The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 92

The dancing and piping continued. Motherwell and I got down to the High Street, were met by Wild Drumrul. He led us down to the near quay, backing on the church. There we found Christmas Muir and Peggs and several old sealers using poles to pull a body out of the water. We ran when we saw, cold inside, and by the time we got there, Christmas Muir was wrapping a flower girl in a shroud.

“Drowned herself, she did,” said Christmas Muir. “Petey sawd it and couldn’t get to her in time. Two feet of water. Might’ve been shock, water’s hellish cold, maybe.” He spat. “Divil cold did it.”

Why did she do it? People do not make consistent sense, and are not obliged to; it might then be superfluous for me to exaggerate my inquiry. Ascribe that day, all of that day, to the power of the irrational, the mystery of the spirit. It does now come to me that there is something telling to what Dolly Frazer later told me and Motherwell. We had carried Lena’s corpse up to the undertaker. Dolly crowded in with some of the other matrons, intending to wash Lena and put her in a good black frock. She told me to get along, then took my arm, paused, said, “It was Janey’s weddin’. She died for that. Whyn’t ye men ken wee folk? Struttin’ and scratchin’ ye go. It were love, want of it, that killed the lamb.”

I insist now it was a futile act of flight. I insist it was not the Devil’s work, no, Grandfather, whatever your idea of Satan means, I declare the darkness cannot touch minds as gentle as Lena’s. I declare that it was men who did it, in this case those hags who teased Lena to the point she believed she was as unclean as they said Robby was, and all of the elders in the community who used the crime and Robby’s fear to advance their plans, forgetting, or not caring, that Lena and Robby were children incapable of knowing the difference between what they did and what was said they did. And I declare that if it was the wedding, it might have been anything else too that made Lena feel lost forever to her high dreams of love and family. The birth of the spring lambs, a christening, even a public kiss, might have triggered Lena’s yearning for release from her degradation. Does this seem as if I am excusing Germanicus and Lazarus and me from contriving our solution to the feud—the wedding—rather than facing openly the fact that it was, on South Georgia, people with the very best motives who can do the very worst deeds? I am not. I know what we did. I will take the blame for it, not alone, my share.

Grief swept Gaunttown that day, like fire, fed madly by the longing that had hours before rejoiced at the seeming conciliation of the Frazers and Gaunts. Our hearts were open. The finality of what had happened tormented us. Elephant Frazer was dumbstruck; I know because I was the first to tell him of Lena. I watched him pull the frozen hair from her face. He could not talk, and would not wipe the tears from his face. The wedding party was consumed by the same grief, celebrants fleeing to their homes. I walked Germanicus and Jane to their bridal rooms at the inn behind the helper. In the pub, the drinking was silent. By early evening a gang of Roses and their cousins had taken over the helper, joining in a drunken wake for Lena. I was told that a wilder bout began at the sealer’s pub, night sun, where the men made terrible curses against the one living thing they truly believed had cursed Lena and, through her, themselves and South Georgia—Robby Oldmizzen.

I remember the skies cleared at sunset, a rosy gray over the peaks with towering clouds above the hornstone ridge, a usually happy vista from the balcony off my rooms at the Assembly Hall. I had gone home exhausted from running from the undertaker’s to the church to the helper, trying to get a sense of the gloom. I can remember not eating supper because I had a notion that I would get up to the Frazer camp later and eat with Abigail. The evening passed quickly, and very late I was still in my rooms, with Motherwell. Wild Drumrul, Otter Ransom, and Peggs had joined us. I do not recall Christmas Muir being there. We discussed small things, the ice, Iceberg’s pups. My clock needed winding, and I fussed with it. We smoked Peggs’s tobacco, which had been a wedding present, a great treasure, black and African. What was I doing at the very moment? I think I was winding the clock with a bent key, with difficulty, for I could not get my fingers to work correctly. I had the shakes. How delicate I was.

Lazarus came through the door. I turned and sensed trouble. He should not have been there so late. It was not his way. He asked me to sit down beside him. I noticed Orlando the Black and Violante in the vestibule outside the door. He pulled me down to my chair, began deliberately.

“Elephant Frazer has been killed,” said Lazarus.

“I knewd it, I knewd it,” said Peggs.

“Elephant Frazer, about a half hour ago, walked into the night sun and put a harpoon into Christian Rose,” said Lazarus. “Saul Rose took it out of him and put it through old Frazer’s heart. He stood there and took it. They’ve dragged Germanicus out of his bed and put him in chains. The Hospidar has declared himself governor-general. Hear me out. Kevin Gaunt and Toddy McHugh are downstairs with ten Volunteers. You and I are under arrest for haboring a suspected murderer.”

“Easy, laddie, give it again,” said Motherwell, on his feet, reaching for the harpoon o\er the