The Arctic Fury

by Greer Macallister

  Chapter Seventeen

  Virginia

  Massachusetts Superior Court, Boston

  October 1854

  Today, when Virginia enters the courtroom, she feels a simmering anger in the chamber, a new sensation. Is there a new witness, someone to rile the Bostonians’ passions, stir up their rage at the death of their hometown girl? The name on the roster is, as is becoming far too frequent for her comfort, unfamiliar. Why hasn’t Clevenger prepared her? She feels much better when she knows what’s coming, even if she knows it will be negative, as with Thisbe, as with Dove.

  But this man’s name is a stranger’s, and she wonders how many more days she’ll have to do this, how many more hours of sitting still and looking impassive she’ll have to endure.

  Her allies in the front row, those five survivors, already look like their energy is beginning to flag. The physical exertion of their journey has, she supposes, left them with scant reserves. Dark circles have appeared under Doro’s eyes, their stain spreading toward her cheekbones. Virginia wishes she could comfort her, but that is not how things work these days, in this place. Later, there will either be time for comfort or not.

  Now the witness comes forward, and she focuses all her attention on him. He is a thin-faced man of medium height, bespectacled. As he passes, she catches sight of two roundish spots of white scalp on the back of his head, where the dark hair thins awkwardly. When he sits, his shoulders are rounded and vulnerable, like a sad child’s, but there is something hard she does not like in his small eyes. The glass of his spectacles reflects the light.

  “State your name for the record, please,” preens the prosecutor.

  “Claudius Dalrymple,” says the man.

  It rings no bells with Virginia. With a subtle glance around the room, she scans the present faces for recognition but sees no signs.

  The prosecutor begins, “And your occupation?”

  “I am a legal scholar.”

  “Of some renown, aren’t you?”

  “One could say so,” says the man, pretending modesty, but Virginia sees the falseness of it, the way he understated his credentials only so he could draw more attention to them. “I am often called to testify on matters similar to this one in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. By way of profession, I teach at the college.”

  “And by the college, you mean Harvard College, of course?”

  “Of course.”

  The lawyer continues jovially, “And do tell us, please, Mr. Dalrymple, what is your particular expertise?”

  “Evidentiary precedents in capital crime.”

  “Shall I translate for the less educated? Murder.”

  The word is loud. Even though the courtroom has no echo, Virginia can hear it repeat inside the chamber of her mind. Murder, murder, murder.

  “Yes, murder,” says the man, turning his head so the lights wink against the round lenses of his spectacles again. “Specifically, the likelihood of conviction when certain evidence is or is not present as well as the patterns currently predominant in the United States judiciary system across its states and territories. I make a study of murder, you see.”

  “And murderers as well?” asks the prosecutor. His voice is neutral, but his body turns toward Virginia, drawing attention to where she sits.

  She risks a glance at her counsel; he seems almost bored by the testimony and certainly not inclined to object. She’s not sure he could—the prosecutor’s tactics are subtle today—but she would at least like him to be as suspicious as she is. The fact that he isn’t is starting to look less like incompetence and more like willful neglect. She is beginning to suspect that even though his entire purpose as her attorney is to defend and protect her, he might be working toward another agenda entirely, for someone else’s ends. Or is she only being paranoid?

  The witness simply answers the question as if it were straightforward, genuine. “Not exactly, sir. I do not study the perpetrators in depth, nor the details of the crimes they commit. My expertise is in studying the way justice is meted out by the courts. How it is prosecuted. How it is punished.”

  Whispers hiss and chase one another around the chamber at that word, punished. Virginia has to work harder than usual not to show, in any way, the shiver that runs down the length of her spine.

  “Mr. Dalrymple. We are grateful to you, of course, for your time,” the prosecutor says.

  She can hear him winding up to something. She hates that his patterns have become so familiar. She hates everything about him, which makes sense, but it is his familiarity she now loathes most. She should never have been in a position to know him. None of this should have ever happened. They should have found Franklin and come back lauded for it. How different things could have been.

  Instead, it is this factotum who enjoys being lauded, praise that the prosecutor heaps at his feet. “We know how busy you are, how important, and so we do not plan to keep you long. Just a few questions only someone of great expertise like yourself can answer.”

  “I will endeavor to do my best,” says the witness with the gravest of expressions.

  Virginia cannot believe she has room to swallow her anger at this on top of all the anger she has already swallowed, but perhaps her capacity is infinite. If it isn’t, she thinks, one day soon, she will burst.

  “What I am sure many of the brighter minds in the court have been wondering,” says the prosecutor, lacing his fingers together over his stomach, “is how we can be sure a murder happened when no body has been produced.”

  Virginia herself has wondered this countless times. She finds herself in the awkward position of being deeply curious to hear what this man will say, though it may well doom her.

  “Well, I can tell you. This is not the first time a murder has been prosecuted in the absence of the body of the murdered, and I am sorry to say, it is not likely to be the last.”

  “It’s a sad fact.” The prosecutor shakes his head as if he rues the violent state of affairs in America today. As if this weren’t his bread and butter. As if…but she can’t think about him anymore. She’s hanging on the witness’s every word.

  “Without the presence of a body,” he is intoning, “the precedent indicates that a reasonable amount of other evidence, including the sworn testimony of at least one eyewitness, is sufficient to create the presumption that a death did in fact take place at a certain time at a certain location.”

  “So let me make sure we understand.” The counsel exaggerates his motions as well as his words, drawing the jury along. He even takes a step in their direction. “You say that we can assume someone died if sworn witnesses tell us where, when, and how she died.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “And this applies in the case of Caprice Collins?”

  “Not just hers.” He sounds excited now, livelier than he has so far. “Several others, all relevant here.”

  “Several others in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? Or other states you’re familiar with?”

  “No, no,” says the witness, an odd sense of delight radiating from him that makes Virginia feel ill again. “On this expedition, I mean.”

  “This very expedition?”

  “Yes! For example, there was another woman who did not come back from the mission—”

  “There were quite a few, as I understand it,” the prosecutor interrupts, his mouth crooking up at one corner.

  Finally, though Clevenger has told her every time they’ve met that she must remain silent, Virginia cannot help but attempt to get her counsel’s attention, just once. How can he not object to this? She keeps her body still, but her eyes are on him, her jaw clenched, and she lets out a short, sharp hiss.

  Clevenger’s head snaps in her direction. His eyes go wide. He pinches his fingers together, his meaning clear: shut your mouth.

  Part of her wants to leap from the dock and sla
p him, hard. Slap the teeth out of his mouth if she could. He won’t stop the prosecutor from prejudicing the jury against her; he won’t stop any of this. He should pay. A larger part of her, the part that believes she deserves this fate, already knows she’s bound for the hangman’s noose no matter what. This part sits back to watch with something very close to indifference.

  The expert says, “The scope of my testimony applies primarily to the precedent that enables this case to go forward, convicting a woman of murder without the presence of the body of the person she has killed.”

  She chances one more hiss toward Clevenger, more discreet this time, softer. Her counsel pretends not to hear her at all, just sitting there like a statue of an overgrown cherub. He does not even blink as the moment to object irrevocably slips by.

  “Please tell us,” the prosecutor continues, “whether it is your considered legal opinion that there is enough evidence of the death of Caprice Collins for this defendant to be tried for her murder.”

  A shadow flits across the man’s face so quickly Virginia knows the jury won’t see it. One of the things this paid expert is paid for is keeping his cool. After a moment of recovery, he says easily, “It is not up to me who is tried for what crime. But yes, I believe there is evidence of the death of Caprice Collins. Her death is a matter of legal certainty.”

  “Please explain how.”

  “When she was taken into custody, upon questioning, the defendant admitted that Miss Collins had died. We also deposed several of the other women who sit before us today, and their accounts all agree. The time and place cannot be pinpointed with as much accuracy as we would have if the death had taken place in, for example, Boston itself, but still, because of the level of agreement and lack of dispute, this death can be considered established as the nearest possible thing to fact.”

  The expert gestures at the five survivors with an open hand, not dismissive and not accusatory, simply factual. “Every woman here has stated that Miss Collins died on an expedition in which they were all participants. There is some dispute as to how it happened, which is why this is a murder trial: it is up to the judge and jury to determine who is telling the truth.”

  “If anyone,” the prosecutor says.

  Someone, somewhere in the courtroom chokes off a cough that might have been a guffaw. Judge Miller glares out over the heads of the audience, seems not to find an obvious culprit, and says nothing.

  “That is the nature of truth,” says Mr. Dalrymple. “A slippery little creature. People can have different interpretations of the same fact, the same word, same sentence. In this case, it is a matter of life and death, but these minor disagreements, these differences in perception, happen every day. Who has not disagreed with his wife about the meaning of the phrase ‘I’ll be ready in a moment’?”

  The prosecutor laughs as if this is funny. So, to Virginia’s horror, does the judge.

  Virginia does something she has not done so far in this trial.

  She stops listening.

  It’s a foolish thing to do, she knows even as she does it, but she can’t stand listening to another word, not today. This man is joking away her freedom. He is joking away her life.

  She hates to think of the past, and yet it’s the only thing that makes sense to her in the moment. The deeper they get into this recollection of the expedition, the more horrors she will be forced to face, but losing herself in memories of those horrors is less painful to her than listening to men scheme to destroy her future.

  At least when she remembers the past, she already knows all the traps, all the fatalities. There is a reassuring certainty in those moments of loss. Having lost these women once, irrevocably, she cannot lose them again.

  She knows the time will come when she’ll have to face the memory of losing Caprice.

  But she can put it off just a little longer. That day is not today.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Virginia

  Sault Ste. Marie; aboard the Doris

  May and June 1853

  Despite the initial awkwardness of forcing a party of thirteen into a space meant for twelve, thought Virginia, the first leg of the journey felt almost enchanted. The weather cooperated, neither too hot nor too cold. The food was neither plentiful nor delicious, but it sufficed. They were so hungry at every mealtime that they fell upon it with great and grateful joy. Stops felt short, but the women slept like the dead and awoke rested even when they rose before the sun.

  After the first few days in the canoes, the aches in their untrained muscles subsided as their bodies adjusted to the hard work. Then they enjoyed the journey more. The lakes sported great beauty and life, and on the shore, they saw new plants, new creatures, furred and feathered things they’d never seen before. Christabel and Margaret were always sketching and scribbling in any free moments, attempting to capture the wildness of their new surroundings, even before they left what still counted as civilization. Even when Christabel did not have her hands free to sketch, her joy at spotting something new was audible. Her ah! of pleasure became a common refrain, and the women heard it so often that sometimes they would sing it back to her, sounding for all the world like a flock of chipper ducks, ah! ah! ah!

  Best of all, they had no trouble with the men. Virginia had feared that the voyageurs hired to transport them via canoe from Buffalo to Sault Ste. Marie would be hard men, disdainful or worse, but they were entirely businesslike. Her experience in the West was that some men took to the wilds because they were unfit for civilization. Too independent at best, and at worst, too violent. But there were exceptions, like Ames. And like her, she supposed. She felt uncomfortable in cities, but she still knew how to navigate them without much friction. In Boston, she’d felt out of place, yes, but she’d been able to take her meals in the ladies’ ordinary at the American House without snarling like a feral hog or dancing la gigue on the tabletop.

  After they disembarked in Sault Ste. Marie—the chief voyageur, Thibodeau, brushing his lips over Caprice’s knuckles in farewell as they went—the women efficiently transferred their goods to the transport for Moose Factory. The practice of their regular stops and starts along the lakes had honed their unpacking and repacking skills to a sharp edge.

  The same skills served them well at Moose Factory when they arrived the morning of the same day they were to leave. Brooks had paid in advance for transport on a topsail schooner called the Doris, and Virginia could not imagine what they would do if the Doris turned out to be fictitious, but it was waiting for them exactly at the contracted time and place. At first, Virginia wondered that more time hadn’t been built into the schedule to allow for the transfer, but she quickly figured out why. Moose Factory was not just a wild town. It was barely a town at all. Clearly, there were no convenient accommodations sufficient for an overnight stay for more than a dozen women traveling without male supervision, and rather than compromise the women, Brooks had chosen to simply move them out of the town before the time came for them to sleep. Expedient and safe, yes, she understood, but it was also exhausting. She knew once the excitement flooding her veins drained away, she’d collapse, but the thrill kept her going for now. Everything felt momentous.

  Virginia lost track of her own pack for a minute, and her heart was in her throat; she didn’t have much to speak of in terms of worldly goods, but those precious letters from Lady Franklin were in her pack, and she was dying of curiosity to see what they’d say. There were four. Three for her and the fourth for John Franklin himself. That one, she would never know what it said unless and until they found him.

  But today, all things felt possible.

  Along with the goods transferred from the canoes to the Doris, a flood of other deliveries arrived for transfer over the course of the next few hours. Supplies to prepare them for the ice, as large as the disassembled sledge and as small as twelve precious pairs of snow goggles, rectangles of polished caribou antler with
narrow eye slits cut to minimize light and prevent snow blindness. Virginia tracked each delivery and checked them off on the list she’d been given by Brooks to make sure they had everything they needed. Every flick of her pen was satisfaction itself.

  The most rambunctious delivery by far was a full complement of twelve sled dogs, each of which Ann threw herself to the ground to wrestle, examine, and judge. She was thorough but efficient, getting a good look at their mouths, eyes, ears, paws. In the end, she judged two of them too weak to take, but the other ten were satisfactory, and ten was plenty to pull the sledge they’d be using, Ann said. Virginia gave her the funds with which to pay the Esquimaux trader. Business was briskly done.

  When the dogs yipped and jogged their way up the gangplank, tumbling around Ann’s ankles, a pale, stone-faced whaler stood at the top as if to block them. He was not a large man, though he had an air of authority, the voice and carriage of a man accustomed to giving orders and seeing them obeyed.

  “Hold up, there,” he said angrily. “You can’t bring those bitches aboard. Where in blazes do you expect them to stay?”

  Ann—his height exactly, with a lantern jaw that put his own weak chin to shame—responded before Virginia even saw the need. “Are you the captain?”

  “Nearest to,” he said. “I’m the ship’s mate, Keane.”

  “It’s been planned out with Captain Malcolm,” Ann said with confidence. “There’s a cabin for ’em. Anyone has a problem with that, feel free to follow me down, and we can jaw about it in their quarters.”

  Then she gave some kind of a signal that made all the dogs growl in unison, low in their furry throats.

  After that, with all the activity, the women did not see Keane again until after the ship had set sail.

  An hour later, as the ship pulled away into the cold bay, Virginia pushed aside her concerns and fears. There was nothing else to be done. They had closed one chapter, and the next had yet to begin.