The Ice Maiden

by Sara Sheridan

  Her cry was cut off as she landed, the last of the air leaving her body so that in the end, it was only a sigh.

  ‘Karina,’ he called into the silence. And again, ‘Karina.’ The officers and men talked so quickly that the sound formed a knot. Above, where she couldn’t see him any more, Pearse was the only one still tending the flag. Closest to the shore, he hoisted it carefully as the others crowded around the crack, terrified by what had happened – the woman disappearing into the earth, so far down they couldn’t see her body. And then, realizing that this spot was dangerous and that the ice might open to swallow them, the officer from the Erebus pulled Hooker away. On the boats, as the men turned, they caught sight of the glint of an eyeglass in the sun. The officer waved, to signal his distress. Over the side a fellow waved back. ‘It isn’t even snowing,’ Hooker said, in shock. ‘There is no sign of a storm. There was nothing to harm her.’

  ‘Karina!’ he called, but she could no longer hear him. The silence stretched.

  ‘Come on, doctor, we must leave,’ the officer said. Hooker tarried and the man raised his voice. ‘Come on!’ he repeated. As if in response, the ice shifted once more. The crack was like a groan.

  They hesitated only an instant and then took off for their lives. Running hell for leather, Hooker turned only slightly to look back at the shattered cave. Pearse joined them as they flew past. At once, the air felt colder. The sun became unaccountably low and, after that one shift, which seemed a kind of warning, the land lay still, as if it was waiting. Throwing the pickaxes into place, the men scrambled onto the open boat and cast off. The seamen rowed like billy-o. ‘Come on!’ the officer from the Erebus encouraged them, his voice carrying across the water. They half expected the ice to answer.

  Hooker could not take his eyes from the receding crack at the foot of the hill, which from a distance looked only part of the landscape, not even particularly dramatic compared to the ice cliffs to the south. He stayed on the rowing boat as the others climbed on deck. ‘Sir?’ Pearse called over the side and only then did the doctor turn towards the Terror and put his hand onto the rope ladder.

  At the top, Ross was waiting.

  ‘Where is she?’ the captain asked.

  ‘There was a crack in the ice. She fell,’ was all the doctor could get out.

  Ross ordered someone to fetch tincture of opium. ‘I shall prescribe for you sir, today,’ he said.

  ‘She might not be dead, James. She fell but she might not be dead. What if she is down there?’ Hooker wailed.

  Pearse shook his head in the captain’s direction. A solid judgement. As the news spread, the men on board whispered in a rush that sounded like the tide. The horror of it.

  ‘We must fetch ropes.’ Hooker thrashed his arms in a windmill of grief. ‘My God,’ he declared. ‘She could regain consciousness. And even if she’s gone, we cannot leave her there without even a prayer. It’s not Christian.’

  In the end Ross gave Hooker leave to return ashore with three volunteers. Archie stepped forward, Farmer, despite his shock, and the young lad whose brother sailed aboard the Erebus. Together the unlikely rescue mission rowed solemnly ashore. They disembarked carefully and then trudged across the ice as if it was only a thin sheet over a frozen lake. At the fissure, Hooker lay flat on his belly and called, low, into the heart of the earth, as if he was attending a birth.

  ‘Hello!’ his voice disappeared as if the continent had swallowed it. ‘Hello.’

  Silence.

  He waited and tried again. Archie took off his hat despite the cold and recited the Lord’s Prayer. Farmer hid his hands, for they were shaking. Still, he readied the rope in case it was needed. ‘Karina.’ Hooker sounded as if he was pleading. ‘Karina. Can you hear me?’ he squinted downwards. ‘Sweetheart.’ The crack appeared to dwindle into the heart of the world. Down. Down. Down. She was gone. ‘Karina.’ This time his voice raised too high. There was a disquieting shift at the echo. Above the mouth of the ice cave, a shard fell into the endless gap. The boy jumped backwards. Farmer called ‘Look out!’ A shower of ice started, slowly at first but then fine as flour, it poured down. Hooker sprang to his feet, not noticing his journal, wrapped in a scrap of paulin, as it tipped from his pocket into the deadly chasm. He turned and as one, the men abandoned the rope and ran for the boat moored a mere three hundred yards away. It felt further.

  Archie fell behind quickly, too fat and old to sprint like the others. The ice heaved and cracked behind him but it missed the old man as it fell away. ‘Come on!’ Hooker shouted, stopping at the water’s edge to usher the others aboard as the crevice filled. Archie jumped as he hadn’t jumped in twenty years, Hooker springing in behind him. As they cast off there was an almighty creak and an island of ice sheered off the edge of the land like a piece of bread being torn from a loaf. It launched into the water buoying the boat on a wave, as Farmer and the boy rowed for their lives.

  Further offshore, the crew of both ships were hanging over the sides, shouting. ‘You can make it, lads! You can make it!’ When they reached the portside, the men were hauled on board. The boy was heaving for breath and laughing. Archie hugged Si like a long-lost brother. Farmer turned with the doctor and stared back at the view. The Antarctic looked as beautiful as ever. If you saw it for the first time, you’d never guess that part was missing, floating on the swell now, off into the distance.

  ‘Well, the flag stayed in place,’ Ross said, as he joined the party. And there it was, fluttering only slightly for there was hardly a breeze. Ross saluted and the men around him did the same. Hooker stared. ‘We will have a service, Doctor Hooker,’ the captain said, as if Hooker was being in some way unreasonable. ‘We shall sing a hymn.’

  TEN

  Karina felt herself wake almost at once. At first she could remember nothing. It was strange. She seemed to be viewing matters from an odd perspective. Was she behind glass, she wondered. She put out her hand to check. Then, beside her a bright light appeared, as if a door had opened onto it. ‘What is this?’ she whispered.

  There was nobody to say. The light was warm and comforting and she felt drawn towards it, but her mind was clouded. She loitered. A familiar voice started speaking beyond the door. ‘Come in,’ it said, but the sound was muffled, as if the speaker was far off, or perhaps underwater.

  ‘Thebo?’ It sounded like him. It was a man’s voice, speaking Danish, in any case. But Karina was too distracted to investigate. Instead she turned her attention to figuring out what had happened. Slowly, the events fell into place. The sound of the crack. The men shouting. Hooker’s voice. The sensation of spiralling into the earth. And yet, she thought, I can see the shore. The boats are there.

  As she watched, a callous kind of calm pervaded the frozen scene. Around her, the light faded slowly. She looked up, squinting, and saw the Terror in the distance and the shadowy outline of the Erebus in its wake. Then she realized that the ships were underway. They were sailing northwards. The voice from the light, still somehow beside her, became so low it almost disappeared as she jumped up, howling.

  ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t you dare leave. Help me!’ She shrieked like a banshee but her words disappeared as they hit the air.

  And then as if Captain Ross’s telescope was in her hand, she found she could make it out easily – she could pull the receding boats towards her as if they were on castors, or at least, the vision of them. At first, Joseph Hooker was nowhere to be seen but then he emerged, striding onto the bridge.

  ‘Come back!’ she screamed.

  As he turned, she could see he was wearing her green scarf. Her fingers fumbled at her throat but it was gone. She remembered leaving it in the box in the galley. Folding it and deciding she wouldn’t wear it ashore.

  She spun round. The tall rectangle of light was still beside her but it had softened at the edges. It looked strange in the dusk. Where is it coming from? she wondered. The voice had almost gone now. She felt as if she should walk towards it, that behind the door there mig
ht be something warm. Or not exactly that, for she wasn’t cold now. Still, behind the door there might be something. But she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind could not tear itself away from her confusion and she was nursing fury in her belly. Her eyes were drawn back to the ships. To the sight of them leaving.

  On deck, the captain joined his surgeon. The men were singing a hymn. The words floated towards her though they were miles off. ‘Praise my soul, the King of Heaven,’ they boomed. Heaven, she thought, how foolish. Hooker was crying. One of the officers passed him a handkerchief.

  Then, the strangest sensation started behind Karina’s eyes. She could see them, but she could see much more – a street, a house, a woman. A woman in a fine dress the colour of claret, sitting at a cherry wood writing table. Her heart felt suddenly leaden as she took it in the scene. The woman was younger than her. She looked English – her dress had a particular cut. Her features were plain, reflected in the gilt mirror over the leather-topped desk.

  My Darling Joseph, the woman formed the words, her pale hands holding an elegant ebony ink-pen and her dark chignon perfectly placed as her head bowed over the letter. I have every faith you are now on your way home and that our nuptial plans will be soon completed.

  Then she stopped, this other woman. She played a moment with an emerald ring on the betrothal finger of her pale hand and Karina knew at once what had happened. She knew it, though she had not a single inkling all the months they were together. In a rush of anger, she realized she was dead. She had tumbled. And this was his life, she was seeing. Everything she had not known before.

  Back in London, the woman in the claret dress resumed writing. It struck Karina she had chosen curious words. She read the phrase again over the woman’s silk-clad shoulder our nuptial plans will be soon completed. She thought of herself lying on the furs in Hooker’s cabin and pondered the idea of a marriage being completed after the ceremony instead of over the course of the many years to come – the ups and downs.

  Joseph had never touched this woman. She knew that, but still, he had been promised. Their lovemaking had been an adventure. The lady in London did not admit explorers. She was why Joseph had wanted to hide her away in the country. How dare he? Karina’s instinct was to push this hurtful vision away. It felt as if she was red raw and bleeding, as if Joseph, impossibly, had slashed open her heart. She let out a scream of anguish and reached out as if she might touch it – the London study with its ticking clock and its measured decorations. Not too showy. Not too plain.

  Then an old man appeared in her line of sight behind the woman’s tidy frame. The woman continued writing, oblivious, but he raised a hand in greeting. He looked her in the eye. Karina reeled.

  Can he see me?

  The man’s clothes were out of fashion by a hundred years – he was wearing britches and an old frock coat. Still, both angry and curious, she raised a salute. The man smiled. She looked down, understanding clicking into place like a rusty hinge. Her mind creaked.

  If you die, your spirit haunts the place where you fell. And between such places, like taut ropes, sightlines connect people who matter to each other. People like this women and I, unacquainted in life, but loved by the same faithless man. In death, you see everything.

  Beside the old fellow, a young girl walked into the frame. She pointed at Karina and squinted before turning to say something. The woman in the claret dress continued to write, undisturbed by this whispering of ghosts over her head. It occurred to Karina that no one had ever died on this uninhabited ice shelf, this terminus at the end of the world. No one, that is, except her. She would be alone here. She whirled around. The last of the sun was sinking and the sky was turning slate grey. The door of light had faded. Soon it would be dark for the whole lonely, Antarctic winter and she was the only soul on the continent – the only corpse in a thousand miles.

  In London, the man put his arm contentedly around the child and in a flash Karina understood the true irony. She did not have it quite right. You were not trapped where you fell. You were trapped where you were happiest. The sea is not kind, why should we be? Thebo’s voice echoed and Karina shook her head as if trying to rid herself of it. Perhaps the world was not kind either. And here she was. Hooker has done for me twice over, the snake. She gasped. It seemed so unfair. She had truly loved him here of all places and now here she would stay. It was not the ship or the cabin but the sheer cliffs and the isolation that had fired her passion. Had Hooker been genuine, perhaps they would have been reunited in death and this would be their heaven. Instead when his time came the doctor would join the shades in the London morning room and his plain fiancé who had been waiting patiently these four years of his voyage. That was where his true life lay. Despite any momentary tears, that would be his happiness. Karina had been a passion. A distraction. That was all.

  From the shore the wind whipped up. Beside Karina the light faded and disappeared. The vision of London dimmed. She stared after it, till it was gone and she was alone. The southerly storm spun her hair into life but she did not feel the slightest chill. She pushed the visions away – the Erebus and the Terror, the sitting room on the other side of the world. She would have none of it. With the gloom darkening, she made a vow with a clarity of purpose she had not known in all the months she had lived in the cold. The sub-zero temperatures slowed the minds of the living but that was no longer her concern.

  I will rise with fire in my eyes. I will rise.

  The wastes were shrouded in darkness. The Union Jack fluttered uselessly, no more than a tiny speck. The edges of the flag had ripped already. And as far as she could see, it all belonged to her. She moved like a skater across the plain. She glided up the snowy peaks and rolled down the far side of the glacier. She could see for miles. The darkness meant nothing. The landscape was clear, the vertiginous cliffs as beautiful as any cathedral. The ice was diamond. And inside she was burning.

  It does not matter how long it takes me, Joseph. I will wait.

  Her fury twisted and as she whirled back towards the shore she swooped like a wheeling gull. She landed on the fresh snow, on top of her makeshift grave. Her feet clasped an indentation in the ice. As she gazed down, the opaque crystals cleared in her vision so she could see her corpse, frozen beneath the ice – her skin like glass, as if she was only sleeping.

  The sight was fascinating and Karina settled to watch herself. The skin had tightened over her face. It was darker than in life. Her flesh was frozen rock hard. Then, with her head to one side, like a curious bird that has found something it does not understand, she noticed the notebook that had tumbled on top of her body when Hooker sprang to his feet to get away. She reached through the ice, surprised as her arm stretched down, grabbing the journal. The book had no weight in her hand, and as she brought it up she realized it remained lodged beside her body. Do books have ghosts? she wondered.

  Laying this matter aside, she opened the first page and settled down to snoop. The story started on the voyage south and unlike any of the other officers’ journals she had caught a glimpse of, this one contained less in the way of charts, of latitude and longitude or weather conditions. Instead Joseph wrote that he was excited. He admitted he was afraid. And for the first time he mentioned the other woman – Frances. Frances.

  Karina repeated the name, lolling it around her mouth. The sting of jealousy was as strong as when she had seen the woman, oblivious, sitting there writing. Fleetingly, she wondered how long it had been since the ship left. Since she had died. She had no way to measure time. Were they home yet or had they only just sailed out of sight? She shrugged and bowed her head to continue reading as Hooker waxed about autumnal walks round a country estate and about a Christmas ball. He wrote about a need. More than one. He kept using the word. Karina tried to understand. My need is great, he wrote. A need for sex? For money? For advancement? She could not tell. The needs are various. He put down once more. What needs were these, Joseph, that led you to betray her with me and me with her? Karina’s eyes
flashed with sadness peppered with anger, but she kept reading.

  By the time his closely packed scribbles arrived at Deception Island, he had sailed for years. He had seen the world – the bustling coastal cities of South America and the deserted wastes of the Antarctic plains. He liked the Australian coastline and was amused by the variety of birdlife. He loved the weather – the mildness of the Antipodean winter as much as the chill Antarctic summer nights. He was impressed by the majesty of glaciers and pondered whether the Emperor penguins were some primitive, flightless form of life so strange that he doubted they were they among the usual run of God’s creatures.

  Quite apart from the weather, he noticed a great deal. The customs and the land around each port. The appearance of the people. The frequency of whale sightings. Rum that was distilled in a remote village, spiced and fiery. He listed the artefacts he had found and those he bought – a bundle of topaz and an ancient carving. Animal skins and fossils. And then, at last, she came to his account of the day she was discovered hiding on deck. That very first day. And Joseph wrote of something else entirely, something he was reading – his concerns about a scientific theory.

  A glimmer of a smile played around Karina’s lips. She did not merit as much as a sentence though she was beaten by the bo’sun. She recalled that for all his medical efforts, Joseph did not doctor her on that occasion. Perhaps he simply didn’t know – billeted in his cabin, pondering the ins and outs of one species and another. Did he only hear a boy had been found when he sat down to dinner? Were those twelve lashes so inconsequential that no one told him about them?

  One way or another, the notebook was more than two-thirds full before there was any sight of her – its heroine. Even then he only noticed her when it was discovered that she could cook. Karina pictured herself. She looked thin and taut like the boy she was pretending to be. She understood why he did not question her appearance. There was nothing of her but a strange, terse creature, odd to see now in her mind’s eye.