sink to the bottom

“Come now, Edward.”

Hickey says his name like a charm, like a caress to call him up from the darkness. Behind him Little can feel Tozer’s body like a stone wall, and the man’s breath against the collar of his coat. He is going to be stuck through, he is going to be skewered like cat’s-meat here between them, on the point of a knife — here in the midst of mutiny.

The pain in his head throbs fearfully, dimming his vision at the edges. Mr. Hickey, the caulker’s mate, is lit from behind in a craze of light — and the Marine is his scarlet-coated second. An image comes to Ned’s mind in splinters, dragged up from what seems like long ago — the scarlet-coated Marines standing watch over the flogging of three men, the kind of sight that would make any man quail. Had the two of them thrown their lot together as far back as that? The disgust had been clear on Sergeant Tozer’s staunch young face, and the moral dread.

Little had sought the man out himself, afterward — not in person, man to man, but in tokens, the way superstitious sailors had left their tokens for the lady in her quarters. Ned had felt pity for Mr. Hickey, and he’d risked his own hide by leaving him a gift. He’d tried to do the decent thing. This is repayment.

“He would have left you to die,” Tozer says, as if it is in his own defense. “Crozier would have left you to die with nothing but rotten meat.”

“Let the man speak, Solomon.” Hickey’s voice is cautioning; his glancing eyes are all but slits, here in the queer light that pierces through the canvas.

They are in a tent, and these tents are damned hard to put up in a hurry even when not short-handed — so there must be more men bound to the mutineers’ cause, or else he’s been unconscious for longer than he knew. Little’s stomach grumbles.

“Take me to the captain. I’ll speak for you, plead for you. He’ll be merciful.” Ned swallows, with a throat like paper. “It’s not too late.”

“Captain Crozier?” (Gently sardonic, too familiar.) “Captain Crozier left you on the bare ground without as much as a sheet to cover you with. Lord knows what might have happened to you. The man’s a drunkard. You know that much from experience.” Hickey’s brow furrows, making neat lines spring out on his forehead, furrows of the gravest concern. “He took me aside on Terror, made me drink whiskey with him. His judgment is compromised, and we men won’t survive it.”

He is insinuating something, but it is beyond Little to know what. Cornelius Hickey is a murderer, a mutineer, and worse. Francis Crozier is a drunkard no longer, unless —

Little stiffens, stretching out his noncompliant legs and feeling the blood return to them in a rush. With the sensation comes the pain, and for a moment he is staggered. Sergeant Tozer still grips him tightly, bracing his arms back like he is any minute now to be struck.

It’s clear now, clear without saying. Hickey is the captain now of his own mad crew, and the time for pity is past. He and the beast have some dreadful understanding, and whatever else may come…

Hickey lays a hand against his leg, and Little takes it in his own, shuddering. The pressure of his fingers makes Ned grunt with surprise, but what springs forth on the spot is not pain — it is relief, that queer uneasy relief that is the absence of hurt. Little looks into his face, questioning, into Mr. Hickey’s colorless eyes. His throat is stuck, his mouth is dry; he can say nothing, he is like a man mesmerized.

Hickey smiles on him, with such gentleness that the earth itself could melt.

“I’ll never leave you, Lieutenant Little. By our own strength we will survive this. Only trust me.”

Hickey kisses him on the mouth, sacramentally sweet. Ned stiffens and whimpers.