Chapter Text
The Bay of Biscay, homeward bound. Grey heaving seas, white froth on the tips of the waves. A north-western gale whipped up the western rollers, causing a corkscrew motion in the ship's progress. In his cabin the captain awoke and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of his cot. His stomach immediately protested; as it was empty, it registered its protests through heaving and dry retches.
"Hell and death," said Jack, "not again!" He turned to glare balefully at the doctor, who was just waking. “Did you not say that you could keep this from happening?”
“I believe I said there were methods that employed might reduce the chance of pregnancy, joy, but you must allow I warned you that nothing short of abstinence would eliminate the possibility entirely.”
Jack, unsurprisingly, had not been interested in that option, and did not pursue the discussion now. “Well,” he said, his natural cheerfulness reasserting itself as the wave of nausea passed, “I survived this once; it should be even easier the second time. I shall know what to expect.”
He did not. To his amazement, it seemed each pregnancy could be different from the last. He suffered much more from nausea; hungry all the time, yet with no appetite once food was set in front of him. Although his diet had been reduced to plain ship's biscuit, broth and whatever soup Stephen, Killick, and the cook could contrive to get him to consume, he seemed to fill out much more rapidly than he remembered doing the previous time, and not just in his belly, where the baby was growing. His breeches became so tight about the hips that he could no longer wear them, but had to resort to trousers cut especially loose. His darted jackets would no longer button over his breasts, which, generous though they had been previously, now swelled uncomfortably, sometimes even painfully. His back hurt, too, and it hurt unceasingly. It simply was not fair.
Worse even than the physical effects were the wild variations in his mood, disconcerting to one accustomed to an even temperament. Oh, it had always been true that he could at times become frustrated by circumstance, be provoked to anger, experience a rush of joy upon a pleasurable event or hearing good news, but generally much of his day, from waking to the instant fall of sleep, was spent in a fairly pleasant frame of mind, and why should it not be? He was a post-captain of the Royal Navy, returning home from a moderately successful voyage, with work enough to occupy his hands and mind yet not to overpress him with anxiety, and above all he was afloat with his best friend, his life's companion. So why must he succumb to irritation at trivialities? Why did tears come unbidden at awkward moments? And why sometimes did a sudden rush of ecstasy at simply being alive flood him with emotion so overwhelming that he would become dizzy and need to hold the rail to stay upright?
When the doctor inquired in depth as to his health, the captain dutifully reported his symptoms, but otherwise he tried to refrain from dwelling on them or making excuses for himself. Fate had turned him female, and there was naught to be done about it. His and Stephen's love had blessed them with this child; others had borne much worse – he had borne much worse – and he could bear this too.
~o~o~o~
“Ah, Stephen, there you are!” cried Jack at second breakfast, with a gleam in his bright blue eye that the doctor had not observed for some weeks. Since the discovery of his condition, in truth. “Did you see this?” Jack pointed to the article in the Transactions he had been reading. “A fellow in the Royal Society says he may have found a cure! A way to turn people like me back to our original form!”
“Yes, my dear, I did indeed look over that most interesting report.” Stephen did not mention that he had been in correspondence with the gentleman himself for some months about the possible treatment. “Would there be coffee, at all?” Drinking a cup of the invigorating brew, and enjoying a slice of toast generously slathered with jam, Stephen watched as Jack eagerly pored over the journal.
“I beg you will not refine too much upon this hope, upon this slim meagre grasping chance of a so-called 'cure',” he said.
Jack looked up, a little surprised. “According to this report, his initial results have been promising.”
“By 'promising' he means that his patients have not died. Or have not died yet, I should say.”
“Oh. I thought it said here that they were even changing back.”
“Yes, yes,” continued Stephen impatiently. “In some cases the individuals treated lost those anatomical attributes, those indicators of sex, that they were not born with, but there has been no evidence of their regaining their original characteristics. To be rendered neither male nor female, not a man nor a woman, but some androgynous ambivalent halfway creature of no defined form does not strike me as a tolerable outcome.”
“No, indeed – that would be most distressing, without a doubt.” Jack looked down at his half-consumed breakfast with even less appetite than usual. The gleam that had brightened the blue of his eyes had faded.
Stephen softened his harsh grating voice as best he could. “In your current condition, joy, the exhibition of any such course of physic would be most inadvisable.”
“Of course, of course, to be sure,” Jack replied, smiling into the doctor's eyes. “For the delivery, I expect to be on land – we will be home in a matter of days – and this time I intend to engage a wet-nurse. Perhaps by then the development of the cure will be farther along.”
“Perhaps.”
“You've no notion – ” began Jack.
Stephen waited expectantly.
“– how pleased so many of the afflicted will be, if a cure is found, I mean. Some officers have never been reconciled to their new shapes, you know. Lieutenants who are now female have so much less hope of promotion, unless they are strangely fortunate in patronage or circumstances, and many mids turned female have given up hope of ever being passed for lieutenant, regardless of how well they know their profession.”
“Certainly the prejudice against having females in positions of authority remains unabated, despite so many 'women' having been men previously.”
“It ain't just that, Stephen.” The doctor looked expectantly at him again, but Jack just shook his head. He had interrupted himself earlier because expressing his own strong desire to return to male form was too much like complaining, and he now found himself unable to explain his own vague feelings of having lost the edge of his effectiveness as a fighting captain. In their last few engagements he had not experienced that bright fierce joy in fighting that had always carried him through battles before, but instead a grim determination to win with minimal loss of life. The difference was not entirely negative: though he might not have wielded his own weapon with the same raging strength, the same single-minded violence of purpose, he seemed to think more clearly; he kept an encompassing view of the engagement instead of focussing narrowly on his own fight within it.
“Maybe I'm growing old,” he thought. Perhaps this was what being an admiral was like: seeing the whole fleet at once, instead of fighting at a personal level. Yet he could not dismiss the sense that it was tied to being female. Even before the pregnancy, he could feel the strength draining from his arms, a little more every day. At his core he felt no different in his interests, his opinions, his skills; but sometimes the feelings in his body would take him by surprise. At the hint of battle a ball of dread coiled in his belly, instead of the sharp prick of excitement; and when he took a calculated risk, a sweat of fear assailed him instead of confident relief in making his decision. If these were signs of a growing maturity, he wanted no part of it.
At the base of it all was the pervading sense of wrongness in his own body. Every time he woke up, it was almost like inhabiting the skin of another person, with odd lumps in some places, missing bits in others. Jack still felt lucky in some ways: he had the consolation of Stephen's thorough enjoyment of his new shape, and his own delight in their mutual pleasure was as great as any he had experienced before the change. Yet his body continued to feel strange to him. Like having a temporary command of another captain's ship, it never felt entirely his.
Stephen had been silent during Jack's meditation, making his own way through the meal. Now he said, “You spoke of being at home for the delivery. Was there not a promise of the Blackwater on the North American station? Will you not be back at sea within a month or two?”
“There was such talk, yes, but you know that has been promised before, and fallen through. The Admiralty ain't likely to give me another command now, not with me in this condition.”
Stephen pondered. The captain spoke easily enough, expressing no disappointment at the loss of the much-anticipated commission, but Stephen recalled Jack's imperfectly concealed resentment of Peter's untimely arrival, and was aware of the captain's ability to appear (at times) unaffected by the slings of outrageous Fate, when they were beyond his control. “My dear, I am most concerned if the child should hamper your chances of advancement.”
He was rewarded with the sight of Jack’s singularly sweet smile. “Do not distress yourself, soul. This commission has gone well enough that I expect another opportunity will arise in the future. Meanwhile I will enjoy having time to spend with Sophie and Di and the children.” Jack smiled inwardly, one hand resting on the bump of his belly.
Stephen noted the gesture and made up his mind. “Jack, I do not like to cause unnecessary worry, yet I have been considering another pertinent recent medical finding. It would appear that the pregnancies of turned women terminate early more often than is the general case, as many as three or four out of ten being unsuccessful.”
The captain listened carefully, but seemed unperturbed. “Peter was perfectly healthy. Surely, then, we have no need to worry ourselves.”
“No need at all, my dear, at all. Merely to be prepared.”
“Indeed, I hope not. I have already grown rather attached.”
Jack's pregnancy proceeded apace, until it was long past the point at which Stephen considered the concern relevant. Apace, also, grew Jack's girth, so that upon arrival at Woolcombe his condition was impossible to ignore.
They were greeted cheerfully by Sophie, who was touchingly excited about the prospect of another baby. Privately Jack had been concerned about foisting yet another wholly unrelated child upon Sophie and Diana, and had been considering whether he had perhaps best entrust it to another's care, but Sophie would not hear of this, assuming that naturally all Jack's children would grow up together under her loving and careful eye.
Stephen's daughter Brigid also resided at Woolcombe, where she resisted Sophie's efforts to turn her into a graceful young lady, preferring instead the various outdoor pursuits engaged in by her numerous, now all male, cousins and half-brother. In these activities she was encouraged by her indulgent Mama-Papa, Diana, who even as a female had loved riding, hunting, and driving; and now rejoiced in the lack of restrictions that came with her new form. “Of what use to Brigid is netting a purse?” Di reasoned with Sophie. “She most likely will find shooting a much more valuable skill than embroidery.” Di was content to leave most of the mothering of Brigid to Sophie, but would not support her in forcing a ladylike education upon the girl. “All the important manners and elegance of our station belong equally to ladies and gentlemen, and Brigid will study languages and geography and the rest along with her cousins. She need not sit primly reading her Bible or hemming a handkerchief all afternoon whilst her cousins are fencing and riding.”
As Brigid was a willful, headstrong child and knew that Sophie was not her “real” mother, without Diana's support Sophie could not exert enough authority in this area. Mrs Williams having gone to live in Bath (to the great relief of all, even Sophie, as her mother's constant strictures on the unnatural and hideous state of affairs that now prevailed in the household wore on everyone's nerves intolerably), Sophie was now the last bastion of gentle femininity in the home, and though usually she did not mind this in the least, she did at times find it a little lonely, and would have loved a daughter to raise as a lady.
She knew that she would find no ally in Stephen, even when he was at home; as long as Brigid was healthy, happy, and acquiring at least some education and a sense of proper morals, the details of her upbringing were not an area in which he felt qualified to interfere. Indeed, the naturalising explorations he loved to make with his daughter were not at all what Sophie would consider especially lady-like.
“... and thus the beetles will fly off together, still conjoined,” Stephen explained to his daughter Brigid, as they lay in the dry meadow of Simmon's Lea.
Brigid watched pensively for a moment, then jumped up and strode off. Her father followed her, taking her hand as they continued their walk through the commons.
“Papa,” asked Brigid a few steps later, “When will I turn into a boy?”
~o~
“I should be most happy to go to London, my dear, so long as you should be comfortable there.”
“Oh, yes, well, as to comfort, certainly nothing is quite so homey as, well, as home. But there can be a little too much domestic bliss, here, at times.”
“I understand you perfectly, joy. Indeed, as much as I value my time with Brigid, I had the most distressingly awkward conversation with her this afternoon.”
~o~o~o~
The captain and the doctor having each a variety of concerns to take them to London, Villiers and Stephen were enjoying a smoke in the doctor's rooms at the Grapes when his former spouse turned to the topic of the day.
“Maturin,” Villiers said, “what is this I hear about a cure? The whole of London is talking about it, and yet I do not know anyone who has actually taken it.”
Stephen pursed his lips. Despite his expression of his misgivings and his professional recommendations of cautious and thorough trials before general application, use of the new treatment had expanded throughout the country and internationally. Stephen summarised his reservations to Villiers, although he was forced to acknowledge that the earliest patients to have been successfully cured were now showing signs of regaining their original sexual characteristics.
“I don't like it either,” said Villiers frankly. “No offence, dear Maturin, but I've no notion of ever returning to the restrictions of womanhood. With all this talk of a cure, the Government will surely be determined to reinstate all the original laws regarding men's and women's roles.”
Jack had heard rumblings too, at the Admiralty. From avoidance to granting commissions to female officers, there was now talk of an outright ban again. Regulations had already been modified to prevent naturally-born women from becoming Naval officers at any level.
“I know you don't like it, brother,” said Jack one evening, making Stephen wince internally at the endearment. He had earlier tried to convince Jack to abandon it, the incestuous overtones unappealing to him, but the habit was too firmly engrained in his spouse, and he'd given up the effort. “But it looks like I shall have to take this cure once the child is born, otherwise I'll be forced to leave the Navy altogether.” As bad as being female was for Jack, being struck off the list again would be infinitely worse. Frankly, Jack would prefer death. Whatever the side-effects of the treatment, he was willing to risk them to remain a Captain in the Royal Navy.
London was dull, dismal and depressing. Usually Jack thoroughly enjoyed the constant interactions with his fellow creatures; the chance to meet with old friends and make new; opportunities to catch up on news throughout the Naval and civilian world. The opportunity to attend meetings of the Royal Society, musical concerts, sessions of Parliament all beckoned to him strongly; and reminded him why living at sea, delightful as it was, could not be his entire life.
Unfortunately his own personal news announced itself unavoidably everywhere he went, and most of his acquaintance seemed intent on making it the centre of their interactions with him. They were kind enough to his face, congratulatory and mostly tactful, yet he felt their smirks following him. It was as if he were no longer Captain Jack Aubrey, RN, MP, FRS, but reduced to being merely the vessel of a new human being.
He was about to depart from Black's, feeling the recriminatory glares of the older members, who though resigned to admitting members turned women, still felt that the club should be a place of refuge from all things feminine, which included anything at all related to children and the bearing thereof; when he caught the eye of Captain Gore, who smiled and nodded at his former commodore – a clear invitation. Jack hesitated, thought Oh, bugger the shrivelled-up old prudes, and joined the captain at his small table in the window.
“How d'ye do, Gore?” Jack asked genially. “You are looking very well.”
The other man positively beamed back at him. “I am doing well, thank you, sir. Excellently well! Never better!” He leant conspiratorially towards Jack. “I took the cure,” he added, sotto voce.
Jack's eyes widened as he gaped slightly. “Did you, now,” he breathed. “How – how was it?”
“I was sick as a dog for weeks,” Gore confided, his smile abating not at all. “But it was worth it. Absolutely worth it! Never could stand being female, not a bit of it. Now that's all gone; all behind me. I feel entirely myself again; haven't felt so good in years.”
Jack smiled back, nodding in understanding. Gore looked confident, comfortable in his own skin in a way Jack hadn't seen throughout their long campaign in the Baltic. “I was overjoyed myself, when I first heard about it. But my doctor don't like it – he had some concerns.”
“Yes,” replied Gore, turning serious. “I understand them. The change doesn't happen as quickly with the cure as with the disease. I lost the female parts right away; but the male parts are taking longer to come back.” Seeing Jack's frown he leant in again, whispering. “But it's growing – I've measured it, and it's definitely growing.” Jack's frown of concern turned to puzzlement. “You know that nub we have – that all women have, it seems.” Jack nodded. “Well, it's growing. I'm sure it'll grow back, just the way it should be – like a man's, like it was before.” Gore sat back, smiling triumphantly.
Jack smiled in return, trying not to let his horror show. Stephen's words came back to him – androgynous ambivalent halfway creature – now with a meaning behind them he'd not imagined before.
“But that's not even so important.” Gore waved a hand dismissively. “It's waking up every morning as a man. And with Mrs. Gore.” His smile took on a gentler aspect. “She was spared before. We were forced to part. Now she has taken me back. Perhaps we'll not have any more children, but,” the dismissive gesture again, “that doesn't matter. The world is right once more.”
As Jack's own expression grew genuinely pleased, into his mind came a brief image of his own world turned right, male himself once again, married to his lovely Sophie, at sea again, nothing to fear from the Admiralty... The baby shifted inside him, and the image dissolved. Sophie was married elsewhere now, and he had his own Stephen. Of course he'd had Stephen by his side before; he couldn't imagine life without him, now or ever.
Gore was still talking. He seemed to be concerned his words might have given some offence to Jack, still obviously female and apparently not wholly lacking in enjoyment of the form. “Of course it might have been different, if I'd had someone who could have stayed with me – especially one who could have sailed with me. I remember feeling fortunate at least to still have my command. I'd felt as though everything else had been taken from me.”
Jack reassured him of his complete understanding and took his leave, his thoughts still meandering. Stephen had his reservations about the treatment, and now Jack understood them a little better. He had Stephen, and he had this child growing inside him, whom he strangely did not resent. He felt more the miracle of it, the wonder of being able to grow an entirely new human being inside his own body. His thoughts drifted to the future. By the time the baby was born, more would be known about the long term effects of the cure. If he could be male again, and still on the list, still climbing inevitably up to the top, to promotion to Admiral, still sailing, Stephen still his surgeon, of course, when not engaged in his less-advertised activities, still playing duets together; well, perhaps his world could be right again, too.
But delivery was weeks, months away. As more officers followed Gore's example and underwent the treatment, the clamouring at the Admiralty grew louder. Those weeks seemed to stretch out infinitely far.
The day the announcement came was coincidentally a day when Jack received no fewer than five solicitous invitations to rest himself comfortably: please, here, take my seat. Jack could bear it no longer.
“Stephen,” he said wearily at the end of the day, over a comfortable fire and toasted cheese, aching back braced by the downiest pillows the Grapes could offer and swollen ankles propped up gratefully. “Stephen, my dear, let us return to Woolcombe, whenever it is convenient for you.”
“Yes, certainly, on the morrow if you wish, joy.” Stephen looked over the captain closely, noting the lines of frustration etched there now which had not been visible the previous day. “Has something occurred to trouble you, my dear?”
Jack sighed, debated, but there was no point hiding it – all would be public soon. “After the first of the year, no more commissions will be given to any women, born or turned. Female post-captains will remain on the list, but their seniority will be frozen until such a time as they may be cured. If I wish to stay active in the Navy, brother, I'll have to undergo this treatment.”
Stephen frowned. “The first of the year, you say?”
“Yes.” Jack mustered up a reassuring smile. “There's plenty of time – my delivery is well before. The thing is,” Jack hesitated, then pressed on, “the thing is, more people are taking the cure, and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of negative effects. At least not outwardly visible,” he added hastily. “Not that the old desk-bound paper-pushers making decisions at the Admiralty can see. If there turns out to be some terrible consequence of the treatment, they can reverse the decision.”
Stephen looked dissatisfied, and pursed his lips, thinking inwardly of desk-bound paper-pushers making decisions that more properly fell under the province of men of science and medicine. Outwardly he turned a more composed face to Jack. “You are right, joy, there is no need to worry ourselves unduly at this time. Let us return to Woolcombe and leave politics behind.”