Dan Simmons - The Terror

“Yes,” said Crozier, “I have seen him carefully remove a fly from a dining room and release it.”

“Uncle John, listening to Aunt Jane, eventually reinstated the surgeon, but that made a lifelong enemy out of this Montagu. The private bickerings and accusations became public, and Montagu – in essence – called Uncle John a liar and a weakling.”

“Good Lord,” said Crozier. What he was thinking was, If I had been in John Franklin’s place, I would have called this Montagu fucker out to the field of honor and there put a bullet in each of his testicles before I placed a final one in his brain . “I hope that Sir John sacked the man.”

“Oh, he did,” said Sophia with a sad little laugh, “but that only made things worse. Montagu returned to England last year on the same ship carrying Uncle John’s letter announcing his dismissal, and it turns out, sadly, that Captain Montagu is a close friend of Lord Stanley, secretary of state for the Colonies.”

Well, the Governor is well and truly buggered , Crozier thought as they reached the stone bench at the far end of the garden. He said, “How unfortunate.”

“More than Uncle John or Aunt Jane could have imagined,” said Sophia. “The Cornwall Chronicle ran a long article entitled ‘The Imbecile Reign of the Polar Hero.’ The Colonial Times blames Aunt Jane.”

“Why attack Lady Jane?”

Sophia smiled without humour. “Aunt Jane is, rather like myself… unorthodox. You have seen her room here at Government House, I believe? When Uncle John gave you and Captain Ross a tour of the estate the last time you were here?”

“Oh, yes,” said Crozier. “Her collection was wonderful.” Lady Jane’s boudoir, the parts they were allowed to see, had been crammed carpet to ceiling with animal skeletons, meteorites, stone fossils, Aborigine war clubs, native drums, carved wooden war masks, ten-foot paddles that looked capable of propelling HMS Terror along at fifteen knots, a plethora of stuffed birds, and at least one expertly taxidermied monkey. Crozier had never seen anything like it in a musuem or zoo, much less in a lady’s bedroom. Of course, Francis Crozier had seen very few ladies’ bedrooms.

“One visitor wrote to a Hobart newspaper that, and I quote verbatim, Francis, ‘our governor’s wife’s private rooms at Government House look more like a museum or a menagerie than the boudoir of a lady.’”

Crozier made a clucking noise and felt guilty about his similar thoughts. He said, “So is this Montagu still making trouble?”

“More than ever. Lord Stanley – that viper’s viper – backed Montagu, reinstated that worm in a position similar to the one Uncle John dismissed him from, and sent Uncle John a reprimand so terrible that Aunt Jane told me in private that it was the equivalent of a horsewhipping.”

I’d shoot that bugger Montagu in the balls and then cut Lord Stanley’s off and serve them to him only slightly warmed , thought Crozier. “That is terrible,” he said.

“There is worse,” said Sophia.

Crozier looked for tears in the dim light but saw none. Sophia was not a woman given to weeping.

“ Stanley made public the rebuke?” guessed Crozier.

“The… bastard… gave a copy of the official rebuke to Montagu, before he sent it to Uncle John , and that weasel’s weasel rushed it here by the fastest post ship. Copies were made and passed around here in Hobart Town to all of Uncle John’s enemies months before Uncle John received the letter through official channels. The entire colony was sniggering every time Uncle John or Aunt Jane attended a concert or performed the governor’s role in some official function. I apologize for my unlady-like language, Francis.”

I’d feed Lord Stanley his balls cold in a fried dough of his own shit , thought Crozier. He said nothing but nodded that he forgave Sophia her choice of language.

“Just when Uncle John and Aunt Jane thought it could get no worse,” continued Sophia, her voice trembling slightly, but with anger, Crozier was sure, not with weakness, “Montagu sent to his plantation friends here a three-hundred-page packet containing all the private letters, Government House documents, and official dispatches which he had used to make his case against the governor to Lord Stanley. That packet is in the Central Colonial Bank here in the capital, and Uncle John knows that two thirds of the old families and business leaders in town have made their pilgrimage to the bank to read and hear what it contains. Captain Montagu calls the governor a ‘perfect imbecile’ in those papers… and from what we hear, that is the most polite thing in the detestable document.”

“Sir John’s position here seems untenable,” said Crozier.

“At times I fear for his sanity, if not his life,” agreed Sophia. “Governor Sir John Franklin is a sensitive man.”

He wouldn’t hurt a fly , thought Crozier. “Will he resign?”

“He will be recalled,” said Sophia. “The entire colony knows it. This is why Aunt Jane is almost beside herself… I have never seen her in such a state. Uncle John expects official word of his recall before the end of August, if not sooner.”

Crozier sighed and pushed his walking stick along a furrow in the garden path gravel. He had looked forward to this reunion with Sophia Cracroft for two years in the southern ice, but now that he was here he could see that their visit would be lost in the shadow of mere politics and personality. He stopped himself before he sighed again. He was forty-six years old and acting like a fool.

“Would you like to see the Platypus Pond tomorrow?” asked Sophia.

Crozier poured another glass of whiskey for himself. There came a scream of banshees from above, but it was only the arctic wind in what was left of the rigging. The captain pitied the men on watch.

The whiskey bottle was almost empty.

Crozier decided then and there that they would have to resume cache-hauling sledge trips to King William Land this winter, through the dark and storms and with the threat of the thing on the ice ever present. He had no choice. If they had to abandon the ships in the coming months – and Erebus was already showing signs of imminent collapse in the ice – it would not do merely to set up a sea camp here on the ice near where the ships would be destroyed. Normally that might make sense – more than one hapless polar expedition had set up camp on the ice and let the Baffin Bay current carry them hundreds of miles south to open sea – but this ice was going nowhere and a camp here on the ice would be even less defensible from the creature than would a camp on the frozen gravel on the shore – peninsula or island – twenty-five miles away in the dark. And he’d already cached more than five tons of gear there. The rest would have to follow before the sun returned.

Crozier sipped his whiskey and decided that he would lead the next sledge trip. Hot food was the greatest single morale builder cold men could have, short of sight of rescue or extra gills of rum, so his next sledge trips would consist of stripping the four whaler boats – serious craft rigged for serious sailing should the real ships be abandoned at sea – of their cookstoves. The Frazer’s Patent Stove on Terror and its twin on Erebus were too massive to move to shore – and Mr. Diggle would be using his to bake biscuits right up to the minute Crozier gave the order to abandon ship – so it was best to use the boat stoves. The four stoves were iron and would be heavy as Satan’s hooves, especially if the sledges were hauling more gear, food, and clothing to cache, but they’d be safe on shore and could be fired up quickly, although the coal itself would also have to be hauled across the cold hell of a pressure-ridged twenty-five miles of sea ice. There was no wood on King William Land nor any for hundreds of miles south of there. The stoves would go next, Crozier decided, and he would go with them. They would sledge through the absolute darkness and unbelievable cold and let the Devil take the hindmost.