The ship heels again and several women slide down the icy deck. Rose grabs for the fife rail; clutching a nest of coiled ropes, she digs at the deck with her feet. Her grip slips on the ice so she drops away, tobogganing into the mass of bodies below her.
Crushed among the cursing, shoving crowd, Rose pushes to her feet, bruised and breathing hard. She sees her father, his head and neck protruding from the hatch like a mounted stag’s head. He pulls himself through, and, half-crouching, slides toward her.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
“No. Father, I do not think so. But I have lost my shoes.”
“We must get off this damnable ship. All is lost.”
“How shall we do that? Must we swim?”
They look around. High above the deck, torn sheets of canvas stream away, howling and cracking like grey phantoms. Lines have snapped and blocks are swinging; one flies out of the darkness and collides against the back of a man’s head with the sound of a melon being broken open. He flips over the rail, black suit flapping like the torn wings of a bat. The last Rose sees of him, he is floating face down and spread-eagled like some kind of nightmarish starfish, drifting with the ebbing current out to sea.
The wreck of one of the Intrepid’s boats clutches to nearby rocks, her mast cutting a steep arc with each incoming wave. As Rose watches, the little White Ensign fluttering from her masthead rips and flies away into the dark unknown of Rupert’s Land.
“What kind of land is this, what has snow an’ sleet in the middle of August?” asks a tousled and coatless young Orcadian; he runs his tongue over thick lips and stares at the white line of surf that marks the shore so close and yet so far away.
“It’s home, lad, and it’s bloody time we got there,” Lachlan says. “Over you go, lass.”
Rose swings her legs over, and her feet drum against the hull, searching for the netting. Lachlan follows her. The youth watches a moment and climbs after them. “If I’m to die tonight, I’ll die among me own,” he says.
They edge down the swinging netting, though what they are to do when they reach the churning water, Rose cannot imagine. Black waves leap at them, spinning with foam. The wind tears at her skirts, threatening to peel her away; the netting is icy and cuts into her numb, red hands. Her mouth tastes of pennies and salt.
They are almost at the water when the youth slips with a shriek and falls into the sea. They watch his head bob on the surface for a moment and disappear. Lachlan curses under his breath. Rose feels his eyes on her, but cannot bring herself to meet them, afraid of seeing her own terror reflected in his gaze. His cold hand encircles her own.
All about them people fall in the water — man, woman, child. The body of a swaddled infant — born on the sea — bobs beneath Rose like a piece of driftwood, its tiny, red fingers curled up under its chin, eyes squinted shut beneath the water. A few bubbles escape from its nostrils as it floats away. The night rolls with the cries of the terrified and the dying.
Rose turns away, closes her eyes and leans against the frigate’s hull. She can feel the grinding of the reef, and it reminds her of a time she rested her hand on a dog’s head as it chewed on an old knucklebone. She follows that thread back to some comforting memory. The dog gnawing its bone, the singular warmth of her aunt’s massive hearth. The smell of peat smoke and brewing tea; pleasing chatter of old women.
“Rose? … Rose?”
She holds her eyes tight, her hands clutched to the rope as if it is all that keeps her sane. An old trick of hers, to be and not be, to remove herself from some difficult experience by fleeing the present and walking down safe, familiar roads in her mind. She sees flowers in a moonlit garden, a star shining through a petal. At the smallest gesture of breeze, the flower bobs in a semaphore of flashing starlight.
“Rose!”She turns toward Lachlan.
“Get away from the ship as soon as you can,” he shouts at her. “Keep away from the rocks. It is not far to shore.” He kisses her forehead. “Now!”
Grasping one another’s hand, they abandon the netting and fall into the sea.
Her lungs explode with a gasp. She kicks for the surface, but cannot inhale. The coldness of the water wraps itself around her, crushing out her breath. Waves carry over her head. Thrashing on the surface, her mind swirls with sharp lights. She is lifted by a wave, and her hand strikes something rough and hard.
She climbs onto the rock. The weeds are soft and slippery, the barnacles cutting; it feels like climbing into a mouth. Shaking, she sits down, wraps her bleeding arms around her knees, and looks at the dying ship. Smoke pours from an open hatch. With a sharp crack, the forward mast splits: ropes fly and bronze hoops burst. The great spar swoons forward, slicing through the clustered people in the water, dark heads bobbing like kelp floats.
Wind whips Rose’s wet hair across her face. She pinches a fold of skin on the back of her hand, but feels nothing. Her shaking is uncontrollable.
At the next wave, she allows herself to be swept off the rock. As before, the coldness of the water seizes her, but she does not fight it this time, accepting just a gasp of air, the smallest of breaths. She kicks toward shore. Her skirt encumbers her, and she attempts to pull it off in the water. Her body has become an unresponsive lump; the fabric tangles about her feet. She chokes, sinking; her legs drag. Her feet find the bottom and she thrusts away the tangling cloth; wearing only her shift she climbs onto the beach, water running off her and darkening the pure whiteness of the snow.
Flames engulf the wreck, and by its light she sees people stumble out of the sea, pushing aside clustered bodies rolling with the surf. A cadaverous light shines on the faces of those who stand watching the frigate burn. Some weep, but one after another, they fall silent.
“Father?” she calls between shaking teeth. It escapes her lips as a croaked whisper. She calls again, louder. A face turns toward her.
“Rose!”
Lachlan runs over and embraces his daughter. “Oh, my wee bairn, I thought I’d lost thee … God’s blood, you’re freezing.” Too cold to reply, Rose slides into her father’s arms, hiding her face from death. He wraps her with his wet coat.
Overheated cannon aboard the burning frigate ignites, blowing out the side of the ship and sending several balls whining over the water to smash into the forest, shattering several trees. In unison, all the watchers ashore jump back.
Spotting a Company official, Cecile Turr, Lachlan seats his daughter on the beach and hurries over to him. “We must find shelter for these people, Mr. Turr,” he says, grabbing the man by the arm and blowing frost clouds into his face. “We must start a fire!” The man turns his sad, heavy eyes toward him, pulls his arm away and sits on the beach, lowering his face into his hands.
Lachlan fights an urge to shout; helpless, he looks up the beach at a palisade of dark trees roaring in the wind. As he watches, several shapes emerge from the forest. Flames from the burning frigate glitter on polished silver and beadwork.
Chapter Two
Alexander McClure opens his eyes and feels grit under the lids scrape against his eyeballs. He cannot imagine where he is, the smell of muddy pig shit, nauseating and unfamiliar. Fragments of memory whirl in his head like torpid summer fireflies.
He is on his back, his eyes taking in a thin, washed sky; the fort’s palisade glows in the first light of dawn like a line of rough-hewn nails fresh from the forge. It had rained during the night; his clothes feel like peeling, wet skin. Distant shouts of men carry from the riverbank and a cannon thuds, startling him. York Fort. He rolls over with a groan.
At this movement, an enormous hog bedded beside him begins nuzzling his hair with its wet snout. Alexander shoves at it, and pain sears through his hand; the knuckles are stiff and crusted with blood. Memories of a brawl hover at the edge of consciousness. Something about cheating at cards.
He