Ian McGuire - The North Water

Sumner, staring at Drax, instantly understands. They have rooted through his sea chest, read the discharge papers, seen the looted ring.

Brownlee is looking at him curiously.

“Do you know what the fuck he’s talking about?” he says.

Sumner shakes his head. He casts his eye unthinkingly over Drax’s arms and torso, breathing carefully as he does so, pushing back against the inner uproar.

“Do you doubt my knowledge or competency as a surgeon?” he says (sounding preposterous even to himself). “I have served an apprenticeship and have certificates from the Queen’s College of Belfast.”

Drax smiles at this, then laughs. His yellowy cock thickens and twitches noticeably upwards.

“You have your little scrap of paper, Mr. Sumner, and I have mine. Now, which one of those two little scraps of paper weighs the most, I wonder, in an English court of law? I never did learn my letters, so I’m not the one to say, but a good lawyer would likely have an opinion, I suppose.”

“I have my evidence,” Sumner says. “It is not a matter of my opinion or my reputation. Who I am, or who I have been, is not the question.”

“And what evidence do you hold against me ?” Drax asks more fiercely. “Tell me that.”

“We are not accusing you of any crime,” Brownlee says. “That’s not why we are here. McKendrick is still down in the hold in chains, remember. Sumner is merely curious about some details of the outrage, that is all.”

Drax ignores Brownlee and continues staring at Sumner.

“What evidence do you hold against me ?” he says again. “Because if you have none, then it’s thee against me, I’d say. My solemn word, sworn on the Bible, against yours.”

Sumner steps backwards and digs his hands into his pockets.

“You are lying about McKendrick,” he says. “I know very well you are.”

Drax turns to Brownlee and taps his finger to his ear.

“Is the ship’s surgeon a little hard of hearing, Captain?” he says. “I keep asking him the same fucking question and he don’t seem to notice it at all.”

Brownlee scowls, then licks his lips. He is beginning to regret agreeing to Sumner’s request. Drax may be something of a savage, but that is no good reason to accuse him of child murder. It is hardly surprising he has taken the hump.

“What evidence do we hold against Drax in this matter, Sumner? Tell us now, please.”

Sumner looks down at the floor between his feet for a moment and then up at the cabin’s pitched glass skylight.

“I have no evidence against Henry Drax,” he confesses flatly. “None at all.”

“Then let’s call an end to this nonsense,” Brownlee says. “Get your fucking clothes back on and get to work.”

Drax gazes dismissively at Sumner for a long moment, then reaches down and lifts his britches from the cabin floor. Each of his movements is considered and powerful; his body, stinking and rotund as it is, clagged and filthy in its folds and creases, possesses a ghastly voluptuousness nonetheless. Sumner looks on without watching. He is thinking of the medicine chest and the delicious pleasures it contains. He is thinking of the Achaeans and the Trojans and the meddlings of Athena and Ares. McKendrick will hang for sure, Sumner realizes. This crime requires a villain and he has been appointed to the post. He will dangle and kick at the end of a rope. There is no way out now, no Hera to pluck him from the scaffold.

Drax bends and then straightens, prods his leg into the hole of his britches and pulls them up his thighs. His broad back and pungent arse are patched with fur; his socked feet are blockish and simian. Brownlee looks on impatiently. The outrage is behind him now, and his mind is on other things. McKendrick will swing for what he did, and that is that. What matters now is the sinking of the ship, which is a tricky business to get right. She needs to go down slow enough to ensure that all the cargo can be saved, but not so slow that any last-gasp repairs are possible. And there is no way of being sure beforehand how the ice will behave and how close or far away Campbell will be able to plausibly maneuver the Hastings . The underwriters are alive these days to various kinds of trickery; if they sense a conspiracy, they will descend on the crew in port and commence offering them rewards for useful information. If it is not done right, he could end up in a cell in Hull jail rather than enjoying his retirement strolling on the strands of Bridlington.

“What’s that gash on your arm?” he says to Drax. “Have you cut yourself again? Sumner will give you a plaster for that if you ask him sweetly, I’m sure.”

“It’s nothing,” Drax says. “A scratch with a harpoon, that’s all.”

“Looks worse than nothing to me,” Brownlee says.

Drax shakes his head and picks his pea coat off the table.

“Let me see it,” Sumner says.

“It’s nothing,” Drax says again.

“It’s your good right arm, and I can see from here it’s swollen and weeping,” Brownlee says. “If you can’t hurl a harpoon or pull an oar, you’ll be no earthly fucking use to me. Show it to the surgeon now.”

Drax hesitates a moment, then holds out his arm.

The wound, high on the forearm near the elbow, half hidden by hair and ink, is narrow but deep, and the site around it is severely swollen. The skin, when Sumner touches it, is tense and hot. An areola of green pus has gathered around and below the scabbing. And the scabbing itself is sticky and raw.

“The purulence needs to be lanced and the remnants drawn out with a poultice,” Sumner says. “Why didn’t you come to me before now?”

“It don’t trouble me,” Drax says. “’Tis just a nick.”

Sumner goes to his cabin and returns with a lancet, which he heats for a minute over the candle flame. He takes a piece of lint padding and presses it against the wound, then makes a brief incision with the lancet. A green-pink mixture of blood and pus spills out and soaks into the padding. Sumner presses harder and the wound exudes yet more of the foul liquid. Drax stands immobile and silent. The red and swollen skin has flattened out, but there remains a strange and singular lump.

“There’s something lodged inside there,” Sumner says. “Look here.”

Brownlee approaches and peers over the surgeon’s shoulder.

“Might be a splinter of wood,” he says, “or possibly a piece of bone.”

“You say you did this with a harpoon?” Sumner asks.

“That’s right,” Drax says.

Sumner presses at the small lump with his fingertip. It slides for a moment beneath the skin and then emerges white and blood-covered from the wound’s opening.

“What the fuck is that?” Brownlee says.

Sumner catches the object in the soiled padding and rubs it clean. He looks at it only once and knows immediately. He glances quickly at Drax, then shows the object to Brownlee. It is a child’s tooth, pale and grain-like, broken off at the root.

Drax snatches his arm away. He looks at the tooth, still in Sumner’s hand, and then at Brownlee.

“That thing int mine,” he says.

“It was in your arm.”

“It int mine.”

“It’s evidence,” Sumner says. “That’s what it is. And it’s all the evidence we need to see you hanged.”

“They won’t hang me,” Drax says. “I’ll see you both in hell afore that happens.”

Brownlee steps to the cabin door, opens it, and calls out for the first mate. The three men eye one another carefully. Drax is still only half dressed, his chest is bare, and he has his shirt and pea coat clutched in his left hand.

“I won’t be chained neither,” he says. “Not by cunts like you two.”

Brownlee shouts again for Cavendish. Drax glances around the cabin for any usable weapon. There’s a brass sextant lying on the table to his right and, in a pinewood rack on the wall beside him, a spyglass and a heavy whalebone walking stick tipped with an ebony pommel. He doesn’t move or reach for them yet. He calmly awaits his moment.