An Officer's Honour

by Vivienne Cox

  The baker was still looking at him in concern, but her husband saved him from further questioning.

  “Don’t tell me you will have Johnson as cook?”

  James groaned theatrically and Mr. Thompson hid a smile, “Oh, do not remind me. Did I tell you of the time he dropped a measure of salt in the rum rations? I thought the crew were going to tie him to the barrel and set it alight.”

  He stayed past what was a reasonable time that night, glad in the company of a friend.

  * * *

  There was a movement in the corner of his eye that in his exhaustion he put down to the drapes blowing in the draft, but then he remembered where he was and that Captain’s quarters did not come with such niceties. He looked up.

  The lack of drapes made it easy to see Alexander Cruise perched on the port ledge, like some great, unwashed gargoyle. It had been some four months since he had slipped from Port Merrian, leaving nothing but a note. He looked well, James observed, under the dirt.

  He opened his mouth, closed it, then decided to accept that Cruise had somehow crept onto a ship of 80 men and move on.

  “Good evening.” he offered, “You do realise there’s a price on your head?”

  Cruise leapt from the ledge and landed sure footed on the deck, took off his hat and offered a grinning bow. James frowned, what was the point in saving the man from his wounds if he was determined to meet the hangman’s noose? He shied away from the thought that he had planned to hand over the pirate himself and went to double check he’d secured the door.

  “It’s good and locked already.” Alexander advised, from where he was investigating the papers on the desk.

  “And how long have you been spying on me?”

  “Not as long as you watched me sleep in Port Merrian, I reckon.” The pirate had the audacity to add a wink.

  “That was- it was- you were dying!” James could feel heat creep into his cheeks and there was little he could do to stop it, to think that he had occasionally found himself lonesome after Cruise’s departure.

  “I brought you a gift.” Alexander continued, flourishing a paper-wrapped shape.

  He handed it over, and James unwrapped it to discover a jug of French brandy. He felt his eyebrows raise - it was a gift worthy of a King along these rum drenched shores.

  “Well? You going to offer me a glass? It’s only gentlemanly, after all.” Alexander had his boots up on his desk and was leaning his best chair back rather alarmingly.

  James swatted at his boots as he went to fetch two tumblers and poured them out a good measure. The smell took him back to the smoking rooms of London: cool climes and a rolling fog that dulled the stink of the streets.

  He sat and toasted Cruise who returned the gesture in silence. They had spoken easily in Port Merrian by the end, talking of ships they had sailed on and good men they had known, but now James was uneasy. This was not a fever-ridden invalid, reliant on his good will and support; this was one of the most dangerous pirates in the Mediterranean and an enemy of the crown.

  “What?” Cruise flashed his golden grin, “No pleasantries for your old friend Alexander then? When I went to all this effort to steal you good brandy, find your ship, and ease your loneliness a little on this fine evening?”

  “We are not friends.”

  Cruise snorted, “Often place gentle hands on the poor fevered skin of your enemies, do you mate?”

  James ignored the question stood to get them more brandy.

  “Show me the scars.” He said as he poured.

  “What? What right do you think you have to me flesh?”

  When James dared to look up Cruise didn’t look horrified, which was something, at least. “You’re correct, I saw to your wounds and now I am entitled to see how they’ve healed.”

  Cruise snorted, “You British, you touch something with your greasy mitts and all of a sudden you’ve raised a flag and named it owned.” But he started to unfasten his waistcoat and shirt, much to James’ relief, as he couldn’t have explained himself any further.

  Cruise turned as he pulled his shirt over his shoulders, dragged his chair closer and straddled it.

  James swallowed the rest of his liquor down before he could make himself look.

  The scars were raised red welts that crossed Alexander’s skin with startling violence, twisting into ragged knots. He ghosted his fingers over one and Alexander shuddered.

  “Are they tight?” He asked softly, not understanding the sudden quiet of the moment but not wishing to break it.

  Alexander shrugged slightly. “A little,” he admitted.

  James put a hand on his shoulder to keep him in place and leant over the desk for his pomade. The smell of cloves filled the air as he rubbed a little between his hands to warm it then began to massage the worst of the damage. Alexander shuddered again, but remained silent whilst James worked the oil first into one scar, then the next, moving gradually down his back until he was just tracing small circles into the warm flesh before him. James had thought that Alexander had not quite gotten over his fever when he’d left Port Merrian, but apparently he was always just a little warmer than one would expect.

  “Have you got anyone who can do this for you?” James asked, still absently tracing the edge of a scar, “The skin will become unyielding otherwise.”

  Alexander huffed softly, “How many folk do you think I know who I’d allow to sit at me back with a pistol at their hip and a dagger in their boot?”

  James froze at the words: his hands still on the half naked man in front of him. What in seven hells did he think he was doing?

  “Is this the part where you have a wee panic?” asked Cruise, calmly.

  James scraped back his chair and stood, horror choking him into silence.

  Cruise shrugged his shirt over his shoulders and turned, hands held out in front him. “How about we have another drink, eh Jamie? That’s top stuff I stole for you and I haven’t given you the story yet.”

  James found himself nodding and bent to his task, pouring them two more sloppy glasses of the brandy and pushing one towards Cruise who had buttoned up and was sitting at a respectable distance again.

  “So, we was out in the dead calm of the North Atlantic, no wind for two days and two nights…”

  James drank and listened to the story, and then drank some more.

  Chapter 5

  He sleepwalked through his duties that week, unable to sleep for twitching at every movement, thinking perhaps that Cruise had returned. He wasn’t sure if it was an idea he hoped for or dreaded.

  What he had been thinking was beyond him, he was an Admiral of the King’s Navy for God’s sake: he did not offer comfort to pirates. He was aware that he had cleaned said pirate’s wounds and held him upright to piss on a number of occasions, but this had been different. It seemed that it didn’t matter where James drew the line in the sand to say, ‘I will do this for this man, but no more’, he fell further into misconduct each time they came into contact. He would do well to remember that easy was the descent into corruption, and that the task and burden lay in retracing one’s steps into the light.

  Captain James Thomas was a man of duty and honour and when he bent his mind to a goal it was done. He did not consciously think of Alexander Cruise again.

  * * *

  James was reading in bed. He was so tired that the letters swam before his eyes. He had been back on shore for nearly a fortnight, but it took him that long to stop jerking awake thinking he had missed the first bells or sure that the reason he could not feel the rocking of the sea was that he had died in his sleep.

  He had not had time to visit the baker beyond the initial welcome home supper they had hosted, where James had nearly fallen asleep in his soup. He was determined to finish this damn book before the next visit, so he could be sure that it was clear how much he appreciated the gift.

  He was on the verge of giving up tonight anyhow, as it was late enough that servants had gone for the evening. He leant over to snuff
out the lamp by his bed, and if it hadn’t been for the dent in the brass handle of the door, he might not have noticed it turning this way and that. James blinked, sure it was a trick of the light, but the door handle moved again and adrenaline had him up, across the room and wrenching it open in a second.

  Alexander Cruise kneeled before him, lockpick in hand.

  The pirate grinned and bounced up from the floor. “Apologies for the lateness, James, I wasn’t sure if you would be getting your beauty sleep or not. Not that you need any, of course.” He flicked his eyes to James’ naked chest as he sauntered into the room.

  James wondered if this were perhaps a hallucination brought on by extreme tiredness.

  “Cruise,” He began, casting around for his damned robe, “You cannot be here.”

  “And yet, here I be.” He flung both his arms out to the side as if to illustrate the point.

  “There are nearly 600 men stationed at Port Merrian, three 60 gunners, a Medway , a Bristol and veritable menagerie of sloops. What could have possibly possessed you to come here?”

  “Well, I’m here for the joy of your clever fingers aren’t I? Got no-one else to ease what ails me and I was in the neighbourhood.” He started to remove his waistcoat, whilst James gaped at him for a full half a minute.

  “Cruise…” The man in question was down to his breeches and boots, the latter of which he was in the process of removing. He caught sight of a gold ring piercing one of Cruise’s brown nipples and shut his mouth with a snap. This was utter madness, and he needed to put a stop to it this instant.

  Alexander obviously had taken his stunned silence as acceptance, and sprawled himself across the middle of James’s bed accordingly. When James didn’t immediately move, he lifted an arm and made a beckoning gesture without moving his head from the pillow.

  He was exhausted. James had managed to not think of the man for months, and now here he was, spread half naked on his own bed. It was so far beyond his experience of the world that he could barely fathom how to do anything else other than what Cruise apparently wanted him to do.

  He shuffled over to his dresser to pick up some fragrant oil, before going back to the bed and settling himself over Alexander.

  The scars were just as ugly as they had been before: knots of roughed hide that took all of James’ strength to knead into something resembling the elasticity of flesh. He worked in a kind of daze, headless of the time and Alexander’s occasional moan or grunt, until he had made his way over each of the deepest scars.

  James swept his hands down the arch of Alexander’s spine, leaning his weight into the dip above his buttocks where his breeches had ridden down a little. He breathed deeply through his nose, aware that he was shaking but unsure when it had started.

  He was also painfully aroused. All Alexander need do was look over his shoulder and he would see the depravity of Captain James Thomas. He did not know how he had gotten himself into this situation, or how to get out of it. He curled forward until his braid slipped over his shoulder to almost touch Alexander’s shoulder and stayed there, still trembling, trying to think above the clamour in his head.

  A warm hand touched his calf, “Lift off Jamie so I can sit up?”

  James obediently slid to the side and Alexander sat up, close enough that he could see the glint of metal and bone in his hair.

  He could not bear to meet Alexander’s gaze, even when Alexander put a hand to his face and tilted his head back so the pirate could press his lips to James’s neck, then again to his shoulder, his throat, his cheek. He murmured as he went - steady Jamie, steady - until James finally felt able to meet his eyes.

  “Ah, there you are.” Alexander offered him a quick grin, then leaned forward slowly until their lips touched. James leant into the contact, moaning a little as Alexander deepened the kiss.

  A distant part of himself knew that this was insanity. For all that a quick tumble between two men was seldom remarked upon on a ship, it was something that had never been even the remotest possibility for himself: he had not allowed it to be.

  James made a deep, rough sound in his throat as Alexander rubbed against his leaking prick. “God, please.” The words tore out of him, and Alexander rewarded him with a filthy kiss, opening his small clothes and spitting on his hand to ease his grip. James wanted to do the same, he wanted to pull moans and cries from Alexander, but he barely had the wherewithal to stay upright. “Alexander, Alexander please,” he begged, hoping to be understood.

  “Alright, Jamie, alright my sweet.” Alexander unbuttoned his own breeches and when he touched James’ cock again, it was with his own in hand, so that they rubbed against each other as they moved. It was like nothing he could have imagined. “Kiss me,” he demanded, and Alexander obeyed.

  He kissed Alexander until he couldn’t anymore, until they were simply sharing breath as they came, one after the other, James barely coherent as Alexander pressed a last kiss to the corner of his mouth.

  “Got a rag, Jamie? I’ll give us a wipe down.”

  James blinked for a second while he registered the words, then got up on shaking legs to wipe himself clean at the bowl at the foot of the bed, bringing a rung through flannel for Alexander to use.

  Alexander then pulled back the covers and got into the bed, leaning over to snuff out the light.

  “You coming in?” He asked, lifting up a corner of James’ second best bedsheets.

  James got in, trying to hold off the feeling of horror that wanted to drag him down. He had just lain with a man: a pirate. This was not a midnight fantasy, easily blamed on too much wine the night before.

  “Shove over a little, Jamie.” Alexander threw an arm over James’ middle, settling in for the night.

  James held a brace of terrible, hateful words behind his teeth: all he could say to drive this man away so that he could delude himself of his worthiness to wear his uniform or to sit in God’s house, so he could return to the man he had thought himself to be, not half an hour before.

  What he said instead was: “That is not my name, you know.”

  “Does it bother you?” Alexander asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.

  James looked away, afraid his thoughts had been too easily read. “No, not nearly enough as it should.”

  Chapter 6

  A man had dropped dead under the mizzenmast at first light and the crew were avoiding the spot as if God himself were going to strike them down. James had little tolerance for superstition at the best of times, but watching the men circle around a main part of the deck for the last eight hours was grinding on his last nerve.

  “Commodore Fitzwilliam,” James said, addressing the man stood three feet away, having a sharp word with a midshipman, “please accompany me to the stern.”

  “Yes, Admiral .”

  Commodore Charles Fitzwilliam was a quiet, fair man, who seemed able to take James’ somewhat mercurial moods in his stride. He was also having an affair with the Quartermaster, a detail that may have slipped James’ notice before but was now uncomfortably clear to him. He had meant to broach the topic of the relations between the two men on more than one occasion, but each time he had thought of Cruise’s hands in his hair as they’d kissed. If the Commodore felt even half of what he had at that moment, James could not deny him it.

  He thought of his Commodore Theodore, who had returned to England and married a second cousin of the Marquess of Hartington and was well on his way to becoming ‘Lord Grove’. Now there was a man who was unlikely to be the cause of an awkward conversation on the appropriateness of sodomising one’s Quartermaster.

  They walked towards the stern of the ship, discussing minor changes to their course, careful to stop on the exact spot the midshipman had died and point out an imaginary flaw in the topsail. He realised with a shock that some part of him had half expected to die on the spot, as if there were any man on the ship who deserved to be judged by God, then surely it was him. Nevertheless, they made it aft with no issue, and a boy ran over th
e spot not a minute later, so that was the end of that at least.

  “Very good, sir,” the Commodore commented.

  James nodded absently. With the weight of duty upon him it was easy to not think of Alexander and the warmth of his skin as he’d slept: he had been gone by morning, and James had rolled into the dip his body had made in the bedding and just lain there for a while.

  But here in the freezing spray of the Atlantic, stood next to a man who surely understood some of the same urges, it was difficult not to dwell.

  “Sir?” Fitzwilliam asked.

  James shook away the thought. “It is nothing, Commodore, please return to your post.”

  Fitzwilliam saluted smartly and made his way back toward the quarterdeck, walking directly under the mizzenmast again as he went, apparently untroubled by the notion of God’s divine wrath.

  * * *

  Alexander appeared in the mirror behind him as James was scraping off the last of the voyage, as if he were stepping from barbarity into civilisation. Or perhaps it was the other way around, he mused as his heart leapt at the sight of the pirate: perhaps it was the savage he was revealing.

  He swallowed in a dry throat. “Did you lock the door?” he asked in lieu of a greeting.

  Alexander showed his teeth in something like a smile, “Perhaps you’d be wanting to finish your shave, Captain?”

  James held out the razor. “You do it,” he said, and bared his throat. Alexander regarded him for a second before taking the razor from him and, with great concentration, sweeping it first with the grain and then against it, revealing swathes of naked skin in its wake.

  “I think I like you like this,” Alexander said after a beat or two of silence.

  “What? At your mercy?” James asked with a forced sneer between strokes of the blade.

  “No: living without fear,” he replied and kissed him.

  It was quick and quiet by necessity, James’ steward and cook being only a floor away. They sat tangled on the floor afterwards, not even having made it far as the bed. James panted into Alexander’s shoulder, aware that he should put some distance between them, their embrace seeming more intimate than the pleasure they had just exchanged.