Voyage of the Narwhal

by Andrea Barrett

  “What is that?”

  Erasmus told him about his last day among the Boothian Esquimaux, and how the wife of the tribe’s leader had slipped him this relic. He didn’t say where he’d hidden it; nor what Joe had told him about the boot from which it might have come.

  “Have you shown it to anyone?”

  “Just some reporters,” Erasmus said. “When I first got back, and everyone was asking questions and I was trying to explain what happened and what we’d found. Even if all the other things were lost, I said, this was one real bit of evidence that we’d uncovered from Franklin’s voyage. But no one believed me.” He paused for a second. “That’s not true; Alexandra and Linnaeus and Humboldt saw it. They believed me, I think. I’m not sure, I was so sick. I don’t remember much from those first few weeks.”

  Copernicus balanced the relic on his palm. “But it’s real,” he said. The tips of the rusty, broken screws raised the leather off his skin, so that this thing which had once sheltered a foot now seemed to balance on little feet of its own. “It’s right here.”

  Two big blotches rose on Erasmus’s cheeks. “It’s my own fault,” he said. “I didn’t include it on my list of the items we found, because I wanted to keep it secret, for myself. I stole it, really. And now there’s no one who witnessed me finding it, no written evidence of how I got it. One of the reporters accused me of manufacturing it. Another said I could have found it anywhere, and that it might be anything. A bit from a sailor’s boot, picked up in Greenland. Or a remnant from Kane’s expedition, found at Smith Sound.”

  “There’s nothing that marks it surely as belonging to one of Franklin’s men?”

  “Just the context,” Erasmus said. “Just where I found it, and who gave it to me.”

  Once more, as he had for months, he berated himself for having kept this secret from Dr. Boerhaave. He’d withheld this part of himself, failed to share every corner of his heart with the man who’d been his friend—why had he done that? What had he been waiting for?

  The outline of the seven screws fit exactly within Copernicus’s left palm. “It’s too bad,” he said. “This ought to have been the one thing that would make everyone understand all you found. But I understand what you mean: it’s almost as if I can see the man this belonged to, and the entire expedition. And that is what I mean by these paintings: sometimes one scene can capture . . . everything. The feel of a place.”

  THE BROTHERS’ PLANS delighted Alexandra, but also made her feel it was time to leave. Lavinia was more serene than she used to be, more thoughtful, more reserved; but perfectly capable of running the household and seemingly at ease with Erasmus now that Copernicus mediated between them. Meanwhile her own family could use her help, Browning said. They were grateful for the money she contributed each month, but how much longer could she count on that?

  To this she had no answer; she was halfway done with her botanical plates and no more had been promised. Yet, as Browning pointed out, there were scores of ways she could help her family. A dense net of obligations, which she sometimes longed to shed . . . but no one was ever free of them. Lavinia was tied here with her brothers, perhaps forever. And she herself must be similarly tied to her siblings; she would never marry, she could feel it. Passing a mirror, she would glimpse herself in her gray frock, with her hair pulled tightly back, and think how invisible she must be to anyone who didn’t know her.

  “Your feet are healed,” she said to Erasmus one day. “And you and Copernicus have so much work to do, you don’t need me here anymore.”

  “But you can’t go,” he said, seizing her hand. “Not now.”

  “We do need you,” Copernicus said.

  “I need you,” Erasmus added. “The paintings Copernicus plans to make—those are just the general portraits. Chapter headings, in a way. But we must have hundreds of detailed drawings of the plants and animals and their parts, just like the ones you’re working on now. Won’t you be our partner in this?”

  “It’s not as if I’m replacing you,” Copernicus added. Although she’d assumed that he was.

  “The way we’ve been working these past weeks,” Erasmus said. “I thought we’d just continue. We work so well together.”

  Erasmus in one corner, writing steadily except when he leapt up to offer suggestions; she with pen and ink in another corner, drawing sedges and seaweeds and gulls; Copernicus already painting in blue and green and gold and white, icebergs calving from a glacier above Melville Bay—they did work well together, but she’d assumed this was just for a few weeks until Copernicus took over her work and her responsibility for Erasmus. But perhaps things didn’t have to go that way. Neither of the brothers had said a word about money, though.

  “Let me think about it,” she said. “Let me talk to my family.”

  IN LATE MAY, Copernicus took Erasmus to visit two fellow painters who shared an attic studio. Under the skylights they drank red wine and chatted gaily—a pleasure, Erasmus thought. He went out so seldom; he’d missed the company of other men. Afterward he tapped along Sansom Street with his walking sticks, delighted with the day and with his own increasing stamina. He smelled lilacs, the sharp green odor of sumacs, freshly scrubbed paving stones. He was moving across the stones—not as swiftly as Copernicus, who kept darting ahead, and then looping back to him—but still he was moving. The sweet air poured into his lungs. Those painters had liked him. Found him interesting. They’d asked him questions about his book.

  At Broad Street they caught the empty omnibus. Past them sailed storefronts, window displays, pigeons rising and falling as if all attached to the same rippling sheet. Copernicus pointed out the shadow rippling beneath the flock; Erasmus asked about the shadows water cast on ice. At their stop they were talking happily when the driver interrupted them.

  “Would you be Erasmus Wells?” he asked, staring at Erasmus’s feet. Erasmus nodded, still thinking about what Copernicus had explained. Water cast a shadow up . . . “My name’s Godfrey,” the driver said. At first the name meant nothing.

  “William Godfrey,” he added. “Kane’s Godfrey.”

  William Godfrey, the deserter and traitor Kane had written about so bitterly in Arctic Explorations! Erasmus caught his brother’s eye. “This is my last run of the day,” Godfrey said. “I’d like to talk with you, if you could give me a few minutes . . .”

  They agreed to meet in half an hour, at a nearby tavern. What harm could it do? On a bench by the tavern’s front window, Erasmus looked out at a catalpa tree covered with foamy white blossoms and wondered what this stranger might have to say to him. “It’s a good idea,” Copernicus said, and Erasmus agreed. “You can compare notes.”

  Soon Godfrey slid in next to them. “Buy me a drink,” he said. “A couple of drinks. You can afford it.” A whiff of horse dung rose from his shoes.

  While Copernicus fetched a round, Erasmus started to ask Godfrey about the sights they’d shared. “The Esquimaux,” he said. “The ones that helped you . . .”

  Godfrey leaned in too close to him, seizing the glass of beer Copernicus offered. “What was Commander Voorhees like?” he asked abruptly. Before Erasmus could answer, Godfrey said, “As bad as Kane? Was he that bad? You know, what I went through up there . . .”

  Dr. Kane lied, he said. His book was a lie, much of what had really happened glossed over; he himself no mutineer but rather a hero who’d saved Kane’s life several times. “I pulled him from the water when the sledge fell in,” Godfrey said. His voice shot up and people turned to look at them. “I shot the bear he missed, the one that charged him . . .”

  A carriage passed by the window, two beautiful chestnut horses and behind them, half-hidden, a woman in a blue silk dress much like one Erasmus remembered on his mother. Still Godfrey was talking: lowbrowed, pockmarked, seeming more unpleasant by the minute.

  “And what did I get?” Godfrey continued, gulping at his beer. He held out his glass for a refill. “Nothing. Worse than nothing. Kane ruined my reputation, no one w
ill hire me: look at me, driving men like you through the streets.”

  “I’m sorry,” Erasmus offered, but Godfrey trampled over his words. Why he’d opposed Kane’s orders, why part of the crew had set off on their own . . . the beer was sour and that, or Godfrey’s complaints, made Erasmus queasy. That droning voice dissolved the pleasures of the day and cast him back to the dark winter, the paper headstone pinned to Captain Tyler’s bunk and the names of the dead, the list that always grew longer. Erasmus was about to make an excuse and leave when Godfrey said, “You know, if anyone does, what it is to be falsely accused. And how the arctic can drive men mad.”

  He bent toward Erasmus and squinted. “Tell me the truth—did you kill him?”

  Was that what people thought? Not just that he had abandoned Zeke, but that he’d murdered him? Erasmus rose but Copernicus pushed him down.

  “How dare you!” Copernicus said. “My brother saved that expedition, he’s the one who got everyone safely home. Zeke made his own decisions, what happened to him was his choice and you have no right . . .”

  Godfrey drained his second glass and set it down. “Well, excuse me,” he said to Erasmus. “Excuse me for making assumptions. But, you know—Kane’s account of our voyage is so different from what actually happened . . . all I know about you is what I’ve read in the papers. How would I know what you really did?”

  “I did everything I could,” Erasmus said. “Believe that or not, as you choose.” He rose again, sure that everyone in the tavern was looking at them. “We have to go.”

  Godfrey grasped his arm. “Don’t,” he said. “I know you despise me, everyone does—but you and I have things in common.”

  More carriages rolled by, a stream of handsome, well-dressed people talking and laughing, making plans, doing whatever it is people do. What did they do? They passed, leaving Erasmus cut off once more from the simple stream of dailiness. He and Godfrey had nothing in common, he thought. Nothing at all.

  “I deserve a hearing too,” Godfrey continued. “A fair and impartial hearing before the American public—I’m writing a book, my version. Will you help me? I need money. Surely you among all men can sympathize . . .”

  If he would stop talking; if this awful man would just stop talking . . . Erasmus dug in his pockets, dropped a few bills on the table, and fled with Copernicus. His dismay stayed with him long after they’d reached home, and that evening he wrote in his journal:

  What a horrid man! Yet something in Godfrey’s account makes me wonder if our two voyages were so different. Perhaps I’ve been making a mistake in comparing what I did with what others claimed in print to have done. Godfrey said Kane’s anger was boundless when the eight crew members seceded and set off on their boat journey; and that four months later, Kane was vindictive when the frozen men straggled back to the ship. According to Godfrey there was no saintly welcome; Kane was an iron-willed tyrant who grudgingly saved his crewmen only when their wills were broken. Godfrey boils with resentment and self-interest; yet some of what he says may be true.

  If Kane was less of a hero than we all believe, am I less of a failure? The world knows Kane’s version of that expedition, not Godfrey’s; as it knew Wilkes’s version of the Exploring Expedition and no one else’s—and as it might have known Zeke’s version of our own journey, had he not been lost.

  Copernicus says we ought to try to talk with him again, this time without beer; he may have observed things on his side of Smith Sound I never saw, which might contribute to our portrait of the area. But I can’t bear to see him again, I can’t bear to think of anyone drawing a parallel between us. How can I write one word about the arctic when a person such as Godfrey is also writing a book, one that says me, me, me, me me?

  COPERNICUS’S FIRST PAINTING grew, it was radiant. When his dealer visited the Repository to collect a group of the western paintings, Copernicus showed him the unfinished picture of Melville Bay and the dealer’s breath whistled in his throat. “It’s one of a set,” Copernicus said. “For a book my brother’s writing.”

  “When you finish them,” the dealer said, “after the color plates have been made, if you’d let me sell them as a group . . .”

  “We’ll discuss it later,” Copernicus said. “After the work is done.”

  He talked about the book as if it already existed, and so Erasmus wrote on. He took courage not only from his brother but from the presence of Alexandra, who turned out one handsome drawing after another. At night he fell asleep thinking about her face, her hands, the ink on her hands, the way her arms merged pale and strong into the sleeves of her smock. At the back of her neck, beneath the coil of smooth, straight, oak-brown hair, small strands escaped and whispered over the bumps of her vertebrae. He hadn’t found her plain for a long time now.

  On the Narwhal sex had been something he seldom thought about, after the first summer; perpetually too cold, too worn, too hungry, so worried he’d barely remembered the feel of skin on skin, which had seemed like something from another life. And before that, when he was still healthy and energetic, the cabin was always full of men coming and going, the light had been endless, there was no privacy. A few times, landing on the shoreline to hunt or left briefly alone on Boothia, he’d touched himself in the shelter of some rocks—but he’d thought of a red-haired woman in Washington then, a woman on Front Street, the flowery faces of Lavinia’s friends. Now he lay in his lonely bed imagining Alexandra.

  Thinking all the heat flowed from him, Erasmus was unaware of Alexandra’s humming confusion. It was the presence of both brothers, she thought, that made her feel so strange. Copernicus’s strong, broad body, his easy good humor and the way he rested his hand on her shoulder; Erasmus’s focused attention, the way he followed her hands and looked into her eyes and spoke as if they were equals: which was it she wanted? Both, perhaps. Although she was aware even then that the affection she felt beaming from Copernicus was part of his general affection for the world. Perhaps it was only the delirious early summer weather that made her toss and turn in her sheets and stare at herself naked in the mirror. One lit candle, the gleam off her flank slipping into the glass and out as she imagined how she might look to another set of eyes. At night someone appeared in her dreams who was neither Erasmus nor Copernicus but both of them. During the day when she wasn’t working she sat with Lavinia and talked about transplanting the irises.

  All this made her blush when finally, reluctantly, she spoke to Erasmus about her financial situation. He looked so startled, even ashamed—did he never need to think about money? “I have an income,” he said quickly. “More than I need. It was foolish of me not to realize that Linnaeus and Humboldt had stopped paying you. The three of us are full partners on this project, and it’s only fair you should receive a salary for your efforts.”

  IN THE GARDEN the four of them sat, eating strawberry-rhubarb pie and listening to Erasmus read. The bleeding hearts were still in bloom, the weather had been cool; the lawn stretched soft and green between the wicker chairs and the drive. Along the drive the peonies planted so long ago rose in great clumps covered with flowers. Erasmus turned the pages on his lap. Lavinia nodded her head thoughtfully when Erasmus read a passage about the fevered coming of summer to Disko Island. It was a gift, she said. She could almost see the cliffs and ice floes sailing toward her. Even if Erasmus wasn’t writing directly about Zeke, he was letting her see the last things Zeke might have seen, and she was grateful for that. Erasmus read on. A carriage appeared at the end of the drive and a man got out. After that everything happened as if in a dream.

  Money changed hands and boxes were dropped onto the grass. Then another, smaller figure stepped down from the carriage, bundled in unfamiliar clothes. The figure lifted out a child; the pair sat, when the man pointed, on one of the boxes. The man began to walk up the drive, between the rows of peonies. Pink globes, creamy globes, the man touching the globes as he passed; Erasmus rose from his chair without his sticks and toppled to the ground. Then Lavinia was r
unning toward the man, stumbling over the hem of her dress, and Copernicus and Alexandra were bending over Erasmus.

  Alexandra would never be able to sort out the next few minutes. How Zeke and Lavinia got from their embrace halfway down the drive to the solarium; how Copernicus got Erasmus to his feet and into the shelter of the Repository; how she herself made her way to the mound of boxes and the two figures sitting there, so out of place—all this jumbled in her mind. One minute she was standing over the strangers—one was a woman, an Esquimau woman, and the smaller figure a little boy—and saying, as she would to anyone, “Won’t you come inside?” The next she was leading them into the house and giving orders to the bewildered servants.

  Zeke was a ghost, but Zeke was here; he had his arms around Lavinia, who couldn’t stop weeping, but he was also calmly greeting Alexandra and asking if his companions could stay here. Lavinia touched his arm, his neck, his face. “Yes,” she said. “Anything you want.”

  “This is Annie,” Zeke said. “And Tom. They come from Greenland.” He pressed Lavinia’s hand to his cheek. “They have other names, Esquimaux names, but these are the ones they use with me.” He kissed Lavinia’s fingers. “They speak English, I taught them how. Annie saved my life.”

  For a while, as Alexandra glided automatically up the stairs, that was all she knew. She turned halfway up and found no one behind her. The visitors stood at the bottom, clinging to the bannister and testing the first step as if checking the thickness of ice. Annie wore breeches, a hooded shirt, soft boots even in this heat—all made from some sort of hide, deer or seal, something Alexandra couldn’t name. Tom was dressed in a similar suit and the hides smelled, or perhaps the smell came from the people. She lifted her skirts above her ankles so Annie and Tom could see her feet; she took the steps slowly and let them see how each step was safe.

  In the spare room across the hall from Copernicus’s room she said to Annie, “You will stay here, with your . . .”