Blood and Ice

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

December 17, Midnight

THE BELL IN THE STEEPLE was ringing when Sinclair finally returned to the church, but it was only the wind banging the clapper. Still, the sound had helped him and the dogs to find their way through the storm. He staggered in, the dead seal draped around his shoulders, and the dogs, released from their harness, yapping wildly around his feet. In an instant he saw that the rectory door was ajar. Throwing the seal upon the altar, he crossed to the open door and looked inside.

The fire was dead in the grate, and Eleanor was gone.

He stood there, his arms extended to either side of the doorframe, breathing hard. It was possible, though unlikely, that she had found some way to unfasten the lock and escape. But where?

And why?

“Eleanor!” He shouted her name again and again, setting off a reciprocal chorus among the dogs roaming the aisles. He thundered up the stairs to the belfry and peered into the cyclone of snow and ice, but he could barely see the warehouses and sheds below. Even if he ventured out into the storm on foot, the blizzard was so intense he would not be able to orient himself or move in any consistent direction. If Eleanor had gone into it, he would never be able to find her… or his own way back.

There was nothing to do, he knew, but wait. He must bide his time until the storm abated. Though he hated to concede it, it was conceivable that she had done something rash and unforgivable… that she had chosen, of her own free will, not to go on. He was well aware of her despair, being no stranger to it himself… but in his heart he could not accept that she had done that. He scoured their humble quarters for a telltale sign of farewell, or a message of any kind, torn from letters in the hymnals perhaps. But there was nothing, and he knew that Eleanor, no matter how possessed by grief she might have been, would not have left him that way. She would not have left him without a word. He knew her too well ever to believe such a thing.

Which left only one alternative… that Eleanor had been taken.

Against her will.

Had men from the camp come in his absence and made off with her? Any tracks they might have left in the snow would have already been obliterated, and with the wet dogs in the church, it was impossible to see any footprints the intruders might have left there, either. But who else could it have been? And where else but their camp could she have been taken?

Finally-and that was where all his thoughts were tending- how could he best effect her rescue?

The obstacles to that were immense, especially because he could not see what the endgame would be. Even if he were successful at finding and freeing her, where could they flee on this ice-bound continent? He felt as if he were staring down a narrow defile to certain doom, just as he had done on that brisk October morning in Balaclava. But somehow, he reminded himself, he had survived that apocalypse, and even worse. Regardless of how black the page, he had always managed to turn it and move on to a new chapter in his life.

And he did have certain advantages, he reflected grimly. A cup of fresh seal blood rested like a chalice at his elbow, next to a book of poetry that had traveled with him all the way from England to the Crimea, and now to this dreadful outpost. He opened it, and let the pages fall where they would. His eyes dropped to the yellowed paper, stiff as parchment, and there he read…

Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide, wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:

And a thousand thousand slimy things

Lived on; and so did I.

Though there was precious little balm in the words for most men, for him they provided comfort. Only the poet seemed to guess the awful truth of his situation. The dogs howled, and Sinclair sawed off another slab of blubber from the dead seal lying on the table and tossed the pieces into the nave below. The dogs scrambled to get them, their claws scraping on the stone floor, their barks echoing up to the rafters.

From his tall stool behind the desecrated altar, Sinclair surveyed his empty realm. He could envision the faces of the whalers who had once occupied the pews, their faces smeared with grease and soot, their grimy clothes encrusted with dried blood. They had gazed up at that very altar, hats in hand, listening to the minister extol the virtues of the life beyond, the bounteous treasures they had laid up in Heaven to compensate them for the torments they endured day after day. They had sat there, in the desolate church- even the crucifix was rough-hewn and plain-in a frozen waste, surrounded by flensing yards and boiling cauldrons, piles of entrails and mountains of bones, and they had listened to stories of white clouds and golden sunlight, of boundless happiness and eternal life. Of a world that was not a reeking slaughterhouse… and oh, Sinclair reflected, oh, how they had been duped.

As he had once been duped by tales of glory and valor. Lying on his pallet in the Barrack Hospital, consumed with the mounting and inexplicable desire, he had been driven to a deed he had long regretted but could never undo. The bloodlust engendered by that unholy creature on the battlefield at Balaclava had proven too strong to resist, and he had preyed upon a helpless Highlander too weak to fend him off.

The Turks would have numbered him among the cursed. And he would not have disputed it.

Still, the next night, when Eleanor had come to his side, he had felt distinctly stronger. Revived. He felt that he could truly breathe again and see more clearly. Even his faculties seemed to have been restored.

Was that how it felt to be one of the damned?

But in Eleanor's face, he had detected something troubling; he had seen what he thought was the first glimmering of the mysterious Crimean fever, and he knew the signs well; he had noted them countless times in many others. His fears were confirmed when she swayed on her feet, spilling the soup, and the orderlies had escorted her from the ward. The following evening, when it was Moira, and not Eleanor, who came to assist him, he knew the worst.

“Where is Eleanor?” he had demanded, lifting himself on one elbow from the floor. Even that was painful; he suspected he had fractured a rib or two in the fall from his horse, but there was nothing to be done for a broken rib, and anything the surgeons might attempt would no doubt kill him.

“Eleanor's resting today,” Moira said, trying not to meet his eye as she set down the bowl of soup, still warm, and a mug of brackish water.

“The truth,” he said, clutching her sleeve.

“Miss Nightingale wishes her to gather her strength.”

“She's ill, isn't she?”

He could see the furtive look in her eye as she wiped a spoon on her apron pocket and put it into the soup bowl.

“Is it the fever? How far has it gone?”

Moira stifled a sob and quickly glanced away. “Eat your soup, while it's still hot.”

“Damn the soup. How far has it gone?” His heart seized up in his chest at the very thought of the worst. “Tell me that she's still alive.”

Moira nodded as she dabbed at her tears with a wretched excuse for a handkerchief.

“Where is she? I need to go to her.”

Moira's head shook, and she said, “That's impossible. She's in the nurses’ quarters, and can't be moved.”

“Then I'll have to go there.”

“Seeing her like this… she don't want it. And there's nothing you can do to help her.”

“I'll be the judge of that.”

He threw back the ratty blanket and staggered to his feet. The world spun around him, the dirty walls, the muslin curtains speckled with flies, the wretched bodies lying in disorderly rows all across the floor. Moira threw her arms around his waist and steadied him.

“You can't go there!” she protested. “You can't!”

But Sinclair knew that he could, and that Moira would help him to do so. He groped around the straw he'd fashioned into a pillow and pulled out the jacket of his uniform, wrinkled and soiled though it was. With Moira's reluctant help, he finished getting dressed, then lurched toward the door. It opened out onto two endless corridors, equally dim and cluttered, but leading in opposite directions. “Which way?”

Moira took his arm firmly and led him to the left. They passed room after room filled with the sick and the dying-most of them silent, a few softly muttering to themselves. The ones who were in such agony or delirium that they could not be kept quiet were given a blessed dose of the opium, and it was simply hoped that they would not awaken again. Occasionally, they passed orderlies or medical officers who gave them a curious glance, but by and large the hospital was so vast, and everyone working in it so overwhelmed by their own duties and responsibilities, no one could spare any further concern.

Since the hospital had originally served as a barracks, it was built as an enormous square, with a central courtyard sufficient for mustering thousands of troops, and towers at each of the four corners. The nurses’ quarters were in the northwest tower, and Sinclair had to lean heavily upon Moira's ample arm and shoulder as they mounted the narrow, winding stairs. When they came to the first landing, they saw the glow of a lantern descending toward them, and Moira had to usher Sinclair quickly into a shallow recess. As the light came closer, Moira stepped forward and said, “Evening, mum,” and from the shadows Sinclair saw that it was Miss Nightingale herself, lamp in hand, a black lace handkerchief draped over her white cap, whom she had greeted.

“Good evening, Mrs. Mulcahy,” she replied. The white collar and cuffs and apron she wore stood out in the lantern glow. “I expect you are returning to your friend's side.”

“That I am, mum.”

“How is she? Has her fever abated at all?”

“Not so's you'd notice, mum.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. I shall look in on her when I have finished my rounds.”

“Thank you, mum. I know she would appreciate that.”

As Miss Nightingale trimmed her lamp, Sinclair held his breath in the dark corner.

“As I recall, the two of you enlisted in this mission together, did you not?”

“We did, mum.”

“And you shall return from it together, too,” she said. “Just be sure that the bonds of friendship, however strong, do not divert you from our more general purpose here. As you know, we are-all of us-forever under a magnifying glass.”

“Yes, mum. Indeed, mum.”

“Good night, Mrs. Mulcahy.”

And then, in a rustle of black silk, Miss Nightingale continued down the steps, and when the light from her lamp was gone, Sinclair stepped out of the shadows. Moira said nothing, but beckoned him on. At the next landing, he heard the voices of several nurses, wearily exchanging the news of the day-one was describing a pompous officer who had demanded that she stop dressing an infantryman's wound in order that she might fetch him a cup of tea- while others were washing up. Moira put a finger to her lips and led him up yet another flight, to the very top of the tower, where he found a tiny alcove with a tall window overlooking the dark blue waters of the Bosporus.

Moira, lifting her skirts from the floor, hurried to the side of the bed and whispered, “Look who I've brought you, Ellie.”

Before Eleanor could even turn her head on the pillow, Sinclair had knelt by the bedside and taken hold of her hand. It was limp and hot, damp to the touch.

Her gaze was unfocused, and she seemed strangely annoyed at the interruption; he doubted that she had actually registered his presence. The fever, as he well knew, could blur the line between fancy and reality.

“If the instrument is out of key,” she said, “then it ought not to be played.”

Moira met his eye, as if to confirm that Eleanor went in and out of sensibility.

“And put the music back in the bench. That's how it gets lost.”

She was back in England-perhaps at her family home, or more probably at the parsonage, where she had told him she once used to go to practice the piano. He pressed the back of her hand to his lips, but she pulled it away and whisked it above her blanket, as if trying to scatter a horde of flies. They were everywhere in the hospital wards, but here, he noticed, so high up in the tower and facing the sea, there were none.

How, he wondered, could he get rid of Moira? To do what he needed to do-what had to be done to save Eleanor's life-he would need to be alone and unobserved. Moira was wringing a cloth in a bucket of water, then dabbing at Eleanor's face with it.

“Moira, can you get some port wine, do you think?”

“More easily said than done,” she replied, “but I'll try.” Moira, no fool, handed him the cloth, then tactfully withdrew.

Sinclair studied Eleanor's face in the moonlight. Her skin had a hectic flush, and her green eyes glittered with a mad delight. She was not aware of her own suffering; for all intents and purposes, she wasn't even there. Her spirit had left her body and was traveling in the Yorkshire countryside. But her body, he feared, would soon go, too. He had seen a hundred soldiers rant and rave, mutter and laugh, just like this, before suddenly turning their heads to the wall and dying with a single breath.

“Can you play me something,” he said, “on the pianoforte?”

Eleanor sighed and smiled. “What would you like to hear?”

He gently drew the blanket away from her shoulders, the heat from her fevered body welling up from beneath the wool.

“You choose.”

“I am fond of the traditional songs. I can play you ‘Barbara Allen,’ if you like.”

“I would like that very much,” he said, slipping the chemise from her shoulder. She shivered in the breeze from the open window. He bent his head above her.

Eleanor's fingers twitched, as if they were caressing a keyboard, and under her ragged breath she hummed the opening bars of the song.

Although her skin was still hot to the touch, gooseflesh had already begun to form. He placed his hand above her breast to protect her from the night air. Even then, beneath the scent of camphor and wool, she smelled as sweet to him as a meadow on a summer morn. And when his lips grazed her skin, she tasted like milk fresh from the pail.

She was singing, very softly, “Oh mother, mother, make my bed…”

What he was about to do, he feared could never be undone.

“O make it saft and narrow…”

But what choice was there?

“My love has died for me today…”

By daybreak she would be gone. He put his arms around her, the breath choking in his own throat.

“I'll die for him to-morrow…”

And when he bestowed it-his mouth closing on her skin, her blood mingling with his own corrupted spittle-she flinched, as if from the sting of a bee, and her singing abruptly stopped. Her body became rigid.

Moments later, when he lifted his head again, his lips wet from the dreadful embrace, her limbs relaxed and she looked at him dreamily, saying, “But that is such a sad song.” She stroked his tear-stained cheek with her fingertips. “Shall I play you something gay now?”