The Arctic Fury

by Greer Macallister

  “Everyone has a choice,” Captain Malcolm said coolly. Then, almost as quickly as he had turned harsh, he softened. “I do appreciate your diligence and your knowledge. But there are factors at play here you do not fathom.”

  “Then explain them to us,” Virginia said. “You might be surprised at just how much we can fathom, how quickly.”

  And perhaps he would have, except that they were interrupted by a series of screams, loud and high.

  Women’s screams.

  Then all three of them set off at a run for the deck. Virginia ran as hard as she could, even though she knew she would not want to see what greeted her once she reached it.

  The sound of the heavy wooden hull dragging against the sharp, hard ice was an unmistakable, wrenching sound.

  When the screams began again, they were softer and even more terrifying. If they’d come from the deck, they’d stay loud. And if the screaming women were outside but no longer on deck, that left only one place they could be.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Althea

  Aboard the Doris

  July 1853

  Althea had grown accustomed to the whisper of the men’s uniforms, how the wool rasped against itself, though she’d never grown to like it. In the beginning, she thought she might. She thought sailing on a ship among rough and ready men might make her feel closer to James. But she just felt further away. These men were nothing like her good husband, not warm like him, not tender like him. James could bluster with the best, and he was no angel, but she knew he’d loved her. If these men loved anything but rum and profanity, she’d be hard pressed to tell it.

  So when she walked down the short hall alone, when she heard the rasping of a man’s uniform close behind her, she did not pause; she kept her footsteps steady and prepared her breath for a scream.

  “Easy there, young lady,” said the sailor in a friendly voice. She glanced back; he was ten years younger than her if he was a day, and he was smiling. “You’ve got nothing to fear from me.”

  “Who says I was afraid?” she said, still refusing to slow. She heard a burst of women’s voices from the deck above, and quickly muttering, “Excuse me, please,” she headed toward the sound.

  She could still hear the sailor’s uniform rasping as he followed her, all too close behind.

  The women on deck were swathed, as always, in heavy coats and Welsh caps, but she recognized Ebba’s voice. She had awoken in the night and seen her friend’s bunk empty, so she’d come out looking for her. No one was sleeping well; the Englishwomen’s bunks were not the only empty ones. It was light enough to see on deck twenty hours a day, and women who didn’t dare venture out in the bustle of the afternoon were known to gulp fresh air in the quieter hours when most of the crew slept belowdecks.

  Then she saw the familiar shape of Ebba’s cheek, which coaxed a relieved sigh from Althea’s chest.

  But Ebba had her arms crossed, her face troubled. Althea slowed. Next to Ebba stood Dove, the woman as tall and broad as a man, with her hands in fists, facing a grimy sailor.

  “I didn’t mean nothing by the offer,” the grimy sailor was saying. “It was a fair one. You gave me friend a tumble.”

  “What friend?” asked Dove, not sounding as if she cared about the answer.

  “Name’s Murrow.”

  “Says I gave him a tumble? I didn’t.”

  “Well, he says a tumble and a larking and a good one too,” the grimy sailor told Dove with confidence, “and his say-so is good enough for me.”

  Althea unwittingly moved her hand in the motion Virginia had taught them, help, help, but even as she did it, she knew it was useless. Dove was the one who needed help.

  “What’s going on here?” asked the man who had followed her up from belowdecks, but no one offered an answer.

  Althea saw the other sailors on deck starting to turn and pay attention. If this weren’t dealt with quickly, things would get bad. She put her hand on Dove’s arm. “Let’s…”

  Dove twitched it away, addressing the grimy sailor again. “Your friend’s word? It’s not good enough for me and neither are you. And even if I had tumbled with your friend, doesn’t mean I’d tumble with you.”

  “Aw, it do. Shows what kind of doxy you may be.”

  “I’ll show you exactly what kind…”

  In a flash, Dove’s hand jabbed up, heel first, into the sailor’s nose. Instantly, blood began to fountain.

  “Bugger you, doxy whore!” he shouted through the blood. More men turned at the shout.

  “Not today,” said Dove grimly and turned to go.

  Blood still cascading down his face, the sailor tried in vain to stanch the flow with one hand. With the other, he drew a knife from his boot.

  “Look out!” shouted Ebba.

  Dove ducked and turned seemingly by instinct. As the man slashed toward her, she barely evaded his blade.

  “Get away from her!” Ebba shouted, putting herself between them.

  “You mind yours!” the man yelled in return, and Althea’s breath caught in her throat as his blade slashed toward Ebba.

  The blade did not catch Ebba, but she stumbled back, then back again, and Althea stood frozen in horror as she watched Ebba smash against the nearby railing and begin to tip over, tipping, tipping.

  Without thinking, Althea rushed forward to grab her friend, flinging both arms around her waist, but the momentum was already underway. She latched on tight and hauled, but then she felt her own feet rising off the deck, and then, with awful slowness, they both went over.

  They screamed all the way down.

  Hitting the cold water was like smacking into stone. They very nearly hit something harder; she was told later they barely missed hitting the boulders of ice that knocked and bumped against each other, and against the ship’s hull, in the cold water.

  But she remembered little from their time in the water after the first minute. At first, they clutched and kicked. Then the ice-cold water swamped their split skirts and froze their legs. They both knew how to swim, but how long could they, fully dressed, in water this cold? She managed to kick off one heavy boot. She and Ebba clutched each other, fell away, reached out again. The last thing Althea remembered from the water was a stray thought popping like a bubble: it was fitting that she die as her beloved James surely had, frozen, foolish, countless miles from home.

  Then there was nothing until she was lying on her side on the deck, unable to move, as cold as death.

  Later, she was told that Dove had thrown a rope in after them and screamed for the captain, who commanded the men to save them. After a mighty struggle, they’d succeeded in hauling them back up on deck. The men claimed they’d had trouble locating the women in the water and that was why it had taken them so long to effect the rescue, but Althea knew better. Had Dove not been there to sound the alarm, the sailors almost certainly would have let them drown without intervention. As it was, damage was done. If the men had moved faster, they might have been unscathed, but frostbite had set in. Siobhan had managed to save their fingers, but they were both likely to lose some toes.

  At that news, Althea let out an involuntary laugh. There were so many far worse things to lose.

  When she saw that Ebba had not opened her eyes, had not stirred, she was no longer laughing.

  * * *

  Ebba lay half-frozen, unresponsive, in the hammock in the medical cabin for two full days. Althea did not leave her side.

  When Ebba opened her eyes at last, Althea gave a little cry of relief.

  “Ebba! Can you hear me? It’s me, Althea. Do you see me? Do you know me?” She hunched over her friend, who she had so recently thought dead. There was a deep joy, one that moved her to tears, in seeing what had always been so ordinary: Ebba, breathing.

  Ebba’s eyes were clouded, but her gaze seemed to fix on Althea, and she g
ave a faint smile.

  “Don’t try to speak,” Althea said. “There will be time. For now, rest and get better.”

  Ebba reached out her hand, and though she missed Althea’s hand on the first try, she caught it on the second. She squeezed. Her grip was weak.

  Althea tried to lay her friend’s hand back down, but Ebba would not let go. She tugged Althea down toward her, Althea assumed to bring her ear closer so Ebba could whisper into it.

  “Yes? What is it?” She proffered her ear.

  “I love you,” Ebba said.

  “Rest,” said Althea.

  Althea leaned to kiss her friend on the forehead, to press a kiss to her brow to soothe her, but in that split second, Ebba moved—so quickly. How could a woman so near to death move so quickly?

  Their lips met, soft and shocking all at once.

  Ebba’s mouth lingered on hers, asking a question, giving an answer to a question Althea had not asked, had never thought to ask.

  “I love you,” Ebba said again, her meaning rattling the foundations of Althea’s world.

  Althea leapt back, almost hitting her head on the wall of the cabin in her haste to put distance between them.

  Ebba looked up at her, and Althea saw the truth, a truth she had never imagined, in her friend’s dark eyes.

  “No,” said Althea, her voice quivering. “Apologize for your presumption.”

  Ebba’s voice was low and quiet, rasping with the effort, but it was firm. “No. I will not. I have loved you, and you know it.”

  “I did not know it.”

  “If you didn’t,” said Ebba softly, still skeptical, “you do now.”

  Althea rose, smoothing down her divided skirt, still stiff with salt from her own descent into the freezing sea. Only moments ago, she had rejoiced that Ebba was alive; now she was ashamed, confused, angry. For her dearest friend in the world to want—no, it was not possible. She was a navy wife. They both were. She would act with the dignity and decorum she’d been rehearsing all these years. She did not have to be what Ebba was asking her to be, someone she had never once considered.

  Ebba’s voice, still weak but with a fierce note of urgency, said, “You know now, Al. What will you do?”

  Scores of possible answers surged through Althea’s mind. It wasn’t even a choice, what she ended up saying. The words spilled from her lips, unbidden.

  “I can’t,” she cried huskily and turned her back.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Virginia

  Charles Street Jail, Boston

  October 1854

  “How’d you like seeing your sweetheart, then?” asks Benson as he closes the door of her cell with a heavy clang, and it takes Virginia a painfully long, clumsy moment to realize that he means the question for her. His voice, for the first time, has an acid edge almost as unpleasant and sharp as Keeler’s.

  “Pardon?” asks Virginia, her standard gambit for buying herself a moment to think.

  “That blackamoor captain of yours, the witness. Suppose you two were cozy for so long on that ship, up there in the chill, he must have missed you something fierce.”

  “Sir.” Virginia addresses him with the frostiest condescension she can muster. “I’m appalled at your insinuation. I insist you stop making such false claims immediately.”

  It is only after the words are out of her mouth and she feels the position of her body—holding her own elbows, her chin thrust high—that she realizes she is unconsciously aping Caprice. The realization brings a prickle of oncoming tears to her eyes, and she hums them away.

  Benson folds his arms, glowers down at her. “Say all the fancy words you like. I know how a man looks at a woman, and that’s how the captain looks at you.”

  “I cannot help how I am looked at.”

  The guard shrugs. It occurs to Virginia that he has only been kind to her because he’s had some romantic notion of what’s between them. Some one-sided intimacy that he imagined. Has she led him on? She has been grateful to Benson, but only grateful. It sickens her a little to look back and see—so clearly now—his true, misguided intent.

  “If you’re concerned for my well-being,” says Virginia, “you could busy yourself finding me a thicker blanket to keep me warm at night or rustle up something more than gruel for my meals.”

  “Better I should be keeping an eye on you,” he says with a note in his voice that chills her. So different from how he was before. His jealousy of the captain has revealed him. “You’re my first murderess. We don’t get those in here every day.”

  She feels weary as she answers, “I’m not a murderess.”

  “Not proven so yet, I suppose. But I’ve been reading the Clarion lately, miss. Keeler lent me his copy, and I must say it’s been eye-opening. They don’t stand on such niceties.”

  “Niceties such as the truth?”

  He shrugs again, and just like that, everything warm and human that ever passed between them melts away.

  She supposes only a fool would be surprised. Of course there are allegations she was whoring it up with Captain Malcolm. The world cannot conceive of any bond between man and woman other than a romantic one, nor can a woman’s accomplishments ever be judged on her own merits. It is assumed that everything she had she was given because a powerful man wanted access to her. That was what the sailors on the Doris assumed, with their whispers and their sidelong stares. It’s what the newspaper writers and readers alike clearly assume. When she’s hanged for murder and buried in a potter’s field, they’ll probably gossip she’d been tupped by whatever lout or lowlife they bury her next to.

  This isn’t new, of course. That was always the assumption of the westward travelers when she and Ames had guided them through the mountains; she and Ames were a couple, because why else would a man and a woman travel together? What else could be between them?

  The answer was far more complex than she ever would have been able to explain, and besides, she didn’t care to bother. What she and Ames had had was between her and Ames. And she had no reason to explain it to anyone, not from the day he rescued her after the Very Bad Thing until the day six years later when he died.

  She only regretted that newspaper interview. The novelty of the girl reporter had thrown her off. When the woman had asked her about Ames, she’d grown emotional. She’d admitted, The world won’t be the same without him. When the woman asked if she was going to find a new partner and go back to guiding settlers to California, she said, That part of my life is over. I’m waiting here for my next adventure to find me.

  And find her it had, in the form of Lady Jane Franklin, who had read that newspaper interview and offered her employment. She wondered what would have happened if she’d never said those words. Would Franklin have sent out exactly the same expedition but with Caprice at the head? If she had, would Caprice be alive today? Would Christabel? Stella? Everything hinged on those words in that newspaper. The chain of events that had led some of them to this trial and some of them to the grave had started the moment Virginia dropped her guard, however briefly, and let herself be found.

  She’d always wondered if Jane Franklin knew her whole story. The newspaper had only described her career as a trail guide. That was the experience that Franklin and Brooks alike had referred to. Virginia Reeve was a leader of men and women. She’d proven she could work closely with a man for the good and health of a traveling party. And if that was all she knew, Jane Franklin had chosen well.

  But did she know the rest? The uncertainty had prickled at Virginia since the beginning. It prickled at her still today. And if it came up at trial, well, this whole charade would come to an abrupt halt, and not in a way that would benefit her.

  Perhaps things will turn out well after all this, but she can’t see her way to that possibility. Right now, she sees no reason to hope. At least she wasn’t counting on Benson to jailbreak her; th
e wisest course, as ever, has always been to count on no one for anything.

  Lost and found, found and lost. Like the truth. Like so many lives.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Virginia

  Sierra Nevada Mountains

  1846

  Virginia looked out on a bright white landscape that seared her eyes. Everything had been wiped away. Trees, rocks, the path that brought them here, any path that might have led them out. Invisible, impassible.

  They’d been told it was a shortcut. They’d wanted to get through the mountains as fast as possible to beat the advance of winter. They’d failed. And now they would be here only God knew how long, trapped by the unforgiving, merciless snow.

  At home, she had never seen anything like this. Never seen snow this deep, never felt cold all the way to the bone. California was supposed to be the promised land, but from here, it looked like hell.

  Were they even in California? She had lost track. She wasn’t a leader of this expedition by any stretch anyway. She wasn’t yet twenty years old, unmarried, still part of her mother’s household. She could only do what she was told, go where she was bid. Sneaking out to give her stepfather enough supplies to survive on after his exile, that had been her only act of rebellion. And look where being good had gotten her. Stuck here, and look at the people stuck with her—Keseberg certainly wasn’t a good man, nor Foster, and she had serious doubts about Spitzer and Reinhardt. If one’s actions made such a difference, she should be in a different place than they were, not the same.

  She’d prayed with the Breens a few times already, and she was considering, if the weather warmed enough, dragging herself through the drifts toward their cabin again. The times when she knelt to pray with them, grasping John’s hand on one side and Edward’s on the other, were the only times she felt warm. The only times she forgot her hunger. Perhaps their god warmed them. Perhaps when God spoke to you, it wasn’t in words you could understand, only feelings. If she got out alive, she would thank God for it and ask Him to tell her how she could serve Him best.