Blood and Ice

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

December 13, 8 p.m.

Sinclair guided the sled on a wide circle around the rear of the camp so as to avoid being seen, then across the snow and ice with the sea on one side and the distant mountain range on the other. Eleanor was battened down inside it, well protected by the voluminous coat they had stolen from the shed.

The dogs were running smoothly and seemed to know precisely where they were going. Sinclair had no idea where that was, but he was prepared to deal with any eventuality. At some point, he even detected tracks in the snow, and the dogs, he noted, were following them. He stood on the runners, gripping the reins, and though the air was frigid and the sun afforded no warmth at all, he held his face up and reveled in the cold wind scouring his skin and filling his lungs like a bellows. To feel! To move! To be alive again! No matter what happened next, he welcomed it, as nothing could prove more unendurable than his imprisonment in the ice. The red coat, with the white crosses on it, flapped around his legs. The gold braid on his uniform gleamed dully in the wintry air, but his blood felt hot in his veins and even the hair on his head seemed to tingle.

There were cries overhead, the restive cawing of a flock of birds- brown and black and gray-and though he might have hoped to see the snowy white bosom of an albatross silently keeping him company, he did not. These were scavenger birds-he could tell from their dirty color and their grating cry-and they followed the sled dogs in hopes of nothing more than a meal. He had seen such birds before, wheeling in circles in the hot blue sky of the Crimea. They'd come, Sergeant Hatch had told him, from as far away as Africa, drawn by the carrion feast that the British army had laid before them.

“Some of them,” Hatch added, “are no doubt here for me.”

For days, Sinclair had watched as the sergeant's skin went from a weather-beaten tan to a jaundiced yellow; even his eyes had a sickly tinge, and there were times he shook so violently in his saddle that Sinclair had taken the precaution of tying a rope from the man's shoulders to his pommel. “It's the malaria,” Hatch had said, through chattering teeth. “It will pass.”

The blades of the sled suddenly rose up on a hidden elevation, then dipped down again, as gracefully as a ballerina. Sinclair had never seen, or imagined, a contraption quite like it; for that matter, he could not even determine what exactly it was made of. The carriage, where Eleanor lay, was as slick and hard as steel, but lighter, much lighter, judging from the speed with which the dogs were able to drag it.

The birds kept pace overhead, skittering and darting across the sky. By comparison, the vultures in the Crimea had been more complacent, soaring in great lazy circles, and even occasionally roosting in the tops of the desiccated trees as the columns marched by. With their wings folded about their smudged brown bodies, and their beady black eyes, they watched and waited for the next soldier, mad from the heat, dying of thirst, to stumble out of formation and crumple in a heap by the wayside. Their wait was never long. Sinclair, plodding along on an emaciated Ajax, could only look on as the infantrymen first dropped their hats, then their coats, then their muskets and ammunition, as they struggled to keep up. The ones who had contracted cholera could be seen writhing in the dirt, clutching their stomachs, begging for water, begging for morphine, and sometimes simply begging for a bullet to end their agony. As soon as their suffering stopped, and they at last lay still, the vultures would flap their foul wings and plop onto the ground beside them. After a tentative peck or two, simply to make sure of things, the birds would set to with their hooked beaks and claws.

Once, unable to restrain himself, Sinclair had taken a shot at one-blowing it to pieces in a burst of bloody feathers-but Sergeant Hatch had immediately cantered up, listing in his own saddle, and warned him against doing that again.

“It's a waste of ammunition, and might even alert the enemy to our movements.”

Sinclair had laughed. How could the enemy not be aware of their movements? There were sixty thousand men on the march, raising a cloud of dust into the sky, and ever since disembarking, they had been crawling slowly across the vast plains and the thorn and bramble-covered thickets of the Crimea. They had met the enemy at the banks of the River Alma, and the infantry had gallantly scaled mountains in the face of withering fire from the Russian batteries, capturing redoubts and sending the defenders fleeing.

But the cavalry-the 17th Lancers among them-had done nothing. By orders of Lord Raglan, the Commander in Chief, the cavalry was to be “kept in a bandbox”-those very words had circulated through the ranks-guarded and preserved so that they might protect the cannons and perhaps one day, if the army ever arrived there, help in the conquest of the Russian fortress of Sebastopol. For Sinclair, the entire campaign had so far been one long series of humiliations and delays. And at night, when they bivouacked in some mosquito-infested glade, he hardly had to speak to Rutherford or Frenchie; they all knew what the others were thinking, and they were usually too weary to do much more than swallow their rum, choke down their uncooked salt pork, and search desperately for some spring or pond where they could water their horses and fill their canteens.

In the morning, the men who had fallen sick in the night were loaded onto transport wagons, while the dead were quickly consigned to shallow mass graves. The stench of death traveled with the British army wherever it went, and Sinclair had despaired of ever scrubbing it off of his own skin.

“Sinclair,” Eleanor said, her head turned toward him now from the sled, “I see something ahead. Do you see it?” She raised an arm and pointed feebly to the northwest.

He could see it, too, a clutter of black buildings, and a ship-a steamer, from the looks of it-beached on the shoreline. But was this place inhabited? And if so, by whom? Friend or foe?

He reined in the dogs and approached more slowly. But the closer he got, the more confident he became. There was no smoke from a chimney, no lanternlight shining in a window, no clatter of pots or pans. There was no sign of life whatsoever. The dogs, however, seemed well acquainted with the place and trotted into the labyrinth of frozen alleyways and dark, abandoned buildings with complete aplomb, bringing the sled to a halt in the middle of a wide and utterly desolate yard. The new lead dog-a gray beast with a broad white stripe, like a scarf, around his neck-turned and watched Sinclair for further instructions.

Sinclair dismounted, and seeing a clawed device between the runners, he stomped on it, hard, and felt its teeth dig into the ice and frozen soil. A bolt of pain shot up his leg, reminding him of the bite he'd received; the dog had torn right through his riding boot, leaving a flap of blood-tinged leather hanging loose.

Eleanor stirred in the sled, and said, in a voice as bleak as the surroundings, “Where have we come to?”

Sinclair looked around, at the warehouses and massive, abandoned machines-in one open shed, he could see huge iron vats, big enough to boil a team of oxen in, and a web of rusted chains and pulleys. There were train tracks, barely visible here and there, crisscrossing the yard, and iron wheelbarrows even more enormous than the ones he had once seen at the coal mines in Newcastle. Everything had been built with a purpose in mind-a plainly utilitarian one-and that purpose had been the making of money. The only way to do that, in a place so remote and forbidding, was by fishing or sealing or whaling. And on a grand scale. A black locomotive engine, covered with ice like a thin glaze of marzipan, sat at the end of a rusted track. There must have been twenty or thirty buildings scattered across the frozen plain, their windows cracked, their doors hanging off the hinges, and rising atop the hill at the rear Sinclair could see a spire, with a toppled cross.

For a second, it gave him pause… then it kindled a spark of defiance.

He stomped with his uninjured leg on the brake lever, and after a couple of tries he could feel it release.

“Onward!” he cried to the dogs, and at first they hesitated, but when he shouted again and shook the reins, they pulled at their harness and moved forward.

“Where are we going?” Eleanor asked.

“Up the hill.”

“Why?” she asked, in an uncertain tone.

He knew what she was thinking. “Because it's the high ground,” he offered, “and affords the best vantage point.”

He knew that she suspected another reason.

The dogs threaded their way past what looked like a deserted blacksmith's shop-there were forges and anvils and lances almost as long as the one he had carried into battle-and a mess hall with long trestle tables, some with frozen candles still sitting on tin dishes. The candles, he thought, he might want to come back for.

As the dogs pulled the sled up the hill, their heads went down and their shoulders rose-these were powerful, well-trained beasts, and under other circumstances, he might have wished to compliment their owner. What Mr. Nolan had done with horses, someone had done with these dogs.

But when the sled approached the church, the dogs slowed down to navigate their way through a random collection of stones and worn wooden crosses, marking the gravesites of the camp's dead. There was no order to the graves, and the words that had been chiseled on some of the tombstones were so effaced by the constant wind that they were virtually obliterated. An angel with no wings stood atop one, a weeping lady with a missing arm atop another. All faced the frozen sea.

At the wooden steps leading up to the chapel, Sinclair applied the brake once again. He stepped off the runners and moved to Eleanor's side, but she was huddled down inside the sled and did not extend her hand to him.

“Let's go in,” he said. “It seems the best shelter the camp affords.”

And it would be needed soon. Dark clouds were filling the sky, and the wind was rising fast. He had seen such storms spring out of nowhere and batter the ship they had traveled on, driving them ever southward.

But Eleanor did not move, and her face, pale to begin with, looked positively ghostly now.

“Sinclair, you know why I-”

“I know perfectly well,” he said, “and I don't want to hear a word of it.”

“But there are so many other places,” she said. “I saw a dining hall, on our right side as we-”

“A dining hall with no doors and a hole in its roof the size of St. Paul's.”

His mention of the cathedral inadvertently reminded them both of a popular ditty they had once recited to each other, in happier days… about coconut palms as tall as St. Paul's, and sand as white as Dover. But Sinclair dismissed such thoughts from his mind and, putting a hand under her elbow, virtually lifted her out of the sled. “It's superstition and nonsense.”

“It's not,” she said. “You remember what happened… in Lisbon?”

It was not something he would soon forget. As they had stood before the altar in the Igreja de Santa Maria Maior-on what should have been a happy day for them-the hand of God himself had seemed to intercede. It was a lucky thing that Sinclair had been able to book passage on the brig Coventry for that very night.

“That was happenstance,” Sinclair said, “and nothing to do with us. Why, that city has been struck by earthquakes countless times before.”

He didn't want to indulge such fantasy. There were things to do, plans to make. As the dogs settled down among the gravestones, tucking their heads in and curling their tails around their hindquarters, he held Eleanor by one arm, and with his other hand on the hilt of his sword, ascended the snowy stairs. The birds that had been following them had alighted, lining the roof and spire like gargoyles. Eleanor's eyes went up and saw them, and when one cawed loudly, its beak extended and its wings flapping, she stopped in her tracks.

“It's a bloody bird,” Sinclair said scornfully, dragging her up the remaining steps.

There was a pair of tall double doors at the top, though one was knocked off its hinges and simply frozen in place. The other one he was able to push, with considerable effort, until it opened enough to let them pass. A snowdrift had piled up just behind it, and once he had stepped over it, he took Eleanor's hand and helped her inside.

Their footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone floor. Rows of wooden pews faced the front, with moldering hymnals lying on some of the seats. Sinclair picked one of them up, but the few words that were still legible were not in English. Some Scandinavian tongue, if he had to guess. He dropped it on the floor, and Eleanor, instinctively, picked it up and put it back on the pew. The walls and roof, which had several holes of their own, were made of timbers that the relentless elements had polished to a fine flat sheen, every whorl and groove in the wood revealed as plainly as a wine stain on a linen tablecloth. The altar was a simple trestle table, with a rough-hewn cross hung from the rafters behind it. Eleanor, wrapped in the bulky coat, held herself back, her eyes averted, but Sinclair strode boldly up the nave. Stopping in front of the altar, he spread his arms and declared, as if presenting himself to a country squire who had invited him to come for a shooting party, “Well, here I am!”

His voice echoed around the walls, joined only by the wind whistling through the narrow windows where the glass had long since fallen away.

“Are we welcome here,” he called out, tauntingly, “or are we not?”

A sudden gust blew the crest of the snowdrift up the aisle, the white flakes dusting the top of Eleanor's shoes. She quickly stepped into a row of pews.

Sinclair turned around and with his arms still out, said, “Do you see? Not a word of protest.”

He knew that Eleanor feared him when he was in this mood- black and challenging and itching for a fight. But ever since the Crimea, this dark side had been brewing in him, as inescapable and ungovernable as a shadow.

“I can't imagine more suitable accommodations,” he said. He looked all around, then spotted a door with great black hinges behind the altar. The rectory, he wondered? His black boots ringing on the stony pavement, he walked around the side of the altar- littered, he could see, with ancient rat feces-and pushed it open. Inside, he saw a small room, with one square window covered by a pair of shutters. It was furnished with a few sticks of furniture- a table, a chair, a cot, whose blanket was rolled up in a ball at its foot… and a cast-iron stove. Dismal as it was, it was as if he had just stumbled into the drawing room at the Longchamps Club, and he could barely wait to show it to Eleanor.

“Come along!” he shouted. “We've got our suite for the night.” Eleanor clearly didn't like coming so close to the altar, but she also didn't want to cross Sinclair. She came to the door and peered in; he threw his arm around her shoulders and held her tight. “I'll get the things from the sled, and we'll see what we can make of this, eh?”

Alone, Eleanor stepped to the window, parted the shutters, and looked out-a strong wind was blowing the snow across an icy plain, dotted with several more tombstones, most of them toppled and broken. On the far horizon, a ridge of mountains lay like the jagged spine of a reclining beast. There was nothing in any of it to greet the eye, or lift the spirit, or offer even a scintilla of hope; in short, there was nothing to persuade her that this was anything other than a panorama of damnation, lighted forever by a cold dead sun.

The wind rose even higher, whistling in the eaves of the church and rattling the very walls.