Author's note: Just one interesting fact: I've included the temperature later on in both Fahrenheit (because this was the scale commonly used in Great Britain at the time) and Celsius (because this was used scientifically). Also, that way both people who use Fahrenheit to determine temperature and those who use Celsius (like me, because I'm Canadian!) will know how damn cold the Arctic gets....
Henry was standing on the quarterdeck of the Resolution, watching the crew go about their daily tasks. It had been two weeks since they'd left port, and the conditions they were facing were a little colder than Henry had expected.
As they had sailed north, gradually passing through the North Sea, the temperatures had begun to drop. Now, it felt far more like October than May as the wind whistled through the rigging. Most men were now sporting thick jumpers or even coats, and one or two even had donned their fingerless gloves. Henry knew it would not be long until they were all wearing the thick, warm coats he had provided them and the massive, fur mittens they had been required to purchase themselves.
Also, the days had been getting longer and longer the further north they sailed, the long days and short nights in sharp contrast with the cool temperatures. He'd heard many sailors complaining that summer here was like late fall at home, except that it was daytime all the time.
"It's wreaking havoc with my sleep," grunted one sailor to another.
The other one grunted back in sympathy.
Now, as he heard the sailors grumbling about their chilly fingers and icy feet, he watched the only person who he hadn't heard complain even once - John - climb onto the bowsprit and sit, staring pensively out over the ocean.
Everyone knew John was watching for whales or an iceberg. The first time he'd seen dolphins leaping beside the bow of their ship he'd jumped around in ecstasy for ages, and would have been the laughingstock of the ship had he not been so loved by the men for his resemblance to their own children.
As for his first sighting of an iceberg, he'd stood on the deck watching it until it had vanished into the distance.
"Sir, are there a great many of those in the Arctic?" he'd asked, his eyes wide with wonder.
Henry chuckled. "Yes, there are. And they're so big that you can walk on them. I'm told that there are people in the West would even drive sledges over them."
Henry smiled in spite of himself as he watched the boy stare. John had earned a hero's place among the sailors for his rescue of Caddock - the Welsh sailor - and as a result had very few duties about the ship. Henry, too, found himself loath to give the boy much hard labour, as it was infinitely enjoyable to watch him marvel at his surroundings. The only physically demanding task ever asked of him was to climb aloft to scan the ocean, but he seemed to enjoy this so much that Henry hardly felt it was abusing the boy to ask him to do it.
Instead, other than waiting on Henry and carrying the occasional message between the crew and their captain, John mainly was tutored by Henry in naval matters. Henry had discovered that John was an intelligent, keen, well-read boy a few days into their voyage.
Henry had been sitting in his study one afternoon, reading from a volume of Shakespeare when John had entered with his tea.
"On, on, on, on, on to the breach, to the breach!" he'd crowed suddenly.
Henry had nearly dropped his book in fright as John's entrance had been silent. John, he had come to learn, was extremely light-footed. Unlike the rest of the sailors - even Hawking, for that matter - walked with a heavy tread, whereas John's every step was careful, measured, and quiet.
"My apologies, sir," said John, smiling brightly.
"Hello, John," said Henry cautiously. Then he looked at John. "I hardly dare ask, John, but-"
"Bardolph," finished John, straightening up from where he'd set Henry's tray down on his desk. "Bardolph is the author of that particular quotation from Henry V."
Henry was astounded, staring at the cover of his book that proclaimed it was Henry V in small, gilt letters. "That is correct," he said. He looked at John musingly. "You're very well educated for a runaway cabin boy."
John smiled. "Thank you, sir." And he proceeded to give Henry a smile so delicately charming that Henry could only marvel at the beauty of it.
And it was after that day that Henry decided to teach John about navigation. He was shocked at how quickly the boy took to everything he instructed him in. John became easily familiar with the workings of the sextant and the compass and eagerly watched as Henry plotted the course of the Resolution northbound.
Now, Henry listened as the men called to the daydreaming John as he perched on the bowsprit, his place of honour ever since saving Caddock.
"Hey! Hey there, Johnny!" called one sailor.
John turned around, smiling. His pretty face was more lovely than ever as the wind had nipped at his cheeks, turning them a shade of delicate rose.
"Are you our new figurehead?" laughed the man. "You sit there day in and day out!"
John laughed and sprang up, standing with his two feet clinging precariously to the spar, his hands grasping the forestays as he swung around dangerously.
"I think I'd make a lovely figurehead!" called John.
He and the sailor continued to banter back and forth as Henry watched on, smiling, when Hawking suddenly appeared at Henry's shoulder.
"There's something off about that boy," he said, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
Henry frowned. "Oh? I think he's a rather charming boy, Edgar. The men like him, and that's no easy feat."
Hawking scowled. "Yes, but the reasons for their affection are strange. They see him as their son, but they also seek his advice, as if he's some elder they turn to for counsel."
Henry turned his head to regard Hawking. "In what matters?" he asked.
"Everything. John's been teaching Matthews to read. He was teaching the cook how to add flour to the potatoes to make them go further," said Hawking. "And I heard him giving advice to the boatswain - Smith, you know - about how to court a young lady he's been madly in love with for the past year."
As they watched, John leaped gracefully from the bowsprit and landed on the deck, arms outstretched. Once again, he reminded Henry of a bird, what with his flighty, elegant movements.
Henry watched as John scampered off. "And what would a boy of twelve know of courting a young lady?" he asked, chuckling.
"A good deal, from what I heard," observed Hawking acidly. "His advice was sound. If only he had been there to give it when I needed it, I could have won my wife in a matter of weeks, not years."
Henry chuckled, remembering how poor Hawking had burned with unrequited love for three years before braving his now-wife's terrifying father to ask for permission to court her. And even when he'd been given the man's blessing, the girl had proved to be so haughty, so aloof, that it was another year before she agreed to marry Hawking.
"At any rate," continued Hawking, his eyes narrowed. "There's something strange about him. Have you noticed anything odd about the boy, sir?"
Henry's fondness for the boy made him reluctant to answer, but he felt as though he ought to be truthful with Hawking.
"Yes," he replied in an undertone. "I have."
Hawking's eyebrows rose in curiosity and Henry gave him a disgusted look.
"What, are we maids gossiping at the market? Surely you are not petty enough to need to hear my own suspicions of John?" asked Henry.
"Not petty, sir," said Hawking, looking affronted and putting a cold emphasis on the word "sir." "I am simply curious to see if you share any of your suspicions with me."
Henry sighed. "That's valid enough, I suppose," he said. "I, too am suspicious of how much John knows. For being a runaway urchin, he's been educated shockingly well. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been tutored at some point in his life."
Hawking nodded gravely.
"And not to mention the fact that he's far too elegant for an urchin," said Henry. "That boy walks and speaks like a duke, his accent aside."
Hawking nodded again.
"I'm not sure what to make of him," said Henry. Then he turned to Hawking and gave him a cool glare. "But I trust him and I like him. So I will not hear you or any other man speak ill of him. Am I understood, Mr. Hawking?"
Hawking looked offended at switch from his first name and a familiar tone to his surname and a cold, commanding tone. But he said nothing other than a cold "aye aye, sir", simply dipping his head and marching off towards the bow, the timber of the deck creaking in a high, complaining tone, under the weight of his boots.
Henry sighed and, trusting that the men knew what they were doing under the command of Hawking, went below. He shivered as he entered his quarters, wishing he had a fire.
There was a timid knock on his door.
"Come!" he called.
As he expected, John breezed in, bringing with him the fresh scent of the sea air clinging to his clothes. He, too, shivered a little.
"Sir, Mr. Curie wanted me to tell you that he thinks we've reached the Norwegian Sea," he said.
Henry, with Hawking's suspicions planted firmly in his mind, was more interested in listening to the boy's voice than the message he carried from the sailing master. Henry, as he listened, noted with curiosity the high tone of John's voice. Despite its common accent, his voice had an aristocratic inflection and every word out of his mouth was considered and careful.
"Good," said Henry, nodding. He sat down behind his desk and a shiver rippled through him.
"Cold, sir?" asked John, his slender eyebrows quirking with concern. Henry noticed that everything about the boy seemed to be slender except his full lips, his wild hair, and his enormous eyes.
Henry chuckled, touched by the humble boy's sympathy. "Yes, rather. Though I adore adventure, I do despise the cold."
John let out a song-like laugh. "Then I do think you've picked rather the wrong place to explore, sir," he said, his eyes sparkling with liveliness. His tone was just on the line between a polite observation and a cheeky rebuff, and it was so disarmingly charming that Henry was left gaping for a moment.
"I suppose," laughed Henry when he'd regained his senses. He eyed the boy, who was smiling.
"Might I ask, sir, is it true that it is never warm in the Arctic?" asked John. He cocked his head, looking for all the world like a curious sparrow.
Henry nodded. "That is true. Above the Arctic Circle, even in July, it's rarely warmer than fifty degrees. At least out at sea, that is. On land and further south, it can get a touch warmer. But where we're going it's rarely above ten degrees centigrade, even in the height of summer. And where we're going - the Pole, hopefully - will be even colder, likely."
John's mouth opened in shock. "Then it must be positively frigid there right now! It's only the end of May!"
Henry chuckled again. "That is why I've provided the men with coats and mittens. I should hardly like to see them freeze to death again."
"Again, sir?" asked John inquisitively. Then he hung his head as he caught Henry's affronted expression. "My apologies, sir. It wasn't my place to ask."
Henry sighed. "No, it wasn't. Though I will tell you, John." He had no idea why he was willing to tell John the disastrous occurrences of the last expedition. He had difficulties even speaking of it with Hawking, and Hawking had been there and seen the same things happen. Yet he could speak with the cabin boy who treated him with far too much familiarity and was disarmingly lovely.
And so John wound himself down into the chair sinuously, and sat up perfectly straight. Henry noticed with suspicion the careful way in which John sat, with perfect posture. That kind of posture was not one ever found in the working classes of London.
But Henry began anyway.
"I sailed north five years ago," said Henry. He chuckled as he remembered his brashness, his overconfidence. "I was hardly more than a boy in spirit, fresh from my successes as a captain in the Navy and I was a fool. It did not matter to me that such a voyage had never been attempted before. I was simply overcome with a desire to discover and to explore. I also desired fame - I wanted it to be my name written in the history books. I fantasized about the way in which I would be remembered for my discovery - 'Captain Henry Kent, the man who risked all odds and discovered the Pole'."
"But it went wrong," said John sadly. By this time, he'd leaned his elbows onto the table and was regarding Henry with wide, admiring eyes.
Henry nodded. "It did. That voyage seemed doomed from the very start. Some of it was poor planning on my part, but some was also simply bad luck. The year of 1784 was the stormiest I have ever seen. We had storms nearly every day on our voyage north. I lost four men overboard in the very first week alone."
John's face suddenly lit up with recognition, obviously remembering similar circumstances and Henry continued.
"Two of the men were washed overboard in one wave and were lost from my sight, but a third remained clinging to the bowsprit," said Henry. "He and the man who went to save him were drowned together by another wave."
John jerked up as though someone had prodded him with a hot iron. "Caddock," he said uneasily.
Henry nodded again. "Exactly. That was why I was so reluctant to have you rescue him. I'd seen such a thing before that ended in tragedy for both men."
John hid his eyes, looking sad.
Henry smiled at the boy's sympathy and continued his story. "By the time we actually reached the Arctic Circle, we were missing a quarter of the crew. Some of the missing men were those who had been killed by the storms, but the rest were those who deserted when we landed at Tromso."
"Tromso, sir?" asked John.
"The port city in Norway. We will be landing there likely tomorrow. We'll take on supplies there," said Henry. He gave John a look that distinctly told him to be quiet and John obeyed. "To continue, when my crew and I landed at Tromso five years ago, we were all exhausted from the storms, our morale crushed, and our physical health dubious. Hawking suggested that we stay in Tromso for a month to recover."
John leaned over and cushioned his head on his arms. The gesture reminded Henry of how he'd once seen the wife of one of his sponsors lay her head on the table as she listened with rapture to his story. He'd told the story to her and her husband a few months earlier, seeking funding for the expedition.
"And did you, sir?" asked John, his head cocked and completely un-naval. In the Navy, he would have been beaten for insubordination long before.
"No," sighed Henry. "We did not. I insisted that we push on. The summer was fading fast - it was already August - and I knew that we could not survive winter temperatures should we depart in September."
John nodded, his brow creasing piteously.
"And so we set off. We sailed for only a few days before we hit yet another storm," said Henry. As he said it, for a moment he was back on the ship of the previous expedition, a rickety little brig he'd christened the Wayfarer. She was pitching and rolling startlingly as he stood on the deck, watching as enormous waves crashed over the men trying to prevent the topsail of the mainmast from tearing.
"Another?" whispered John.
Henry nodded. "Another. This was the worst storm I've ever faced. No one drowned, miraculously, but we nearly lost one of the masts. Trying to get out of the storm, we became trapped in the ice." He paused for a moment, remembering as he'd gazed out with horror at the sight of the Wayfarer, sailing serenely between large ice floes but in little danger from them, now surrounded by what looked like one, unending sheet of ice.
"If you've never seen the Arctic ice, you couldn't understand. Especially in the summer, it's always shifting, melting and joining, creating larger and smaller floes of ice on what seems to be the whim of the elements," said Henry. He barely noticed that John, who still had his head cushioned on his arms, was now staring directly at him, his expression one of blatant admiration. "You've no idea what it's like to look out from the deck and see what looks like your ship - so tiny in comparison to the ice - sitting in a vast expanse of snow. It's like someone picked up the ship, with all its contents and all its crew, and set it in the middle of a huge, white desert."
Henry suddenly took in John's expression. The boy's eyelids blinked slowly, bewitchingly. It was the hooded, heavy-lidded expression of a woman, not a boy. Only then did Henry notice how the downy, dark eyelashes that fluttered along John's lids batted as he blinked.
"Ah," he said, entirely losing his train of thought. He struggled for a moment before regaining it. "We were trapped in the ice."
John sat up abruptly. "And?" he asked.
Henry found himself unable to go on. How could he relate to John the horrors he'd faced there, as the men had begun to go mad from the eternal daylight and the agony of sitting alone in that snowy desert? Or how they'd run out of food and he'd watched as two men ganged up on a weaker man and killed and ate him? Or how he'd been forced to strangle four mad, bloodthirsty, starved, men before they tried to smother him to death in his sleep?
"And..." he said. He shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the terrible memories that suddenly crashed over him. "And...the expedition ended badly. We ran out of food. Men starved, men went mad, men killed each other. I couldn't keep order. I think even Mr. Hawking was nearly ready to turn on me before we were rescued."
John looked sad. He reached out with his hand and touched Henry's soothingly, his lovely blue eyes wide with compassion.
Not knowing what possessed him, Henry took the boy's slender, long-fingered hand in his, accepting the little comfort against the suffering he'd experienced that John could offer.
Then, John removed his hand and sat up, his eyebrows arched delicately as he gazed at what he must have found a strange action on Henry's part. Henry felt a touch muddled and confused as John went on:
"Then why did you choose to come back, sir?"
Henry smiled. "I suppose it's all I'm good at. The sea is my mistress and my life, and I needed to come back here." Henry didn't continue, knowing that John would understand that Henry's need to return stemmed from his desire to settle his past with the ghosts of the men that haunted his life, those he had killed and those that had died under his command.
John nodded and stood. "Shall I tell Mr. Curie that you are pleased then, sir?" he inquired, tucking his arms behind his back. This posture only added to his resemblance to a plucky, flighty sparrow.
"Yes," said Henry.
John made him a pert bow and left. Henry shook his head in wonderment. As much as he liked John, he had to agree with Hawking - there was something strange about the boy.