes making a shock of glorious, erotic surrender sing and seethe in Peter’s blood. “Prove it to me?”

  What the hell was he letting himself in for? He wanted to find out at once. “I will,” Peter said eagerly, “but not here. At home. In my own bed.”

  Josh lifted a hand, gently brushed back the errant lock of hair that was always getting in Peter’s eyes, his chest heaving with desire, but his touch tentative, tender. “I can’t believe it.” There was such naked adoration in his gaze that Peter felt almost embarrassed, as if he should say something self-deprecatory to restore the balance, to stop the gods from getting jealous. “I’ve dreamed these things before. I’ve dared believe it before…and then I wake up.”