by Alma Katsu
Don’t mention the séance in front of the doctor, Maddie wanted to say, but knew it was hopeless with this crowd.
“We had a séance last night,” Lady Duff-Gordon said with her usual bluntness. “It was quite . . . lively.”
“I suppose you object to such things.” Mr. Stead took preemptive offense, as Maddie expected he would.
“Many of my colleagues find spiritualism intriguing,” Dr. Leader said.
“What a diplomatic answer,” Lady Duff-Gordon replied with a crisp laugh.
“But not you, I take it,” Stead said. “Even a disbeliever wouldn’t deny we had contact from the other world last night. We had . . . a presence.” As he spoke, the words crept underneath Maddie’s skin, the coldness sweeping into her bones. The old man knew the truth of what had happened, just like her.
“The table shook under our hands,” he went on, and she remembered it. The night had seemed a dream, but now she knew it had been real. Too real. “A wind came in and blew out the candles,” Stead was saying, “and the room grew cold. All the classic signs of the presence of a spirit.” Stop talking, she willed him, subconsciously afraid that they’d summon up the spirit by merely talking about it. This spirit isn’t a toy, a curiosity. It’s dangerous.
“I’ve been practicing occultism for many years now,” he continued, “often in the company of great mediums, and I can honestly say I have never felt a presence as strong as the one I felt last night.”
Maddie sank farther into the chair, growing more and more desperate for escape. The chill was winding through her now, stirring in her belly and up into her chest, like ice-cold seawater.
“It could be because we are over water. Water is easier than earth. The spirits encounter less resistance. Yes, that could explain a lot of what we saw last night.” He nodded even though no one was refuting him.
He was talking about it like the spirit was a physical presence. . . .
“So, you’re saying spirits over water are more powerful than they would be on dry land,” Caroline Fletcher asked as she picked through the cards in her hand, “because they would encounter less resistance? Like with electricity?”
“Precisely,” Mr. Stead confirmed. “Like telegraphy. Like that Marconi machine. Except”—he paused, and in the silence, Maddie shivered—“spirits can live not just in air but in people.”
“What?” Maddie said, the interruption bursting out before she was aware of it. Her husband gave her a sidelong glance.
“Do you mean like a possession of some kind?” asked Lucy.
“I do indeed, madam,” Stead answered. He looked from one to the next dourly. “And it’s when they possess the body of another that they’re at their most dangerous. Because, you see, then they are corporeal. Flesh and bone. They can act on their desires, whatever those may be.”
“Excuse me.” Maddie shot to her feet—as much as she could shoot up in her current state. The urge to flee was overpowering. She would cause a stir leaving so abruptly, but she couldn’t sit there any longer. “I’m not feeling well.” She smiled faintly, with a gesture toward her belly, knowing they wouldn’t ask for details.
She pushed through the glass doors and scurried down the promenade, ignoring her husband’s calls. She would claim that she was about to be violently ill and she couldn’t wait for him. He wouldn’t get mad at her for leaving. He wasn’t good with illness of any kind. He was good with a great many things—playacting and dogs and inventing useless things—but not sickness. It wasn’t in his nature.
She just couldn’t take it a minute longer. They could all make fun of the séance and act as though it was some kind of trick, but she knew it wasn’t. It had been real.
They had touched the malevolent spirit that had taken Teddy; and you could tell it was pure evil, whatever it was.
And it was still here, hovering on the ship. What if it had taken the form of someone here, someone in that room, someone lurking in the halls, waiting for the next victim? Stead had just said this was possible, that this evil spirit could slip inside the body of a living, breathing person, bend it to its will. Those near misses and misfortunes during their grand tour made sense in retrospect: the servant who’d let Kitty out of the hotel suite in Cairo, causing all manner of anxiety, the trail guide who’d given her that too-spirited mount in Montreux. The thief who’d chased her into an alley off the open-air market in Florence. Jack had said he was a common cutpurse, but Maddie had seen something more sinister in his eye. Demonic cat’s-paws, all, sent to fulfill the curse.
Of course: that’s how Teddy had died. At the hand of someone on board this ship, someone who might not even be aware of what they’d done. Could that be why she still had this ugly, sinking feeling lurking within her?
Some might think her young and naive—spoiled even—compared to all those vaunted, celebrated people upstairs, laughing and playing cards, but Madeleine Astor knew complacency when she saw it. They wanted to believe in spirits and ghosts, but they were blind to the danger. They were ignorant of the shroud of death that hung over them.
Over all of them.
Footsteps had caught up to her and she swiveled. Caroline Fletcher had followed her. “Are you all right? I thought I should make sure you got safely to your stateroom—you gave us quite a fright.” Before Maddie could say or do anything, however, Caroline rushed forward and took Maddie’s arm firmly, in a way that reminded Maddie of her mother.
She let Caroline escort her. It was reassuring, at that moment, to feel a warm human body beside her, anchoring her. “I find all this talk about spirits very unsettling,” Maddie said. “It’s just that Jack and I had several frights while we were traveling. Traipsing from one old castle to another, each of them haunted, to judge by the stories.” She choked back a sob. “And then losing poor, dear Teddy . . .”
“Don’t underestimate the effect of pregnancy.” Caroline nodded at Maddie’s swollen belly. “It makes you so much more sensitive to everything around you. Almost unbearably sensitive.”
“Yes . . . You understand. . . . It wasn’t so long ago for you, was it?” Maddie thought of the Fletcher baby, a beautiful little thing; too bad she was usually off with the nanny. Maddie wouldn’t mind a little practice handling an actual infant. Caroline merely smiled, one of those beatific smiles that only recent mothers could give. Maddie looked forward to smiling like that herself. Saintly.
They had fallen into a rhythm, their steps in cadence like horses paired together in harness. At that moment, Caroline could’ve been one of her old friends—and was certainly closer to her in age than any of those other ladies—and her companionship was a comfort. “I feel it, too. There’s a presence on board this ship. It’s not just you: everyone is talking about it.”
As frightening as it was to hear her fears confirmed, it was also reassuring. It wasn’t all in her head. “It seemed every place we stayed in Europe was haunted. Jack kept telling me there was nothing to be frightened of. . . . ‘Ghosts can’t harm you—just a lot of cold air and humbug!’ But you heard Stead. Could it really be possible for a ghost to take possession of someone’s body?” If this was true, the danger from Ava’s curse was real.
And present: on a ship with more than two thousand souls, how would she know which ones meant her harm? She was surrounded by potential enemies. Like the newspapers with their insatiable appetite for stories about them, with their swarms of reporters ambushing them in Europe and Egypt. Waiting on the docks to waylay them as they boarded the Titanic. The world, it seemed, meant her harm.
Caroline was leading her now, clamping Maddie’s arm firmly to her side. Caroline wasn’t looking at her any longer, no: she was looking down at their feet as though following a path Maddie couldn’t see. “In the town where I grew up, there were a lot of Catholics. One of my Catholic friends told me a story about one of the parish priests, an old man who had done a number of exorcisms in his day. But there was one case i
n particular. . . . He wouldn’t talk about it, but the parishioners did. It had to do with a young man who had lived a couple of towns over. . . . The man had been accused of killing his brother in a fit of jealousy because the brother had married the man’s sweetheart, the girl he’d hoped to wed.”
Maddie was beginning to tire—she got winded so easily with the pregnancy—and tried to slip out of Caroline’s grip, but Caroline held tight, continuing to pull Maddie down the long, empty hall. Pulling Maddie along as though she were a stubborn child. “The family was convinced that their son was possessed by his brother’s spirit. He’d moved into the dead man’s house, slept in his bed, enjoyed his wife—the dead man using his brother to have the life he was otherwise denied.”
Maddie snorted, unable to control her tongue. “That was stupid of them. It obviously wasn’t possession: it had been the killer’s intention all along. He killed his brother to have the girl he loved, and used possession as an excuse. The family just couldn’t accept that their son was capable of such evil—”
“That’s what the constable thought, too. The family was in a position of influence in the town, however, and was able to buy the priest a few days.” The pressure on Maddie’s fingers grew painful. “He tried all the usual things: tying the man down, praying over him for hours at a time, sprinkling him with holy water, making him kiss the crucifix. Nothing worked.
“Finally, knowing time was running out, in a fit of desperation, the priest took the man to the pond behind the family’s house and . . . submerged the man. Completely, totally underwater. He wanted to trick the spirit into thinking that the man was going to die, to drive the spirit out.”
Maddie gasped.
“That’s what the priest did. He held the brother down. Held him down, even though he thrashed and fought. Held him down to save him.”
Maddie was nearly faint with pain. Caroline was squeezing her fingers together, squeezing them into a pulpy mash.
“He almost drowned the man—almost—but pulled him out of the water at the last minute. The man sputtered and wheezed, but he was alive. The priest was relieved to find that it had worked: he’d driven the dead man’s spirit out of him. It was the brother once again.”
“The killer,” Maddie clarified.
They’d come to the end of the alleyway. Caroline steered them through a door onto the promenade. They stood at a railing at the ship’s stern, the gray-green ocean spooling away in two spiraling wakes. Maddie looked down at the cold, dark sea. Into the fathomless abyss. It was a long, long way down.
Where was everyone? In this lonely corner, it was like they were the only two people on the ship. A chill descended on Maddie. Why had Caroline Fletcher brought her here? They’d walked right by the stairs that led to the Astors’ stateroom with its cozy, safe bed.
Finally, Caroline released her hand. Maddie rubbed life back into her fingers as the two stood at the railing and stared at the sea’s hypnotic undulations.
“The spirit driven out, when the brother—the killer, as you say—came to his senses, he was horrified. Because while he was under the brother’s influence, he’d killed the girl. The dead brother had driven him to do it, he told the priest. He swore the brother’s vengeful spirit had been inside him. Had seen the happiness on the girl’s face as they fornicated—she’d wanted the first brother all along—and the dead brother flew into a rage when he saw it. Killed the girl, and wanted to kill the brother, too. Such is the power of a jealous heart, even from beyond the grave.”
The power of a jealous heart. It was only a story, but Maddie didn’t doubt the truth of it. She could feel the brother’s pain and confusion all around her.
Caroline continued to stare at the sea. “And now the brother, seeing what he’d done, what the vengeful brother had made him do, he was beside himself with rage and regret. What else could he do but kill himself? He stabbed himself in the heart as soon as he stepped back inside his parents’ house.” She settled her gaze on Maddie. Was it Maddie’s imagination, or was Caroline Fletcher’s normally warm gaze a trifle chillier than before? “When you hear a story like that, you can’t doubt whether possession is real. There is no other explanation for what he did.”
The deck moved beneath Maddie’s feet suddenly, and she grabbed the railing to steady herself. Was it the ship, rising and falling on a gigantic wave, or Caroline’s insidious story? The vengeful spirit, coming for her?
It was a long way down. The gray-green waves lashing the ship, clawing like wolves.
Maddie saw, in that instant, what she had to do to save herself and her unborn child.
Chapter Fifteen
There was a faint rattle of crystal drops as Dai Bowen entered the Astors’ stateroom that evening, a step behind Les and Violet. If someone were inside, an Astor or one of the servants, Dai would not be able to explain their presence. Violet Jessop, who’d opened the door with her passkey, was the stewardess assigned to the room, of course, but if the Astors were to return early from the concert, they’d be surprised to find the two boxers with her.
Could Violet have miscalculated the length of tonight’s piano concert? Or might one of the Astors’ servants have remained to polish shoes or lay out tomorrow’s outfits?
No: all was still. It was nothing more than the rise and fall of the ship rattling the crystal. They’d made their final stop in Queenstown, Ireland, earlier this afternoon, and had already by now struck out for open sea, New York bound.
They tiptoed into the room. Dai had to hand it to the girl: Violet had nerve and cunning, planned it all to a T. All the first-class passengers’ servants were being treated to a special meal (eels in aspic and pigeon pie) in the crew’s mess. She’d known the rooms would be empty and decided to use the opportunity to offer them a little sightseeing tour.
Not that he was surprised—he knew the effect he and Les had on girls. Once they fell under the spell of it—the smiles, the subtle flexing of the muscles, the teasing in his voice, the mention of his workout regimens—they all became the same to Dai. A sea of sweet laughter and perfume and confidential tones of voice. They became standing too close and smelling too floral, all haloed hair and pink lips and white teeth.
Dai wasn’t proud of it. And he certainly could take no credit for the way his hair curled just so across his face or the symmetry of his dimples—his pretty mama had given him those. And he knew there were plenty of other men with curls and chins and muscles—but they were not boxers. Modern-day gladiators.
And he didn’t like to lead her on—you’re not my type, miss—but it was good cover. He had to play the game.
Besides, he had lured her in as a favor to Les.
Dai fancied he and Les looked out of place in the pretty room of mahogany paneling and plush carpet, chairs upholstered in velvet, enough bedspreads and robes to keep an entire village in Wales warm through the winter. It was nothing like the room in steerage they shared with two additional men, not enough space to turn around without whacking your head on one of the bunk beds. As a matter of fact, he felt out of place on the entire ship and had the sneaking suspicion that the ship had come to the same conclusion and was secretly displeased whenever he set foot on any of the upper decks. Know your place, guttersnipe.
Violet went about the room lighting another two lamps—the first-class passengers had such excesses of light, it occurred to Dai—and Les traced her path. Dai didn’t like the way Les’s eyes glittered as he surveyed the Astors’ possessions. He watched Les pause before the dressing table laid with Mrs. Astor’s nice things: ivory and jade combs and a set of silver brushes. A Chinese lacquer tray holding Mr. Astor’s everyday jewelry. Two pairs of cuff links and a watch on a chain. It made Violet nervous, too, Dai could tell, and why shouldn’t it: it was her job on the line if something went missing. Now he understood why Les had been keen for a little tour: it wasn’t to see how the other half lived. It was to case them.
&nbs
p; The bed had been turned down by some dutiful servant—probably Violet herself—but Dai approached, recalling the gossip that had circulated the second- and third-class quarters all day. The story of the little boy—the one he himself had rescued from falling into the water only yesterday.
“So, this is where he—where it happened,” Dai said, not wanting to bring the word died into the room with him, as if it might leave a stain. A pang of sadness moved through him—the boy had looked at him so admiringly on the promenade yesterday. For the moment, Dai had been his hero. And yet . . .
Whatever had troubled the boy enough to cause him to first climb the railing had continued to call to him, until the boy succumbed to his own death by another means. It was uncanny.
“I wish you hadn’t mentioned that,” Violet said. “I’ve been thinking about it all day, every time I’m in here by myself. It gives me the willies.”
“Are you the superstitious type?” Les asked, poking around in a cabinet. “I heard some of the swells think the ship is haunted,” he added, looking over his shoulder with his half grin.
Violet swayed toward him, as if to stop Les from prowling through the cupboard; then thinking better of it, she lingered instead near Dai. “The crew, too,” she said. “There’s a strange feeling on the ship, there’s no denying.”
Les laughed. “How could it be haunted? It’s brand-new. Nobody’s died on it, except for—”
“The boy.” Violet rubbed her upper arms like she had a chill. “And it isn’t just the boy—there are deaths on every voyage, it’s just that most passengers don’t hear about them. Crew members, mostly. Accidents. There’s something different about this crossing. I been on plenty; I should know better.”
He wasn’t sure if Les believed in hauntings. Dai had grown up with it all around, belief in fairy folks and malicious spirits, mostly embraced by the poor and uneducated and, ironically, the most religious, in his experience. The kind of people who would call for his public execution if they ever found out the desire he harbored in secret, so he had resolved early to have nothing to do with them, including their embrace of magic.