‘I think the birds smell better alive,’ she said.
‘Come now, every animal is better cooked, surely,’ Bevan laughed. But still, his face crinkled when he tasted the stew. At length, they decided it would turn stomachs more delicate than those of Her Majesty’s finest. Nothing was to be wasted though. The men were served the penguin with hard tack and the officers had it in a pie with a blubber crust.
Both treated the novelty of the meal like a scientific experiment. Even the common men might have been discussing dinner served in a fancy restaurant, as if the tough hunks of fatty flesh were a delicacy imported from Paris.
‘Archie says a little sauté might make it better,’ Bevan noted. ‘Or a sauce.’
Karina shook her head. There was nothing that could improve the meal. ‘It’s foul flesh, even freshly slaughtered,’ she proclaimed. ‘They are having their revenge on us.’
Bevan nodded sagely, as if it were possible that the birds might decide to taste unpalatable through sheer force of will. Karina did not argue with him. She did not eat that night. ‘Let’s hope the fish and the seal hold out,’ she said.
Two weeks in, the ships hit their first storm and it became apparent that the weather in the deep south hit hard and without warning, as the blizzard obliterated the blue above and all visibility with it. The Terror anchored in a bay, men working at the double as the cry went up to batten down the hatches. At anchor, the ship rocked violently and everyone kept below decks bar two lookouts – who lashed each other to the mast so the wind could not take them.
Below, the whisper went up that they had lost sight of the Erebus. The wind was howling like a banshee.
‘Sound the bell and light the lamps,’ came down the order from Ross himself and the men sprang to it.
The weather ate the chimes though, as if they were the tiny tinkling of a child’s toy. There was no hope for the lamplight either as the thick air swallowed it. Below, hot rum was served in the mess and the men huddled together as the ship creaked and strained.
Karina had the strangest sensation of being alone. It was a whisper of what it might be to be dead, she thought. Everyone on board had the same eerie sensation as they sat together, waiting. It was the Erebus that was absent but the Terror that was lost. The boy whose brother sailed on the other ship, wept. Karina pulled a biscuit from her pocket and offered it to him but he waved her away.
‘Come on, lad,’ one sailor offered. ‘We should pray.’
And together the men recited the Lord’s Prayer.
When finally the blizzard died and the water settled, the whole crew streamed on deck. The last of the watch were given blankets and hot toddy. Pearce ordered the bell tolled once more. And they waited, in sight of land. For an hour there was no sign. Silence fell over the crew and the bell sounded melancholy. And then one man spotted her. He screamed, ‘The Erebus ahoy! The Erebus!’ and everyone came hammering across the deck to see for themselves. The bell picked up its pace and it was as if there was a carnival as the ship sailed back into view. The flags were raised hurriedly. ‘All’s well,’ the men shouted as they saw the reply. ‘All’s well. We survived the storm.’
Ross came to see for himself as the crew danced to the hornpipe, all movement swaddled by thick clothing, but still they danced and their fellows danced back from the other deck. Two men with broken limbs were rowed over for treatment and welcomed like kings, hoisted aboard and transported to Hooker’s cabin.
‘If we’d lost the other ship,’ Si started, but could not finish his sentence for the prospect was too dreadful.
As the polar summer wore on, darkness disappeared. In the unrelenting light, the glare from the snow affected men’s eyesight. Without darkness to mark the nights and with the place engulfed in immense silence, it was easy to feel awash in time. No one slept the night through. The endless frozen sun was unexpectedly troublesome. For some reason it felt as if the never-ending light was the men’s greatest difficulty – or at least the easiest one to admit.
‘Men are animals who wake in the light and sleep in the dark. At least that is what we are used to,’ Hooker declared privately as Karina served him. The doctor’s cabin became more piled with books and bones, day by day. Through the window the sky was the only clear space. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. ‘You never know what you might learn by studying these conditions, Karl,’ the doctor said sagely, peering over his spectacles at the wooden bowl of stewed fish she had laid before him.
For herself, Karina struggled to see the purpose in the doctor’s notes. The information seemed impossible to classify – a strange jumble of facts and observations.
As the cold wore on, the men’s eyes ached from the glare and lack of sleep. Hooker kept a log of medical complaints. He did not note, however, that below decks there was dissent. The men grumbled incessantly.
‘Nothing is as it seems – the sea turns to ice, the ice is land and the night is bright as summer,’ Karina heard one man complain. ‘I’ll not come back another year. You don’t know where you are here.’
The light affected her less than the others. If anything, it seemed natural. In Ven, celebrations had been held at the summer’s sunny midnight, though on the island her childhood summers had been hot. She slept easily, the only one on the ship by all accounts. That said, there were other changes. As Hooker had predicted, Karina soon found she could smell nothing and yet food still tasted good. She had become accustomed to eating. After the privations of Deception she put on weight though not everyone was so lucky and for some the pain of the cold (for in such conditions there was inevitably pain) was terrible. Not everyone spent their days in the warmth of the galley. Hooker dispensed advice. In the evenings, when she delivered his tray, there was often a sailor being treated in the doctor’s cabin. On these occasions, she became his assistant – passing bandages and dispensing rum.
The doctor clearly cared about the welfare of the crew and she noticed that when he treated them, he did so with such kindness that she found herself well-disposed towards him despite his brutality in the matter of the penguins. The glassy-eyed medical men she had known in other ports showed their patients little care. She hardly recognized the man who had ripped the bird flesh to pieces as she watched him spooning hot soup into his charges. Two men lost toes and one a finger, but it would have been far worse had the doctor not been so kind.
One evening, Karina laid down the tray on his desk and hovered. Hooker had given an injured sailor his seat. It was odd for him not to be at his station. The man looked afraid. She smiled to comfort him as he held out his hand for Hooker to inspect. He was quivering.
‘It’s an ice burn,’ the doctor diagnosed.
‘Burned, sir?’
‘I know it sounds odd. But ice will burn just the same as fire.’
‘I was on fishing duty. It was so cold my fingers felt like they were made of wood.’
‘You mustn’t hold onto the ice blocks. Even if you need to clear the net. It’s painful now, I bet. But you’ll live.’
Hooker rifled his shelves and handed the man a pot of salve.
‘Put that on it, and no more fishing until it is healed. Tell them, those are my orders.’
The man looked satisfied. He had come to see the doctor thinking he might lose his hand. Now he saluted.
‘Thank you, sir.’
As he left the cabin, Karina laid the cutlery. She had come to enjoy the time she spent in Hooker’s cabin. She liked tidying the bandages and fetching hot goat’s milk for the recent amputees, as Hooker chatted about botany and geology. Si said the store was almost out of feed and the animals would be slaughtered soon. She wondered what they would give the invalids then.
‘Poor chap,’ Hooker said. ‘This cold almost makes you wish for a fever. Can you imagine the winter?’
Karina had been given a woollen waistcoat from the stores and wore it over her other clothes. It was impossible to get warm right through but you could stave it off. ‘Reminds you of home, I expect?’ Ho
oker said, as he inspected the tray.
‘The winter can be cold where I come from.’
‘An island, you said?’
‘I left when I was young.’
‘The islanders are good men.’ Hooker smiled. ‘At least, that’s what they say where I come from. Men and women from our islands are tough.’
Karina laughed. ‘I don’t know about that.’
He rubbed his eyes and pushed his hair off his face. Then he searched the desk for his glasses. ‘Very good, Karl,’ he said, dismissing her as he picked up his spoon.
As Karina walked down the corridor she wondered why he’d sent her away. Perhaps tonight he was tired. The doctor’s cabin was the most interesting on the ship. Once she had arrived to find he had bottled a penguin in a chemical solution, sealed in a large glass jar. The bird’s little body bobbed with the movement of the ship, an eerie spectacle. She wondered where he had got it, for they had not been ashore that day.
‘Don’t ask,’ he advised, reading the question on her face.
Perhaps it was this – that he seemed to know her. In time, they had become firm friends or at least as much as might be tolerated across the ranks. He found her useful – an extra pair of hands. Some days the doctor wrote his journal, scribbling in tiny writing, hardly looking up. ‘I swear I need to get this onto paper,’ he said. ‘I worry that the ink will freeze and I shan’t manage.’ She laid down the plate and peeked over his shoulder. It struck her she had never known a gentleman who worked so hard. On the page, there was a jumble of scientific symbols between lines of text. The pastry is tremendous. Butter? He had written. And Late night seals like old men swimming for their health. And then calculations, scattered freely and small diagrams. His writing was tiny, but then paper was scarce. From the corner of the desk, the doctor noticed the line of her eyes.
‘Can you read, Karl?’ he asked.
Karina hesitated, pulling back. Most sailors did not have their letters. Still, she didn’t want to lie.
‘I didn’t mean to snoop,’ she said. ‘I learned to read as a child. My mother insisted.’
This was true. Not all girls were sent to the village school but Marijke and Karina never missed a day, even when they could have helped at home.
Hooker pulled a book from his shelf. ‘Here,’ he said, opening it at the fly leaf. ‘Show me.’
Karina weighed the book in her hand and then read the words. ‘A handbook for travellers on the continent being a guide through Holland, Belgium, Prussia and Northern Germany, and along the Rhine, from Holland to Switzerland: containing descriptions of the principal cities … with an index map,’ she said hesitantly at first, and then finishing smartly. It had been a while and the book was in English.
Hooker looked impressed. In England, reading in the lower orders it was rare. ‘Well, I never,’ he said. ‘My mother bought me that book. I think she hoped it would encourage me to travel closer to home.’
‘Where is she, sir?’
‘Mother? Glasgow, I expect. I miss her, to tell you the truth. Do you miss yours?’
‘My mother is dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. If she hadn’t died, my sister and I would still be on Ven,’ Karina smiled.
‘And would that be so bad?’
‘Would Glasgow?’
Hooker laughed. ‘Everyone needs somewhere to go home to. Somewhere to keep in mind. Though for me, it is probably London that is closer to my heart. You would love to see it,’ he swore, still unaware of Thebo’s warning. ‘I shall show these specimens there and Ross will deliver his charts to the Society. If we can calculate the pole, we might even be famous, Karl!’
Karina didn’t care about fame. What was the point of that?
‘For me, the place I think of is Amsterdam,’ she cut in. ‘My sister lives there.’ It was the first time she had said it out loud since she boarded. She stared, vacantly, as if she did not recognize the words.
‘Amsterdam?’ The doctor sounded almost impressed. ‘I have never been.’
Karina’s eyes warmed. Here was somewhere that she was the more experienced. ‘It is a fine city. They say the canals are like Venice. And there is a library.’
Marijke loved the library. When they arrived from Copenhagen it was the first place she had visited. They allowed women members. Later, when she had married, Marijke sold the business she had set up at the bottom of one of the grand canals. She had become famous herself in some small way, and several society ladies had been disquieted at her quitting but her workshop continued to prosper and Marijke took tea there once a month to dispense advice to the woman who had bought it. Or at least she had done so when Karina had left to return to Copenhagen, which was, by her calculation now almost six years ago. She had been called back to run the kitchens of a former mistress. The money had been good. As she sailed out of Amsterdam, she had felt her stomach turn for the first time. She’d miss Marijke, of course. But she’d miss the city too. It was an unfamiliar feeling. She’d never once felt homesick for Ven.
‘What kind of library?’ Hooker enquired.
‘There are scientific papers. Religious texts.’ Marijke read about the stars. She had always been fascinated by the night skies – a map as important as the world below, she said.
‘You have read such books?’
Karina shifted uneasily. She did not have the same interests as her sister. ‘Poetry,’ she admitted.
The doctor laughed. ‘What manner of poetry?’
‘Just poetry.’
He regarded her slowly in the candlelight. ‘Well I never.’
Some days later, when Hepworth was incapacitated with stomach cramps, Hooker suggested the kitchen boy serve at the captain’s table. Bevan thought this a hilarious development. Half the size of the black man, Karina could not wear the footman’s uniform.
‘Why can’t someone else do it?’ she objected.
Bevan stared. ‘It’s the captain’s order,’ he said baldly. ‘And you’ll do as you’re told.’ Then he tittered. ‘Have you ever given service?’
Karina shook her head. ‘Not at table.’ She had served beer in a tavern. She had served a lady in a private room. But a table of English officers was a different matter. In the dark passageway, she loitered with the tureen of stew in her hands, listening to the long, low creaking of the ship, as if it was laughing at her. Bevan had slaughtered the goats at last and the meat she was holding in her hands was markedly better than anything they had served for weeks. Still, she hesitated before slipping through the door.
The room was lit with candles so that it looked warm. There was a stove at one end, which gave out some heat, at least. The men wore full dress.
‘Ah. Excellent,’ Ross declared, his voice booming.
Karina made the rounds and each man served himself. They ignored her; a shadowy shabby nobody from the galley. The conversation turned to home and the new queen on the throne. She was called Victoria. Captain Ross was dismissive. Far from respectability and beyond all reach of her majesty’s dominions, he spoke his mind.
‘She’ll never last,’ he said. ‘Not to be disloyal,’ he checked himself, ‘but a queen. And so young. Rule is too much for such slender female shoulders. It is as well that she is married. She will defer the business of monarchy to Prince Albert. She must.’
There had been news of the royal engagement as the ship left England some years ago. The last time the expedition made land or, more accurately, the last time it made civilization, the captain had found an old copy of the London Illustrated News, which confirmed the royal wedding had gone ahead. That was the way of it at sea – a sailor was always behind on events. The news was a queer patchwork to be assembled out of sequence and peppered by a dash or two of word of mouth. Queen Victoria might have had a child by now but it would be months before the men of the Erebus or the Terror would hear of it.
Karina laid the tureen on the side. The men tore into the food, passing cornbread between them. Silence fell as t
hey savoured it. Hooker caught her eye and she looked down.
‘Our progress has been excellent,’ the captain said. She realized he was speaking about their mission. To one side, a desk covered with papers and scientific instruments attested to the officers’ efforts. ‘The crew is working well despite the conditions. We will finish this year, I think.’
‘And the pole, sir?’ Pearce asked.
The officers hung on this.
‘Our instruments are unreliable, I fear. What do you say, Joseph?’
Hooker looked up from his plate. ‘The only way would be to go inland, sir. And we don’t have the means. We can make calculations but we will not be able to prove them.’
‘But the Society will be happy with calculations, will it not?’
‘They are an improvement on the current situation.’
‘The men say there is a spirit at the pole,’ Pearce stated.
Ross laughed. ‘The men believe there is a spirit almost everywhere. I heard one terrifying another as we crossed the equator – voodoo or somesuch. They all believe in it. Boy,’ he motioned towards Karina, ‘do you believe in ghosts?’
‘I was not brought up to, sir.’
The captain grunted. ‘Fine fellow,’ he said.
‘Karl can read,’ Hooker chimed in. ‘He also has some experience of expeditions across snow with dogs.’
‘Dogs, eh? Excellent.’ Ross poured a glass of wine. Karina felt her skin prickle. ‘A most unexpected fellow, our kitchen boy. Though we have not had one of your custards for a while.’
‘Supplies are running low, sir. The goats …’
Ross waved dismissively. ‘Well, I’m sure you’ll manage something. You’re in the navy now, boy. Have Bevan trim your hair. You look like a bally female.’
She almost ran out of the cabin as they started the cheese, clutching the empty tureen to her chest and heading for the galley where she slung the pewter into the washing bucket and scrambled to hand Bevan the shears. She ran her fingers through her hair.
The Ice Maiden Page 5