Amnesty fic
TITLE: As strange as the thing I know not.
AUTHOR: mylodon
CHARACTERS: Horatio/Archie
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: There are not mine, I just borrow them.
CHALLENGE PROMPT: Confessions
Horatio Hornblower had no idea how he would have survived the peace had not Archie been at his side. It was not just a matter of finance - the Kennedys had money and to spare and even if it had meant swallowing his pride (and bitter it had tasted) he had at last agreed to the family providing for him. He stayed as a guest in their London home and salved his conscience in terms of dependency by teaching mathematics to two small Kennedys - nephews of Archie who shared the man’s ready smile but thankfully not his inability with trigonometry.
It was an arrangement that worked well and the Countess has been blessed with enough innate sense of what was going on to make sure that the two sailors’ rooms were close enough for liaison but not for scandal mongering. And of course the great blessing for them all was that Archie had survived not just his bullet wound but the crossing home in Retribution, where he had been mollycoddled to the point of wanting to scream. If the Spanish bullet and the worries about the court-martial-that-in-the-end-never-was were not enough for any man to bear, then being fussed over by Horatio was, for Kennedy, just about the last straw.
They had returned home slightly less enamoured of each other than before but the shared joys of finding something worthwhile to do with themselves, now that peace had been brokered, had brought them back to the halcyon days of love that they had once delighted in and the time had passed with pleasure.
Until Horatio discovered the women’s clothes in Archie’s closet. And the ribbons. And laces. And worst of all the make-up pots. It had all been an accident, naturally. He had needed a new stock and knew that Kennedy possessed several spares; unable to work with the Archibald school of logic that demanded that spare stocks had to be kept in the draw of the bedside table, Hornblower had looked in the chest of draws and then the cupboard, rummaging about in the bottom among the shoes and boots and buckles and discovering a false bottom under the mess. On prising up the boards, which were neatly hinged - and feeling guilty at every movement - Horatio had found the treasure trove of oddities and had immediately had to rush to the bathroom to be sick.
There must be an innocent solution to this, he knew, but the worst possible sorts of interpretations insisted on dancing about in his brain. He was not so naïve to the ways of the world that he did not know that there were men who dressed as women - and vice versa - for the sheer pleasure of it. The thought that Kennedy might be one of these - and worse still had been hiding the fact from him - made his blood run cold. Another thought hit him like a blow; Archie had been acting slightly oddly of late. He was rarely about the house while Horatio performed his tutoring duties and then was very cagey on his return as to exactly where he’d been. He had vaguely mentioned something about apes so Horatio had assumed that he was off at the Tower poking his nose into the menagerie or some such stupidity but now he was not so sure.
He imagined Archie strutting about the embankment dressed in a directoire style dress, lacy gloves covering his calloused hands, twirling a parasol and flirting with gentlemen. Or worse still, sailors. Then he thought of his lover sneaking off to some house of ill repute where he would paint and powder himself, slip into his bodice and entertain gentlemen. Or worse still sailors. He went off to be sick again.
He felt so very off colour for so long that he averred to his pupils that the sine of sixty degrees was twenty seven and a half and would not be gainsaid. In the end he had to plead an incipient migraine and insist that he needed to go off for a brisk walk so that he could clear his head. His scholars were glad to be let off the traumas of trigonometry and readily agreed, allowing their tutor to dash away and surreptitiously don a burgundy coloured greatcoat and a physical style bob wig.
The plan had been formulated in his brain almost from the first glimpse of the petticoat secreted in Kennedy’s room. He would assume disguise and follow his lover when he left in the afternoon and then he could see if his worst fears were either confirmed or confounded. He kept his room for a while until he heard Archie set off down the stairs and out the front door, whence he quickly took up the chase, grabbing a silver-headed cane as he slipped out of the same entrance.
He was very pleased with himself for remembering the walking aid - he recalled that his father had once been at great pains to point out to him that however much a man or woman could disguise their appearance, their gait was unique and would give them away immediately unless adapted in some way. He decided that a limp might be rather effective, although as he strove to keep up with Archie in the crowds he wondered whether he should have bothered. The man didn’t seem to feel the need of turning around and was clearly fixed on his destination. As they proceeded, the more respectable parts of London gave way to the less and soon Horatio was feeling a bit uncomfortable. He had began to lag behind, finding the limp hard to sustain - and was startled to see the blond head he sought to keep in sight suddenly darting into a passage. By the time Hornblower had reached the spot and turned in, all he could see was an empty alley.
He darted down it himself, but when he reached the end was presented with a little courtyard from which a labyrinth of other passages emerged and into one of which Archie must have gone. Horatio prepared to examine them one by one but his heart was already sinking; the Kennedys had warned him of some of the seamier parts of the capital, where in veritable warrens bred the worst of the capital’s inhabitants. He was not entirely sure he had ventured far enough to have reached such dens of iniquity, but the rather raddled appearance of some of the women in the vicinity gave him pause for thought.
He retreated out to the main road and decided to quarter the area just in case he struck lucky. It was a good hour later that he happened to be in a small side street and heard an unmistakable laugh. He sidled closer to the source of the sound, managing to find a viewpoint where he could himself remain out of sight. What he managed to see made his blood freeze; it was all that he had dreaded and more. Archie was dressed in a dusky blue dress, which beautifully set off his eyes and hair; he was a mass of lace and ribbons and carried a parasol, which he twirled lasciviously - or in a manner Horatio assumed was lascivious. There were two men with him; gaudily dressed men - customers, no doubt - who were laughing and joking and touching Kennedy’s arm.
Hornblower resisted all temptation to go over and thrash the men to within an inch of their lives, merely sufficing himself with observing and becoming more and more angry, until they re-entered the house of ill repute or whatever it was and left him alone with his thoughts.
***
“I know what you’re up to.” Horatio had managed to be sensible and polite all the way through supper despite the turmoil he was suffering inside. He’d waited until the family had retired and then he’d bearded the lion in his den, or rather Archie in his bedroom. “And I’ve seen what you wear while you’re doing it.”
“Ah.”
“Is that all you have to say - ah? At least you have the grace to blush.”
“It was meant to be a surprise - for you. I thought you would like it.”
Hornblower stood dumbfounded. How could Archie have so misunderstood the nature of his character that he would think that the selling of his body in a molly house might be a pleasant surprise for his lover? Hornblower wanted to say a million things, ask a million questions, but nothing seemed to be able to emerge from his lips. “Why,” he blurted out at last, “the women’s clothes? All the lace and fripperies?”
“Because we wanted to do things in the traditional way.”
“Traditional?”
“Yes - that’s how it was done in the days of Shakespeare you know. Women weren’t allowed to do it, so men - or boys - had to oblige.”
Horatio was stunned. He had heard awful tales of the liberties undertaken at the court of King James the First and Sixth and of the scandalous goings on that were alleged there, but he had never realised that this had extended to making brothels male only. His head span and he could hardly think, only gradually becoming aware of Archie saying something that might be important.
“So when I heard it was Beatrice, I naturally had to agree.”
“Beatrice?” Hornblower’s poor mind was incapable of following any conversation at present, not least one with so many twists and turns.
“Yes, Beatrice in Much Ado - didn’t you know that’s who I was playing?”
There was a silence pregnant with misunderstanding, then for Horatio it was as if he had been looking into a deep fog off the starboard beam and it had suddenly cleared - and a filthy great Frenchie was approaching. “I wasn’t sure of the role…” He tried to buy some time, get his head clear. Luckily for him they had touched on The Bard and Archie was sailing along blithely.
“Oh yes - the best role in his comedies, I feel - for a woman, that is.”
“And the costume is suited to the role?” Horatio could hear that his own tone was weak and unsure and he prayed that Kennedy would not notice.
“So my fellow actors think - Benedict seems to feel I resemble some sturdy frigate as I sail along in that crinoline and they insist on layers of lace because of the old hairy chest, but I believe the effect is not too bad. What do you think?”
“I - I…”
“Well you must have seen me Horatio, or else why this conversation? Will I get away with it?”
“I think you look remarkably like that portrait of your grandmother that’s in the drawing room.” Hornblower could say no more - the sight of Archie in women’s clothes unsettled him greatly and he did not even want to begin discussing it.
“That’ll be fine then.” Archie stopped, as if he had only just noticed his friend’s great confusion. “And what’s the matter? You seem totally out of sorts. Don’t you want me to be in a play? I know it’s only a bunch of amateurs, but…”
“No, it’s not that,” Horatio was a fraction too hasty. “I was just worried that things might not go off well; I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed.” He wanted to take Archie’s hand, make some amends for doubting him, but his own hand was at risk of trembling and that would have perhaps given away that there were amends to be made.
“Oh I don’t mind, Horatio. They can jeer as much as they want, as long as you and all the family cheer me on. I shall get to play The Bard on a real stage and that’s all that matters.” Archie cupped Hornblower’s face and kissed it. “And there are a lot worse things one could be doing during the peace.”
“That’s so true.” Horatio often woke in a cold sweat from dreams in which he was penniless in Portsmouth, living in a turmoil between the tables and the pawnbrokers.
“We could be selling our bodies in a brothel!” Archie grinned and kissed Horatio again. “You’d make a fortune.”
“Oh hush.” Hornblower silenced his lover with a kiss.
***
The play was a remarkable success and Horatio stomped and cheered louder than any other member of the audience. Archie was very fetching as Beatrice, if slightly too butch for her - but he spoke his lines trippingly and often had the same inflections as his dear Mama, which earned him both a whack on the seat of the pants and a big sloppy maternal kiss at the party afterwards.
But it wasn’t until round about the time of the Battle of Trafalgar that Horatio stopped having occasional dreams of Archie in lace at a den of iniquity.
AUTHOR: mylodon
CHARACTERS: Horatio/Archie
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: There are not mine, I just borrow them.
CHALLENGE PROMPT: Confessions
Horatio Hornblower had no idea how he would have survived the peace had not Archie been at his side. It was not just a matter of finance - the Kennedys had money and to spare and even if it had meant swallowing his pride (and bitter it had tasted) he had at last agreed to the family providing for him. He stayed as a guest in their London home and salved his conscience in terms of dependency by teaching mathematics to two small Kennedys - nephews of Archie who shared the man’s ready smile but thankfully not his inability with trigonometry.
It was an arrangement that worked well and the Countess has been blessed with enough innate sense of what was going on to make sure that the two sailors’ rooms were close enough for liaison but not for scandal mongering. And of course the great blessing for them all was that Archie had survived not just his bullet wound but the crossing home in Retribution, where he had been mollycoddled to the point of wanting to scream. If the Spanish bullet and the worries about the court-martial-that-in-the-end-never-was were not enough for any man to bear, then being fussed over by Horatio was, for Kennedy, just about the last straw.
They had returned home slightly less enamoured of each other than before but the shared joys of finding something worthwhile to do with themselves, now that peace had been brokered, had brought them back to the halcyon days of love that they had once delighted in and the time had passed with pleasure.
Until Horatio discovered the women’s clothes in Archie’s closet. And the ribbons. And laces. And worst of all the make-up pots. It had all been an accident, naturally. He had needed a new stock and knew that Kennedy possessed several spares; unable to work with the Archibald school of logic that demanded that spare stocks had to be kept in the draw of the bedside table, Hornblower had looked in the chest of draws and then the cupboard, rummaging about in the bottom among the shoes and boots and buckles and discovering a false bottom under the mess. On prising up the boards, which were neatly hinged - and feeling guilty at every movement - Horatio had found the treasure trove of oddities and had immediately had to rush to the bathroom to be sick.
There must be an innocent solution to this, he knew, but the worst possible sorts of interpretations insisted on dancing about in his brain. He was not so naïve to the ways of the world that he did not know that there were men who dressed as women - and vice versa - for the sheer pleasure of it. The thought that Kennedy might be one of these - and worse still had been hiding the fact from him - made his blood run cold. Another thought hit him like a blow; Archie had been acting slightly oddly of late. He was rarely about the house while Horatio performed his tutoring duties and then was very cagey on his return as to exactly where he’d been. He had vaguely mentioned something about apes so Horatio had assumed that he was off at the Tower poking his nose into the menagerie or some such stupidity but now he was not so sure.
He imagined Archie strutting about the embankment dressed in a directoire style dress, lacy gloves covering his calloused hands, twirling a parasol and flirting with gentlemen. Or worse still, sailors. Then he thought of his lover sneaking off to some house of ill repute where he would paint and powder himself, slip into his bodice and entertain gentlemen. Or worse still sailors. He went off to be sick again.
He felt so very off colour for so long that he averred to his pupils that the sine of sixty degrees was twenty seven and a half and would not be gainsaid. In the end he had to plead an incipient migraine and insist that he needed to go off for a brisk walk so that he could clear his head. His scholars were glad to be let off the traumas of trigonometry and readily agreed, allowing their tutor to dash away and surreptitiously don a burgundy coloured greatcoat and a physical style bob wig.
The plan had been formulated in his brain almost from the first glimpse of the petticoat secreted in Kennedy’s room. He would assume disguise and follow his lover when he left in the afternoon and then he could see if his worst fears were either confirmed or confounded. He kept his room for a while until he heard Archie set off down the stairs and out the front door, whence he quickly took up the chase, grabbing a silver-headed cane as he slipped out of the same entrance.
He was very pleased with himself for remembering the walking aid - he recalled that his father had once been at great pains to point out to him that however much a man or woman could disguise their appearance, their gait was unique and would give them away immediately unless adapted in some way. He decided that a limp might be rather effective, although as he strove to keep up with Archie in the crowds he wondered whether he should have bothered. The man didn’t seem to feel the need of turning around and was clearly fixed on his destination. As they proceeded, the more respectable parts of London gave way to the less and soon Horatio was feeling a bit uncomfortable. He had began to lag behind, finding the limp hard to sustain - and was startled to see the blond head he sought to keep in sight suddenly darting into a passage. By the time Hornblower had reached the spot and turned in, all he could see was an empty alley.
He darted down it himself, but when he reached the end was presented with a little courtyard from which a labyrinth of other passages emerged and into one of which Archie must have gone. Horatio prepared to examine them one by one but his heart was already sinking; the Kennedys had warned him of some of the seamier parts of the capital, where in veritable warrens bred the worst of the capital’s inhabitants. He was not entirely sure he had ventured far enough to have reached such dens of iniquity, but the rather raddled appearance of some of the women in the vicinity gave him pause for thought.
He retreated out to the main road and decided to quarter the area just in case he struck lucky. It was a good hour later that he happened to be in a small side street and heard an unmistakable laugh. He sidled closer to the source of the sound, managing to find a viewpoint where he could himself remain out of sight. What he managed to see made his blood freeze; it was all that he had dreaded and more. Archie was dressed in a dusky blue dress, which beautifully set off his eyes and hair; he was a mass of lace and ribbons and carried a parasol, which he twirled lasciviously - or in a manner Horatio assumed was lascivious. There were two men with him; gaudily dressed men - customers, no doubt - who were laughing and joking and touching Kennedy’s arm.
Hornblower resisted all temptation to go over and thrash the men to within an inch of their lives, merely sufficing himself with observing and becoming more and more angry, until they re-entered the house of ill repute or whatever it was and left him alone with his thoughts.
***
“I know what you’re up to.” Horatio had managed to be sensible and polite all the way through supper despite the turmoil he was suffering inside. He’d waited until the family had retired and then he’d bearded the lion in his den, or rather Archie in his bedroom. “And I’ve seen what you wear while you’re doing it.”
“Ah.”
“Is that all you have to say - ah? At least you have the grace to blush.”
“It was meant to be a surprise - for you. I thought you would like it.”
Hornblower stood dumbfounded. How could Archie have so misunderstood the nature of his character that he would think that the selling of his body in a molly house might be a pleasant surprise for his lover? Hornblower wanted to say a million things, ask a million questions, but nothing seemed to be able to emerge from his lips. “Why,” he blurted out at last, “the women’s clothes? All the lace and fripperies?”
“Because we wanted to do things in the traditional way.”
“Traditional?”
“Yes - that’s how it was done in the days of Shakespeare you know. Women weren’t allowed to do it, so men - or boys - had to oblige.”
Horatio was stunned. He had heard awful tales of the liberties undertaken at the court of King James the First and Sixth and of the scandalous goings on that were alleged there, but he had never realised that this had extended to making brothels male only. His head span and he could hardly think, only gradually becoming aware of Archie saying something that might be important.
“So when I heard it was Beatrice, I naturally had to agree.”
“Beatrice?” Hornblower’s poor mind was incapable of following any conversation at present, not least one with so many twists and turns.
“Yes, Beatrice in Much Ado - didn’t you know that’s who I was playing?”
There was a silence pregnant with misunderstanding, then for Horatio it was as if he had been looking into a deep fog off the starboard beam and it had suddenly cleared - and a filthy great Frenchie was approaching. “I wasn’t sure of the role…” He tried to buy some time, get his head clear. Luckily for him they had touched on The Bard and Archie was sailing along blithely.
“Oh yes - the best role in his comedies, I feel - for a woman, that is.”
“And the costume is suited to the role?” Horatio could hear that his own tone was weak and unsure and he prayed that Kennedy would not notice.
“So my fellow actors think - Benedict seems to feel I resemble some sturdy frigate as I sail along in that crinoline and they insist on layers of lace because of the old hairy chest, but I believe the effect is not too bad. What do you think?”
“I - I…”
“Well you must have seen me Horatio, or else why this conversation? Will I get away with it?”
“I think you look remarkably like that portrait of your grandmother that’s in the drawing room.” Hornblower could say no more - the sight of Archie in women’s clothes unsettled him greatly and he did not even want to begin discussing it.
“That’ll be fine then.” Archie stopped, as if he had only just noticed his friend’s great confusion. “And what’s the matter? You seem totally out of sorts. Don’t you want me to be in a play? I know it’s only a bunch of amateurs, but…”
“No, it’s not that,” Horatio was a fraction too hasty. “I was just worried that things might not go off well; I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed.” He wanted to take Archie’s hand, make some amends for doubting him, but his own hand was at risk of trembling and that would have perhaps given away that there were amends to be made.
“Oh I don’t mind, Horatio. They can jeer as much as they want, as long as you and all the family cheer me on. I shall get to play The Bard on a real stage and that’s all that matters.” Archie cupped Hornblower’s face and kissed it. “And there are a lot worse things one could be doing during the peace.”
“That’s so true.” Horatio often woke in a cold sweat from dreams in which he was penniless in Portsmouth, living in a turmoil between the tables and the pawnbrokers.
“We could be selling our bodies in a brothel!” Archie grinned and kissed Horatio again. “You’d make a fortune.”
“Oh hush.” Hornblower silenced his lover with a kiss.
***
The play was a remarkable success and Horatio stomped and cheered louder than any other member of the audience. Archie was very fetching as Beatrice, if slightly too butch for her - but he spoke his lines trippingly and often had the same inflections as his dear Mama, which earned him both a whack on the seat of the pants and a big sloppy maternal kiss at the party afterwards.
But it wasn’t until round about the time of the Battle of Trafalgar that Horatio stopped having occasional dreams of Archie in lace at a den of iniquity.