The Broken Lands Read Online Free Page B

could only look evenly back at both men.
    The tension was released by Surgeon Stanley, who asked the governor about the family likeness in several of the portraits hanging around them. Having thus sacrificed himself, Stanley was then committed to following him from picture to picture as individual histories were repeated, each as dull and forgettable as the last. Stories of traders and civic dignitaries, and none of them so highly placed
as the governor himself. The tour ended only when the meal was announced, and the governor led each of them to their designated seats, again flanking himself with Franklin and Crozier at the head of the table.
    The feast began with clams, and the governor told the story of the American whaler which had arrived at Lively the previous summer with six tons of foot-wide quayhogs as ballast. These had been dumped in the shallow waters of Danish Bay and the benefits were still being reaped. The bay did not freeze below a foot of the surface all winter and the oversized shellfish were resilient enough to survive. The shells would not fit comfortably into an outstretched hand, and to save the diners the effort and messy business of opening these themselves, the clams had already been prised apart and their meat gouged loose. There were lemons and pepper sauce for those who wanted it.
    Fresh bread and thick white butter followed, a small loaf delivered to each man in a steaming linen cloth by the women who had earlier been dismissed. The governor, unaware of the bakers on board both the Erebus and the Terror, explained that he had had the bread made specially so that the memory of it and all it suggested might remain with them during the months ahead. Franklin signaled to his officers not to disabuse him of the generosity of his gesture. Accordingly, each man found something complimentary to say about the loaves.
    Three large joints of fresh roast pork were brought out, each accompanied by several bowls of vegetables and dishes of apple sauce. The glazed head of a small pig was then added to the table for decoration, its skin shiny and crisp, its ears pinned upright. Its uncooked eyes had been returned to their sockets, and a bunch of grapes positioned in its mouth. More wine was served, and with each new decanter, a fresh toast proposed.
    Outside, a wind rose and rattled the windows and the governor called for them to be shuttered inside and out. More candles were brought into the room and logs thrown on to the already large fires.
    “I hope,” said the governor to them all, having tapped his glass
and waited for their attention. “I hope that the unseemly display on your first morning ashore did not in any way lower your opinions of our existence here.”
    “Be assured—” Franklin said, and was then interrupted as the governor resumed speaking.
    “I am their governor, but I must also be very careful. Our more usual visitors are a wild breed and they have little respect other than for their profits. To have prevented them from going ahead with their cruel display would have achieved little and almost certainly have resulted in a riot. As you can see, I have no militia to enforce my wishes, and the few of us here who struggle to impose even the rudiments of law and order are all a very long way from home.”
    By then the man was intoxicated, as were several others, most noticeably Edward Little and James Fairholme.
    “This, all this,” he went on, gesticulating around him. “What is it but a flag upon a forsaken island, a stake-post in the wilderness?” He picked up a piece of meat, the tender flesh separating in his hands, the milky juice running over his chin.
    Fitzjames watched him and it was as though he were seeing the man for the first time, seeing beneath his pomp and his feathers and his speeches, and he felt a sudden great sympathy for him, caught here in a despised and treacherous wilderness, attended by his fawning and speechless lackeys and pierced a hundred times a day by the