la sauteuse

“It’s only a bit of a lark, Billy. Aren’t you laughing?”

Cornelius’ reddish hair is arranged around his face in two smooth bands, parted down the middle; while he does not exactly make a plausible woman, he is a comely one nonetheless, with his smooth white shoulders quite bare. Every ship’s storeroom has some such chest of odds and ends broken out at times like these: mermaid wigs and false beards, sooty skirts and all such aids to amateur theatricals and shipboard merriment — Billy doesn’t know what he expected to see from Hickey, some pantomime nonsense or a paper crown. More likely it seemed he’d be skulking around the periphery, watching the revels with a cynical eye. It had been pleasant to join him once, to stand back and swap acid scorn for the petty melodramas of their fellow seamen, but the novelty of it had worn thin after that first winter, and now they are united by something else. He’d never expected to see Cornelius like this.

Gibson frowns, to stop himself from gawking. (He is at present dressed as a fish, in a knitted fish's head.) “You’ve sacrificed your whiskers for the sake of the joke.”

“They do grow back, you know.”

Hickey has never been shy about cuffing him aside or giving him a pinch — for a small man he has the physical presence of a flying cannonball, deliberate and unshakable. For that reason it had been a fearful thing to stand by and watch him be whipped — it meant watching that body seethe and tremble with pain, watching him bleed and sweat and spray spittle with nothing to say for himself but groans. Here he is the very picture of delicacy — laced and pinned, rustling in silks. It is a picture Gibson will be holding in his mind for some time. The narrowness of his frame is emphasized by the way the costume bodice draws to a point at the waist — on a bigger man, an ice master or a ship’s cook, it might look ungainly, splayed half-open in the back to accommodate greater brawn. On Cornelius, it might well pin closed. Prim as an envelope, stays or no stays.

There’s many that wouldn’t have looked twice at Mr. Hickey in his cuffed trousers that would sniff after him tonight in his borrowed women’s things — he’ll catch trouble that way if he doesn’t watch himself. Perhaps that was the intent, to stoke the fires of jealousy or to flaunt himself — here with a carpenter, there with a Royal Marine. Gibson won’t be such a fool. He doffs his fish’s head and bows.

“Miss Hickey, if you’ll have me.”

“Mr. Gibson.”

Hickey takes him by the hand — he wears delicate gloves of white netting, and his fingernails are polished to a mirror shine, without a spot of tar. Gibson can only bow his head; he draws him into a snug hold, the better to keep track of him.

Hickey’s eyes are shining, and his cheeks are pink as prize roses. It can only be the heat lending him such fine color; Billy’s never known him to take anything stronger than a ration of lemon juice. Captain Crozier once tempted him with a glass of whiskey, but where’s Captain Crozier now? They dance together under the canvas tents, with Billy leading; there is a subtle tension in Hickey’s body that nudges him to keep pace, though his grip on Gibson’s shoulder is light.

“I knew I’d see you in something fearsome tonight. Were they out of white bearskins?”

“You laugh, Billy, but I’ll wager you’ve never been to a servants’ ball, then. The hardest fellows you’ve ever seen, done up in striped silks, skirts like wagon wheels. Women in trousers, smoking their cigars. Everyone dances with whomever he pleases, all topsy-turvy.”

“And you know all about women, don’t you.”

Hickey gives a funny little laugh, tilting his head in a manner that is unmistakably saucy. A strand is falling loose from his carefully dressed hair, curving against his arrestingly bare cheek like a parenthesis. There’s a cluster of paper orange-blossoms tucked behind his ear, like a bride.

Face to face they can go unobserved, unheard in the clamor. Gibson guides him through the steps, bearing him up when the dance commands them to leap, turning him around when it is required that they turn. It’s been so long since Billy has danced with anyone at all that the brush of skirts against his legs stirs something in him, or perhaps it is only the knowledge of what is beneath the white sprigged cotton. Even a bachelor like Gibson can tell the dress has seen better days, but by firelight, it is almost pretty.

They fall into a loping, sprightly rhythm; Hickey is quick on his feet when he’s not slacking with a tar-brush in his hand, and there is a seed of competition in Billy’s heart that bids him go faster still. All the cramps and aches his body has accumulated in the course of its duties have flown away, chased out by hot brandy and the sound of singing — there is no music fit to bear the name, but it’s enough for two men to dance by, a stomping rollicking rhythm. If they are being watched, it is with a general attitude of anarchic goodwill. They are not sodomites here; they are scarcely men at all, among the angels and bumblebees and geese.

By the third pass around the crowded floor, Billy is sweating in the rum-scented heat, and out of breath.

Hickey beckons him down with a finger. “I have a feeling about tonight. Step outside with me.”

Gibson dips so low to heed him that Hickey’s lips graze his ear, sending an odd quiver through him like the dipping of a compass-needle. It seems damned unfair, after all they’ve done to one another, that Hickey can still lay him so low with a gesture.

Underneath the great tent, the mood has turned like the seasons; the heat is dizzying and not reassuring, the press of bodies is no longer fraternal but frantic. It’s a relief to be out from under the canvas flaps, with the cold air lapping at his face — Hickey all but drags him out by the arm. His ladylike grace has all but dried up.

“Cornelius,” Gibson begins, and sighs — he is sweet like this, looking up at him with worried eyes. The only light comes from the spilling lamps inside and the passionless stars.

“Something’s wrong,” Cornelius says. “Something’s amiss, you can feel it in the air. It’s not the beast or the witch, it’s something — else.”

“The men are desperate for a little cheer. Don’t begrudge them their fun. Tomorrow they’ll be sober and contrite and there’ll be plenty of time for dread.”

“That isn’t it. You must have noticed something, something up the chain—“

“That’s why you’ve brought me out in the cold, is it? To talk about the wardroom?”

Cornelius is shivering, pale, restless, alert — perhaps he is even frightened. His white arms are fearfully bare, without even a wooly comforter to play at being a lady’s shawl. Gibson clasps him in both hands as if he can impart a little warmth.

Hickey inclines his small serious face. Without whiskers, he looks almost boyish. “I need your help, Billy. I’m not too proud to ask for it.”

Who could resist a face like that, in the long winter’s dark? Gibson crushes him close, and all is lost.

Hickey kisses him with the hunger of months or years apart — arms flung around him tightly, boots scraping for purchase as his wiry-limbed body attempts to climb Gibson like a greased Maypole. Gibson hoists him up, rucking back his skirts — beneath his petticoats he wears long underwear like a lady’s drawers, and Gibson fumbles for the reassuring hardness of his prick.

Forgiveness, remorse, anger, all the things the two of them have not dared to pour out aboard a sinking ship — all of it seethes between them like water come to a boil, hard hungry bodies needing urgent release. Hickey’s gemlike fingernails dig into the nape of his neck, as he grasps for purchase — he grinds against him in most unladylike fashion, drawing ravenous kisses from his mouth. Gibson in turn presses that white throat with devouring kisses, lapping at the faint reddened stubble to draw out mottled pink bites. They will both come away from tonight marked.

“I’d like to see you in skirts” Hickey breathes against his ear. “I’d have them up past your waist by the third dance.”

Gibson cannot help laughing at the image of Hickey as a music-hall masher, finger-deep where he shouldn’t be. He tugs Cornelius off through the fabric of his drawers, beneath his gathered-up skirts, and enjoys the little jerks of his hips in rhythm with pleasure. Lace and ribbons crush between them in their embrace, and the fallen remnants of paper flowers.