“For what?”
“I judged you. It wasn’t fair. But all my life, everyone’s told me to be a lady, and that was the most important thing. Even while I was climbing mountains. I did it with a full skirt and a broad-brimmed hat and a picnic basket. Not because I thought I needed those things. Because I’d been told that was the only way.”
Caprice chanced taking a breath of the cold air, but she wasn’t done yet, and when Virginia didn’t stop her, she rushed to continue.
“Then you showed up. Reaching for your own sandwiches and saying whatever you wanted. Handing out divided skirts and not even blinking at Ann when she showed up in Buffalo wearing breeches. I’d been told the world would end if men outside my family saw the shape of my legs. And you didn’t care about that. And the world didn’t end. I was angry because you didn’t have to act like a lady. You just lived as a woman.”
Caprice moved to the edge of the frozen water to stand next to Virginia. She smiled, though she knew Virginia couldn’t see it; she hoped the difference could be heard in her voice. “So let’s get through the winter. Together. And when we bring Franklin home, you’ll be rich then, and we can be high society rivals back in Boston. Won’t that be fun?”
“It’ll be a delight,” Virginia answered. “I’ve never had a rival.”
“Even if you had, I’d be a better one.”
Caprice reached out with her mitten as if to grab Virginia’s hand, but neither could bend their fingers inside the thickness of the material. They touched their hands and let them drop in the same instant.
“Let’s go back to the others,” said Caprice. “You won’t have to say anything.”
“You’re not going to, are you?”
“We’re going to get through this. What is there to say?” asked Caprice. She did not wait for an answer, gliding back toward the ice house and the other women.
Behind her, she heard Virginia following.
Chapter Forty-Five
Virginia
Massachusetts Superior Court, Boston
October 1854
When the day comes to testify, Virginia is surprised to find a visitor has been sent to her without being announced: Althea, bearing a new dress in her arms. Her straw-gold hair is plaited and knotted in upon itself like some exotic basket, pulled just as airtight. The look on her damaged face is inscrutable. At a signal from the guard, she stuffs the gown in between the bars, muttering to Virginia in a rush, “Put this on, put this on.”
Virginia acts first, knowing her questions can wait, and besides, she is used to not having her questions answered by now. Action first, always.
“Turn your back,” Althea barks, uncharacteristically sharp, and Virginia snaps to attention before she realizes the words aren’t meant for her. Althea’s speaking to the guard. Virginia glances up to see him obeying—with conspicuous slowness, yes, but still obeying, which is really all that matters in the end.
She shucks her worse-for-wear serge, relishing the change of sensation on her skin, even though the air is outrageously cold. She stands in her underthings for only a moment before yanking the new dress on. Althea hasn’t brought new unmentionables, and Virginia couldn’t imagine stripping down to her skin anyway. She’s not sure which idea appalls her more: the idea of seeing her own flesh bared or allowing someone else to see it. Bare flesh still feels so profane: exposed, vulnerable. She shudders even letting the image flit across her galloping mind. Though to be fair, that is not entirely the Arctic’s fault. She got a taste of all that during the Very Bad Thing, which has been very much on her mind. Last night, she even dreamed of watching Sarah Fosdick walk away from her on those snowshoes. In the dream, she’d run to catch up, run and run and run, and she almost had her hand on Sarah’s shoulder when she awoke.
Up goes the dress over her arms, her chest, her back. Wordlessly, Althea reaches through the bars to button up her fastenings. Parts of Virginia have to touch the bars in order for Althea’s fingers, not as nimble as they once were, to reach. The sound of her breath is the only thing she hears at first, and then there’s Althea’s breath, and the guard’s, all three of them tense in the silence.
Finally, the last button slides through the last buttonhole. Althea steps back, and so does Virginia.
“Thank you.”
“It’s nothing,” says Althea, though she must know that it isn’t. It’s something. Virginia just isn’t sure what.
The dress is finer than anything she’s used to, and that worries her, but she doesn’t ask questions. It is too late to do anything differently. Besides, the new fabric distracts her, which is good. She has less time to worry about what she will say and what they will all think of her when she is busy smoothing down every seam, settling every wrinkle, shaking out the folds of a new skirt to see how it falls around her. Perhaps someone very intelligent—was it Mr. Mason? Althea? Someone else?—has anticipated just how the dress will affect her. Or perhaps they just want her to look exactly the right amount of nice.
And once she’s been in the dress for a few minutes, she knows it’s exactly right. The richness of the fabric feels different against her skin, it’s true, but it does not appear so different to the outer eye. It isn’t a plush velvet or a rich sateen. It is good cotton, but only cotton, and it makes her look a little younger, with its blue and green sprigs on an ivory ground. For a moment, it makes her think of snow, but she brushes that away. It will not make anyone else think of snow. It will make them think of spring and growth and joy. She hopes she lives to see another spring. Whether she does could depend entirely on what she says in the courtroom today.
Apprehension grips her, an icy hand on her throat, as she approaches the courtroom. She loses herself in a prayer, silent and fervent, and all thoughts of fabric and expectation and the guard’s averted gaze drain away. The moment is between her and God, and He knows what she wants most. What she fears. What’s most important. Why and whether she cares. She lets herself drop into His waiting arms, and just like that, the fear falls away. Whatever is going to happen is in His grasp now. She will tell the truth she needs to tell in order to live with it, and if that means her remaining life on earth will be short, she will look forward to her eternal life with Him in heaven.
It is the only way she can take another step. Only her faith bears her up.
“Godspeed,” says Althea softly.
Virginia only nods solemnly, but as the guard opens the door and swings it shut behind Althea’s retreating back, it occurs to her she might never see this woman again.
“Althea,” she blurts.
The Englishwoman turns. “Yes?”
Unprepared, unsteady, she asks the first question that comes to mind. “Are you glad you went?”
Althea’s mouth moves as if she wants to smile, quirking up at one corner, but then it flattens out again. Her eyes flick toward the guard’s face, then back to Virginia’s, then down to the cold stone floor.
“We’ll never be the same,” says Althea.
Then Virginia can only watch as her friend—are they friends? Were they ever?—takes her leave.
Not long after, Benson comes to unlock the door, as he always does. He cuffs her hands, as he always does. She shuffles into the hall as she always has, her feet dragging slowly on the stone.
Then something happens that’s never happened before.
In the courtroom, Virginia takes the stand.
She has seen so many other figures do the same—hated ones and loved ones, people she regarded with suspicion and affection—but it is different from here. She hadn’t realized how different it would be.
From the raised witness box next to the judge’s bench, the courtroom is a sea of faces, and the most important faces are looking right at her. She went over them so many times, reading those faces, loving them. Doro, Althea, Irene, Ebba, Margaret. She realizes now, when she counted those survivors, sh
e should also have counted the others who still lived. Dove, for example, who had been dragged in to testify and disappeared again as quickly as she’d come, off to go where she’s needed. Siobhan, for whom the risk was too great to sit in that row but who now lives her chosen life. And herself, too, thinks Virginia. She should count herself as a survivor.
She survived the Arctic. She survived the bitter cold and the crushing ice and the lack of food. She would, God willing, survive this.
“Please swear,” says the bailiff, and Virginia swears, and two curious forces hit her chest at once: a draining wave of relief and a heavy thud of fear. She has gotten what she wanted. She gets to speak for herself at last.
So why does she feel so conflicted? Probably because she cannot be sure that what she says will change anything. Which makes her doubt whether she should bother saying anything at all.
She is in control of her answers. That much is hers. She has no power over the results. She can’t control the judge, the jury, the questions her counsel will ask her, whatever questions the prosecutor will ask.
Control what she can. Let go of the rest.
She was never good at this, not on the trail or even before. Her life has hung in the balance before but never quite in this way. She has been in danger from the hazards of the trail, jagged mountains and ravines of ice, the open waters of a fierce bay. She almost laughs at the inadequacy of that list, a mere sampling of dangers. So many things have come within a hairsbreadth of killing her. Hunger. Anger. Fear. The sky. The snow. The sea. Men. Women. Mistakes. Regret.
Right now, it feels like she’s most in danger from herself.
Virginia smooths down the sprigged skirt of her new gown and looks out over the assembled audience. She sees so much naked antagonism there it takes her breath away.
She looks down at her clasped hands so she can regain control of herself, and then, she lets herself look at the five survivors she can see.
Irene. Althea. Doro. Ebba. Margaret.
Ten flinty eyes watching her, not without kindness, not without hope. If they had no hope for her, they would not be sitting there. She meets their gazes, each in turn, feeling her entire fate hovering in a pocket limbo as she waits for the questioning to begin.
She looks out to see if Captain Malcolm is here. A foolish hope, she decides. Or is that him in the back? No, but then she lets herself imagine that the stranger is Ames, though that is a ridiculous feat of imagination. She knows Ames is dead; she saw him die. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here today. The man in the back is not Ames. But if he is the ghost of Ames, so be it. He will keep her honest, as he did in life.
Finally, Mason approaches. She is relieved to see her counsel looking grim and intelligent. She can tell he knows what’s at stake here. That was one of the many failings of her previous counsel, one of the things that gave him away: he never seemed daunted by his burden. Mason does. That may not mean he can lift the burden, but at least it means he’s aware of it resting on his shoulders.
“Miss Reeve. I understand this is all very challenging for you, and you’ve been held over in jail without real evidence of wrongdoing for several months already. I’ll endeavor to keep my questions as brief as I can.”
“Thank you.”
“So let’s begin at the beginning, for the sake of these good people’s understanding. Why did you go north?”
“I was hired to do so,” says Virginia, because it’s the truth.
“By whom?”
“By Lady Jane Franklin.” Whispers circulate around the court. The claim’s been made before from the witness box, but she supposes hearing it from her lips is somehow different.
“And what did Lady Jane Franklin set as your goal?”
“To find her husband and his lost ships.”
“Did you succeed?”
She still regrets having to admit it. “We did not, sadly.”
“I’m certain your adventures on the ice were both inspiring and daunting, and though I’m sure the good people here would love to listen to them, unfortunately, in a trial like this, we must stay focused on our capital business.”
This doesn’t seem to call for a verbal answer, so she simply nods to show her agreement.
“So I will ask you the question at the core of this trial. Virginia Reeve, did you kill Caprice Collins?”
“No, sir,” she answers and is proud of herself for the conviction in her voice. She is glad he used the pointed word kill and not the more elegant construction feel responsible for the death of. She would have had to answer that one in the affirmative.
“In your own words,” he says soberly, “please describe to us the last time you saw Caprice Collins alive.”
This will be the hardest part, she thinks. More than the prosecutor’s pointed questions and accusations. More than the dark corners of the past she’s been dragged into thus far. There is no more delaying it, putting it off, sweeping it under. It’s time to look this demon square in the eye.
She tells them about the day Caprice fell into a gap in the ice and never came out.
What she tells them, her eyes held level over the heads of the assembled, breathless crowd, is both the truth and not the truth.
It is the story they all agreed on, up north. The fact that there is so much truth in it makes it remarkably easy to tell.
Virginia’s voice is steady. Her hands do not tremble. Perhaps her calm will be used against her, evidence she has no real emotions, but she can only tell it the one way. All her regret and pain, she will keep on the inside.
Tonight in her cell, alone, she will cry over the truth. For now, she feeds an eager courtroom the lie.
Chapter Forty-Six
Virginia
On the Expedition
January to April 1854
In the long, dark months of winter, the women went days without leaving the ice house. Some days, it was too cold to risk exposure, even for moments; some days, they simply could not stir themselves from their huddle. On the first day of January—Virginia counted on Irene to keep track—they went down to one ration a day instead of two, and as a result, their energy flagged even more, leaving little to go on.
There was a particular horror to the relentlessness of the Arctic, thought Virginia. Everything seemed to be without end. In the winter, it was the dark that persisted; in the summer, the same was true of the light. One never knew how long anything would last: a snowstorm, a bout of good hunting, a high ridge of ice. The uncertainty was probably exciting to true explorers. If she had discovered nothing else on this journey, Virginia had discovered she was not a true explorer. Her personality, her skills, were far better suited for the work she’d been doing in her precious few years of partnership with Ames: guiding people over territory that was strange to them but familiar to her, ensuring their every footfall landed as safely as her own.
She missed that certainty almost as much as she missed Ames, which was still a lack so intense it sometimes took her breath away.
For months, the only events memorable enough to distinguish the days were bad ones. Early on in March, they sent out a small group—just Elizabeth, Doro, and Irene—in search of food, hoping that the char might return to the lake or the hares to the woods. They suspected it was too soon but they tried anyway, thinking it was better than just waiting inside the ice house to die. The three women were tied together at the waist with a rope so they could not be separated, and the remaining women lost a night of sleep when the three who’d gone out did not return until the morning.
Elizabeth and Irene were only chilled to the bone and quickly recovered, but Doro had lost her goggles on the failed hunt. She’d been so snow-blind and disoriented that she didn’t realize her Welsh cap had gotten soaking wet on one side, then frozen. By the time she returned, the ear underneath was so badly frostbitten Siobhan had to cut away what was left, using precious morphine fro
m her kit to blunt the pain. She did not have enough to take the pain away entirely, but she did her best, as did Doro.
After that, they didn’t venture more than fifty steps from the ice house for the rest of the month, and that only with ropes to lead them back in case they lost their sense of direction. Had there been more rope, they would have gone farther; fifty steps did not even get them to the shore of the frozen lake. Sometimes, they continued to tell stories, but most often, they lay in silence, conserving their energy, lost in their own dizzied thoughts.
On the sixteenth of April, an anniversary none suggested celebrating, they heard the first falcon wheeling overhead. They had not heard or seen a single bird since November. The rapture of it sent them all scrambling out into the snow, whooping with laughter. The sun had not yet risen, but they searched the sky for more birds, a promising omen. Immediately, someone suggested a hunt—Virginia would never remember who—and they tied themselves together on two long ropes in case they stumbled. Virginia approved consuming the day’s ration early to give them the energy to trek, and they moved out together into what looked like a perfectly typical, clouded-over day. The terrain was high and uneven, their feet slipping on snow and ice, but half-grim, half-giddy, they charged on.
Two hours later, hints of a warm, soft breeze tickling their cheeks, they had bagged a dozen lemmings, small and wriggling. It was all they could do not to eat the furry creatures raw. Irene dispatched each with forceful, spare motions and packed them to cook later over the fire. They went on with their search.
Using the compass, Doro kept them on a straight heading, making sure they would not be dependent on unfamiliar landmarks. The lemmings would not feed them for long, so they continued. Every rise and fall of the land meant they could be greeted with disappointment or thrill at any time, and driven by tension, they peered out through their snow goggles and hoped. Then, they were rewarded. When a stream came into view, to a woman, they shouted with unfettered joy.
The stream lay under a cap of ice, but in the rushing water underneath, they found a feast. The fish lay sluggish near the bottom of the stream. If the water had been warmer, they could have simply thrust their hands in and yanked dozens of fish right out. As it was, it took a while to find the net, affix it to its frame, and then begin scooping fish slowly and carefully, hoping not to frighten off the ones destined for the next sweep of the scoop.
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