Do you know, after the war, I asked permission to walk home to London from Nanking, through Tibet and Russia. I wanted to try my hand at being an overland spy. I was the best walker in the Service. I told Sir John Barrow that once without blushing. I was quick to want the world rid of its fools an hour ago. I forget sometimes how much an exemplar I am among them.
That's not how I see you.
Francis, do you know how I was appointed to this expedition? I saved Sir John Barrow's son from a scandal. By chance, in Singapore. I paid to have a very base matter settled that would have blackened the Barrows' name, and the Admiralty's by association. As soon as I returned to London, I was promoted to commander. When the Admiralty announced there would be another attempt at the Passage, well, I only had to say the word.
That only makes you a man.
Does it?
What you describe is a surplus of political luck. Not a dearth of courage.
I am a fake, brother.
I challenge any biographer to tally up your acts of valor and then call you a fake.
Francis, a man like me will do amazing things to be seen. My... My father... My father was a ridiculous man. Ruined himself with debts. He was a consul general in Brazil, and he and his wife would mix with the wealthy Portuguese families in exile there. My mother was probably from one of those families. I was never told more. I was born out of an affair. And my father's cousins had to find people to raise me. My name... Even my name was made up, for my baptism. "James Fitzjames." Like a bad pun. I'm not even fully English.
I didn't know any of that.
I've never said it out loud before now. I always felt I deserved more. So I went to sea aged 12, and I began to build myself a great gilded life that didn't humiliate me to live. And so all of those stories that you would have my biographer tally as courage? It's all vanity. It always has been. And we are at the end of vanity.
Then you are free. Mine your courage from a different lode now. Friendship. Brotherhood.
Are we brothers, Francis? I would like that very much.
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