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Chapter Text

A man was never alone on a ship. A man was always alone in death. These were two truths that Dr. Stanley knew well.

He lay in his berth and did not sleep. The weeks of horror to come rushed upon him like a torrent, as fast as the hours of this night were slow. Whispers and shadows surrounded him. Whispers he could head burn our dead, Thomas even with the ship groaning and the ice creaking let them be warm as they go . Abandoning his efforts to sleep, Stanley at last rose, patting around him in the dark for his journal. Nowhere to be found- he must have left it behind him in the surgery after his consultation with Mr. Collins. He took the lamp and went to retrieve it.

David Young was dead and frozen in the ground on some godforsaken shoreline of King William Island. And David Young was in his surgery.

“I know your thoughts,” the boy said. Something about it befuddled Stanley, past standing in his surgery in the small hours, in his nightclothes talking to a dead man. He ran Young’s words through his head again. ”Scio animum tuum.

“You don’t know Latin,” he said stupidly. Black lips quirked slightly over gray teeth. “Young knew no Latin!”

“I know your thoughts.” This time in Greek.

“I am returning to bed,” said Stanley. He reached for his book. A grey-black hand seized his own, its touch raised every hair on the surgeon’s head.

“You will see three of them,” David Young said. The hand pressed down on Stanley’s own, flattening it further and further against the leather cover of his journal.

His hand would be crushed, would be ruined. Stanley was certain that when Young finally let go there would be nothing left below the wrist- his flesh gone beyond frostbite, frozen by the ghost’s touch and then shattered beneath its weight.

“Three of them,” Young repeated, “I know your thoughts.” His thoughts- what thoughts? His disgust at the wasting body he had not tried to save because it was past saving? Well, what of it? He had made no secret of his feeling before the boy’s death, why should he? burn our dead. His discomfort with Collins? The man was talking rubbish and would fret himself into lunacy if indulged. let them be warm His consuming preoccupation with the horrors that awaited them?

“I know your thoughts, Dr. Stanley.”

Stanley squeezed his eyes tightly shut. This was not happening, could not be happening. Collins’ confused talk from earlier in the day had preyed on him more greatly than he had anticipated, that was all.

He woke in the dark discomfort of his berth. The journal sat in its place on his shelf. His right hand was beyond stiff, nearly useless. He’d slept on it wrong. It was the morning of the Carnivale.

Chapter Text

Distraction, anticipation and a proper task were panacea in Stanley’s experience, and the preparations for Carnivale had provided all three. There were fewer men in the sick bay than there had been since their first winter in the ice. Even the comatose Heather had been strapped to a stretcher and brought along, his exposed brains concealed by paper crown. It was a morbid notion and likely would do no good to the injured Private’s health, but Stanley did not care to intercede.

Between the nightmare conversation with Young and pondering all their fates in light of this new catastrophe of the tinned provisions, Stanley had no room in his thoughts for some fool Marines. Let them dress the glorified corpse up as Queen Victoria if they wished. They were all of them glorified corpses, were they not? let them be warm as they go

In small groups and large, the men left for their merrymaking. He was alone on the ship. A man is never alone on a ship.

There was a lingerer in the sick bay. Whether the man was ill or hoping to rifle the medical stores while the ship was unguarded, Stanley could not say. But the man did not belong there. None of them belonged here. But as he approached, ready to shepherd the man off to the merry-making, something made him pause. He did not know this man. Granted, he did not know all the Terrors by sight, they were too many and too common-looking for him to make note of unless they came to him specifically. Yet he knew, knew with the certainty of a the most fundamental childhood lesson, he knew this man was not from Terror nor Erebus.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?” he demanded of the stranger. The man turned, his smile was warm but it made Stanley shiver. “Sir John?”

It was Sir John, it had to be Sir John Franklin, unless the man had a secret younger brother stowed away aboard for three years, but the man looked twenty years younger. The eyes were clear and eager, the mouth relaxed in a way Stanley had never quite seen on the man in life. He held himself less bowstring-taut, less wary of some slight or censure set to ambush him.

“Well, come along Doctor.” All this time, Stanley had taken the man’s joviality as genuine. It rang true enough at the officers’ dinners. But that was nothing compared with the easy pleasure he showed at discovering the surgeon.

“This is madness,” said Stanley aloud, though to himself or the miraculously young and living Sir John he did not know. “Visual and auditory delusions. A symptom of the tainted food, perhaps.”

Sir John took him by the elbow and led him from the surgery out- into a bright, spacious room that echoed with the laughter of a gentile and contented crowd. It was warm, and the air smelled of rain and trees. “My brain has deteriorated more than I thought. The food, the ice, the darkness- I thought myself more fit to handle such burdens-“

“Pudding?” asked Sir John. Stanley stared. Sir John raised an eyebrow, gestured toward a silver platter crowned with what looked to be a perfect pudding.

Stanley felt almost giddy with the strangeness and the unaccustomed warmth. “This is madness,” he repeated.

“This is Van Dieman’s Land. Have a slice of pudding. It’s wonderful- flavored with rum from which I would normally abstain, but I think in this case it can do little harm.” He handed Stanley a china plate. “Excuse me a moment.”

Sir John left him standing stupidly on his own, in his ridiculous masquerade getup, and moved to speak to a smallish man with cunning eyes. Stanley remained in his corner a moment, then at a loss for what else to do and dizzy with the tropical warmth and fragrance, he followed at a distance.

“You will not reconsider then, Governor?” the cunning-eyed man enquired. His tone was all disinterested concern.

“I will not, Munro. And I would ask that you not bring this up again. Those men are as much my charge as anyone on this island. They are not yours to drive into the ground and trample over when they fall.” Sir John spoke with assurance.

“They are common criminals.”

Sir John nodded. “They are Her Majesty’s prisoners. But they are not your chattel.”

Munro spread his hands placatingly. He bowed and stepped away into the crowd.

Standing beside Sir John, Stanley watched the man’s retreating back. “That man will destroy your career.”

“He will thoroughly ruin my standing. My station. I will lose respect and position.”

“Why trouble yourself? Let him have his convicts and be damned.”

“Because, Doctor. Here and now I have a responsibility, I have conviction and I have the power to marry these two things. Even if am never again in such a position, I am here now.”

His calm was infuriating. “You dragged dozens of men across the ice before, most of them starved. You brought us to the ninth circle of Hell and now a hundred more men will join the list of souls that you led to ruin!”

“I did. I did my utmost and I did my worst. Men suffered because of me and through my acts suffering was relieved. But tell me, you now have a responsibility, you have conviction and you have the power to combine the two. And what will be the result Stanley? Hmm?”

Even in death, even miraculously rejuvenated to an age junior to Stanley’s own the man gazed at him like a superior waiting impatiently for an answer he was owed. “Will there be suffering because of it? Or will there be relief?”
“It is not my fault, it was not my doing!” Enraged he seized the Captain by the shoulders, ready to knock his head against the colorful walls of the Governor’s villa. “This is not my guilt to own! You will not put this on me!”

Now, for the first time, Sir John was less corporeal. He slipped through the surgeon’s clawing hands like mist and stepped away. The flapping costume impeded Stanley’s movements and he flailed wildly. “Not my doing, not my doing, yours not mine! Not my doing, not my doing!” Stanley ran at Captain with all his strength.

Chapter Text

His mad rush threw him bodily into the side of the ship. Pain jarred down his side, rattling his jaw, sending shards of agony through his shoulder and hip where he struck the frozen wood. Stanley staggered back, shocked at the sudden return to cold and dark. Sir John was nowhere to be seen. Of course he was nowhere to be seen. The man was dead and frozen halfway down a glacier, and Stanley was a diseased fool among a sea of diseased fools. Well, he was done idling here in the empty hold, mooning over fantasies of their dead captain’s ill-fated past. He had a task before him.

It was fairly easy going, over the ice to the Carnivale bazaar in his Pierrot robes. He made his way along the path of dozens of booted feet- some of the imbeciles had in their excitement actually thought to wear slippers on the trek across the ice until Peddie had heard their plans and put a stop to it. As though it mattered one way or another who kept or lost another toe.

Someone was following him, catching him up. Stanley did not slow.

“Stanley!” It was McDonald hailing him. The Terror surgeon reached his side. “I see we are both fashionably late.”

Stanley rallied a nod for the other doctor, though he had not the wit for conversation. His mind was full of shriveling skin, retracting gums, beads of moisture on a plum pudding in the subtropical heat, on a convict’s brow.

“I’ve been paying a call on our captain,” McDonald went on.

At the mention of their valiant second-turned-first Stanley could not restrain a grimace. If Sir John was a vainglorious fool, his second was a drunken cretin. He was glad the task of nursing the man through his ravings had not fallen to him these last weeks. “Well,” he replied, proud of the even calm of his voice, “I am sorry you had to sacrifice your time at the festivities.” It was, perhaps, the wrong thing to say.

“Oh, I did not mind. To tell the truth, Captain Crozier needs very little from me these past few days. I was there more to see that Jopson has not worn himself to a shadow. The man has hardly eaten or slept in three weeks.”

It was ever so. One man’s weakness rippled out to another and another. Jopson would work himself ill tending the captain, and he in turn would need others to divert their strength into caring for him.

“But it all comes around again,” McDonald answered, though Stanley was nearly certain that he had not spoken the thought aloud.

“What?”

“We bear our neighbors’ burdens and they in turn carry us when we falter.”

“I do not see Captain Crozier washing his steward’s fevered brow.”

“No,” said McDonald, “You do not see that.” His tone was odd yet he kept smiling that pleasant, slightly puzzled smile at Stanley. They walked in silence for a time. The smile and the silence troubled him, different to the uneasiness he’d felt in the presence of the impossible Sir John. As though a schoolmaster had asked a question he ought to know and found him slow to answer.

At last he spoke again, “Henry Collins came to see me.”

“Is he unwell?”

“He is perfectly well. It is merely malingering.” His reply was too snappish.

“He did not wish to work?”

Stanley shook his head. “He is willing to work. Would overwork if he could without a thought to who might have to care for him when he has exhausted himself. It is a morbid fascination of some kind. He was begging for reassurance.”
“And did you reassure him?”

Why was it taking them so long to reach the fete? Surely they should be there and yet the lights were still distant, the music too faint to reach them. “Why should I? He is a grown man. If all is well he should need no reassurance. If all is not well, it is not my job to feed fairy tales to nervous idiots who need be sung to sleep like infants.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Why do you answer me every time with another damned question? You know our work as well as I do!”

“Is it our work to burn our charges alive?”

Stanley wheeled upon the other man. His jaw worked in fury and confusion. “Better that than- “

McDonald cut him off. “Than what? We doctors know better than the common man in some things. We know how much of disease is yet unknown.”

“It does not require a great deal of study to know the ultimate result of starvation and scurvy.” The words ground out, speaking was nearly painful as the bruising in his jaw swelled where he had struck the wall of Erebus’ sick bay, where he had rushed in fury at Sir John.

“And the progression of human fate is as predictable as the course of disease?”

“Do not speak to me as though I am some great failure in our field!” cried Stanley. “No one will thank you for prolonging their misery! You are only as well-liked as you are now because they don’t know!”

“I would tell you that they will thank you for your actions tonight, but it is not my job to feed fairy tales to infants.”

They had arrived at the entrance to the grand pavilion. He ought to be worried that McDonald would frustrate his plans, that he would warn the men, or at least steal out to safety himself with those dearest to him. Somehow he was not.

McDonald raised the curtain and ushered Stanley into the tent.

Chapter Text

He stepped through the flap, through smoke and screaming and convulsing pain and into a shabby grey Holland tent. The tent stank with the rusty scent of old blood and the faint soiled smell of a new corpse. Opposite Stanley a man sat on a cot, his head in his hands.

“Goodsir? Good God!” Stanley gasped. The youngest surgeon was scarcely recognizable. He was like a badly drawn portrait of Harry Goodsir, done without care and crumpled to discard. The dark curls were unkempt, hair and beard swallowing the sunken face. He looked at Stanley with eyes surrounded by deep lines of misery, but the eyes themselves were clear and dry. Goodsir sighed. He rose wearily to his feet. Stanley could hear the painful scrape of joints when he moved.

“The scurvy- you should rest,” he began.

Goodish shook his head, “I have a job to do.”

The dread was a stone filling Stanley’s belly, crushing his lungs, forcing grit into his dry mouth. “What job?” Goodish moved slowly past him to where a canvas covered form rested on a makeshift table. “Might I help you with it?”

He did not want to help. He did not want to stand idle. He did not want to know what task Goodish could have. He already knew the task.

“No,” Harry said, “Thank you.” He rested his hands lightly on the dead man’s torso for a moment and swallowed. “I set myself this task, I will not ask anyone else to undertake it for me.”

“But I am here. Why not make use of me?”

The younger surgeon began to undress the skeletal body Stanley took care not to study too closely lest he recognize the man.

“You are not here,” Goodsir said. He glanced at Stanley through a fringe of unwashed curls. “At any rate, I would not wish this on any man.” There was a pause. “Though perhaps you might pass me that apron.”

The dead sailor was nude now and Harry began the methodical work of stripping his flesh with the same weary dexterity and gentleness with which he had removed the man’s clothes. His cuts were precise and efficient.

“I tried to spare you this- to spare all of them this!” Stanley hissed.

Goodsir looked up at him again. “You were in great pain that night, weren’t you?” he asked, “And for a long while before. I’m sorry I did not see it.” The softness of his words raked Stanley.

“We were all doomed to this,” he pleaded. He was hungry for absolution that Goodsir had set down freely before him but which he found he could not seem to take up. “I told you how ugly it would be.”Half a smile tried to crease Goodsir’s face, even as he bent over his work. “You weren’t so lovely yourself there, at the end.”

“As ugly as this wretched land,” Stanley conceded.

The junior surgeon shook his head. “This place is beautiful to me. Even now.” Stanley believed him.

“You are as much a fool as any of them. I tried to spare you. Doubt me if you wish, I’ll not waste my time trying to convince a- a spirit or whatever it is you are.”

“Immolation is as painful in its way as scurvy. The men who burned- you know they suffered and died frightened. You know that Stephen.”

Stanley could say nothing. Finally, “There was not enough laudanum. Not enough morphia. Not enough in all our combined pharmacies to put a hundred full-grown men mercifully to rest.” His voice was near breaking. “How could I choose some to grant a peaceful death and some to suffer? I had no right.” Goodsir was still simply watching him, his hands bloody to the wrists. His brown eyes- soft, like a dog’s Stanley had always thought- were steady. “An equal share to all. Myself included.”

At last Goodsir blinked. He sniffed slightly. “I don’t know whether your trouble is a lack of imagination or too much of it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Are there no other ways to help dying men than by burning them alive?”

He could not look Goodsir in the face. Stanley sank onto the cot, adopting the same despairing pose the younger surgeon held when he had come to this dreadful place.

“We could all be at peace now,” he offered. His voice was soft, the words to meaningless to speak too loudly.

“But we’re not.” Goodsir continued his work, his back to Stanley.

“I can see that.”

There was silence for a time, save for the scraping and cutting as the man on the table became so many joints and cuts of meat. Goodsir’s narrow shoulders heaved with the effort of the work. Useless, Stanley reached for the dead man’s clothes, lying discarded on the ground. He carefully folded threadbare trousers, vest, shirt. Something dropped from a fold or pocket and clinked softly on the rocks.

“Hello, what’s this?” Stanley reached for the object. It was a gold ring strung on a piece of twine. Goodsir had finished his work. There was nothing on the table but several tidy piles of meat. He turned to look. Those brown eyes went wide then squeezed shut and Harry sank down beside him on the cot. He pressed the backs of his gore-soaked hands to his mouth in silent grief.

“What is it?” asked Stanley.

Goodsir held out a hand for the ring, then saw how bloody it was and made a futile attempt to wipe it on his apron. “I promised I would get the ring to his sister. It was the last thing he asked of me, only I forgot to collect it before he was buried. I thought it had been lost.” He paused. “I- I am glad that it will find its way back to her. If I give it to one of the others- to Captain Crozier- he will see it returned.”

They watched the ring turn on its bit of string. Goodsir’s shoulders began to heave, he rocked back and forth slightly. “I don’t remember his name. The man who died- I don’t remember who he was.” For the first time since Stanley’s arrival, the other man showed unchecked distress.

“David Young,” said Stanley. Goodsir looked up at him astonished. “The ship’s boy who died of consumption. That is who you mean?”

“You remember him?”

Stanley wished he could feel more offended at the incredulity in Goodsir’s voice. He smiled slightly. “One tends to remember one’s first ghost.”

He offered the ring to Goodsir. “Here, you are one step closer to fulfilling your promise.”

Goodsir looked sadly at his still red-stained hands. “Perhaps you should hold onto it for the moment.”

Stanley stared at the ring. In the polished surface of the metal were faint shapes and figures- men leaving their frozen havens with their friends by their sides, Captain Fitzjames flush with pleasure at the men’s good humor as they began the long trek, McDonald and Peddie accompanying Goodsir, assisting when the surgeon grew weary and heartsick, speaking to Morfin, to Collins. He saw them all still marching towards home too slowly, saw them begin to waver and weaken, saw the awful end that still curdled his insides to think of. He turned David Young’s ring slowly in his palm until his own fingerprints smeared the surface and he could see nothing clearly.

“Very well.” He closed his hand around the ring.

Harry rose, weary and painfully as before, and with the slightest tremor began placing the remains of the sailor into two canvas bags. When the last piece was stowed and the sacks drawn shut he hefted them and made for the flap of the tent. The sacks were heavy and the weakened surgeon stooped under their weight. “I have to deliver these to Hickey.”
“Here- ” Stanley rose as well, “Let me carry one.” He took up the strap and followed Goodsir out into the grey sunlight.

**
The men were raucous, officers and marines and enlisted men all laughing together. It was still foolish and rather morbid, thought Stanley spying the paper-crowned Private Heather, propped in a corner.

"Ah, there he is. Stanley, over here!" called Dr. McDonald. He waved. "Come and join us."