The Deep

by Alma Katsu

  Her first thought was alarm: Was he accusing her of harming the baby? “Could she have scratched herself? Babies do that.”

  “I checked her fingernails myself, and they were trimmed neat. Miss Flatley is good for something, it would seem.” He pressed his lips together tightly. Started to speak, stopped, then relented. “I hesitate to admit it, but, yes. It’s most . . . unusual. Almost . . . supernatural. There’s more. . . . Something else happened last night, Annie—Ondine’s all right now, mind you, but at the time it was . . .” He shuddered.

  An icy finger ran down Annie’s spine. A push, a prod. Speak up.

  “We woke to find Ondine choking. . . . My wife—” he began, but then stopped, as though there were hands at his own throat.

  Had Caroline been choking the child? Did he think his wife was responsible for the scratches? Annie had heard stories of what mothers sometimes did to their babies. Bad things. Caroline Fletcher did not seem like such a woman. Still—what else could it be? Annie’s heart went out to Ondine. The helpless one.

  Then again, there was her brooch, found on the dead boy’s body, which still sat, wrapped in its handkerchief, in Annie’s pocket.

  The poor man was tormented, that was plain to see.

  He suspects his wife. The thought came to her and she couldn’t erase it, even though it turned over sourly in her gut.

  “Is there something I can do to help?” There was such sadness in his eyes; she would do anything to make it go away.

  “Let’s find someplace quieter. There are too many people here,” he said, even though it wasn’t true—the crowds on the promenade had thinned out vastly, the night sea was dark and twinkling. Still, he pulled her farther into the darkness, to a deserted spot—a guilty spot, a place where it would be hard for a stewardess to explain why she’d been found there with a married passenger—and then turned again to look at her, the wind whipping his hair around his face, making something inside her soar. “I hope you don’t mind my confiding in you, Miss Hebbley. I realize it’s inappropriate and a terrible imposition but . . . I feel as though I have no one to talk to. . . . These people”—she supposed he meant the first-class passengers—“are my wife’s people, not mine.”

  “Oh?” she asked, though instantly she felt she had known this about him—that this was why she’d been so drawn to him initially. It wasn’t just the intensity of his eyes, pulling on something within her. It was that feeling she sensed, that he was just to the outside of things, like her. That this boat, for all its comforts, was not her world, and not his, either.

  “I wasn’t born to money,” he explained, offering a strained smile. “Those who’ve always had it can’t understand what that’s like. To feel so . . .”

  “Helpless,” she whispered.

  “Desperate.”

  “Trapped.”

  “Yes.” He blinked. “Yes, that’s it exactly. Ironic, isn’t it? A ship so massive, and here we are, trapped on it, nowhere to run.”

  She shivered. “One is always trapped within oneself, though.” She wasn’t sure where the thought had sprung from. It was something she’d heard somewhere or read in a book, though she’d never remember where.

  He stared at her, concern wrinkling his brow. Had she spoken out of turn? But then she watched as the corners of his eyes crinkled and a smile, far brighter and more genuine, broke out across his face.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, it’s just.” He shook his head, the smile still playing across his lips like sunlight on water. “Someone I once knew used to say that very same thing.”

  “Who?”

  For a moment, Mark Fletcher was transformed. No longer sullen, his face radiated with the kind of warmth that only comes from remembered love, so strong that Annie felt a pang of jealousy. “She was very special to me. Her name was—” But then he stopped, and the smile was snuffed out in the wind. “Never mind. I’m doing you a disservice, Annie. I shouldn’t trouble you with the intimate details of my life. It’s an imposition. You are staff on this ship.”

  She felt slapped, even though what he’d said was true: they should not be alone like this. They should not be confiding in each other. She had no right to feel so close to this man, this stranger. “I—I’m sorry, sir, I—”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. . . . You have no choice if a passenger comes to you with his problems. . . . You must do your job. It is I who am sorry. I’ll take up no more of your time. You may resume your duties.”

  She curtsied, feeling sick to her stomach. She had begun to take leave of him when he called out to her. “Annie?”

  She turned. “Yes?”

  He was quiet for a moment, only stared at her. Once again, she felt as though he were seeing her for the first time, studying her features so intimately but without recognition. Whatever he’d hoped to see wasn’t there. “Never mind,” he finally said.

  As she watched him return to the lounge, the joy went out of her, like a soul departing the body. She wanted to sit for a moment, sink onto one of the chairs set out for passengers, and have a good cry. She felt confused and overwhelmed: far too guilty now to approach the wife, though she still had Caroline’s brooch and it suddenly felt wrong, almost dirty, that she’d kept it so close. It was a wonder she herself didn’t reek of death from it. It had come straight off the boy’s corpse, after all. And again, desire to see Ondine tugged at her sleeve.

  “Miss Hebbley! There you are,” a voice called out from the across the deck. It was John Starr March, the postal clerk. He jogged toward her, an envelope in his hand. A flush of guilt poured over her, but surely he couldn’t tell in the darkness.

  “I’ve been looking for you, Miss Hebbley. I have something for you.” He thrust the envelope at her. For a moment, they both stared at it. Crumpled and twisted, as though it had been wet once but had dried. He smiled sheepishly. “You know we’re not supposed to deliver mail while we’re at sea. I hand ’em over to the U.S. authorities when we dock, but this one bag got wet and I was drying them, to minimize the damage, when I saw one had your name on it! Addressed to the ship. I didn’t think there would be any harm in giving it to you now. . . .”

  More likely, he’d been bored, trapped down there in the mail room, had looked for any reason to snoop on people’s mail and then to skirt about on the upper decks to deliver it.

  She turned the envelope over. The flap was unsealed. Clearly, it had been opened. She looked at March, too anxious to be angry at him for invading her privacy.

  “You should read it, Annie. That’s why I brought it to you.”

  She pulled out the letter. She recognized the handwriting, though the lines were bloated by water and nearly unreadable. It was from Father Desmond Flannery. He had been on her mind because of Mark but now, seeing his name written out like this sent a dark current of memory through her. Dark blue eyes the color of an angry ocean. A lean but strong frame. Delicate, long hands, like those of a musician.

  Annie—Can it really be you? Safe and alive, on a ship to America? You must know, I have searched for you since the day you disappeared . . .

  Annie lowered the letter, feeling March’s eyes on her. “You must swear to me that you’ll tell no one about this letter—no one.”

  “But this man is worried sick about you. I don’t know what happened at home to make you end up here—”

  Annie drew back from him. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve put it all behind me. I don’t want to reopen old wounds. Can you understand that?”

  “Aye, I understand only too well. But did you ever stop to wonder that maybe life doesn’t want you to move on, and that’s why this fellow found out about you? You know, after my wife died last year, my daughters pleaded with me to give up the sea. ‘You’ve had enough close calls,’ they said.” John Starr March’s near misses were legendary among the crew. The man had endured an accident on each of the s
hips he’d served. “But I returned because this is my destiny. I wanted to make them happy, but I knew in my heart that if I left the sea, I’d never be able to make peace with it. So here I am, where I belong. You might ask yourself whether the same is true for you, girl.”

  March’s words crashed down on her like a great wave, dragging her under and holding her down. He was wrong, she knew: the past would drown her if she stopped running. It was all well and good for him to make peace with his past. He hadn’t done anything nearly as bad—as damning—as she.

  When she thought of Desmond Flannery—Father Flannery—she panicked. She couldn’t say why exactly. There was something standing in the way of her memory, like a curtain, hiding whatever stood on the other side. She could remember the sound of his voice, though, gentle—and persuasive. His boyish smile, the curve of his lips. She knew the feel of those lips, the feel of his hands. His name, whispered on her tongue. Des.

  “What you saw in this letter is not my destiny,” she said as she returned the letter to its envelope and stuffed it in her apron pocket. Strands of unruly strawberry hair had fallen out from her cap and she brushed them impatiently off her face. “As you said, it’s not your business and I’ll thank you to keep it to yourself. Now, excuse me. I’m late seeing to my rooms.”

  She rushed away without waiting for another word from him, down the passageway of first-class cabins. But as soon as March disappeared, she walked on, not paying attention to where she was going, and it wasn’t until her feet stumbled over a threshold that she realized she was in the first-class smoking room. She had no business here, could not say why she’d come. The few passengers puffed on their cigars and eyed the lone stewardess with detached curiosity. She scanned the smoky room, not sure whom she was looking for—until she realized she was hoping to find Mark again. She wanted to see his face light up, the way it had for the woman he’d mentioned, surely a former lover. Mark would comfort her, take care of her.

  She wanted Mark and it had nothing to do with Desmond Flannery.

  There was no denying it.

  Mr. March was wrong: she had been drawn to the Titanic because it was her fate. She was fated to meet Mark. He was her destiny. She felt the truth of it in her blood.

  As for her past—she’d made up her mind, hadn’t she, by traveling to Southampton and talking her way aboard this ship?

  She reached for one of the cigar lighters—a heavy brass affair designed especially for the fancy smoking room—and set a corner of the envelope on fire, then dropped it on top of the logs that had been carefully arranged in the fireplace for the evening crowd. She watched the orange flames stretch heavenward and said a little prayer. Fire would cleanse her past, taking Des—his words, his promises, even his faith—away on a furl of smoke.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mark needed a smoke.

  Where had Caroline gone? He couldn’t remember if she had promised to meet him in the lounge or the reception room. The nanny was there to watch Ondine during dinner and had long since put her to bed. Mark himself should go to sleep, too. But something irked him.

  First, the conversation with the stewardess, Miss Hebbley, and the odd thing she’d said to him. One is always trapped within oneself. He couldn’t count the number of times Lillian had said something similar to him. She considered the soul to be one’s true self; but unlike many people, she sometimes longed for her soul to be freed from its mortal shell. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be free of one’s own self?” she had asked on a number of occasions, a desire that he frankly didn’t understand. She had moments of disliking herself, voicing the strange craving to be rid of her fine body and beautiful face. It was absurd, especially when many women would give their eyeteeth to be her—raven haired and sparkling eyed. Lillian was, sometimes, a paradox. Her mind was so strange and dark that way. He knew he shouldn’t be drawn even to her melancholy, to her moods, but he was. He loved her moods. He loved the stir he felt in her, even from across a room. The swirling rise of tension, when he knew without even knowing how he knew—simply by the angle of one of her eyebrows or the tapping of her foot—that a fight was about to brew.

  Lillian loved to fight. And she fought ruthlessly, too. With verbal claws. She’d told him once that that wasn’t true—it wasn’t that she was vicious, only that he chose to believe every cruel thing she ever said to him in the heat of the moment.

  But of course he had believed. Her word had been God to him, and he didn’t even believe in God. He believed in Lillian. Cruel, dark, strange, wonderful Lillian. He knew that he had loved her too much—in the same way he loved gambling. He loved too deeply, and one day it would drag him under.

  He had to stop thinking of her. What was it about being at sea that made him feel so close to her all over again, like she was here, hovering nearby?

  He shook his head—felt drunk even though he’d had only a single brandy after dinner. He’d been good tonight. Had avoided the itch to play, though it had called to him like a high whine of a dog in the distance, persistent. He’d brought a book and kept his nose in it until Miss Hebbley pulled him out.

  No matter.

  What he wanted—what he needed—was his damn wife.

  But since they had set foot on this ship, Caroline had been disappearing a lot. When she finally did turn up, there would be a sly little smile on her lips, but she refused to talk about it, insisting he was imagining these absences.

  He knew now what else had distracted Caroline the night of the séance: Guggenheim. She’d let slip that they’d spoken that night and since then, the millionaire seemed to turn up in random spots throughout the day with annoying regularity. He’d taken the table next to them at breakfast, slipped into a bridge game that afternoon, his gaze always returning to, and lingering on, Caroline.

  If he were honest with himself, Mark could see why Caroline would respond to the attentions of a man as famous and rich as Benjamin Guggenheim. Guggenheim was more like Henry, Caroline’s late husband: older, with a wise paternal air that Mark—being close to Caroline’s own age—would never attempt with her. And confident: Guggenheim exuded the self-assurance that came with vast amounts of wealth.

  He pushed his way into the smoking room. It was only when he saw the room was deserted—everyone off to bed by now, certainly—that he realized his heart was pounding. Shame poured over him like a sheen of sweat. He’d come in the irrational hope of catching the two of them. He wanted to have it out with the millionaire, to make him stay away from his wife. Which was absurd, he knew. Nothing had happened. Why was he acting like this—like a possessive maniac?

  He never used to be like this: jealous, petty. Not with Lillian. With her, their passion had been mutual and matched. It had never occurred to him to think otherwise. Lillian had been the jealous, volatile one. And now . . . it was like the memory of her was at his shoulder, whispering envious thoughts into Mark’s head.

  He should go back to his room. Caroline was probably there already, humming lullabies to Ondine. It wasn’t Caroline who was even missing, was it? It was him. He was the one lost, roaming, adrift.

  He moved to the door, but the acrid scent of smoke stopped him.

  He turned, wary.

  A spark from behind one of the heavy, polished oak tables.

  A snap.

  Behind the table, the hearth glowed hot.

  The flicker of shadows on the wall, orange light dancing behind a cluster of club chairs.

  Oh my lord.

  Fire.

  Crackling and hot and . . . out of control.

  Mark acted without thinking, darting across the room straight toward the hearth, nearly tumbling over the table that stood in his way.

  There was no one else around. No crew, no stewards. He had to do something.

  Buckets of sand hung on the wall beside the servants’ entrance. Mark hoisted two from their hooks and ran back to the conflagr
ation, which had already spread now, beyond the lip of the hearth, eating away at one part of the soft rug. He threw the contents onto the fire. That helped dampen the flames.

  He ran back twice more before the fire was out.

  Sweat streaked down his face. The carpet was gritty with sand. Soot streaked up the wall. Seemed awfully strange for a fire to blaze out of control inside a fireplace—though there had been a string of odd occurrences on the ship. Out of instinct, Mark reached up to check the flue. His hand sizzled at the touch, and he had to pull back quickly, but he’d been able to tell it hadn’t been opened. That was damned careless of the staff.

  Fire had almost ruined his life once. Only by the grace of God had Lillian avoided what could’ve been a terrible tragedy. The factory where Lillian spent all her daylight hours burned to the ground, killing nearly every one of the women she worked with.

  But Lillian had been spared, called away unexpectedly by the owner to run an errand. At the time, Mark had seen it as confirmation from the Fates that this woman, this perfect creation, was not meant to die.

  This miracle was somewhat ironic, because she was gone less than nine months later.

  Mark reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to wipe his face and spied, from the corner of his eye, a piece of paper jammed into the half-devoured stack of firewood. Most of the paper had been consumed by the flames. A singed, tattered remnant remained.

  He pulled it out. The first thing he saw was Annie Hebbley’s name.

  He couldn’t make out much else, only a string of desperate words in a man’s handwriting.

  Mark staggered to one of the club chairs, the paper already forgotten. This night was too much—the fire brought it all back, his past life, the life he had expected to have with Lillian.

  He knew he shouldn’t, but he did anyway. He reached into his coat and drew out a slim, worn journal. Lillian’s. Her essence poured into its pages.