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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 could mean anything - that he'll make it through the afternoon of backbreaking work; that nothing is going to crumble out from under them while they aren't looking (just never stop looking); that he isn't angry and doesn't need Thomas talking to him like a spooked animal; that he won't let anyone out Thomas is a position where he's unduly compromised (not without being next to him during it) . He strokes his thumbs at Thomas's jaw, nearly kisses him but doesn't, then frees him so they might make their way back down to the work alongside each other.
There's plenty to be done. The ground is nearly dry now and demands breaking before it turns to clay so solid that anything growing there risks being strangled. They dig in matched lines, an uneasy rhythm to the rise and fall of the shovel. Metal strikes earth. Sweat drips from his nose. He works directly behind George McNair who can't look at him, but who sharpens every time James drives the shovel down again. He can't deny that he finds it satisfying: to have something that feels like a weapon in hand again even if there's only one logical direction in which to brandish it.
For the time being anyway. At this rate, tomorrow might turn all their shovels into something fundamentally different.
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(Maybe it would be easier to pick up on if Thomas acted like he was afraid of being bitten, but he isn't capable. Never has been, with this particular predator.)
More at ease than he should be, Thomas makes it through the rest of the workday without incident. When the bell sounds for the final time and they begin to disperse and wrap up, he stops short after McNair passes him, an uneasy, shocked look on his face that flickers briefly into something hunted. It's not in full view of everyone-- just the overseers facing them, James if he happens to catch it, maybe a few others. Whatever McNair said is a total mystery, having been turned only to Thomas and now wandering off, oblivious to the reaction in his wake.
Said reaction is gone in an instant, and Thomas is fine again when he's at James's side, wiping down his hands and resting the damp rag on his wrist after. He says nothing, his expression schooled back into one that renders his thoughts opaque; when they pass near Marshall the overseer mutters, "What was that?"
"Mind your own business," Thomas answers easily, familiar banter.
"Fuck off, Hamilton."
"Might I speak to you later?"
Marshall grunts his assent, turns to monitor the men still putting up tools as Thomas and James continue to walk. He doesn't say anything else.
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He doesn't stagger out of the tilled rows, but James does take a long moment to mop the sweat from his face with the neck of his shirt. What he wouldn't give for even the slightest breeze. This still air's fucking unnatural, he thinks. By the time he's capable of straightening the line of his shoulders again, Thomas is beside him.
Meaning the question on his mind that's most pressing as they make their way up the path is: "What do you want from him?"
Maybe another one will occur to him after - 'What did he mean?' or some variation on a similar theme. In this immediate moment, he concentrates on the distance between where they are now and a place he can reasonably expect to sit down.
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"I want him to do what I tell him," he says after a while.
McNair didn't say anything. Of course he didn't. But it'll be good for Marshall to think he did, because for whatever reason, Marshall seems to like Thomas well enough, and carries a measure of guilt over what happened to he and James over the fire. He'd been nervous; We know you didn't do it, and honestly, we know he didn't neither, but it looks like what it looks like-- and Thomas isn't stupid, they can use that. James hasn't been here long enough, he doesn't have the same sway that comes with history, though Thomas suspects he'd be infinitely better at convincing him if he had. For all his work in politics, Thomas has never gotten the hang of dishonesty or manipulation. All his coaxing was ever done with the scandalous allure of the truth.
Very quietly, "Three years ago there was a problem with how certain men were getting on, and they re-sorted sleeping assignments. If he thinks we're being harassed by the man who sold you out, who Marshall knows was lying, I think I can get him to put men where I want him to."
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James huffs out a low breath and speaks equally low, a murmur that hardly clears the crunch of small stones under the feet: "That works." There's a curl of warmth in it that sounds more like 'Smart man,' a broad stitch of fondness. "If I were to press McNair, his friends might come crawling. Two birds."
It'd be a succinct way of starting their list of lost causes - give Marshall something else to chalk down and anyone with their eyes peeled for the African slaves a concrete sense that the two of them were taking the task they'd been given seriously. He can't imagine it will be difficult; McNair's already twitching with the urge to be spoken to. The only challenge is finding something to say to him that won't make Bettina angry when it works its way to her ear.
(That too is more flexible than it would seem, he thinks. He isn't sure sensible is an apt description for the woman, but reasonable? Certainly. And she must be fully aware of where her brother stands already. She must have known what she was committing him to when it was decided who was to sway the convict laborers.)
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Thomas has been softly pushing him into a corner. He'll have to make a decision-- throw himself on the sword or let it fall on Bettina, or remove them both from the situation entirely. Maybe he's too soft-hearted, giving him a chance, but then again, maybe he would find vicious satisfaction in the man letting himself be punished over it in her stead, because it was his word that set them on James.
He would feel guilty. Probably. Hopefully.
(Scandalous allure of the truth.)
"What degree of moral responsibility is there?" He asks after they've gone a few more paces. "Do we count among our number men who I know would follow us if the reason they're here is something like preying on children?"
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Thomas speaking softly again dredges his attention back around. "How many would it rule out if we didn't?" is his immediate response, so quickly that it's clear he he either isn't concerned or has asked himself the question enough times for it to be familiar.
There are maybe six men already he can think of off the top of his head as needing to be quietly set aside before even taking into consideration their crimes. Surely Thomas must have more than that. They've numbers, yes, but already that's a noticeable chip in the ranks of the white convict labor. Can they afford to be selective about anyone willing to stand and fight and listen?
(Nevermind the morality; what about the logistics?)
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(It's fine if George McNair gets his throat torn out. Liam, no, they need him and his number, but to hell with McNair.)
"Overall, eight," is a sigh. He can't nevermind the morality. Of course he can't. He is who he is, still. Somehow. Somehow. Thomas is almost surprised at himself, but there's no room to reflect on it. He doesn't want anyone to stay imprisoned like this, it's inhumane, slavery is a chief cog in the machine of the empire, but if some men can't be trusted not to harm others without constant, tyrannical supervision, surely they can't be a party to setting them loose. "Three would back us for certain. Two definitely not. The others are-- less communicative." James'll know which, as he's pointed a few out, and even if he hadn't, that kind of disturbed nature is easily spotted.
What right do they have to pass that kind of judgement? What right does Thomas have to mark them down into lists, anyway? If they need the help of those men, isn't it just as awful to benefit from their aid only to put them back into bondage after as keeping them here in the first place? If they're permitted freedom, will James and Thomas be responsible for any crimes committed after? Who's to say some of them haven't actually reformed?
There's a part of Thomas, some new thing that's developed over the past decade, that flatly suggests using them and killing them after, and for a moment he's quietly horrified at himself.
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And if they can take such a loss, at what point do they stop cutting names away? Which crimes are too deplorable to risk the involvement of the men who committed them? Is there a finite number of lives ruined that warrants being dumped into a dark hole and forgotten forever?
"If they agree to work toward something that's good, I don't know that I can refuse them. A thing that's right can't be invalidated by the involvement of a few men." How many of his own crew had once done something despicable? And there had been men among other crews who he'd fought alongside touched with more cruelty, capable of unspoken wretchedness. That couldn't have been his responsibility - not then, and it can't be theirs now. "I think," he says, some large part of him unhappy with his own answer. "That our responsibility is to seeing this done."
Six men likely won't make a difference. But they might. And if they can ruin this place in the same breath as earning their freedom alongside that of a hundred others, then don't those dozens of maybe happier lives balance somehow against what a handful of others might later choose to do? And maybe they'll be lucky. Maybe they'll do something that warrants a bullet in the head after.
"But if you'd rather differently, I'm all ears." Tell him how he's wrong.
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Even if neither of them are thrilled about it. To himself, Thomas makes a silent promise that if he ever hears word of one of these men-- doing something, relapsing, getting near some woman or child-- that he'll find a way to see to ending that threat. That's part of the responsibility to seeing this done. It must be.
Thomas doesn't love being wrong, but he doesn't balk at being corrected or being made to see another perspective. He feels something like the sensation of a healing burn inside him, crackling further to reveal new flesh beneath. Selfishly he holds tightly to that sensation, sparks akin to what he felt whenever he and James had at it over this or that in his study in private, or his salon in public, or closed in his bedroom with Miranda rolling her eyes. Now isn't the time to be thinking of any of it and yet--
It's the perfect time, too. It isn't the same. It's aged with them. Thomas tips his head back to look up at the darkened sky, and the stars twinkling to life. It's good, I think.
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He's quiet for some time beside him, studying the backs of the men ahead and them then tipping his face to glance at Thomas' throat, the fray of his shirt collar and the sturdy sinew of his bare forearm, nut brown between the dying light and his color from working in the sun. A rooster calls from the hen house and the horses in their lean to shelter whip their tails at flies. Oglethorpe's youngest boy screams and laughs from the porch, thrashing in the circle of a woman's arms as he's tickled. The sound carries through the still air, easily heard over the note of men trudging up from the fields. James touches his hand to the ruddy back of Thomas's neck. thumb drawing the edge of his hairline.
"When do you expect Marshall will come speak with you?" It matters. Ideally, McNair will need to be goaded before then.
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"After dinner."
A little while, then, as they have the time still to meander to set things up, then eat. The overseers take their meals in shifts and prefer not to disrupt the convicts' own, some strange animal respect about it that isn't always afforded to the African slaves. He has an idea about how to go about it with Marshall and he hopes it works-- will they have to kill all the overseers? No pang of guilt comes at him over that thought. The boy's laughter rings across the fields.
Humans are spectacular. The things they do to each other.
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The length of his stride won't put up with being stretched. Even so it doesn't take them much longer than anyone else to make their way to the yard or the long, squat room where they take their supper. The need to sit - immediately, at the first available space - has been folded in under the appeal of speaking to McNair directly, granting him the ability to fetch a bowl and cup of water before making his way between the rows of tables and benches studded with slump shouldered men.
James slings a leg stiffly over the bench and sits down across the table from McNair. George goes sharp along all his edges then leans harder into the conversation happening beside them ('--and I tell you, I'm sick of salted pork and mealed corn. What could possibly be wrong with salted pork and potatoes or anything other than this godforsaken--'). For some time, James is happy to let him do it. He turns his body by a half degree toward Thomas instead, line of his arm and shoulder a barricade McNair is clearly all too happy to respect. They talk about the heat. James fusses over the half healed flesh of Thomas's wrists. It's only once the manifesto being recited down the length of the table has reached its pitch ('Shut the fuck up, Barnaby.' 'Don't tell me what I can and can't say, you--') and some of the tension has gone out of George McNair's shoulders that James turns his attention on him like a knife's point.
"How much longer do you think he can get away with it?" he asks of Thomas, as if he isn't looking directly at the man in question.
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Right now? a voice in Thomas's head is more than a little concerned with the speed, in case he needs a few more conversations after this to work on Marshall, but he tells himself it'll be fine, and that it's a mistake to leave James on edge for so long, anyway. His anxiety, after all, is largely due to being so unpracticed at this.
Piracy must be exhausting.
He is halfway through eating, spending it quiet as is his custom when he and James aren't seated off on their relative own, sopping up soggy cornmeal with a piece of bread. When James asks his hostile question, more men than just McNair go still. This place is its own contained universe; people talk, people theorize. Whether or not anyone knows real details, there are hunches, and there are those who've been keen on this confrontation. Thomas makes a note of who.
"I think we've talked about this," Thomas says, marginally better at being manipulative than he gives himself credit for. It is the kind of non-answer that tailors itself to all kinds of listeners; people who think he's a spineless fop are going to imagine him shrinking away from his dominant lover, people who favor him will see it as threatening in its apparent disinterest. A hand on a leash not inclined to hold it too tightly.
George has gone tense, jaw clenched, glaring now at Thomas like he's been punched in the stomach.
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(There's a small, vibrant, vicious spark at the thought. Good. Shut up and listen.)
"Don't look at him," he snaps, whip sharp and low enough that it shouldn't carry but does. He leans forward by a degree. "He won't be of any use to you. Why, when you could be watching the thing that's dangerous, would you be looking at him?"
McNair is quiet and still as a stone, though his glare does stray in the direction it ought to--
"But you've a habit of that, don't you George? Saying the wrong thing. Biting the wrong hand. Rolling over at the wrong command." For the wrong master. "How long have you been here? You have so much practice being incompetent."
The quiet is spreading, butting up hard against where Barnaby is still fucking talking, and there's a muscle in McNair's cheek that's flexing and popping. He looks at James, then past him, expression schooled bland and flat and pointedly impassive.
James laughs at him.
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That must be it, he realizes distantly. What Bettina sees and what makes her capable of sitting alongside James and Hannah and not dragging her heels for her brother's sake. Her brother will do anything for her but he's lost something, after all these years. The fight's gone out of him, even if the anger remains.
Is she sad about it? How could she not be? Thomas's heart goes out to her, suddenly, in a way it hadn't before. He'd let his own spirit be worn down, needing to retreat into himself to survive, to win the battle between wanting to take something sharp to a vein every morning. But he'd been alone. He tries to imagine James or Miranda being with him (because he has no siblings, no family with which to understand that bond) and one of them losing their will completely. He can't quite envision it, too counter to reality and to them, but the idea is enough to stir up keen sympathy.
Barnaby is going on and on, still. Over the tense silence, over James's laughter.
"You know that's why everybody's sick every two months, like clockwork I'm telling you, it's this much fucking pork, your insides stop up without anything green," Barnaby's saying, his single voice impossibly loud in contrast, "next time I swear I'll bring it right to the-- oi, there going to be a fight?"
"No," snaps George. Every pair of eyes is latched onto him or James or darting between the two. "No."
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For a split second, he can be legitimately angry at the way the other man is so fixed in this state. It isn't cowardice - it isn't stupidity - it's nothing at all. And it's dangerous. Not for George (who cares about him? seems to be the most valid question present; certainly not George), but for his sister. He stabbed a man to death for her. Can he really be content with half measures now?
James presses, staring McNair down the length of his nose. "You know what you're risking with this, don't you? You can say no all you like, but it won't stop me and it won't keep the truth from coming to light."
It's not a threat - just honest -, but it must drip with the intent of one up and down the length of the table. It sounds like he wants to wrench McNair's head from his neck. Or maybe, maybe to the right ears, it sounds like a threat to what must still matter to the man. A possibility made into horrifying reality. James had been in the main house for eight days. The likelihood that someone knew something and slipped it to him must be extreme enough to be worrying. Maybe James can tell the truth whenever he cares to. What exactly is stopping him from going straight to an overseer directly after this?
The texture of George McNair's stillness changes dramatically. He looks straight back at James, the purposefully blank set of his expression gone so rigid it might be weaponized. He knows how easy it is to ruin a person here, doesn't he?
"Well fuck," says Barnaby. "As I was saying then, a man's body requires certain things and some moderation of others for a healthy constitution, salt being the latter. I know a physician who would tell you just the same."
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(James's anger is beautiful.)
"You don't know any physicians," says Mr Browder, Barnaby's voice doing nothing to ease the choked feeling holding all other conversation at bay. For half a moment it seems as though that's it, this awful spell is broken, but then a man from some lengths away-- Romans 14:8-- pipes in aggressively, "You can't leave it there, we have to know--"
Thomas stands up.
More than one startle results in it, abruptly (but strangely gracefully) leaving the table with his empty plate and walking to the open doorway to just about meet the girls coming to collect dishes and flatware. Behind them is an overseer, wandering close in a vaguely curious manner about the odd stop-and-start quiet from the normally noisy hall.
Stiltedly, conversation resumes, while Hannah and Thomas exchange a silent look.
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James watches as McNair's attention visibly oscillates between the two of them, clearly uncertain which he considers the more immediate threat: James, who is quite literally within arm's reach; or Thomas, who clearly has some connection with one of the girls from the house. Before the conversation limping around them can hope to recover, James fetches up his and his neighbor's (who starts as if struck) plates. He reaches across the table and takes McNair's as well. "Let me take care of this for you, George."
With an audible pop from his knee, he hauls himself to his feet and clears the plates away. If Thomas and he are the last to arrive and among the first to leave, let McNair have all that time to torture himself over what they could be saying to someone (what Thomas will tell Marshall).
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To do it while speaking of such action and forwardness is dizzying. He feels the need to do more, say more, aching in his hands. But it's just a phantom, and Thomas says nothing. He helps Hannah pile things into a basin and exchanges a look with James, his smile soft and affectionate, like it might be any night.
The overseer who comes to wander the perimeter of the mess isn't Marshall, but it's no-one particularly worrisome. A man who does his job without flinching but who seeks out no added sadism. In this place, practically a saint. What does that makes Marshall, who allows them to cut corners, who laughs and who looks stricken when something happens to a man or woman he's friendly with? More layers of moral obligation.
Please, he thinks. Just let this bloody conversation work out.
"You look like you're going to collapse," Thomas tells James once he can do so out of anyone else's earshot. Frank because that's life (that's also him), and because he's a little worried. James isn't used to constant labor like Thomas is, no matter that piracy is a physically demanding occupation. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Marshall beginning to make his way over, meandering unhurried from the houses for the overseers.
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And if the venom he'd spit at McNair had ever been anything but manufactured for the moment (it was - real: boiling up from the middle of him the moment he'd been allowed to recognize it), it's folded elsewhere now. Not gone, just compacted back into the forward energy of doing something: his hand briefly at the small of Thomas's back, an eye for the overseer at the edge of the hall as they step away, then all his attention turning as a compass needle to hone in on the vague shape of Marshall wandering up from the bungalows.
"Good. We want McNair to think he has a chance." He doesn't feel like he must look. Not anymore. He would've been happy to lie down for a week when they'd first quit the fields, but now the prospect's remote enough that he can just ignore it exists at all. Besides, maybe Marshall will be more receptive to what Thomas has to say if the man next to him looks positively miserable.
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But there's merit, probably, in Marshall seeing how run down he looks. Like if anyone did decide to come after him, he wouldn't last. Thomas touches the side of his face like he's too concerned to touch anywhere else; he doesn't have to put much acting power into that one.
"I'm not chaperoning something, am I?" asks Marshall, loud and indelicate some meters away, plodding along closer.
"No," answers Thomas once he's a little nearer, instincts of politeness drilled in earlier and deeper than a decade of torture, somehow. "Do you mind if he's here, though?"
"Naw, I don't mind no Captain Flint, do I." The overseer shrugs. "C'mon and take a walk, though, I have to go 'round the fence anyway."
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Why it's important, he doesn't yet know. Maybe it's as simple as wanting an excuse to shake the man insensible for what his cowardice did (to him, to Thomas). Maybe he wants Bettina safe (which isn't possible as long as McNair clearly knows something; eventually someone will get curious enough to ask the right questions). Or maybe it's something else entirely. Maybe it's the ghost of something lingering behind his shoulder, saying Stay, stay, stay. The question sits there at the very edge of his mind, gnawing like teeth at a bone as he drifts along in Thomas's shadow.
And waits. And listens.
"But see, this is why no one likes him," says Marshall.
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"What exactly did you anticipate me doing this evening?" He asks instead, drier than perhaps James has ever heard him, dehydrated edges of it crackling with accusatory deadpan innuendo. The overseer barks a truly shocked laugh and swerves away temporarily, as though so taken aback by Lord Hamilton so much as suggesting a rude joke. He grumbles about what a classless motherfucker Thomas secretly is, but it's in tangibly good humor.
(Everyone is shocked about his pirate lover except for this one particular overseer, who seems to think it makes sense.)
"So what's this about, really?"
Thomas sighs and crosses his arms, reluctant. This is not surprising; he doesn't like making waves, he doesn't like snitching. Feeling compelled to do it is significant. Marshall is aware of this.
"I know it was McNair who threw James's name out about the fire," he says eventually. "He's made it obvious. His friends and a few others who've decided to feel one way or the other about me, or us, are making it difficult for--" he shrugs, shoulders tense. This uneasy feeling while he's so worried about James's recovery doesn't have a name in words. Marshall is listening to him with a frown on his face. "I don't know. I don't really sleep, because the doors are bolted now, and if someone decides to try and make a point in the middle of the night there's no getting away from it."
No sound for a while except their footsteps over the packed earth ground. Marshall glances over his shoulder sidelong to look at James, not for need of confirmation - whatever strange relationship he has with Thomas is not one of doubt - but warily contemplating.
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It takes longer than just the interim following Thomas being so pointedly crude. There's nothing inherently untrue or funny about what Thomas is saying, including the part where someone could very well decide to come at either of them in the night (not McNair, but a friend--), but there's something about the moment that strikes him as irrationally pleasant. Listening to Thomas talk, how frank he sounds, makes something heavy in his chest go light and brilliantly sharp.
It's one thing for Thomas speak so certainly between the two of them. It's different to be so driven with one of the men who could run them into the ground if he really cared to.
By the time Marshall glances back at him, James has mastered the lines of his face enough to look back. Tone pitched low in the dark, he says, "You can understand why I'd rather not be put in the position of having to defend myself."
Let the man interpret that however he likes - that James doesn't trust himself to be able to mind their safety, or that he's too sure and isn't fond of the idea of being taken to task for harming someone so soon after his initial beating. Marshall's clearly spread predisposed to a certain strange amount of sympathy and likely his imagination will do better work than being explicit with him might.
Indeed Marshall makes a short noise that must border on agreement because after a moment he follows it with, "Look, who said what isn't really your business, though I can see where the thought comes from. But I can't very well just leave the door cracked when someone asks, now can I?"
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