When she was only eleven, Marijke had taken a passion to one of the boys at the village school. After class, she’d wait for him by the window at home, hovering in the hope that he’d pass. He was called Anders and he was older than her – thirteen perhaps.
Marijke had loitered endlessly at that window. If ever Karina and she had to pass Anders’ house her temples reddened and she’d giggle at whatever Karina said. When it became clear Anders was sweet on Barta from Landskragen, who was some kind of distant cousin of his, Marijke was furious. She tried to ignore the window, tried not to look for him, but even at nine years of age, Karina found her sister’s bravado unconvincing. She did not understand Marijke’s interest. Anders, as she recalled, smelled of milk and onions. Maybe passion always seemed foolish from the outside. And yet what else was there?
She quit the galley and went above. It seemed possible to think there, as the darkness drew in. Ahead, across the water, the ice rose, rock hard and immutable. Walking in the cold air of evening was like plunging your face into a barrel of dark, icy water. She felt wide awake. Karina wondered what had happened to Anders. He was probably still on Ven. Perhaps Barta had joined him and that had been enough. Why was it always the choice of the man? Why couldn’t a woman have her way?
From below, the shadowy figure of a fellow smoking a cheroot appeared. As he walked towards her he reminded her of a tugboat, set upon a mission. Squinting, she realized it was Pearse and she steeled herself for a conversation about pastry.
‘There you are,’ the midshipman said, the burning tip of his cigar pulsing orange. ‘I heard you had a spat with Hooker.’
Karina’s heart sank. Perhaps they all knew below decks. Even silence couldn’t mask aboard ship.
‘Well,’ Pearse said. ‘That’s a turn-up.’
She didn’t reply, only turned to look over the side. Far off a seal splashed. The sound carried on the night air. Pearse loitered.
‘You know I’d have you.’
She turned back. His teeth seemed almost fluorescent as they held the cheroot in place. ‘I think I’d be happy with a wench such as you, Mrs Lande. Why you can’t be more than five and twenty and fair too. I like yellow hair. It is more feminine. If matters haven’t worked out with the doctor, I’m sure you and I could come to an accommodation. You might be wise to consider it. My family has a lot of money.’
Karina wished she had never baked the boy’s damn custard tarts. Pearse puffed loudly. ‘I knew that you were a woman. I had my suspicions all along.’
‘That is the trouble with a ship such as this,’ she rounded on him. ‘Proximity.’
She started to walk away but he followed, pulling her arm.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Be reasonable, won’t you?’
‘Let me go.’
‘It’ll feel warmer with two of us together.’ He steered her off course, pushing her against a barrel. Quickly he tossed the cigar overboard and moved in to kiss her. His breath was thick with tobacco. Karina struck out, but he was strong and held her in place. She felt his mouth closing in and she pursed her lips tightly.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ he pulled back, fumbling his fingers inside her greatcoat and pawing her breasts through her dress.
‘Stop it!’ she shouted. ‘Help!’
He slapped a hand over her mouth as if he was trying to smother her. He was breathing heavily now, nuzzling into her neck. Biting. Licking. Gathering all her might, Karina stamped on his foot and brought up her knee. It winded him just long enough for her to struggle free.
‘I should have thrown you overboard, the day I found you,’ he spat, his eyes alight with fury.
As she kept going, running to get below, he called after her. ‘That’s what the men say. It’s unlucky to have a woman aboard.’
Almost at the hatch, Karina let out a yelp of fury. She rounded. ‘Go to hell,’ she said. ‘Lucky or unlucky, what the hell does that mean?’
The midshipman laughed. ‘You’ll come round.’
She ducked inside, leaving him in the freezing air. It was, she realized, the assumption that angered her. Not only Pearse’s assumption, for he was a fool, but Hooker’s too. These men took it for granted that she was not good enough for them. That she should be grateful. It was a very British kind of insult.
Furious, she stormed towards the galley. Behind her, she heard Pearse fumble down the stairs, following at a distance. Back at the stove, she armed herself at the rack of knives, scrambling to pick out a sharp paring blade. She grasped it, ready to turn on him, but as he rounded the entrance, he smacked into Si Bevan, just arriving back from a visit to the mess. ‘Sir?’ Si asked, placid as a Jersey cow.
‘That woman,’ Pearse spluttered. ‘She struck an officer. She struck me …’
Karina stuck the blade in her pocket. She’d keep it with her from now on, she decided. Si smiled.
‘Well, if she struck you, sir, a strong chap like you must hardly have felt it. I’ll have her scald you some brandy, shall I, and Hepworth will fetch it to you.’
Pearse deflated. He dusted down the arm of his greatcoat. ‘I’d have her flogged if she were a man.’
‘Too late for that, sir. Now she’s uncovered, eh?’ Si’s laugh was throaty and dismissive.
Pearse glared but he stalked away.
‘I won’t scald him brandy,’ Karina growled from the corner, pulling off her coat.
‘Won’t you now?’
‘He tried to hurt me … He offered me his attentions.’
‘I’m surprised you ain’t been offered more, madam. Maybe if you’re out from under Doctor Hooker’s protection you should stay here where I can keep an eye on you.’
Karina sank onto the stool in the corner. She had a sudden longing to be alone. To stay here in the south and somehow survive the bitter winter that was coming.
Si poured a draught of brandy and heated a poker in the oven till it glowed. He plunged the tip into the liquid, which hissed violently. Then he stirred in sugar. ‘Hepworth,’ he called. When the negro appeared the cook handed him the tankard. ‘For Mr Pearse,’ he ordered, and Hepworth disappeared down the corridor. ‘I’m retiring for the night,’ Si announced, rather formally. ‘And tomorrow I want no more nonsense.’
NINE
Thebo never liked the English. ‘You can’t trust them,’ he swore. This assessment was based on his acquaintance with sailors who hailed from the south coast. Men from Southampton and Portsmouth with whom he had crewed packets and merchant ships over the years. That and the war, in which he had not fought, but was legend among his father’s generation. ‘They are, to a man, obsessed with their flag,’ he swore. ‘They love it above everything.’
Karina could not help think that he had proved right about the flag. The Erebus and the Terror would not leave the far south without claiming the place for the queen. Ross announced an expedition to be mounted to plant the jack ashore. The flag the ships had left there the year before had long since blown to tatters but that did not mean it should not be replaced.
Karina could not help wonder if every ship in Her Majesty’s navy kept a store of flags to leave behind – territories claimed across the globe, colouring the charts that men like Ross were mapping as they went.
That night her dreams were troubled and she woke feeling panicked as if she had lost something important and could not find it again. She lay on the floor and stretched her limbs. The hard surface stiffened them. For a moment she thought she might cry, but she controlled herself. He ought to be beside her, she realized. And there was the rub. She loved Hooker. She had come to love it here, aboard the Terror too. She loved the unrelenting white landscape beyond the porthole. Many years ago, she thought it was Thebo who had been her love match. But it was travel she craved – the glamour of the world’s most exciting cities, and when it came to it she had found something good here in the middle of nowhere – a place it was impossible to survive.
Si lumbered in and they prepared the breakfast. The crew was excited and
the meal finished quickly. The flag ceremony would mark the end of the Antarctic leg of the trip and there was the prospect of setting off northwards, over open water. Heading for home. Each man had a spring in his step. On deck two able seamen whittled dice out of whalebone and whistled cheerfully. Karina stirred a pot of brose and listened to them. She peered periodically towards the ice. The weather was exceptionally fine, as if the sky was on its best behaviour. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of a shoal of elephant seals that swam between the Erebus and the Terror. The spray from the animals sparkled like a scatter of diamonds above the silky water. She knew, above, many of the sailors would take it as a sign.
In the middle of the morning, he knocked on the door frame. Si was on deck, taking a turn. Hooker stepped sheepishly into the galley. He seemed taller today as if he was held from above, dangling towards the boards, almost out of control.
‘At home, a chap would bring flowers and here there are none of course,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I’ve come to say sorry.’
She laid down the spoon. ‘I don’t know what I want,’ she said.
‘Would sorry be a start?’
‘From a man who values me so low, he’d shut me up in his house and make a whore of me?’
‘Not a whore, Karina. That is harsh.’
‘What then?’
Hooker hesitated. ‘What we have is outside of normal life. Whatever it is between us, it is not in the run of things. That is why it thrived here, perhaps.’
She felt herself flush and was glad of the galley’s darkness, which meant Hooker might not notice. Out of the porthole she caught a snatch of the ice cliffs. She wished she could be as majestic. As distant.
‘We could make what we have grow a different way in England,’ he suggested.
‘By keeping me separate to everything? Housing me close enough to visit. What would I do, Joseph? In this house, while I waited for you? Tell me about my days?’
‘There is something of the wild thing about you. I like it.’ His smile was endearing.
‘I will miss it here in the end. That is what I have been thinking.’
There was a clatter in the corridor and Si appeared in the doorway. ‘Apologies, sir,’ he said, and began to back away.
‘No. Come in.’ Hooker waved him through. Karina cursed the old man’s timing. ‘Well,’ the doctor’s tone changed. ‘I will join the shore party.’
Karina turned back to the pot on the range.
‘I’m looking forward to some heat in my bones,’ Si chipped in amiably.
‘I wondered if you might join us?’ Hooker ignored him. ‘Would you like to step onto the ice, Karina? Just once before we go.’
This captured her attention. She felt a thrill at the idea. She had not been off the ship for months. It seemed a shame to leave without going ashore, if the chance was offered.
‘May I?’ It felt forbidden, though nobody had expressly said so. ‘What about the men …’
‘You will be with me,’ Hooker said firmly. ‘I have spoken to Ross. He will allow me to manage it.’
At the ropes, the shore crew assembled above. Karina held back from Pearse, who acted as if she was below his notice. He chivvied the men, who were loading a jute sack, two pickaxes and a wooden box.
‘I don’t know,’ she said to Hooker.
‘I thought you’d like to come. It is my way of saying sorry. And a good way to say goodbye to this place. You said you would miss it.’
The water looked inviting today, she thought, as the sea lions frolicked. If she was ever to try out the ice, she couldn’t ask for milder weather.
‘All right,’ she said.
The boat was small so they huddled together. Two able seamen manned the oars – Farmer one of them. Pearse, Hooker and Karina sat for the ride. Karina’s skirt ballooned around her legs and she could not settle it. She was swaddled in a woollen blanket with the old greatcoat on top. Hooker looked resplendent in his fur hat. She avoided Pearse’s eyes. The sound of the wooden oars cutting through the water was soothing and she found she could scarcely take her gaze from the shore as it drew closer. The Erebus had sent a rowboat to join them – the planting of the flag being a business with which everyone wished to be involved. The English loved ceremony.
Farmer was first on the ice. He sprang from the bow and efficiently hammered in a peg to tether the rope. Hooker turned to help Karina ashore, offering his gloved hand. The ice was rougher than she expected, running in frozen waves as if someone had thrown it like a piece of cloth across a wide table and had left it wrinkled. The grains were thick. Saltis, she thought. Sea ice. As she stepped ashore it crunched underfoot. Pearse saw the kit unloaded – the box and the sack and some rope to hoist the flag.
Karina didn’t help. Her head swam as she regarded the vista before her, relishing the steadiness of her first land in months. Beyond the mooring, the glacier stretched to a range of low hills that fell away to sheer ice cliffs. She felt as if she was flying without the dark, heavy ship to moor her. Thebo’s old boots afforded a good grip and she stretched her hands wide and walked away from the party, which was now welcoming the men from the second boat. When Hooker called her back, she felt like a boat being pulled in by the tide. The first time she did not heed him.
‘Karina!’ His second call was more insistent.
Reluctantly, she rejoined the party. The men from the Erebus nodded in her direction, their eyes still with interest as they took her in.
‘Madam,’ one of them mumbled.
They haven’t seen a woman in months, she thought.
They set off inland, Pearse ahead leading the seamen. Behind, Hooker and one of the officers from the Erebus drew out a compass each and took readings. There was some talk of magnetism as they trudged towards the lee of the hill, which it had been decided was the best place to raise the flag.
‘It will never last the winter,’ Hooker said.
‘It might,’ the other officer chimed in. ‘You never know. It will be protected by the slope.’
‘Well, we must raise it inland a way at least. Closer to the shoreline would be uncertain. At any time the ice could sheer off and we can’t have the jack adrift.’
‘No. We can’t have that.’
It felt good to be moving unrestricted. She was reminded of walking for miles when she had hunted for eggs on Deception Island, scouring the cliffs for nests to raid. It felt a long time since she had been that hungry. It would be odd to see Deception Island again – the ragged line of shacks on the dock and the stink of the smelting vats. She wondered if, waiting for her, was the letter from Marijke at last. It felt alien to hope for news from Amsterdam and perhaps even some money. She wondered if Van Kleek might have opened it to retrieve what she owed him. How might he manage here, she wondered. Of anyone, she thought, the grizzled old company man would suit this kind of isolation.
They stopped and two men set to the ice with the pickaxes. It was heavy work. At sea, there was always an element of blue between the water and the sky but here if you turned away from the shore, the whiteness could overtake you, like stepping through a curtain. Like wrapping yourself in a frozen shroud.
In the other direction, the ships looked like children’s toys – tiny, dark vessels floating on an icy pond. One of the officers from the Erebus pulled a hipflask from his pocket and offered it to Hooker, who took a gulp and smacked his lips. One of them said something Karina didn’t catch and they all laughed. Hooker looked as if he belonged here, in this company. His green eyes stood out against the snow. He was smiling. She liked that he was taller than the other men – only a shade, but still.
She lingered uncomfortably on the fringes of the group. Pearse eyed her and turned away. The officers laughed again and Karina decided she might head a little further along the hillside. She could see a small fissure framed by icicles. There was something intriguing about it. Behind her, the laughing continued. A little way off now, one of the men scooped up a handful of snow and formed it into a
loose ball, which he threw at Pearse, who retaliated in kind. They were, she thought, like children.
Looking down at her boots, she stamped hard, testing out her land legs. Then she peered into the crack. It was like a sculpture. Snow made everything beautiful, she thought. It covered both mud and decay. As a child, the morning the first snow came was always an occasion of excitement.
The fissure opened into a small ice cave. She turned in the entrance, staring at the vivid blue sea framed by the walls. A smile played on her lips. Back at the flag, the men were missing this. They simply brought their world with them, she thought. She stamped her foot, enjoying making a deep footprint in the rough surface and stretched up to reach an icicle, which she broke off and held in her hand like a dagger. Then, in only a second, there was a tearing sound and a crack.
Behind her, the fissure in the ice opened and over at the group, the laughing stopped and there was a shout. ‘Karina!’ Hooker’s voice sounded. She swung round. The men were still planting the flagpole but Hooker, Farmer and the officer from the Erebus were running towards her. Pearse held back and gestured to the men to keep working. She hadn’t realized she had come so far. It was only watching them running, she realized the distance. She started to move, but before she could take a step, she tipped as the ice gave way beneath her, just as Farmer appeared in the frame. He sprang, missing her outstretched fingers by an inch. Karina heard herself scream. Time slowed.
Farmer was above her now, the light from the sky formed a slash between shady, sheer walls of ice. His face was pink. He looked like a raspberry, she thought and then wondered why this had come into her mind, as he tumbled towards her, overbalancing. Then someone caught him and hauled him back over the edge. Karina reached upwards but there was no such help and she kept falling, falling, falling. Before it went dark, Hooker’s face appeared in the light like a flash. He seemed as far away as the boats had been.
The Ice Maiden Page 9