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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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(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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It's his job, after all, in addition to making sure each and every person remain here, human-shaped property. If someone ends up brutalized in the middle of the night or concussed from a fight - particularly while Oglethorpe is away - the overseers will be in just as much trouble, if not more, than the convicts involved in any given altercation. It's a failure of attention paid as much as anything else.
And here's the fine line, effectively encouraging an overseer to watch them closer when they're in the midst of something so dangerous-- but it's the sort of gamble they have to make. They have to push to get the results they want.
Marshall makes a noise of assent but doesn't say anything else just yet, keeping pace with Thomas and staring at the fence as they walk, frown over his expression. It's a long while with no talking, but Thomas stays as he is, giving no indication of impatience, something that he hopes James notices so that no one ends up on edge.
"You know how it is," he says after a while, his voice lower. "With how parameters shift around with all of it." Thomas hums in agreement - reference to some conversation or other predating James's presence on the plantation. They must have had a number of them, to have this level of ease between them, even if it's necessarily manufactured on Thomas's part; their difference in rank, one human and one not, prohibits anything real, or honest, even on a surface level.
"Andies has it out for you." Marshall twitches his head, indicating James without properly looking back again. "Both of you."
"I know."
"I can get something going but you have to be fucking careful. I mean it, real fucking careful."
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Saying anything feels like it might sever whatever line is being drawn between the two of them. So when Marshal actually does look back at him, clearly expecting some kind of answer, James just gives him of confirmation. See? He can even keep his mouth shut here.
Marshall expels one heavy breath, scratching his forehead vigorously enough that it's clearly just something to do with the hand not tucked into his belt. "Better if it gets done before he gets back from business then," he says, as if a note to himself. "Andies'll throw fits otherwise and that's too many questions. --So keep those noses clean through the week end."
Idiot, thinks James. That's four days without Oglethorpe's improving presence on the plantation. Plenty of time - to sort what needs to be sorted; for the residual exhaustion to wear out his body; for them to prove their worth to the African slaves; to make ready.
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"Thank you," Thomas tells him, the weight of his sincerity almost tangible. Marshall grumbles something indistinct in response, shrugging off anything genuine as though for fear of accidentally brushing up against something alien.
Quiet, for a while. Then Thomas says,
"So you don't have to tell anyone, I'll have to complain at you now about the state of James's injuries, and ask to talk to Annie."
Marshall swears.
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As they walk the fence, Marshall shifts to chatter so idle it's either to keep Thomas from asking for anything else or it's habit: talking to fill air when he could very well send them back the way they'd come while he does his work along the perimeter. James suspects it's the latter. It doesn't seem to occur to the overseer to just tell them to fuck off so they spend nearly an hour in his company while getting a thorough look at every piece of fence along the face of the property.
By the time they finally turn back toward the main house, James's pace has slowed so significantly that Marshall stops a handful of times - first to shake a stone out of his boot, then again just "Because you look sick." Also he doesn't want Annie talking sharp to him about dragging the pair of them around by the nose all evening.
"She can be particular," James agrees, sweating where he stands.
"Goddamn right she can," says Marshall and the topic of being on the bad side of women carries them all the way back to where they started.
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Doesn't make it easy. His heart aches. His heart screams, frustrated and angry. Outwardly he is calm, even if the way he sometimes flexes his fingers is a tell for anxiety; the fine tremor that sometimes haunts him grips his left wrist, though it isn't so visible.
This has gone remarkably well.
Annie is displeased to see the state of James, frowning thunderously at all of them, her comments making Thomas think she might launch into a lecture if it were just the two of them. He's given a towel and a fresh shirt for James and instructions to fetch a pail of water so he can have something cool on his back. Marshall hovers but not for too long, calling out that he'll take a walk by later, which Thomas assumes means he'll be doing rounds near the bunkhouse to dissuade any overnight murder attempts.
"Drink some water right now," Annie is bossing Captain Flint without hesitation, meanwhile.
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James does as he's told, drinking down the well water without complaint as Marshall recedes into the darkness. "Take your shirt off," Annie orders from where she's hooking the lantern high in the doorway. He gives Thomas a long suffering look as he unrolls his sleeves.
It takes him longer than it should. Something's come open from the labor in the field or the combination of scabbing and sweat has just reacted poorly, but peeling himself out of the shirt leaves him feeling raw and tender. No blood on the shirt though. That's a good sign. He's eager to bundle it over itself, stowing it on the step behind his heel where it can be forgotten.
"That went well," he says. It sounds so much lighter than he feels. But both can be true - that he's been hammered thin and that it's strangely easy to grin at Thomas as he shifts his arm out across his knee, holding his hand out toward him.
From behind him, Annie fixes Thomas with a skeptical stare.
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Five years ago, when he was finally able to process what was happening to him, being moved from Bethlem to the New World, Thomas had been so infuriated and sickened by the certainty that he'd be forced to be grateful to slavery that he'd shut down. He'd left, and endured illness and branding as a shell of a person. What shall he think now? This feeling of fierce, unbelievable joy at how James has left shame behind, coupled with the weight of where they are and how they've both come to this point.
How could he ever have thought they'd have no chance at leaving? They can't die in the attempt. Death itself has already failed to separate them.
Thomas takes his hand, tremor and all, unafraid of showing that weakness to James and pressing it into his skin. Heaven knows what kind of look is on his face, relieved and helplessly adoring and baffled and concerned. Sometimes he's very good at schooling his expressions and sometimes he's not, and this is the latter.
Annie deserves an award for putting up with them.
"It did," he agrees, inexplicably sounding choked-up. Get it together, he tells himself, and smiles. Well. That's what they're doing. He squeezes James's hand and sits sideways next to him, angled so he can help with the welts on his back. Just as soon as he lets go of his hand. To Annie, quieter: "Marshall is going to help us with something Hannah asked for. He's just not aware."
A gamble to say it so plainly, but it pays off in the way Annie's entire demeanor changes. They all understand each other.
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