"Good morning, sir."

"God, Cyril! 'Sir?' You've been here almost half a year! Refer to me as anything but 'sir'."

"Markham, then..." I have no wish to call him by his first name. An uncomfortable silence again, until I remember -- "Scott is coming in an hour, for breakfast."

"Ah, yes!" he exclaims, nearly upsetting his bowl. "Good. I need to check up on that boy. Not too much time left now. Less than a year. God, what an expedition this will be, with Robert Falcon Scott leading it." His eyes glaze uncannily at the thought.

"Markham?" He focuses on me again, on the line of the eyebrow. How can I ask? Just... "I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I am � I am not certain that these are the best circumstances for me."

He squints up at me suspiciously. "Spare me the Oxford rotundity, Cyril. You mean you want to get out."

"No! I mean.... Well, yes. Oh -- not out of the expedition, though. I would still do the work on that. I was just wondering if you could give me a weekly salary instead of all my money as a lump sum when the expedition ends."

"So you could find an apartment of your own. Run out on an old man." He pouts and I feel my apprehension rising: this is not going well.

"Of course not, sir! Markham. I certainly wouldn't go until your foot heals. Or your wife returns. Whichever comes first. You know I would never, ever..." But I sound insincere, even to me.

"No. You can't go."

"What?" I ask angrily. 'You can't go' -- what is he going to do, lock me in my study?

"Many reasons compel you to stay here. One, how would we communicate? You could never afford an apartment with a telephone. We've only got a few months until the expedition leaves, and there is so much paperwork to do. We need direct communication!"

"But--"

"And since you have nothing to your name, I would have to give you a massive sum to fund your apartment. And that kind of money is something I do not have yet."

"It's not my fault I have no money!"

"It is your fault! You were caught with an eighteen-year-old in your room, that's your own damned fault." More than rejecting my proposal, he is treating it as a personal affront! "Why do you want to leave so badly?"

I can't tell him! "I don't know, I just... No reason, really..."

"You applied for this job from a one-room flat in Cheapside, you who were used to your rich father's house and deluxe Oxford dorms, and I returned you to a nice neighborhood with free room and board and a job I thought you enjoyed. You must have something more than 'no reason, really!'"

Confrontation turns my stomach. "Can we discuss this later? I should go prepare some food and you should find some more appropriate dress."

He glowers at me but does not speak. I glower back and stomp away, leaving him with his dirty dishes.

So I flee to fight another day. I must now shuffle down to the dank, brown kitchen to prepare cucumber sandwiches. How ignominious. This takes me quite a while, as I am not accustomed to preparing my own food and in my anger I cut myself with the knife. As I bring the tray of sandwiches to the garishly wallpapered parlor, I find Markham sitting at the table in a formal, forbidding black suit, chatting animatedly with his prot�g�. With Scott's presence he appears to have regained his smile and extroversion. Both stand when they see me, and Markham exclaims:

"Ah, time for introductions! Robert, this is the Secretary of the Expedition, Cyril Longhurst. You know his handwriting well. Cyril, this is Lieutenant Robert Falcon Scott. Shake hands, gentlemen."

I set down the tray to do so, and so I meet Scott in person for the first time. The first thing I feel is a hot wave of envy. After my disastrous attempt at freedom, I am being forced to interact cordially with him, the man who gets a whole continent to himself, while I cannot persuade Markham to let me have whatever hovel I can unearth. Scott wears his Navy dress uniform, complete with epaulets and kid gloves, but he does not impress me. He's not even tall, not a bit.

No matter how Markham raves about Scott's talent and ability, he is unqualified to lead an expedition of this magnitude. A hundred Navy men have seen the Arctic, and dozens would love to head the best-funded polar expedition in Britain's history. Why have the honors gone to this unspectacular, inexperienced torpedo lieutenant? Without even an illustrious family to recommend him -- and has he ever seen the snow?

Even examining his face, and knowing Markham's weakness, I am at a loss. As he sits across from me, I can observe some good features -- broad shoulders, eyes a truly gemlike purple -- but too individual for Markham, who prefers bland and Greek. Scott seems older than thirty: his dark hair is thinning slightly, his face sporting lines of worry that will not come to me for twenty years. Why has Markham chosen Scott, when the lieutenant worries, and isn't even young, when Markham worships youth?

Scott and I eat our tiny green sandwiches in our own silence, which is unbroken except for the patter of Markham's words. Scott has learned to tactfully ignore the old man, and I must grudgingly admire him for this, as it's something I have thus far failed to master.

The arcades of curio cabinets in the dining room house an army of commemorative plates and other pale trinkets. They lean in at a crazy angle, straining to hear Markham through their glass and so hemming us in.

"Be sure the visit Nansen, my boy, he's where the real wisdom is. Not that bounder Borchgrevink, the epic fool. Nansen's crossed Greenland pulling twice his own weight behind him and no damned dogs. That's the spirit of exploration. That and the great god Science! What's that Latin -- dulce et decorum est-- it is good and proper to die for science. But not to sacrifice one's morals...! Ask him what skis he uses. Surely you've written that down. You do have an agenda for the trip?"

"Yes, sir," he says. (I wrote it, from Markham's dictation.)

"Good boy." Back to the subject of Heroism vs. Efficiency in the Modern Polar Expedition, a favorite topic of his to expound upon. As he speaks I sneak glances at his prot�g� across the table from me. Curiously, he is still wearing his white gloves; his manners are militarily perfect.

Soon enough, but not before we finish our sandwiches and grow politely bored, Markham finishes his speech. "Now if you'll excuse me, my foot is bothering me and I think I shall go lie down." He exits with dignity, limping most slightly. I suppose I must clear the table, so I rise and take up the garishly scrolled silver plate.

"I didn't know you were the maid here too." Scott says in an amused tone. He has discarded his military posture; he leans back in his chair and looks up at me.

"I'm not," I reply crossly. "Lady Minna has just left for Italy, and she's taken all the servants."

"Ah. That's just like her, you know, taking all the help when he's stuck in the house with the bad foot. She's an absolute shrew. They fight all the time." It appears that he thinks they are merely an old arguing couple, their veneer of love rubbed off by years of close contact. Well, let him think so. I won't prove him wrong.

Ignoring him, I depart to the kitchen, a floor below this one, to wash the tray. I have almost forgotten how to do this, even after half a year of living on my own before I came to 23 Exeter. I do not know where the soap is, and all the brown roots hanging from the brown ceiling seem to be laughing at how ridiculous and servantile I look, and the bright brass pots twinkle at me in amusement.

A rustle that makes me turn proves that Scott has followed me, and slumps with a cigarette in the doorway. He considers my sodden shirt-sleeves in something approaching pity. "Can I help you?" I ask, reddening. My father is physician to half the House of Lords...

"Just bored and looking for conversation. That parlor is rather overpowering."

"Claustrophobic is more like it. It's as if Markham never leaves the room." I laugh to mask my malice. Why won't the old bastard let me free? Must I return to poverty to escape him? I'll do it.

"I had never thought of it that way before, but you're right. I suppose I don't notice much these days but pemmican and sledges. I only have a few months, and then it's off to Antarctica."

"I know. You forget that I've written sheaves of correspondence on the subject. Sometimes I feel as if I were going myself."

"Ah, I'm sorry; I forget sometimes that you are a real flesh and blood person; I've only seen you as a return address until today! But you wouldn't want to come South anyway. From the disgusted face you're giving to that plate I'd guess that you've been raised elite. Which, as you could surmise, is the exact opposite of Polar exploration."

"I don't care." I say sullenly. "I wish I could go."

"Fine," he shrugs, "Perhaps someday you will."

And now he's acting condescending! He can do that to me, and him a lowly lieutenant! "You're so goddamn lucky!"

Without even starting at my sudden, cursing declaration, he laughs a little. "I have the largest Antarctic expedition ever to organize. I wouldn't call that lucky."

"But you're free! I mean, when you get there. It's a whole continent that's all white and pure and all for you. You can go where you please."

"We have already set a route to the Pole." With this he wanders to the table in the center of the kitchen, on which he rests his elbows and holds his cigarette loosely, much closer to me. "Across the Ross Ice Shelf and over the Larsen glacier."

"I know -- I addressed it out to the Geographic Society. But you'll see so much. Side trips and all. Sights unseen by human eyes..."

Scott smiles again at my wonder and jealousy. "I'm excited too. But I'm not Columbus. I have duties to fulfill. I have a program. I'm from the Royal Navy and so are my men; we couldn't forge new paths if we wanted to. We'd anger the financiers."

I frown at the faintly amused Lieutenant. My dark-fringed eyes peer into his brilliant purple ones. And to my surprise there is no wild freedom there, nor independence even, simply a man employed. Little better than I. For number of commitments to others, worse off.

"You're a pawn to him, too," I exclaim.

"Hmm?"

"To Markham. You're his front." This must be... "He can make you do anything and go anywhere. It's an exchange, but he gets a vicarious expedition however he wants it and you do the work and have the heavy responsibilities." This must be why he chose you.

His eyelids shutter back down. "I suppose so," he says tersely. "I know very little about Antarctic exploration � still." Scott whips up from his relaxed posture at the table. His mood changes with his posture and he speaks frostily as he stubs out his cigarette. "I have so much work to do. Even today is full, I have overstayed my time here. I should go, really."

"It was nice having you here."

"I can find my own way out." And he leaves, marching off, an automaton.

Did he not realize that he, too, was a pawn to Markham? Or does he just find it disagreeable to acknowledge the fact?

I finish with the plate, worrying these questions and the question of my freedom in my mind all the while. But somehow the kitchen has become a mere backdrop instead of an annoyance.

Without quite realizing it, I clean all the dirty dishes in the room. How much time has passed, and hour? More? My jailer may want me for another petty task. I slog up the stairs to his room.

My eyes widen as they catch the glint of a spent syringe lying next to his bed. It must be morphine, but I have known him to take morphine only twice, when the pain in his foot was so great he could hardly speak. But when he left Scott and I at lunch, he was hardly limping!

Now he lies, eyes closed, on top of his covers with his shoes on but without his coat, one sleeve of his shirt rolled up to expose the veins. A voice echoes quietly from within the collapsed mountain of flesh. "Oh... Hello..."

"Hello," I respond clumsily.

"I was just thinking about the expedition. Did you know that some winds in Antarctica can reach over 160 kilometers per hour? Katabatics, they're called. Stand alone against them, and they'll throw you right off your feet."

"Have you taken morphine, sir? Should I call a doctor?"

"A bit of morphine, yes. No doctor, please."

Halfway between the doorway and the bed, I hesitate to move either way, but he is clearly delirious. "Do you need my help?"

"Oh, always." he laughs, a distant rumble. "Always, Cyril, what would I do without you?"

"It was rather unfair of your wife to take all the help, if I do say--"