The Midnight Circus

by Jane Yolen

  I was sitting in a half-dream when the door chime woke me, ringing like the tolling of a far-away bell. I shook myself out of an unsettling fancy about being summoned to watch spirits rising up from open graves. Pushing myself from my desk, I blinked in the lamplight, and then frowned down at my watch, which I had placed on the desk. Near eleven—and the text of the sermon not yet done.

  The bell rang again, more insistently this time. I hurried from my study, barely restraining myself from shouting an irked warning to my visitor to show some patience.

  I slid back the bolt and opened the door so abruptly that the woman who stood on the threshold took a timid step backward. At once I felt guilty for my own impatience and mustered what I hoped was a conciliatory smile.

  In the gloom into which she had retreated she was well disguised, and it took me a few moments to recognize her. She was tightly wrapped in a thick green coat with a scarf bound over her head, for the weather outside was blustery with snow. Her pleasant, round face looked up at me diffidently. She had been at church sporadically over the past few years, but for the life of me I could not recall her name.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at such an hour, vicar,” she apologized, “but Mr. Atkinson was quite frantic that I bring you.”

  ‘‘It’s perfectly all right, I assure you.” I wracked my brain for her name. “Perfectly all right.” Now it was coming back to me. “God doesn’t keep his eye on the clock, Mrs. Marchant,” I added experimentally.

  Her expression brightened only faintly but it was enough to confirm that I had recalled her name correctly. She was employed as a housekeeper by a Mr. Atkinson who had moved into Bay House about six years before but had never attended church. He was—I had been reliably told—a retired naval officer, and I had heard someone speak of him as having been something of an explorer in his youth. These days, by contrast, he was evidently so infirm that he was rarely sighted out of doors. I suppose I should have visited the old man before, offering him the consolation of prayer. But when he had first arrived in our village, I had sent over a welcoming letter. There had been no reply. I did not send another. I am not the proselytizing type. I believe that to force oneself on the unwilling only invites disaster. In God’s own time, is my motto.

  “Mr. Atkinson wishes to see me, you say?”

  She nodded, her eyes wide. “He told me I had to come in person and fetch you. He was afraid you wouldn’t respond to a phone call.”

  “Are you quite certain it cannot wait until morning? I have, er . . . business.” I gestured vaguely toward the interior of the house. “It is very late.” And in the morning I would be in church and unavailable, but I did not mention that. Just as I finished speaking, the clock in the hall began its toll.

  “Mr. Atkinson is unwell,” Mrs. Marchant said. There was no mistaking the genuine anxiety in her voice. The emphasis she laid on that last word implied more than the normal ill health of an invalid. I even detected a trace of a tear welling up in her eye. The natural conclusion was that Atkinson might be dead by morning.

  I sighed in what I hoped was a good-natured manner, and signaled her in. Of course I would have to relent. The poor woman had just walked a good two miles in this inclement weather to find me.

  “Just give me a moment to fetch my coat.”

  Relief spread across her face.

  As I led her to the back of the parsonage where my car was parked, I had a flickering recollection of the bell in my recent reverie. That sense of being summoned for some extraordinary purpose returned to me with an irrational force that made my hand tremble as I tried to fit the key to the car door. But of course I did not speak of it. The devil is often in dreams. And in loose tongues as well.

  Once we were seated and on our way, Mrs. Marchant appeared to relax. She even loosened her head scarf, the way another woman of another time might have loosened her stays. I looked back at the road.

  “I assume Dr. Landsdale is in attendance?”

  The housekeeper shook her head. I could see it from the corner of my eye. “Mr. Atkinson wouldn’t allow me to call him,” she said, staring off into the night.

  “But if he is seriously ill . . . ?” I tried to keep any note of censure out of my voice.

  “It was you he wanted, vicar, no one else,” Mrs. Marchant insisted. She folded her arms about herself as though that gesture signaled an end to our conversation, like a full stop at the end of a sentence.

  I decided not to press her. Clearly she was not minded to disobey her employer’s instructions, however unreasonable they might seem. But I was determined to assess the situation upon our arrival and take whatever steps I felt necessary to aid the old man, even in the teeth of his own resistance.

  Soon a wan yellow light from a pair of tall windows assured me that we were approaching Bay House. The handsome stone building, built around the turn of the century, was situated upon a small rise within sight of the sea whose low tide glimmered dully under the glow of a half moon. I pulled up by the front door, but Mrs. Marchant made no move until I climbed out and opened the passenger door for her. Even so, it was with obvious reluctance that she led me into the house.

  In the well-lit vestibule, a ship’s barometer upon the wall bore mute testimony to the unseasonable weather. To one side of a nearby doorway a stuffed gull stood upon a shelf, its wings outstretched, its beak agape as if in warning. On the opposite wall was a skillful watercolor painting of the sun rising over a snow-covered landscape.

  Mrs. Marchant took my coat and hung it up, then pointed out the stairway.

  “It’s the first door facing you when you reach the top,” she said. “The door’s ajar. Just go right in. He’s waiting for you. Can I bring you a cup of tea?”

  “Not at the present, thank you.” If I were to find myself attempting to argue Mr. Atkinson into accepting medical advice, it might be best for the housekeeper not to walk into the middle of a difficult scene. These old gentlemen can be devilishly reluctant. And the presence of a woman only makes them worse.

  I ascended the stairway and, when I reached the open doorway, I could hear the labored breathing from within.

  I stepped inside and saw Atkinson laid out in bed under a quilt, his head and shoulders propped up on three plump pillows. His hair was pure white, thick around the sides but with only a few wisps covering his crown. He was clean shaven—thanks, I assumed, to the attentions of Mrs. Marchant—and his features were of a lean, intelligent cast. One eye stared up brightly at me, the other seemed somehow dead, for it did not track as its mate did. What struck me most forcefully, however, was the air of melancholy that hung over him, even in repose. It was my immediate impression that this was not the result of his physical condition, but was a habitual facet of his character.

  As I approached the bed, he fixed me with a stare that bespoke a fierce will.

  “You are Reverend Kitson?” he asked. His voice, though tired, was that of a much younger man. In fact, as I got closer, I realized, he was not at all the aged seaman I had been led to expect but looked to be in his late forties, though hard living and rough seas, as well as the lingering illness, must have taken a great toll.

  I also realized, somewhat latterly, that I had not donned my clerical collar before leaving the house.

  “Yes, I am the vicar,” I confirmed. “Mrs. Marchant brought me. I wrote you once.”

  He smiled, but it did not lift the melancholy that sat on his mouth. “I did not answer.”

  I shook my head, signifying that it did not matter. Not now.

  His head shifted as though he were trying to nod in response, but was impeded by the pillows. “Mrs. Marchant is a good woman,” he said, “and I will not let her go unrewarded.”

  I was surprised at the strength and clarity of his voice, which was very much at odds with his debilitated appearance. “I am certain that is not what . . .”

  But his hand impatiently stopped my sentence. He had no time, that peremptory wave said, for the niceties of Christian dialogue. I w
as, I admit, glad of that. I have never been really good at this sort of thing. My parish work includes hospital visits, of course, but I do them with dread.

  I moved closer and stretched out a hand that stopped short of touching his arm. “Do you not think we should phone for a doctor, Atkinson? You should really—”

  He interrupted me this time with a savage cough that sent a brief flush to his pale young-old face. “I have had enough of his pills and injections,” he rasped. “If death is coming, we should meet it with dignity, not cringing behind false comforts. All those potions do is to grant us a few hours of breath. I was a naval surgeon not so very long ago, and I know of what I speak.”

  I recovered my composure and said, “I knew you were a naval man, something of an explorer, I heard?” I did my best to sound conciliatory and accommodating. Numbing, even. His violent outburst had caused a visible deterioration in his state, and I did not want to provoke another.

  He made no response to my inquiry, but raised a limp arm to indicate a small cabinet by the wall. “Do you drink, Vicar?”

  “I take a drop on occasion,” I conceded, thinking on the hour. I had forgotten my watch, on the desk by my sermon, but surely it was closing in toward half eleven.

  “Then have one now,” Atkinson said. “There’s a decent brandy in that cabinet that will warm you.”

  I hesitated, knowing there was still the sermon to complete when I got home again. But before I could decline politely he added, “You’ll need a drink if you are to hear me through to the end.”

  There seemed no sense in upsetting him over so small a matter, so I accepted his offer. Then I pulled a chair up to his bedside and sipped from the modest measure I poured myself. In spite of the circumstances, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was more than merely decent. I complimented him upon his taste, and this appeared to both amuse and calm him.

  “Now that you are fortified against what is to come, we should get down to our business,” he said, as if I were there for some sort of settling of a debt, “while there is still time.”

  “I assume you wish me to hear your confession.” It would not be the first time I had heard the deathbed story of a man who had not seen the inside of a church since boyhood. Often what these fellows had to say was all the more poignant for the distance they felt yawning between themselves and their creator. I was good at this part of my vocation; listening was a skill I had been born with, unlike the writing of sermons, or parish small talk.

  “It is only in part my confession,” he responded with a hint of irony. “It is another’s confession that I must pass on to you, and I promise you will not thank me for it.”

  I was puzzled by his words, but I took another sip of the brandy and did not challenge him. It was only to be expected that his thoughts should become confused in this final extremity of his life.

  “You are acquainted with the tragic consequences of Scott’s Antarctic expedition?” he asked.

  The question was unexpected, but I answered that, indeed, I was. “Who has not heard the tale of Captain Oates’s noble sacrifice and the courageous end of Captain Scott and his men?”

  “Yes, there have been several accounts published, but none—not even Scott’s own journal—contains the truth,” Atkinson said. “That truth has been a burden I have carried to this day. I am haunted by it. I have kept Scott’s secret all these years, turning over and over in my mind whether I was doing the right thing by concealing it, or whether it would serve Scott and myself better for the world to know the truth. I have left it ’til too late to make a decision, so now I have no option but to pass that responsibility on to you. As a man of God, you of all people should know the value of discretion and be able to balance that against the stern demands of truth.”

  Indeed, I did not know if he had the right vicar for such an undertaking. God and truth, discretion and balance, were words in my vocabulary of service. But of late I would have been hard pressed to swear I knew what they meant. I was a bit old for a crisis of faith, but in fact it had thrust itself upon me. And the difficulty I was having writing my sermon was but one aspect of that thing. Still, it would not do to say so to Atkinson’s face. The man was clearly dying. He needed my help. I did not need his.

  So instead I nodded, setting aside the glass of brandy and leaning closer. “I am sure that you have made whatever decisions you thought best at the time. None of us make unflawed choices but any error can be excused if forgiveness is sincerely sought.” That sounded as weak as one of my recent sermons, and I blamed it on the brandy. I vowed not to take another sip ’til the poor man was done.

  “I seek nothing for myself,” Atkinson insisted, “not even forgiveness. But this is my last opportunity to discharge a duty that was laid upon me all those years ago. Listen well, vicar—and try to understand.”

  He closed his eyes briefly—the one good one and the one that was dead—as though gathering his strength. Then his eyelids sprang open and he commenced his account, staring at the ceiling all the while. Someone more fanciful than I might have thought he beheld on that white plaster surface the harsh polar landscape that seemed to be haunting him, but not I. I merely waited for him to go on.

  “I was not a member of Scott’s first Antarctic expedition,” he began, “not the one that left in 1900. But I was honored to be chosen as one of the crew of the Terra Nova, which set sail upon the second expedition in 1910. The aim of the earlier journey had been exploration and scientific study, but this second voyage, as we all knew, was a quest for the ultimate goal—the Pole itself.” He stopped speaking for a minute, and licked his lips.

  I gave him a glass of water that was sitting on the bedside table, holding it for him, while he drank two or three sips eagerly. He waited a moment before starting up again.

  “Six months after setting sail from England, we landed at Cape Evans. By God, we were all awed by the imposing grandeur of the Great Ice Barrier and the distant mountains that guarded the hidden lands of Antarctica.”

  “Antarctica,” I whispered. It was really a place to conjure.

  “It was less than twenty years since man had first set foot upon that continent,” Atkinson said, “and its frozen interior was as unexplored as the surface of the moon. In fact,” and here he laughed without mirth, “without the benefit of radio, we were so isolated from the rest of the world, we might as well have been on the moon.”

  “I see your point,” I muttered, though I did not entirely.

  “The next several months were spent establishing our base and penetrating southward to lay down depots of food and fuel to supply the journey yet to come. It was during this time that we learned of the arrival of Amundsen and his Norwegians at the Bay of Whales. They had traveled south against all expectation with the avowed intention of being the first to reach the Pole.”

  As I suddenly recalled, they had. But I said nothing.

  “There was no denying the sense of disappointment and resentment we all felt at Amundsen’s intrusion, but we were not to be deterred. We were English, after all. Scott asserted vehemently that we still had every chance of beating our rivals in this race.”

  We were both silent for a moment, considering Scott’s words, for hindsight is ever more accurate than foresight.

  Then Atkinson continued. “You may not know this, but Scott was subject to periods of gloomy abstraction. He was so resistant to any criticism of his plans, that any suggestions that ran counter to his expressed intentions were treated as little short of mutiny. I am a naval man, Reverend, so mutiny is not a term I use lightly.

  “I was a member of the support party that accompanied Scott on the first leg of the journey, and I doubt if there was one of us who did not hope right up to the last he would be selected by Scott to join the summit party, those chosen few who would make the final push to the Pole.

  “We crossed the frozen surface of the Great Ice Barrier and pushed on up the Beardmore Glacier to trek across the mainland of Antarctica itself. I can still h
ear the sound of the place, the immense stillness broken by an explosive crack—like a fusillade—as the ice responded to its own weight and pressure. There is nothing else quite like it in the world.”

  He began coughing again, and I offered him more water, but he waved it aside, impatient to be on with his tale.

  “It was shortly before Christmas when we made our farewells to the summit party. Scott had chosen Oates, Wilson, Bowers, and Evans. I admit that I was both desolated and relieved at not being part of that group. A sense of foreboding hung over us all as we watched them disappear into the blank emptiness of the interior, but at the time we attributed it to our fear that it might already be too late to beat the Norwegians to our goal.”

  “As it was” I said.

  “As it was,” he conceded before continuing. “I returned to Cape Evans where I took command of our base there. The daily routine kept us sane while we waited. But as the weeks went by, we became increasingly anxious about the fate of the summit party. Twice we probed as far south as we dared in the face of biting blizzards, but found no sign of them. Then the Antarctic night set in, and we could do nothing but wait through the long months of a ferocious winter.”

  Almost unconsciously I shivered, thinking of that place of cold comfort. Or perhaps it was that a midnight draught had come through the bedroom curtains, for the windows overlooked the bay and took the full brunt of the weather. But my tremor passed unnoticed by Atkinson, wrapped up as he was in his story.

  “At last,” he said, ‘‘the sun returned and conditions eased enough for us to set out on a proper search. It was now almost ten months since we had watched Scott and the others disappear into the frigid waste, and we held out no hope at all of their survival. Yet it was still a bitter blow when we sighted their tent drifted up with snow. I was not alone in my melancholy. I saw tears in the eyes of the others as we trudged toward that lonely shelter.” His hands sketched the tent as he spoke.