Bones

by Eli Easton

  “Tuer il. Tuer l’oiseau. Et tuer votre désir à jamais!”

  Kill it. Kill the bird. And kill your desire forever!

  The man holding the cage opened it and brought out the bird. Oh, the bird! It had become as familiar to me as my own face in the glass—exotic and horrible and familiar all in one. It did not try to fly away but sat hunched with its black feet curled around the man’s fingers. Its red eyes were fixed on mine. It opened its beak in a plea but made no sound. It sat there, chest moving with its rapid breath, waiting.

  The knife was in my hand. My palm was slick with sweat against the wooden handle. The man held the bird away from his body, offering it up to my blade. One strike in the breast and it would be done.

  Richard. The name echoed around and around through my skull, as if part of me were panicking, wings beating against the walls of my mind. Richard.

  I saw his eyes sparkling in the sun, his slim, pale chest when we went swimming in the river, his broad mouth laughing. I saw him lying on his side in my bed at school, so young, only fifteen, his eyes staring into mine full of love and hope and fear.

  I saw Elizabeth’s face, young and polite and good, her hand perfectly poised as she sipped a cup of tea in the parlor.

  The knife fell from my hand to the ground. I reached forward and grasped the bird on either side of its wings, lifted it up, and tossed it into the air.

  With a loud caw, it flew away.

  ~9~

  I SENT a boy to frequent the docks in Kingston, ready to send me word the moment the Libertine II was spotted in the bay. It was September 4th when I received the message, a Saturday morning. I left Philip in charge of getting a coach ready, and I rode into town as fast as I could on my horse.

  The ship was real, and it was there, causing my excitement and nerves to soar. Libertine II was painted on her brown sides in a jaunty red and blue. Men, and a few ladies, waited on deck to disembark. I jumped off my horse and tied him to a post. Then I strode toward the ship, my hand shading my eyes as I searched the deck.

  I saw Richard, backlit by the sun. His tall, trim body was dressed formally in a mustard-colored jacket, his brown hair set off with a beige top hat. He spotted me and waved. I faintly heard his cry of “Colin!”

  He looked handsome and so very English, and I swore I could see the relief in the set of his shoulders when he saw me. Poor fellow. If I’d had to go a month or more without knowing if Richard was alive or dead, I’d have done myself physical harm.

  It took ages for them to secure the plank. I stood in a small crowd on the docks and watched him—watched him watching me. A buzzing tension invigorated every part of me. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, only that I wanted to see Richard again more than I wanted anything else in the world.

  At last he was coming down the plank. I surged forward to meet him.

  He wore that heart-stopping grin of his. “By God, Colin, you had me worried. Not sure if I should hug you, hit you, or beg your forgiveness for intruding.”

  “Hug, most definitely.”

  I embraced him like a brother. I held on longer than was our custom, and when we parted, there was an uncertain tension in his mouth that hadn’t been there before.

  “Is it all right that I came, then?” he asked, a bit flustered. “You’re not cross about it?”

  I studied his dear face, which was so familiar to me, and at the same time, entirely new. Because for the first time, I was gazing at him without a self-imposed wall between us, allowing myself to feel.

  “It’s the best possible thing, that you came,” I said, meaning it.

  I was rewarded with a brilliant smile. “Well, then. I suppose you have a great deal to tell me.”

  “I do. But not here.”

  We chatted about mundane things until Philip arrived with the coach—the weather in London, Richard’s voyage, the sugarcane crop. When we were ensconced in the coach, just the two of us, and working our way into the countryside to Crosswinds, he had a hard time keeping my gaze and there was a high color on his cheeks.

  “So, will you tell me what happened? With this Obeah ritual?”

  “Not here,” I said again. I was unable to keep the pleased smile from my mouth.

  He looked bemused. He studied me for a long moment. “You’ve changed.”

  I thought of that night, of Tiyah-Erzulie digging her fingers into the secret graveyard of my belly and pulling out a piece of me. “I have,” I said solemnly.

  Richard frowned but said nothing more.

  WE HAD luncheon when we arrived, and then I took Richard on a tour of Crosswinds. It was a good distraction, and we both needed it. I tried to behave as I always had, but I caught myself looking at him time and again. And every time he tried to bring up the subject of the Obeah ceremony or what had happened to me in Jamaica, I told him, Not here, not yet.

  I was knotted up with twisted strands of apprehension and longing, like the two serpents of a caduceus. I felt unsure if I had the courage to do what I wanted to do, unsure if I’d be welcome or if there was no foundation beneath me. But a few times, I caught Richard looking at me in a way that told me I was not wrong.

  By dinner, Richard was fading, smothering yawns with his linen napkin.

  “You’re exhausted from your journey,” I said, pouring him a second glass of wine.

  “I’ve no reason to be,” he complained. “Not like I could do much aboard the ship.”

  “I know you, Richard. You were worried about me the whole voyage. You hardly slept.”

  He grumbled words like “nonsense” and “sea air” but didn’t entirely deny it. He was blinking wearily by the time we finished our meal, and I took him to his room.

  “Good night, Colin,” he said at his door. “You know, you’ve yet to tell me your story, and if I weren’t about to fall asleep, I’d have it out of you.”

  I leaned against the doorjamb and let my eyes linger on his face. “You’ll know it soon enough.”

  With a final puzzled look, he went into his room.

  I LET him sleep for eight hours, though I was unable to get any rest myself. I paced along the veranda, soothed by a breeze from the sea. It was three in the morning when I entered Richard’s room. I wore a nightshirt and nothing else. I closed the door behind me, put my candle on the table by the bed, and slipped under the covers.

  He stirred, half-sitting up on one elbow and peering at me confusedly in the dim candlelight. “Colin?”

  “I had a nightmare,” I said, echoing his words from long ago.

  “Oh?” He turned onto his side to face me and lay back down on his pillow. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” I said softly. My heart pounded so loudly, he could surely hear it.

  He visibly swallowed and stared at me. The tension formed and curled between us, heavy and dark, like a sleeping beast. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I leaned forward and pressed a dry kiss to his lips, then withdrew.

  His breathing bordered on panicked, and his eyes went wide with disbelief. “Colin?”

  “Do you remember that night you crawled into my bed in Eton and kissed me?” I asked quietly.

  He blushed furiously and looked at my chest rather than my eyes. “I… I….” I’d never seen Richard speechless before. But then, we’d never dared speak of this.

  I put my hand on his arm to reassure him. “I should have kissed you back.”

  He raised his eyes slowly, and I saw everything on his face—fear, desire, hope, longing, uncertainty. He considered my words for a long moment. I could see his brain working, trying to decide what was going on. Richard needed to come to things in his own time. I waited.

  “Why are you saying this now?” he finally whispered.

  I smiled at the way his mind worked. He hadn’t denied it, asking, What do you mean? Or Why are you doing this? Only, Why now? “It’s rather a long story. Do you really want to discuss it right this moment?” I teased him with a cocked eyebrow and a long glance at his lips.

>   A shudder ran through him. “Perhaps later.”

  “Good thinking.”

  We stared at each other a moment longer, and then, squaring his chin in determination, Richard leaned forward and kissed me back. His lips against mine were dry and chaste, still tentative. But I pushed into him, moving myself closer until I was pressed against his sleep-warmed body. He grasped my upper arms, pulling me even closer. At that welcome, I felt a hot rush of lust and a heavy ache of affection in my chest.

  I’m in Richard’s bed. This is happening.

  The feelings were so sharp and so sweet that the moment felt worth anything—any price, any punishment, even my immortal soul. I felt no guilt or shame, only the joy of absolute surrender to something I’d wanted for so long, I might have been born already addicted to him. It felt unbearably, perfectly right.

  I touched my tongue to his lips and sucked lightly. He trembled beneath me and opened his mouth on a sigh.

  I kissed him the way I’d dreamed of doing—wet and deep. He kissed me back desperately.

  “I never thought…,” he said, when I freed his mouth to attend to his neck.

  “Did you imagine it?”

  “Yes. God, yes.”

  Had Richard ever been with another man? He trembled beneath me as if this was new to him, but then, I was trembling too.

  I grasped his wrists and pulled his arms up over his head, lying fully on top of him. I fed on his mouth. I could feel his chest firm and flat against mine, with only our nightshirts between us. His cock was so hard it hurt where it dug into my stomach. I’d never felt anything as arousing as Richard’s body underneath mine, and I was light-headed at the evidence that he wanted me too, that he was in this as fully as I was.

  He broke the kiss and rolled me onto my back. His straight, long hair spilled forward like silk. I couldn’t help but run my fingers into it and hold it back so I could see his eyes. The hazel was only a rim around a pupil, bottomless and black.

  “You can’t give this to me, then take it away,” he said, as if it were being forced from his lips.

  “I won’t. You’re the other half of me.”

  He nodded in agreement, his eyes growing damp with emotion. Then he kissed me hard. We kissed and rolled and rutted, and it was so good, it felt like we could go on forever. But I felt his hands tugging down his own drawers and then lifting my nightshirt, and suddenly I couldn’t bear to not be naked with him. I pulled my nightshirt over my own head and then his. He was a sight in the candlelight, his chest lean but strong, his skin a pale field with a lovely glowing blush.

  “Will you take me?” he asked shakily. His thighs came up around me, and his hips lifted so that my cock slipped over his bullocks and between his cheeks.

  Dear God. “Is that… are you sure?” I wondered if he understood what he was asking, if he had any more experience than I had.

  “I’ve dreamt of it a million times. Please, Colin.”

  I’d experimented a little with myself in the past few weeks, and I knew we needed something to ease the dryness. I had placed a jar in his bedside table earlier for such an eventuality, though I hadn’t really believed it possible. I took a breath and reached for it.

  “Have you done this before?” I asked.

  “No. I never would, not with anyone but you.”

  “I’m glad.”

  We figured it out together, Richard and I, the way we always had done everything. There were smiles and laughter as we did our best to prepare us both, but none of it dulled the sharp lust I felt in every part of my body. Our familiarity and his openness only made me want him more.

  At last he laid flat on his stomach, arms and legs outstretched as luxuriously as a cat. I penetrated him carefully and with many sighs and sounds on both our parts. Entering him was like pushing into a fist, he was so tight. We both teased each other with the glacial pace of my entry—him pushing up as I held still, me pushing forward when he moved away. It was like savoring a favorite dessert, that first seating, and we encouraged each other and whispered over it like the boys we once were.

  But at last I was buried inside him as deeply as I could go, my ballocks, now tightly drawn, pressing against the sweet curve of his arse. I lay on top of him, knitting his fingers with mine and rubbing the top of my feet over the bottom of his, so that every part of us touched. I nuzzled his neck and, when he turned his head, the sides of his beautiful mouth.

  The overwhelming pleasure was like a caught breath, and I could only resist for so long before I had to take the next gasp.

  He wiggled against me as I pulled out several inches and pushed back in.

  “Oh God, Richard,” I groaned as the pleasure nearly unmanned me.

  “Colin! Hurry. Don’t wait!”

  I withdrew and slammed into him. Then there was nothing that could stop our headlong fall, for I was on the cusp already, and from the tension in his body below me and the way he rutted into the mattress, I knew he was too. And so I plunged and withdrew, faster and faster, as Richard moaned without ceasing. Soon I felt him clench tight around me, nearly expelling me from his body as he dug his face into the pillow, gripped my fingers tight, and convulsed. I pushed in deep in a bid to hang on and let myself go, spilling inside him with an intensity that made me cry out.

  We lay still for a long moment, until I felt his chest struggling to rise against my limp weight. I rolled off and onto my back. It was a moment I could never take back, and one I would never wish to erase.

  LYING THERE in bed, I told Richard about Tiyah and the Obeah ceremonies. We cuddled together, and I wove my tale with whispers and small gestures. It was as if we were boys again, telling strange stories in the night. Only this strange tale was true, and it had happened to me.

  He held my hand and listened intently, propped up on one elbow. And when I got to the part about the native boy who had come to me, I didn’t shy away from the truth. Nor did I hold back when I told him of my determination to be rid of the gift and the second ceremony.

  “What a fantastic yarn, Colin,” he said to me when I’d finished. “You didn’t make it up?”

  “Not one word.”

  He studied my face. “Why did you change your mind and let the bird go?”

  I pulled his hand to my chest and placed it over my heart. “I didn’t choose to let the bird live. I chose you.”

  “And Elizabeth?”

  I saw doubt in his eyes, a preemptive withdrawing, as if he expected me to say I’d still marry her and we’d see each other when we could or maybe not at all.

  “I’ve written to her and freed her from her obligation to me as gently as I could. She’ll be terribly upset and probably hate me, but she’ll be happier with someone else in the end. If I’d married her, we both would have lived half a life.”

  He fell into me then, slipping his arms around me and burying his face in my neck. “I’m frightened,” he said. And in his voice, I heard all the things he didn’t say—I want you, I’ve always wanted you, and I choose you too, but what will become of us?

  As for me, I was done being frightened. I remembered the sensation I’d had in my dreams of flying high above the landscape, surrounded by nothing but openness, free.

  Epilogue

  Jamaica, 1880

  “TO PHILIP Garvey and the legislative council!” I raised my glass of wine in a toast.

  “Hear, hear!”

  Beside me, Richard gave Philip a congratulatory pat on the back. Philip’s broad face beamed.

  We’d invited our neighbors to the small celebration, as well as Philip’s family. It was an uncomfortable mix. The natives, dressed in their Sunday best, gathered on one side of the room and the English around the table. Major Pivot was there with a fox stole wrapped around his neck and a flat cap with leaves attached to it on his head. He was on a King Lear obsession lately, and he had fewer good days than bad. I’d told Lester Pivot he was welcome to invite Jena, his housekeeper and paramour, and he’d blustered as if he had no idea why I would su
ggest such a thing. So be it. I have no right to judge what a man hides in his bedroom.

  The capital of Jamaica had moved to Kingston in 1872, and a new legislative council made up of nine islanders had just been formed to advise the British. It was a step toward self-government that was meant to appease the Jamaicans, who were becoming more and more restless with foreign rule. Most of our fellow Englishmen were not happy with the measure. But Richard and I had supported Philip in his bid for the council, and I had hopes that it would be a good move for a peaceful future. Richard and I had made our home in Jamaica, and we had made a success of the plantation. I didn’t want that ever to change.

  Philip and his wife, Sally, would be sorely missed at Crosswinds. They’d protected Richard and I and kept our secrets well. But Tiyah’s daughter, Lily, was going to take Sally’s place, and we had Jax, who’d taken shelter with us a number of years ago and learned his trade under Philip’s tutelage. Jax had good reason to guard the privacy of a pair of bachelors, for he was of the same inclinations himself.

  Major Pivot banged on his glass to get everyone’s attention. Lester shot me an apologetic look, but I shrugged. We had little enough entertainment—Major Pivot was welcome to the floor.

  “When we are born, we cry that we are come, To this great stage of fools,” Major Pivot quoted in his most theatrical voice. “And fools we are, but even fools can stumble upon the right path.”

  I smiled at Richard.

  Major Pivot raised his glass. “To Philip, who deserves this honor. May he be a steadying hand on the wheel. And to the estimable Misters Hastings and Wesley, who have been most excellent neighbors and friends. They’ve shared their success with all of us, and we are most grateful.”

  “Hear, hear!”

  Lester gave me an inscrutable look, though he drank to the toast. Lester suspected, or probably more than suspected, that Richard and I were not merely friends. But he kept his own council. We were not the only pair of English bachelors living in Jamaica. There was something to be said for inhabiting the fringes of the British Empire.