The North Water(60)
Drax looks at him and nods.
“The case is altered. I have to show you something now.”
“Show me what?”
Drax puts the sleeping bag down on the snow, tugs it open, and points inside.
“Lookee in there,” he says. “Tell me what you see.”
Cavendish pauses, shakes his head, then moves forwards and leans down to take a look in the bag. Drax steps off to the side, grabs him by the forelock, yanks his chin upwards, and cuts through his windpipe with one single slice of the blubber knife. Cavendish, rendered suddenly mute, grabs his gaping neck with both hands as if hoping to reseal the opening and drops onto his knees in the snow. He shuffles forwards for a few moments, like a crippled penitent, jerking, rasping, and gushing blood from his impossible wound, then topples, shudders like a hooked fish drowning in air, and stops moving completely. Drax turns him over and starts going through the pockets of Brownlee’s greatcoat.
“That wont my idea, Michael,” he tells him. “That one were yours alone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
It is still half-dark when they find the first mate’s corpse spread-eagled on the snow, frozen hard, throat gashed, bibbed and spewed over with blood. They assume the Yaks have murdered him until they realize that the Yaks are both dead themselves, and it is only then that they notice Drax is missing. When they figure what has happened, they stand there stunned, unable to parse the world implied by such events. They look down at Cavendish, dead and rime-covered, as if expecting him to speak to them again, to offer up one last unbelievable opinion on his own demise.
Within the hour, under Otto’s direction, they bury Cavendish in a shallow, scooped-out trench at the tip of the headland and cover the body over with slabs of rock and stones prized from the cliff face. Since the Yaks are heathens and their funerary rites, in consequence, obscure, they leave their bodies as they found them, only blocking the snow house entrance and collapsing the roof and walls on top to form a crude and temporary mausoleum. Once this work is complete, Otto calls the men into the tent and suggests they pray together for God’s mercy in their present distress and for the souls of the recently deceased. A few kneel and bow their heads; others unfurl themselves lengthways or crouch cross-legged, yawning and picking at themselves like apes. Otto closes his eyes and tilts his chin upwards.
“Oh dearest Lord,” he starts, “help us to understand Your purposes and Your mercy. Preserve us now from the grave sin of despair.”
As he speaks, a jury-rigged blubber lamp is still burning at the center of the tent. A curlicue of black smoke twists up from it and meltwater drips off the canvas where the heat has risen and touched the half-inch inner layer of ice.
“Let us not give in to evil,” Otto continues, “but give us faith in the workings of Your Providence even in this time of our confusion and suffering. Let us remember that Your Love created this world and Your Love sustains it still at every moment.”
Webster the blacksmith coughs loudly, then leans his head out of the tent and spits into the snow. McKendrick, who is on his knees and trembling, begins to weep softly and so does the cook and one of the Shetlanders. Sumner, who is light-headed and nauseous from a combination of fear and hunger, tries to concentrate on the question of the manacles. Since Drax could not have committed three murders with his wrists and ankles chained together, he must have freed himself beforehand, he thinks, but how could he do so? Did the Yaks assist him? Did Cavendish? Why would anyone wish to help a man like Drax escape? And if they did help him, why did they all three end up dead?
“Guard and direct the spirits of those who have just died,” Otto says. “Protect them as they travel through the other realms of time and space. And help us remember always that we are a part of Your greater mystery, that You are never absent, that even if we fail to see You, or if we mistake Your presence for some other lesser thing, You are still there with us. Thank you, Lord, Amen.”
The amens come back to him in ragged, grumbling chorus. Otto opens his eyes and looks about as though surprised at where he finds himself. He suggests they sing a hymn, but before he can begin, he is interrupted by Webster. The blacksmith appears angry. His dark eyes are filled with a bitter eagerness.
“We’ve had the Devil hisself living here amongst us,” he shouts out. “The Devil hisself. I seen his footprints out there in the snow just now. The cloven hoof, the mark of Satan. I seen it clear as day.”
“I seen it too,” McKendrick says. “Like the tracks of a pig or a goat, ’cept there int no pigs or goats alive in this forsaken hole.”
“There were no such tracks,” Otto says, “no marks at all except those left by the dogs. The only Devil is the one inside ourselves. Evil is a turning away from good.”
Webster shakes his head.
“That Drax is Satan taken on a fleshly form,” he says. “He int human like you or me, he just looks that way when he chooses to.”
“Henry Drax is not the Devil,” Otto tells him patiently, as if correcting an elementary confusion. “He’s a tormented spirit. I’ve seen him in my dreams. I’ve spoken to him there many times.”
“There’s three dead men outside I’d weigh against your fucking dreaming,” Webster says.
“Whatever he may be, he’s gone now,” Otto says.
“Aye, but where is he gone to? And who says he won’t be coming back betimes?”