The Governor assembled the council in order to deliberate with them some matters concerning the affairs of the colony, among them the question of how the reconnaissance expedition most graciously commanded by His Majesty over the ice to the Eastern Settlement could and would be carried out.
FROM HANS EGEDE’S JOURNAL, MARCH 1729
Now plainly the spring is on its way. I breathe in the air and peer up at the sky which is patched with blue and white. I stroll in the colony harbour with my hands behind my back while humming an indeterminable melody that has come fluttering to me in the night. The tails of my coat wave in the damp flurries and I shiver. Yet in the lull between gusts, and when the sun peeps down upon me, as cautiously as I squint upwards at it, the weather feels almost warm. I am inspecting the buildings, part of the surveying work I am to perform for the Chancellery. I oversaw their construction what feels like years ago now, though barely more than six months have passed, issuing instructions as to length, breadth and height, how the space inside was to be divided, where the stoves were to be placed, and so on. I feel they are my buildings. I feel tenderness for them, more than for the people who inhabit them. They are constructed of peat and timber and stone. There is an animal shed where the goats and sheep and the two surviving horses dwell. There is a blubber house we have still to make ready for production, though for the time being it is used as a bath house and for storage. It is the colony’s smallest structure, only eleven alens in length. It stands at the top of my list of jobs to be started now that the winter has begun to loosen its grip and those whose time it was to die now seem to have done so. Death keeps its own ledger. If the colony is to have any reason for being, we must soon be productive. Next to the blubber house is the bakery, twenty alens. Then a timber house, twelve alens, for storage. A small village, in every respect, and it is mine.
They call me Fox. I suppose it is because of my slanting eyes, inherited from my mother’s family, and my red hair, from my father’s side. I think there was Finnish blood in her veins, my mother. Or perhaps it is because I am sly. My name is Johan Seckman Fleischer, and I am Paymaster of the colony.
I am twenty-eight years old and deaf in my right ear. It happened in a skirmish in Moss when a cannon recoiled and knocked me out. Presently, the hearing returned to my left ear, though I am still tormented by bells that ring and hymnal tones, some days loud, others barely audible. Occasionally I will hear the sound of what I take to be musket balls flying through the air, which makes me cower even after all these years. When people address me I turn my good ear to them, though sometimes the poor one, depending on whether I can be bothered with them, and then they think I’m having them on. They say I mock them with the way I peer at them. But it’s all because of this bad ear. Well, perhaps there is something of the mocking bird about me, but only because of that bloody cannon that has made me half deaf.
I was born on 15 September at the manor house Dragsholm on Sjælland. The manor lies near the bay of Nekselø. My father was Captain Herman Reinholdt Fleischer. He took part in the battle of Gadebusch, or the Gadebusch slaughter as some people call it. A ridiculous war if ever there was one. The Swedes won. My father died. He took a Swedish bullet and it did away with him. I was ten years old. The path that led me here has been long and winding. I prefer not to talk about it, though I will say that something happened in the early spring of 1728. It happened, of course, because I wanted it to happen, or wanted something to happen, whatever it might be. At a dinner party held at his home by the assessor Baltzer Seckman, my foster-father, I ran into an old friend of mine, Jørgen Landorph, a lieutenant with whom I had previously attended the naval college. He told me of Greenland, of the new colony where he was to be Commandant, and that they were looking to appoint a merchant. I knew nothing about Greenland, had already dabbled unsuccessfully in trade, and to take on a position as colonial Trader would moreover clearly be a step backwards in my career, so I asked him directly: When do we leave?
Two days later we met at a drinking house in Vestergade with two other friends from the naval college, Jesper Reichardt, who was to be first officer of one of the ships that was to make the journey up, and Ole Lange, who had abandoned the military and become a priest, of all things. We drank ourselves senseless and enjoyed a splendid evening with women and music, and polsk dancing. And thus do men make merry, rolling themselves in the dirt, when they know they have frittered away their lives, and I who was never even a one for the ladies.
I was admitted to the King. I had seen him once before, ten years earlier. He had become elderly, though remained quite spritely and with all his faculties, friendly and hospitable, albeit with the peculiar bashfulness for which he is known, even before ordinary citizens, peasants even, and humble folk, which causes his speech to race away with him, reducing him often to stutters and giggles. The King informed me that I was not to be Trader, but Paymaster. Another step down the ladder. Still, I accepted the position. The King himself was offering it to me, and I’d already lain awake several nights in succession imagining a life in Greenland, so I could hardly decline. Indeed, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty. And I bowed and touched my forelocks as I withdrew backwards out through the door.
The Assessor, my guardian, was of course horrified. He didn’t shout, but spoke sternly, though in the thinnest, most wizened of voices: Have you, without my knowledge and permission, taken on a subordinate position, in the colonies? Do you realize that you are consigning a career in law to the midden? What would your dear deceased father . . . etc.
And so it was that I left it all behind. Farewell.
The colony in which I arrived was moreover not a proper colony at all, the land barely land at all but a strip of rugged coast between the sea and the ice, with a garrison that was not a garrison, and no fortification either, though such had been planned, a governor who was governor in name only, for what was he supposed to govern? And with friends who were friends no longer, for the closer we were lumped together the more we drifted apart. Reichardt returned home. Lange went about in his black cassock and immersed himself in his missionary work along with the other young priest, Miltzov, who however spends more time drinking than he does on the Scriptures. Landorph seemed mostly intent on making life difficult for the governor, though Pors was as much to blame himself.
Life is strange. So why should I not cock my head and play the mocking bird? Or should I weep instead? Is laughter not but tears that change their mind at the last minute? Sometimes, at least, it can be hard to tell the difference.
I think about a person’s personality and character. Is it, I wonder, the case that such things are attached to place, by which I mean geographical location? And can a person then be shipped out from one personality, transported away from it in the direction of another and thereby, in short, become a different person? I see it in my old friends. They are scarcely recognizable after they came here to this land. Has the same thing happened to me? Have I become another? And would it be a good thing, I wonder?
It could be said that death was on my side this winter. For as resources and materials for the construction of the buildings meant for storage and production dwindled, the need for them too diminished as the numbers of the living fell. Death worked its way up from the bottom, as always. First it raged in the crew house, where the great majority, forty-five in all, succumbed, the former convicts, then the enlisted men and the non-commissioned officers, then the tradesmen, the servants and domestics, the attendants. Some two score remain, counting everyone, a suitable number for a colony this size. A good thing we began with so many, or else there would be no one left. We are but fodder for Death. How it had been supposed we could feed five score full-grown adults in a wilderness such as this is more than I can fathom. Even now with our numbers decimated, we have only just enough to scrape by. However, things have a way of levelling out. My inspection duties include keeping a record of the crew’s daily consumption. I myself have set the weekly menu. It looks like this:
WEEKLY MENU, COLONY OF GODTHÅB:
| Mid-day | Evening | |
| Sunday: | Pork-meat and pease porridge | Pork-meat and pease porridge |
| Monday: | Grain porridge and herring | Flour porridge |
| Tuesday: | Pease porridge and salmon | Pease porridge and salmon |
| Wednesday: | Grain porridge and herring | Flour porridge |
| Thursday: | Pease porridge and dried fish | Pease porridge and stockfish |
| Friday: | Grain porridge and cheese | Flour porridge |
| Saturday: | Grain porridge and herring | Flour porridge |
Moreover per person: 3 jugs of ale per day and one fifth of a pot of aquavit per week.
The warehouse. Something smells rotten, puh! I rummage in the dark to find out what it is. A foodstuff gone bad can contaminate all else around it. I may be half deaf, but my sense of smell is keen. There. I pick up a sack and my hand feels something wet and slimy. What can it be? Urgh, how vile! The corpse of a child. One of the old tarts in the crew house must have given birth on the sly and got rid of it here in the winter. With the thaw these past days, decomposition has quickly set in. Now I suppose there will be proceedings, a hanging perhaps. But then the unfortunate child-murderer is most likely already dead.
I open the door wide to let the light and then cut open the sack. Who knows how long it’s been lying here frozen. But that which once housed a human soul, a crying, blabbering child, can scarcely be discerned in these skin-covered bones. I prod it with the toe of my boot. The lump still sticks to the sacking, which comes with it when I turn it on its side. The stench assails me. I bend forward while holding my nose. Clear signs of strangling. I feel a rage well inside me at such a despicable deed and hope the woman will still be alive, that I might have the pleasure of seeing her dangle from the gallows.
I go outside and call two men to me who are sitting on a rock in the sunshine. A job for you in the warehouse!
They look up at me, dull and listless. Their cheeks are sunken after the physician extracted their teeth.
Do you hear me?
Without enquiry, they stand up laboriously, holding onto each other for support like a pair of old men, before trudging over to the warehouse.
Take this to Lieutenant Landorph, I tell them. And give him my best regards, I shout after them as they go.
The melody returns to me. I listen to my humming. What is it now? Something my mother once sang to me? Detached words and rhymes, the faintest of echoes, Agnes, O Agnes, dear daughter of mine. Yes, that rings a bell. But how does it go then? Where e’er hast thou been in all this long time? Splendid, I remember! It’s coming back to me now, the whole song, so many verses, but I remember them nearly all. To think, there they’ve lain, coiled inside my mind, and all it takes is to pull on one end, like a cord, and the whole song unravels. On Højelands Bridge maid Agnes did stand . . . up came a Merman and reached out his hand – ha ha!
How amusing, that old nursery ballad. It must be at least twenty years since I heard it last. Agnes, O Agnes, to the sea come with me, thy children so fair await us with glee . . .
A peculiar song indeed, on reflection. But of course I never thought about it like that at the time. I was afraid of the Merman though, forever afraid, whenever it was time to sleep, whenever I was at the sea, or wandering by the stream. I would think he was going to pop up and reach out for me, and pull me down into the water with him.
I am the one they call Fox, and I think about my life as I walk up the muddy bank, past the crew house that seems almost on the verge of collapse after the ravages of winter, on to the squelchy peatland where I stand a while and feel the wind and the sun on my face. I remind myself that I must not cross the peatland but walk around it. To cross it would be a poor idea indeed. A man will sink into his knees, then to his waist, and I am in no doubt that he could also drown and be for ever consigned to the bog if he should venture so far. Sooner or later we shall have to drain it. It would give us new land in one fell swoop. We could build a whole town. What should we call it? Something including Fleischer, perhaps? But no, more like something royal, I imagine. Fleischer the Fox is not destined to be commemorated in the name of any town.
I sit down on the rocks between the moor and the colony, take my pipe from my pocket and puff some tobacco. Again, reminiscences of childhood, nursery songs. I rarely think of my childhood, more of my time in the army, and the time I spent in Copenhagen. But childhood, why should a person think of it at all? Why now? Is it because I am to die? I have heard it said that those early years return to a person when death is on its way.
Someone must have seen me, for I can hear my name be called. The Lieutenant, of course. There he is. Forever dashing about like he has a firework up his arse. Can a man not sit in peace for a minute in the sunshine? He calls again, and I can see him quite clearly, Landorph, standing there gazing up towards me. Too late, then, to hide. How annoying! Nothing for it now but to climb down again. Most likely it’s nothing that couldn’t wait either. The Lieutenant likes to keep people busy.
He calls again, and I acquiesce. I put the pipe back into my pocket and climb down the steep, though rather low, rocks which are wet and slippery with meltwater. At the governor’s residence Landorph stands waiting with his hands at his sides.
Was it you who found the child?
The body, yes. It was the smell that led me to it. I touch the side of my nose with my finger. Will there be an investigation, Jørgen?
There is no body, says Landorph and studies me to gauge my reaction.
But there is, I saw it with my own eyes.
No, there is no body. The child is alive.
I am startled. It was dead when I found it.
Not any more. It’s a boy.
For a moment I feel quite dizzy. It was a corpse, it was a festering mess.
Yes, he was certainly rather filthy. But apart from that he seems to be all right.
Well, I’ll be . . .
The strangest things can happen, says Landorph.
Do you know who the mother is?
We’ll find out soon enough.
There can’t be that many left who are even capable of childbirth.
A couple at most. Although it could be one of the women who died last week.
How many were there?
Two, no more.
And what about the Governor’s housekeeper? She strikes me as the type who could throttle her offspring.
The jomfru Titia is still as abundant as a fully laden schooner. Unfortunately. There’s Sise Petticoat as well, but she’s still pregnant too.
What are we supposed to do with a foundling?
The child has been taken to Madame Egede. She has only just lost one of her foster-children, poisoned by the old man’s chemicals. I don’t doubt she’ll be glad of another to take care of.
Yes, our Gertrud is a good person, I say, and sincerely too.
Perhaps the only one in this whole land, Landorph concurs.
I will go and see the child, I tell him. I can hardly believe it was alive.
Indeed, I am quite unable to grasp that the filthy rotten corpse I discovered could possibly have been living. I must see it with my own eyes.
I go around the side of the governor’s residence, to where the priest lives. I knock on the door and go inside. The place is quiet apart from a clock that ticks. The Egede family are gathered at the other end of the parlour, Egede himself and his son and foster-son standing with their backs towards me, the two girls kneeling on the floor. The Madame is seated in a chair. It is she to whom their attention is directed, or rather the bundle she holds in her arms.
Peace of God, I say, stepping closer over the creaking floorboards.
Egede glances at me over his shoulder and waves me on. Come and see, he whispers. A veritable wonder of the Lord.
Now I can see. The child has been washed and swathed in clean linen. The Madame is feeding it with milk from a bottle whose neck she has plugged with a switch of fabric. The child is very pale and its eyes are closed. But I can see the way it trembles as the Madame brushes its cheek with the bottle, its mouth searching for the teat. The nursery song appears in my mind again, yet now it seems wicked and taunting. He covered her mouth, that she could not speak, took her to the bed of the sea so deep. I clear my throat.
Ah, there he is, I say as if the child were my own and I have been looking for him.
Yes, he lives, says Egede. He wished not to die.
Großartig, I say.
The first viable child to be born here, Egede says. A little nourishment and he will be fine, I’m sure.
Yes, he’ll need some, to be sure, I say. And we still don’t know who the mother is? One of the natives, perhaps?
No, the boy is a Dane. No doubt the mother is already among the dead. I have spoken to Kieding. He thinks he knows who it might be, one of the women from the Spinning House gaol.
The son of a whore, I think to myself, but say instead: Presumably there is a father too?
He has departed this life long since.
I leave the Egede family to themselves, they look like a tableau, a nativity scene, and walk up to the moor again, though this time I continue in a southerly direction. I want to go to the inlet where the ship lies anchored for the winter. I have walked here many times before, but this is the first time since the snow has gone from the ground. It is wonderful to walk again, to stretch the limbs and feel oneself to be free in the wilds of this land and beneath such a great infinity of blue. There are sparrows everywhere. They must have arrived here only recently. They flit about and busy themselves with their sparrowy pursuits. How old can a sparrow be, I wonder? Hardly more than five or six years. Born on the very thresholds of death. They have much to do, and all at once, and are obviously keenly aware of the fact, though it does not seem to worry them. Migratory birds. So much time they spend flying back and forth. Like a ship’s voyage of ten years or more. Gulls and ravens and grouse, sedentary birds, are idler altogether. They live longer too, so I imagine. More time to pass. What is best? I will soon be thirty. How many more years can I expect? Hear me, O Agnes, I say to thee now. Wings beat in the air that surrounds me, I place my feet tentatively on the sods before transferring my entire weight, sensing myself to be slightly sinking, the bogwater gurgling up, and then I lift my foot once more with a squelch before my sock is soaked. One has to keep moving, or else one will be sucked down.
Parallel ridges of rock run towards the fjord. Between them lies a flat, open bed a couple of hundred alens in width. My eye sees peat-huts and skin tents at the shore below. Thin spirals of smoke rise from the holes in the roofs. These people too are migratory, for never do they stay in one place for any length of time. But now they are here. Might I pay them a visit? I have never spoken to a native apart from those who are naturalized and work in the colony, pitiful, pipe-smoking individuals in threadbare woollens, breeches of linen and worn-down military boots passed on from the dead.
At once a man stands before me, a native, as if risen out of the ground. He gives me a fright. The shock of finding the dead child, who nevertheless was alive, is in me still. Or perhaps it is that dreadful song. But the man smiles kindly and speaks to me. He turns and makes his way down towards one of the tents, glancing back at me as he goes.
Inside the tent, where perhaps a score of half-naked natives sit, mostly women and children, someone places a tin plate of meat in front of me. I eat heartily.
I look across at the man who invited me in. Where are you all from? I ask.
The man leans forward and studies me.
From the north? I point in the direction.
Now he understands. Kujalleq, he says, and points too.
From the south, I understand.
He jabs a finger at me.
Copenhagen, I say.
He nods. He has understood. Kunngi, he says.
Indeed. The King’s city.
Guuti? he says. Palasi?
No, no. I laugh and shake my head. I am not a priest. Paymaster. A kind of merchant. Trade. I rub my fingers together.
Niiverneq, says the man.
In the summer, you and I, nivernek, I say.
Puisi, he says. Seal? Orsoq. Blubber, yes?
A pleasure, I tell him. Narwhal tusk. Whale. I try to illustrate.
The native shakes his head. He makes wave movements with his hand, angling his other hand against it. Schip.
Ship, I say.
He nods. Vaalfis.
I don’t understand. What ship?
Vaalfis. He gestures towards the sea, then splays his fingers, counting them one by one.
Many ships? I say. Ah, I see. Whalers?
He twists his face into a grimace, puts his hands to his temples and furrows his brow. Qallunaat! Laughter ripples through the tent.
Europeans? Dutchmen? Ah, Dutch whalers. Now I see. The man has been speaking Dutch to me. Do you trade with the Dutchmen? Has Mr Egede not forbidden it?
The man smiles and produces a knife. I study it. It is from Europe, a cheap sailor’s knife, though probably of value to the natives. Then he finds a box and opens it. Inside are a number of sewing needles of various sizes.
I understand, I tell him. Money. But our king has now taken over the trade in your country. He does not wish for you to deal with the Dutchmen. The man considers me intently. I draw a sweeping gesture. Dutchmen no more, kradlunat?
The savage raises his eyebrows, whatever it may mean. He looks rather sceptical. I point at myself, then at him. Nivernek, I say. I put my hand out and he takes it. We shake hands at length.
Jørgen, I say, pointing at myself with my free hand.
Miteq.
Friend, I say.
Peqatik, says the man.
He will not release me. His handshake is excruciatingly firm. Eventually, I see no other option than to extricate myself from his grip.
///
I walk back to the colony along the shore, a rather perilous expedition, as it turns out. Treacherous rocks drop away to the seething, swelling sea whose foam-drenched tongues flick at me, fall back and assail me once more. I find safety on a beach of sand and pebbles, kelp strewn upon it like a woman’s hair released from its ties. I wander along. Merchant. Yes, that is what I am. The Trader Kopper has no aptitude for it, with his sour horselike face and his moping about, complaining of all his ailments. When he returns home, or when it transpires that one of his imaginary illnesses is not imaginary at all, but actually does away with him, I shall take over the Trade. My mind busies itself with sums: the Greenlanders in the south are well supplied with blubber, but are in need of more reindeer skins. They pay one barrel of blubber for one skin. A regular Danish smock is valued at 5 marks . . . The natives will pay two skins for a smock . . . da-dum da-dum . . . two reindeer skins bring 16 marks when purchased in Bergen. But two barrels of blubber give 8 rigsdaler, sometimes more . . . that’s, what, per barrel . . . about 27 marks, which is 4½ rigsdaler . . . da-dum . . . da-dum da-dum . . . there’s that melody again now . . . hear me, O Agnes, I say to thee now, be thou my sweetheart, this must thou avow . . . I feel myself drenched by figures, a downpour of numbers, falling in columns all around me. If now I purchase reindeer skins for smocks, then after conversion I will be paying 2 rigsdaler, 8 shillings per skin . . . I then sell on the reindeer skins to the Greenlanders in the south and take a barrel of blubber per skin in payment, then ship the blubber to Bergen . . . that means I rake in, let me see . . . the figures shower down on me . . . a profit of 2 rigsdaler, 4 marks and 8 shillings, a tidy sum! O yes, but of course, I gladly will so, to the deep of the sea with thee I’ll go . . . But then there is the sea passage and the uncertainty of that . . . he covered . . . How many ships go down? Probably no more than one in twenty, but still . . . he covered her mouth, oh, go away, silly song . . . that will have to be factored in . . . which means, in total . . . da-dum da-dum . . . 264 shillings divided by 20, let me see . . . yes, a loss of about 13 shillings per skin . . . he covered her mouth, that she could not speak, took her to the bed of the sea so deep, oh, how annoying . . . my brain creaks . . . let’s say I have 2,000 skins, that would make a dizzying sum! Fortunately, the shipping trade has become much safer these past years, and our captains are so much more competent. I shall trust in my good fortune and strike off the 13 shilling loss. A merchant has to be something of a gambler. Kopper has no conception of it. Therefore he will never amount to more than a simple grocer.
These reflections have returned me unwittingly to the colony. All of a sudden I find myself between the warehouse and the blubber house. I pause to collect myself. I realize I am smiling like a fool at Landorph who is telling me something.
Who is dead? I say.
The child.
What child?
The foundling.
Now dead again?
No, you imbecile. The child. The one that was alive and was taken in by Madame Egede.
Oh, that one, I say, confused. It didn’t look much alive. So the Egedes have done in another one. Hear me, O Agnes, I say to thee now . . .
Are you now deaf in both ears, Fleischer?
No, there’s nothing wrong with my hearing. I hear as well with my left ear as you do with both of yours.
I said, it’s Sise Petticoat.
What is? . . . thy children so fair await us with glee . . .
The child’s mother. Sise Petticoat is the mother.
The child?
The foundling! Landorph yells. For crying out loud, man!
I come to my senses. Sise? I thought you said she was as abundant as a fully laden schooner?
She’s been wearing a pillow.
Good lord. So she concealed the birth?
It seems so.
Then there will be proceedings against her?
Pors is against it. He says because the child was alive there’s no reason to pursue the matter. What’s your opinion, Fleischer? Do you think Pors is in a scrape? Landorph smiles shiftily.
But the child is dead, you say?
It is now, yes. It wasn’t before, though. It died in between times.
What says the woman herself?
Very little. Refuses to say a word about it. They held the boy out to her, but she turned away.
The dead child?
No, the living one. The dead one while it was still alive.
I feel like I’ve been drinking. I shake my head in the hope that everything will fall into place. I can hardly sort out who’s alive and who’s dead, I say.
I know, it’s all a bit of a muddle. But the child that was alive is now dead, that’s the long and short of it.
I suppose the matter will be taken up by the colony council?
Yes, we’re bringing it forward to tomorrow. I just wanted to hear your opinion, Fleischer.
But the Governor is against proceedings, you say? Perhaps he doesn’t care to see a woman dangle from his gallows?
No, Landorph sighs. And he’s not alone either.
///
The colony council convenes on the Thursday, the same day the dead child is laid to rest. I give evidence. I was certain it was dead, I say. It’s so very strange. I mean, it’s not the first time I’ve seen a corpse. That’s as may be, Pors interjects, but what you discovered was not a corpse. No, I’m not contesting it, I reply. It is now, though. Indeed, though before it was not, and that’s the crux here. The child was not dead, and therefore there has been no crime. Or at least no murder.
But why would Sise give up a living child? says Landorph. She is married, after all.
Derangement, says Kieding. I have spoken to her. She cannot recall the birth. She has become very melancholy.
I think I’ll be deranged soon, I say.
Another madwoman, says Landorph. As if we hadn’t enough with the jomfru. But what says her husband, Hartman?
He says nothing, says Pors.
He’s not looking especially downhearted at the moment, says Landorph, fixing the Governor’s gaze. In fact, I’d say he’s looking rather chirpy.
Who knows what goes on inside these people’s minds, says Pors. They are ravaged by drink and gambling.
I don’t believe Sise and Johan are that way inclined, I say. They’re decent folk. That’s probably why they’re still among the living.
I find it odd, says the Commandant. There is something fishy about this. He glances sideways at the Governor, though without having the nerve to confront him further.
The council decides, with the full backing of its members, not to begin proceedings against Sise, since the boy, who in the intervening period has perished, at the time of his discovery did not appear to have suffered injury, and because Sise, in the opinion of Kieding, cannot be considered to be of sound mind, for which reason it is deemed that she had not fully comprehended her action.
///
That same day something else happens: the body of a child is discovered in the warehouse. This time there is no doubt. I hurry down to see it with my own eyes. Signs of strangulation.
There you are, I say. I was right all along. I tour the colony to inform Pors, Landorph, Kopper, the Egedes, declaiming to whoever will listen: The child was dead. I was not mistaken. It was not alive! I thought I was going mad. But now everything has fallen into place.
The problem is that we now again have a dead child on our hands. Kieding examines Titia, though finds her still to be incontrovertibly pregnant, no pillow down her skirt. It must be one of the dead women who is mother to this second child. Or perhaps it is Sise. It is decided that no investigation will get to the bottom of the matter, and I, to be frank, am relieved. I am a fox, deaf in one ear, though possessing the most sensitive nose in all the colony. I think I have sniffed out an explanation of what has occurred. But I tell no one.