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The carriage was stopped on a narrow street a quarter of a mile from the train station where an impatient Robert Goodsir was due to see his brother for the first time in years, when his attention was caught by voices outside. Robert turned his face towards the window, ready for any distraction from the abysmally slow progress the carriage was making through town traffic.
"There was a foreign woman at the train station today, traveling with an Englishman," a passerby said; he carried a package under one arm. "Some sailor must have brought home a China wife." The man laughed.
"I don't know what you're laughing about," the woman next to him said. "The Navy ruins these poor men. So many of them come back with strange ways and strange ideas from the godless lands they visit."
"And sometimes strange women!" the man said, still amused by the idea of a war bride in their midst.
If the woman had anything to say to that, Robert missed it. The porters had finally finished unloading the crates from a cart in front of them and traffic was beginning to move. Robert was past them now, heading in the opposite direction.
Funny, Robert thought, another sailor coming home the same day as Harry. A coincidence.
Fleetingly, Robert wondered if Harry somehow knew this sailor. But Harry wasn't really a sailor, for all that he'd been aboard a ship for the last few years, and anyway, Harry hadn't gone to China. So perhaps the coincidence was not that great.
But Robert didn't have time to ponder anything else when he approached the station and saw his brother there, emerging from a side door of the station. Robert felt physically jarred at the sight. His brother's face, his walk, the light on his hair -- they woke a part of his brain that had been dormant these last three and a half years. Emotion came in a torrent, Robert found himself grabbing at the carriage's interior handle and half-jumping, half-stumbling out of the carriage before it had stopped moving.
"Harry!"
Robert ran to his brother and threw his arms around him with such vigor that both men rocked on their feet. His brother was here, right now, in front of him; Robert didn't know whether he laughed or cried, or perhaps he did both as they embraced there outside the train station, ignoring God and the world.
This, however, could not be accomplished for long, since the rest of the world has a way of reasserting itself rather quickly. And because, of course it was Harry who the pedestrians had seen at the train station with such an unusual woman, Robert couldn't help but stare when Harry led him back to where she stood at the station. When Robert said hello, the woman didn't return the greeting, though she took his hand when he offered it.
Harry then turned to the woman (who Harry introduced as Miss Silna) and, continuing the series of shocks Robert was undergoing, began to converse in an unknown tongue that Robert was certain that Harry hadn't known before he left. But perhaps 'converse' wasn't quite the word, for the woman didn't talk back to Harry, but only responded with certain looks and small gestures.
Robert dared not ask why the Miss Silna was mute (for she certainly was not deaf), or if she were a good Christian woman (for he didn't think he would appreciate the answer). Besides, Robert was perfectly capable of reading the room when he cared to, and when it came to preserving the happy mood of his first reunion with a presumed-dead brother, he very much cared to.
There was another woman traveling with Harry and Miss Silna, a very old woman. Harry referred to her as Mrs. Layton, Miss Silna's companion, but, really, she was nothing of the sort. The woman and Miss Silna did not converse, or really even interact beyond the necessary. Mrs. Layton seemed to spend most of her time sewing or reading. Robert suspected that she had been hired merely to lend an air of propriety to an unmarried man and woman traveling together, and do little else.
The four of them made quite the motley crew on the carriage ride back to the house. After they had arrived and thrown the servants into a uproar the by suddenly arriving with three overnight visitors when only one was expected, Robert finally had the chance to corner his brother as they oversaw the unloading of the luggage into the rental cottage Robert had taken on the edge of town.
"You might have warned me," Robert said quietly. There was reproach in his voice, but he was finding it hard to keep it there in the face of his brother's still-novel company.
Harry knew exactly what Robert was referring to. "I did write that I might be returning with a guest."
Robert gave him a Look.
"...yes, I suppose that I could have, perhaps, enumerated a bit more." Harry had the grace to look embarrassed, which only served to further melt all of Robert's resolve, since for a moment Harry looked just as he had before the voyage.
"How long will they be staying?"
"Miss Silna will be our guest for as long as it might please her."
Robert laughed. "Well, that is settled, then! All is clear."
A smile began curling at the edges of Harry's lips. "Are you sure you're still happy to have me back?"
In the following days, the Goodsir brothers and their guests fell into something like a routine, and Robert had the chance to reacquaint himself with Harry again.
The Harry that settled in Robert's house was not quite the Harry that left England three years ago. He was quieter, and more fragile in some ways. His health for one, certainly; Harry could be waylaid the entire day by a headache now, and he still had not regained even the middling level of stamina he had left with.
But in other ways Harry was stronger, though it was hard for Robert to articulate exactly how. It was something in his sense of self, his confidence. When Harry said something now, he meant it. He was also no longer shy about turning that stinging wit that his siblings had always been aware of on those that disrespected him.
(And, while it was neither here nor there, this Harry flatly refused to eat anything from a can, and made Robert swear up and down that he would never buy a thing produced by Goldners again.)
Robert was not just learning Harry's habits. Miss Silna took long walks -- sometimes with Harry, sometimes alone -- along the cliffs by the sea. She examined the plants still remaining in the garden leftover from a previous tenant. Sometimes in the evening she would watch carefully as the old woman who served as her companion knitted and sewed, with neither woman exchanging a word between them.
Robert still wasn't sure what to make of Miss Silna. But he could see the way that his brother's gaze settled on her, the shift of his body towards her when she looked at him. Yesterday, Robert had entered the parlor and seen the two of them facing each other, Harry's hand delicately hovering so close to the scar along her jaw.
Perhaps it wasn't Robert's impression of Miss Silna that was important.
Robert also noticed that they were causing quite the stir in the neighborhood. Questions and speculations were bandied about in every drawing room in town. What was the relationship between Henry Goodsir and that mysterious woman? Was there more to the tragic death of Sir John Franklin than had been reported in the newspaper? Was there any truth to the rumor that the trapped ships had been haunted by a violent ghost?
Not being bold (or rude) enough to ask Harry directly, Robert began to find himself the target of every busybody in town. Folks he was barely acquainted with sidled up to ask very leading questions. Robert would have found it all very amusing if he weren't a little bothered by not knowing all the details himself.
Robert privately considered himself the most charismatic of his brothers, though often he uncharitably thought that wasn't a high bar to clear. Thus, he chalked it up to his good manners that he managed to wait until nearly a week after their arrival to fabricate some excuse to speak to his brother alone in order to properly interrogate him.
Robert proposed a walk over breakfast -- just Harry and himself. Brotherly bonding, he called it.
"I promise, I won't keep him from you for long," Robert assured the group at the table.
Harry said something in that peculiar language to Miss Silna -- presumably providing a translation. Mrs. Layton didn't even look up from her sausage.
What a household I head, thought Robert as he waited with the two silent women while Harry readied himself for the outing.
It was a particularly nostalgic walk for Robert. They used to walk to the sea often as children. Robert could almost imagine they were traveling the same back paths and ducking the same fences as all those years ago. The fantasy was interrupted by Harry needing to take a short rest on the way up to bluffs. Harry said that he was still a little weak from all they endured on the voyage, but he was getting better.
The sea breeze ruffled their hair as they reached the crest, and they were greeted with quite the view. The sea spread into the distance, racing off to meet the clouds that hovered at the horizon. The chatter of birds nesting on the sea-facing cliffs rose and fell according to their animal whims. They seated themselves not far from the edge and took a moment to appreciate the scene before them.
Robert watched as Harry tipped his head back to better let his face soak up the sunlight. It was a fine spring day, and Robert thought, by the expression on his brother's face, no one had ever appreciated a day like this one as much as Harry did right now.
They stayed just like that for a while, contented with each other's silent company and the slice of the world in front of them. Robert tried to imagine living on a ship held fast by the ice's grip for two winters, and found he could not. It was almost a nonsense sentence, alien to all his experiences, and currently beyond his imagination while he sat in the warm sunlight among the green grass and wildflowers.
"Armeria maritima," Harry said, holding a sprig of small purple flowers out to Robert.
"I remember. Sea thrift." Robert smiled. "When I have you for a brother, how could I forget?"
"I have been away for quite some time. I cannot have you falling out of practice."
"I assure you, Harry, when you next undertake a three-year voyage to the Arctic, you can leave confident that you'll return to a brother who will always be a better scientist than you."
Harry laughed at that, and it did Robert's heart a world of good to see it. More than the joke, it was the sight of Harry's laugh lines that made Robert join in, and for several weightless moments they were just two brothers enjoying themselves on a warm spring day.
As the moment faded, his thoughts intruded, and Robert broached the subject that had compelled him to suggest this walk in the first place.
"What are your plans here, Harry? What are you hoping for, with her?"
Harry sighed like he had been expecting the question. He picked up a leaf from another plant and examined it closely.
"You know, on the the way to the train station," Robert continued when Harry didn't respond, "I overheard a man say that a sailor had brought home a Chinese wife. Imagine my surprise when I learned that it was you."
"Are you taking your news from strange men of the railway now?" Harry asked, still peering at the delicate veins of the leaf.
"He was apparently correct, and supplied more intelligence than my brother's letters, so perhaps I am."
Harry huffed. "Not terribly correct. Miss Silna is from the Arctic. Her people call their land Nunavut."
"So, not Chinese?" Robert asked, confirming. He knew his geography, and where Harry had sailed, but Nunavut was completely unfamiliar to him. And Harry had been gone so long, it felt like he could have sailed anywhere at all.
"No," Harry said. "And not my wife."
Robert looked at Harry then. His eyes, his hands folded together with a tiny leaf between them.
"But you wish she were."
The words hung in the air, and slowly faded into the backdrop of buzzing insects. Harry looked out across the ocean and didn't answer, but the truth was abundantly clear. So clear that Robert thought Harry didn't stay silent out of embarrassment or avoidance, but because the answer was so obvious that it required no voicing.
The sun above them shone lovely and bright on the world around them. It also didn't need to be acknowledged for all to feel its warmth.