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There is a misconception about the Great White North. The name is misleading; it is not white, but a startling kaleidoscope of greys and blues and browns under a blanket of white, as if to disguise the true beauty of the place from the prying eyes that wish to extort her. Even the white itself is not truly white; it is a glittering tapestry of crystals woven together by the cold, and has no more colour than a droplet of water.
It is no surprise, though, that this misconception persists; names are often misleading. Koala bears are not bears, and butterflies are not flies. Greenland, as it happens, is mostly ice, and Iceland is, conversely, mostly green. Terror and Erebus are ships of exploration and scientific discovery, as if their dismal names might act as a ward against tragedy and not become horrific omens.
King William Land, on which a hundred and twenty-nine men are rotting away—some breathing, some not—is an island, rather than the peninsula it’s presumed to be in this year of 1848. The rocks there are ashen, and sapphire waves lap at the shore. The men’s frost-bitten extremities are charcoal, and their bodies and blood ravage the landscape with crimson.
That red is a natural part of the kaleidoscope as well; it is a metal-tinted drop in the river of life, flowing from fish into seals, from seals into bears, from all three into the indigenous Inuit that call this vast, expansive land their home. The lifeblood of the Arctic is blood itself; it is not a marker of cruelty and pain, but harmony and survival, and the persistence of a people that live despite the harshness of their climate.
Thomas Jopson, captain’s steward aboard HMS Terror, has a different sense of that colour. It bleeds from his gums and stains his clothes, as the old lashing scars crisscrossing his back split open and let his life’s essence free. He thinks of himself more as a poorly-preserved slab of meat than a person, now; well-salted and dried, more suitable for a cook’s pot than the doctor’s cot on which he now lies for examination, limp and nearly unconscious from the utter agony wracking his body.
He must make a sound, then, because in an instant, Doctor Peddie—head surgeon from Terror—is running his hand over the back of Jopson’s neck, and murmuring to him in low, gentle tones. “It’s alright, lad,” says Peddie, though the waver in his voice suggests otherwise. “You’re holding up better than I expected, though…”
“Not well enough.” Jopson finishes Peddie’s sentence for him, because he knows what’s coming; he’s felt it creeping through his muscles, his bones, his very thoughts and feelings, for months now, slow and almost teasing in the way it has meticulously wrested the life from his body. “Spare me your pity, Doctor.” His voice is cracked and raw and rotten, and every word tastes like blood. He continues, nonetheless. “Give me the truth of it. The captain ought to know if I’m— if his steward is… infirm.” Jopson dares not say the worst aloud, in case he is somehow, miraculously, incorrect.
He is not.
“It’s hard to estimate…” waffles Peddie, as he lays fresh bandages across Jopson’s back. Jopson wants to tell him not to waste such valuable supplies on a mere steward, but he can only groan and uselessly try to twitch away from his touch.
“Days,” Jopson chokes out, gripping the edges of the cot with all of the force left in his brittle hands. “How many— how many days?”
Peddie’s hands fall still, hovering over the scurvy-weak and hunger-thin expanse of Jopson’s back. “Not many,” he admits, in a breath so soft he might as well have been blowing out a candle. “I am very sorry, Mr Jopson. I’ve done my best.” With that, he turns away, and hastens to a nearby basin with its pitiful offering of fresh water to wash Jopson’s drying blood from his hands.
Jopson does not make an attempt to rise, but turns onto his side, gingerly and with some effort. “Help me from this, then,” he orders, shakily, though he has no authority here. “Quicken it, and I’ll thank you.”
Peddie visibly tenses, hesitating for a long moment as Jopson can only watch the jagged rise and fall of his shoulders. “The captain,” he starts, and then he pauses, hesitating even longer before giving an answer. “The captain,” he says again, “would have to decide.” He glances over his shoulder, and gives Jopson an unreadable look. Jopson dares to consider that it might be pity.
“I’ll speak to him,” Jopson promises, quietly, as if this moment has some sanctity that he dares not impose on by raising his voice. “He’ll understand.”
Peddie does not reply.
Jopson chokes down a difficult meal of tinned beans, and knows that he won’t regain any more strength than what he already has. Even eating seems pointless; he swears he’s expending more energy with the effort than what his body manages to salvage from the slop. The other men politely ignore him, as they’ve always done, and Jopson has never been so glad for it, because he knows he must look a far cry from the dignified steward’s appearance that he always made an effort to maintain aboard Terror. He wipes his blood-smeared lips on his sleeve and stands, legs quaking beneath his weight as if they’re no stronger than toothpicks, then slowly makes his way to the captain’s tent.
When Jopson draws aside the flap, he announces his presence with a respectful greeting of, “Sir,” and a nod in the captain’s direction. Then, he waits.
Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier, captain of HMS Terror and leader of this doomed expedition ever since the untimely death of Sir John Franklin, is sitting upon a chair, looking utterly undignified as he rubs his socked feet between his hands in an attempt to work some feeling back into them. He looks every bit a man and not a single part an officer of the Royal Navy, there, especially as he raises his head almost bashfully to regard his steward, and Jopson is suddenly struck by a feeling he cannot name.
“Jopson,” replies Crozier, and the expression painted across his face is one akin to relief, which instantly sinks its claws deep into Jopson’s chest. For a moment, he considers that he might have made a mistake. “My apologies.” With a forced smile, Crozier shoves his foot back into the boot sitting beneath him, and turns bodily towards the entrance. “How are you fairing?”
Jopson does not give his answer immediately, as is expected of him. Instead, he takes a single step forward and closes the flap behind him before giving Crozier his full attention. He straightens his coat. “Sir,” he says again. “I saw Doctor Peddie, as you ordered.”
Crozier gestures for him to go on.
“He is… not optimistic,” Jopson offers.
Crozier’s gaze hardens. “Well, tell him to be more positive, then,” he snaps, and the harshness of his tone takes Jopson by surprise. “There must be something he can do. What did he give you?”
Jopson awkwardly presses his mittened hands together and admits, “Nothing, sir.”
“Unacceptable,” Crozier growls. Abruptly, he stands, and purposefully makes his way towards Jopson as if he’s going to drag him back to Peddie by the arm. “I won’t have it, do you hear me? I won’t have you going untreated just because the doctor thinks—”
“It’s no use, Captain,” Jopson protests, helplessly. “Please, don’t— it’s not his fault that I’m dying, sir.”
Crozier freezes, hand hovering above Jopson’s shoulder, almost touching him but not quite, and the distance is profound. After a moment, he responds, in an oddly gentle voice, “We’re all dying, Jopson.”
“I know, sir.” Jopson meets his gaze, slowly, and calls on all of his years of service to keep himself from flinching. “But I will be dead within the week. I do not have years, nor months—I have days, sir, and I don’t wish to burden you with my pain anymore.”
The gap closes, then, and Jopson jolts as Crozier’s strong, firm hand grips the crook of his neck. “You are not,” says Crozier, sternly, “a burden, nor have you ever been.” It is the closest thing to warmth that Jopson has felt in years.
“Captain,” Jopson breathes. “There is no version of this in which I survive. You know the scope of my injuries—”
Crozier winces, jerks his hand back, and turns away. “Don’t remind me,” he grumbles. The lash had not been in Crozier’s hand, and yet Jopson knows how the guilt is with him still, even as that night in the Antarctic feels so far away now.
“You know,” Jopson repeats, daringly. “At least spare me having to bleed myself dry before I can rest. I never ask for anything, sir, but now I’m asking you for this—please, let Doctor Peddie make it quick.” He pauses, then goes on when it becomes evident that Crozier does not intend to interrupt him. “And… and if you ration it properly, the… meat may carry you to Great Slave Lake after all.”
It takes a moment for Crozier to understand what he means; Jopson knows the second that understanding dawns, by the abject horror painting itself across Crozier’s face. “No,” he insists, hastily, and he takes a step back. Jopson does not go after him. “No, no, Jopson— I won’t allow it. Bad enough that you ask me to… speed your passing, but to… good Christ, you’re mad, I won’t hear any more of this, I forbid it.”
And for the first time in his life, Jopson disobeys a direct order from his captain.
“Sir,” Jopson says, softly. “You owe the men your best efforts to get them home. Truthfully, it’s no worse than eating one’s shoes. More appetizing, in fact, in my opinion. At this point, you must take advantage of every resource at your disposal, no matter how unpleasant. I apologize for speaking out of turn, but you know I speak honestly, and I’m begging you to hear me.”
Crozier is silent.
“It’s only meat,” Jopson finishes, gingerly. “You needn’t tell the men where it came from. It’s only meat, and it’s not as if any of us know for certain what sort of animal we’ve been eating out of those tins these past few years.”
Crozier continues to say nothing for a long moment, as he turns and drops his hands onto his desk, remaining standing but slumping forward to hide his face from Jopson’s sight. Time stretches on at an agonizing slow pace, until—
“Go,” Crozier croaks, hoarse and gruff and almost mournful, as if he is rising to speak at his best friend’s funeral and must hold himself back from weeping until he’s finished. “Go. And tell Doctor Peddie to… to do what he must.”
Jopson drops his chin in a nod that goes unseen and unacknowledged, and backs out of the tent.
The captain gives them use of a tent that has lain empty since its inhabitants fell prey to one illness or another; Jopson shares his own with two other men, and doesn’t wish to sully their space, nor Peddie’s, by making it his deathbed. Not that anybody would wholly mind—they’ve been dropping like flies since the lemon juice lost its effectiveness—but Jopson wants to maintain some sense of propriety in death. It’s the least that he can do for himself, out in this endless expanse of ice and nothing, where he will receive neither a Christian burial nor a funeral. The best that he can hope for is that Captain Crozier will ensure that his pay gets back to his family, when the survivors return to England.
And, he can have this—a small, private tent, sheltering him from the wind and weather, and providing for him the last semblance of comfort that he will ever have. He cannot see the sky, as he lays himself down on the cot, and that is something he takes solace in; he can pretend that he is somewhere else—anywhere else—and perhaps delude himself into being happy, so that in death he might at last remember how to smile.
Peddie does not speak, as he presses the glass into Jopson’s hand. He keeps his eyes down, but he can’t completely hide the sorrowful tinge to his expression, which he has worn in some regard since the passing of his assistant surgeon the previous year. However, it seems more poignant, now, and Jopson is momentarily touched that the unshakable doctor deems him someone worth mourning.
Jopson exhales, slowly, and his fingers remain steady as he accepts his fate with a growing numbness. He gives Peddie a nod, then knocks back the elixir in a single gulp. It tastes foul, and burns like cheap liquor on the way down; Jopson cannot stop himself from retching, and a hand falls on his shoulder, but he manages to keep it from coming back up. Panting, he slides his gaze back to the side and croaks, “Leave me. Please.”
Peddie ducks his head, murmurs, “Mr Jopson,” and backs out of the tent.
When Jopson was growing up, he had taken ill with food poisoning on multiple occasions; his family was poor, and their nourishment had often been subpar. That experience, of being laid up in bed feeling nauseous and in agony as his stomach twisted itself into knots, is the closest comparison Jopson has to how his body convulses now, though a shamefully inadequate one. He writhes, bile rising in his throat as he quakes and groans and struggles not to cry out for his mother like a child; he feels as if his organs are all attempting to turn themselves inside-out in the most excruciating manner, as if they’re dissolving into acid and tearing away at his flesh and bone, as if they are all shutting down one-by-one and letting him rot.
And then, all at once, his muscles give a great spasm, and it is finished.
The colour fades, slowly, from his body, bleaching his skin the same shade of grey as the shale, but even before the pink tone has left his cheeks, he is being split open; sawn, like the wooden planks that form Terror’s hull and Sir John’s coffin. His bones crack and give way, and he is glad that he is not alive to feel it.
His red streams back into the earth from whence it came, and eventually, he is nothing but white; nothing but a pale imitation of the spectacular kaleidoscope that glimmers off of the snow.