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Jopson’s scars ached in cold weather. He did not know for certain what the stripes on his back looked like these days, whether they were faded white or still retained a dull pink hue, and their position made it hard to feel if they were raised or flat. Most of the time he forgot they were there at all, except for when the cold crept in and the skin pulled tight against his shoulderblades.
As far as Jopson was aware, only he and Crozier knew that he had them. One of the small privileges of being a steward was having a private cubicle of one’s own to wash and dress in, and given the extreme cold outside he was unlikely to be frolicking about shirtless any time soon.
It amused him to think how surprised the other men would be if they found out. Jopson was well aware that even the other stewards thought he was a bit of a goody-goody. He’d overheard Armitage and Gibson gossiping like a pair of old wives over the laundry once, referring to him as ‘Mrs Crozier’ and joking about him offering to hold Crozier’s prick so he could aim properly at the seat of ease. Bold talk, in Jopson’s opinion, considering Gibson was sweet on that weaselly little caulker’s mate and Armitage kept making eyes at the Marines. He’d taken great pleasure in announcing his presence with a gentle cough at a well-chosen moment and watching them squirm in mortification.
He imagined they would think of him differently if they knew Crozier had once had him flogged. Perhaps they would respect him more. Then again, perhaps they would assume he was only obedient because he was afraid. It was unlikely, Jopson expected, that anyone would see it the way he had chosen to – as something like a baptism.
Terror and Erebus had been in New Zealand when it happened, waiting out the southern winter before the ships embarked on their next attempt at the Pole.
Jopson had liked New Zealand. It was lush and green and temperate, and with the captains spending so much time dining with various local officials, his duties on board were relatively minimal. On that particular day, Sergeant Cunningham had got together a hunting party, and Jopson had been given leave to join them. “It’ll be good for you to get some fresh air,” Crozier had said, “And if you see one of those funny little kiwi birds, try and grab it. Ross tells me his surgeons are desperate to have one to add to their stuffed menagerie.”
Luckily for the kiwi birds, Jopson did not sight any on their sojourn into the forest, but he did successfully bag a wild pig, earning congratulations from the rest of the party and a tongue-in-cheek suggestion from Cunningham that if he ever tired of washing the Captain’s smalls, he should consider becoming a Marine.
In the evening the men dined like kings on roast hog and various locally grown vegetables that the ship’s cook had managed to purchase from a group of New Zealand Company settlers in exchange for a box of ammunition and a watercolour painting of the great Antarctic Barrier.
When evening drew in, with the officers still not returned to Terror, one of the men revealed that he’d quietly built up a little stash of rum. They passed around the bottle to warm themselves, and Jopson scarcely noticed that with each nip he was growing more inebriated, or that at some point the others stopped drinking while he continued to take more shots. It was so nice to be included. To be one of the men.
His memories of the night after a certain point became blurry, but he knew there was dancing, and an attempt at a bareknuckle boxing match with one of the Marines that led to him being laid flat out on deck, laughing like a kookaburra.
Then someone had called out that the Captain was coming on board and he had tried, very hard, to be professional. He smoothed down his hair and buttoned his jacket back up, and stood to attention as the officers returned, all the while feeling like he was pitching back and forth in a storm-tossed sea.
“Jopson,” Crozier said to him, apparently surprised to see him on deck.
“Captain,” Jopson tried to reply, but it came out as an incoherent mumble.
He did his best to keep his words from slurring and himself from wobbling as he readied the Captain for bed.
“Slippery little bugg- little things,” he mumbled as he fought with the buttons of Crozier’s jacket, finding that they kept slipping out of his fingers.
Crozier sighed. “Go to bed, Jopson,” he said at last, pushing Jopson’s hands away.
“I’m fine, sir,” Jopson protested.
“No, you’re not. You stink of it. Go to bed, and we’ll have words in the morning.”
When morning came, it brought a ferocious headache and a nausea that had Jopson bent double over the heads, forcibly ejecting the breakfast he had only just consumed. As he went about his duties he felt like he could smell the poison seeping out through his pores, rum-stinking sweat gathering on his brow and rolling down his back in fat droplets.
When he brought the Captain his morning tea, Crozier gave him one of his enigmatic looks. A deadpan expression and a single raised eyebrow could mean any number of things from Crozier – amusement, disbelief, disappointment.
“How are you this morning, Mr Jopson?” he asked.
There was no point in lying. “Sick as a dog, sir,” Jopson replied, “Which is the least I deserve.”
Crozier looked away as Jopson settled the tray down beside him. “All too true, I’m afraid. You know what the penalty is for being drunk on duty.”
“Yes, sir.” Jopson felt his empty stomach clench.
“I’ll have to order an appropriate punishment. I have always been clear that drunkenness will not be tolerated on my ship.” Crozier’s hands were clasped tightly in his lap. “How did you allow this to happen, Jopson?”
“Error of judgement, sir,” Jopson said.
“I wouldn’t expect it of you,” Crozier said, and the dismay in his voice made Jopson’s chest ache. “But the example must be made. I must treat you as I would treat any other man.”
“I understand, sir.” Jopson tasted bile in the back of his throat, and tried to focus on breathing in the cool, clean air.
Thirty-six lashes.
Thirty-six was the standard punishment for a man found drunk and disorderly. The use of the cat was falling out of favour in the Navy, but both Captains were in agreement that a strict approach to misbehaviour was instrumental in ensuring it remained rare.
Jopson stood surrounded by the same men he had been drinking with that night, their eyes avoiding his gaze as he stripped off his shirt and had his wrists bound above him.
He knew what to expect. He had witnessed floggings before, the whole gamut from a quick six of the best intended to chide, to brutal beatings that flayed flesh from bone and left the recipient close to death.
He was still not prepared for the pain. He had vowed to take it like a man, to remain silent and not show the suffering on his face. Then the first strike landed and punched the air from his lungs, and the second came before he had the chance to regain his breath.
By the fifth stroke, he was crying out with every hit. By the tenth, he was screaming. His back was streaming blood, pouring down his legs and pooling at his feet, making him slip and lurch forward with every blow, the rope at his wrists biting into rubbed-raw skin.
He felt as if he was being carved out like a whittled spoon, layer after layer being torn from him until he was open and hollow. He fancied he could feel air on his ribcage, on the outers of his lungs, that soon the cat would strike through to his heart and at last he could die.
Conscious thought became impossible. He was a trapped and feral creature, howling and sobbing through an unending agony, until after some undefined period of time he distantly heard Crozier’s voice say “that’ll be all” and felt the ties around his wrists undone.
Mr Lyall was very gentle with him in the surgeon’s office, keeping up an amiable chatter about birds he’d seen recently while he cleaned and dressed Jopson’s wounds. The glassy eyes of a taxidermied penguin stared at him from the other side of the room.
Half-delirious, Jopson imagined the thing speaking to him, a queer little angel in the body of an ungainly bird. I am gone but you are not, the penguin’s gaze seemed to say. Repent, repent and be reborn.
That night he had a dream of himself as a martyr at the stake, and of Crozier running a wet cloth over his charred body, wiping away his ruined flesh and revealing healthy pink skin beneath.
In the morning, Jopson found that the other men he had drunk with – one of Terror’s other stewards included – still could not meet his eye when he went down to the mess to collect food for the Captain’s breakfast. But Crozier could, and enquired gently about how much pain he was in as he went about his morning duties.
“I won’t pretend it doesn’t hurt, sir,” Jopson said, wiping down the table.
“Take it easy on the cleaning until your stitches are out,” Crozier said. “You’ll be no use to me as an invalid.”
“I’ll try, sir.” Jopson straightened up, wincing as his dressings rubbed against his undershirt. “I promise you that. I will be better.”
Crozier waved it off. “You’ve nothing to apologise for, you’ve already paid your dues.”
I will be better, Jopson repeated to himself as he went to collect the tray of breakfast things to be taken back down for cleaning. It was not a vow but a statement. He had been made better, and through duty and service he would prove it.
Time passed and wounds healed, and Jopson rarely gave much thought to the marks on his back. Not until they were frozen into the Arctic ice, and he began to feel them ache again.
They ached when it was cold, and they ached whenever he smelled whisky on Crozier’s breath.
He said nothing, did nothing, could do nothing but attend to his duties without comment or judgement. When Crozier asked for a bottle he would bring it, and if the Captain needed a body to steady him when he rose from his chair, Jopson would be it.
One evening Crozier stumbled on the path between chair and desk, and Jopson was there to catch him before his knees hit the floor. Crozier took a few steps back and flopped back down into the chair.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Crozier said, tongue thick with inebriation.
“Sir?” Jopson said, expression perfectly impassive.
“I haven’t forgotten. That I had you flogged for drunkenness.”
Jopson fixed his gaze on the wall just above Crozier’s head. “You did what you had to, sir.”
“Ha,” Crozier said. “If only I could say the same now, eh?” He rested his elbow on the arm of his chair and propped his head in one hand. “Thirty-six lashes, wasn’t it? Thirty-six by, how many times now – fifty, a hundred? There’d be nothing left of me.”
Jopson said nothing.
“Would you do it?” Crozier asked. “If I wasn’t the Captain, if I wasn’t exempt from what I deserve?”
“Flog you, sir?” Jopson said. “It would be unusual for a steward to be giving out a flogging. But I suppose I would have to, sir. If I was ordered.” Even then, he wasn’t sure he’d have the stamina, or the nerve. After the first couple of swings it’d be as much an ordeal for him as anyone else.
“What if I ordered you now?” There was a funny look in Crozier’s eyes that he only got when drinking. Misery and malice. “Stripped off my shirt and sent you to fetch the cat from the bosun?”
Jopson failed to repress a shudder. In his mind’s eye he could see it. Crozier’s hands braced against the desk and his broad back striped with red welts. Crozier gasping, cursing, sobbing – and begging Jopson to keep going, until he had taken as much as he felt he deserved. Until all the demons had been thrashed from him and there was nothing left but a quivering, broken carcass. Jopson would dress his wounds and wipe the tears from his eyes, and Crozier would kneel at his feet and thank him for letting him start over again.
Jopson gathered his thoughts and straightened his back. “Then I would have to refuse, sir. And would ask if you’d consider seeing Doctor Macdonald. I’m sure there’s something he can give you which would ease your mind.”
“No chance to pay my dues, then?”
“No reason to do it.” Jopson desperately wanted to step closer, to place his hand on Crozier’s shoulder or take his hand to calm him, but rank forbid such intimacies. “Tomorrow, you will still want to drink, and I will still have scars on my back.”
Crozier wiped something from his eye. “You’re more than I deserve, Jopson.”
A short while later, Jopson helped the Captain to bed. When he slipped the shirt from Crozier’s shoulders, for a moment he let his hands linger on Crozier’s shoulderblades. He ran his hands down Crozier’s back, tracing where the marks of his Captain’s atonement should be, and felt Crozier draw in a shuddering breath.
You will be better, Jopson thought, as if he could will it into Crozier through touch alone, and the scars on his back ached in response to his longing.