CHAPTER THREE
When he woke, Adams was shocked at the cold. They lay like dead men, loath to move lest tiny pockets of warmth be lost. Worthington’s beard was frozen to his blanket bag. Adams and the other men lit their pipes and puffed until the contents glowed. They held them beside Worthington’s chin.
“Don’t set me beard alight, you bastards,” Worthington muttered.
Worthington coughed until his frozen whiskers parted reluctantly from the wool. He sat up, rubbing his chin. Robinson watched silently from the shadows.
They waited for evening before breaking camp. Adams wrote by candlelight. He squeezed his ink bottle in his armpit to keep it from freezing, shifting uncomfortably on the stones beneath the floorcloth.
Dear Frances, he wrote. For months I wished only to get off Investigator . But now I remember her population of stinking, wasted men as a rich city of souls from which I fear to be torn. When shivering on the ground in my blanket, I recall my damp horsehair mattress as the softest of beds, and the company in the gun room as the wittiest and noblest of men.
Frances was the only person he had ever told about the day his father returned early from London, the day Edward and Richard had duelled with the gander. When his father ran up the hill in his shirtsleeves, he had spun Richard around and shoved him in the back.
“Get the midwife! Now!”
William Adams had turned and run back down the slope to the house. Edward stared after him. When he looked around at his brother, the sun was in his eyes. He lifted his arm to shield his face from the glare. Richard was a jerky silhouette disappearing over the top of the hill into a ball of light, his elbows and knees pumping. Edward stood alone on the slope. He looked at the gander. It stared back at him. The wind strengthened, cooling the sweat on his face and arms. White clouds bunched on the horizon to the north. Edward picked up his sword and ran down the hill toward the house.
The midwife had taken two hours to arrive. With her husband’s horse lame and unable to pull the box cart, she sent Richard half a mile down the road to the neighbour’s cottage to request the use of his two oxen. When she arrived with Richard behind her in the cart, Edward was waiting at the front door, his finger filthy from drawing shapes in the gravel. Richard climbed down from the cart. Edward grabbed his brother’s hand tightly and would not release it. The midwife hurried through the door. The boys waited on the front step as the sun sank. Richard put his arm around Edward’s shoulder. Both boys were cold now, but neither was brave enough to enter the house to retrieve their coats. The western sky caught fire.
Both boys started as a drawn-out scream split the air, echoing from inside the house and ending in a series of racking sobs. Edward began to cry. The boys’ father sent them down the lane to the cottage of a farmer whose children Richard and Edward often played with. But on this night there were no games, nor even conversation. The farmer and his wife spoke in whispers, their faces changing shape in the shifting candlelight. The brothers remained with the farmer’s family for the night and the following day. The farmer pulled on his boots every few hours and disappeared, only to return soon after. He shook his head at his wife but said nothing. The farmer returned them to the main house as the sun sank on the third evening.
In their parents’ bedroom, William Adams lay on rumpled sheets, his arms around his wife. His red-rimmed eyes were open, seeing nothing. Edward walked over and stood by the bed. His father’s chest rose and fell, but he gave no sign he was aware of the boys’ presence. Edward looked at his mother. Her eyes were closed. Her arms were by her side, and her white face had been washed. She was dressed in a fresh nightgown. Edward looked in the crib but did not see the baby.
Years later, when they were grown, Richard would say their father left them the day their mother and newborn sister died. In the months after the funeral, William Adams crumpled into himself. The house was silent after supper. There were no more stories of explorers or Vikings, none of the exploits of Nelson or Wellington. The boys’ father sat alone near the fire, sipping brandy and staring into the flames. One evening, when Edward approached hopefully with a book cradled in his arms, minutes passed before his father noticed his presence. Blinking, William looked down at the book and touched his son’s hair.
“Not tonight, my lad,” he said. “Perhaps you could ask Richard to read it to you.”
Their father absented himself from their lives gently, melting into the shadows like an actor stepping off a darkened stage. The boys learned from schoolyard whispers that he was spending more time in the public houses. He allowed the boys to roam the hills after their lessons or shoot grouse with their old flintlocks until dusk. Edward could take down a bird from ninety yards in a matter of weeks. William’s trips to London became longer and more frequent. The boys spent weeks with only the housekeeper and governess for company.
After his mother’s death, the enigma of the Passage was a safe mooring in a current to Edward. He grasped at whatever he still remembered. Richard told him it would not help, that their father was irrevocably changed.
“Father said it was God’s work,” Edward replied. “The work is still not done. The Passage is not found. I will find it when I am grown.”
Richard looked sad. “You are not brave enough.”
“I will be. I will be brave. Like Franklin. And Father will be happy again.”
Edward was eight when his father boarded the packet from Ipswich to London. The governess called the brothers in before dinner. Tears glistened on her cheeks. The corners of her mouth were turned down. She spread her hands, groping for words.
“’Tis a lot for a man, to look after two little boys,” she said.
Edward looked at her and then at Richard, who shrugged. The woman cast her eyes up at the ceiling, desperate, then back at Edward again. Her face was grey in the twilight.
“Some men can fight battles or wild animals, but to raise two boys on their own—that’s too frightening for some.”
Later, the boat’s captain told the boys he did not see their father go over the gunwale.
Grey and purple tinged the sky. The outcroppings were alive with guillemots standing like sentries, their heads turning one way, then the other. Eider ducks cruised in formation, diving low over the water. The sea to the east was calm and free of broken ice. Three large icebergs were grounded near the shore.
Robinson and Adams led the men along a stony beach. Whale bones lay strewn along the shore. The two officers eyed the ducks and checked their shotguns. They quickened their pace. The seamen dragged the sledges over the stones a hundred yards behind them.
There was movement in the sky overhead. Robinson threw his shotgun to his shoulder and fired at a flock of ducks. The shot sprayed out into the air, but not a bird fell. The birds shrank to specks and disappeared. Robinson spat on the ground.
A shout went up, and Adams wheeled around. Four seamen had dropped their harnesses and were running directly at the two officers, their faces twisted and red. Their mouths worked, but the wind snatched away their words.
Adams frowned. “Mister Robinson.”
Robinson looked up from his gun.
Far down the beach, Worthington stood alone next to the sledges. He faced away from them, staring. Adams scanned the low hills that rose steeply into cliffs above the gravel beach but saw only scattered patches of dirty ice and snow. Then the air shimmered and bent, as on a hot day. The bear materialised like a cloud of fog rising from the earth, its ragged yellow-white coat difficult to discern against the snow-flecked hills.
Adams broke into a run, his shotgun heavy in his hands. Robinson was beside him, his boots slamming on the gravel. Worthington sank to his knees and bowed his head. The bear was so close to him that the man could have reached out and touched its snout. Adams shouted. The bear raised its massive head and sniffed the air. Worthington was between the two officers and the animal.
“Get down, man!” Robinson shouted. His shotgun was at his shoulder, arcing back and forth, seeking a clear shot.
Worthington slumped to the earth and lay still. The bear hesitated, then approached the prostrate man with an odd, stiff-legged gait. It looked at the two officers, who had closed to within forty yards, and growled, a low guttural noise that ended in a hiss. The bear’s coat hung off its bony frame, its long tongue uncoiling like a reptile’s.
Robinson stood beside Adams with his finger curled around the trigger of his shotgun. Adams thought to cry a warning— No, not with bird shot! —but his voice failed, and before Robinson’s gun discharged, he knew it was too late. The detonation clubbed Adams across the back of the head, and in that instant the world was snatched away. He fell to his knees with his hands over his ears.
Bells rang in Adams’ skull, high and shrill. The volley had caught the bear on the side of its broad head, and the animal wheeled away, pawing at a lacerated ear. The bear’s incisors flashed in its long black mouth. Adams thought Robinson must be shouting but heard nothing through the hum in his head. The bear swung around to glare at Robinson. One enormous paw fell on Worthington’s outstretched hand, lifted again; then the bear came at Robinson.
Robinson dropped his shotgun, turned, and ran.
Adams thrust his hand into his shot bag, scrabbling for a heavy ball. He swore, his voice loud in his head, as one brushed his fingertips but rolled from his grasp. He glanced up. The bear was almost on Robinson. The animal stopped, its jaws wide. The droning in Adams’ head faded, and he could hear the huffing of the bear, woolly and indistinct, as if his ears were stuffed with cloth. Robinson tripped and fell headlong on the gravel. Three feet from the bear’s jaws, he drew his knees to his chest and covered his head with his mittened hands.
Adams upended his shot bag on the ground, blood roaring in his ears. His face glowed hot. He heard the clink of stones shifting under his boots, and then shouting, but whether it was his own voice or Robinson’s, he could not tell. He plucked a heavy ball from the gravel, then grabbed his ramrod and shoved it down the muzzle. When he looked up again, the bear had the heel of Robinson’s boot in its jaws and was shaking it. The lieutenant lay motionless.
Adams exhaled and lifted the shotgun. He took aim at a point behind the bear’s shoulder. The gun trembled in his hands. He clenched his teeth and fired. The shotgun boomed and bucked, and the bear swung around as the ball struck it with a wet slap like raw meat thrown on stone.
The bear turned to escape, but Adams had found the lung. The animal staggered and hung its head, then swayed like a drunkard. Blood spurted from behind its foreleg, the crimson stain bright on its yellow-white fur. A foreleg buckled, then the other. The bear’s hindquarters remained poised for a moment before it toppled onto its side, its breathing rapid, splashes of bright red pooling between the stones.
Robinson uncurled himself. He sat up on the gravel, his chest heaving. Staring at the fallen beast with wide eyes, he crawled backward from it, his bootheels scattering pebbles. The bear coughed up a bloody froth and lay still.
The ringing in Adams’ head receded. He looked at the sky and marvelled at the silence. He could feel the flesh of his cheek twitching, the contents of his bowels moving, his heart slashing in his chest.
Robinson stood and brushed himself off. Each movement slow and deliberate, he loaded his gun with a heavy ball from his shot bag and approached the bear. He studied the creature, then raised his shotgun and held the muzzle against its skull for a long moment. Robinson pulled the trigger, his shoulders jerking as the gun erupted and the bear’s blood and pink brains splashed his boots.
Adams went to Worthington. As the seaman stirred, Adams bent down and rolled him onto his back. The man was uninjured, but from the stink, he knew Worthington had soiled himself. He gagged, the stench caustic in his throat. He stumbled away to stand upwind.
An unfamiliar Robinson approached Adams. The lieutenant seemed full of words he could not say, eyes wet and hands shaking, possessed of a shame he wished unacknowledged. Adams thought to make light of it, shake his head, clap Robinson around the shoulders and laugh, but neither of them was that kind of man.
The four other seamen gathered at the sledge. Humphreys pulled Worthington to his feet. The men stood staring at the dead bear, kicking it with their boots.
Adams could still smell Worthington’s shit. His head swam, and he staggered. Something slithered in his stomach.
Robinson stood before Adams. “Captain Bird told me you could shoot. I did not know how well.”
Adams placed his hand squarely on Robinson’s chest and roughly shoved him away. The lieutenant stumbled back, his eyes wide in astonishment. Adams dropped to his knees and vomited on the stones in a hot rush.
Robinson walked slowly with Adams through a light breeze, the shingle loose under their boots. When the distance between them and the men had increased to half a mile, they stopped to wait. The atmosphere between the two men had shifted. Since the bear, something had thawed in Robinson, even as ice and snow remained stubborn and heavy on the land. As much as Adams’ piety irked him, the man had saved his life. Robinson wanted to believe himself a fair man. Perhaps he needed to revise his opinion of Adams. Unfamiliar emotions of gratitude and obligation stirred in him, leaving him befuddled. Camaraderie was as alien to him as a foreign tongue. He would require time to become proficient.
“I once saw a portrait of Sir James Clark Ross,” said Robinson. He pulled his scarf down from his face. There was a civility in his tone with which even he was unacquainted. “It was a fine painting, done when he was a young man. Do you know it?”
Adams nodded. “It was painted in ’33 or ’34,” he said, “after Isabella rescued the crew of Victory in Lancaster Sound.”
“Yes, yes. That one.” Robinson’s gaze was drawn to the west, where the midnight sun yellowed a trio of small bergs. Their shadows trembled on the water. The moon was full and fat. With a halo studded by three mock moons—one above and one on either side—it was like a gaudy piece of jewellery, an enclosed crucifix in the heavens, something a princess might wear.
“He looked like a god in that painting,” said Robinson. His tone was wistful. “Staring out into the Arctic wilderness, bearskin over his shoulder, hand on his sword. I remember his hair, so thick and black against the dark background that his face seemed to float on the canvas.”
“The most handsome man in the navy, they called him.”
Robinson grunted. “Not anymore.”
“All men age,” said Adams. “There is nothing strange in it.”
“Nobody painted a grand portrait of his uncle, though, did they? After four years on the ice, John Ross brought back most of his men alive. Was he not the hero?”
“Perhaps he made fewer enemies in the Admiralty than his uncle.”
Robinson smiled and clapped his gloved hands. “Ah, so one needs to know the right people! This man should be honoured; that man should not. It seems odd to me. John Ross survived four Arctic winters, but they disdain him. If Franklin’s ships are lost, they seem likely as not to put his statue on a plinth in Westminster Abbey. It’s simple to ennoble a man once he is dead.”
Adams stopped. He glanced back to ensure the men were out of earshot, then turned to face Robinson. “If you have such low regard for Sir John, why sail to his aid?”
Indignation flickered on Robinson’s face. He had tried his best to engage Adams, but the man always seemed quick with a riposte Robinson found difficult to parry. Adams followed the lieutenant’s gaze out to the bergs in the sea. Backed by the late-evening sun, they glowed red around the edges, sea smoke rising off their jagged tips. Out of range of their shotguns, walruses rolled, scarred and bristling, like toothed logs in the water.
Robinson looked sideways at Adams. “Because Franklin has something I want.”