by Alma Katsu
On the tiny nightstand, a shiny wooden box. She tilted the lid up: it was filled with the usual sentimental mementos. A dried corsage. A snippet of faded ribbon tied around a dance card. More photographs, curled at the corners, browning. She looked through them quickly; no one who bore a resemblance to Mark, probably all from Caroline’s side of the family.
Wait, here was that woman again, the woman whose face was in the locket. She was sitting in a chair, wearing a stiff black dress, holding a baby. Not any baby: Ondine. It was unmistakably Ondine as a newborn.
Annie lifted the photo to her face to get a better look. The woman wasn’t just holding the baby: she was breastfeeding her.
The room tilted suddenly, like someone had crept in behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. Who would breastfeed Ondine except Caroline?
No, silly. Caroline wasn’t breastfeeding. Annie brought the milk herself, several times a day.
What a strange picture. But Annie had heard of this craze, this fad of taking pictures while breastfeeding, heard her mother and the Ballintoy crones talk about it—Silly Londoners, whatever will they do next.
She flipped the photo over. This time there was a name. Two names.
Lillian Notting. Ondine.
She thought she heard a scratch at the door, though how she heard it over the thudding of her heart, she wasn’t sure. Was it a key turning in the lock? She threw the photo in the wooden box and slammed down the lid, guiltily. She didn’t want Mark to catch her snooping.
But the door did not open. Whatever made the sound, it didn’t happen again. Once again, the rooms fell still as a tomb.
She left the room in a hurry. She couldn’t stay there any longer. It felt, suddenly, like a stranger’s room, like she had no business being there.
So many confusing facts—what could it all mean? Caroline was not the baby’s mother. The truth of it thudded through her. That other woman was the mother. That Lillian Notting. So, why did Caroline have the baby now, and why was Mark with her, and why were they on this ship?
And then it came to her: they were running away.
Maybe Caroline Fletcher had something to do with the bad things that had been happening on the ship. Caroline changing overnight from sweet and warm to cold and distant. Mark confessing that he was afraid his wife was guilty of something—of what? Caroline somehow luring the servant boy away with her dazzling brooch, and then . . . ? Annie didn’t know, but she couldn’t rule it out. Maybe Caroline had charmed and stolen Mark, too, stolen him away from Lillian.
She could think of no other explanation.
Annie shivered as she raced down the hall, past stewards who gave her an odd look over the shoulder. She paid them no mind. She felt feverish and dizzy. This was all too terrible. Did Mark even know?
They had to track down this Lillian woman, or her relatives—someone, anyone—and let them know the baby was safe and that they’d bring her back as soon as possible. Even as she had this thought, there was a second, darker, more horrible one lurking in the back of her mind.
No woman leaves her baby behind willingly. Annie felt this with a terrible, cold certainty in the marrow of her bones, as certain as she’d known anything in her life. The woman in that photograph, the one with the look of steel and fire in her eye, would not give up her baby to another woman without a struggle. Annie was sure of it—that she would, in fact, do everything in her power to keep Ondine with her. Use her last ounce of strength to hold on to her.
She’d go to the wireless room and get the operators to send a telegram to the London police. And prepare herself should the word come back that Lillian Notting, the true and rightful mother, was no longer with them. That Lillian Notting, in fact, had been murdered.
* * *
—
Annie ran to the wireless room on the top deck. Past passengers who muttered under their breath at the reckless girl. Past stewards and crew members, who gave her quizzical looks. If someone tried to stop her, she darted around them. She had no time to explain.
Finally on the boat deck, she stood at the top of the stairs to catch her breath. She’d run so she wouldn’t have time to think about what she was doing, but now she couldn’t catch her breath. She doubled over, head practically tucked between her knees, as she gulped big swallows of air.
She had never been this close to the bridge. She knew it was where the officers were, where navigation took place and the important decisions were made. But she’d only seen the captain from a distance and wasn’t sure she’d recognize any of the ship’s officers if they weren’t in uniform, wearing their double-breasted reefer jackets with eight brass buttons. Mr. Latimer, the chief steward, had warned them all to stay away from the officers. “You’ve no reason to be on the boat deck forward of the grand staircase,” he’d told them once at a steward’s meeting. “And if I get word that you’ve been seen up there, you’d better have a damn good reason for it.”
Was this a good reason? Annie wasn’t at all sure. But a baby’s future was at stake. Annie knew in her heart that she had to follow through. The urgency of it made her dizzy. She could almost feel Lillian’s outrage, her devastation and desire, from across the sea, from the grave.
Besides, she had to do what was right—now more than ever.
The Lord favors good girls, Annie.
No one ever went to the radio room, small and closet-sized, behind the first funnel. The radio operators scurried in and out to deliver messages to passengers. Annie had heard it was painstaking work, listening to strange dots and dashes, writing it all down. She’d heard the two radio operators subsisted on black coffee and cigarettes and were as jittery and foul tempered as addicts. Standing outside the door in the dim alleyway, she could just make out bursts of scratchy noise. She felt as though she were being swarmed by fleas.
Annie nudged the door open a crack. “Hello?”
The room was kept very dim with just one bare bulb shining down on a table in the center of the room. It was a mess in there, as though a tornado had hit: an entire shelf of books tipped on their sides; papers stacked everywhere, in no seeming order; cups and saucers piled three high, like someone was playing a child’s game with them. She recognized the man on duty as Jack Phillips, the senior wireless operator. Annie’s heart sank a little, for she would’ve preferred Harold Bride, the junior operator. It wasn’t that Phillips was so very old—he was only twenty-five—but he was the nervous sort, and difficult, and he made everyone who came in contact with him nervous, too.
He barely looked up from his work. “What are you doing here?”
She froze.
“Who are you?” He was giving her a good looking over now. He would remember her face. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“I need you to send a wire for me. It’s very important.”
He gestured at the piles of papers. “Just drop it off here. You’ll have to wait your turn. The machine was down yesterday and there’s a tremendous backlog. You’d think these people had never sent a telegram to their friends before, but no, they’ve all got to send one from the Titanic. We’re just now coming into range of Cape Race and there’s only this short window to get all these messages sent. So off with you and let me do my work.”
“I’m sure none of these are as important as this.” As soon as she’d said the words, however, she heard a tiny scritch, scritch, scritch, as though a mouse were scratching at the pile of telegrams. The insistent noise needling her. Look here. She felt drawn to skim over the sheets on top.
Ice sighted in the water . . .
A string of numbers that meant nothing to her but made her pulse race all the same. Coordinates, perhaps.
SS California stopped by ice field . . .
She’d overheard a couple of passengers talking about ice the previous day, hadn’t she? Two white-haired men coming in from the promenade. The only real danger to a ship this bi
g is ice, one of them had said. Ice and the Germans, the other had replied, one we’re as likely to see as the other. “These are incoming messages, aren’t they? Shouldn’t they have been delivered to the bridge?” Her hands itched for them—Look here, this is important—but the tingling stopped once she picked them up.
“Are you daft? Get away from those. They’re confidential.” He swatted at her. “You telling me how to do my job? I’ve already told you: there’s only a short window to get through to the Cape Race station and I’ve all these wires to send. Bride will take those messages up to the captain before he starts his shift.”
No, no, no. Annie danced back out of Phillips’s reach, the messages still in her grasp. The scritching was joined by buzzing in her head, as urgent as the clanging of alarm bells. Danger, danger. Someone must pay attention. Annie, they need you. All those innocent people on this ship, they need you. That was why her attention had been drawn to the weather reports, which she’d normally not pay attention to. It was up to her to save them. Her initial mission was forgotten for the moment. “And when’s that?”
“Be quiet now. I can barely hear Cape Race as it is . . . Where do you think you’re going with those? I said—”
“But—but these are important. It says there is ice! I heard that’s a special danger on this run. . . .” Her hands skittered over the papers, sending them in a blizzard to the floor. “You mustn’t ignore them. . . .” She had to make him understand, to see what she knew. “But don’t forget my message—my message is important, too. There’s a missing baby. Well, what I mean is, a stolen baby.” Her voice rose uncontrollably.
“What are you on about? Stolen babies,” he huffed.
“No, I’m just explaining it wrong. It’s a private matter of great urgency. There’s a woman— Can’t you feel it?” Annie could, now, feel Lillian’s fear and anger, her need, wrapping around her, reaching across the waves. . . .
“Calm down, miss. I need you to calm down.”
“No, don’t you see? I heard her voice. I mean, I saw her face, it was there, plain and simple and it’s wrong, don’t you see?”
“I can’t make sense one way or the other of what you’re saying, but I’m going to ask you one more time to vacate the area or I’m going to have to call for help—”
“But—” Annie lunged for the floor, reaching for the messages about the ice. The only real danger is from the ice. Even as she was rambling, she knew she wasn’t making sense, at least not out loud. And what’s more, the urgency had brought about a new tremor of fear in her. A voice that frightened her, yet was familiar.
You know what I want.
You know what I need.
Through the window, Annie saw the officer’s promenade, the open-air deck they used to observe the condition of the sea or get some fresh air. It was deserted. If she could make it to the promenade, she’d have a clear path to the captain’s bridge. It was her best chance to get these messages to Captain Smith.
Yes, yes, yes. She felt a bleat of reassurance within her jangled nerves. This was what she must do: take the messages to the captain, make him see that they were about to sail into danger. He would understand. She would have saved the day, and then they would listen to her about Caroline Fletcher.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I must have gotten carried away.” She pretended to slip out the door, while Phillips, with a disgusted shake of his head, went right back to transcribing outbound messages. As he busied himself, however, she clutched the stack of important messages to her chest, then darted around him and was through the door before he had left his seat.
Wind whipped down the open deck, striking her full force in the face. It was so cold it nearly paralyzed her. Her uniform was no protection at all. With the air so frigid, she could easily believe the inky waters below were choked with ice. They’d been told—they’d all been warned—about the special danger from ice on this course. What was the matter with Phillips? Why hadn’t he taken the warnings more seriously; why had he felt it was more important to send telegrams for foolish rich people? People who made silly demands, who had no idea of the danger. The captain had to see these messages right away. Too much time had passed as it was. . . .
A force hit her from the side, knocking her to the deck. Her head made contact with the cold, wet boards hard and fast.
Squares of white slipped out of her hands and danced up on the wind, out of her reach. The messages. They fluttered on the air, swooped over the railing, and then—turning and twisting on the wind—drifted out over the open water. They shrank smaller and smaller until they were mere dots of white in the darkness, the sound of their fluttering lost in the roar of the ocean. Until they disappeared.
The warnings with the location of the ice were lost.
“I got her, Mr. Phillips.” A hand jerked her to her feet like a rabbit caught in the vegetable garden. Harold Bride grinned at having brought her down. The hound that caught the rabbit.
She pulled away. “Let go of me! Don’t you see what you’ve done? The messages—”
“They were never your concern to begin with.”
“They were warnings! There’s ice ahead—”
“That just goes to show what you know.” Bride puffed up, happy for the chance to show off in front of a member of the fairer sex. “This ship’s got nothing to fear from a little ice. It’s unsinkable, or haven’t you heard?”
“You’re in trouble now,” Phillips said as Bride wrestled Annie back into the radio room. The room was far too small to hold three people at once and the two men pressed against her. She felt they enjoyed her distress. Small pleasures for small men. “I’ve sent for Mr. Latimer.”
Latimer, the chief steward, was a big bearlike man who could barely fit into his White Star uniform. She’d seen him angry before—seen how he grew silent, wore an icy white stare that implied terrible consequences to come. It tied her stomach in knots, even though she knew there was nothing Andrew Latimer could do to her worse than what she’d already done to herself once.
“What in the world possessed you to steal them telegrams?” Now there were four of them in the radio room, Latimer looming over Annie. It was so hot and stuffy, she was afraid she would faint.
“It’s female hysteria,” Bride said with confidence beyond his years. “I’ve seen it before. Sometimes they get ship fever. Not meant for the sea, some women.”
“No, I—” But the men weren’t listening to her.
“I knew there was something wrong with this one from the minute she stepped on board,” Latimer said as though Annie wasn’t standing beside him. He lifted his cap to wipe sweat from his forehead; Annie watched it trickle down his face.
He gripped her upper arm—just like Bride. She’d been grabbed and pulled so much as a child, the sensation was strangely numbing. When you were treated like an object, a wild animal, sometimes the easiest thing was to let your mind go dead. It was a version of the Vanishing Game, and it made it like they weren’t touching you, not the real you. “You’re confined to the crews’ quarters,” he was saying, “until I get a word with the captain and he decides what to do with you.”
She thought he meant for her to stay in her own cabin, the one she shared with Violet, and so she went meekly, but, no. He brought her to a different room, this one as small as a broom closet and without a bed, just a hammock hanging from a hook on the wall. There wasn’t an electric light or candle, and being an interior room, there was no light from outside. She told him in a faltering voice that she was afraid of the dark and asked if she might not stay in her own cabin—she promised not to leave, not until they told her she could—but he didn’t react in the least, as though she hadn’t said a word.
Maybe the Vanishing Game had worked too well.
She sat on the floor, knees tucked to her chest. It was cold, even though the cabin had to be close to the engine rooms. Could Bride be right?
Was she hysterical? What did that mean—female hysteria? Was it different from when men got upset, yelled and stomped and slammed things about, like her father when he was at his worst? Maybe she was more like her father than she wanted to think. She tried to remember what had happened on the officer’s promenade. That wasn’t like her, not at all. She’d always been a quiet, meek girl. What in the world had possessed her to take those telegrams and run out on the officer’s deck? She could picture it all, as though she’d been watching another girl. Maybe she was going mad.
Her thoughts wound round and round the sequence of events, and what she’d learned. There was so much she still didn’t understand. The eerie note, like some kind of frantic warning—you know me—haunted her now. Stead had given credence to the idea it might be a prank . . . or it might be a spirit.
Oh, Lord.
She was shaking so hard she could barely think. Tears were streaking her face uncontrollably. The pieces slotted and pieced together in her mind. She thought she knew now what was happening.
Caroline had stolen Lillian’s baby. . . .
And Lillian Notting was dead.
Lillian was the spirit. The spirit that had shaken the table and blown out the lights at Stead’s séance. Who was responsible for the note under her door and maybe even the seizures.