Page 72 of Confounding Oaths
Put like that, it almost seemed simple. But over the years Mr. Caesar had learned not to hope for simple. “And how do I know,” he asked, almost in a whisper, “which face is the right one.”
Captain James cupped his cheek and looked into his eyes with an intensity that from anybody else would have made Mr. Caesar want to turn away in fear or shame or sheer self-protection. “The one I’m looking at now seems all right.”
And then, reader, he kissed him.
“I don’t deserve—” Mr. Caesar began.
“Fuck what you deserve.”
“But—”
The captain sigh-growled again and placed a hand over Mr. Caesar’s heart. “Somewhere in here,” he said, “there’s a good man trying to get out. Fucking let him.”
And that, reader, was the problem (or the rub, if you want tobringhiminto this). It seemed to Mr. Caesar that there were no good men inside him, just a hundred confused men trying to do what was right in ways that overlapped and disagreed and contradicted. “I’m not sure I can,” he said.
Captain James let out a disappointed breath.
“But—” Reaching up, Mr. Caesar brushed the back of his fingers across the captain’s cheek. “You make me want to try. If—if that will be enough. If itcanbe enough.”
And the captain nodded. “You’d better bloody mean it.”
“I do.” Mr. Caesar nodded, almost desperate. “Orestes, please, I—no matter what, I cannot help but be different for having known you.”
The captain kissed him again. And this time Mr. Caesar kissed back. As I have intimated elsewhere in this and other volumes, the precise mechanics of mortal intimacy are of little interest to me, but when they involve risks or fears or prices they become far closer to my personal area of expertise.
And prices and fears there were here in abundance—and not only because they were still in a part of the city where you stood a reasonable chance of having your throat slit in the night. As Captain James peeled off his sodden shirt and bore Mr. Caesar to the bed, he gambled that this man, unlike every other member of his class that the captain had encountered in his life, would prove constant, or at least constant enough, and not abandon him the moment he was no longer useful. And as Mr. Caesar reached up with hands and mouth and body and begged wordlessly to be drowned, he gambled that the soldier wanted him for something other than money or influence or advancement, that he could be an ally rather than a rival. And of course both men were trusting that the other would not turn them over to the magistrate for sodomy, which remained a rare but constant threat.
So they came together in a tangle of fragile trust and searching. Limbs and bedsheets and sweat and questions in a room that two months ago Mr. Caesar would never have dreamed of spending more than an hour in but which now became a sanctuary from a world crawling with enemies, only some of them unnatural.
“I’ve never asked how you got these,” Mr. Caesar mused, a little later, letting his fingertips play over Captain James’s many scars.
“Did you ever care?”
The question was at least slightly shaming, because there had definitely been nights when he hadn’t cared at all. And not only with the captain, but every time he’d been with a fighting man. “I should,” he replied, “and I do.”
Captain James guided Mr. Caesar’s hand to a mark on his arm. “Musket ball at Vimeiro”—up to his shoulder—“another at Talavera”—down to his chest where the mark was longer—“sabre at Ciudad Rodrigo”—he shifted his grip and let Mr. Caesar’s hand come around to his back—“lash in a British camp.”
“You were flogged?”
The captain nodded. “Insubordination.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“Officer was taking liberties with the locals. Tried to stop it. Failed.”
As a man whose greatest achievement to date was finding the perfect way to put on breeches without visible creases, Mr. Caesar couldn’t help but find that a little humbling. “I’m sorry.”
In the dark, the captain’s voice was all Mr. Caesar had to go by, and his voice was giving away very little. “I was lucky. Could easily have hanged if things had gone further.”
“And”—a thought had struck Mr. Caesar and he couldn’t help but voice it—“was the officer …”
The captain laughed low and merry in the shadows. “No, itwasn’t Bloodworth. That particular officer didn’t make it through the next battle.”
“No?”
“Excellent shots, the French.”
They held each other in silence awhile, Mr. Caesar tracing the lines of Captain James’s scars and the captain breathing slow and steady and quiet.
