anteros_lmc

Title: Debt
Author: Anteros
Characters: Bush, Hornblower, (Kennedy)
Rating: R
Notes: My first attempt at Bush!fic and it's a weird bookverse movieverse hybrid :} Set on Hotspur, after Bush leaves Hornblower's cabin having taken issue with the report in the Gazette but before receiving the signal from Flag. Still movieverse though due to lingering presence of you-know-who. In some ways this is also a sequel to

rosiespark's wonderful fics The Simplest Gift and Revelation. Huge thanks to

esmerelda_t for patient and helpful beta.

I

Bush threw the copy of the Naval Chronicle down on the table with sufficient force to make the wardroom steward start. One look at the first lieutenant's face was enough to send him scuttling for the door. Removing his hat Bush placed it on the table beside the paper. He rubbed his brow and frowned. The paper was still folded open at the page with Chamber’s report to Cornwallis. The page that neglected to mention that Captain Hornblower had endangered his own life to save the Hotspur and her crew by picking up an explosive shell and extinguishing it with his own hand. The willful injustice of the sparse four lines rankled with Bush, and all the more so because he knew Hornblower had damn well written them himself.

Bush knew full well it had been rash to raise the issue with the captain; tantamount to putting himself right in the firing line, and as expected he had received a full broadside. However his scantlings were strong enough to withstand Hornblower's not infrequent assaults. Bush knew the captain’s temper and the length of his fuse, he could predict an incoming storm and he could hear the oath that Hornblower frequently bit off at the end of a command. But he had a duty to his captain and to the man who he still considered a friend, despite recent evidence to the contrary. If Bush knew anything, he knew about duty, he knew what was right and what was wrong within the bounds of the service and he knew those four lines were wrong.

Bush also knew he had a duty that went beyond the Hotspur, beyond the service, beyond the captain even, to a quiet dark prison cell in Kingston.

II

It was a changed man that Bush had met, hunched against the biting wind on a Portsmouth side street, months after his return to England. They had both changed. Peace and poverty had changed them as surely as war and loss. And Kingston had changed them. Although there had been a deep flicker of genuine warmth in Hornblower’s eyes on recognizing Bush, his smile had hung unconvincingly on his serious face drawn more somber by hollowed cheeks and shadowed eyes. Like all half pay officers Bush had known poverty and want those last bitter months, but there was a look of destitution to his former shipmate that had appalled him. His concerns had only been reinforced when Hornblower had insisted on Bush accompanying him to the Long Rooms and then on to his shabby lodgings. The sumptuous decadence of the gambling house marking a stark contrast to the drab stale boarding house.

Even as he stood in the Hotspur's wardroom Bush's skin crawled when he thought of Portsmouth's Long Rooms and the heavy velvet drapes that concealed the private rooms where the high stakes games were played. He couldn't forget the proprietorial way that the powdered frog owner had looked at Hornblower when Bush had lingered too long in the gambling hall. As though he owned him. Bush felt the blood prickling under his collar as he remembered Hornblower's fawning gratitude for the marquis’ generosity in paying him a monthly salary. Hard as he tried to push such thoughts to the back of his mind, Bush couldn't help wondering exactly what services the perfumed foreigner received in return for that weekly half guinea. And whether Hornblower had ever been driven to play the games behind the velvet drapes when the ten pound reserve in his top pocket disappeared and his luck was less favorable than the night Bush had watched him play and win against two admirals and a colonel of infantry.

Bush slid one finger inside his stock and tugged at his collar irritably. Hornblower had always been reserved by nature, playing his cards close to his chest; Bush in return was not one to pry and, as a friend, did not seek information where none was volunteered. So there had been little discussion of what had passed those months since Hornblower had stepped aboard Retribution and his unexpected reunion with Bush on the raw Portsmouth side street. There had been no discussion of Sawyer or of Renown; no discussion of Kingston or of the trial. No discussion of Kennedy. And despite the debt he owed, Bush would no sooner raise the man's name than he would stand whistling on the quarterdeck. Yet Kennedy's absence was everywhere, surrounding the captain and permeating the tiny ship.

Bush had more than sufficient intuition to suspect that Hornblower was punishing himself simply for being alive. Not that he was reckless, far from it, he never took rash decisions or gambled with men's lives the way some officers did. Despite Hornblower's audacity he was cautious in the extreme; weighing, judging each decision and, Bush expected, frequently finding them wanting. There was an almost willful perversity to Hornblower's actions, he seemed determined to shun every offer of interest and prospect of advancement. His deliberate failure to record his role in defusing the shell was just the latest in a catalogue of spurned opportunities. Bush was painfully reminded of Hornblower's conversation with Admiral Parry at the whist tables and his insistence that if his name was familiar it was for being sea sick at anchor in Spithead. Not a word of Samana, of Retribution, of the unconfirmed command. Hornblower had demoted himself more effectively than ever the Admiralty had, from commander to green midshipman.

But will it or not, promotion had come Hornblower's way with the first rumour of war. Bush allowed himself a wry smile. Hornblower played the part of commander well enough, meeting all the requirements of service and standing with faultless diligence. Lord, the man had even acquired a wife! Of course he should have taken a wife with interest and connection but, true to form, Hornblower had saddled himself with one that was little more than a millstone around his neck. The foolishness of his friend's decision still galled Bush. It was one more example of the man's obstinate contrariness.

That was unjust, the wife was a decent enough woman in her way, clearly devoted to her husband, if blind to the reality of her marriage. And Hornblower himself had never been the kind of man to seek advancement or gain from another's standing or connections. But even when he earned that advancement fair and square through his own actions and those of his crew, as he had in destroying the signal tower and battery at Brest, he had still turned his back on the resulting opportunity. Bush thought bitterly again about the prize money the frigate would have earned Hotspur's officers and crew. Not that he was prompted by personal avarice, far from it, though no doubt his sisters would have made prudent use of any prize money. It was for Hornblower himself. Propriety and rank precluded any discussion of a gentleman's finances but it took only one look at Hornblower to see the man was not rich. And soon, if not already, he would have a child to support as well as a wife. Even Doughty's careful needlework could not disguise that the captain's jacket was a patchwork and his slop chest trousers were worn thin at seat and knee. After months of continual blockade duty with the Inshore Fleet few of the crew looked too smart, but Hornblower appeared more like one of the scarecrows that Bush remembered from his childhood, sprouting along the canal each spring. The contrast with the pristine lieutenant who had greeted Bush when he came aboard Renown could not have been more stark. And Hornblower's neglect did not stop at his uniform, the man looked positively gaunt, he barely slept and God knows what he ate, having no cabin stores to speak of. Bush knew that Doughty had been discretely begging handouts from the wardroom and the purser. While he certainly did not begrudge anything the officers could provide from their own store, it stuck in his craw that their captain should be reduced to accepting handouts from his own crew. Not that Hornblower had any idea of the extent of Doughty's reciprocal supply network or of the wardroom's willing collusion.

When Bush had rashly but dutifully attempted to suggest that the captain take better care of his person he had met with the inevitable response. Not for the first time Bush wondered if Hornblower resented him just for being there. Begrudged him when it was his eye he caught across the quarterdeck. Begrudged him for living. That was as maybe, but nothing could change the fact that he had lived and Kennedy had died. And no punishment Hornblower could inflict upon himself would bring the man back. Bush felt a rare stab of genuine anger towards Hornblower. A good man had given up his life and his name for him and this was how he repaid him?

Bush still felt a bitter surge of remorse when he thought of the futile trial. It wasn't just Hornblower who owed his career and reputation, indeed his very life, to Kennedy; Bush had been on trial too. He could have fulfilled the role of arbitrary scapegoat required by the Admiralty as a token of "justice" equally as well as Hornblower or Kennedy. Bush was under no illusion as to where Kennedy's loyalties, and more, had lain and that it was for Hornblower and Hornblower alone that he had paid the ultimate price. But Hornblower was not the only one Kennedy had saved that morning when he made the long walk to the court house, and Bush was not a man to forget such a debt of gratitude. There was only one way he knew to repay that debt and do justice to Kennedy's tarnished reputation and that was simply to carry on. But it was not just a duty of service to a captain he had promised Kennedy, it was a duty of friendship to the man. And he would see that duty through in the face anything Hornblower could throw at him. So Bush carried on and did his duty with faultless precision; seeing to the running of the ship, dispatching and executing orders with unfailingly efficiency, anticipating requirements without ever preempting an order, placing himself exactly where the captain would expect to find him before he even looked. It might never be enough to meet with Hornblower’s approval, but that was not the point, it was enough to meet the promise he had made.

III

Bush was still standing gazing at the folded gazette on the wardroom table when he caught Foreman's faint hail from aloft. Abandoning the paper where it lay, he picked up his hat and made his way topside. By the time Hornblower appeared on the quarterdeck moments later Bush had already acknowledged the signal from the Flag to Report to the Commander and had put the ship about. Carefully keeping any hint of irritation from his voice he reported the signal to Hornblower and was relieved when he responded with an even “Very good, Mr Bush.” Perhaps this time the Commander-in-Chief would present Hornblower with an opportunity that even he could not shun.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

venusinfurs90.livejournal.com

I love this. It's so true of Hornblower and it's so true of Bush. I think one of the reasons I love Bush so much in the books is just how perceptive he really is when it comes to Hornblower and how much he knows Hornblower well enough to usually pretend he doesn't know any better.

From:

.... he longs as he is longed for....

Debt

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags