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The time has come, I believe, to take stock of my resources.
I promised my men they wouldn’t starve, with me. That I wouldn’t ill use them the way Crozier would. And yet here they are, starving anyway.
Billy is dying, that much is obvious, and several of the others aren’t that far behind him. This harsh land has carved away at all of us over recent months, eaten us up in constant tiny bites, and Billy started with less meat to spare than most.
The question is, who can I afford to do without? Not as many men joined the mutiny as I had hoped, among our party there is very little fat to trim. Goodsir and Diggle are not loyal, but it is good to have a surgeon along, and a cook as well, in the hope that we may yet find game. Hodgson and Des Voeux provide a concession to hierarchy, an illusion of order that has not quite outlived its use. Not to mention they are both needed to ensure Goodsir’s compliance— Hodgson to be threatened, and Des Voeux to be the threat.
Manson and Tozer are my muscles, my two most able bodies. Pilkington and Armitage I do not particularly care for, but Tozer does, and I know I would lose my sergeant if harm were to come to them. Golding is just about worthless for hauling, but he is to be my spy, so he too has his uses.
Billy, of course, is not earning his keep. It would not be unreasonable if I were to leave him behind on the shale. He can no longer haul, has to ride along on the boat as a passenger, meaning the others must not only pick up his slack but also carry his weight. His spindly limbs, now mottled with bruises, are barely even good to warm my bedroll as we cling together in our camp. His nose is a cold point on the back of my neck, the sharp lines of his hipbones press uncomfortably against my arse. He is brittle and insubstantial. But what little is left of him is comforting still.
Every man, as I say, has his uses.
Hoar, then. It will have to be Hoar. It will be a shame, as Hoar is obedient, and remains in reasonable health. But then again, there would be no point in eating sick and starving meat.
And won’t it be an honour, for him to serve the rest of the party so?
It’s strange, the way this place makes men into beasts. Their minds decay, turned to animal concerns, like food and warmth, like pain and the escape from such. They become what they’ve always been, intricate constructions of meat, animated by electricity and instinct, no higher thoughts in their skulls than haul and rest. A person becomes a body, when pushed to extremity. I know it well, it has happened to me before. I grew up in factories and workhouses, where they used me like a beast of burden, and as I grew older I was used in worse ways still. I joined the navy, in body if not truly in spirit, where men are components of some greater machine, and there I was whipped and bled and punished. But no longer.
While the other men become bodies, I leave mine far behind. I take my turn hauling, sometimes, because it does the men good to see me leading them in action. But more often I walk ahead, scouting the way, as is my burden and my due. My mind expands. My body treads on without me, while my consciousness floats up into the cold grey sky and becomes immaterial, or seeps down in and under the shifting shale, and runs out to sea. I drift on the currents, and eventually, inevitably, they carry me South to warmth and freedom.
Without this grand perspective, none of the men can be expected to see what needs to be done. Seamen all of them, or marines, they are not in the habit of making decisions. They follow orders, sometimes orders that run counter to their own survival, because the machine requires it. This is an abomination to me. It goes against all natural order. Why should a strong man spend his life bowing and scraping to a weak one? Why should rank place a feeble drunkard like Crozier above the rest of us, and demand that we lay our lives down in service of his plans? Why are some men permitted to be selfish, while others must die for their duty? The fox that kills the rabbit does not care for duty. And this animal instinct has begun to reassert itself among the men. This is self-evident in their mutiny. With my guidance, they might free themselves entirely, and live.
Well, not all of them. Hoar won’t. But Hoar is an Erebite, and those old divisions do still count for something. He won’t be missed, except perhaps by Goodsir, and the more squeamish among the men. Even those sentimental concerns will doubtless fade away once they all realise what greater value he can provide.
The act itself is easy. Much like with the dog, I wait for the cover of night to do it. Much like with the dog, I enlist Tozer’s help to butcher the meat and pack it away in sacks.
Tozer looks momentarily shocked at what I am asking him to do, but that soon fades. He’s killed men before. So, as I lay out clearly for him, he is no stranger to death. Not when it’s necessary.
“I know we need to eat something,” Tozer says in response, “I won't argue that. But the expedition has left a trail of bodies behind, recent ones too. What have we been carting Gibson around for these last few days, if not—”
“Enough!” I snarl at him, putting him in his place. I do not want to hear what he is about to suggest. “Besides,” I add, gentler now, “fresher meat is better.”
Tozer does not look convinced. “But that was murder.”
“Was it murder as well, then, when you shot that poor sod Morfin?”
“Of course not,” Tozer says. “He was a danger to others. He needed to be put down. For all our sakes.”
“So, you’ve killed before when your life depended on it, or the lives of others. How is this any different?”
It really is as simple as that. They will eat, or they will die.
Tozer capitulates, and helps.
It amuses me, sometimes, to think on the subject of families.
Most of my thoughts are pure speculation, having never had a family myself. I’ve seen them depicted in periodicals and stage plays— though one can never be sure how much truth these contain. And I’ve observed them going about their lives out in public— though these were dishonest also. A man is never true to himself in front of an audience.
The father is supposed to lead the family, that I am sure of. In my foggiest early memories, I can recall a house, and a man in it, and everyone else in the house did what the man ordered because they were afraid of him. In this way, a household is very much like a workhouse or a jail. That was so long ago, though, I may very well have made it up. I’ve certainly seen enough fathers hit their children, and been hit enough myself in my youth, that I may have conflated the two.
The children, it follows, do as they are told. Their parents raise them up and direct their thoughts, as I do for the mutineers.
The mother, meanwhile, the wife, her role is more of a mystery. I am led to believe she provides affection and prepares the food, and keeps the house in order. I have known women throughout my life, none of them the caretaking sort, for all that I’ve been told that sort of inclination comes naturally to the so-called fairer sex. Either way, we have no equivalent among our party. Only a surfeit of stewards.
Fewer, now, than what we started off with.
Certainly most of the men once had a mother of some sort, many even have a wife or a sweetheart back in England. I hear them crying out for these cherished figures sometimes, in their restless sleep. I suppose I cannot begrudge them this weakness. Even animals long for comfort.
I once told the captain I had grown up in Liverpool and Manchester, although in fact I believe I spent my early youth in a village somewhere between the two. But I don’t like to think of myself as such a provincial creature. There was a gang of us that eventually relocated to one city, and then another, in pursuit of the opportunities they had to offer. For a while, I longed to return to the countryside. It was easier to poach chickens and trap rabbits there. In the city, we dined more often on rats, or discarded scraps, or pies made out of horse meat when money was good. But there are plenty of ways to put coins in your pocket and food in your belly, if you keep your eyes open for opportunities.
Not a lot of opportunities out here, though, unless we are to start scraping fungus off the rocks. I do wonder what the bear eats, when he can’t get sailors. Maybe if we too could dive for seals, we wouldn’t have to follow his example in butchering men.
It falls upon me, then, to be both leader and provider for my mutineers.
Most of them have retreated into dull incuriosity. They do not ask where Hoar has gone, and they do not ask about the provenance of the meat.
Goodsir knows, as I had to borrow the bone saw from among his surgical tools, and he refuses to partake. He may well have told the others. Even if he hasn’t, they surely have enough brains in their heads to figure it out.
Some of them eat with reluctance, others fall upon the meat in ravenous desperation. They do not thank me, for securing this salvation, for undertaking the messy work of preparing it so nicely. I doubt many of them would’ve had the stomach to pare skin from flesh, flesh from bone, not when it had a human face. But I don’t need gratitude. They depend upon me for their lives, and that is enough of a reward.
I watch from the head of the table with a stern eye, to ensure no one takes more than his fair share. There really is something of a family mood to it all. I half expect Hodgson, in the role of the beleaguered older sibling, to start scolding his fellows for their poor table manners.
Aside from Goodsir, who retreated to his tent as soon as he realised it was supper time, one more of our brothers is absent from the table. Billy, of course. He did not ask to be excused, but that is normal. When we are not on the move, he spends all his time resting.
If he is in his tent, then so much the better. I have saved all the best cuts for him.
When I draw aside the flap at the entrance to our tent, Billy doesn't stir. But he knows I am there. Once you’ve fucked a man, or been fucked by him, I believe you become sensitive to his presence. Our bodies resonate, like the ringing of a knife tapped against a glass.
It is dim inside the tent, when I allow the flap to fall closed behind me. The harsh sunlight barely permeates the yellowed canvas walls. They heave and snap in the wind, like the tanned hide of some great panting beast. I can barely hear my own breath over it, much less Billy’s.
Billy lies on his back in his shroud of blankets, hands folded over his chest. The cold is not so bad at this time of year, some of the men even walk around in their shirtsleeves, but Billy feels it quite keenly.
“Cornelius?” I hear him say. “Is that you?”
“Have a drink of water,” I instruct him. I sit him up, with a palm between the sharp wings of his shoulderblades, and hold a bottle of snowmelt up for him to sip. Some of it spills down his chin, wets his beard, but I blot it up with my sleeve.
His voice is less parched when he thanks me. The knife-tap sound of it rings a little more strongly in my head.
“I’ve got something for you, love,” I say. Just inside the collar of his shirt, I can see the cord upon which hangs my last gift to him. If all goes well, there will be many more.
“Cornelius, I’m not in the mood,” he sighs. His lips don’t move as he speaks. I help him slowly and stiffly lay back down among the blankets. Even the motions of rest seem to exhaust him.
“Not in the mood for what? I haven’t even told you what it is yet.” I feel uncharacteristically playful, in the throes of my beneficence. I picture the look of delight that will creep across his face, once he realises what I have brought him.
His soft, pale eyes gaze at me. Even sunken and glassy as they are now, they remain gentle. Such a sharp-edged face, so suited to stern expressions. But his eyes always gave him away.
“It’s food, Billy,” I whisper. “Good, fresh red meat. No more poisonous muck out of them tins.”
“I’m glad,” Billy says. He makes no motion to accept my gift. “If they are all to die out here, at least you will have given the men a decent final meal.”
This churlish ingratitude inflames my anger. I want to strike him for it. I feel almost nauseous with the strength of this desire. His cheekbone would burst into a glorious burgundy contusion. I would press my fingers into it afterwards, feel it pulpy and fragile like overripe fruit. Like the scraps we used to pick through as children, his sinewy chicken bone limbs, his rotten vegetable bruising.
But I do not. It is my choice, whether to break and discard the things I have fought to keep. Billy may no longer be invested in his own survival, but it isn’t up to him.
I slip myself in behind Billy’s nest, and prop him upright against me. He hasn’t the strength to resist me at present, but even with proper sustenance he never really had the inclination to try. His head lolls back against my shoulder, and he allows me to cradle his body. We have been in this position many a time before. I gentle him and stroke his hair, I kiss his face and his mouth, I whisper sweet words in his ear. Perhaps, in doing so, I ease his pain. It does not matter to me whether I truly do, it’s not my pain, but I enjoy going through the motions of soothing him. It soothes me too.
With the sack in one hand, and my knife in the other, I carve off a sliver of meat, and slip it between Billy’s parted lips. I must feed it to him, a single delicate bite. He is too listless for anything more. But he will regain his vigor soon, I know it. A lesser man’s strength will become Billy’s strength, his life will sustain Billy’s life, and my own.
While Billy savours his morsel, I cut a piece for myself. It is cold, drained of blood, which Tozer and I drank fresh and warm last night. But even like this, so inert, so neatly butchered, it still tastes like life. There is a glorious animal vitality in eating it raw. Part of me almost wishes I had bitten it straight from the source. That I had woken Billy from his slumber, and brought him out to do the same.
Billy is not a wife, or a mother to the mutineers. He provides no sustenance, he comforts none other than me. But have I not knelt before him? Did I not provide him with a ring? I will not be parted from him, not now. What man has joined, God must not divide, or however it goes, amen.
After we have eaten, we lay down together. I arrange the blankets, and Billy’s limbs, so that he holds me close in the way that I like. And then I leave my body behind, in his safekeeping, while I drift over the blighted landscape and dream of our survival.