The Arctic Fury

by Greer Macallister

  The courtroom goes mad with panic, their shouts wilder this time, their sounds meshing into a rippling, cascading roar.

  Judge Miller bangs his gavel with the fast, hard cadence of a woodpecker, rat-tat-a-tat, and shouts, “This is your final warning! Anyone else interfering with these proceedings will be held in contempt! Bailiff, clean up this mess!”

  “Do not compromise the evidence,” shouts Mason, leaping to his feet. “Enter it into the record. Every coin speaks to the truth of the witness’s story.”

  The judge should probably shout him down, thinks Virginia, but even he is overwhelmed, watching the scene unfold with undisguised awe.

  The bailiff’s eyes are round with wonder—no doubt this is more wealth than he’s even seen in one place, let alone touched with his own hands—as he scrambles to pick up the coins from where they’ve bounced, rolled, settled.

  But even as this outrageous thing is happening, something even more outrageous is underway.

  In the witness box, standing tall, Doro is unbuttoning her dress.

  The judge’s gavel bangs. Althea is clutching Ebba’s shoulder, and their mouths both open in mad, shared laughter. Irene’s hands fly to her own mouth, cover it. Only Margaret watches calmly, her face merely open, curious, ready. The prosecutor’s face is slack-jawed and, for once, completely silent.

  When the fifth button of her collar is undone, Doro slips her fingers between the parted tartan and draws out a strikingly gorgeous necklace, three ropes of perfectly matched pearls with an occasional gleam of jet beads emphasizing their beauty. An enormously expensive necklace. A unique one.

  One that Virginia distinctly remembers seeing on the neck of Mrs. Collins, and she knows she’s far from the only one.

  “Further evidence!” Doro calls. “Now you are all witnesses. Perhaps you think the gold proves nothing; it could have come from anywhere. But this,” she says, holding it up for the whole courtroom to see, high above her head and theirs. “Only Lydia Collins could have given me this necklace. And she did so to make sure the defendant would hang for a crime she didn’t commit.”

  The simmering shock of the courtroom boils over. Whispers become shouts, laughter, even hoots and shrieks.

  The judge says, almost howling now, “If you cannot control yourselves, we will adjourn until you can!”

  They cannot. No one can. Even the survivors in the front row, as still as they’ve been this whole time, are allowing themselves to show their shock, fury, wonder. Still holding the necklace aloft, Doro sends a triumphant smile their way. It is a question, and with smiles of their own, they answer.

  “I call for a mistrial, Your Honor!” shouts Mason, but no one appears to hear him in the din, the judge least of all.

  On the inside, even while she laughs, Virginia weeps to wonder what might happen next. The newspapers, she thinks, will have a field day with this one. She sends up a silent prayer that Caprice, in the afterlife, can somehow feel the ruckus her death has stirred up. She would have loved it.

  Because Caprice was never appreciated enough in life. Who knows what she could have done, who she could have been? Instead, she was a bright spark that burned out early. Like so many other sparks Virginia knew. Like Tamsen Donner. Like Christabel Jones. Like Emmanuel Ames.

  Virginia can only hope that when the dust settles, she herself will be allowed the chance to live on without burning out.

  As wild as the scene is, as much as a disaster as it appears, all this is temporary. The wheels of justice, such as they are, are still turning. Doro has broken the trial wide open, but who’s to say it won’t close back up again? That the rich family that hates her won’t find a way to right the ship?

  But the blossom of hope is bursting in Virginia’s chest again, that green shoot, those unfurling petals. When she looks at the faces of the women who have turned their hands up in motions she taught them, advocating for her even without words, she is powerless against it.

  For a moment, she allows herself that hope. Perhaps, as the end of this trial unfolds, God will grant her a second—or would it be third?—chance.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Virginia

  Superior Court Judge’s Chambers, Boston

  October 1854

  The guard who fetches her from the courtroom is a stranger, and he steers Virginia down an unfamiliar corridor of the courthouse. The last time this happened, the stranger—a different one—had taken her to Brooks. She hopes that will not be the case again. Even though she still has her hands in cuffs and won’t be able to strike him, she knows she won’t be able to resist trying. She is done keeping herself in check. She has nothing left to lose.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asks the guard.

  He ignores her as if she hasn’t even spoken, which is what she thought he’d do. Still, there is something satisfying about having asked.

  She is not out of the woods yet. A funny expression, that, she thinks. In the times of greatest danger of her life, when there were woods, they helped extend her life, not do her in.

  The walk seems even longer than last time, and she has plenty of time to reflect on everything that has brought her to this moment.

  Of the thirteen women of the expedition, not all of them made it back, but some stayed away by choice. Their failure to return was not a failure. Virginia, too, could have stayed away. She could have stayed in the North with Stella and Elizabeth. She could have melted back into the world anonymously like Siobhan. She could have fled the country entirely like Dove.

  If Virginia had known what would happen when she returned to Boston, would she have come back? If she’d known that when she went to Caprice’s house to give condolences to her parents, they would seize her and demand her immediate arrest? That she would spend months in jail, alone and defeated, waiting for her trial?

  She still would have come.

  Because just as surely as Stella and Elizabeth could never go back to civilization, she could never stay in the Arctic. To her, it would always be the place where she’d failed to save Caprice, the way she’d failed to save Ames on that trail just to the west of Fort Bridger.

  She would save the women she could and regret the loss of the ones she could not. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to save herself.

  Just like she’d never seriously entertained taking Lady Franklin’s final offer to lie on the stand. Reputations were just words and thoughts. Society cared about them, but Virginia could not. They didn’t matter the way people mattered, the way lives mattered. She would not compromise her principles for Sir John Franklin’s reputation or her own.

  “Here,” says the guard and shoves her unceremoniously through a doorway, then closes a heavy oaken door behind her.

  She is in a dark chamber, more luxurious than any room she’s seen since her first stay in Boston, when she flitted from fancy parlors to luxurious hotel suites without knowing how small her world would someday become. Rich, burled wood makes up bookshelves, a desk, the backs and legs of several chairs. The color of the wood reminds her of the deck on the Doris, of how she once thought that Captain Malcolm and his ship seemed to be crafted of the same material. She wonders if the captain has been observing her trial. She wonders if he cares what happens to her.

  Another door opens on the opposite side of the wall from where she herself came in. The sight of the figure coming through it comes as a complete shock.

  It’s the judge, fresh from the courtroom, alone.

  “Please.” He gestures to the nearest chair, a comfortable-looking leather affair, square-backed and elegant. “Sit.”

  Virginia is too stunned to do anything but obey. He himself takes a seat behind the desk, sweeping his dark robes out of the way with both hands before he sits, reminding her of how women in broad skirts do the same. She’s never seen a man do it. But of course, she’s never been in a room with a judge.


  Alone, she thinks.

  He slides a folded newspaper across the desk to her, letting go of it so she can pick it up with her own hands, and waits for her to do so.

  She looks up at him before she reaches for it, eager as she is; she wants to see his expression. She might as well not have wasted her time looking. He has none.

  Virginia picks up the newspaper. She feels her own face trembling, shifting, changing shape against her will as she reads.

  What he has handed her is neither the Clarion nor the Beacon but another newspaper, one Virginia has never seen before. Something called the Bugle. Seeing the unfamiliar pattern of the slightly smeared print shakes something loose in her head, and she’s not sure why it’s taken her so long to think of it: if the Collins family had influence at the Clarion, pressuring the editors to write negatively about her case, might someone also have their thumb on the scales at the Beacon, using their influence for a positive angle? She only knows one journalist. But that journalist, Margaret, has been sitting in the front row of her trial ever since the day it began. If she ever gets free of here—and today she has reason to hope she might—she’ll find a way to express her gratitude.

  But this newspaper, the Bugle, is not even from Boston. It appears to be Canadian. And the Bugle has a great deal to say about the shocking news that a party led by John Rae, the latest of so many parties sent to search out John Franklin, has returned with news of the party’s fate. The snippet Virginia had spotted in the Boston paper was just the beginning; this article takes up most of the front page, with the shocking headline GRIM REPORT REVEALS FATE OF FRANKLIN PARTY: MEN RESORTED TO LAST RECOURSE.

  “It is a newspaper from Montreal,” says the judge, his voice steady, giving nothing away. “It quotes a report from the London newspaper, the Times, that not only has John Rae found evidence of the deaths of the Franklin expedition but evidence among their remains of cannibalism as well. The world is shocked.”

  She can think of no reaction appropriate to the news. It is sad, of course, but what else is there to say? They are all dead now, the eaters and the eaten. No one lives forever but Jesus, and even he had been put to death once, by those who hoped his death would serve their own ends.

  All she says to the judge is, “Oh.”

  “I thought you would want to know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Before you go.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “I thought you would want to know that before you leave. Since you are so interested in the Arctic. Whether you went there or not at Lady Franklin’s behest.”

  “I did,” she says, but softly, mildly, almost as if she doesn’t quite believe it herself. It doesn’t matter anyway. The flower of hope is blooming in her again. He has not brought her here to punish or castigate her. She knows it for sure now. She lets herself believe.

  “With the revelations of wrongdoing brought forward by Miss Roset,” he says, “this trial is no longer a fit exemplar of justice. The proceedings will be stopped immediately. And without pressure from the Collins family to try the case again, I sincerely doubt the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has any interest in spending more funds and time on a trial with no physical evidence whatsoever. Without pressure from them, I doubt it ever would have been pursued in the first place.”

  Stunningly, he produces a small key. She knows from the shape and size of it exactly what it’s for. It’s the key to the handcuffs she wears around her wrists.

  “Godspeed, Miss Reed,” he says. “You may go. You may not have heard it in the din, but your counsel requested I declare a mistrial. I’ll be granting that request.”

  She stammers, “Shouldn’t I be present for that?”

  “Do you want to be present?”

  She considers this. It has been a long time since someone has asked her where she wants to be and even longer since she had the sense that her answer actually matters.

  “No,” she replies.

  “It’s my courtroom,” he says. “I make the rules. And this time, I say the defendant can go.”

  “Where should I go?”

  “How in the name of Hades should I know?” the judge says. He seems on the verge of laughter until he sees her stricken face. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might actually want an answer to that question.

  He unlocks her cuffs himself, managing to hold the cuff gingerly and turn the key in the lock without ever touching her flesh. His hands are steady. When the metal falls away, she finds herself already standing a little straighter.

  “Congratulations on surviving, Miss Reed,” says the judge, not unkindly. “Now go find a way to live.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Virginia

  Boston

  October 1854

  Where will she go?

  She still does not know the answer when she steps into the bracing Boston air, the new dress she wore to testify now covered by an old coat the warden had given her, apologizing that the coat she’d come in with could not be located. It seems fitting, she decides. Even though Elizabeth had worn the crimson coat in those last weeks north, then given it to Virginia to wear back to Boston, it never really belonged to either of them. It always belonged to Caprice.

  The question again, thinks Virginia. It cannot be answered. It must be answered. Where will she go from here?

  When Ames died, she could not, did not, accept the loss. Running to the ends of the earth was a foolish way to try to escape a loss that could not be escaped, but what other ways had been open to her? How was a woman supposed to grieve catastrophe?

  She is about to turn around and step back through the door of the jail, hiding for a few more moments in safety while she plans her next action, when she spots a familiar figure only steps away. Tall and broad, his dark hair topped by a woolen cap, he turns his warm brown eyes in her direction.

  Captain Malcolm.

  In five steps, he is at her side but stops short of touching her.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  She tilts her head back to squint up at him in the winter light. “For what,” she asks, “in particular?”

  “This time? That I’m the one who’s here to greet you and not your friends. Everything happened so fast—I don’t think they know yet.”

  “So why do you?”

  “Mason,” he says.

  “Oh.” It makes sense, but still, with her head reeling from her sudden release, she is struggling to make sense of how she feels about him here, so unexpected.

  “But don’t worry. I sent a message. So they don’t leave.”

  “Leave where?”

  “A friend of mine owns a tearoom near here, and he’s been hospitable. They gather there every day after the trial adjourns. Sometimes I join them. They’re extraordinary women, Virginia.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” she says. “I know.”

  “I understand,” he says, his voice gentle. “Last time, I failed to deliver you where I promised to. I want to follow through this time. May I, please?”

  Instead of answering, she walks, because she can. The air is cool but not cold. He falls into step beside her.

  She closes her eyes and opens them again. The streets bustle with bodies, walking fools, people who’ve never been the places Virginia has been and would never understand what she did there. It all seems impossibly loud and frenetic. All these people are probably thinking of what they think matters, but so many of those things, Virginia could tell them, don’t matter at all.

  They walk three blocks without speaking until he says, “Turn right here, and then in two blocks, left.” But even before they get to the next turn, he blurts out, “I’m sorry. None of this was fair. What happened on my ship wasn’t, I know that. I can’t apologize enough.”

  “Don’t.”

  “And not just that. You’ve been through so much. W
hat happened on the ice. What happened to the Don—what happened before that, when you were younger. You didn’t deserve any of it.”

  “Deserve has nothing to do with it. Do you want to know what I learned?”

  He squirms a little under her bright gaze, but then he says, “Tell me.”

  Virginia says, in her quietest voice, “Experiences like that teach you the harshest truth there is.”

  “What truth is that?”

  “If you believe that no one deserves to die,” she says, “you have to acknowledge that no one deserves to live.”

  His eyes open a little wider as he considers this. Then he nods.

  He does not move to console her, and that is what makes up her mind. He understands there is no consolation. If he understands that, she thinks, he might understand her. That might be the beginning of something.

  He had reminded her of Ames once, dear, much-missed Ames. If there is anything she has learned from this experience, it is that respect and friendship go further than anything else in the world. Even to the ends of the earth. Even into what feels very much like hell. She has been there and back, but returning by herself would not have been a return at all. The company on the journey was the only thing that truly mattered.

  A few blocks later, she spots the sign for the tearoom, and when she raises her eyebrows at him, he nods. She isn’t used to speaking much. She wonders if she will ever be as talkative again as she was before she went north. So many words during the trial, so many voices. She is tired of them now. But mere feet away, there are voices she wants very much to hear.

  Captain Malcolm gestures to the short set of stairs leading down to the tearoom door.

  “They’re waiting for you,” he says, and as plain as the words are, she’s not sure she’s ever heard a more beautiful sentence.

  As Virginia steps down toward the entrance, she calls behind her to Captain Malcolm, “If you’d like, come in.” She does not wait to see whether he follows her. She’s too eager for even the shortest delay.