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Daylight was dwindling when the Enterprise docked in Greenhithe. It had been five years since her passengers had last seen the city's skyline and they scarcely could find any familiarity to it. Greenhithe, looking back at these poor souls, would have been inclined to agree.
Although the docks had been full earlier in the day, a curious crowd eager to see Franklin's men returned from their trip on the other side of the world, on the other side of life itself, they were now empty of purposeless passerbys. Even the most inquisitive souls had been deterred by the cold November weather and the ship's delay.
The Enterprise had been forecast to arrive at midday but tumultuous winds and currents had meant she had to make a detour before she could reach English waters. Only families had remained, fathers, mothers, wives, siblings, and children, waiting to see returned to them the brave men who had left their arms in 1845. They would not clear the dock until the Enterprise’s sails were visible on the horizon.
There were antsy murmurs. They knew little of what had transpired in the Arctic. They simply knew Franklin’s expedition had been as well as presumed dead. Would have been, if Sir James Clark Ross had not come to look for them. Sir James Clark Ross who had left England with two ships and returned with only one, leaving the Investigator stuck in ice, as had been rumoured Terror and Erebus. It was hard to imagine ice like that in England. Ice solid enough to ensnare ships, to ensnare England’s adventurous spirit of exploration. Ice was the deadly machine against progress.
Although they had imagined, these families had not thought Death would disembark with the men. They had not thought each man would be wearing it so close to their ribs like a second skin. Haunted men. Gaunt men. Dead men.
They disembarked with the pace of slaves heading to the auction hall. Some were limping. Some had to be carried. Most were not as sick as they had been when Ross had found them. All were miracles. All were testaments. None were absolved.
In a pantomime of normalcy, they exited the ship in roster order. Captain Ross and Captain Crozier disembarked first. Two ladies moved from the crowd in staccato. They were mirrors of each other, in elegant day dresses and coiffed hair, one dark, one fair. The one with the dark hair moved first, walking up to the two men. She threw her arms around Captain Crozier’s neck. It was as scandalous as if she had kissed him and anyone who had been looking at them turned away.
Behind them, Commander Fitzjames walked off the ship, one arm slung under Lieutenant Le Vesconte's arm. Although custom would have wanted First Lieutenants to disembark before Second Lieutenants, Le Vesconte was excused by the sight of his leg, which stopped just below his knee and required using his Commander and long time friend as a crutch.
As it were, the only other alive Commander of the expedition had been promoted in absentia and was not aware of his new rank. Commander Little, resilient and stable as he'd been on the journey back to England, walked alone. He did not raise his head when the Coninghams welcomed a weakened Fitzjames into their arms, nor when Lieutenant Hodgson moved past him to reach his sister. He kept his face towards the ground, lest someone see the marks in his skin.
Men disembarked in fitful bursts. Marines and midshipmen were unconcerned by rank. Sergeant Tozer, although he had been given a new uniform aboard the Enterprise , was most undressed, in a shirt and his braces. He had declined the uniform, which had been oversized on his hollow frame. Of all men diminished, to those who'd known him, he'd been the most striking. Gone was the broad shouldered Marine, instead seemingly replaced with a frightened little boy. He did not shiver in his undershirt. He was used to the cold by now, they all were.
He walked to the end of the dock carried by muscle memory alone and stopped in front of a woman who'd been rousing two little girls from sleep. He did not hug any of them. That was not his wife, and they were not his daughters. Recognition and relief left place to grief as he exchanged words with the woman. She let out a single sob before gathering herself like strong women usually do.
Under the cover of night, tears were more easily forgiven. Sergeant Tozer is forgiven. His friend's widow guides him through the crowd, two little girls in tow. They don't understand yet but they will.
There is a guttural howl. It shocks the crowd and they part around it like startled birds. Commander Little has collapsed to the ground, body shaking as he sobs. He has just found out his mother died while he was gone. In a lifetime of grief, in the race of loss, everything always comes up Little. What is death to a man who has already died?
Although Field Lieutenant Jopson is standing the closest, he makes no move to assist Commander Little. He tightens his hand over his brother's shoulder and simply watches his fellow man's agony until Little's sister helps him up and ushers him away from prying eyes.
The last man to disembark sets foot on English soil like a relief. His brothers rush to him, overcome. They thought he had died when they hadn’t seen him with Ross’s doctors. The assistant surgeon looks through them. He does not believe in the order anymore. He is less than the lesser of men. Despite two brothers who excel in their professions and a future by their side, he will never work in the medical field again.
Only one person remains on the dock after the Enterprise has finished disembarking. She stands with a small child on her hip, looking around for a familiar face. Her name is Bridget, you see, and her husband isn’t here. Her husband isn’t on the list read out by Sir Ross and he isn’t on the ship. Her husband, she repeats in a soft Irish lull, her husband hasn’t come off the ship. No one helps her as she hails sailors under Ross’s roster and dock workers bustling about the Enterprise. They don’t like to look at grief too closely and she’d got nothing but on her face.
Finally, Captain Crozier steps away from his party and goes to her. Her face changes when she hears his accent and for a second, she believes. Her husband, Crozier tells her, did not die in the Arctic. Her husband has never left England. He looks at the boy on her hip, a small child, only as old as the expedition, with silent intelligent eyes. Her husband, he says, was murdered for a man to buy himself freedom and then hang for it, left to sink under the murky waters of Regent’s Canal.
Of all the dead men on the Expedition, Cornelius Hickey is the only one who has received the burial of a sailor. The water swallows his name quietly. History washes out Crozier’s name. The empire deifies Franklin’s.
No one remembers Lady Silence. No one carries her name. She is finally anonymised, returned to the Arctic. Free of these men.