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[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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Which James knows how to give him, somehow. Thomas worries about the implications of kindness and James rips the stitches out.
Breathing comes incrementally easier.
Words fail him, for a time. He feels slightly dizzy after brushing against panic, but he is anchored. He doesn't wonder or worry about seeming like he's lost his mind, because he has faith that James will sit with him for as long as he needs - or at least, for as long as they have until someone shoos them back to work. But it won't take such a time. He squeezes James's hand and hopes it communicates his gratitude. Honesty is rarely beautiful or comfortable, but it is lifeblood, isn't it.
Miranda robbed him of it. This doesn't surprise him. Miranda could see through anything, no matter how obfuscated or tangled. The smartest person he's ever met, man or woman, before or since. He wishes she could have known how much it means to him to know she's the one who saw it.
At the cost of her life.
"She was your wife, too."
I'm so sorry.
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"She was."
He was her husband. It had been an uneven, irregular partnership - the two of them a house on sand with a cracked foundation where sometimes the only good thing between them was insensible and angry and spitting and the fact that they weren't alone with it. And sometimes they had been happy. Sometimes all the cut ends had set flush together. What would she make of them now?
Stay down, is a voice in his ear, but he's certain it isn't hers. Not in this place. Maybe for whatever comes after (it occurs to him that they haven't gotten that far again, that the last time they spoke about the where instead of the how had been before they'd committed to leave this place only after it's been wrecked).
He's aware of how thick his voice has gone around just those two words and makes an effort to clear his throat. "In any case, I can't imagine Peter Ashe has any further relevance to us."
It's the cruelest thing he can think to say about the man.
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Pain is worth it. Thomas sits forward and kisses him, apple core at their feet between them, bruises protesting. Do you know what it makes us, he doesn't say. Later.
When he sits back, he feels almost back to normal. His other hand covers James's, and they must make such a picture sitting here in the shade, practically curled up together. It's so improbable that they're both still alive, and that they'd have grown in ways that make them so understanding of the other. Always reaching for each other in the dark, even if they didn't know it.
"I think Bettina started the fire."
By the way.
"George McNair's sister."
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Was that her? isn't a question he needs to ask. Instead he goes with, "Did she do something to make you suspect her?" As intent as he'd been on Thomas in the hallway the day before, he'd hardly gotten a look at the woman but maybe he can trace the resemblance between the woman and her brother. The shape sharp chin. A similar color to their hair--
He pauses, hand shifting reflexively between Thomas's. "There was a woman in the kitchen when we broke in. I thought she'd been sleeping there." He'd hardly seen her then either, incandescent with adrenaline and hungry to say a word and see it followed. But there are only so many white women at work here.
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"I don't think she turned them towards you. Andies had no reaction to her in the hall, or me speaking to her."
But there is someone here who'd do anything for her. Such a hypothesis is on weaker legs than his one about Bettina starting the fire, but it does seem plausible that her McNair may have made a preemptive move if he knew about what she'd done, if he'd been thinking about what James was nudging him towards and decided it's safer for her here, if Bettina wants to leave more than her brother does.
If, if.
Quieter, "The women are handled gentler, but it's the same reality." They're all slaves.
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Fuck. He'd been reasonably certain of McNair three nights ago - that if pushed, he might fall in a particular direction. Luckily (debatable) if there's an urge to put his hands to to the man and shake him or worse, it isn't really sustainable given how he's currently one continuous bruise - though he entertains the thought for a few seconds anyway. Then huffs out a breath. Scuffs his thumb and forefinger at his hairline. Weeks before, he'd been convinced of the danger other people might be to them too. Things change. Nothing does. People in a closed environment are predictably infuriating.
"If she did it, she'll be found out eventually." There's some undirected measure of heat in his voice. Things like this have a way of shaking loose in little worlds like this one. Never mind the beating played out in the yard, he can't imagine But who really did start the fire? is really a question those running this place will simply forget if bigger ones don't rise to replace it.
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Something that worries him greatly. It's only in the specific that her motivation remains a mystery; broadly, things must be a certain way. Either George told her of James's encouragement, or Bettina has been listening all on her own.
Or they all have.
Thomas lets out a half-startled laugh.
"Hannah, the girl in the house I was scrubbing the floor with," he begins, looking at the other man, "spoke to me a little. I think we've completely overlooked something. Everyone who works in the house."
The men alongside them, possessed of imaginary notions of betterment and superiority over the women or African slaves, are all so varied and difficult to predict. They have no notion of unity like the black slaves or, indeed, like the women who work indoors or who are too traumatized to do anything but darn socks. They are observed less, permitted more privacy, and they are ubiquitous. Of course they've been listening and aligning themselves as though they're being considered. Why wouldn't they.
Miranda would dump out her tea over his head about now, he suspects.
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Or someone in her position might anyway, given the woman's apparently mute and her interests - if she does indeed have a penchant for arson - clearly lie beyond conversation.
"Yeah. That could work."
Under the watchful eye of Mrs Oglethorpe might not be the ideal environment for full sedition, an opportunity must eventually present itself. There's no such thing as a waterproof ship. Tugging at his beard, he's just drawing a breath to say as much when the bell in the yard clangs out twice. They're apparently at the end of their leisure. James starts to get his feet under himself without thinking, then balks at the habit and instead turns Thomas's hand over in his - bares the raw underside of his wrist.
"Your arm looks terrible," he says. "I'll let Annie know."
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"You needn't tell stories," Thomas murmurs. "You don't know how charming you are when you're being yourself, still, I suspect."
Stubborn and cranky but with that jagged-edged humor, the way he smiles, the way he listens. James isn't charming like an actor or a con-artist, but in his own way; the sound of waves on a beach at night, a heavy wooden table that doesn't creak. Something like that. Thomas never has the right words for him, precious and burning-- and, anyway. If the girls are already doing things like burning down structures for his quiet propaganda, then things are proceeding rather well, honestly.
(How could those pirates wish him away? How could they not be desperate to keep someone so smart and so charismatic?)
"Until tonight."
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Something in James's face softens so dramatically that it strips back the former - undoes a dozen years in an instant with barely a handful of words. It's as if they're a map on paper and Thomas has folded it so this point and some kinder one - the curl of some crooked smile in a cheap room - can touch. And how James loved him then and how he loves him now spills through, both parts as real and as present as their hands together. That isn't a story like a ghost from the sea or who pirates are or what anyone says the world and what's right in it is or lines of poetry or a book written to make sense of things. It's just true.
"Tonight," he agrees, squeezing Thomas's hand.