Blood and Ice Page 5

  While Darryl unpacked, Michael dug out one of his digital cameras- the Canon S80, good for down-and-dirty wide-angle shots-and went up on deck. The Constellation had left the dock, and was passing slowly southeast down the Beagle Channel, named after HMS Beagle, the very ship that had carried Charles Darwin into those waters in 1834. The air temperature wasn't bad, maybe thirty-six or thirty-seven degrees, and since the ship was still in a relatively protected waterway, the wind was mild. Michael was able to get off a few shots without worrying about gloves and without his fingers going numb. He probably wouldn't be using these for the piece anyway, but he always liked to have a few photos recording every important phase of his trip. He used them as memory aids when it came to the writing part, and it never failed to surprise him that something he remembered one way would show up quite differently when he looked at the photos. The mind could play a lot of tricks on you, he had learned.

  The port had slipped into the distance, and the coastline was dusted with a pale green cover of moss and lichen. Patagonian Indians had once populated the wind-ravaged country, and when Ferdinand Magellan, searching for a sheltered westward route in 1520, had seen their burning campfires dotting the barren hills and shore, he had dubbed it Tierra del Fuego, or “The Land of Fire.” There was nothing fiery, or warm, about it now, and certainly no sign of the original Patagonians; they had been decimated by disease and the usurpation of their home by the European explorers. The only signs of life that Michael could see onshore were flocks of snowy petrels, darting among the scoured cliffsides, tending their nests and feeding their young. When his fingers got too cold to handle the camera anymore, he tucked it back in his parka, zipped the pocket closed, and simply leaned over the rail.

  The water below was a hard, dark blue, and broke from the sides of the ship in a constant curling motion. Michael had been reading up on the Antarctic ever since getting the assignment from Gillespie, and he knew that this ice-free water wouldn't last long. As soon as they left the channel and entered the Drake Passage-and Cape Horn-the sea would become the roughest on earth. Even now, in the southern hemisphere's summer, icebergs would pose a constant threat. He was actually looking forward to their appearance. Photographing bergs and glaciers, bringing out the delicate hues that ranged from a blinding white to a deep lavender, was an artistic and technical challenge of the first order. And Michael liked a challenge.

  He'd been standing there for some time before he became aware of a fellow passenger also at the rail-a black woman with braided hair, bundled up in a long, green down coat. He wondered how long she'd been there. She was maybe twenty feet away, and fumbling with her own camera. From where he stood, Michael thought it looked like a Nikon 35 mm. She was aiming at the water-a couple of sea lions had just popped up, their sleek black heads glistening like bowling balls-and Michael called out, “Not easy from a moving boat, is it?”

  She looked over. She had a broad face with high cheekbones and arched brows. “It's never easy,” she said. “I don't even know why I try.”

  With one hand on the rail for balance-the sea was fairly calm, but the boat still rolled on the swells-Michael strolled over.

  “You must be the photographer we've been waiting for,” she said.

  “I am.” He was starting to feel like the class problem. “And you must be the doctor who got here ahead of time.”

  “Yeah, well, when you're coming from the Midwest, you make the connections you can.”

  They introduced themselves, and Michael glanced at her camera. “You're using film,” he said.

  “I've had this camera for ten years, and I've used it maybe twice. What's wrong with film?”

  “Right now, it'll be okay. But when the polar weather really hits, you can run into some problems. Film cracks pretty easily in extreme cold.”

  She looked at the camera in her hand as if it had betrayed her. “I only brought it ‘cause my mom and my sister said I had to bring back pictures.” Then she brightened. “Maybe I can just borrow some of yours. They'll never know.”

  “Help yourself.”

  The sea lions bleated, then ducked their heads back under the waves.

  “You work for the National Science Foundation?” Michael asked.

  “I do now,” she said. “I've got a ton of medical-school loans to pay off.”

  Michael guessed that she couldn't have been out of med school more than five or six years.

  “Plus, the hospital I work for in Chicago is under active investigation by about six different agencies. I thought it might be a good time to get away.”

  “To the Antarctic?” Michael was already making mental notes, thinking she'd be a great character in the Eco-Travel piece.

  “You know what they pay for anybody crazy enough to sign up for a six-month stint?” A gust of wind suddenly kicked up, blowing the braids of her hair, some of them streaked with a hint of blond, back over her shoulders. “I can tell you this-it sure beats working in the ER. In fact, I heard about this gig from a friend there, who did it himself about a year ago.”

  “And he lived to tell the tale?”

  “He said it changed his life.”

  “Is that what you're looking to do?” Michael said. “Change your life?”

  She pulled back a bit, and paused. “No, I'm pretty happy with my life so far.” But she looked at him a bit warily. “You sure seem curious.”

  “Sorry,” he said, “bad habit. It goes with the job.”

  “Photographer?”

  “I'm a writer, too, I'm afraid.”

  “Okay, then-at least I know what I'm up against. But let's take it slow. We've got a whole lot of time, I think, to get acquainted.”

  “You're right,” he said, thinking to himself that his interviewing technique might have gotten a bit rusty. “Why don't we just go back to the photo tips and start over?”

  He quickly ran down a few pointers for her on taking photographs at sea, especially in the peculiar light so far south, then headed back to his cabin. Take your time, he reminded himself, let your subjects open up on their own. At the door to his cabin, he remembered that he'd been told to dress appropriately for dinner, and he knew he'd have to dig out his least wrinkled flannel shirt, slip it under the mattress, and lie down on it for a while.

  CHAPTER SIX

  June 20, 1854, 6 p.m.

  It would have been an altogether typical night for Sinclair Archibald Copley, lieutenant in the 17th Lancers, had it not concluded in such an unforeseen way.

  It began about six, with several rounds of ecarte in the barracks, at which Sinclair lost the sum of twenty pounds. His father, the fourth Earl of Hawton, would not be pleased at another request for funds-he had sworn, after buying Sinclair the army commission, that he would offer no more help. But rather than suffer any damage to the family name, he had already quietly settled an outstanding bill with Sinclair's tailor, then another with the Oriental proprietor of a dubious establishment in Bluegate-fields, where Sinclair had indulged in what the earl decried as “depraved behavior.” He could hardly refuse one more small request, certainly not from a son who might well be dispatched any day to fight the Russians in the Crimea.

  “What would you say to dinner at my club?” Rutherford asked, raking in his winnings. “As my guests, of course.”

  “That's the least you can do,” said Le Maitre, the other loser for the night. Because of his surname, he was known to his friends as Frenchie. “It's my money you'll be spending.”

  “Now, now,” Rutherford said, stroking his extravagant side-whiskers, “let's not quarrel about it. What do you say, Sinclair?”

  Sinclair wasn't eager to go to the Athenaeum just then, either. He had a small indebtedness to several of the members there, too. “I'd prefer the Turtle.”

  “The Turtle it is, then,” Rutherford said, lumbering up from his chair-they had all done a fair amount of drinking while gambling-”and perhaps a late visit to Mme. Eugenie?” He winked broadly at Sinclair and Le Maitre, while stuffing the
ir pound notes into the pocket of his scarlet pelisse. He was in a good mood, and rightly so.

  The three of them careened out into Oxford Street, sending several civilians scurrying out of their way, and splashed through the muddy London thoroughfares. At the corner of Harley Street, where a Miss Florence Nightingale had recently founded a hospital for indigent gentlewomen, Sinclair stopped to watch as a pretty young woman in a white bonnet leaned out to close the shutters on a third-story window. She saw him, too-his epaulettes and gold buttons gleamed in the dusk-and he smiled up at her. She ducked her head back inside, and the shutters closed, but not before he thought he'd seen her smile back.

  “Come along!” Rutherford cried from down the street. “I'm famished.”

  Sinclair caught up to his companions, and together they made their way to the beckoning globe of the Turtle tavern. A wooden placard, depicting a bright green turtle standing, improbably enough, on his hind legs, swung over the door, and Sinclair could hear the roar of many voices and the clattering of cups and cutlery from inside.

  The door banged open as a fat man in a top hat spilled out, and Rutherford held it wide for Sinclair and Le Maitre to enter.

  Long trestle tables ran the length of the low-ceilinged room, and a crackling fire burned in the vast stone hearth. Waiters in grease-spattered vests moved among the diners with platters of roasted chicken and slabs of bloody roast beef. Customers banged empty beer mugs on the wooden tabletops to signal the need for replenishment. But Sinclair was neither hungry nor thirsty.

  “Rutherford, give me back a fiver.”

  “What for? I already said I'm buying.”

  “I'm going out back.”

  Nearly all the taverns had a fighting pit out back, but the Turtle's was especially well attended. With a bit of luck, Sinclair would be able to win back what he'd lost at cards.

  “You're incorrigible,” Rutherford replied, while obligingly providing the five-pound note.

  “I'll join you,” Le Maitre said, and Rutherford looked shocked.

  “You're leaving me to dine alone?”

  “Not for long,” Sinclair said, as he drew Le Maitre by the arm toward the rear door of the tavern. “We'll be back with our winnings.”

  Behind the tavern there was a filthy alley, littered with bones and offal, and beyond that an old stable that had been converted to gaming use. It was insufferably warm and fetid inside; gas lamps burned from iron stanchions, illuminating the mob that crowded around the fighting pit-a square about fifteen feet on each side, and perhaps four feet deep.

  The pit boss, bare-chested and sporting a tattoo of the Union Jack across his back, was standing in its center, announcing the next bout. The sand in the floor of the pit was wet with blood and spittle and littered with scraps of mangled fur.

  “We got Duke, a black and tan,” he shouted, “and we got Whitey! If you will make way, gentlemen, you will be afforded the opportunity of seeing these fine beasts before placing your wagers!”

  The crowd parted, opening crooked avenues for two men with pit bulls on short chains, their muzzles tied with rope. The dogs strained ferociously at their leashes as they moved toward the lip of the pit, and it was all their masters could do to keep them from leaping inside, or going after each other.

  “Duke, he hails from Rosemary Lane,” the boss announced, “and Whitey, why Whitey's the pride of Ludgate Hill. Two fine champions, gentlemen, and a right even match. So place your bets!” he cried out. “Place your bets, if you please!”

  He stepped up out of the pit and rolled a barrel to its rim.

  “Have you seen either of them fight?” Frenchie asked, leaning close to Sinclair's ear to be heard over the crowd.

  “Yes, I've won on Whitey,” Sinclair replied, while raising his hand to a passing bookmaker. “Five on Whitey!”

  “Make it ten!” Frenchie threw in.

  The bookmaker tipped his cap-as they were clearly gentlemen, he would not insist on the cash in advance-and turned to an old drunk pulling at his sleeve.

  “Last call, gentlemen,” the boss called out as he pounded a fist on the closed barrel at the rim of the pit. “Place all bets!”

  There was a sudden flurry of cries and raised hands as the dogs’ masters removed the ropes from their muzzles. The dogs barked furiously, foam flying from their lips. Then a bell rang, the pit boss shouted, “All done!” and everyone's eyes turned toward the barrel. The boss yanked off its lid, and with his foot tipped it over.

  A swarm of rats, black and brown and gray, tumbled out and fell in a frenzied torrent into the pit. They righted themselves quickly and ran in all directions, some nipping at each other, others scrabbling at the wooden boards that lined the pit. Several actually managed to leap out, but the laughing gamblers booted them back in again.

  The dogs went into a frenzy at the sight of the rats, and their masters had no sooner unhooked the leads than the dogs sailed into the pit, jaws snarling and claws bared. The white one was the first to make a kill, grabbing a fat gray rat and biting clear through it.

  Sinclair clenched a fist in triumph, and Frenchie shouted, “Good work, Whitey!”

  Duke, the black and tan, quickly evened the score, shaking a brown one like a rag until its head flew off. The rats scurried to the sides of the pit, clambering over each other's backs in their rush to escape. Whitey lunged at the one on top of a pile and tossed it into the air. The rat landed on its back and before it could turn over Whitey had lunged for its belly and ripped it open with one swipe.

  There was a huzzah from Whitey's supporters in the crowd.

  And so it went for the full five minutes. Blood and bone and bits of rat flew everywhere-Sinclair always made it a point to stand well back so that his uniform would remain unmarred-but at some point Whitey seemed to lose his enthusiasm for the kill and decided to eat his prey. That was not good training, Sinclair thought; while the dog should be kept hungry before a bout, enough to keep its instinct for blood alive, it should not be so starved that it stopped to consume the quarry.

  “Get up, Whitey!” Frenchie shouted, as did many others, but the dog remained on all fours munching the dead rodents scattered around its paws. Duke, meanwhile, continued about his grim business.

  Sinclair could see his money evaporating even before the bell rang and the boss called out “Time, gentlemen!” The dogs’ masters leapt into the pit, landing between the dogs and among the few maimed rats still crawling about, half-alive.

  The pit boss looked to his fellow judge-a dirt-covered urchin holding the brass bell-and announced, “It's Duke, gentlemen! Duke of Rosemary Lane has carried the day with a baker's dozen.”

  There was a happy clamor from Duke's supporters, and the passing of notes and coins among the mob. The bookmaker in the cap appeared before Sinclair, who grudgingly handed him the fiver. Frenchie did the same.

  “Won't Rutherford gloat,” Le Maitre said.

  Sinclair knew he was right, but he had already put the loss out of mind. It was always best not to dwell on misfortune. And his thoughts, as it happened, had already turned in a decidedly more pleasant direction. As he joined the raucous throng heading back to the tavern, he was thinking of that fetching young woman he'd seen, in the crisp white bonnet, closing the hospital shutters.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  November 30

  For days the sky had been filled with a swirling cloud of birds, following the Constellation as it headed south toward the Antarctic Circle. And Michael had set up his monopod-a Manfrotto with a trigger grip for quick, automatic adjustment-on the flying bridge to get as many good shots of them as he could. In his cabin at night, he'd been reading up on them, too, so he'd know what he was looking at.

  Now-even if it didn't make them any easier to catch in flight-he could at least begin to tell them apart.

  Nearly all of the birds were tube-nosed, with bills that contained salt-excreting glands, so that didn't help much. Nor did their color scheme, which was almost unrelievedly black and white. But t
he different species did exhibit unique flight patterns and telltale feeding methods, and that made the job a bit easier.

  The diving petrels, for instance, were small and chubby, and shot above the sea with fast-beating wings, punctuated by short glides; often they went right through the crest of a wave, before plunging down to capture a bit of krill.

  The pintado petrels danced with their webbed feet across the top of the water itself.

  The southern fulmars, gunmetal gray, would allow themselves to stall in the wind, then fold their feet and drop, head last, into the sea, like a scaredy-cat jumping off a high dive.

  The Antarctic prions plowed through the surf using their broad, laminated bills like shovels, filtering plankton from the water. Their cousins-the narrow-billed prions-flew more languidly, leaning down to pluck nimbly the occasional prey from the top few centimeters of the sea.

  The snowy white petrels-the hardest to see against the foam and spray of the turbulent ocean-caromed around like pinballs, darting this way and that, their sharp little wings even touching the icy water to gauge the shape and drift of the swells.

  But the king of them all-soaring on high like a ruler calmly surveying his realm-was the wandering albatross, the largest of all the seabirds. Even as Michael rooted around in his waterproof supply bag for a new lens, one of them had roosted on the helicopter tarp on the lower deck, and several more were keeping time with the ship, flying at the height of the bridge. Michael had never seen any creature travel with such beauty and economy of motion. With a wingspan of over three meters, the ashy white birds-with bright pink beaks and blackened brows-barely seemed to exert themselves at all. Their wings, Michael had learned, were a miracle of aerodynamic design, feeling every tiny shift in the wind and instantly adjusting an entire suite of muscles to alter the angle and sweep of each individual feather. The bones themselves weighed almost nothing, as they were partially filled with air. Apart from the brief spells when an albatross might alight to nest or mate on an Antarctic island, the bird lived its whole life in the air, borrowing the power of the changeable winds and using it, through some prodigious feat of navigation, to circle the entire globe, again and again.