Bitter Passage

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Robinson helped Adams use the sledge to fetch four large stones to place on Billings’ and Handford’s graves. Together they sang a hymn for the two men. Adams remained by the graves with his Bible. Clouds streaked a mustard sky.

Robinson took the first watch when Adams returned to the tent to sit with Honey. He sat facing south with his shotgun across his knees. Walker and Dunn did not reappear on the horizon. Had he erred in releasing them? Things would go easier for him with Adams’ cooperation, but it was important the man not underestimate his determination.

An accident. Walker was a brazen bastard, saying Billings’ death was an accident. He rehearsed the story he would tell. The Admiralty should know as little as possible. He and Adams had met a dying crewman who revealed the location of the ships, and thus he, Lieutenant Frederick Robinson, had determined the location of the Passage. Franklin dead a year before they left the Thames, Fitzjames starving to death, Crozier disappearing to the south, bones on the beach, half-eaten corpses, gun battles with murderous seamen—none of that need be known. It would be enough for the Admiralty to reward the officer who had risked his life to bring back the truth. He was unsure he could remember which parts to omit, so he would need to leave it all out. He sighed. Ambition writhes like an eel in a bucket, he thought. It will not be grasped, then turns and bites your hand, just when you think you have it.

He went to the cairn. In his hand was the message they had found two weeks earlier, telling of Franklin’s death and the departure of the survivors for Back’s Fish River. He tapped the metal cylinder on his palm, then reached up and began removing stones from the top of the cairn. When he had opened a hole in the pile, he slid the message cylinder into the centre of the cairn and began replacing the stones.

Adams’ voice cracked from behind him. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

“My duty.”

“You must report your findings to the Admiralty.”

“And I shall, but the Admiralty will need the story to be cleaner. There are too many parts they will not want to hear.” Robinson turned to face him. “The newspapers enjoy tales of suffering and hardship, but only if Englishmen triumph. Both ships are lost. Franklin and his officers are dead. The survivors were eating the flesh of their shipmates and would have done the same to us. Who will reward us for delivering such news?”

The indignation faded from Adams’ face. His voice was that of a small child. “But ... we must tell them what happened.”

“Must we? I also used to think so.” Robinson shook his head. “Think of what they will do to us. They will call us liars, tear us down. They will deny it could be true. Will you be the one who tells Lady Jane her husband blundered into the pack and died twitching in his bunk? Do you think she will clasp your hand, weep with joy, and say, ‘Thank you, good sir, for the truth. I am so glad to know it, for now I shall rest easy’?”

Adams looked at the cairn. “Somebody else will find the cylinder. They will ask why we did not report seeing it.”

“Perhaps. But I shall be a captain by then.” Robinson shrugged. “We shall say we did not get this far. That we got only as far south as Cape Felix before our supplies ran out. Or that we did not see the cairn in the fog.”

“You are a coward.” Adams’ words were like mortars thudding into the earth between them.

Robinson coughed wetly. “Yes, quite possibly.” He shrugged. “But you know, I used to think myself as courageous as the next man. I will say this: the prospect of reporting the truth of Franklin’s fate frightens me. It should frighten you. We are complicit now in a great crime.”

The wind dropped, and the air was cold and still.

“We have done nothing wrong,” said Adams.

“No. It has touched us, like some ghastly miasma. We must shield ourselves if we are to resist it.”

Light drained from the sky but did not entirely leave it. Clumps of poppies dotted the slopes above the tent, their yellow heads dipping and bowing in the light rain. A pair of hares, their white winter fur replaced now by the dark grey of summer, darted away between the rocks. Adams picked up his shotgun and followed them.

Robinson watched him go. He thought of Elizabeth in her sickbed, coughing blood into her pristine white handkerchief. He imagined her sitting in her wicker chair on the veranda when the weather was warm, watching the shadows in the garden change shape. Waiting for him. Waiting for the end. He thought the worst kind of death was that which affords one altogether too much time to contemplate it. He thought Fitzjames was wrong when he said it was best to die slowly. Give me the ball in the heart.

Adams returned with a hare on his belt. He tore the skin from the carcass and threw the innards on the ground. They ate the dark-red flesh raw. The sound of meltwater streams trickling down through the boulders above them was like music.

Robinson was quiet for a time. “We can tell them the Esquimaux did it. They attacked and raided Franklin’s ships.”

“No.” Adams shook his head slowly and gazed at a moon collared in mist. “It does not sit well with me. It would be a monstrous lie.”

Robinson nodded. “Utterly monstrous. But I remember you telling stories to the men aboard Investigator . You had a flair for it. Were it not for you, I would not know Frobisher went looking for the Passage in a vessel barely fifty feet long. Or that he took an Esquimaux arrow in the arse.”

“Those stories were true,” Adams said.

Robinson sat up, his teeth red and shining with the hare’s blood. “True, you say? How do you know? We only know Henry Hudson was set adrift in a boat because those who did it said so. Who is to say the mutineers did not cut his throat and eat him?” Clouds masked the sun. The ocean to the west was the colour of charcoal. “Perhaps,” he continued, “you and I are victims of an elaborate conspiracy. Those other fellows—Frobisher, Davis—I think they were ashamed to go back and say they had found nothing but ice, so they invented tales about this place. They knew their sponsors would not sail to the Arctic and see for themselves, and they knew their wealthy patrons would keep shelling out for a good story. Why return and admit the whole venture was folly?”

Adams traced shapes in the dirt with his knife.

Robinson was sombre. “I thought I knew what needed saying,” he said, “but now I am unsure. People were amused when Franklin ate his boots. They will not be so amused to hear what his men ate this time. Our story will require a little judicious censorship.” He patted Adams’ knee. “Do not look so melancholy. How often do you get to stitch your own history? Parry did it. James Ross did it. Even George Back did it, and he got a river named after him. Look on the map—is there a peninsula or mountain that takes your fancy? I have one marked out for myself. Stake your claim. The boldest lies always receive the least scrutiny.”

Adams scanned the skies as he walked, his shotgun at the ready. No birds appeared. He trod carefully, like a dancer; if he missed a step, he would stumble on a stone or plunge into a puddle. An injury here to an ankle or knee could be as fatal as a knife to the heart. Nothing remained of the meat they had carved from the deer carcass. The bones had been boiled and pounded and consumed. They walked over mile after flat mile of shattered stones and gravel and wiry olive grass, but saw no game. Lightning flashed like artillery fire on the horizon. At midnight, the sun was a sullen orange. When they stopped in the morning, Adams counted out the rations. Three pairs of eyes remained fixed on his hands as he divided the last few broken pieces of stale biscuit.

They huddled in the gloom of the tent, kneading their frozen limbs. Adams lay down in his blanket, the stones beneath him sharp in his back. He felt as if the flesh beneath his skin had melted away, leaving only his bare skeleton stretched out on the rocky earth. Once stout and rigid within him, his bones felt like the ancient whale bones they often found on the shingle; one stout blow and they might crumble to powder. In the darkness of the tent gloom, Robinson lay asleep.

“Boiled pork and pease pudding,” said Honey.

Adams whispered so as not to wake the lieutenant. “Something else, please,” he said. “I have had my fill of pork.”

“A joint of beef, then,” Honey said.

Adams grunted. “Not with these unsteady teeth. I want a Manchester pudding. Our housekeeper would put brandy in it.”

“Pigeon pie.”

“Yes, very good. And kedgeree. And roast pheasant.” Adams groaned at the thought. He closed his eyes and thought of large fat birds hanging for a week in the autumn.

“We caught foxes that first winter on Beechey Island,” said Honey. He coughed, the phlegm bubbling thick in his throat. “They’re good roasted. Better than salt pork.”

“Much better.”

“When it got too cold to hunt, we’d trap ’em. Got an empty cask, put a flap on the top made from an old iron grate. Then we’d put a bit of old pork in there and leave it on the ice.” Honey’s expression was distant, his voice hushed. “You have to be careful gettin’ ’em out. Vicious little buggers, give you a nasty bite. Once we got one, saw blood all over the inside of the barrel. I remember it was all wet and shiny.” He paused, remembering.

Adams frowned. “Had it bitten you?”

Honey shook his head slowly. When he spoke again, his voice was a croak. “I saw something stuck to the iron grate. Like a bit of meat. It was his tongue.”

“His tongue?”

A tear gleamed on Honey’s cheek.

“He’d licked the iron grate, see? To see if it was food. It was so cold, his tongue stuck to the metal. He must’ve pulled and pulled and torn it out from the roots.” He sobbed in thick, gusty breaths, his mouth twisted and his cheeks wet. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Poor little bugger.”

Elizabeth’s white nightdress billowed in the breeze as she walked alongside Robinson. Her face was ruddy in the cold air, her breath sweet. A hint of her jasmine scent carried across the air between them.

“Billings is dead because of me,” he said. “He wanted his mother and a pie. He was a good man, but I did not tell him that.”

“It was not your fault,” said Elizabeth.

“It is difficult for me to speak plainly with the men.”

“Nobody needs know of it. You shall be a captain.”

“Mister Adams knows,” he said.

“It was Mister Adams who insisted he travel with you. Do not blame yourself.”

“Elizabeth, he had a man’s body and a child’s mind. He would have done anything Adams asked of him.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I would like someone to look to me like that.”

“I do. Come home to me, and we shall have a child. A son. He shall look to you as I do.”

He allowed himself a moment to think of it, to imagine the boy. His eyes dark like hers. His hair shining like hers, his hand clasped in hers. He saw nothing of himself in the lad and was glad of it, for he would wish better for the boy.

“You were right not to let Humphreys have the rum,” she said.

“He did not think so. Nor did Adams. I would protect them, but they do not understand.”

“Fitzjames and Aylmore would not have lived. You knew it.”

“Adams thinks me wicked for wanting to leave them. But I would save both his life and mine, even if I could not save theirs. And he thinks I wished Walker and Dunn dead.”

“You would not shoot a man for being hungry.”

He sighed. “I could not let four men die if two could be saved. There was not enough food for all.”

“But to take a man’s life for it? You would not have done that.”

“Would I not?” He shook his head, uncertain. He took out his pipe and put the stem in his mouth. His tobacco was used up long ago, but the flavour was a pleasant memory. “I do not know.”

She brushed her dark hair from her eyes and smiled at him, like she had when they stood beneath the elm at the bottom of her father’s garden, waiting for the rain to stop. As on that day, her hair was beaded with mist.

“Mister Adams does not see things as clearly as you. He does not understand. You cannot trust him to tell Their Lordships all that you have learned. It may ... colour their opinions.”

And then she convulsed, coughing. Her churchyard cough. A sound too deep and hollow for such a thin, frail frame, like that of a trapped creature thrashing in an empty barrel. Specks of blood appeared on the front of her nightdress. She fell behind. Soon he heard only the sound of his boots on the ice.

“A man is dead because of me,” he said.

He turned to see if she followed him, but she was not there.

Adams stepped out of the tent, shivering in a wet breeze. The mercury read thirty-five degrees. Grey clouds were strung out in a jagged line overhead. The smell of wet soil rose as if the earth were rotting beneath his feet. Far out to sea, ice hummocks rose under the pressure of floes pushed down from the north. He helped Robinson pack the tent. They pulled Honey to his feet and began walking. The last of the spring snow was melting. The white slush on the surface of the frozen earth drew back to reveal jagged rocks poking through like broken bones, ripping and slashing at their stumbling boots. It was three weeks after the summer solstice. Each day the sun sank lower, its reflection turning pools of water into puddles of blood. After midnight, their shadows stretched far across the ground. A line of ducks flew north, far out of range of their guns.

Honey’s knees folded beneath him, and he fell without a sound. Adams went to him and lifted the man to his feet, but before he could take another step, Honey toppled again. Adams propped him into a sitting position on the ground. He sat, sagging and limp, his eyes dull.

Adams and Robinson placed Honey on the sledge and secured him with ropes. They hitched the sledge ropes over their shoulders and made three miles. The earth sloped almost imperceptibly upward, and though Honey weighed barely one hundred pounds, they sank to their knees, exhausted. Robinson threw down the sledge rope. He and Adams lifted Honey from the sledge and placed him on the ground, then erected the tent. Wrapped in his blanket bag, Honey turned his head to one side and spat a tooth and a bloody pool of spittle onto the floorcloth. His gums were black and oozing. He lay with his eyes closed. Adams helped him drink from his canteen and rolled the man in his blanket, where he lay shaking.

“Dreams ...” Honey’s voice was a croak. “Me dreams are ... round the wrong way.”

“What do you mean?” Adams asked.

Honey lay with his eyes closed. He was quiet for a time, gathering the strength to speak. “When you have a nightmare, you wake up and the bad dream is gone, right? It were just a dream, it weren’t real. Right?”

“Yes. Not real.”

“But when I dream, I see me old life—me wife, me little ones, all the good stuff I miss. Then I open me eyes and it’s ... all this shite. Cold. Pain. Hunger. All the bad stuff that should be in the nightmare is what’s real now. Me good life is only in me dreams. It’s supposed to be t’other way round. You know what I mean?”

“I know what you mean.”

Honey grunted. “I reckon that’s what drives men bonkers.” He lay in silence for a time. Then he spoke in a whisper. “Did you see young Billings fall?”

“I saw him.”

“Walker said Billy Orren shot him by mistake.”

“Yes.”

“It ain’t what I saw,” said Honey.

Adams leaned over him. “What did you see?”

Honey’s eyes remained closed. He frowned, straining to speak. “Orren was a better shot than most.” He opened his eyes and regarded Adams through slitted lids. “If he was aiming at Lieutenant Robinson, he wouldn’t have hit the Billings boy.”

Adams and Robinson surveyed the ice pack. Three dark cylinders lay on the ice, two hundred yards from the beach. One lifted its head and rolled over, lazily lifting a flipper. Adams checked his shotgun. Leaving Robinson with the sleeping invalid, he walked in a crouch out over the shore ice.

He sank to his hands and knees one hundred yards from the sleeping seals. He pinned the stock of the shotgun in his armpit and held the barrel up with one hand to keep it out of the shallow puddles that dotted the surface of the ice. Inching forward, he raised his head occasionally to check the position of the seals. Icy water soaked the heavy wool of his trousers and penetrated his linen drawers, leaving his knees raw and freezing. His hands were wet and cold in his gloves. He crawled on, clenching his jaws to keep his teeth from chattering. When he had approached to within thirty yards of the seals, one raised its head. Adams hauled himself to his knees and levelled his shotgun. As he aimed, all three seals flicked their tails and vanished into unseen holes in the ice before his finger could even twitch on the trigger.

He stomped back over the ice, his boots full of icy water. Tears blurred his vision. He pulled off his boots, stripped off his sodden stockings, and threw them on the ground. He imagined the pungent taste of the seal’s red flesh in his mouth, felt his hand warming over the flame rising from a kettle of its oil, and thought, Never have I wished this much to kill something.

Outside the tent, Robinson paced. The sun fell toward the northern horizon, painting a golden streak across the meltwater pools on the shore ice. Still a bright white at noon in the southern sky, the sun was a weary orange in the late evening. Nearly an hour after midnight, it touched the horizon and remained poised there for half a minute. It glowed a fiery red and daubed crimson along the skyline, then began its ascent again. There was a languor in its movement, as though rising into the heavens consumed all its remaining strength. As if the end was not far.

Had Franklin named the waterway he had sailed down west of Boothia? He wondered if it might be possible to claim it. True, such honours were usually the privilege of lords and patrons, but perhaps it could be done with a spot of lobbying by his father, using his extensive connections in a way he would not object to. Robinson Sound. He imagined the words inscribed on a map of the Arctic as he showed it to his son.

In his few truncated minutes of sleep, he dreamed he was looking down at his boots, trudging forward over the ice and gravel. When he looked up, he found himself walking along a narrow path snaking along the top of a snow-covered mountain ridge. On both sides the hill dropped away steeply into a blue abyss. As he balanced there on the spine of rock, trembling in the cold air, he felt his head cracking. He pressed both palms to his temples, because if he dropped his hands, his head would split open, and he would not be able to stop screaming.

Adams sat beside Honey and listened to the sick man’s shallow wheezing. Honey’s pallor was grey beneath the dirt, and his fingers were curled into his palms. The clouds blackened like a new bruise. The drizzle turned to heavy rain, hammering the cold earth around them. Robinson sat staring at his hands. When the rain stopped, the mercury rose to forty-five degrees.

Adams went hunting. He returned four hours later with a dozen dovekies taken with two blasts of shot. The seven-inch birds spilled from his knapsack onto the stones at Robinson’s feet. Their black and white feathers were damp and lustreless. He hacked at the small bony carcasses with a blunt knife, scraping an ounce of dark-red meat from each bird. He added it to the cooking pot with a handful of grey-green leaves he withdrew from his bag.

“Iceland moss.” He pointed to the south. “There are patches of it growing about a mile down that way. It is bitter, but if it’s boiled, we can eat it.”

The soup was sour and tasted of spoiled fish. Adams and Robinson consumed it without comment. Adams propped Honey against the tentpole and carefully spooned soup into his mouth. The man could no longer chew. Adams picked out all but the tiniest fragments of meat and lifted the man’s chin so the soup would run down his throat. Ten minutes later, Honey turned his head to the side and vomited the soup onto the shingle. He toppled over and lay coughing on the stones. Adams propped him back up as Robinson left the tent to stand watch.

Honey licked his lips and swallowed, trying to speak. Adams leaned in to hear him.

“How much further?”

Adams put an arm around his shoulder. “Not far now.” He watched Honey’s chest rise and fall and took his hand. “We have some reindeer meat cached ahead,” he said. “I shall make you a fine soup.”

“I can’t see you.”

“I am here.” He squeezed Honey’s hand.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You are merely tired.”

“I should be hungry. Tommy weren’t hungry either. At the end.”

“Tommy?”

“My brother. He was a carpenter on Terror .”

“I’m sorry.”

Honey was quiet for a time. Then, in the softest of murmurs, he spoke only to himself. “It’s what happens. I seen it.”

“What have you seen?”

“None of ’em were hungry at the end.”

“You will feel better once you sleep.”

“You oughta watch out for ’im.”

“Lieutenant Robinson?”

“I seen men go down like that. Angry. Scared. He’ll use that gun on you before long.”