The floor of the tilt was ruined by the storm’s rain and they raked out the sludge, replacing it with a fresh layer of sand. Evered reframed the entrance with pieces of salvaged lumber and he set the ship’s door on the old door’s leather hinges. The first real snow fell before the end of October and it kept coming in the weeks that followed, the drifting so heavy that even wearing a set of Indian racquets he found it a trial to haul out the trees he’d cut in the spring and left to dry in the woods.
They both felt an aimlessness about their days. They had started sharing a bed again but seemed barely to notice the other’s company. Nothing in their young lives had astounded or animated them like the storm and the shipwreck’s unexpected windfall and the frantic days of salvaging that followed. The urgency and resolve had drained from their world in the wake of it.
Ada felt the lack almost as a physical ailment, an oppressive aching and soreness that for days made her short and querulous. She begged off going into the woods with Evered to avoid the irritation of his company. For his part, he was happy to be clear of her peculiar crookedness and they spent as much of their days apart as the cove allowed.
She worried it might be a permanent condition she was suffering until she felt blood trailing along the inside of her thighs as she stood at the fire. She lifted the skirts of her apron and dress, knowing what she would find there and still shaken when she brought her hand away wet. “Piss and corruption,” she whispered.
A visitor, her mother had called it, in a tone that managed to be diffident and still vaguely ominous. This was after Martha was buried, failing herself then and wanting to pass on what she could to Ada in the time they had left. “You’ll have a little visitor every month,” she said to her daughter. Her eyes sunken, the skin stretched across the bones of her face in a way that made Ada think now of the bodies they’d uncovered in the cave burial.
“Down there,” she’d said and she pointed with her eyes. “It’ll come calling before long.”
It was never her mother’s custom to offer instruction or commentary or to speak of the future beyond the season ahead and the strange talk unsettled Ada. It seemed a symptom of the woman’s affliction.
“What do it mean?” Ada asked.
“It’s just women’s business,” she said and Ada could hear Sarah Best’s voice now as she stood at the hearth, a lick of her own blood on her fingers. And for the last time in her life she set to crying over her mother’s loss.
For the rest of the day she talked to Martha about the development and how she might deal with the practicalities of the situation. Rags, her mother had said, or deer moss. It seemed a waste of precious material to use cloth but the moss was all frozen under snow and Ada turned to the old man’s beard they had collected for tinder. She placed the dressing into her underclothes, the tree moss chafing at her thighs until it softened with the flow of blood. She threw each sodden handful into the fire and watched it burn. “Women’s business that is, Sister,” Ada said.
It was clear there wasn’t nearly enough tinder put up to serve and she would have to sacrifice a few strips of cloth to the task. She settled on the doll she’d made for her baby sister, cutting away the strings that tied the rags into the rough shape of head and arms and legs. Asking Martha’s pardon for the desecration.
She didn’t speak a word about it to Evered first or last. Women’s business, it was. She worried about bleeding through her clothes and they slept in separate beds for the next five nights.
Evered put it down to the queer mood that had overtaken his sister and didn’t ask for an explanation, not the first night when she made up their parents’ bunk across the room and not when she settled back under the covers beside him days later. It seemed a fickle act, almost spiteful, and he was tormented by it. Though not enough to risk galling her with questions.
* * *
—
The snow fell and continued falling through December month. It drifted past the height of the window on three sides of the tilt. It was a daily job to shovel the narrow paths waist-high, then shoulder-high, from the door to the woodpile and to the root cellar and to the space behind the store where the slops were dumped. But there was little else to occupy their time. Even with the snow’s insulation against the wind it was bitterly cold inside and they spent most of their waking hours within two feet of the hearth. They had nearly outgrown the elaborate games and songs and foolishness that used to occupy their time and the short winter days seemed endless.
They drank a glass of the salvaged spruce beer with their dinner at midday and then napped an hour or longer. They had small cups of port with their supper though Ada found the sweetness of it cloying and diluted hers with water. They went to bed almost as soon as the sky went dark to save the lamp oil, lying together in alternating periods of sleep and hours of idle wakefulness. They talked through the black or looked to the other’s warmth for comfort, gravitating to the familiar body beside them. And one night, half-asleep and adrift in that liminal space, Ada hooked a leg across Evered’s hip and they nudged into one another.
Ada had been dreaming of the bear they’d encountered in the berry hills and the image stayed with her through the length of that flushed episode. The slow serene swing of its head among the berry bushes that she and Evered seemed to be moving in concert with. The ripple of flesh under the creature’s fur like a current muscling just below the ocean’s surface and she could feel something akin to it furrowing the length and breadth of herself.
May month, the year she turned nine, Ada had gone to the landwash to watch Evered and her father prepare the boat for the coming season. She stood at the bow, leaning into the curve of the upturned keel as they raked oakum from the seams, the vibration of the work travelling up through the vessel’s bones into her own. She shifted on her feet instinctively to make way for that tremor, rising on her toes to rest her pelvis against the wood. She pressed against the quiver until she felt an answering quiver pass through her like an echo coming off a cliff face. A comber of goosebumps travelling the length of her arms. And for a few endless seconds she was lost to the world, her whole self compressed to the spot where she pulsed against the keel.
It was her father’s voice brought her back. “She’ve gone to sleep there have she?” he said.
“Her eyes is open,” Evered said.
They were watching as she rocked against the keel, both smiling at the studied look on her face, the blank stare. “You’re all right then?” her father said when she met his eye and she turned to run off to the brook, Evered laughing behind her. She stayed there the rest of the afternoon, feeling almost stripped of her skin.
She’d experienced something cousin to that uncanny pulse on occasion, pressing into her fist as she lay in bed, though it seemed a pale shadow at best. And she forgot that first incident altogether in the grinding welter of the years since. But the nights of furtive trade with Evered revived her memory of it, the traffic between them just as acute and confounding. It felt halfways familiar and altogether new to the world. It entered their lives like a third creature with its own being and sentience, something Ada didn’t wholly trust and resisted in fits and starts. She edged up to it on the sly without ever admitting to herself what she was moving toward. She never spoke of it for fear Evered would laugh at her. For fear it would disappear altogether.
It was the one thing in the interminable winter that gave her any pleasure though she never felt she had dominion over it. And the sting of being caught out on the landwash shadowed the exchange with a sour aftertaste, a residual sense of naked shame. It made her think there was no indulgence in the world that wasn’t cut with regret.
The Ark of Malaga. A Blindness.
The weather went glassy in the new year, clear and sharp and windless. The pack ice moved in before the end of February and Evered used the snow drifted against the tilt to climb onto the roof with the telescope. He scanned the miles of white for seals but weeks passed with no hint of harp or hood or round.
In the middle of March he spotted what looked to be smoke on the ocean’s horizon, a thin perplexing plume that rose all that day and the next. Eventually he made out what looked to be a vessel in the grip of the ice. He called Ada up to the rooftop to be certain he wasn’t imagining the thing. The ship was a near wreck, dismasted by some misfortune at sea and all but abandoned to judge by appearances. The only sign of life was the smoke that rose each morning and sometimes the glim of a single light after dark that was too distant to be seen with a naked eye.
They talked of nothing else while it was in view, speculating on the vessel’s origins and what circumstances might have brought it to them, about the smoke and the random light and who it was aboard the ship and what condition they might be in. It was lying north-northwest of the cove and was chained in the stationary grip of the ice field for weeks. And at some point in Evered’s vigil there came a morning when there was no plume of smoke and the irregular light disappeared for good.
It was near the end of April when the ice was usually long gone from the coastline and the herring were about to strike in. But the field showed no sign of breakup, holding fast to the shoreline and spanning the horizon east to west. And in all that time no sign of seals. They had been surviving on the last spongy potatoes and the store of ship biscuit and pork they’d salvaged in the fall and that reserve was growing thin.
They woke in the dark one night and Evered began talking about the possibility of an expedition to the seized ship. It was miles further out than he’d ever chanced walking for seals. But the ice field had not so much as creaked in a month and a half and the vessel hadn’t budged from the spot where it ground to a halt weeks before.
“Imagine what might be aboard of her,” he said. “Pork and biscuit and God knows what-all.”
“She could be licked clean for all we knows,” Ada said.
“Might be spruce beer aboard,” he said. “Or that foul-smelling stuff you loves.”
Ada nodded into his shoulder at the thought of it.
“Not the first sign of spring yet the year, we’ll be late getting the vegetables into the ground,” he said. “Wouldn’t hurt we had something to tide us over.”
It was a foolish undertaking but she knew there was no bringing him to his senses. “I’m coming with you,” she said.
“Sister,” he said. Though he knew she would insist and didn’t waste any more of his breath trying to talk her into staying back.
* * *
—
They spent the next three days preparing for the trek out. Evered had a kit reasonably fit for the ice but Ada was still wearing the same ragged dress and the mismatched salvaged shoes and her mother’s old stockings. Evered fashioned a set of ice creepers with iron tacks driven through strips of leather that she could tie to the soles of her shoes and Ada sewed leggings cut from an old sealskin to wear under the skirt of her dress. Evered had the gaff as a walking stick and he cut the narrow end of a longer and shaved it down to make one for Ada. They tied up bundles of hard bread and salt pork and filled two of the empty port bottles with fresh water. Ada wore the vest she’d made of the whitecoat that Evered had long outgrown and they covered their heads with homemade caps and scarves. Evered considered taking the flintlock along but it was heavy and nearly his height and awkward across his back. And there was no one alive out there he was sure. Ada strapped on the telescope in its case and Evered wound the hauling rope about his waist, tucking the sculping knife and a hatchet into that belt. He beat a path ahead of his sister down to the landwash and they walked out onto the ice in their rummage gear, looking for all the world like a pair of childish vagabonds passing through an abandoned northern kingdom.
The walking was free and easy until they cleared the harbour skerries where the ice went ragged with hillocks and rafts of shale-like outcrops that slowed them to a crawl. As the morning went on they lost the depths of shadow which made it almost impossible to read the terrain ahead and they were forced into long detours away from the vessel they were aiming for. They stopped when the sun stood overhead for noon, crouching out of the north wind behind a low ice wall and tucking into the food they’d brought. They’d set out at first light and had been on the march almost six hours, both of them famished and beat, their clothes gumboed with sweat. Evered raised up to scan out toward the vessel. It didn’t look any ways closer now than when they started.
“We won’t get there much ahead of dark at this pace,” he said.
Ada said, “We should go back, Brother.”
“Likely we should,” he said. “But we come this far.” He looked up over the ice wall again as if taking his bearings anew, offering his sister a chance to push for a retreat. But she did not. “We can sleep the night out there,” he said. “Start back in first thing tomorrow.”
She nodded. “Do you think there’s anyone aboard of her?”
It was a question they’d discussed endlessly in the weeks since the ship appeared but it seemed a fresh consideration with the thought of spending the night.
“Not alive I expects,” Evered said. Though he wished he’d brought the flintlock along after all.
They couldn’t stop long for the cold making itself at home in the damp of their clothing and they gathered their things and trudged on across the jumble in single file. For a time they were both convinced they wouldn’t reach the ship before darkness overtook them but there was nothing helpful in the thought and they kept it to themselves. Shadows stretched out on the ice field as the sun went down, adding some definition to the white terrain which made it easier to plot a useful path ahead and they made better time in the late afternoon. And they were within shouting distance of the hulk before dusk.
* * *
—
They stood together awhile in the lee of the ship, listening for some hint of life aboard. They saw the ship’s name painted at the bow though the appellation remained a mystery to their unlettered eyes. The bowsprit was cracked and hanging by a ligament of rope, swaying in mid-air. There was no sign of boats on deck or at the stern.
She was twice the length of The Hope and belled wide at the hull which made them wonder what she might have carried. They walked around her in a wide circle and could see she was in worse shape than they’d guessed, not just the masts but most of the rail and the forecastle torn away and the hull on the far side caved in at the bow from the reaming pressure of the ice. It was only that frozen grip keeping the ship at the surface anymore and it was plain she would sink as soon as the field broke up.
It didn’t seem likely they’d find much to scavenge aboard and Ada said as much.
“She’ll do for the night anyway,” Evered said.
He flung the end of the hauling rope over what was left of the rail until the hook found purchase and they hoisted themselves onto the deck. Ada stood close beside him, one hand on his elbow. They could see much of the planking along the starboard side had been ripped up.
“I guess we knows what they was using for firewood,” she said, whispering as if they might be overheard.
They started aft where an iron chimney came through the decking on the starboard side and they went down a steep stair at the last hatchway into rumours of a rank smell subdued by the cold. There was a cabin door ajar in that darkness, a staff of light showing through the crack, and they stopped outside. “Hello the house,” Evered called and they stood listening before pushing it wide. The last of the sun shining through porthole windows that had lost their glass. A stove stood along the far wall, a body lying slack in a chair pulled close up to it, the legs covered by a rug. “Hello the house,” Evered said again, quietly. They inched into the room and stood over the dead man, the face lean
and unshaven, the eyes half-closed. It seemed colder inside than it had been out in the open, their breath pluming in the frost. An untidy sheaf of planking lay near the stove and they looked at one another.
“We’ll have to shift him out of the way,” Evered said.
They grabbed the back of the chair and scraped it to the far corner of the room and they stood a moment with their heads bowed as they had when the Beadle read the funeral service over Martha’s grave. Evered was eyeing the man’s coat made of a thick worsted wool. Thinking he would not be leaving the ship without it. He reached to open the jacket to see what the dead man was wearing underneath and was surprised by the bulk of the chest. Half a dozen layers of shirts and sweaters at least. Enough material there alone to have made the trip worthwhile.
He turned back to the stove to see about lighting a fire.
“What do you think it was carried him off?” Ada asked.
“No saying. But he didn’t starve.” Evered picked up a pot on top of the stove and waved it at his sister. She walked across to him and they peered inside at the remains of a gruel or stew with shards and splinters of bone showing through, the whole glistening with fat scum. They both reared back from the sight and Evered heaved the pot through one of the glassless porthole windows to be clear of it.
He turned to the decking in the corner for firewood and uncovered a small midden behind it. He used the blade of the hatchet to pick through the pile of discarded bone, all of them cracked and boiled and sucked clean of marrow.
“What is it you’re into?” Ada asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
He’d brought a pocketful of old man’s beard for tinder and sparked up a fire, stoking the stove full once it took hold, and they used the last of the daylight to poke around as they waited for it to take the edge off the cold. An axe stood against the wall behind the stove, a hammer and two knives and a handful of other tools on the floor beside it. A half-puncheon with an inch or two of brackish water gathered from rain or melted snow sat under the windows and they refilled the port bottle they’d drunk dry on the trip out with it. A folded length of sail that the dead man had been using as a mattress lay opposite the stack of decking. Behind the door they found a trunk with a scatter of materials across the top, an empty tinderbox and a bladder with a handful of matches, a deck lamp with the stub of a candle.
The Innocents Page 10