Here, in the middle of the night, it was still light enough to read a Bible verse by — if anyone had brought a Bible out here on the ice to read a verse from, which no one had — and the dim light aided us, the two surgeons and two crewmen ordered to help us, as we poked, prodded, shoved, slid, and finally slammed the Esquimaux man’s body deeper and deeper into the blue ice and thence into the Black Water beneath.
The Esquimaux woman stood silently, watching, still showing no expression. There was a wind from the west-northwest and her black hair lifted from her stained parka hood and moved across her face like a ruffle of raven feathers.
We were the only members of the Burial Party — Surgeon Stanley, the two panting, softly cursing crewmen, the native woman, and me — until Captain Crozier and a tall, lanky lieutenant appeared in the blowing snow and watched the final moment or two of struggle. Finally the Esquimaux man’s body slid the last five feet and disappeared into the black currents fifteen feet below the ice.
Sir John ordered that the woman not spend the night aboard Erebus, Captain Crozier said softly. We’ve come to take her back to Terror. To the tall lieutenant whose name I now remembered as Irving, Crozier said, John, she will be in your charge. Find a place for her out of sight of the men — probably forward of the sick bay in the stacks — and make sure no harm comes to her.
Aye, sir.
Excuse me, Captain, I said. But why not let her go back to her people?
Crozier smiled at this. Normally I would agree with that course of action, Doctor. But there are no known Esquimaux settlements — not the smallest village — within three hundred miles of here. They are a nomadic people — especially those we call the Northern Highlanders — but what brought this old man and young girl out onto the pack ice so far north in a summer where there are no whales, no walruses, no seals, no caribou, no animals of any sort abroad except our white bears and the murderous things on the ice?
I had no answer to this, but it hardly seemed pertinent to my question.
It may come to the point, continued Crozier, where our lives might depend upon finding and befriending these native Esquimaux. Shall we let her go then before we’ve befriended her?
We shot her husband or father, said Surgeon Stanley, glancing at the mute young woman who still stared at the now empty fire hole. Our Lady Silence here might not have the most charitable of feelings toward us.
Precisely, said Captain Crozier. And we have enough problems right now without this lass leading a war party of angry Esquimaux back to our ships to murder us as we sleep. No, I think Captain Sir John is right… she should stay with us until we decide what to do… not only with her, but with ourselves. Crozier smiled at Stanley. In two years, this was the first time that I could remember seeing Captain Crozier smile. Lady Silence. That is good, Stanley. Very good. Come, John. Come, m’lady.
They walked west through the blowing snow toward the first pressure ridge. I went back up the ramp of snow to Erebus, to my tiny little cabin which seemed like pure heaven to me now, and to the first solid night’s sleep I had had since Lieutenant Gore led us south-southeast onto the ice more than ten days earlier.
15
FRANKLIN
By the day that he was to die, Sir John had almost recovered from the shock of seeing the Esquimaux wench naked.
It was the same young woman, the same teenaged harlot Copper squaw whom the Devil had sent to tempt him during his first ill-fated expedition in 1819, the wanton Robert Hood’s fifteen-year-old bedmate named Greenstockings. Sir John was sure of that. This temptress had the same coffee-brown skin that seemed to glow even in the dark, the same high, round girl’s breasts, the same brown areolae, and the same raven-feather slash of dark escutcheon above her sex.
It was the same succubus.
The shock to Captain Sir John Franklin of seeing her naked on surgeon McDonald’s table in the sick bay — on his ship—had been profound, but Sir John was sure that he had been able to hide his reaction from the surgeons and from the other captains during the rest of that endless, disconcerting day.
Lieutenant Gore’s burial service took place late on Friday, the fourth of June. It had taken a large work party more than twenty-four hours to get through the ice to allow for the burial at sea, and before they were done they had to use black powder to blow away the top ten feet of rock-hard ice, then use picks and shovels to excavate a broad crater to open the last five feet or so. When they were finished around midday, Mr. Weekes, the carpenter from Erebus, and Mr. Honey, the carpenter from Terror, had constructed a clever and elegant wooden scaffolding over the ten-foot-long and five-foot-wide opening into the dark sea. Work parties with long pikes were stationed at the crater to keep the ice from congealing beneath the platform.
Lieutenant Gore’s body had begun to decay quickly in the relative heat of the ship, so the carpenters first constructed a most solid coffin of mahogany lined with an inner box of sweet-smelling cedar. Between the two enclosures of wood was set a layer of lead in lieu of the traditional two rounds of shot set in the usual canvas burial bag to ensure that the body would sink. Mr. Smith, the blacksmith, had forged, hammered, and engraved a beautiful memorial plate in copper, which was affixed to the top of the mahogany coffin by screws. Because the burial service was a mixture of shoreside burial and the more common burial at sea, Sir John had specified that the coffin be made heavy enough to sink at once.
At eight bells at the beginning of the first dogwatch — 4:00 p.m. — the two ships’ companies assembled at the burial site a quarter of a mile across the ice from Erebus. Sir John had ordered everyone except the smallest possible ship’s watches to be present for the service and furthermore had ordered them to wear no layer over their dress uniforms, so at the appointed time more than one hundred shivering but formally dressed officers and men had gathered on the ice.
Lieutenant Gore’s coffin was lowered over the side of Erebus and lashed to an oversized sledge reinforced for this day’s sad purpose. Sir John’s own Union Jack was draped over the coffin. Then thirtytwo seamen, twenty from Erebus and a dozen from Terror, slowly pulled the coffins-ledge the quarter mile to the burial site, while four of the youngest seamen, still on the roster as ship’s boys — George Chambers and David Young from Erebus, Robert Golding and Thomas Evans from Terror — beat a slow march on drums muffled in black cloth. The solemn procession was escorted by twenty men, including Captain Sir John Franklin, Commander Fitzjames, Captain Crozier, and the majority of all the other officers and mates in full dress, excluding only those left in command in each near-vacant ship.