Voyage of the Narwhal

by Andrea Barrett

  “What is it?” Erasmus said. “Is she—unwell, again?”

  “Zeke is back,” Linnaeus said. “He walked in right after I got there.” Then he drew a long breath.

  “Annie is dead,” he said. He rested his hand on Erasmus’s arm; Alexandra had never seen them touch before. “She died two days after you left.”

  “She’s dead?” Erasmus said. “How can she be dead?”

  Linnaeus closed his eyes and then took the glass Humboldt offered again. “I know,” he said. “It’s horrible. He brought Tom with him; he’s recovering but still very frail.”

  Alexandra thought of Annie and Tom as she’d last seen them in the Repository. Shouldn’t she have known—shouldn’t they all have known—where this was heading? “But Lavinia and Zeke will take care of him,” she said. “Won’t they? They’ll find a home for him, at least until he’s better and can be returned to his family.”

  “Lavinia’s very upset,” Linnaeus said. “She asked Zeke who was more important to him, her or those Esquimaux. If you’d heard her voice—it was terrible. And then, and then . . .”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Erasmus burst out. “He’s just a little boy, and now he’s lost his mother. You’d think she’d remember what that was like.”

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Linnaeus said. “She had one of the maids settle Tom in the Repository; he’s to sleep there with only those two dogs for company. Zeke didn’t even try to stop her, he said he’d do whatever she wanted.”

  “Zeke can’t,” Erasmus said. “Can he?”

  Linnaeus curled his lip. “I suppose he can do anything he wants. He claims he was nursing Tom in Washington; I’d like to see him nurse anyone but himself. Then he admitted he’d stayed a few extra days, to take care of Annie’s remains.”

  “He had her buried down there?” Erasmus asked.

  Linnaeus gulped at his drink. “There was no burial,” he said. “No body, even. There are men at the Smithsonian who—who do this sort of thing. I don’t know how, I don’t want to know how. I think the man Zeke was staying with had the idea, he knows about bones and skulls. Zeke gave him his permission and he, they, someone prepared and mounted her skeleton for the museum. Zeke stayed to oversee it.”

  Erasmus groaned, and Alexandra thought about Toodlamik’s bones and skin. Then about Annie as she’d first seen her, leaning against the windowpane until the sash was raised and she reached, so gratefully, for the air.

  “He did it for Lavinia,” Linnaeus continued. “Or so he claims. The skeleton’s to go in a glass case in the hall across from Dr. Kane’s exhibit, with a plaque about Zeke’s expedition. You know how he is, he thinks this will make him famous. Everyone will want to buy his book and then he and Lavinia won’t have to depend on his father’s generosity, they won’t have to worry about anything again.”

  “Is that what he’s thinking?” Humboldt asked.

  “I don’t know. But Lavinia said she didn’t care what happened to Annie’s remains, she knew all about Zeke and Annie and she’d never been fooled, she wasn’t stupid.”

  Humboldt raised an eyebrow and Copernicus said, “Surely we’re not surprised by that? He spent six months in her company, after better than a year without any female companionship. Didn’t we assume . . . ?”

  “I don’t know what you assumed,” Linnaeus said. Alexandra could not help glancing at Erasmus; what had she assumed about him? “I assumed that he’d honored his commitment to Lavinia, and that Annie was just what he said. A member of the tribe that saved his life. If she was ever more than that, why would he be so unfeeling as to exhibit her bones?”

  “Nothing,” Erasmus said, “has ever gotten in the way of Zeke’s ambitions.”

  She was gone, he thought. They’d hardly had the chance to know each other. For a minute Linnaeus’s words drifted past him. When he could bear to listen again, Linnaeus was still discussing Zeke’s plans: returning Tom to Washington, arranging to have him cared for by someone associated with the Smithsonian. Someone who might be willing to take Tom in and educate him.

  Copernicus turned to Erasmus. “You have to do something.”

  “I know,” Erasmus said. He reached for Linnaeus’s hand. “It’s not your fault.”

  “We’re all at fault,” Copernicus said. “You should have fought back when Zeke returned, and not let him persuade everyone that you acted wrongly on the voyage. We shouldn’t have doubted you. And you and I should have refused to leave our home.”

  “I know,” Erasmus repeated. They’d doubted him? “I know.” He stared out the window, toward the river and his lost home on the opposite bank.

  FROM THAT HOUSE, in the gathering twilight, Lavinia was gazing back. Somewhere, perhaps along the creek, Zeke was pacing through the haze that had carried the fever to Annie. And somewhere else, she imagined, her brothers were together. When had they ever put her first? Copernicus had traveled across the continent and Erasmus had sailed to both ends of the earth; neither had ever asked if she minded being left behind, alone and waiting for them. What had Erasmus given her? Her mother’s walking shoe; a few odd books and lessons; a promise, which he’d broken. Erasmus let me down, Zeke had told her. When I most needed him. Because of Erasmus, he’d had to go north alone; because of Erasmus he’d ended up staying with Annie’s family, bringing Annie home.

  Outside the window the shadow of Annie rose before her, as it did every night at this time: piercing dark eyes, the smooth skin of her arms and throat, the quiet voice Zeke seemed to have found so alluring. Annie had been helpless here, completely dependent on Zeke—and what man could resist that? Her very existence had set Lavinia in the wrong. But she’d been patient, so patient, willing Zeke to turn away from Annie by the sheer force of her own desire. She had won him back, only to see the hurt and disappointment in his eyes as she turned away from the dead woman’s son. Was it so awful, after their long separation, to want a scrap of normal life?

  She’d stopped praying when Erasmus first returned without Zeke, started again with the help of Browning, stopped again when Zeke came home and her pleas were answered. Now she folded her hands across her waist and prayed she might be carrying a son.

  11

  THE NIGHTMARE SKELETON

  (OCTOBER 1857–AUGUST 1858)

  These are the qualities which are required to make a first-class collector: He must have a fair general knowledge of zoology, especially the vertebrates. He must be a good shot, a successful hunter, and capable of great physical endurance. Then he must be a neat and skillful operator with the knife, and conscientious in the details of his work, down to the smallest particulars, for without this quality his specimens will always be faulty and disappointing. In addition to all these requirements he must be a man of tireless energy, incapable of going to bed so long as there are birds to be skinned, and who, whenever a doubt arises in his mind in regard to the necessity of more work on a specimen, will always give the specimen the benefit of the doubt.

  —W. J. HOLLAND, Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting (1892)

  He woke to their sounds in the dark: whispers, rustlings, something dropped. In the moonlight the portraits above him shimmered, faces caught behind panes of glass like dead men peering through the ice, and at first he thought the sounds came from them. But there were footsteps moving his way. The two black dogs beside him rose and bristled; he sat upright on the mattress of caribou skins, terrified but determined to be brave. They had come to kill him, he thought. Zeke and his wife, who talked about him as if he weren’t present or couldn’t understand them. They wished him dead, as his mother was dead, and had chosen this night. They were leaning over him, while the traitorous dogs said nothing.

  “It’s all right,” the woman said. “Can you be very quiet?” He could hear the dogs snuffling at her hands.

  The man said, “We need to take you from here, so you won’t be hurt. Will you come with us?”

  Tom said nothing. He recognized the woman as the one who wasn’t Lavinia; th
e one whose garment his mother had worn the first day here. The man was one of the brothers but he could never tell them apart. Then the man reached out and Tom knew him as Copernicus, from the bright painty tang of his hand.

  “Tom?” Copernicus said.

  He wasn’t Tom; his real name was his secret and he’d never speak it among these people. Two days ago he’d decided to stop speaking altogether. But he rose to his feet when Copernicus asked; he walked from this building so full of death; he sat where they placed him and felt the ground slip as if he were on a sledge. Two other brothers appeared, but one stayed only briefly. In and out of other doors, other rooms, some still and others moving; he slept when he could, ate now and then, said nothing. The walls rattled, the floors shook, trees moved past him and then more buildings. His clothes were taken and other clothes put on him. Erasmus was here, he knew Erasmus. Sometimes he dozed against his shoulder.

  The landscape changed and changed again, but it was never the one he wanted. The people so close to him talked in low worried voices, but also sat still for long stretches. Where was Zeke? Somewhere else: farther and farther away, he hoped. His people had a name for Zeke, a chain of soft syllables that meant The One Who Is Trouble. To his face, they’d said the syllables meant The Great Explorer, and Zeke had smiled and nodded his head and done his best to repeat them.

  He had plans for Zeke. Tucked into his jacket were bones he’d stolen from the place where Zeke had caged him: a bird’s curved ribs, a serpent’s spine, a mouse’s foot. He needed more. When he had enough he would make a tupilaq, a nightmare skeleton built from bones of all kinds of creatures, wrapped in a skin. By the edge of some water he would set it down and say the secret words; then the tupilaq would come alive and swim across any form of water, no matter how far. Blank-eyed it would swim up to Zeke, disguised as a familiar animal; sleek fur, smooth ears. Perhaps it would travel as a deer before allowing itself to be killed. After Zeke slit down the belly and parted the flesh he’d find all the wrong bones, connected in all the wrong ways. Then he’d die.

  That vision kept Tom quiet as he traveled. This wasn’t like the journeys he’d taken with his people, moving happily behind the dogs to another hunting ground. This was like the later journey, the days in the box moving over the water. They moved over land now, but he was still confined. When he could, when Erasmus would let him, he hung out the windows and filled his lungs. There were trees, and then mountains. Then very large mountains and air so cool and fresh it almost made him think of home.

  When it rained he held his hands out to catch the water. Resting on the top of the sky, he believed, was the land where the dead lived—a place of light and warmth and abundant game, feasting and song and dance. His mother was there. She’d abandoned her body so that she might watch over him; those men who came later, to take what was left, had only made visible the process she’d begun. Light from the land where she’d gone shone through holes in the sky, appearing as stars. Water fell through those holes from the rivers; that water was rain. Each drop that touched his skin was a message from his mother.

  The movement stopped. The door was opened from the outside. When he stepped down and saw a man missing part of his nose, his scream was the first sound he’d made in days and it rang in his own ears. He pitched forward and crouched on the ground with his arms over his head, and would not be moved.

  EVEN WHEN THEY reached the cabin on the Ausable River, no one could convince Tom to open his eyes. His arms wound tightly around his knees, his eyes screwed shut, his mouth sealed, he sat without moving where Copernicus placed him, on the small, red-blanketed bed.

  “Has he been like this the whole trip?” Ned asked.

  “Not quite this bad,” Erasmus said. He touched Ned’s shoulder. “I’m so glad to see you.” Then he turned to Tom again. “He hasn’t said a word since he was taken from the Repository.”

  Ned made coffee for the tired travelers and quietly, with the boy in the background radiating a distress that no one could soothe, they caught each other up on the events of the past few weeks. Erasmus told Ned how Linnaeus had driven the carriage to their old home, although he’d do no more than that; how Copernicus and Alexandra had tiptoed into the Repository and swept the boy away. Each of them had told a separate lie, he said. Copernicus had told his companions he was heading west. Alexandra, during a terrible quarrel with her siblings, had said she was taking a position teaching drawing at a female academy in Cincinnati. Erasmus, knowing the way Zeke thought and imagining how he’d set about searching for them, had purchased passage for two on a ship bound for Liverpool; it would take some time before anyone discovered that they hadn’t arrived.

  “I think we’ve covered our tracks,” he told Ned. Although his feet had prevented him from taking an active role, the plans had worked smoothly so far, and they were his. “But none of this could have happened without you—how can I thank you for all your help?”

  “It’s not a problem,” Ned replied. “I told you I’d help any way I could, and I meant it.”

  He bustled around the small kitchen, avoiding the knees of his guests. “I’ve found a house for you, about a mile from here,” he said. “It’s pleasant, and quite isolated, but it won’t be ready until tomorrow. We’ll have to stay here tonight.” He watched his guests look around his tiny home. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But it’ll be all right. I’ve borrowed some extra bedding from the hotel.”

  “Of course it will be fine,” Alexandra said. Her dark hair and strong features reminded him of his sister, Nora, as did the way she leaned toward the boy every few minutes and stroked his back. “You were good to take us in like this. And it’s wonderful to see you well, after you were so sick in Philadelphia. I understand you have a fine job now?”

  “It’s good enough,” Ned said. How could he tell her that he was in danger of losing it? The time he’d had to take off, while he searched for a house to lodge his guests; the flurry of letters arriving at the hotel, which had made the owner suspicious; the letters he’d had to write back and the supplies he’d had to purchase: all this to help a boy he’d never met. The tone of Erasmus’s letters had been so distressed, though, and the tale he’d told so upsetting, that Ned could not deny him anything. I failed his mother, Erasmus had written. I can’t fail Tom.

  Ned walked toward the grubby, silent boy, the source of all this trouble. Searching for some words Joe had taught him before their trip to Anoatok, he introduced himself haltingly in the boy’s language. To his surprise, Tom opened his eyes—and then his mouth, as if he might scream again at the sight of Ned’s nose.

  Ned had no more Esquimaux phrases, but Erasmus had written that Tom could speak and understand English. He thought about his own arrival at Grosse Isle, when he was just a boy himself: when he and his brother had been torn from their fevered sister and packed like cattle on a crowded barge, then shipped upriver and cast on the kindness of strangers. Who hadn’t been kind, and hadn’t spoken any language he could understand. The rippling, incomprehensible flow of French, which he’d never heard before; the English so different from the English he knew; and never a word of Gaelic, never a taste of home. Never a story he could recognize, nor a person willing to take responsibility for him. He looked into Tom’s dark eyes, reading there help. Can you help me?

  “We were on the ice, in a great storm, in terrible weather,” Ned said. He tapped his eroded nostril. “In the darkness the innersuit appeared from behind the rocks and swept me away to their hiding place. They took my nose and forced me to stay with them, but I prayed for strength and at last was able to escape them. When I was returned to my people, this man”—here he pointed to Erasmus—“this man, who was our angekok, did magic and my nose was returned to me. But a piece was missing, a scar by which the innersuit let it be known that I was once captured by them.”

  Tom unwrapped his arms, straightened his legs, and reached forward to touch Ned’s nose. “It is painful?” he asked; the first words he’d spoken since leaving Philadel
phia.

  “Not anymore,” Ned said. “Will you eat something?” From the cupboard he pulled a tray of roasted ducks he’d prepared at the hotel.

  “The innersuit tried to take my mother,” Tom said. “But she conquered them.” He bent over the tray.

  “What now?” Ned asked Erasmus.

  Erasmus lowered himself onto a chair. “I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve gotten this far, and that’s something. Thanks to you we have a place to stay. The rest—I don’t know yet.”

  While they talked Tom finished the first duck and started on a second, pushing aside the baked bones; the heat made them brittle and ugly, useless to him. But around the walls, just as in the place from which he’d come, there were also skeletons: bat, fox, serpent. Later, after everyone had gone to sleep, he would steal a bone from one of the bat’s wings.

  THE HOUSE NED had found for them was drafty but large, set amid a stand of hemlocks at the base of a mountain, not far from the trail that led to North Elba through the meadows. Six days a week, drawn by Tom’s lonely eyes, Ned took a long detour on the way to the hotel and breakfasted with the little band of runaways. As he got to know Tom better, he brought a clasp knife, a hatchet, rabbits’ feet. On his days off, he took Tom for rambles in the forest. Erasmus asked several times if he’d like to join their household, but he preferred to keep his own place. After his time on the Narwhal he’d sworn he would never again share living quarters with people not his family.

  “Would you think about it?” Erasmus said. “Anytime you wanted, we’d make room for you.” Ned brought strings of fish for breakfast, but continued to say no.

  While the weeks slipped by, Erasmus tried to understand what he should do next. He walked and thought, thought and walked—a pleasure that had grown unfamiliar. At least they were safe here. With the snowshoes Ned had made for him he could cast his sticks aside; the broad netted platforms restored his lost toes and as long as it snowed he was free. A few miles from the house, he might have been in another country. The forest was dark and unbroken; he saw wolves, deer, panthers, loons: okipok, fast ice. Snow glazed the fields and sealed off the mountain peaks. All around him, in every tree and stone, he felt Annie and Dr. Boerhaave. Once he stood in the meadows, after a snowfall, and in the moonlight saw the dark abrupt peaks casting shadows onto a plain that resembled a frozen sea. The shadows took the shape of his dead friend’s face, and then of Annie’s.