by Alma Katsu
Annie crept closer, moved by piety for the dead but also—to be truthful—curiosity. She’d seen the dead before, of course, but only after they had been washed and dressed by the old grandmothers in the village and set out in the family’s parlor, ready to receive visitors. There was no coffin for the Astors’ boy: he had been wrapped in sailcloth and weighted down with ballast from the bilge. He made a compact white package, small enough to be mistaken for laundry or a bundle of life belts, improbably bound in heavy iron chains.
The Astors had requested the body be buried at sea, as quickly as possible. The boy had been an orphan; no reason to keep the body on board—there was no family waiting to receive him, and it would be a good six or seven hours until they reached Queenstown, the last stop before New York. More likely, they simply wanted to avoid a scandal. Still, it all seemed overly hasty to Annie; on the back of the boy’s sudden and unnatural death, it left her unsettled.
When she heard that the Astors’ servants were to attend the service, she decided to go, too, to swell the meager ranks. She counted heads: there was the head butler and Mrs. Astor’s two lady’s maids, Mr. Astor’s valet, and two young under butlers, all of them bonneted and buttoned up in shades of black and charcoal, plus two sailors to help with the body. The mourners were as fidgety as she, hovering, pacing, wringing hands. No one, it appeared, knew what to do or what to expect. Protocol called for the captain to preside—but certainly that wouldn’t apply to a little servant boy.
Finally, an elderly man in a black suit with a Bible tucked under his arm appeared out of the fog, whom Annie recognized as one of the ministers in second class. The head butler walked up to him and, after a minute’s engagement, shepherded the rest to form up around the shrouded body.
The minister opened his book and began the service, but Annie, standing to the back, could barely hear his words, swallowed up by wind. She edged forward a few steps, as close as she dared without disturbing the mourners. She liked the bit that she was able to hear, how the dead in the sea sleep without monument and so there were no distinctions between rich and poor. Theodore Wooten—a name too stiff and formal for the tiny boy—would rest with kings and peasants, all of them the same in the eyes of God.
When the minister closed his book, the sailors crouched on either side of the body, then raised the board carrying the sailcloth bundle to their shoulders. With some awkwardness, they lifted it over the railing, then tilted the board and, just like that, let the bundle slide into the sea. They were high over the surface of the water and Annie heard the splash as the body met the waves. She shivered all over.
Annie had always been a good, strong swimmer; her mother insisted on it after her uncle had died at sea. She used to love to hold her breath and open her eyes beneath the warmth of high tide in late summer, where, it always seemed to her, lay the ultimate truth, the fractured light of it. And yet . . . as she watched the ocean close itself over the pale shape, she imagined it was her own body plunging into the frigid water, being wrapped in cold, the chains pulling her down in a terrible embrace.
One of the young footmen let out a muffled moan and the older of the lady’s maids cried noisily into a handkerchief, but Annie was surprised to feel no urge to join them. It was, she supposed, because they knew the boy and she did not, but it bothered her that she felt so little. Only regret that he’d died so young. She wondered if that meant there was something wrong with her.
It was then she noticed William Stead standing beside her, dressed as though out for a morning country walk in a tweed jacket and brown trilby. He appeared to have observed the entire thing. Annie was taken aback; as a man of his station, he stood out.
“Astor’s boy, I take it?” he asked without emotion.
“Did you come for the service?” Annie asked.
“No . . . I was working and thought I might stretch my legs. I saw the gathering and . . .” He gestured to the group. As they watched the mourners straggle away, Stead turned to face her. “I’m glad to see you, Miss Hebbley. I wanted to thank you for your assistance last night, procuring the items I requested.”
She remembered only hazily, amid the blur of anxiety around the child’s sudden death. A few curiosities: plain bread, extra candles, a large shaving bowl.
It seemed he wanted to tell her something. “I’m happy to help provide whatever you need.” It was one of the sentences she’d been trained to say when the first-class passengers were feeling conversational.
He shrugged but didn’t make eye contact. “I will likely need more of the bread and candles tonight.”
“Of course. Were they not enough?”
“The waves will be hungry for more, I’m afraid,” he said, staring out at the water.
“The . . . waves?”
“The bread was not for me, you see, but for the dead, who have come back, hungry. One offers them bread in order to appease them—or perhaps to hear what they might say.”
A sickening shock moved through her. Was the man insane?
Perhaps he saw the way her face had changed, because he smiled, as if to reassure her. “I have been practicing séances for years now. I assure you, I know what I’m talking about.” He paused and she said nothing. “Have you ever attended one?”
“No, sir,” she replied hastily. “Nothing like it up in Ballintoy.” At least as far as she could recall. Back home, the priests wouldn’t have approved of such things.
He squinted toward the ocean, invisible in the fog. “I take all my holidays at the seaside. It’s very restorative, walking the shore, watching the waves. . . . I can see how, sometimes, the wind over the water might sound like a woman’s voice. There are stories, you know, of creatures who try to lure men to their deaths in the sea. Some call them sirens; others call them mermaids.”
Annie knew all of these stories. Ballintoy was a town of fishermen, with fishermen’s superstitions and fishermen’s tales. Men claimed to hear the sirens’ call when they were far out at sea. Lost men were said to have let themselves be swept overboard in storms, to meet them.
A memory came to Annie—one she was conscious of having tried to bury, though now it somehow seemed like the only clear memory she had of her past, blotting out all others. She’d been very young and wandering on the beach at Ballintoy not far from her auntie’s cottage, where they were having a picnic. Her auntie Riona was a fisherman’s widow and lived by the sea with her mother, Annie’s granny Aisling, a short walk from where Annie lived with her mother, father, and four brothers. Normally Annie loved the sea, despite the fear her parents had tried to put in her, told her she would never be able to fight the strong tides if she were to get swept out and that she would be lost to them forever like Uncle Wilmot.
But as she scampered over the rocks that day, Annie’s head started to hurt and her vision went white and blurry. It had been a bright spring day, cold and clear. Still, there was something about that day that left her, even now, with a feeling of terror. . . .
She’d had a vision. There was no other word for it. A terrible vision that had made her run back to the picnic, to seek out her father and try to climb into his lap, hiding her face against his chest. But he would have none of it. She was too old to sit in his lap, he’d told her. And when he’d demanded to know what had frightened her, she’d told him what she’d seen: the dubheasa. The dark lady of the water. The sea goddess. The demon. The one who longed always for her coveted girl children, to keep and protect them, never allowing them to surface from the water again. Or so the stories went.
Rather than comfort her, she watched as his bearded face grew red with fury, the kind that always seemed to be boiling just below the surface of his skin. He shouted in front of everyone, See what comes of these daft fairy stories, he’d yelled at Annie’s mother. What would Father Mulroney say? It’s all your mother’s doing. . . .
It’s the old ways, Auntie Riona had said, jutting out her chin, wi
ld black curls whipping all around her face. She was the only one in the family who stood up to Jonathan Hebbley.
It’s pagan nonsense, and I forbid it in my house. Do you hear that, Annie?
That was the last family picnic with Auntie Riona and Granny Aisling, and Annie wasn’t allowed to visit her grandmother ever again, the woman who told her of wee folk and fairies and her favorite of all, selkies: women who could slip in and out of their beautiful coats of sealskin, to walk the earth in search of those they had once loved.
With effort, Annie pushed the memory away. She was not in Ballintoy, and she was not a little girl anymore.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that Stead had left her side without any word, continuing his walk along the promenade, his figure just disappearing into the mist.
As she regained her senses—she had to get belowdecks; there were passengers to attend to—she was approached by a sailor. She recognized him as one of the pair who had sent Theodore Wooten’s body to the deep.
He touched the brim of his cap. “Begging pardon, miss, but you’re one of the first-class stewardesses? I was wondering ’f I might give this to ya.” He reached into his peacoat and pulled out a handkerchief. It seemed to be wrapped around something, the small, white lump reminding her of the shrouded body on the deck.
He placed it in her hand. Unwrapping the handkerchief, she saw a piece of jewelry. A brooch in the shape of a heart dangling from an arrow, the clasp fashioned into the arrow’s back.
“I was part a’ the detail that made the body ready, and I found that on ’im,” the sailor explained. “Piece as nice as that, I figured it must belong to one of them first-class passengers. Kid mighta pilfered it. Could ya see that it gets back to the rightful owner?”
Annie looked from the object to the sailor. A man on funeral detail would be among the lowest ranks on the ship. He could’ve pocketed it himself, sold it. No one would’ve known. She was touched that he trusted her, that he saw the decency in her. “Yes, of course.”
As he shuffled away to his next task—shoveling coal, oiling machinery in the bowels of the engine rooms—Annie turned back to the jewelry. It was a fairly large brooch, made of gold but no gemstones, with finely detailed designs all over. She struggled to remember where she’d seen it before. All her female passengers brought jewelry with them, strewn across their dressing tables with little concern, as though they were mere baubles and not the most precious things Annie had ever seen. She had to ignore them completely or risk temptation—but she’d made an exception for this piece, of which she had been immediately covetous.
And now it seemed the boy had been unable to resist that temptation, she thought sadly as she turned the piece over in her palm. Would a boy so young be of a mind to sell it? she wondered. No, more likely he’d stolen it because he liked it, because it was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen and had decided in a rash moment that he couldn’t live without it.
And then she remembered where she’d seen the brooch: on Caroline Fletcher’s dressing table. She recalled thinking it was curiously unlike the rest of Caroline’s jewelry. Could the boy really have stolen it? He would have had no reason to be in the Fletchers’ rooms, no reason at all. It wasn’t easy to get into the cabins; people didn’t leave them unlocked and, besides the occupants, only the stewards had keys. It would have been impossible for Teddy to get into the Fletchers’ room—unless the Fletchers invited him.
Which was absurd.
She ran a finger over the brooch’s face, thinking. What if it were the other way around—not that Teddy went into the Fletchers’ rooms, but that Caroline went to see Teddy? Could she have sought the boy out for some reason? Given him the brooch? That, too, made no sense.
But that was probably always true at the start of a mystery.
As the ship heaved onward through the thick waves, the irking anxiety that had been lingering in her chest ever since the boy died—no, ever since seeing Mark board the ship—billowed into a vague, cold dread. Something was not right; she could sense it at the core of her, an echoing suspicion, a discomfort she couldn’t find a single source for. It was everywhere on this ship. It was in the cool air sliding along her skin even now, like one of Stead’s hungry spirits.
Annie covered the brooch with the handkerchief again, afraid that someone might see it and leap to the wrong conclusion: that she’d stolen it. Because she wasn’t going to return it to Caroline Fletcher, not yet. She would hold on to it a while longer. Had to hold on to it, for it was proof of something, even if she didn’t know what.
The oddest thing was that—holding the brooch now, being reminded of the Fletchers—Annie had the strongest urge to see Ondine. To hold the baby in her arms, cradle her close, breathe in her delicious aroma, warm and sweet. To protect her, to make sure she never ended up like poor Teddy Wooten, his body now entrusted to the care of the sea.
She stuffed the wrapped brooch deep in her pocket—the gentle weight of it there kept her anchored amid all this bad feeling and fog—and ducked down into a darkened stairwell to prepare for her morning duties. The rest of her passengers were sure to be waking soon.
Chapter Thirteen
11 April 1912 10:30 a.m.
Entered into the record of Dr. Alice Leader
Strict confidentiality
Patient: Madeleine Astor, née Talmage Force
Age: 18
Condition: overall health is good; patient is five months pregnant by the patient’s reckoning, though judging by distention of belly she could be at later in term (six months? Seven? Note: Perhaps an attempt to obscure that conception took place prior to the wedding?). Patient lacks color; but temperature fine, breathing and pulse in acceptable range. Notable swelling of the joints to be expected with pregnancy.
I did not intend to practice while on this voyage; indeed, I tried to explain to Mrs. Madeleine Astor when she came to see me that I am on holiday with my friends the Kenyons and Mrs. Margaret Welles Swift and not prepared to see patients. But Mrs. Astor had developed an antipathy to Dr. O’Loughlin, the ship’s surgeon, and insisted on seeing me, feeling she would be more comfortable consulting a female doctor. Given her condition, as well as her state at the time, I did not think it wise to upset her further.
Mrs. Astor came unaccompanied to our meeting, insisted on coming without her husband. (Note: no evidence of husband’s permission. Follow up with him separately?)
The patient was visibly tired and had the appearance of not having slept well. Her hands were restless. When asked why she had come to see me, she did not answer, asking instead if I believed in occultism. I told her, truthfully, that while not overfamiliar with it, I had several friends who were avid practitioners. That seemed to put her at ease.
She told me she believed there was an evil spirit on the ship that was trying to harm her. When I asked her why she thought this, she told me that one of her servants, a young boy, told her that he had heard “a woman on the water calling for him to join her” shortly before he died. I assured her that children often claim to see and hear the dead. Given the child’s circumstances—a recent orphan, by Mrs. Astor’s accounts—this is not surprising at all. That seemed to calm her somewhat, but she told me that she, too, believed there was a spirit and, what’s more, that this spirit had designs on her unborn child. She admitted she believed it had something to do with her marriage to Mr. Astor and the scandal around his divorce, though she refused to go into further detail. However, she hardly needed to. Though I myself care little for gossip, I have seen the newspaper articles about Mr. Astor’s shocking whirlwind romance with the much younger woman.
In any case, knowing that indulging her delusions would do her no good, I advised Mrs. Astor that she was apt to feel unsettled after her servant’s death. It was only natural to be upset. But she was at risk of developing a hysteria: the excitement of her recent marriage and subsequent attention from the ne
wspapers; her pregnancy.
Prescribed dilute of laudanum with instructions to further dilute in ratio of 1:20 and take a quarter cup over the course of two hours. Skeptical but visibly calmer, Mrs. Astor left my room after making plans to meet again the following day.
Chapter Fourteen
Sunlight broke like a golden egg yolk through the Astors’ porthole, flooding the stateroom in sparkly shards of light, refracting off every surface, from the set of silver and ivory combs to the jewelry tossed carelessly across her dressing table, diamonds and emeralds and sapphires strewn about like children’s toys. Light glinted off the crystal perfume bottles and faceted whiskey decanters. It lit up last night’s discarded gown in a blaze of pure white, so blinding that it was impossible to look at for more than an instant. It was as though they’d awakened inside a mirrored lantern.
Madeleine Astor winced in her chair in their private breakfast nook by the window. These days, her body simply couldn’t get comfortable, even snuggled deep in her voluminous robe, which was like wearing a velvet tent. She couldn’t warm to the day knowing that Teddy’s body had been dropped into the sea at dawn, long before they’d even awoken. The thought of it made her queasy. She’d wanted to be there, but John Jacob—Jack, as he liked to be called—had put his foot down. “You’re emotional enough about it. . . . The last thing we need is for you to faint at a servant’s funeral,” he’d said.
She’d gone to speak to a woman doctor about her queasiness, worried it might be a pregnancy-related nausea she was experiencing. But Dr. Leader had been clear-eyed, if unsympathetic, and suggested the events of last night, and Maddie’s lingering feelings of guilt and horror, were to blame.
She shouldn’t feel guilty, the doctor had assured her. After all, Teddy’s death hadn’t been her fault. Bad things simply happened sometimes. It didn’t have to be part of a pattern. It didn’t have to mean something.
But it was her fault. She knew it as surely as she knew anything.