The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Chapter 91

  The tall, silent boy heated the needle in the flames of the campfire. When it was glowing, he tapped Seamie's foot and spoke to him in Maa.

  Tepili, the headman, a Masai who spoke English, translated. "He says do not move," Tepili whispered. "He says be very still now."

  "Easy for him to say. He's got the needle," Seamie muttered.

  Wordlessly, the boy slid the red hot needle into Seamie's toe, just below the nail, pushing it farther and farther in. He canted it slightly then held his breath and slowly pulled it back out. An egg sac, small and white, popped out of the wound. The boy grinned.

  "Jiggers," Tepili said.

  "Jiggers," Seamie echoed.

  "Very bad. Make you very sick," Tepili said. "No walk, no climb."

  "I've heard of them," Willa said, swabbing Seamie's toe with carbolic from a vial. "They're some sort of fiea that lays its eggs by the nail. If the egg sac bursts while you're trying to remove it, the beasties get everywhere and wreak havoc. Infection, pain, gangrene, all of that."

  "Lovely," Seamie said. "Give me the Antarctic any day of the week. Fifty below and a howling blizzard. Too cold for anything but penguins. Definitely too cold for jiggers, ticks, snakes, scorpions, and giant man-eating spiders."

  Willa laughed. "The spider wasn't that big," she said.

  "It was as big as a bloody dinner plate!"

  "What a fibber you are."

  "It was!"

  "A saucer, maybe," she conceded.

  "It jumped on my head!"

  "Dropped."

  "Jumped!"

  It was the first day of their trek, and not a good one for Seamie. A large and horrible spider had attached itself to him as they were passing under some trees, causing him to dance around shouting until he got it off--to the great amusement of Willa, Tepili, and the rest of the porters. He'd also been charged by a gazelle, of all things, cut his hand on a thornbush, been bitten by a tick, and now the jigger. He was looking forward to a good night's sleep on a camp bed with plenty of netting to keep the bugs out.

  Willa finished with his toe, and he put his socks and boots back on. Tepili had asked that he and Willa remove their boots after they'd finished supper. They'd thought it strange, but he insisted. He'd inspected Willa's toes and nodded, but when it was Seamie's turn he'd frowned and then the boy had been called. The extraction had been unpleasant, but Seamie was glad the thing had been found. Infections were never good, particularly when one was miles away from a doctor.

  "We sleep now," Tepili said. "We walk at dawn." And with that, he was gone.

  It was just Willa and Seamie, then, sitting at a camp table by the fire, listening to the sounds of the African night. Willa had her books on the table. She'd brought everything she could find on Kilimanjaro--accounts by Samuel Teleki von Szek, a Hungarian explorer, and the first to attempt Kibo peak, and by the German Hans Meyer, the first to summit it.

  "You hate it here, don't you?" she said worriedly. "You're sorry you've come."

  Seamie shook his head. "No, Wills, not at all. In fact, I love it. I could do without the bugs, but when we started out from Voi and I could see Kili rising in the distance, its top all white with snow, I was really happy I came. It's beautiful, that mountain. I can't wait to climb it."

  Willa brightened. "Africa's extraordinary, isn't it? The golden plains that stretch out forever, the soft hills..."

  "A lot like Croydon."

  "Will you stop? I'm serious."

  "I know you are. And I agree, it is extraordinary. I think the most amazing thing of all is the freedom. It's not just a word here, is it? It's a concrete thing. You can see it, same as you see the endless sky, or hear it, like the thundering of zebra. And feel it, like you do the sun on your back. I honestly don't think I've ever felt so free anywhere I've been--not even Antarctica--as I do here."

  Willa looked at him closely. "Seamus Finnegan, explorer-poet," she said. "That's how I'll describe you in my book."

  She bent her head over her books again, jotting notes as she read. He watched her, his eyes lingering on the line of her jaw, the rise of her cheek-bones, the curve of her mouth. They'd been on the go for hours, covering just under fifteen miles today before stopping to set up camp. They were dusty and sweaty, and yet she looked as lovely as ever to him.

  They'd set out two days ago, taking the train from Mombasa, and disembarking at Voi, a small village due east of the mountain. The journey to Voi had been a long one. The train kept slowing down, adding hours to the trip. Willa had found out why. The diplomat who'd arrived in Mombasa just before they had--Lytton was his name--was on board in a private carriage and his daughter wanted to see the zebras. She was a lovely child; they'd met her on the beach at Mombasa. When they finally arrived at Voi it was already dark and they had to spend the night there in a thatched hut. The next morning they'd started walking west toward the village of Taveta, where they planned to stop and top up their provisions. From there they would veer north, avoiding villages and any overzealous officials who might be policing them.

  Seamie was in excellent physical shape and he'd wondered if Willa would be able to keep up with him and with their long-limbed porters. He needn't have worried. She walked tirelessly and without complaint. She never asked to stop and rest, never showed fear--even when they'd startled a fat crocodile on the Voi River. In fact, she was the one who'd pulled that disgusting spider off his head. He kept looking for flaws in her, hoping she would somehow disappoint him and make him fall out of love with her, but she didn't, and his feelings only grew.

  He had come to know her so well over the past weeks. He knew her every mood and expression, what she ate for breakfast, how she took her tea. He knew how she smelled--like fresh air and sun-warmed grass. He knew that she liked old men and dogs, and hated crossword puzzles. He'd traveled on a boat with her for six weeks and slept in the same bed at the Mombasa Club for five nights. He would never forget those nights, listening to her breathe as she fell asleep, feeling the warmth of her next to him, aching for her. He'd woken in the mornings to find her arm slung over his chest. Knowing she'd be embarrassed if she woke like that, he'd gently disentangled himself; but not before he kissed her--just once--on her forehead or her cheek.

  She looked up at him now, her finger marking a spot in a book. "Fosbrooke here says Teleki got up over seventeen thousand feet on Kibo, but his lips started to bleed badly and fatigue got him and he had to turn back," she said. "The altitude's going to be a bugger."

  "We'll just have to go slowly. Drink lots of melted snow. Climb high, sleep low," Seamie said. "We carry loads up, make camp, then we come back down to sleep and recover. We go slow, only netting one thousand feet a day until we're acclimatized. Then, on the last few pitches, we push like hell. Get up to the summit and get down again as quick as we can."

  "The good news is that Mawenzi's only supposed to be about seventeen thousand feet. If Teleki didn't start bleeding till seventeen thousand, we ought to be all right. We ought to be able to make it."

  "But Teleki was on Kibo. Kibo was no picnic, but Mawenzi looks a hell of a lot trickier. Meyer and Purtscheller reckon sheer faces on all sides. Did you read Meyer on getting up the glacier? He said it took twenty strokes of the ice-axe to cut each step. Twenty strokes for one step, while climbing at an angle of three-five degrees and fighting altitude sickness. Our angles are going to be a lot steeper."

  "But we've got crampons. Meyer didn't have them."

  Seamie thought of the spiked overshoes they'd brought. They were worn strapped over boots, like ice skates, and had metal spikes protruding from them. They were a new invention and largely untried.

  "Who knows if they'll work?" he said.

  "They will. Also we've a better map than Meyer and Purtscheller had. And a quadrant. Telescope. Jacob's staff. We'll take sightings, add to what we already know, and make an even better map by the time we start off."

  Like every good ascensionist, Willa knew that you climbed first with
your eyes. During the long sea voyage they had sketched a rough drawing of Mawenzi based on photographs, descriptions, and rough maps made by earlier climbers, but they were both well aware that they could read every word on every page of every book they'd brought, take their own readings and sightings, and it wouldn't matter--when it came to the actual climb, they would still be dealing with an unknown. They would have to find the route for themselves. Find out where the icefalls were, the crevasses, the deadly couloirs and cornices. If they did this successfully, they could well be the first human beings to ever set foot on the Mawenzi summit. If they did not--they could die.

  Willa sat back in her chair now and gazed at the fire. "Hadrian climbed Etna in 121 to see the sun rise. Petrarch climbed Mount Ventoux in 1336. Balmat and Paccard took Mont Blanc in 1786 and Whymper got the Matterhorn in 1865. Can you imagine how they felt, Seamie? To be the first? To know that their feet were the first to stand on the summit? Their eyes the first to see what no one had ever seen before?"

  "I mean to do more than imagine it, Wills."

  She grinned at him. "Me, too," she said.

  Their eyes met. He thought he saw something in hers, something made of longing and hope. He nearly moved toward her, but then he got scared. What if he was wrong? He looked away awkwardly, said he was dopey with sleep and was going to turn in.

  "I won't be far behind you," Willa said hastily. "Take the lantern. I have the fire."

  The moment was gone. Seamie stood and bade her good night, angry with himself for not doing something. He tried to work up his nerve again, to at least say something, but before he could, they both heard eerie laughter rising out of the night. It made Seamie's blood run cold.

  "Listen to that!" Willa said. "Hyenas. Must be your toe. They can smell blood, even a tiny bit, from miles away."

  The strange sounds grew louder, closer. Suddenly, a massive, hump-back shape lunged out of the darkness. Seamie saw fangs flash as it growled at him. It grabbed his hat--he'd put it on the ground by the tent-- and disappeared.

  "You bastard!" he shouted, running after the creature. "That's mine!"

  The laughter rose higher as he raced after the thief. He stopped. Eyes were on him, all around him, winking ghostly green. He realized he'd run a fair distance from the campfire. He quickly returned to it amid more squeals and barks.

  "They're laughing at you, not with you," Willa said, trying not to laugh herself.

  "They are, are they? Let's see if they laugh at this." He grabbed his rifle and fired a round into the air. There was yipping, the sound of skidding and sliding, claws in the dirt. And then it was quiet again.

  "Think Tepili will let us sleep with him?" he asked.

  Tepili and the other porters had no use for tents. They'd built themselves a manyatta, a small, sturdy enclosure made of thornbush branches, fearsome enough to thwart the boldest hyena.

  "I doubt it," Willa said. "He thinks we smell bad."

  "How do you know?"

  "He told me."

  "He didn't."

  "He did. He's right, of course. We do."

  Seamie sniffed his armpits and winced. "Maybe we'll cross a stream tomorrow. Have a wash."

  Willa was squinting at her pages, reviewing what she'd written.

  "I'd feel a lot better if you were in the tent, Wills. They might come back."

  "All right, then. I'm feeling pretty knackered anyway," she said.

  They built up the fire with branches they'd found earlier in the evening, then walked the few feet to their tent. They'd decided to bring only the one. Less to carry that way. It was roomy enough to comfortably accommodate two beds. Privacy was maintained by means of a canvas dividing wall.

  "You take the lantern," Seamie said. "I can see well enough to fall into my bed. I've got the rifle in case the hyenas come back. 'Night."

  " 'Night, Seamie."

  He quickly took off his shoes, socks, and shorts, and climbed under the mosquito netting hanging over the bed. He stared up at it for a minute, then turned his head to the side. The lantern light silhouetted Willa as she undressed. He could see her long legs and the curve of her breasts as she slipped off her shirt. He knew that she slept in a camisole and in the men's drawers she wore under her trousers. He groaned softly. It was too much. He couldn't bear it anymore. He had to tell her how he felt. Even if it changed everything between them. He couldn't go on like this. He could see her bent over on her bed, writing in her notebook. He was just about to call out to her when she spoke first.

  "Seamie?"

  "What?"

  The lantern went out. He heard her tussling around on her bed, trying to get comfortable.

  "You still up?"

  "Mmm-hmm."

  "What makes a good climber? I'm trying to work that out for my book. George says it's skill, but I think fearlessness enters into it. You have to be very sober and careful about your preparations--making sure all your clobber's in tip-top shape, planning your route and so forth--but at some point you have to let go. You can't climb if you're always thinking about falling."

  Seamie thought about this, then said, "I think it mostly has to do with arrogance."

  "Arrogance? Why?"

  "Well, when you're climbing, everything's against you. Gravity, wind and weather, altitude, time, geography. You're nothing but a speck on the face of a monolith, one that's been where it is since the dawn of time. But you don't care about any of that. If you did, you wouldn't be there. But you are there, daring disaster and death and all of it, a little fiea climbing up a mountain. A mountain. What is that, if not arrogance?"

  More silence, then, "I'd say you're right, but that would mean admitting that I'm arrogant," Willa said.

  "Mmm. And ambitious. And competitive. And--"

  "All right, mate. That'll do," she said, laughing. She was quiet for a bit, then said, "What will you do? After Kilimanjaro, I mean. When we get back home." Her voice was sleepy-sounding now.

  "See if Shackleton's already left for Antarctica. If not, talk him into taking me with him. What about you?"

  "I think the Alps again. And George and I have talked about Everest. That's all it is, talk. It's too cold and too high, and yet neither of us can stop fantasizing about the climb. He wants it very badly." She yawned, then said, "I don't think he'll ever be happy, not in his entire life, unless he gets it. I asked him why. He said, �Because it's there.' That's George for you, another poet-explorer. I'm surrounded by them."

  "Willa?"

  "Mmm?"

  "I need to tell you something."

  "Mmm?"

  There was a long silence as Seamie worked up his nerve. Then he said,

  "I ...I love you, Willa. Have for years. I don't expect that you feel the same way about me. I know about you and George. But I had to tell you. I hope this won't bugger things... but, well, anyway, there it is. I'm sorry."

  There was a long silence. Seamie was in agony waiting for her response. When one didn't come, he was certain it was because she was mortified. Or maybe she was furious.

  And then he did hear something--a sound like cloth tearing. He knew that sound: Willa was snoring. She snored like a drunkard and slept like one, too. Once she was out, an earthquake couldn't wake her. He'd discovered that at the Mombasa Club.

  Seamie took a deep breath and blew it out again. He was relieved. He'd given in to a momentary bit of madness and he shouldn't have. Luckily, she hadn't heard a word he'd said. Their friendship would go on as it had with no complications. And that was good.

  They didn't need complications, not now with fifty miles still to go to get to Kilimanjaro and then a risky climb up Mawenzi.

  Willa snored on, shockingly loud. And Seamie smiled. That noise, if nothing else, would surely keep the hyenas away.

  Chapter 92

  "Four children sleeping on wooden pallets the mother scrounged from the docks," Joe said angrily. "If she hadn't got the pallets, they'd be sleeping on the wet floor. Three of the kids are consumptive. There's a surprise.
Mother chars. Leaves at five a.m., doesn't get back till seven most nights. Father's an invalid, injured at the docks. No compensation."

  Joe was talking--almost shouting--from a narrow hallway outside a small, dank basement room in a tumbledown house in Wapping. Water trickled across the floor under the wheels of his chair and into the room where a miserably poor family of six was being photographed. The thin children wore little more than rags. The father lay in a single bed, staring vacantly. The mother's anxious eyes darted between Joe in the hallway and the enormous black camera on a tripod in the middle of her room.

  The man behind it, Jacob Riis, adjusted his camera's settings, nodding absently as Joe ranted. His assistant took down everything Joe said in a small black notebook.