No, he checked himself again, not a monster. The head and neck of a large white bear somehow had been mounted onto the ice. The creature’s mouth was open. Its black eyes reflected the small amount of torchlight that made its way through the black-dyed canvas walls. The bear’s fur and teeth were the brightest things in the ebony compartment. Its tongue was a shocking red. Beneath the head, the ebony clock ticked like a heartbeat.
Filled with a fury that he could not define, Crozier marched from the ebony compartment, paused in the white room, and bellowed for an officer – any officer.
A Satyr with a long papier-mâché face and a priapic cone rising from its red belt scuttled forward on black metal hooves set beneath heavy boots. “Yes, sir?”
“Take off that fucking mask!”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” said the Satyr, sliding the mask up to reveal Thomas R. Farr, Terror’s captain of the maintop. A Chinese woman with huge breasts next to him lowered her mask to show the round, fat face of John Diggle, the cook. Next to Diggle was a giant rat who lowered its snout enough to show the face of Lieutenant James Walter Fairholme of Erebus.
“What in hell is the meaning of all this?” roared Crozier.
Various fantastical creatures cringed back toward the white walls at the sound of Crozier’s voice.
“Of which exactly, Captain?” asked Lieutenant Fairholme.
“This!” bellowed Crozier, raising both arms and hands to indicate the white walls, the rigging overhead, the torches… everything.
“No meaning, Captain,” responded Mr. Farr. “It’s simply… Carnivale.” Crozier had always, until this moment, thought Farr a reliable and sensible hand and a fine maintop captain.
“Mr. Farr, did you help in the rigging?” he asked sharply.
“Yes, sir.”
“And Lieutenant Fairholme, were you aware of the… animal’s head… exhibited so bizarrely in that final chamber?”
“Aye, Captain,” said Fairholme. The lieutenant’s long, weathered face showed no sign of fear at his expedition commander’s anger. “I shot it myself. Yesterday evening. Two of the bears, actually. A mother and its almost grown male cub. We’re going to roast the meat toward midnight – have a sort of feast, sir.”
Crozier stared at the men. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, could feel the anger that – mixed with the whiskey he’d had that day and the certainty there would be no more in the days to come – had often led him to violence ashore.
He had to be careful here.
“Mr. Diggle,” he said to the fat Chinese woman with the huge breasts, “you know the liver of the white bears has made us ill.”
Diggle’s jowls bobbled up and down as freely as the pillowed bosoms beneath them. “Oh, yes, Captain. There’s something foul in the polar beast’s liver that we haven’t been able to heat out of it. There’ll be neither liver nor lights in the feast I cook tonight, Captain, I assure thee. Only fresh meat – hundreds and hundreds of pounds of fresh meat, grilled and singed and fried to perfection, sir.”
Lieutenant Fairholme spoke. “The men are taking it as a hopeful omen that we blundered across the two bears on the ice and were able to kill them, Captain. Everyone’s looking forward to the feast at midnight.”
“Why wasn’t I told of the bears?” demanded Crozier.
The officer, maintop captain, and cook looked at one another. Birds and beasts and faeries nearby looked at one another.
“The sow and cub were only shot late last night, Captain,” Fairholme said at last. “I guess all the traffic between the ships today has been Terrors coming over to the Carnivale to work and get ready, no messengers from Erebus making the return trip. My apologies for not informing you, sir.”
Crozier knew that it was Fitzjames who had been negligent in this regard. And he knew the men around him knew it.
“Very well,” he said at last. “Carry on.” But as the men began setting their masks back in place, he added, “And God help you if Sir John’s clock is damaged in any way.”
“Aye, Captain,” said all the masked shapes around him.
With a final, almost apprehensive glance back through the violet room toward the terrible black compartment – almost nothing in Francis Crozier’s fifty-one years of frequent melancholy had oppressed him as much as that ebony compartment had – he walked from the white room to the orange room, thence from the orange room to the green room, then from the green room to the purple room, from the purple room to the blue room, and from the widening blue room out onto the darker open ice.
Only when he was out of the dyed-sail maze did Crozier feel that he could breathe properly.
Costumed shapes gave the glowering captain a wide berth as he made his way toward Erebus and the dark, heavily cloaked figure standing at the top of the ice ramp there.
Captain Fitzjames was alone near the ship’s railing at the top of the ramp. He was smoking his pipe. “Good evening to you, Captain Crozier.”
“Good evening, Captain Fitzjames. Have you been inside that… that…” Words failed him, and Crozier gestured toward the loud and lighted city of coloured walls and elaborate rigging behind him. The torches and braziers burned bright there.
“Aye, I have,” said Fitzjames. “The men have shown incredible ingenuity, I would say.”
Crozier had nothing to say to that.
“The question now,” said Fitzjames, “is whether their many hours of labour and ingenuity have gone to serve the expedition… or the Devil.”
Crozier tried to see the younger officer’s eyes under the muffler-tied bill of his cap. He had no idea if Fitzjames was joking.
“I warned them,” growled Crozier, “that they could waste not one pint of oil or one extra lump of coal on this damned Carnivale. Just look at those fires!”
“The men assured me,” said Fitzjames, “that they are only using the oil and coal thay have saved by not heating Erebus these past weeks!”
“Whose idea was that… maze?” asked Crozier. “The coloured compartments? The ebony room?”
Fitzjames blew smoke, removed his pipe, and chuckled. “All the idea of young Richard Aylmore.”
“Aylmore?” repeated Crozier. He remembered the name but hardly the man. “Your gunroom steward?”
“The same.”
Crozier recalled a small man, quiet, with sunken, brooding eyes, a pedant’s tone to his voice, and a wispy black mustache. “Where in the hell did he come up with this?”
“Aylmore lived in the United States for several years before returning home in 1844 and enlisting in the Discovery Service,” said Fitzjames. The stem of the pipe clattered slightly against his teeth. “He maintains that he read an absurd story five years ago, in 1842, describing a masqued ball just such as this with such coloured compartments, read it while he was living in Boston with his cousin. In a trashy little piece called Graham’s Magazine, if I recall correctly. Aylmore can’t remember the plot of the story exactly, but he remembers that it was about a strange masqued ball given by a certain Prince Prospero… and he says that he is quite certain of the sequence of the rooms, ending in that terrible ebony compartment. The men loved his idea.”
Crozier could only shake his head.
“Francis,” continued Fitzjames, “this was a teetotaling ship for two years and one month under Sir John. Despite that, I managed to smuggle aboard three bottles of fine whiskey my father gave me. I have one bottle left. I would be honoured if you would share it with me this evening. It will be another three hours until the men begin cooking up the two bears they shot. I authorized my Mr. Wall and your Mr. Diggle yesterday to set up two of the whaleboats’ stoves on the ice for heating incidentals such as canned vegetables and to build a huge grill in what they are calling the White Room for the actual cooking of the bear meat. If nothing else, it will be our first fresh meat in more than three months. Would you care to be my guest over that bottle of whiskey down in Sir John’s former cabin until it’s time for the feast?”