Page 33 of Brave Truth

Matthew had no idea what to say to that, but he managed a little smile. They walked off to the pub together and got a table at the back. Their food and drink came out promptly and Claudio brought up the privacy protections immediately. Then he added, as he lowered his hand, “Doyle mentioned you’d noticed where I’d learned them. Glad to teach you sometime. It’d take half an hour and some quiet, though. The underlying theory’s a little obscure.”

“Is that like you saying you were only a little busy last week?” Now Matthew could add, “You know I know people in the Courts. I got the three sentence overview yesterday. What you were doing needed doing.”

Claudio’s entire face and shoulders shifted. “It was bad. An entirely and utterly awful domestic bit of badness. Going to take some healing, on several levels, but at least she can now. Can’t talk about the details, you understand, yeah? Not until the trial, at least.”

“Of course not.” Matthew hesitated, then said, “Does it help you to talk about it after? Do you, I mean?”

“The Penelopes have customs about some of it. Otherwise we’d go off a cliff about it. That’s no good to anyone.” Then Claudio tilted his head. “I’m guessing you haven’t. You’ve been alone with it. With yours.”

“No. And there’s—” Matthew gestured back toward where they’d been. “What gets me is that there’s simultaneously a rush of having figured out a way forward. Maybe a solution, maybe just another few steps stumbling in the dark with a lousy dim light.” Claudio’s mouth twitched upward at that; he clearly had that experience too. “But then there’s realising the horrible things you’ve been dealing with, and you can’t talk to most people about it. Maybe you can?”

“Lucky that way. Now.” Claudio’s lips pursed, then carefully, he reached out a hand to rest his fingers on Matthew’s hand. It wasn’t, in a purely definitional way, a particularly intimate touch. People did, after all. Now Matthew stared down at it.

They were private, sound but also a sort of shimmer that made it hard to see the details of what they were doing, facial expressions or something like this. Besides the fact that they were in the back corner and no one was aimed their way. The nearest two tables had games of cards going. Claudio added, before Matthew had to figure out what to say. “It shapes you. Going alone. Besides the nightmares. A bit of my war, I couldn’t talk about. It’s a lot worse when there’s no one but the inside of your head.”

“Yeah,” Matthew let out a puff of air. “People don’t understand. May Day was sort of horrific that way. Mum had invited someone my older brother had walked out with. She’s a widow now. Young daughter, obviously the nice, stable Ministry job is appealing. Or a nice steady job, anyway. She doesn’t think much of Trellech. I just couldn’t figure out how to say any of it. Not the bit about how I’d be a horrible husband. Not the sort you were dealing with. I like to think I’m better than that. But I wake up with nightmares, and I’m prickly, and there are all sorts of things I don’t know how to say. And I’ve got no interest in a woman like that, but of course I couldn’t say that to Mum.”

Claudio had not moved his hand, and Matthew was becoming more and more aware of that. Softly, Claudio said, “Oof. What did you do in the end? You did something?”

“Excused myself for a smoke. My uncle came out, and something I said got him to realise the, I don’t know, size of the problem? He was in the trenches during the Great War. I said it was like that. I didn’t want to hurt him, and I probably did. But it got the point across, so I also don’t know that I actually feel sorry about it. Calibration problem, yeah? Anyway, he’s more or less got Mum off my back. Not that she’s apologised, and solstice is going to be awful in a different way. But I’ll deal with that when we get there, I guess. No use borrowing misery ahead of time.”

“If people keep pushing you about something, they’re grown adults, they can understand that there might be some consequences. I can’t imagine you didn’t give them a way out. Several times over.” Matthew shook his head. Claudio paused, as if he understood he was asking something complex. “What would you have wanted instead?”

“Oh, ask the easy ones, sure.” Matthew said it with no malice. “I want it to be like it was before the war. Easy. Comfortable. My brother there. Calling me Matty. Mum and Dad don’t, anymore. Is it odd to want someone to call you a name?” He glanced over at Claudio now, because he wasn’t sure if he’d said too much.

“Some people I know would argue that names are one of the most powerful things we have. Nicknames or names, or how people say them. Cammie, for example, is always Cammie and not Camilla. She is decidedly not a Camilla. Even her mother admits she has no idea what she was thinking. Family name on her father’s side, actually. Claudio doesn’t have appealing nicknames, though, and please don’t try it with Hesperidon. Middle name.”

“For your father.” Matthew nodded, though he’d be thinking a bit about how tightly that must bind. “I— with me, it’s a me who wasn’t bruised like that, somehow. I can hear Don saying it. Not so much anyone else.”

“Mmm.” Claudio was looking at him now, the steady, measuring look of a Penelope with a puzzle. Matthew was getting more used to that now. Then he changed the subject, or at least appeared to. “And your family doesn’t know about the rest of it. You not wanting to marry a woman.”

“Gods, no.” Matthew hesitated. He didn’t know how much of this Claudio would even have thought about. “I don’t know how much you pay attention to the laws or any of that.”

“Quite a bit, being a Penelope. But more to some laws than others.” Claudio gestured with the hand that wasn’t still touching Matthew’s. Then he added, in something of a non-sequitur. “Should probably say. My marriage was cordial but not remotely passionate or—” He hesitated, then he fairly visibly pushed himself to say something. “Able to be. On either side. I’m trying to figure out rather a lot of things now. It’s entirely tangled. But I can’t recommend that sort of arrangement, even if it worked out all right for us, considering everything. My son and daughter are both grand, and becoming more so as they figure out who they want to be.”

That was certainly going to give Matthew bookshelves of thoughts to think about tonight, when he had time on his own. Possibly in the bath, though he was never very taken with fantasising about people he actually knew. And he did not, actually, have quite a large enough sample of Claudio as an adult to work with, in his mind. It’d have been better and worse if he’d seen Claudio play bohort or duel as he was now. He swallowed, then ventured a “Yeah. I suppose you also see when things go horribly wrong, too. That’s part of it. But being in London feels like a threat.”

“Tell me about that?” It wasn’t a demand. It had an utterly sincere bit of interest. It was a question no one had ever really asked Matthew to articulate before. Either the other person had known it, down to their bones, or they hadn’t known it was there to ask about.

Matthew had to look away, somewhere that wasn’t Claudio’s face, much as he wanted to watch the reaction. “It’s illegal to even express interest. Anything that looks like two men sharing a bed, making a pass, anything. And it doesn’t take much evidence. I can’t imagine how people manage in London. Or I do, but I can’t— I’m not good at that kind of risk.”

“Plenty of people aren’t. Horrible on the nerves. And here, well. People will talk, and I know people who couldn’t dare hint at it for professional reasons. But there’s at least some options in private. And more ways to be private.” One of his fingers twitched, and Matthew knew he meant the privacy charms. “You worried about being seen with me every week?”

“Not here. And not walking in the street. There are enough reasons for that. Are you? Worried?” Matthew had had that thought in the middle of the night after a bad bit.

“I can take care of whatever gossip there is.” There was something suddenly there, fiercely so, and Matthew didn’t look fast enough to catch the expression that went with the voice. “I’ve been thinking about how that sort of thing, the shape you take in the world, affects everything else. No answers yet, sorry.” Then he shifted tone. “Anyway. Albion’s easier all round. They won’t prosecute. You have a little elbow room to figure out what suits. If anything. You’ve not found anyone here?”

There was absolutely no answer to that, and Matthew didn’t try. Just a “Well, I’m out at the pub with you, not someone else.” It slipped out before he thought better of it. Claudio’s fingers tensed on his hand for a second, and then Claudio made a point of letting them relax.

“Lots of ways to be intimate with someone. Gods know I’ve done everything except sex with Orion. Shared a bed, shared a bedroll a couple of times, a shower or bath, the worst dregs of ourselves, some truly awful alcohol and the aftermath.” It sounded absolutely fond. “Had a crush or two, but nothing that could go anywhere. Sounds rather sad, honestly.”

“You mostly sound philosophical about it.” Matthew hesitated. “Crush on anyone I know?”

It got a sudden barking laugh out of Claudio. “Oh, yes. Cammie. She knows, so does her husband. It’s not a problem. And not really a crush on her? But the way she goes at the world.” There was a fractional pause, a sixteenth note rest in a run of music. “You remind me a lot of her that way, actually. Fierce but steady. Not getting distracted from what she wants to do. That’s like Orion, too. Admirable.” His voice softened. “Interesting. Endlessly interesting.”

“Oh.” It came out as a single breath. “Well.” Now Matthew had to figure out what to say that wouldn’t make the moment awful. “Glad to keep doing my best to be interesting, then.”

“Don’t think that’ll be a problem.” Then Claudio tilted his head. “Actually, I wanted to ask, did you catch the apprentice league bohort on Sunday? I couldn’t make sense of the write-up.”