The Second Birth of Frankenstein (The Department 19 Files #5) (2 page)

“My apologies,” he grunted, and made to step around the man.

“No harm done, sir,” said the man, beaming widely. “None at all. Sea legs are tricky things, are they not?”

“Indeed,” he said. “Good day to you.”

He stepped around the man a second time, but the man moved to block him, his smile still wide and friendly.

“Where are you headed, sir?” the man asked. “If to ask does not cause offence?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I am headed off this dock, sir,” he said. “I would be grateful if you would step aside.”

“Of course, of course. Might I trouble you for a minute of your time, sir? I am firmly of the opinion that what I have to say will be of interest.”

He felt his stomach churn. The dock seemed to be moving beneath him, rolling and tipping, his equilibrium battered by the crossing. But there was something earnest about the man, something that made him pause.

“One minute,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” said the man. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Heath, and I have the honour of acting on behalf of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Perhaps you have heard of it?”

The man shook his head.

“My good sir,” said Heath. “We are nothing less than the oldest trading company in the world, chartered by His Majesty the King in the year of Our Lord 1670. We deal in furs, sir, in the wilds of British North America, where the forests are full of natives more savage than you can imagine and the lakes are many feet deep with ice. It is a wilderness that suits only the hardiest of souls, the very bravest of men, but the rewards for those with sufficient constitution are notable.”

“And?” asked the man. “Why does this matter to me?”

“My presence here, sir, on this dock, on this very day, is on account of a Company ship leaving for the New World on tomorrow’s tide. Twelve berths are as yet unoccupied, and I am seeking men with the required sense of adventure, with the necessary resolution, to fill them. I saw you, good sir, and you struck me immediately as just such a man.”

He considered the smooth patter of Heath’s words. It sounded well-practised, with the faint insincerity of an actor’s speech, but he could not deny that his curiosity had been piqued. He had been asked, on several occasions as he worked his way south, where he was headed, and what his plans were when he arrived there. He had deflected such enquiries, because, in truth, he had no idea. He had been violently birthed into existence barely two years earlier, and the man who had given him first life, then purpose, was gone, leaving him adrift. The prospect of the wilderness, where he might leave his sordid history behind him and invent himself anew, was appealing.

“What terms are on offer?” he asked.

“That depends,” said Heath. “Might I ask what command you possess of letters and numbers?”

“Extensive,” he said.

“Provably so?”

“Of course.”

“In which case, serendipity surely shines down on us, good sir,” said Heath. “I have been instructed to procure a junior clerk for this voyage, to address a regrettable shortage of learned men at York Factory. Such a position carries with it five years of secure employment, a starting wage of eighteen pounds per year, and your every need provided for. Have you ever heard the equal of such an offer? I would wager not.”

The man said nothing.

“What say you then, sir?” asked Heath. “Do you have the stomach for a life of adventure? For the opportunity sails tomorrow, and will not appear again for six months.”

“And if I agree?” asked the man.

“Why, it could not be more straightforward,” said Heath. “Simply be here, where we now stand, tomorrow morning as dawn breaks. A signature on the contract, and you will be on your way. Shall I expect to see you?”

“Yes.”

“Splendid,” said Heath, beaming more broadly than ever. “I shall make note now, so that there be no confusion. What name should I mark down?”

“Wallace,” he said. “John Wallace.”

“Tell them what you saw, Paterson,” said Wallace. “You will be in no trouble, I promise you.”

“Hush yersel,” growled McTavish, brandishing his knife. “We ken whit wis seen. Ye’ve never even denied it, so quiet wi’ ye.”

Wallace forced a smile. “Would you have loosened these knots if I had?”

“Never,” said McTavish, and spat on the snowy ground. “There’s ae been somethin’ that wisnae right about ye, John Wallace. Yer no’ normal, ye ken? Ye never huv been. Ah’ve seen it, an’ others huv seen it an’ aw. This mess is nae surprise tae me. Nae surprise at aw.”

“You’re a fool, McTavish,” said Wallace. “And you’re scared, but that’s fine. Fear makes men blind.”

McTavish narrowed his eyes. “Ah’m no afraid o’ any man.”

“That’s good,” said Wallace. “Because what’s out there isn’t a man.”

The crossing to the New World took almost two months. Two days after departing Aberdeen, the ship made port at Stromness, in the Orkney Islands, where the remaining berths were filled with stout island men, many of whose brothers and friends had departed on previous Company sailings. The majority of the men took the opportunity to spend a final few hours on solid ground, drinking and carousing. John Wallace remained in his bunk, face turned towards the wall; he would not set foot on the Orkneys, nor even go on deck until they disappeared from view, some ten hours later. The islands were where his damnation had been confirmed, where he had sworn a vengeance that had proved more terrible than he could have known.

The ship, whose prow was covered in ornate carvings and whose bow was painted with her name,
Orlean,
attacked the fierce swells and storms of the North Atlantic with great enthusiasm, but there was no way to shorten the duration of the voyage. After seven weeks, the ship slipped steadily into Hudson Bay, a body of water so apparently vast that once they were beyond her mouth, there was little visible change from being on the open seas. Two days later, the
Orlean
reached the southern shore of the bay, and docked at York Factory, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s largest settlement, and as strange a cluster of buildings as Wallace had ever laid eyes on.

It looked more like a fort than a trading post. A high rectangle of walls enclosed warehouses, offices, bunkhouses, stores, and other less clearly identifiable buildings. Towers stood at each corner of the compound, along with a tall central watchpost that rose from the end of one of the main buildings. Set into the walls, and above the main entrance, were heavy cannons, pointing outwards.

“What place is this?” asked a man whose name was Logan. He was standing beside Wallace on the deck of the
Orlean
, his thick red beard coated with ice.

“I have no idea,” said Wallace. “I presume it is home.”

With dinner finished, McTavish built the fire, ordered Grant and Munro to take watch, then settled down in his bedding to sleep, huddled tightly alongside Paterson.

The temperature was plummeting, and were Wallace a normal man, he would already be feeling the creeping numbness of frostbite in his fingers and toes, despite the thick gloves and heavy boots that encased them. His recycled body seemed immune to the condition that was the worst fear of the Hudson’s Bay Company men; he had seen a good number of men taken to the doctor to have their noses and fingers cut off before the dead flesh turned black with infection. Men with a full complement of digits were not quite a minority at York Factory, but were certainly noteworthy.

The light went quickly, as though some enormous lamp had been snuffed out. Wallace could no longer see beyond the nearest trees that surrounded their camp, could barely see the shapes of Grant and Munro as they walked the perimeter, stamping their feet to keep warm. Snoring rose thick and steady from the sleeping men, their breath clouding and drifting on the freezing air. When dawn broke, they would head for York Factory, and if he delayed them, they would tie him to a pole and carry him. By the end of the following day, accounts of what had happened in the forest would be presented to the Factors, and Wallace knew that, despite his good standing, it would not be his version that was believed.

He shifted his arms, trying to keep the blood circulating. They were numb, the combined result of cold and restraint, and pins and needles stabbed at his flesh as it was forced into action. When he could again feel his fingers, he settled back against the post that had been driven into the ground to hold him, and cast his mind back to what had befallen Scott, turning it over and over in his mind, searching for any detail that might be turned to his advantage, that might extricate him from the situation in which he found himself.

The first winter had also been the last for many.

The temperature rarely rose above twenty-five below, and the exertion of simply moving one’s body in such conditions drained vitality that was almost impossible to replace. Men who had boarded the
Orlean
as giants, highlanders full of brawn and muscle, shrivelled away before the eyes of their colleagues, despite dried venison and fish and abundant fat geese. The snow was deep, thick and relentless, and the cold was beyond anything the men had known. It was hard to think, let alone move. More than one man was found dead in his bunk as the dawn rose, his body, or perhaps his spirit, having simply given up, and the isolation and the cold raised madness in men who were not built to cope with such extremes; fights were common, many of them bloody, several fatal. Less than a month after Wallace’s arrival, an entire trading party vanished in the interior, not far from the Red River; nothing was found but their scattered packs and patches of blood that had frozen solid. One of the lost was Alan Logan, who had crossed the Atlantic on the
Orlean
with Wallace, and had seemed tailor-made for Hudson Bay: tall and heavy-set and wickedly handy with an axe, qualities that had clearly not been enough to prevent whatever had befallen him and his colleagues.

When the ice thawed and the first company ship made its way into the bay, almost seven months after the
Orlean
had departed, the clamour for berths among men who had changed their minds was fierce, despite the wages they would forfeit by returning home. The lucky ones staggered on to the ship without a backward glance, their faces set with misery.

John Wallace, on the other hand, had never been happier.

It became quickly apparent that the command of letters and numbers that Heath had been so interested in was not going to be greatly taxed by his new employment; it was mostly basic bookkeeping and inventory, the completion of ledgers and receipts, the tallying of simple columns of figures. He quickly excelled, and by the time that first, hard winter had passed, he had turned down promotion on two occasions. It was not ingratitude; it was rather that he had no desire to spend even more time hunched over a desk in his office, while the wilderness howled and roared beyond its walls.

After three months, he had requested permission to join a trading party on their journey into territory the Company had recently granted to the Métis, the offspring of Cree and Algonquin mothers and French fathers who hunted buffalo far west of Hudson Bay. It was a dangerous mission; the granting of the land had angered the North West Company, who operated on the western shores of the bay, and whose trade routes had been compromised by the Métis settlement.

Wallace’s superiors had been reluctant to grant his request – his value to the Company was already clear – but they had eventually relented, and Wallace had set out with a party of men on a blindingly bright March morning, his feet bound in a pair of enormous snowshoes that had been specially made for him.

And despite the tension between the company and the native peoples, the blistering cold and the harshness of the terrain, the trip went well; the Métis had prospered over the winter, and the buffalo skins and furs they had to offer were both plentiful and of the highest quality. All at York Factory were delighted upon the party’s return, with a single exception.

John Wallace had felt something profound in the wilderness.

The cold affected him less than other men, he knew, and his unusual strength and size made the hard landscape more manageable than it might have been. But it was not these advantages that had caused him to enjoy the journey; it had been the remarkable sense of freedom. Here, near the top of the world, his guilt fell away from him like thawing snow, washed away by ice and freezing air and sunlight so bright it was blinding. He was liked well enough by his colleagues, men whose bodies were barely stranger or less uniform than his own, and who asked no questions, and cast no aspersions. They worked together, ate together, and looked after each other, but there was no softness to either the men or the world around them, despite its remarkable beauty. It was a land of sharp edges, a land that punished carelessness and stupidity, and in it, for the first time, John Wallace had found peace.

There were dangers in the forest, beyond the conditions and the terrain. The spring brought newly-awakened bears, their bellies rumbling with hunger, irritable and unpredictable after long months asleep. Wolves roamed the wilderness in packs, more than capable of taking a full-grown man who found himself separated from his colleagues. Tracks in the snow were never ignored; they were pored over and taken into careful consideration when the trade missions were selecting their routes in and out of the interior of Rupert’s Land.

But beyond the all too real animal threat, there were other dangers less easily described. Tales were told, by the elders of the natives whose lands these really were, of things that moved between the trees, things that made no sound and left no tracks. The spirits of the dead, the lost and the restless, ghouls that had no form, but who howled on the coldest winter nights. Wallace was not a superstitious man, although he knew more about what could scientifically be classed as the supernatural than almost any other man alive. But even he had seen and heard things in the wilderness that he could not readily explain. Lights that moved low across the snowy ground, tracks that corresponded to no animal he recognised, howls and whines that chilled the blood. He had often felt like he was being watched as he journeyed along the Hudson Bay tributaries, even though he usually attempted to dismiss such sensations as the results of isolation, and the fear it caused.