Youve had no time? Erasmus asked.
Zeke shook his head. I keep meaning to, he said. Lavinia made me promise Id write in here, for her to read when we get back. But its so large, and water spots the coverand anyway I have this.
He showed Erasmus another notebook; hed been keeping it for several years, he said, under his pillow at night and in his pocket during the day. Erasmus stared at the battered black volume, troubled that he hadnt known about it before.
I started it when I began wishing I could do something to find Franklin, Zeke said. Its where I keep notes on things Ive read, little reminders to myself, and so forth.
He held it out and Erasmus read the pages where it fell open. The titles of four books Zeke meant to read and seven hed recently read, a letter to the Philadelphia paper praising Jane Franklins continued quest for her husband, some thoughts about scurvy and its prevention (FRESH MEAT, underlined twice. In the men, watch for bleeding gums, spots and swollenness of lower limbs, opening of old sores and wounds), a recipe for pemmican, a drawing of a sledge runner, a Philadelphia merchants quoted price for enough tobacco to supply the crew for eighteen months.
Interesting, Erasmus said, although he was taken aback by this hodgepodge. Where was the urgency of their quest? I can see this is where you kept track of what you learned while we were planning the trip. But what about now? Dont youdescribe things? Write about what youve seen each day, and the progress were making?
Thats not important, Zeke said. On the cabin table a candle burned, casting improbable shadows. Or not as important as planning ahead for whats to come. I like to use this for thinking, writing down whats really significant. Captain Tyler may run this brig on a daily basis. But Im the one with the vision. Im the one who has to keep us on track in the largest sense.
I could do the mundane part, Erasmus offered. Keep a record of our daily life, I mean. Then youd be free to keep a more personal account.
Why dont you take this? Zeke said, indicating Lavinias gift. Its a good size, youll have plenty of room. He lifted a stack of pages and let them slip along his thumb: a whirring noise, like wing beats. When we get home, we can tell Lavinia we worked on it together.
THE WIND GREW fierce again. Not far from Cape York, Zeke gave in to Captain Tylers wishes and ordered a dock cut in the land-fast ice, where they might shelter until the gale passed. Above them a glacier poured between two cliffs crowded with nesting murres: black rock streaked with streams of droppings, the clean white river of ice; more soiled rock secreting waves of ammonia and an astonishing squawking noise. As birds left their eggs to seek fish in the cracks between the floes, a hunting party fired at them. Dr. Boerhaave, perched on a boulder, stayed behind to examine the parasites in the slaughtered birds feathers. Zeke and Erasmus and Joe headed up the glaciers tongue.
They climbed joined by a long rope, which Joe looped around their waists as protection against the crevasses. Wissy, attached to Zeke by a separate rope, led; then Zeke and behind him Erasmus, who kept listing to the glaciers edge where it met the cliff, and where plants grew in the rocky, sheltered hollows. Chickweeds and sorrel and saxifrages, willows hardly bigger than his handbut Zeke pulled on him like a farmer tugging a reluctant cow. In the rear Joe called out instructions when he detected a weakness in the ice. The lichens alone, Erasmus thought, would have repaid a weeks visit; he didnt have a minute with them. The heaps of envelopes hed brought for seeds were useless. The white bells of arctic heather like dwarfed lilies of the valley, the inch-high tangle of rhizomes, everything spreading vegetatively in a season too short for most plants to set seedshe should be taking notes, copious notes, but they were moving too fast.
What was Zeke pulling him toward? A rough, craggy object half-embedded in the ice; he was missing his chance with the cliffside plants for the sake of a rock. By the time he caught up to Zeke, about to complain, Zeke was digging out one side of the boulder, assisted by Wissys frantic paws. Whats so interesting? Erasmus asked.
I dont know, Zeke said. It caught my eye, it looked so out of placewhat is this doing here?
Erasmus bent and saw that the side of the boulder opposite his hands was chipped and fractured in a way that suggested human interference. Elsewhere was a crust he recognized. Its a meteorite, he told Zeke, annoyed that he hadnt discovered it himself.
Joe caught up to them, out of breath, and inspected the chipped side. One of the iron stones! he exclaimed.
Why do you call it that? Erasmus asked. He could feel where flakes the size of fingernails were missing.
There are Esquimaux around here, Joe said. The ones Ross called Arctic Highlanders. Even as far south as Godhavn weve heard stories of how they use the odd rocks stuck in the glaciers. They chip harpoon heads from them.
Erasmus inspected the rock more closely and probed it with his knife: a siderite, he decided, metallic iron alloyed with nickel. A similar specimen had fallen in Gloucestershire in 1835but how remarkable to find one here! And for Joe to know the story that made sense of it. Ever since Ross explored this area, people have been wondering about the source of the northern tribes iron, he said to Zeke. They must have been getting it from this stone, or from others like it.
Joe nodded. Somewhere near here are supposed to be three large ones, which the Esquimaux have named. And perhaps smaller ones like this as well.
Zeke tapped the lumpy, dull-colored rock. We cant leave such an important discovery here.
You cant take it, Joe exclaimed. The natives need these. They call them saviksue, they believe they have a soul.
Erasmus looked at Joe, at Zeke, at the rock. He couldnt help himself, he coveted it.
Them, Zeke said. You acknowledge yourself that there are others. Im only taking this small one.
Over Joes protests Zeke and Erasmus chipped the ice away with their knives, until the rock was free. It was as heavy as a man. Just help us roll it to the ship, Zeke begged; and Joe finally agreed.
In the eerie pink light they sweated and struggled and pushed, all the time hearing the distant gunshots and the indignant roar of the birds. Erasmus, as the angle of the glacier grew steeper, slipped near a patch of meltwater and fell. Joe and Zeke, roped on either side of him, tumbled seconds later. The meteorite, free of their hands, rolled clumsily as they untied the knots that tangled them. It gathered speed and lurched down slantwise, leaping over a last ridge of ice to plunge into the gap where the glacier had pulled away from the side of the cliff.
Erasmus heard it shatter and leapt to his feet. Running after it, too late to save it, stumbling and slipping and hoping, still, that he might retrieve a piece, he stayed upright most of the way down the glacier but skidded off the last, lowest ledge. He was flying; his eyes were open. He was arcing over the stony shore, heading for the ice, praying that hed die quickly. He saw a patch of darkness the size of a dining-room table, an open pool in the ice; then he was underwater. Then under ice.
Erasmus heard it shatter and leapt to his feet. Running after it, too late to save it, stumbling and slipping and hoping, still, that he might retrieve a piece, he stayed upright most of the way down the glacier but skidded off the last, lowest ledge. He was flying; his eyes were open. He was arcing over the stony shore, heading for the ice, praying that hed die quickly. He saw a patch of darkness the size of a dining-room table, an open pool in the ice; then he was underwater. Then under ice.
The water burned him like fire and scoured his mouth and eyes, but even as he thrashed and struggled and felt his limbs numb he saw the fish schooling around his legs, and the murres serenely swimming like fish, and the cool, green, glowing underside of the ice. He had a few minutes, he thought, remembering Ivans near drowning. No more. Something shimmered white: belugas? He fainted, or froze, or drowned. When he came to himself again he was looking up at Dr. Boerhaaves anxious face.
Am I alive? he asked.
Just barely, Dr. Boerhaave said. Ned pulled you out.
Did you see the meteorite?
Dr. Boerhaave shook his head.
THEY COULDNT RECOVER even a single piece of the stone before Captain Tyler hurried the Narwhal into a suddenly open lead. In his berth, recovering from his chilly bath, Erasmus rested for a day. When he felt better he thanked Ned.
It was nothing, Ned said. I was gutting a fish, looking right at the hole in the ice where you landed. All I did was run over with the boat hook.
With Dr. Boerhaaves help, Erasmus wrote up a description of the meteorite to send to Edinburgh. The weather grew finewarm during the day; just below freezing during the gleaming north light that was as close as they came to nightand as Erasmus wrote to Dr. Boerhaaves friend he noted the odd combination of summer and winter features: cool air, hot sun; black cliffs, white ice. On the cloudless day when they reached the North Water, he felt as though he were home during harvesttime.
The air was warm, the water gleaming like steel and the icebergs elevated against the horizon. The men had stripped off most of their clothes. Mr. Tagliabeau was urging them on at the capstan bars when the lookout shouted, Were here! and the brig broke into open water. All hands stopped work and gave three cheers. Mr. Tagliabeau and Captain Tyler embraced one another and then, to Erasmuss astonishment, shook Zekes hand. Joe broke out his zither and played several cheerful tunes; Captain Tyler ordered the sails set; and they were free of the pack.
3 A RIOT OF OBJECTS
(JULYAUGUST 1855)
It was homeward bound one night on the deep
Swinging in my hammock I fell asleep.
I dreamed a dream and thought it true
Concerning Franklin and his gallant crew.
With a hundred seamen he sailed away
To the frozen ocean in the month of May
To seek that passage around the pole
Where we poor sailors do sometimes go.
In Baffins Bay where the whalefish blow
The fate of Franklin no man may know.
The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell
Franklin and his men do dwell.
Through cruel hardships they vainly strove.
Their ships on mountains of ice was drove
Where the eskimo in his skin canoe
Was the only man to ever come through.
And now my hardship it brings me pain.
For my long lost Franklin Id plow the main.
Ten thousand pounds would I freely give
To know on earth if Franklin do live.
LADY FRANKLINS LAMENT
(TRADITIONAL BALLAD)
In her diary, Alexandra wrote:
On the calendar Lavinia keeps by our desks, she not only crosses off each passing day but counts the days remaining until October. Shes embarrassed when I catch her doing this, embarrassed to catch herself doing it. When we visit Zekes family, she wraps her arms around Zekes black dogs and buries her nose in their fur; the smell reminds her of him, she claims, his clothes often carried a faint odor of dog. But otherwise she puts up a brave front and tries not to talk about her worries.
Still, I can see how distracted she is and how hard she finds it to concentrate. Apart from her anxieties, shes not used to sustained periods of work. I remind myself that at least I had my parents throughout my childhood, while she had no mother at all: of course this has shaped her, as has life with her brothers. On Tuesday, while we were trying to mix a difficult shade of greenish blue, she told me she was often invited to join in when their father read to themif she wasnt taking drawing lessons, or piano lessons, or being instructed in cookery or the management of the householdbut she listened with only half an ear, sure shed never use that knowledge. Erasmus and Copernicus would travel; Linnaeus and Humboldt would learn to engrave the plates and print the books that resulted from other mens travels. But always, she said, always I knew Id be left at home. So why bother to learn those lessons well?
Because, I wanted to say. Because there is something in the learning; and because we can never tell what we may someday need. Instead I pointed to our paints. When you were taking drawing lessons, I said, did you ever think wed be doing this? It is my hope to distract her with the pleasures of our task.
We completed the plates of the annelids today and then Lavinia worked on her trousseau, arranging piles of embroidered white lawn and ribbon-threaded muslin. Waists and knickers, nightgowns and petticoatsmost made by two young sisters, half French, from Chester. Her own stitching is clumsy, but shes good enough not to ask me for helpeven though she knows Ive sometimes supported myself by sewing. I told her something she didnt know about mein her back issues of the Ladys Book, which she saves religiously, I pointed out the plates I colored by hand for Mr. Godey. A gown in green and yellow, not so different from a beetles wing covers, made her smile. You could do this, I told her. If you dont like working with plants and animals, I could help you find work coloring fashion plates when were done with the book. She told me her brothers would think that frivolous work, especially as she has no need to earn her living.
We have two pair of cardinals nesting in the mock-orange near my window. A cecropia moth hatched from the cocoon Erasmus left on the windowseat. Last night my family came for dinner, and after we talked about the antislavery speeches Emily attended in Germantown, Harriet took me aside to whisper that she is with child again. Then Browning clumsily asked if wed had any news. Of course this upset Lavinia. No mail, I answered quickly. Not yet. But its too soon for the whalers with whom the brig might cross paths to have returned to port.
After they left we read out loud to each other, as we do most evenings. Lavinia reads from Mary Shelleys tale of Frankenstein and his monster; I read from Parrys journal. The journal of the first voyage, when Parry was hardly older than Zeke and when his men were all in their early twenties; the one during which everything went right. Fine weather, remarkable explorations, good hunting, starry skies. This is how Zeke and Erasmus are faring, I said.