The Terror

²³ HICKEY

Hickey had decided that the tall, skinny lieutenant — Irving — had to die and that today was the day to do it.

The diminutive caulker’s mate had nothing personal against the naive young toff, other than his poor timing in the hold more than a month earlier, but that was enough to swing the scales against Irving.

Work and watch schedules kept Hickey from his task. Twice he had rotated onto watch duties when Irving was officer on deck, but Magnus Manson had not been on duty above-decks either time. Hickey would plan the timing and method of the deed, but he needed Magnus for the execution. It was not that Cornelius Hickey was afraid of killing a man; he’d cut a man’s throat before he was old enough to go into a whorehouse without a sponsor. No, it was simply the means and method that this murder called for, which required his idiot disciple and arse-fuck buddy on this expedition, Magnus Manson.

Now all the conditions were perfect. It was a Friday morning work party — although “morning” meant little when it was as dark out as midnight — with more than thirty men out on the ice repairing and improving the torch-cairns between Terror and Erebus. Nine musket-armed Marines were, in theory, providing security for the work parties, but in truth the line of working men was spread out for almost a mile, with only five men or fewer under the command of each officer. The three officers here on the east half of the dark cairn trail were from Terror — Lieutenants Little, Hodgson, and Irving — and Hickey had helped sort the work parties so that he and Magnus were working on the farthest cairns under Irving.

The Marines were out of sight most of the time, supposedly prepared to come running should there be an alarm but really just doing their best to stay warm near the fire roaring in the iron brazier set up near the highest pressure ridge less than a quarter mile from the ship. John Bates and Bill Sinclair were also working under Lieutenant Irving this morning, but the two were chums — and lazy — and tended to stay out of the young officer’s sight so they could work at the next ice cairn as slowly as they pleased.

The day, though dark as night, was not as cold as some recently — perhaps only forty-five below out — and almost windless. There was no moon or aurora, but the stars vibrated in the morning sky, shedding enough light that if a man had to walk out of the range of a lantern or torch, he could see well enough to make his way back. With the thing on the ice still out there in the darkness somewhere, not many men wandered far. Still, the very nature of finding and stacking the correctly sized ice chips and blocks to repair and enlarge a proper five-foot-tall cairn required the men to keep wandering in and out of the lantern light.

Irving was checking on both cairns while frequently giving the men a hand with the physical labour. Hickey only had to wait until Bates and Sinclair were out of sight beyond the curve in the trail through the ice blocks and Lieutenant Irving’s guard was down.

The caulker’s mate could have used a hundred iron or steel instruments from the ship — a Royal Navy vessel was a treasure trove of murder weapons, some of them quite ingenious — but he preferred that Magnus simply blindside the blond-haired dandy of an officer, haul him off twenty yards or so into the ice, break his neck, then — when he was well and truly dead — rip some of the toff’s clothing off, smash in his ribs, kick in his pink-cheeked happy face and teeth, break an arm and two legs (or a leg and two arms), and leave the corpse there on the ice to be found. Hickey had already chosen the killing ground — an area of tall seracs and with no snow underfoot in which Manson would leave boot prints. He’d warned Magnus not to get the lieutenant’s blood on him, not to leave any sign that he’d been there with him, and, most important, not to take time to rob the man.

The thing on the ice had killed men with about every variation of violence imaginable, and if the physical damage to poor Lieutenant Irving was vicious enough, no one on either ship would give a second thought as to what happened. Lieutenant John Irving would be just another canvas-wrapped corpse for Terror’s Dead Room.

Magnus Manson was not a born killer — just a born idiot — but he’d murdered men for his caulker’s-mate lord and master before. It would not bother him to do so again. Cornelius Hickey doubted that Magnus would even ask himself why the lieutenant had to die — it was just another order from his master to be obeyed. So Hickey was surprised when the physical giant pulled him aside when Lieutenant Irving was out of earshot and whispered with some urgency, “His ghost won’t haunt me, will it, Cornelius?”

Hickey patted his huge partner on the back. “Of course not, Magnus. I wouldn’t tell you to do nothing that led to having a ghost haunt you, now would I, love?”

“No, no,” rumbled Manson, shaking his head in agreement. His wild hair and beard seemed to leap out from under the wool comforter and Welsh wig. His heavy brow furrowed. “By why won’t his ghost haunt me, Cornelius? Me killin’ him while not having nothing against him and all?”

Hickey thought fast. Bates and Sinclair were walking farther on to where a work party from Erebus was erecting a snowblock fence along a twenty-yard stretch where the wind always blew. More than one man had gotten lost in white-outs there, and the captains thought that a snow fence would improve the couriers’ chances of finding the next cairns. Irving would make sure that Bates and Sinclair were busy on their task there, and then he’d walk back to where he and Magnus were working alone on the last cairn before the clearing.

“That’s why the lieutenant’s ghost won’t haunt you, Magnus,” he whispered to the stooping giant. “You kill a man in heat of temper, now that’s a reason for that man’s ghost to come back and try to get even with you. It resents what you did. But Mr. Irving’s ghost now, it’ll know there was nothing personal in what you had to do, Magnus. It won’t have no reason to come back to bother you.”

Manson nodded but did not look completely convinced.

“Besides,” continued Hickey, “the ghost won’t be able to find its soddin’ way back to the ship now, will it? Everyone knows that when someone dies outside here, so far from the ship, the ghost goes straight up. It can’t figure its way through all the ice ridges and bergs and such. Ghosts ain’t the smartest blokes around, Magnus. Take my word on that, m’love.”

The huge man brightened at hearing this. Hickey could see Irving returning through the torchlit gloom. The wind was coming up and causing the torch flames to dance wildly. Better if there’s wind, thought Hickey. If Magnus or Irving make some noise, no one’ll hear.

“Cornelius,” whispered Manson. He looked worried again. “If I die out here, does that mean my ghost won’t be able to find its way back to the ship? I’d hate to be out here in the cold so far away from you.”

The caulker’s mate patted the slop-shrouded wall of the giant’s back. “You ain’t going to die out here, love. You have my solemn promise as a Mason and a Christian on that. Now hush and get ready. When I take off my cap and scratch my head, you grab Irving from behind and drag him to where I showed you. Remember — don’t leave no boot prints behind and don’t get no blood on you.”

“I won’t, Cornelius.”

“That’s a good love.”

The lieutenant came closer in the darkness, moving into the dim circle of light thrown by the lantern on the ice here near the cairn. “Almost finished with this cairn, Mr. Hickey?”

“Aye, sir. Just set these last blocks up here and it’s done, Lieutenant. Solid as a lamppost in Mayfair.”

Irving nodded. He seemed to be uncomfortable to be alone with the two seamen, even though Hickey was using his most affable and charming voice. Well, fuck you, thought the caulker’s mate as he continued to show his gaptoothed smile. You ain’t going to be around much longer to put on such dandified airs, you blond-haired, apple-cheeked bastard. Five minutes and you’ll be just another frozen side of beef to hang down in the hold, boyo. Too bad them rats are so hungry these days that they’ll eat even a fucking lieutenant, but nothing I can do about that.

“Very good,” said Irving. “When you and Manson are finished, please join Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Bates on working on the wall. I’m going to walk back and bring up Corporal Hedges with his musket.”

“Aye, sir,” said Hickey. He caught Magnus’s eye. They had to intercept Irving before he walked back along the dimly visible line of torches and lanterns. It would do no good to have Hedges or another Marine up here.

Irving walked to the east but paused at the edge of the light, obviously waiting for Hickey to set the last two blocks of ice in place at the top of the rebuilt cairn. As the caulker’s mate bent to lift the penultimate square of ice, he nodded to Magnus. His partner had moved into position behind the lieutenant.

Suddenly there was an explosion of shouts from the darkness to the west. A man screamed. More voices joined in the shouting.

Magnus’s huge hands were hovering just behind the lieutenant’s neck — the big man had removed his mittens for a better grip, and his undergloves loomed black just beyond Irving’s pale face in the lantern light.

More shouts. A musket fired.

“Magnus, no! ” shouted Cornelius Hickey. His partner had been about to break Irving’s neck despite the commotion.

Manson stepped back into the darkness. Irving, who had taken three steps toward the shouting in the west, whirled in confusion. Three men came running along the ice path from the direction of Terror. One of them was Hedges. The rolypoly Marine was wheezing as he ran, his musket held in front of his massive bulge of belly.

“Come!” said Irving and led the way toward the shouting. The lieutenant was carrying no weapon, but he’d grabbed up the lantern. The six of them ran across the sea ice, out of the seracs, into the starlit clearing where several men were milling. Hickey could make out the familiar Welsh wigs of Sinclair and Bates and recognized one of the three Erebuses already there as Francis Dunn, his caulker’s-mate counterpart on the other ship. He saw that the musket that had fired belonged to Private Bill Pilkington, who’d been in the hunting blind when Sir John was killed last June and who had been shot in the shoulder by one of his fellow Marines during those moments of chaos. Now Pilkington was reloading and then aiming the long musket into the darkness beyond a fallen section of the snow fence wall.

“What has happened?” Irving demanded of the men.

Bates answered. He, Sinclair, and Dunn, as well as Abraham Seeley and Josephus Greater from Erebus, had been working on the wall under the command of Erebus’s first mate, Robert Orme Sergeant, when suddenly one of the larger blocks of ice just beyond the circle of lantern and torchlights had seemed to come alive.

“It lifted Mr. Sergeant ten feet into the air by his head,” said Bates, his voice shaking.

“It’s the God’s truth,” said Caulker’s Mate Francis Dunn. “One minute ’e was standin’ among us, next minute ’e’s flying up into the air so alls we can see is the bottom of ’is boots. And the noise… the crunching…” Dunn broke off and continued breathing hard until his pale face was all but lost in a halo of ice crystals.

“I was coming up to the torches when I saw Mr. Sergeant just… disappear,” said Private Pilkington, lowering the musket with shaking arms. “I fired once as the thing went back into the seracs. I think I hit it.”

“You could’ve hit Robert Sergeant just as easily,” said Cornelius Hickey. “Maybe he was still alive when you shot.”

Pilkington gave Terror’s caulker’s mate a look of pure venom.

“Mr. Sergeant wasn’t alive,” said Dunn, not even noticing the exchange of glares between the Marine and Hickey. “’E screamed once and the thing crunched ’is skull like a walnut. I seen it. I ’eard it.”

Others came running up then, including Captain Crozier and Captain Fitzjames, looking wan and insubstantial even in his heavy layers of slops and greatcoat, and Dunn, Bates, and the others all rushed to explain what they had seen.

Corporal Hedges and two other Marines who had run to the commotion returned from the darkness to say there was no sign of Mr. Sergeant, only a thick trail of blood and torn clothing that led off into the thicker ice jumble in the direction of the largest iceberg.

“It wants us to follow,” muttered Bates. “It’ll be waiting for us.”

Crozier showed his teeth in something between a mad grin and a snarl. “Then we won’t disappoint it,” he said. “This is as good a time as any to go after the thing again. We have the men out on the ice already, we have enough lanterns, and the Marines can fetch more muskets and shotguns. And the trail is fresh.”

“Too fresh,” muttered Corporal Hedges.

Crozier barked orders. Some men went back to the two ships to bring the weapons. Others formed up in hunting parties around the Marines, who were already armed. Torches and lanterns were brought from the work sites and assigned to the killing parties. Dr. Stanley and Dr. McDonald were sent for in the low probability that Robert Orme Sergeant might still be alive or the higher probability that someone else might be injured.

After Hickey was handed a musket, he considered shooting Lieutenant Irving by “accident” once out in the dark, but the young officer now seemed wary of both Manson and the caulker’s mate. Hickey caught several concerned glances the toff was throwing toward Magnus before Crozier assigned them to different search parties, and he knew that whether Irving had caught a glimpse of Magnus behind with his arms raised in that second before the shots and shouts were first heard or whether the officer simply sensed something wrong, it wouldn’t be as easy to ambush him the next time.

But they would. Hickey was afraid that John Irving’s suspicions would finally cause him to report to the captain what he’d seen in the hold, and the caulker’s mate could not abide that. It wasn’t so much the punishment for sodomy that bothered him — seamen were rarely hanged anymore, nor flogged around the fleet for that matter — but rather the ignominy. Caulker’s Mate Cornelius Hickey was no mere idiot’s bum-bugger.

He would wait until Irving lowered his guard again and then do the deed himself if he had to. Even if the ships’ surgeons discovered that the man had been murdered, it wouldn’t matter. Things had gone too far on this expedition. Irving would be just another corpse to deal with come the thaw.

In the end, Mr. Sergeant’s body was not found — the blood and strewn clothing trail ended halfway to the towering iceberg — but no one else died in the search. A few men lost toes to the cold and everyone was shaking and frostbitten to some extent when they finally called off the hunt an hour after their supper should have been served. Hickey did not see Lieutenant Irving again that afternoon.

It was Magnus Manson who surprised him as they trudged back to Terror again. The wind was beginning to howl at their backs and the Marines slouched along with rifles and muskets at the ready.

Hickey realized that the idiot giant next to him was weeping. The tears instantly froze to Magnus’s bearded cheeks.

“What is it, man?” demanded Hickey.

“It’s sad, is all, Cornelius.”

“What is sad?”

“Poor Mr. Sergeant.”

Hickey shot a glance at his partner. “I didn’t know you had such tender feelings for them damned officers, Magnus.”

“I don’t, Cornelius. They can all die and be damned for all I care. But Mr. Sergeant died out on the ice.”

“So?”

“His ghost won’t find his way back to the ship. And Captain Crozier passed the word when we was done searchin’ that we’re all having an extra tot o’ rum this evenin’. Makes me sad his ghost won’t be there, is all. Mr. Sergeant always liked his rum, Cornelius.”