katabasis | [PSL] in this sense the open jaws of wild beasts will appear no less pleasing than their prototypes

[PSL] in this sense the open jaws of wild beasts will appear no less pleasing than their prototypes

The bread that is over-baked so that it cracks and bursts asunder hath not the form desired by the baker; yet none the less it hath a beauty of its own, and is most tempting to the palate. Figs bursting in their ripeness, olives near even unto decay, have yet in their broken ripeness a distinctive beauty.

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He breathes out, a series of short little noises that must be chuckling as he leans his forehead against the line of his forearm. There. That's an acceptable compromise. With his fingers curled at gap in the wood, he can bow forward without much pull or strain on any particular point. Further, leaned low like this he can't see much beyond dirt and short grass, a swatch of Thomas's shirt through the slats. The effect is strange and comfortably intimate, the already remote shape of slaves in the field so obscured that they might as well not exist at all.

"Go on." Being along in a carriage with Miranda Hamilton had felt like putting his hand in the mouth of a lioness - equal parts electric intrigue and terrifying. Had she always been so fully, brilliantly formed?

(It's strange too to be reminded of everything they'd been before him after ten years of nothing but the constant droning awareness of what the three of them had been and had and seen shattered. Just because they'd defined something for him didn't mean they hadn't known the meaning already - 'Que nunca fue desdichado amor que fue conocido,' the shape of Cervantes on the page as clear as if it were laid open there on his knee--)

The potential for sadness hangs ever-present, discussing Miranda, but Thomas will not let her become a wraith above them, nor some too-fragile thing they cannot touch. Easier said than done-- his own heart isn't ready to think of her in past tense when James is here beside him, but there's no telling when he might be, if ever. He has to push himself. For Miranda, it's worth the tender effort.

"It was when we were just becoming aware of each other," he says. "Trying to converse without supervision was impossible, and talking about anything of interest with supervision was this.. awkward nightmare." God, it was so long ago. He feels centuries old. He'd been in the worst fight with his father at the time over whether it was going to be Oxford or Cambridge (as studying in Paris was off the table, much to his consternation). He'd never been moved by a woman before, not really, and Miranda had captured his attention so effortlessly. A confusing, exhilarating time. "I'd made a deeply questionable decision about spending the night somewhere, and it became absolutely vital that I leave in the morning or - I don't know, I was so young then, I suppose I thought I would actually die." Everyone was a passionate mess at that age, even Thomas. Even James, he suspects, regardless of whether or not he'd been born with that serious set to his shoulders. "At just dawn, I was desperately trying to leave this man's summer apartment and not look like I was doing that very thing, and I walk into a courtyard and there's Miss Barlow. I was so panicked at the thought that she'd guess what I was doing I launched into this cheerful tale of long hours studying university proposals and how lovely it was to see her, what a pretty morning, goodness are you alone, would you like a ride back to your parents' estate. She says yes. We get into the carriage, and I'm still panicking, because now I've oversold this endeavour and we're in a carriage together, unchaperoned, before it's even fully light outside.

I sat there staring at her, with her staring at me, and in a single effort as though it was choreographed that way, we each begin to realize that our mutual nervous behavior isn't because we're scandalized at each other, but we're terrified of the same thing being noticed."

Thomas can still see her face so clearly, wide eyes and slightly flushed cheeks, the both of them socially fumbling around each other long before their near-telepathic language of significant looks and shorthand conversations had evolved.

"After this stretch of torturous silence I said, 'I certainly hope yours was a better time than mine was, that was mortifying'. She burst out laughing. It was--" Thomas exhales in a laugh now, remembering, "It was more emotion than I'd seen a lady ever express in my whole life, or at least I'd thought so in the moment, and a large part of me was in love with her just then. I don't know we didn't end up banished from society over it, honestly, we showed up arm in arm cackling like lunatics while her mother was still abed."

Edited 2017-07-21 06:32 (UTC)

The warmth of it bubbles rapidly to the surface and James, equal parts exhausted and the most amused he's ever been, smiles into the crook of his arm. Sure. He can imagine exactly that oppressive, awkward silence of a carriage between them - the palpable relief when it breaks. "She was right," he murmurs. "That is grounds for divorce."

How many time did they speak after before Thomas proposed their marriage? Or had it been a mutual arrangement? Or-- Or-- Or--? What a strange thing to not have the slightest answer to, given all the pieces of them he does know. He lifts his face from his arm, sluggish and pleased despite a hundred things but most especially the part where Miranda isn't here to be appropriately mortified over his husband's indiscretion.

-- (Only she is, somehow. She's in Thomas's laugh and the quirk of his mouth under the swollen skin of his face, his fingers curled at the wooden slat, under Thomas's fingertips, and in the shadow of a nearby tree moving opposite the sun to cast here while they wait for mid-day)--

"Did she tell you how she trapped me?" That can't have been a secret between them. Somehow he thinks he prefers it if it wasn't. He likes the idea of the two of them in concert, arm in arm and lovely.

"Is that what it was?" is so arch and knowing, even without the curve of Thomas's smile visible it's clear that his answer is Yes, immediately, and I know about everything else, too.

The frequency of Thomas's own extramarital affairs had decreased to nearly none by the time his career put him in a position to be given things like the Nassau project, content with Miranda - and too busy with work and too uninspired by other paramours, besides. But that never stopped he and his wife from discussing everything and everyone as they'd always done. It was especially engaging to hear about her liaising with his liaison. A man Thomas found so fascinating from the start, who he began to fall and fall and fall over.

(Someday, when they are not so crippled and Thomas's heart and blood can take the poignancy and stirring of the tales, he'll tell James about Miranda coming home from one of their torrid outings and putting his hands over the marks James left on her skin while she narrated.)

"As I understand it she just wanted to go see interesting artifacts."

Teasing. Where would they be without carriages - where would anyone be, honestly. He's sure half the population of every nation with an upper class has dabbled in their illicit use.

His answer is a low hum and a skeptical eyebrow, his free hand shifting from the dirt to Thomas's fingertips. Something like that.

"When we first came to Nassau--" James begins to say, then stops. The sun is warm here and he's so fond of the look on Thomas is wearing right this instant under the bruising and blood. There must be a breeze blowing through the yard to carry the smell of burning and horseflesh away, thinks some distant part of him. He wets his lips. Clears his throat.

"She bought a horse and cart." He can't remember what she'd sold to do it, just that he'd been incoherently angry at the prospect of her pearls or a silk dress like chum in the water of that place. "And we spent two days driving circles across New Providence because she wanted to see it."

There's more to tell - how before it they had reached a point where they were hardly speaking to each other (or anyone) and how after, it was as if the island of hills and scrub had reminded them both of something - but he doesn't know if that's really the kind story he means it to be or if his voice will hold to tell it in the way that would make it so. So instead James lifts his face to smile crookedly at Thomas, hoping that does the work for him.

He can imagine it clearly, Miranda refusing to stay shuttered away after that sea voyage, needing to understand her new context to try and come to terms with her place in it. He can imagine, too, James's unspoken anxiety over her throwing around evidence of former status in Nassau-- his previous visit having only shown him brutality. Their arrival over a whole new kind.

Thomas hopes it became a peaceful moment between them. He sees James's smile, feels his fingertips against his own, and sighs a humming noise, wishing he could lean closer to kiss him.

(It would probably hurt.)

"I prayed for nothing else but that you'd find some measure of happiness together," he says. "I tried to bargain with God that if it happened, I would believe in Him."

That's-- funny. Every part of it. Surely they'd managed in some fashion to find a (very small) measure of happiness? There had been nights where the danger of Nassau town had shifted so fundamentally under the rein they seemed have both their hands on that it was impossible not to believe in this fiction they had created together and be vibrant for it: that this could be done, that they could be people who lived as they did there then shed it for some breed of peace after it was all finished. There are sharply defined moments of joy in his memory: the house that was built for her, capturing the Walrus and sailing it into port under all her canvas and telling Miranda every feverish detail in the dark--

"Well," he says. "Close enough." Sometimes. For all the obvious reasons.

He withdraws his fingers from between the slats and plants his hand in the dirt to steady himself. "After yesterday, we'll have fewer friends. But," --and he's as grateful for this as he is the fact that they are so isolated here-- "There will be no mistaking them."

"Mmm," says Thomas, and it sounds both like he's a little sad at the lack of confirmation and also like he's graciously choosing to believe he's now a man of faith and gladly so. He trusts in their intuition that so much is communicated in one monosyllabic sound.

Good thing he knows so many Bible verses, Lieutenant McGraw.

And then: business. More silver linings, able to speak more or less freely. His fingers curl against the dirt, this thumbnail worries the edge of a splinter.

"We might be surprised," is after a moment's consideration. "Though I wouldn't look to the men among us for a showing of numbers. It'll be the African slaves who'll turn out more, and will be more reliable anyway." Frank opinions. Most of the white men have rationalized themselves half to death with at least not that comparing and contrasting how they're treated; watching James beaten and Thomas hauled away will unsettle plenty of them for that reason alone.

Fair assessment though it might be, it's the summary scrapping of weeks of work. He knows little to nothing of the Africans - who they look to, who can be trusted, who might feel there could be merit in throwing in with two mad men. He'd known those things about the white convict labor. Suspected he had, anyway. Give him a moment - a collection of seconds - to mourn that trajectory they must apparently abort.

"Then the question becomes how to coordinate an effort between us." He suspects that's entirely the reason they're kept loosely divided from the African slaves to begin with - to allow the white men their modicum of privilege, and to restrict the African slaves from believing they might find any support for an uprising in those men. Divide and conquer is so old a strategy that perhaps it's second nature.

Maybe Thomas's newfound connection with the Lord, god of heaven, will produce some miracle for them and they'll have no reason to muddle through this themselves.

James studies the distance to the field, the shape of the labor being done there. The wheeze of his breathing is irritatingly loud in his own ear as he turns his attention in the other direction - back toward the yard and the blackened husk of the barn, the garden and the main house. Nothing comes immediately to mind from looking at it, though he feels there must be something there. Maybe his brain just don't have the ability to link the pieces. Not today.

"It would have been easier yesterday, as I expect they're going to lock us in at night for a while now, but don't worry about communication."

They don't have as much contact, true, but the girls in the kitchen like Thomas - and by extension, James - and their bonds with their fellows surpass the white prisoners by a hundred miles. What's more, they remember that the black slaves who participated in that escape attempt got out, even while Thomas himself was dragged back, bloodied and tortured.

Nearly a martyr.

"And you're forgetting we don't yet know who started the fire."

That has to be one of the convicts, a house worker or - unlikely but still technically possible - an overseer. Thomas doesn't see this as grounds to scrap anything. Efforts worth their salt are always laden with setbacks. An initial proposal always has a different number of supporters than when it gets its first rebuttal, and different still is the number after debate truly begins. A proposal is amended, edited, postponed, taken on and off schedules for reworking and approval.

They have time. James can barely breathe, for god's sake.

And if they ever did? Depending on the course of the next few weeks, he might be in the mood to thank them personally. Regardless of the blood all over Thomas's shirt and the burn the length of his arm, his own full body ache and...however he must look..., the aftermath of the blaze has afforded them this strange lateral flexibility. In the coming days, he suspects quite a few things will change very rapidly. Some of them must be for the better. Thanks to the fire and everything that had come after, there will be some way to measure who might be trusted (and he already knows who had followed orders when he'd given them). The fact that they have this moment to speak so frankly is a gift all on its own.

Bitterly given and won, maybe, but the point must stand. And that doesn't even begin to touch on--

James suddenly cackles, a hand coming up reflexively to brace at his chest.

"I told Andies to fuck off."

Thomas's reaction is a mixture of-- a lot of things. His newfound piousness immediately challenged with a Goddamnit, James in a rushed exhale. He's laughing a little, but only because James is laughing and he can imagine the kneejerk instinct of a sailor's mouth, so extremely exacerbated by a pirate's, snapping out at an overseer. But he knows how dangerous it is. An extra layer to explain such keenness on extracting pain from him, a slight like that would be worth a strike across the face from anyone but Marshall on an average day.

"He'll be watching you like you threatened his family for weeks," he sighs. Oh, my darling.

"Jacobson is the one who got into it, with me. But he's always been like that with everyone."

Distantly he realizes that naming names in such context is putting a mark of death over this particular man's head. He doesn't so much care.

"Good," he says without thinking, still laughing. He should feel threatened. The whip sharp insult hadn't been calculated in the moment, but he can tell himself there's a benefit to it now. Men like Andies sometimes buckle when they don't have every advantage. What would that look like in the middle of ruining this place?

(Bloody, probably.)

Andies. Jacobson. Oglethorpe. A very small piece of him keeps a quiet running list - so low and instinctive that adding another name to it doesn't give him pause. Instead, he takes a moment to recover his breath then drops his hand to touch Thomas's fingertips again. He doesn't need to ask What did he do to you because it doesn't matter. The specifics wouldn't change the outcome and he's seen how Jacobson lays his hand across anyone he cares to. Maybe Good and the certainty that the ground is shifting (has already shifted) beneath their feet are all that needs to be communicated.

"And Mr Marshall?"

Maybe the sun is getting to him or he's just too tired to think in a straight line or the luxury of sitting in the middle of the day is making him uncharacteristically benevolent, but-- But something.

There is a fraying thread in Thomas that wants to tell him Please don't instigate that, I can't take watching you be hurt like this again, but he's so tired and the thought of James feeling like Thomas is reprimanding him makes it so he doesn't have the heart. Fleetingly he considers Miranda, but even her memory seems to agree to just let it go for now.

He huffs something wordless and presses their fingertips together. He must admit, there's something therapeutic in the dark humor of it. He hasn't had anyone to share so much as a knowing look with in so long that he'd forgotten.

"I think," he says after consideration, "that if I told him this whole place is wrong he'd say he agrees with me, but that agreement doesn't matter, as neither he nor any of us have anywhere else to go. I don't know the extent of what I can buy with that, because I've never pressed. If I'm very lucky I think I could tell him to walk away and he'd listen, but there are so many other things to account for that could influence him."

Is that actually what James was asking, he wonders.

Belatedly, "He tried to keep me away from it. He tried to release you when it was over."

But he still put Thomas in chains, he still dragged him back to this, he's still an overseer. Thomas is cognizant of the layers of complicated, here, but occasionally he has understanding without empathy. The product of a decade of abuse.

Thomas answers and he doesn't honestly know if it really meets the question he'd been asking - isn't sure he really knew what he'd wanted to know to begin with. 'And Mr Marshall', what exactly? Maybe he'd just been asking what Thomas would prefer done should they stumble across the man at the right time on the right day.

Mm - a low hum, as clear an indication that he's listened and heard everything without battering himself over the process of saying as much. Marshall had brought him here as well, after all. Where would he be if not for that? He genuinely doesn't know. Shucking more corn and plucking further chickens? What menial tasks had they put to Benjamin? He can't quite remember.

Fuck. He's exhausted.

For a moment the notion of sleep is overwhelming, but this is precious time. It would be a waste to not use it, and-- something crawls out of the back of his mind then, shifting forward from dream to reality. A shadow passes over his face then, and he frowns as he searches his memory to place what little he recalls of... "Someone from the main house brought me water in the night. I'll find out who it was."

"I'm glad they did that," is quiet. Whomever it was. From the main house means chances are, it was a woman. Who sneaked out under cover of darkness and was - apparently - not caught. Probably those connections are making sense to James, too, and Thomas worries a little about voices floating through the still plantation, putting someone else in danger. Or winding either of them up with notions that could prove to be imaginary. It could be a man, hell, a child, it could be different people, James in the aftermath of that pain could be mistaken.

Thomas wishes he could pull James into him, hold his head in his lap and gently touch what undamaged skin there is, read to him in the shade. Nonsense dreams. At least they can almost lace their fingers together.

"I'll talk about anything you like until mid-day," he says, "but you need to spare yourself or you're not going to get any better."

(So I'll twist an ankle or eat something raw the next time we need to talk, he'd said. Good lord.)

Thomas recites bits of poetry, sweet and sometimes erotic-leaning things just because they're alone and he can't get away with it in front of the others, until one of them alights his memory on something else-- tells a story, then, of he and Miranda staying at his father's country estate by themselves, almost burning down a four hundred year old gazebo and all the ancient prize roses around it in an attempt to sit outside and read by candlelight. Topical, almost.

Almost too soon, his eyes catch on the sight of three men approaching. Thomas sighs. "Here we are," he murmurs.

There's a protest on his lips when Thomas shifts the track of the conversation - if they've been given this time, they should use it for all the things they can't breathe a word of otherwise -, but when he tried to think of what more he could say on the matter, his mind only supplies him with further possibilities and nothing solid to stand on. Maybe it's possible that they've reached the point where nothing more can be done from where Thomas is trapped in a box and he's stuck sitting in the dirt.

So he contents himself to listen, lulled by the heat of the day and the shape of the other man's voice. Some of the lines are ones he knows, and others are familiar only from the sensation - not so different from the pleasure of Thomas telling a story he recognizes the dimensions of by merit of knowing the two people in it.

Then the rise of fall of Thomas's timbre shifts. James lifts his face, blinking, and turns to squint in the direct of footsteps closing in on them.

"What do you know. Like stink on a carcass," says one of the men, barking out a laugh even as he moves straight to the lock on the box, keys jangling.

Andies looks at them from the shadow of his wide brim hat as Flint catches his hand at the slats of the box. It takes some time to get his feet back under himself, longer to haul himself upright hand over hand.

They have to pace themselves. Patience is the hardest virtue, endurance the hardest strength. Thomas knows this by now - he's sat so still for so long without knowing why.

(And now he does.)

Marshall isn't with these three. Too convenient, probably. He gets his knees under him and assumes (correctly) that he's not going to be shown the courtesy of having the shackles removed before he's out, and half-allows himself to be dragged bodily from the cage and dumped on the ground before being hauled to his feet. His vision spots, blood pressure not liking the way he'd been folded up for so long and forced to stand so quickly, but it's a small thing. Thomas stands steadily, and says nothing while the iron around his wrists is unlocked and pulled away.

"Get cleaned up, then the boss wants a word," they're informed by a man who is not Andies. Nunes, Thomas thinks. A new hire. Some cross chatter as feeling returns to Thomas's hands-- "So's you can understand your place in the world, I reckon" "Like any of this has a point" "Honestly, I hope you put up a fuss, hanging's a good show."

Thomas remains silen. He flexes his hands at his sides and doesn't look at anything in particular. They're herded to the appropriate room, uncharacteristically and perhaps pointedly free of razors, and they are observed for the duration of their stay. Despite this, Thomas is almost wholly preoccupied with making sure James is as all right as he's going to get, only bothering with the cuts on his wrists when reminded of their existence. "I've had marks there forever," is dismissive, though he consents to tending to himself eventually. There's nothing to be done about the bruising on his face.

They both look terrible.

If they were being escorted by someone gentler, or someone James hadn't told to fuck off, Thomas might say something-- who knows what. It's a lost cause, for now, being marched up to the main house. He watches others from the corner of his eyes go about their work as they pass, seeing who watches them, who looks away, who is studiously avoiding the strange procession.

Walking from breakfast down to the cages hadn't seemed like a trial - too disoriented or made vague from the fear of who he might not meet when he finally found Thomas again to recognize all the aches -, but making the rounds to wash and change into a fresh shirt is. Whatever Oglethorpe wants of them, it can't be to butcher them in his parlor (too keen on seeming civilized and too ready to put on some piece of theater for the yard) so all that's left is to worry over Thomas's arm and catalogue every trembling muscle.

It's a good thing Thomas is watching; being upright for so long has him feeling a little insensible. The path to the main house crawls at the edges, marked by a strange assortment of detail as he tells himself to look while they're led up through one of the side entrances: the paint beginning to peel in the doorway from the summer heat and humidity, small blue birds hidden in the patterns of wallpaper, the carpet runner folded over itself in the hall and a dark skinned girl on her knees watching them intently under the pretense of scrubbing the floor.

When they reach the study it's just James who gets pushed through the french doors. "Not you," Nunes is happy to tell Thomas. "The Lord can be trusted not to make trouble. Get back to work," Andies tells the other overseer, then steps into the study after James and clicks the doors shut behind them.

Oglethorpe is writing a letter. "Please, take a seat Mr Flint," he says without looking up.

There's a ladder backed chair in front of the desk, distinctly mismatched with the other furniture. Either Oglethorpe doesn't care for the potential of James oozing on his own chairs or the slats of the chair back are meant to make him exactly as comfortable as he should be. But a seat's a seat. James takes it.

For some time the room is still, quiet save for the scratch of the quill and the persistent ticking of a clock behind him near the door. He can feel Andies lurking, a shadow across the desk which is scattered with account ledgers - a metal figure in the shape of a dog weighing down a series of loose papers under its hind paws - a portrait of a child--

Eventually Oglethorpe sets the letter aside. "Forgive me. I've been meaning to write the new Governor of the Carolinas for some time."

The look on Thomas's face as the door close between he and James is one that's lucky to go unobserved; an unnerving calm that begs an answer to what kind of trouble anyone is talking about. In the hallway, he steps away with the intent of finding something to busy himself with, knowing the house well enough after five years. Nunes takes his leave, and only then does Thomas look down at the girl scrubbing the floor.

Inside:

Forgive me, for politeness's sake and an unknown party's benefit - not Andies, who is inherently violent enough to find this charade dull, and certainly not Flint. Who, this pointed pause seems to imply, knows a thing or two about a new Governor of the Carolinas.

Oglethorpe is just that sort of man, apparently. Still wearing his wig in the oppressive Carolina humidity. "It is important to me," he begins, after not enough time for anyone to actually accept or reject his good manners, "that you understand I was being honest with Thomas yesterday. Of course, all in true need of sanctuary are welcome, and you are a man who is in truest need of repaying the world for his place in it, but if those men had come to me looking for anyone else I would have rejected them. It does you no good to labor under any delusion that I capitulated to the demands of pirates out of fear."

Would it be easier if this man were more sadistic? If he sat across from Flint and was smirking, instead of gravely earnest?

"I have done you both a kindness permitting this period of adjustment, granting you allowances where appropriate - even when inappropriate." A sigh. "It's my fault, in part. Allowing the two of you such prolonged contact and to house together overnight is kind, the Christian thing to do, but also morally disturbed. You've put me in a position to think on that."

There's no such thing as being comfortable in the chair, just as there's not really anything he could possibly communicate to the man behind the desk that will change whatever he's already prepared himself to say. The threat of the Carolinas is an empty one - he has been paid what Flint assumes is an exorbitant fee to keep him from becoming a spectacle and there would be no avoiding it if he were delivered to the hangman there. It must be meant as a reminder of Oglethorpe's generosity along with everything that comes after.

So he says nothing. Never mind that the effort is exhausting on top of useless - that in the drama of this, his cue hasn't arrive yet; James can't imagine a version of events where Oglethorpe could conceivably keep him and Thomas separated for long. Nothing else had managed it.

In the hallway, the girl on her knees continues to scrub the floor. The bristles of the brush against the wood fill what might otherwise be an oppressive kind of half quiet, underlined only by the occasional indistinguishable murmur of voices behind the french doors. Instead the back and forth of the brush overlaps any trace of talking entirely, a rhythmic kind of camouflage interrupted only by the passing of Nunes and the girl dunking the brush back into the bucket of soapy water. She slaps it back down to the floorboards with a wet thwack.

"Your face looks awful," she tells him. "Not that I mean anything by it."

"Thomas Hamilton is an important milestone for the work here," Oglethorpe is explaining. "The way he was when he arrived - well." He smiles at Flint, wry and paternal, the smallest spark of something honestly regretful. "I'm sure you've heard all about it. And on top of all that, complete silence for months. I admit even my own faith wavered, waiting for him to die. But he prevailed somehow."

(A faint crick as Thomas kneels down, knees protesting in a verse he doesn't bother listening to, finding another brush in the basin. He knows better than to stand here like an idiot waiting for someone to tell him to do something. Look busy, speak quietly.

He hasn't told James anything about the hospital, or what it was like arriving at the plantation. There are things he wants to leave buried, things he wants to forget. What if James looks at him and sees-- that.

"You can mean something by it." Swish, scrape. "I know better than to resist them, but here I am.")

Tick, tick.

"He prevailed over being spirited away by anarchists, too, what an ordeal that was. Thank the Lord God that Governor Ashe was still with us, else I don't know he'd have been spared the noose." This said with faint irritation. "All that and Thomas has settled into a model product of this great experiment. I'm sure you don't see it that way, but you will, in time. You'll understand what he understands: that this is how you should behave. There is peace in this work. You are finding yourselves here."

Oglethorpe believes what he's saying, but there's a strong performative element in it, too. He observes Flint closely, seeing just how much of this he's buying, if anything. Option B waiting in the wings if he detects any pushback.

Something in his face closes. He can feel it happening, involuntary and as impossible to stop as the roaring in his ears. The sound of it narrows the shape of everything else Oglethorpe is saying; James finds himself staring at the letter set aside - the upside down shape of the words like if he stares at them long enough, the urge to say something insane will evaporate.

Tick, tick.

"Governor Ash knew Thomas was here?"

(She moves the brush in long vertical stripes and gives him a skeptical look. "Here you are," she agrees. "Looking like that." As far as role models go, he's not a very good one.

For a moment it seems like that's all she has to say about the matter. But it can't be - if she was trying to avoid conversation, there are easier ways to do it than staring directly at him. Instead she pauses, finding her brush and knocking it against the edge to shake out the excess water and soap.

Tang, tang, tang, goes the wood against the bucket's side. It's loud enough to be annoying, loud enough to make a few words of conversation easy to miss.

"How do you feel though?")

He can taste something bitter unwinding in his mouth when he asks it - a latent, vicious heat beginning to set its fingers against his ribs. It's useless and it should be exhausting to be angry over the prospect. Ashe is dead, having already paid for what James understood to be true (killing Thomas and Miranda and everything he'd ever wanted from the world--). Shouldn't this be less reprehensible? To know that Peter was just keeping secrets like the coward he was?

But instead he can feel himself sharpening. Anger might be dangerous here, but it has always been dangerous everywhere. He can't help himself.

Oglethorpe is earnest about his thoughts on Lord Hamilton - been through so much, uncooperative in so many strange, silent ways, but still finding himself shaped. Properly. Or so his words describe the man. His words that are still happening - incidentally, apparently - when Flint asks his question.

His mouth is open, mid-thought, and it closes with distinct irritation at realizing he's being tuned out.

"Governor Ashe is who made arrangements for Thomas to come to us," he says, distinct impatience threaded beneath the pointed words, like speaking to a child. Like Captain Flint is many steps behind. Like perhaps, given it was his own friends who delivered him to the plantation, it should be obvious who sent his lover.

(Thomas makes a noise of agreement, low. Yes, looking like this. On his hands and knees he scrubs the wooden floor, tepid water licking at his worn fingers, occasionally touching the wounds; he forgets to notice the discomfort. Someday, he will find it such a struggle to reconcile this habit - what closes his mind to recognizing pain will close his mind to recognizing the opposite, at least for a time. Relearning how to feel tenderness fully will force him to feel brutality, too.

He gives her space to continue, or not. People change their minds all the time.

How do you feel?

Thomas says nothing, for a time the only sound in the hall the off-rhythm swish of bristles. He realizes he's smiling at the floorboards. Faintly, but he is. When he sits up to dunk the brush in the pail, he lets his weight rest on his heels for a moment and looks at her properly. Smiles properly, too. Gentle sunshine in an unwitting counterpoint to the gathering stormclouds on the other side of a set of doors.

"Human.")

There are many clocks in this house. Spread far enough apart that the noises do not overlap in the still of night, causing no one undue irritation. Whatever one reaches this room is faint, a lullaby of time slipping past. Years, slipping past.

"The late governor was a selfless man. As I understand it, the Earl of Ashbourne was quite opposed and required convincing of the merits of a false demise." Opposed to a real one, the abrupt end of the sentence implies. Or not. Oglethorpe surely knows a dramatic tale for each of his wards, but it would be impossible for him to be privy to every fine detail - particularly of lords so far above his station.

"Like your own."

(Maybe she doesn't expect that flash of warmth from him - not when he's here on his knees in the hall of the main house with his face all battered and his companion behind closed french doors. Or maybe she's just mulling over some unspoken possibility and the smile on his face and how honest he seems complicates matters. Either way, she pauses. Digests it.

"What about your friend?" Asked with some false lightness.)

Arrangements had been made. In what world was it possible for the Earl of Ashbourne to be convinced of anything he didn't already believe necessary - especially when it came to his son? How close must they have been for Peter to have swayed that man of anything? He can feel his pulse in his throat, pounding in time to the tick of that goddamn clock. James closes his eyes for a moment, finding the study and Oglethorpe behind the desk unbearable. Thunk, thunk, thunk. He lets the sensation swallow him up, a buzzing in his fingertips absorbing the ache in his body and the uncomfortable dig of the chair against his bones.

"And now? Who is paying you to keep him here with both of them dead?" Alfred Hamilton hacked to bloody pieces and Peter Ashe splayed across the stone of the thing he'd traded his friend for. Is there an account in England being slowly funneled here even now by some unwitting accountant? Or a willing one? Or-- "Or is this just charity I should be grateful for?"

("I'd be angry if I were him or you," she says. "Not that I am - angry, I mean." Swish, scrape. "Just don't care to see anyone else in trouble."

Humans do all kinds of nasty things to each other. Even ones that smile so nice.)

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