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One night, finally turning into his cot after a long, hard day of work on blockade in the Lively, Jack was hit with a conclusion born of a thousand premises, a conclusion he would have rather not ever realized than in that moment. Jack Aubrey lay down in his cot and realized that he was in love with Stephen Maturin. In love with Stephen; how could such a thing have ever come to pass? How could he, Jack Aubrey, who had been turned before the mast for hiding a girl in the cable tier, who had ruined many of the chances of his career by making love to his commandant's wife all over Minorca, who had almost ended up in a duel with his deadeye shot particular friend over his conspicuous attentions to a lady then end up in love with that particular friend? How in the name of heaven was such a thing possible?
Stephen was not around when this had come to pass. Stephen was off somewhere traipsing around Spain while Jack was on tedious blockade in the Lively. Stephen had been gone for months and months and Jack had never felt so lonely nor so miserable since the night he met Stephen in Port Mahón, when he'd gotten his first command.
Jack had never been attracted to another man in his life. He had not, in truth, ever really been able to understand how one man could actually be physically attracted to another. Lonely and away from women for months or maybe even years and seeking release – that he understood. Attracted, the way a very pretty and interested girl could transform him into a lightheaded, panting fool as they had since he was fourteen? No. Such a thing was beyond his ability to conceive. Yet he found himself, pulse racing and lightheaded, thinking of being alone once again with his particular friend. He felt a familiar stirring deep in his loins which took him aback greatly. He had loved Stephen for years now and this was not that. This was much more than that; unmistakable, exciting and deeply disconcerting.
The men that Jack had known who were sodomites were uniformly attracted to pretty young boys, generally feminine young boys with perfect skin, beautiful eyes and no beards. They might make their way through much of the lower deck, but that was the obvious preference. Jack worried when he saw youngsters arrive who were too pretty, truth be told, knowing how disastrous their popularity could be for the overall morale of the ship. He worried about corrupting influences on them. Usually, these boys entered puberty, shot up, their skin became atrocious, their beards came in and their voices broke and that was the end of their popularity with the men who had those tendencies.
Now Jack was in love with Stephen, in love with the actual person of Stephen, intensely desirous of making love with Stephen. Poor Stephen, who had frankly told Jack that he knew his person was considered to be ugly. Stephen was not considered to be physically attractive by anyone, male or female. Stephen was, as he himself repeated the words of the rude and loud young woman at Lady Keith's party years ago, “so small, so ugly, so dark, and so Irish.” Stephen had laughed at himself, his harsh, grating laugh out loud, laughing retelling this to Jack because it was so very rude, so obvious and so true. Jack had felt very sad for him, though he never would have shown it. And now he was deeply in love with Stephen, so small, so ugly, so dark and so Irish.
The fact had dawned on him whilst sitting at his writing desk, handling papers and finding himself thinking about what it would be like to kiss Stephen. First the idea struck him as absurd and then he found himself thinking it over and over. What would be like to be so close to Stephen that he could lean forward and kiss him? How would he feel when his lips brushed Stephen's? Would he close his eyes without thinking? What would happen next? His heart beat fast thinking of it and he pushed it from his head, alarmed. He had actually stopped working and wondered if it were possible that he was ill and regretted that Dr. Maturin was not there to treat him and that had led to him engaging in more suppression of what it would be like for Dr. Maturin to kiss him while examining him.
Jack tried to not think about it at all after that.
Jack dismissed the idea from his thoughts, telling himself it was just one of those things that happened with not enough shore leave, not enough carnal exercise, not enough sleep. Never mind that it had never happened before with any shipmate in his twenty years at sea under similar or worse circumstances. It was not tenable. It was absurd. He and Stephen had been friends for about five years. It was ridiculous. Jack Aubrey was not a sodomite. He'd been called a whoremaster by a very angry captain and there had been truth in it. A sodomite? No. Absolutely not. Never in life. It was impossible, utterly impossible.
He made a point of turning in early that night. He fell asleep and dreamt of Stephen. He dreamt himself naked, kissing Stephen's bare shoulder blades and woke up with a start. It was the middle of the night, he had a few more hours of sleep coming to him. He rolled over and went back to sleep.
Jack spent the next day arguing with himself, even thinking that it might not be a bad idea to avail himself of the next reasonably clean bawdy house in Gibraltar, engagement to Sophie or no engagement. He was sure Stephen would agree. His humours needed rectification, clearly. Normally, he was more abstemious than this, especially worried about the idea since getting sick years ago in Minorca, but this was clearly a carnal exigency. He wished Stephen had been there to counsel him and put his humours to rights, though Jack would never, at that point, consider giving any specifics. He had a hard time even imagining telling his particular friend and personal physician that he was having issues of this type, let alone any of the specifics. There was no chance of any type of shore leave before Gibraltar though, given that they were on an eternal blockade.
Jack wished that Stephen were there for him to have a private philosophical discussion with him about sodomites, in general. Were there ever men who had relations with women, many relations with women who then fell in love with a man? Were there any men who ever fell in love with men like themselves, not with beautiful feminine youngsters? Were there men who fell in love with another man qua person, not as a member of their sex, but for the person in and of themselves yet were filled with a deep desire to make love to that person? Could a man fall in love with just one other man and no one else? Could a man fall in love with another man and still be deeply in love with his sweetheart? What did having those sexual ideas mean? Did men ever have those thoughts about others apropos of nothing? Was such a thing possible? Jack had all the answers to these questions in his own heart. He desperately wished he could ask the only person he could imagine knew the scientific and philosophic answers to such questions but didn't know how he would be able to ask Stephen, given that Stephen was the object of his affection. He knew he was no accomplished dissimulator, not at all. His face gave him away in most things, he thought ruefully. He was past thirty now and still blushed like a school girl given the right provocation, fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes be damned.
That morning, as usual, Killick brought Jack his pot of coffee and breakfast in the cabin and Jack realized consciously that he missed Stephen dreadfully. He realized that he had gone every day eating dinner, missing Stephen. He ate supper and missed him. He practiced his violin alone and missed him. It had never occurred to him he could miss anyone as much as he missed Stephen. His heart literally ached, looking at Stephen's empty place in the cabin. He was almost continually occupied with the business of the ship and still he missed Stephen. Jack realized that he had started thinking reflexively when things happened, "Ah, when I tell Stephen..." He had missed Stephen before when he was away from the ship but now it was far worse. Jack wanted to believe that he just missed his friend's company but still there was that idea breaking in his consciousness like wave after wave, over and over of leaning forward and kissing Stephen and that feeling in the very bottom of his belly. Jack never mentally progressed beyond that kiss. He dared not. He could almost black out contemplating that first kiss.
Jack sat thinking about Stephen, his friendship with Stephen. Stephen was an unlikely love object. Most people found him somewhat to extremely eccentric. Even Jack, who loved Stephen dearly, found him distinctly quirky in a way that did not jibe well with the perspective of an officer of the Royal Navy, as conformist, conservative and tradition-bound as it was. Jack had not been in his acting command on the Lively long. The crew was not his and he had felt extremely compelled to make a good impression on them and Stephen had unintentionally completely humiliated Jack the first day of his command. When Stephen had appeared on Lively's quarterdeck for the first time in his hideous knit garment and made a comment comparing the ship to an Indiaman, Jack had almost wished to be swallowed up by the sea at that moment. The bees were yet another major embarrassment, verging on being utterly unbearable. Yet Jack could not bring himself to say anything but the mildest rejoinders to Stephen, which Stephen had, of course, missed completely. Thinking of it, over a glass of port, Jack realized that he could not imagine himself reacting to anyone as he had reacted to Stephen following these incidents because his affection for Stephen was so great.
Stephen was a man of remarkable parts. Jack shared virtually none of them but he admired them deeply. Stephen's abilities were so exceptional in so many ways, that Jack never stopped being amazed by him. Jack's and Stephen's principal shared interest was music. Jack did not aspire to Stephen's interests any more than Stephen aspired to become a captain of a man of war, but Jack withal esteemed him highly. He was still amazed and delighted by his friend's incredible scope of knowledge, still in awe of his impersonation of a plague-beset Dane on the Sophie, of his unbelievably quick wit, and his unpretentious view of himself. Stephen knew more than any person Jack had ever known in his life and had less arrogance and conceit than virtually anyone he'd ever met, despite having more pride than Lucifer. Jack hated showing away and people who showed away and Stephen was the antithesis of that trait. Stephen was one of the kindest and most generous people that Jack had ever known. Jack had sanguine qualities that made him naturally outgoing and generous. Stephen did not, but no one had ever been kinder or more generous to Jack. Jack loved him heart and soul.
All of this made perfect sense in view of their friendship, but Jack was still mystified what had happened that suddenly he was experiencing an enduring image of Stephen's mouth on his whenever his mind was not actively engaged elsewhere, an idea that that made his pulse race no matter how many times it entered his head in one day. His fixation made him unhappy. Jack felt himself seized on the horns of a dilemma: the terrible fear that he would ever actually act on such an impulse and the equal fear that he never would. He was significantly more apprehensive of ever acting on it but somehow, his heart held a deep sadness at the idea of never doing so. The idea of acting on it alarmed him, frightened him, disturbed him and almost horrified him but he was also aware of dreams every night in which he leaned forward and kissed Stephen and was happier than he had ever been. He woke up basking in a glow of great happiness from having kissed Stephen, though only in his dreams, and then became increasingly anxious the rest of the morning, remembering the reason for his happiness, increasingly lonely and downcast with no Stephen aboard.
The morality was not so much of an issue to Jack as a very well founded fear of the effect that any such intimation would have on their friendship. It was obvious even to Jack at this point that Stephen was apparently very much attached to Diana Villiers. Diana had been the precipitating factor in the conflict which Stephen had been ready to kill Jack over an offense to his honour. Stephen had never in any way, shape or form, given Jack any indication of any kind of attraction to anyone other than Diana and no one male. There could be no conceivable way, Jack thought, that Stephen would in any way reciprocate any such sentiment. Jack could not imagine the reaction that Stephen would have to any such declaration. Extreme umbrage, deep offense, a complete break were the some of the lesser outcomes. A denunciation, a demand for personal satisfaction, or personal ruin were not impossible. Perhaps not all that likely, but definitely not impossible. Jack tried to think what his reaction would have been six months ago if Stephen had approached him similarly and he could not conceive of such a thing, let alone his own reaction. A break seemed inevitable.
Jack resolved to never, ever speak of it. He was so happy having Stephen in his life that it would be enough. It would have to be. Jack had gone his entire life without ever having had a sexual encounter with a man and he could spend the rest of his life the same way. It deeply saddened him, but he was naturally extremely conservative. The possibility of offending Stephen was so great that it was a chance he could not possibly take.
Then Jack had gone to Cala Blau and Stephen had not appeared. Joan Maragall appeared and told him that Stephen had been taken for a spy and was being tortured. In a terrifying instant, Jack was seized by horrendous fear that he would never see Stephen Maturin alive again. He would lose him forever. Stephen would die before Jack ever had the opportunity to tell him that he loved him and suddenly telling him mattered very, very much, far more than he could have ever conceived. The grief and the regret were ripping his heart asunder. If Stephen were alive, Jack knew he could not go a lifetime with those words unsaid.