The Broken Lands (39 page)
Authors: Robert Edric
F
itzjames rapped on the wall of his cabin and waited for an answering knock from Goodsir. None came. He called out to him, but still received no answer.
itzjames rapped on the wall of his cabin and waited for an answering knock from Goodsir. None came. He called out to him, but still received no answer.
The two of them had spent the previous evening together, sharing a meal of gelatin soup and old biscuits chamfered by long-dead mice. They parted at nine and returned to their separate cabins. It was Goodsir who had insisted on this early retirement, explaining that he had a great deal of work to do on his papers. At one point during this final meal, he had momentarily passed out, slumping forward and knocking his forehead on the table. He came round almost immediately, took a vial from his pocket, broke it and swallowed its contents. Afterward, he took several deep breaths and continued talking as though nothing had happened.
Fitzjames heard him working for several hours after they had parted, sorting through his papers until long past midnight, when he had finally fallen silent. His cabin door was closed and his lamp dimmed.
Now, as he struggled to pull himself from his bed, Fitzjames began to fear the worst, remembering Goodsir’s embrace as they parted.
He knocked on the door and then pushed it open. At first he thought he had been concerned unduly and that, heavily drugged, Goodsir had fallen asleep where he sat, his head resting in his arm on his desk. It was not until he moved closer and saw the open,
staring eye and the line of dry blood, little thicker than a line of red ink, running from Goodsir’s nose to his lips, and from there down his chin to the papers and crushed vials on his desk, that he knew his friend was dead.
staring eye and the line of dry blood, little thicker than a line of red ink, running from Goodsir’s nose to his lips, and from there down his chin to the papers and crushed vials on his desk, that he knew his friend was dead.
A small bottle of ambergris lay spilled under Goodsir’s hand and Fitzjames saw that there was also a dab of this on his forehead, as though his final act had been to annoint himself with the precious liquid for want of holy water, seeking forgiveness for the act of sacrilege he was about to commit.
All around him lay the evidence of his labors over the previous months. In addition to his numerous journals, labeled and dated and neatly arranged along his shelves, there were his monographs, illustrated and stitched in cloth, and alongside these were stacked packets of unbound papers, several thousand pages in total.
Opening the drawers of the desk, Fitzjames found hundreds of letters, and a cursory examination of these revealed recipients in over a dozen countries ranging from America to Europe to Australia. A note attached to the largest of these bundles indicated that they were intended for Goodsir’s close family and that if the dictates of space or weight meant that not all of them could be carried to their destination, then these alone should be saved. Only the clumsy writing of the later letters betrayed Goodsir’s unpracticed left hand.
In addition to these, Fitzjames found a case containing Gore’s photographs, entrusted to Goodsir by Gore when his supply of plates was finally exhausted. It was with a succession of small shocks that he looked through these, catching sight of himself on several occasions and barely able to bring himself to do anything more than glance at the man he had once been before turning to the others. He saw himself upon the beach at the Whalefish settlement, and then again in a near-identical pose—the same stiff smile on his lips—on the shore at Beechey. He saw himself in the company of others, men now dead or lost, beside them on the ice, posed in front of the ships, standing in their boats, among their dwellings. He saw himself with his head turned to one side and remembered the distant feature he had been directed toward, but which had failed to materialize on the finished plate. He saw himself and the others shaking
hands, as though something had just been achieved, some victory gained. He saw too the pieces of Gore’s unfinished panorama, and wondered who now would fit these together and what artifice and wonder they might reveal as the seams were lost and the ribbon of arboreal landscape emerged in its entirety for the first time.
hands, as though something had just been achieved, some victory gained. He saw too the pieces of Gore’s unfinished panorama, and wondered who now would fit these together and what artifice and wonder they might reveal as the seams were lost and the ribbon of arboreal landscape emerged in its entirety for the first time.
He stopped searching, unable to look beyond the group of men who had accompanied him on his march to the southwest, unwilling to exchange the expectant determination which shone from their faces for the anguish and hopelessness which all too soon replaced it.
He found a letter on the desk addressed to himself, and he took this and pushed it into his pocket, already knowing everything he might later need to be told. A pen and blotter lay beside the envelope, convincing him that this had been the last of his friend’s awful preparations.
He took a blanket from Goodsir’s bunk and draped it over him, careful not to disturb the papers. He prepared to leave and find Reid and Gore, but looking back from the doorway, he saw that this crude shroud made Goodsir look ridiculous, and so he reached for its corner and pulled it away.
His progress in search of the others was slow.
He passed the galley, in which sat Bryant, Weekes and Hopcraft, and he looked in at them without speaking as they stared equally silently back at him. They were all now ghosts and they resented the intrusion of other ghosts to remind them of this fact.
Eventually defeated by the steps leading up to the deck, he fell for a final time and dragged himself into the square of sunlight and draught of fresh air which penetrated from above. He looked up, waiting for someone to appear, and high above him he saw the sun and was blinded by it and felt it beating down on the dry flesh of his face and then searing direct and magnified into the thin bone of his unprotected skull.
G
raham Gore became delirious and then fell unconscious. David Bryant sat with him, but other than attend to his more obvious physical needs, he made no attempt to revive him. He undressed him, wiped clean his broken skin and mouth, and occasionally changed one or other of the sheets beneath which he lay until there was little to choose between the clean and the soiled.
raham Gore became delirious and then fell unconscious. David Bryant sat with him, but other than attend to his more obvious physical needs, he made no attempt to revive him. He undressed him, wiped clean his broken skin and mouth, and occasionally changed one or other of the sheets beneath which he lay until there was little to choose between the clean and the soiled.
He collected together Gore’s shooting trophies and medals and arranged them along the shelf close to his bed, each of the tarnished silver cups reflecting the ember of dim light which was the sickroom’s only illumination.
The ship had become a mausoleum, but without the dignity conferred by polished granite or Carrara marble; or if not a mausoleum, then a hidden valley of sarcophagi, wherein the occupants were laid to rest like ancient princes or pharaohs surrounded by their prize possessions and the familiar objects of their lives, stacked all around them to ensure their swift and untroubled journeys into other, more certain existences.
Two days after Gore’s confinement, the first large body of Eskimos came aboard. They arrived unnoticed and unannounced, twelve or fifteen in all, and wandered freely along the full length and breadth of the ship, moving from the fallen rigging and the deck to its innermost spaces, in which lay silent and unattended the oldest of its mortuary cargo. They wandered without restraint or fear, and with little concern for the few remaining vestiges of life, the living
men included, which they encountered on their journey through the disemboweled shell the
Erebus
had become.
Erebus,
the primeval darkness born of chaos, half-brother to night, and reluctant father to air and day, Aether and Hemera, the Lower World of the ancient Greeks, fearsome and forbidding and filled with impenetrable darkness.
men included, which they encountered on their journey through the disemboweled shell the
Erebus
had become.
Erebus,
the primeval darkness born of chaos, half-brother to night, and reluctant father to air and day, Aether and Hemera, the Lower World of the ancient Greeks, fearsome and forbidding and filled with impenetrable darkness.
Only Weekes and Hopcraft took genuine fright at the appearance of the natives, and because they alone still possessed the strength to walk and to climb, they left the warmth and security of the galley and fled out onto the ice, where they hid themselves fearful and expectant amid the last of their jettisoned waste.
The Eskimos showed no hostility toward the two men, nor surprise at their alarm and extreme actions, and they stood at the rail and looked down at them before resuming their exploration of the ship.
News of the boarders reached Reid and Fitzjames as the two men sat together in the latter’s cabin, and where they awaited the intruders calmly and without any thought of expelling them.
The previous day, one of Fitzjames’ cheeks had torn, and Reid had attempted to sew the loose flaps back together, knowing the repair was unlikely to last, but acceding to Fitzjames’ demands to cover the grotesque hole of his mouth and upper jaw until some more permanent means of concealment could be devised. Reid sought out the needle and surgical thread from Goodsir’s cabin, along with the spirit and laudanum to clean and then render insensitive what remained of the eroded flesh. At first the translucent skin tore each time he tried to find a place for the needle, but eventually, by increasing the length of the stitches until he was sewing in sound flesh, he managed to draw the two halves back together. The result was little less unsightly or disfiguring than the original wound, but Fitzjames accepted this and repeatedly studied it in a mirror as the effects of the laudanum wore off and he was better able to assess what Reid had attempted.
Now, as he sat and waited for the Eskimos to appear at his cabin door, the growing pain from the stitches was almost too great for him to bear, and he frequently felt himself drifting into semiconsciousness,
hardly aware of what Reid was saying to him about why he thought the natives had finally come aboard in such a large and single body.
hardly aware of what Reid was saying to him about why he thought the natives had finally come aboard in such a large and single body.
They could hear the men in the galley and adjoining rooms, hear them gathering up the tools and cutlery and other objects they so covetously desired; hear them examining the cooking pots and the cold remains of uneaten meals; hear them pulling bedclothes from unoccupied beds and searching among drawers and chests, bottles and books. They could hear too the unintelligible chatter of their conversation, spoken largely in a near whisper, but occasionally high and childlike, which through the distortion of distance and pain sounded like laughter.
Reid reassured Fitzjames that there was nothing to fear in all this, and because he could not speak, Fitzjames responded with nods and with his hand upon the ice-master’s arm. Nor could he spit or swallow, and every few minutes he leaned forward so that a gob of bloody saliva might fall in a string from his mouth into the crystal bowl in his lap, and each time he did this, Reid dabbed dry his chin. Even these small exertions now made Fitzjames feel as though he were about to lose consciousness.
The Eskimos finally reached them, two of the short dark men stopping in the doorway to look inside. They wore hide smocks and gray fur trousers, satyr-like in the sepulchral illumination. Their hair was long and untidy and their copper faces glistened with the pungent oils with which they annointed themselves.
Reid spoke a word of greeting to them, but neither responded to this, content simply to stand and stare at what they had encountered.
Fitzjames saw that one of them held a Bible, and that he was studying the embossed gold and silver of its binding, as though this rather than the words inside held some reverential significance for him. There was little point in guessing to whom the Bible had once belonged, or in which of their three separate and devastated parties that man had perished; even less to be gained in trying to take it back so that it might one day in the distant future accompany its owner to his grave. Many other Bibles and hymn books and tracts of Scripture had been found along the trail of corpses out on the
ice, retrieved from the dead, if not the dying, and long since wrung dry of their final drops of spiritual succor by the wind which blasted clean the plain upon which not even the shallowest or crudest of graves had been dug.
ice, retrieved from the dead, if not the dying, and long since wrung dry of their final drops of spiritual succor by the wind which blasted clean the plain upon which not even the shallowest or crudest of graves had been dug.
The two Eskimos moved away and were replaced by others, all equally inquisitive to see what had been discovered.
Eventually only a solitary man stood in the doorway. He appeared older than his companions, shorter and heavier. His hair was trimmed in a line at his ears, and he bore a scar running vertically from his nose to his throat. He looked in at the two men, and then stared with greater interest at the contents of the cabin all around them.
On the point of blacking out completely, Fitzjames raised his hand to him.
The man did not respond, but a moment later he reached into the pouch at his waist and drew out a small live gull, its feet trussed and its wings tied to its side. The bird was vividly white, almost luminescent in the fetid gloom of the passage.
Momentarily distracted by screams and laughter from the others, and then by the sound of crockery being smashed and paper torn, the man held the gull out toward Fitzjames and Reid as though he were making a gift of it to them.
The small bird struggled briefly, incapable of flapping or kicking out, but still able to twist its neck from side to side with sufficient vigor to shake itself free of the man’s hand, and from where it then hung suspended on its slender cord. Without looking down at it, the man flicked it back into his palm and with an equally deft and invisible motion released its wings, causing the bird to resume its attempts at escape. This time it flapped blind and unsynchronized, beating against the door-frame until several of its feathers came loose and were carried into the room on the draught of this wild flapping.
Fitzjames watched closely as one of these was blown clear of the struggling bird and drifted to the floor at his feet, mesmerized by it, almost as though it were a solitary and long-awaited light in the darkness through which he had for so long been limping and then
shuffling and then crawling, constantly shedding the skins of his own humanity as he went. It landed and became still, and although it was only inches from his feet, he knew that the effort required to bend and pick it up was now beyond him.
shuffling and then crawling, constantly shedding the skins of his own humanity as he went. It landed and became still, and although it was only inches from his feet, he knew that the effort required to bend and pick it up was now beyond him.
In the doorway the bird began to screech, and in response to this the man swung it gently from side to side until, calmed by the motion, it fell silent again, its wings stretched to their full span, loose and yet at the same time tensed, as though the fragile bones to which the feathers were attached might either snap under the unbearable weight of this unnatural position, or might just as likely come suddenly back to life when sufficient lost energy had been regained.
Again the man held the gull forward as though making a gift of it to them, and Reid held out his hand to receive it.
Fitzjames watched him, but without any other indication that he understood what was happening, and as hypnotized now by the perfect black beads of the bird’s eyes as he had been by the detached and floating feather.
All around them the cries and the voices of the others had ceased and there was silence, broken only, or so it seemed to Fitzjames, by the hoarse and irregular sound of his own tortured breathing.
He watched as the man took a step toward Reid, pushing the bird closer to him, and in a moment of unexpected clarity he remembered what Reid had once told him many years previously about how the Eskimos, upon trapping a bird and not wishing to damage its plumage, would kill it by pinching tight its beating heart through its chest; and remembering this he looked from the Eskimo to the bird, to its wings and its beak and shining eyes, and finally to its throat, where the man’s dark fingers were already probing the plump white cushion of its breast.
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