“I’ve been thinking about your ball,” said Fitzjames as Crozier began bundling up to leave.
“My ball?”
“The Grand Venetian Carnivale that Hoppner set up when you wintered over with Parry,” continued Fitzjames. “When you went as a black footman.”
“What about it?” asked Crozier as he bound his comforter around his neck and face.
“Sir John had three large trunks of masks, clothing, and costumes,” said Fitzjames. “I found them among his personal stores.”
“He did?” Crozier was surprised. The aging windbag who would have held Divine Service six times a week if he had been allowed and who, despite his frequent laughter, never seemed to understand anyone else’s jokes, seemed like the last sort of expedition commander to load trunks of frivolous costumes the way the stagestruck Parry had.
“They’re old,” confirmed Fitzjames. “Some of them may have belonged to Parry and Hoppner — may have been the same costumes you chose from while frozen in Baffin Bay twenty-four years ago — but there are over a hundred tattered rags in there.”
Crozier stood bundled in the doorway of Sir John’s former cabin where the two captains had held their sotto voce meeting. He wished Fitzjames would get to the point.
“I thought we might hold a masque for the men soon,” said Fitzjames. “Nothing as fancy as your Grand Venetian Carnivale, of course, not with the… unpleasantness… out on the ice, but a diversion nonetheless.”
“Perhaps,” said Crozier, allowing his tone to convey his lack of enthusiasm at the idea. “We shall discuss it after this accursed Divine Service on Sunday.”
“Yes, of course,” Fitzjames said hurriedly. His slight lisp became more pronounced when he was nervous. “Shall I send some men to escort you back to Terror, Captain Crozier?”
“No. And turn in early tonight, James. You look fagged out. We’ll both need our energy if we’re to properly sermonize the assembled crew on Sunday.”
Fitzjames smiled dutifully. Crozier thought it a wan and strangely disturbing expression.
On Sunday the fifth of December, 1847, Crozier left behind a skeleton crew of six men commanded by First Lieutenant Edward Little — who, like Crozier, would rather have his kidney stones removed with a spoon than be forced to suffer sermons — as well as his assistant surgeon, McDonald, and the engineer, James Thompson. The other fifty-some surviving crewmen and officers trooped off across the ice following their captain, Second Lieutenant Hodgson, Third Lieutenant Irving, First Mate Hornby, and the other masters, clerks, and warrant officers. It was almost 10:00 a.m. but would have been absolutely dark under the shivering stars except for the return of the aurora which pulsed, danced, and shifted above them, throwing a long line of their shadows onto the fractured ice. Sergeant Soloman Tozer — the shocking birthmark on his face especially noticeable in the coloured light from the aurora — headed up the guard of Royal Marines with muskets marching points, flank, and behind the column, but the white thing in the ice left the men alone this Sabbath morning.
The last full gathering of both crews for Divine Service — presided over by Sir John shortly before the creature carried their devout leader down into the darkness under the ice — had been on the open deck under cold June sunlight, but since it was now at least 50 degrees below zero outside, when the wind was not blowing, Fitzjames had arranged the lower deck for the service. The huge cookstove could not be moved, but the men had cranked up the seamen’s dining tables to their maximum height, taken down the removable bulkhead partitions that had delineated the forward sick bay, and removed other partitions that had created the warrant officers’ sleeping area, the subordinate officers’ stewards’ cubicle, and the first and second mates’ and second master’s berths. They also removed the walls of the warrant officers’ mess room and assistant surgeon’s sleeping room. The space would be crowded still, but adequate.
In addition, Fitzjames’s carpenter, Mr. Weekes, had created a low pulpit and platform. It was raised only six inches because of the lack of headroom under the beams, hanging tables, and stored lumber, but it would allow Crozier and Fitzjames to be seen by the men in the back of the jam of bundled bodies.
“At least we’ll be warm,” Crozier whispered to Fitzjames as Charles Hamilton Osmer, Erebus’s bald purser, led the men in opening hymns.
Indeed, the packed bodies had raised the temperature on the lower deck here higher than it had been since Erebus had been burning great heaps of coal and forcing hot water through its heating pipes six months earlier. Fitzjames had also tried to lighten up the usually dark and smoky place by burning ship’s oil at a furious rate in no fewer than ten hanging lamps that lit the space more brightly than at any time since sunlight had poured through the overhead Preston Patent Illuminators more than two years earlier.
The crewmen rocked the dark oak beams with their singing. Sailors, Crozier knew from his forty-plus years of experience, loved to sing under almost any circumstance. Even, if all else failed, during Divine Service. Crozier could see the top of caulker’s mate Cornelius Hickey’s head in the crowd, while next to him, hunched over so that his head and shoulders would not hit the overhead beams, stood the idiot giant Magnus Manson, who bellowed out the hymn in a boom so off-key that it made the grinding of the ice outside sound like close harmony. The two were sharing one of the tattered hymnals that Purser Osmer had handed out.
Finally the hymns were finished and there came a low din of shuffling, coughing, and clearing of throats. The air smelled of fresh-baked bread since Mr. Diggle had come over hours earlier to aid Erebus’s cook, Richard Wall, in the baking of biscuits. Crozier and Fitzjames had decided that the extra coal, flour, and lamp oil were worth expending this special day if it helped the men’s morale. The darkest two months of the arctic winter were still ahead.
Now it was time for the two sermons. Fitzjames had shaved and powdered carefully and allowed his personal steward, Mr. Hoar, to take in his baggy waistcoat, trousers, and jacket, so he looked calm and handsome in his uniform and shining epaulettes. Only Crozier, standing behind him, could see Fitzjames’s pale hands clenching and unclenching as he set his personal Bible on the pulpit and opened it to Psalms.
“The reading today shall be from Pthalm Forty-six,” said Captain Fitzjames. Crozier winced slightly at the upper-class lisp that had become more pronounced with tension.