September 1901
Upernavik, Greenland
Reid’s body was kept in Dr. O’Regan’s surgery until it could be prepared for burial.
Daverley was held in the brig overnight, as per Captain Willingham’s orders. He had pleaded to stay with his nephew’s body, promising to do two nights in the brig in lieu. His request was denied, and so he asked for one of the others to stay with the body. No one had come forward.
Nicky dabbed her face with a towel, wincing when the fabric touched her lip. Blood globed on her lip, her cheekbone bloomed with bruises. Her ribs ached, but it seemed that none were cracked. When Lovejoy drove his fist into her belly, she’d vomited all over him, and he fled.
After she cleaned up the pool of bile on the floor she crept out of her cabin with a blanket and made her way through the dark hallway to the surgery. Inside, she found the boy’s body laid on the table where Dr. O’Regan had stitched the wound in her foot. Thomas, she remembered. That was his given name, the name that Dr. O’Regan had called him.
He was naked to the waist, his slim arms and bony shoulders luminous in the gleam of her lantern. His eyes had been closed, long black eyelashes against the delicate skin above his cheekbones, and his wound cleaned, though the bloodstain on his trousers remained.
She took his hand and found it was already hardening.
She found another bottle of pills in the apothecary cabinet and slipped one into her mouth. Then she sank down into the chair next to the boy’s body, the pain dissolving slowly.
Morag loved horses. Nicky had been a keen rider since she was a child, and so she took Morag as often as she could to ride the ponies at her uncle Hamish’s farm in Perth. The ponies were tame as house pets, following Morag around while she picked flowers in the meadow and allowing her to thread them in their manes. And on the streets of Dundee, she would stop by every carriage to greet the horses, asking her parents to lift her up so she could speak with them face to face.
It happened on a wet Tuesday night. She and Allan had ventured to Her Majesty’s Theater to see The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith. It had been difficult when Morag was born, and for many months she had not wanted to leave the house out of both exhaustion and a strange fear that crept in whenever she thought of speaking to people. But now it was their wedding anniversary, and Allan had surprised her with tickets that morning.
“You look braw, Mammy,” Morag had said from the doorway of her bedroom. She was clutching a teddy bear, her wet hair hanging in ringlets on her shoulders.
“Thank you, darling,” Nicky said, turning to view her dress from the side in the long mirror. She was wearing a forest-green velvet dress with a lace neckline, her corset pulled so tight she could barely breathe. Before Morag was born, the dress was loose at the hips, but now it sat tight. She could manage it, so long as she didn’t take long strides.
“Daddy and I are going to see a play,” Nicky said. “Remember we took you to see the puppet show at Carolina Port?”
Morag screwed up her face. “You’re going to see a puppet show?”
“No, but it’s like a puppet show. A bigger version of that. It’s on a stage and there’ll be lots of people there.”
Morag’s little face brightened. “I liked the puppet show. And the fireworks after. Will there be fireworks at your play?”
Nicky laughed. “No, I’m afraid not. It’s indoors.”
“So what?”
“The roof would be set on fire, darling.”
Morag’s blue eyes went wide. “That’s no’ good.”
Nicky fastened her pearl choker. “You promise you’ll go to bed for Mrs. Mackie?”
Morag gave a woeful sigh. “I promise.”
Nicky tugged up the skirt of her dress and knelt by Morag, dabbing her nose with the tip of her finger. “If you can’t sleep, remember what Daddy told you to do.”
“Think of horses jumping over a bale of hay and count them all.”
“Exactly.”
“Granny says I should count sheep, not horses.”
“You can count whatever you like.”
“I’ll count horses, then.”
Nicky leaned forward and kissed Morag on the cheek. Morag struggled to sleep in her own bedroom, plagued by dark imaginings and a curious mind that seemed to spark at nighttime, just like her father. “You be good for Mrs. Mackie, won’t you?”
“Yes, Mammy,” Morag said. Then: “Can I come to the play, too?”
“Sorry, love. It’s a play for adults. But if you like, I’ll take you to see a play for children. Would you like that?”
Morag nodded. “Yes, please.”
“Well, you have to promise that you’ll try very, very hard to go to sleep.”
Morag took a deep breath and gave a solemn nod. “I promise.”
She heard Allan answer the door to Mrs. Mackie downstairs and gave Morag another last peck on the cheek. “On you go, now.”
“Ready?” Allan said from the top of the stairs. Then, seeing her in the dress she’d not worn for years, he said, “Good God. Maybe we should just get a hotel room instead.”
She tutted. “There’s a good chance I wouldn’t be able to get the dress back on.”
He approached and kissed the patch of exposed skin between her ear and shoulder. “You smell like glory.”
“What on earth does glory smell like?”
“I have no idea. But I reckon it’s beautiful.”
She kissed him on the lips, leaving a trace of rouge. “Thank you.”
The theater was resplendent and heaving with crowds, the shimmering lights and the gold balconies a welcome relief from the days she had spent at home alone with Morag. Allan clasped her hand and smiled at her; he worked so hard lately, such long days in the mill, that she had wondered if they might ever get a chance to spend time together again. And here they were, laughing at the play, holding hands, both of them dressed in their finest clothing. She never wanted the night to end.
When the play finished, Allan suggested they take a carriage home. He seemed anxious. “We should relieve Mrs. Mackie,” he said. “She’ll be tiring, no doubt.”
Nicky felt crestfallen. She had one night and one night only to be her old self, to remember what it was like to be alone with her husband.
“Perhaps we might walk home?” she said. “Spend a little more time together?”
Allan hesitated, and she could see he was pained. But in a moment he nodded, and they took the path along the River Tay, admiring the lights on the water and the clear night sky. She felt light on her feet, and whatever had been bothering Allan had passed.
But as they turned into the main road near their home, she heard a commotion. In the dark, she could see that a carriage had toppled, and the crumpled heap at the side of the road was a horse lying dead. Nearby, the driver sat on a wall speaking to two policemen. As they drew closer, a howl pierced the air. A woman being taken into a police carriage. The wheels grinding across the cobbles.
“They’ve just taken her to the hospital,” one of the men said. “Awful scene.”
“Taken who away?” Allan asked.
The man nodded at the fallen horse, and Nicky saw that one of its legs had been broken. The teeth glinting in the light of the street lantern.
“The bairn,” he said. “Ran straight out in front of the carriage.”
Nicky felt a terrible chill race up her neck. “What bairn?”
“A lassie. Dashed out to see a firework. Driver couldnae do nothin’.”
As the police carriage passed by, Nicky saw that the figure inside was Mrs. Mackie. Her eyes turned to Allan, his expression changing to horror as he realized. And when he raced after them, calling Mrs. Mackie! Mrs. Mackie! she couldn’t bring herself to move. Didn’t want to think of whose bairn had been struck by the horse.
They found Morag at the hospital, her little head wrapped in bandages. Her eyes closed, her curls shorn. Bedclothes drawn up over her broken limbs. A nurse had placed a cloth doll in her arms and encouraged them to speak softly to her.
“She might still hear you,” she said.
Allan watched blankly, his face an open grave, as Nicky took her daughter’s hand in hers and pressed it to gently to her lips. They whispered to her, told her bedtime stories as though she were simply lying in her bed at home, preparing for sleep. They told her they loved her.
When she had drawn her last breath, they knew, the stillness of her chest and the parting of her lips signaling that she had passed away before them. But still they whispered, as though the words might call her back, back to the ones who loved her most.
The day of Thomas’s funeral, the crew gathered around the body. Like Collins, Thomas was wrapped in a sail and stitched tightly like a shroud, the last stitch through the nose to prevent the boy’s soul from following the ship.
“All hands bury the dead, ahoy!” Lovejoy shouted.
Nicky watched from the forecastle as the men placed cannonballs into either end of the fabric, before Daverley and Royle lowered the body on a wooden slab into the ocean. Daverley looked haunted, his face dark. None of the men spoke as the shrouded body sank quickly, the gray water opening as if to accept him, before healing again, no trace left. A different kind of grave.
Three men dead. The human toll of whaling would never be measured, but in death it was felt most keenly.
She thought of what Daverley said about Thomas’s soul being unable to rest if he was given a sea burial, how he might haunt the ship and seek revenge. She would have dismissed such a tale out of hand in the past, but her own secret, the wound that was somehow spreading up her leg, made her less skeptical. So she found herself turning to look behind the ship, studying the water there in case she might see Reid unfurled from the sail, angrily trying to catch them.
For a moment, she thought he would be justified. Perhaps, in his immortal form, the boy would have powers that would enable him to enact revenge on his killer. Lovejoy’s claim of acting in self-defense was a bitter pill to swallow; even Harrow had seemed reluctant to agree. It should have been Lovejoy in the brig, not Daverley. She hadn’t heard him speak a word since.
Her door was quiet for two nights afterward, and she felt relief at the men leaving her alone but also an overwhelming guilt at the cost of her peace. And she couldn’t help but feel that she had played a role in the boy’s death. Lovejoy had taunted Thomas by revealing his part in her capture; he had known that the boy would react.
Perhaps if she had not shown her dismay so nakedly, Thomas would not have lashed out the way he did. She had known, almost immediately, that Lovejoy’s divulgence was not out of any wish to share the truth with her of her misfortune, but to goad the boy. To rip apart the relationship he had formed with Nicky. Lovejoy was jealous of Thomas’s sea shanties, and his ability to write. He was jealous of the way he made Nicky laugh, at the way her face lit up instead of folding in disgust.
And that jealousy had cost Thomas his life.
Three days after Thomas’s funeral, a knock sounded on her door.
Cautiously, she opened the door just wide enough to let the amber light of the oil lantern in the hallway trickle inside. She had expected Lovejoy to be standing there, that vile grin on his face and his pale eyes running the length of her body. His fists ready to strike her if she displeased him.
Instead, she spotted the tall figure of Daverley. His shoulders were rounded and his eyes were dark. She reeled at his presence at her door, knowing what it meant.
She stepped back into her room, confused and saddened. She didn’t like Daverley, but she had thought him principled. But now that Reid was gone she expected he didn’t have to set an example. He was just like the others.
He closed the door behind him, the small room lit only by the candle that shivered on the sea chest next to her bed. She sat down, keeping her eyes fixed on him and her mouth closed. He remained standing, his eyes on the floor.
“Well?” she said when several moments had passed like that.
Slowly, he sank to the ground, his face twisted in pain. He drew his palms to his eyes. Around his wrist, she noticed the small bracelet made of rope that Reid had worn. Reid, she thought. He’s here because of Reid.
Slowly she moved to the floor and sat next to him. After a minute she slipped an arm across his shoulders, and he moved into an embrace, letting her hold him. When she was sure he wasn’t here for anything more than friendship, she sat on the bed and invited him to sit next to her. Then she lay down and held him, his arms around her, his tears dampening the sleeves of her dress.
“It’s my fault,” Daverley murmured.
“It’s not,” she said.
“He wouldn’t have been here if it weren’t for me.”
She felt the sting of recognition at his words, a painful memory unfolding of the time she and Allan had held each other like this on the floor of the house on Faulkner Street. The devastation of their daughter’s death should, perhaps, have drawn them together, but instead she found it housed Allan and her in two separate rooms, or in two different countries. She saw her daughter in Allan’s face, and found herself hating that he was alive and she was not. The pain of Morag’s death was a wound that drew across every inch of her heart, and she could not love while that wound was unhealed.
But, of course, it was an unhealable wound.
The pain Daverley held within, she knew well. It was still there, in her own body, as real and tangible as metal. Thomas’s loss would live within Daverley forever now, that much she knew. There was no use telling him otherwise.