by Suzanne Weyn
“Do you believe that man would have hurt him?”
“I think that’s what he was there for, yeah,” Thad said.
“Let us hope that villain dives off the ship and never returns,” said one of the women. Her comment was met with a wave of agreement.
I agreed with the sentiment, but thought it unlikely. More probable was that he would continue to lurk about on the ship until we docked. Thad, Tesla, and his inventions would be in danger until then. I was suddenly glad Tesla would be seeing Colonel Astor that night. The sooner someone else knew about the invention and its possible application, the less chance there was of someone else stealing it. I didn’t want to see him lose out again as he had lost credit for the radio to Marconi.
Thad got to his feet, still holding the ice to his face. “Let me change out of this dress and I’ll walk you back to the infirmary,” I offered. “Then we should tell the ship’s security that your room was broken into again.”
I noticed purple bruises starting to form under both his eyes. “You need a doctor,” I said anxiously. “I think your nose is broken.”
“No, it’s not,” he disagreed.
I wasn’t convinced, and touched it gingerly. With a howl of pain he jumped away from me. “Why’d you do that?” he cried. A line of blood ran from his right nostril.
“It is broken,” I insisted. “Come with me. We’re going to the ship’s infirmary.”
When we got there, the ship’s doctor confirmed my theory: “Oh, it’s broken all right.” The blue purple color of the rings under Thad’s eyes had deepened in just the time it had taken to get there.
I left Thad in the infirmary and walked out on the deck alone. Leaning on the railing, I gazed out once more at the rolling waves. The quietly steady hum of the ship’s motors mixed with the crash of the water below. I found it very calming.
A strange thought came to me. I wondered if being on the ocean, traveling from one country to the other, was what it might be like for spirits in the Beyond—if indeed there was such a thing. One wasn’t in England anymore but hadn’t yet landed in America yet, either. One was just…floating. It was still possible to travel back and forth. Maybe some spirits didn’t want to commit to either side and chose, instead, to float in between for a very long time. I could understand that happening. I would hate to leave all the people I loved.
Perhaps I would choose to be a ghost, given the chance.
Chapter 31
Mr. Guggenheim’s status as one of the wealthiest passengers on the Titanic helped Ninette to secure the ship’s amazingly beautiful and luxurious Grand Ballroom for Mimi’s wedding ceremony. The reception would be held there, as well. There was plenty of room for both in the enormous room.
All was set for the wedding. Mr. Stead had agreed to give Mimi away, and when she appeared on the curving Grand Staircase with its ornate ironwork decoration under the spectacular glass dome overhead, you could hear people gasp, amazed by their appearance. Mr. Stead was the picture of stately dignity in his tuxedo. Mimi stood beside him like royalty. Her dress seemed to glow and her veil was held in place by a wreath of white roses that encircled her head.
The photographer whom Ninette had located on board flashed a photograph and the ship’s eight-man band began to play “The Wedding March.”
“Wouldn’t Mother just love to see this,” Blythe whispered to me.
“We’ll say it was a small, plain ceremony,” I whispered back.
When Mimi joined Victor in front of Captain Smith, they made the most striking couple imaginable. The happiness that was so evident on both their faces made them all the more radiant. The civil ceremony was brief and to the point, but Captain Smith was a man of such dignity and authority that the plain words when spoken by him seemed to take on a deeper meaning.
The party began with the band striking up a song that the band leader, Wallace Hartley, said was called “Ragtime Mocking Bird,” written by a popular songwriter named Irving Berlin. That set the tone wonderfully and put everyone in a festive mood.
My sisters and I stood on a receiving line with Mimi and Victor and greeted all the guests. I was happy when Thad came along, purple under eyes and all.
“Does it hurt a lot?” Blythe asked him.
“I’ll live,” Thad told her.
Tesla came along after Thad. He didn’t shake hands as the others did—afraid of germs, I guessed—but bowed politely. “A lovely wedding, Jane. You will excuse me if I nip out with Colonel Astor later? We have business to conduct that cannot be postponed.”
“Of course. Thad told me you had to go,” I said. “Best of luck with everything.”
The line passed with many people I didn’t know greeting us politely. Mr. Guggenheim was reserved, though Ninette hugged me like we were sisters and I found that I didn’t mind. Mrs. Brown nearly swept me off my feet with her enthusiastic embrace. “What a hoot to have a wedding on a ship!” she said.
Madeleine Astor came by looking slightly greenish. “Is this ship rocking?” she asked me. I told her I didn’t feel it. “It’s the pregnancy,” she said.
“I didn’t know you were having a baby. Congratulations,” I said.
“Thanks, but it’s making me sick to my stomach. They say the feeling will pass.”
Li looked pretty in a narrow, embroidered, traditional Chinese silk dress. “I am so happy for you all,” she said.
I hugged her warmly. “We wouldn’t be here to see it if it wasn’t for your kindness to us,” I remarked.
Once the line had finished, I got to enjoy the party—which meant searching out Thad and getting him onto the dance floor. I no longer wanted to deny that he was my boyfriend. After all, he would soon be my fiancé—my betrothed, my intended! I wanted to embrace it—and him.
Thad and I danced to songs like “The Society Bear,” “All Night Long,” and “Beans, Beans, Beans!” At one point, the band gently teased Colonel Astor by playing a funny song called “The Tramp That Slept in Astor’s Bed” that had been popular back in 1894. It was about an earlier Astor who had lived in a house so huge that a homeless man had gotten in and lived there for several days without anyone realizing. Colonel Astor gave one of his rare smiles and waved at the band, indicating that he had not taken offense.
Breathless from dancing a ragtime number, I got off the dance floor and scanned the guests to see where everyone was. Tesla and Colonel Astor were still there with their heads close, locked in serious conversation. Blythe was sitting with Mr. and Mrs. LaRoche, along with Mimi and Victor. Mr. Stead was talking to Captain Smith, the Strauses, and Mrs. Brown. But where were Emma and Amelie?
I quickly located them on the Grand Staircase. Amelie was shaking and Emma was trying desperately to calm her. “Uh-oh,” I said to Thad. He was right behind me as I hurried toward them.
“She’s having a vision,” Emma said, holding on to Amelie’s quivering shoulders. “I’m trying to block it out. I don’t want to ruin Mimi’s wedding.”
“No, you don’t want to do that,” I agreed, knowing how impatient Mimi had become with this sort of business and how embarrassed she would be in front of all these people.
Emma’s eyes suddenly glazed over and I could tell she’d lost the struggle to resist Amelie’s voice. “Get in the lifeboats!” she shouted. “Get in now!”
The band played on but everyone stopped dancing and talking. All eyes were on us.
Captain Smith stood and looked at us questioningly.
I glanced at Mimi and saw how horrified she was.
“We have to get them out of here,” I said to Thad.
“I’ll carry Amelie,” he suggested, stooping to lift her slumped body.
“Sorry, everyone,” I announced. “My sisters are afraid of ocean travel and they’re overtired from the day. Please go back to what you were doing.”
“Yes! Yes!” Captain Smith agreed reassuringly. “All is well. No cause for concern.”
Li joined me as I hurried Emma out, still shouting and struggli
ng to be heard. By the time we got them to Li’s cabin, she had calmed down. Amelie was snoring as Thad set her down on one of our bedrolls on the floor, so I assumed she was no longer sending messages to Emma.
“I stay with them,” Li offered as Emma curled up on the bed and fell instantly asleep. “I also tired.”
I thanked her and we left. “I’d better get back. Tesla wants me with him for the demonstration,” Thad said.
“Can I be there, too?” I requested.
“I’ll ask,” he replied.
Thad and I returned to the wedding to discover that Tesla and Colonel Astor were already gone. We left and went to the Astors’ stateroom, but no one answered our knock. On a hunch, Thad decided we should look for them in the telegraph room, and that was where we found them.
Tesla saw us and smiled when we entered. He took out a pad and began to read from it. “Nine o’clock this morning, the Caronia warns of ice. At eleven forty, another ice warning from the Noordam. The Baltic reports ice at eleven forty-two. The Amerika checks in with an ice warning at one forty-five this afternoon. At seven thirty the Californian telegraphs to warn of ice. At nine forty the Mesaba sent an ice warning. And most recently, the Californian telegraphed again to warn that they were encountering heavy ice.”
“I told the Californian to shut up for heaven’s sake,” the telegraph officer said. “All these ice warnings are jamming up my lines.”
“Which of these is the closest ship?” Tesla asked him.
“The Californian is only a few miles away from us.”
“So if they were experiencing ice less than a half hour ago, we have to be encountering ice, as well,” Colonel Astor concluded. “Can you contact them and see what their conditions are right now?” he asked the telegraph operator.
The operator looked annoyed, but didn’t dare refuse the ship’s number-one passenger. He tried to reach the Californian but soon shook his head. “I can’t get any response,” he reported. “Come to think of it, their telegraph operator usually signs off at about eleven thirty and it’s eleven thirty-three now.”
“Thirty-three, an auspicious number,” Tesla remarked. Thad had once told me Tesla had a superstition about things divisible by three: He thought they were good luck. “I think our moment has come,” he continued. “Shall we go on deck to see if we have any potential problems with ice?”
“Did you say ice?” We all turned to see who had spoken.
Mr. Stead stood in the doorway, his face ashen.
Chapter 32
Fifteen minutes later, Colonel Astor, Tesla, Mr. Stead, Thad, and I were out on the first-class deck. The night sky was brilliantly clear, a blue black field crowded with stars—some of which seemed distant and others astoundingly close. We could hear the muted sound of the band still playing at the wedding reception inside. I shivered in the night air, and Thad draped his jacket over my shoulders.
We peered into the darkness but saw no sign of ice.
Two officers joined us. “Officers Fleet and Lee,” Colonel Astor greeted them. “Seen any ice, gentlemen?”
“No, but Captain Smith stationed us out here tonight with specific orders to be on the lookout for it,” Officer Lee replied.
“Hold on!” cried Officer Fleet. “Look out there!”
In the distance something glowed like a giant phantom in the darkness.
“We should be able to steer around that without a problem,” Lee said. “Let’s go tell Officer Murdoch at once.”
“Officer Murdoch takes command at night,” Colonel Astor explained to us. “He’s an extremely able seaman.”
Tesla waited until they were gone before taking his earthquake machine from its case and handing it to Thad to hold. He did some quick calculations on a pad. “I believe we are traveling at a speed of approximately twenty-six knots,” he murmured.
“That is what Captain Smith told me the other night at dinner,” Colonel Astor concurred.
I felt a flutter of nerves. Although I’d experienced it nearly thirteen years earlier, I well remembered the power of that small device. “Should we stand back?” I asked.
“No need,” Tesla assured me as he took the device from Thad.
We were quickly nearing the iceberg. It surprised me how fast it had gone from being a white spot looming in the distance to becoming an alarmingly large, jagged white pyramid just off the right side of the ship. “We’re going to hit it,” I said quietly to Thad.
I saw worry in Thad’s eyes, and he looked to Tesla to see when he planned to make his move.
Mr. Stead folded his arms and remained calm, but his eyes were locked intensely on the iceberg.
Colonel Astor must have been concerned, too. “All right, Tesla,” he said. “Let’s see what this invention of yours can really do. Your moment of truth has arrived.”
I sensed that the ship was beginning to steer away from the iceberg and felt a tremendous relief. Thad took my hand and squeezed it, smiling a little; he, too, must have been reassured that the situation was being handled.
Tesla held his earthquake machine toward the ever-larger iceberg and turned a dial.
Instantly I clutched my head with both hands. That high whine that had made my brain feel like it might melt, the sensation that had occurred during the quake so many years ago, had returned full force. I grabbed for Thad and he held me tight, but he, too, was cringing in pain.
“Something is wrong!” Tesla cried. He tried twisting the dial but it was jammed. “This device has been tampered with!” He scratched something sticky off the bottom of the device. Taking a tiny screwdriver from the case, he undid the minuscule bolts holding the device together. “Some sort of rubbery gum has been poured into this,” he observed. “How could this have—”
“Turn it off, would you, Tesla?” Colonel Astor implored through a painful grimace. “Talk later.”
“I can’t.”
“Throw it in the ocean,” I suggested desperately, my teeth chattering.
“No,” he said, “it might kill everything down there or create a whirlpool. The entire ship would be sucked under.”
“Smash it, then,” I said, remembering when he’d done it before.
The ship’s outer railing suddenly started vibrating. A small crack began to split the wooden deck right under my feet.
Tesla stared at the device as though he were in a trance. In the next second he came out of it and began pounding the device on the side of the ship with a fury I would not have thought him capable of.
“Thank God!” Colonel Astor exclaimed when the thing finally lay in smithereens at our feet.
“We need to discover what damage has been caused,” Tesla said urgently, hurrying toward the ship’s bridge. We all followed him, moving quickly.
When we reached the bridge, we were told to get out. It was clear that some emergency was under way. We crowded in the doorway of the bridge as Officer Murdoch shouted at his helmsman, “I said hard astarboard! Didn’t you hear me?”
“The ship won’t turn as it should,” the helmsman replied in a panicked voice. “The rudder isn’t responding properly.”
Captain Smith brushed past us without a word and demanded to know the situation. Officer Murdoch told him that the rudder was not turning correctly. “Whatever caused all that vibrating just before might have affected it.”
“What was that?” Captain Smith asked.
It was a terrible moment for me—for all of us, probably. Should we reveal what the earthquake machine had done and risk putting Tesla in peril of arrest? It seemed to me that we had to.
We felt a bump and all of us at once tottered back several steps. Thad caught hold of my elbow to keep me steady.
“We’ve glanced off the side of the iceberg,” Officer Murdoch announced.
Tesla stepped just inside the bridge and spoke. “That vibration you experienced was caused by an invention of mine. I was attempting to shatter the iceberg by vibratory waves. Someone tampered with it, and it vibrated at a rate much higher
than intended.”
Captain Smith listened to him without comment and then turned to Officer Murdoch. “Send someone to get Thomas Andrews, the ship’s designer. Tell him to meet me below. I’ll want his assessment of the damage.”
We hurried back to the wedding to tell the guests what we knew. The wedding had been scheduled to end at eleven thirty and most of the guests had already left. Blythe and the LaRoches were gone. The band was packing up its instruments and soon departed, too. Mimi and Victor were saying good-bye to the few guests still in the process of leaving. Soon only the Astors, Mrs. Brown, Mr. Guggenheim, Ninette, Mimi and Victor, and Thad and I were left.
“Jack, where were you?” Mr. Guggenheim asked Colonel Astor.
Everyone gathered to listen as Colonel Astor told them that we’d hit an iceberg and that the captain was assessing the damage.
“We felt the impact,” Mrs. Brown said, “but we weren’t worried. This ship is unsinkable. What was that strange shaking, though? It gave me quite a headache while it was going on.”
“I was demonstrating an invention of mine,” Tesla admitted.
“What are you—some kind of mad scientist?” Mrs. Brown asked.
“It would seem so,” Tesla replied despairingly.
“I am sure there is nothing for us to worry about,” Ninette spoke up. “This is the Titanic.”
I noticed Mr. Stead was standing off by himself at the bottom of the Grand Staircase. Leaving Thad’s side, I went to him. As I approached, I heard him speaking rapidly in a very low tone. When he noticed me, he stopped talking in this way. “Julia has come to me,” he said. “This is the test of which she spoke. My destiny is before me at last, and I must meet it in the right way. Tell your sisters, tell everyone, to prepare to leave right away.” He hugged me in a fatherly way and then held my shoulders, speaking to me urgently. “Go immediately. There is not as much time as everyone is saying.” Having said that, he hurried up the Grand Staircase.