Carpathia

by Matt Forbeck

  While the women might not have been strong enough to haul a waterlogged man up into the boat on their own, Maggie had taught Lucy that they could use the entirety of their weight to manage it. All they had to do was get a good grip on the man first.

  Once Lucy had the man close enough, Maggie reached down to grab him by the arms and wedge her hands under one of his shoulders. Lucy put down the boathook and then did the same on his other side. Behind them, another woman grabbed them both by their collars and prepared to add her weight to their cause.

  "All together now, ladies!" Maggie said. "One. Two. Three!"

  On the last number, they all threw themselves backward. The combined weight and strength of the three women, along with whatever feeble effort the object of their endeavours was able to add, raised the man up and out of the water and dragged him over the gunwale and into the boat.

  Hichens snarled at them as they performed this operation, just as he had every other time. "Careful!" he said as he leaned out of the boat in the opposite direction, trying to provide some balance against the new passenger's weight. "You'll tip us all into the drink!"

  The women ignored him. As the boat stabilized once more, they dragged the half-frozen fellow into the middle of the boat's floor and swaddled him with as many blankets as they could spare.

  Lucy set to rubbing the man's exposed skin with her hands, trying to bring some life to it. It felt as cold as that of a dead fish, but she didn't let that stop her.

  "How is he?" Maggie peered down at the man from over Lucy's shoulder. "It's a miracle he's alive. He is alive, isn't he?"

  "He spoke to me," Lucy said, working his hands faster. "He grabbed the boathook."

  Maggie put a hand on her shoulder. "Oh, sweetie," she said. "He doesn't look good."

  Lucy ignored Maggie's fatalistic tone and kept working over the man with her fingers, rubbing his hands and his face until they started to show pink. She couldn't tell if that was from circulation returning to his skin or if she'd just managed to somehow bruise him, but she chose to count it as an improvement either way.

  After a moment, Maggie sat down next to Lucy. "You get back to working the prow and looking for others," she said. "I'll take care of our friend here."

  Lucy's hands stopped working, and she nodded at Maggie. She didn't want to give up on this man, but she knew Quin and Abe might still be out there. If this man had survived for so long in the freezing water, then perhaps she still had a chance of rescuing them too.

  Lucy got up to leave, but the man's hand reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. "No," he said, his voice as thin as smoke. "Don't go."

  "There might still be others out there," she said. Hichens snorted behind her in disgust, but she paid him no heed. "I have to keep trying."

  "Dear God!" The sailor at the tiller stood up and pointed off toward the east. "A light. It's a ship! We're saved!"

  Lucy looked down at the man who still had his hand clamped around her wrist. He was smiling.

  "You're going to make it," she said to him. "Just hold on."

  "I will if you tell me your name, angel," he said.

  "Lucy Seward." She stuck out her hand, and he shook it, his grip strong and tight.

  "Brody Murtagh," he said with a soft Irish lilt. "Very pleased to be making your acquaintance, Miss Lucy Seward."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It took them hours to get out of the ocean and onto the ship that had come to their rescue, the Carpathia. It hove within sight fast enough, but then it had to navigate gingerly through a field of icebergs to make sure that it didn't meet the same fate as the vaunted Titanic. Even then, a ship of that size couldn't maneuver about all that well, so the lifeboats had to row over to it.

  It seemed to take forever, but Lucy didn't mind it at all. She even took a turn at the oars herself to help keep fresh rowers in every seat. In between rounds at that duty, she checked in on the few people they'd been able to save. The two women were chilled to the bone, but they'd become more communicative by the moment.

  The man – Brody – on the other hand, had grown even more quiet. He sat there, huddled under his dripping blanket, and watched the Carpathia grow closer, but he didn't say a word for the longest time. When he did, it was only to inquire after the time.

  "It's nearly half after five now," Lucy said. Although she'd left every bit of her luggage on the ship, her watch had survived all the excitement intact.

  Brody glanced off toward the false dawn in the east. "Do you think they'll let us on board before the sun comes up?"

  "They certainly do seem to be taking their time," Lucy said, "but I don't think we'll be down here all that much longer."

  "That's good," Brody said with a weak smile. "Very good. Thanks, angel."

  Lifeboat number five had made it to the Carpathia first, and Lucy watched as they hauled the people in it up to the ship. They hadn't, as she had first suspected they might, tried to raise the entire lifeboat into the ship on its davits, people and all. Instead, they'd lowered a rope ladder to the boat and had people climbing up it.

  Not everyone was able to use the ladder. Lucy watched one elderly woman get hauled up in a sling chair, and a few children were even brought up by ropes attached to mail sacks. While it seemed unorthodox, Lucy had to admit she would have felt safer riding up to the ship in a canvas bag rather than being forced to brave the fragilelooking ladder.

  When it came their turn to leave their lifeboat behind, though, Lucy stood up and grabbed onto the rope ladder's wooden planks, already slippery from the fine spray whipped up as the winds increased with the coming dawn. Taking it one step at a time, she hauled herself up to the gangway door the crew there had opened for them, and when she got there, a pair of strong sailors pulled her over the threshold and onto the Carpathia's main deck.

  A pair of stewards dressed in Cunard Line uniforms approached her then, one with a dry blanket and the other with a mug of steaming hot tea. They took down her name and found her a place to sit in the first class dining room. A tall, well-dressed man came by to look her over.

  "I'm Doctor David Griffiths," he said. "I just want to check you for frostbite and the like." He had her show him her fingers and, after offering some polite apologies, he helped remove her boots so he could check upon her toes. She passed his inspection without a single hitch.

  "How do you feel?" he asked.

  Lucy hesitated before she answered. "Numb."

  "In your extremities?"

  Lucy shook her head and tapped at her heart, suddenly overwhelmed.

  The doctor sighed. "That's to be expected, I'm afraid. There's nothing I can give you for that. The best remedy is time. You just need to establish a little perspective, chronologically speaking."

  "I don't think a hundred years would give me enough room for that," she said.

  The doctor gave her an understanding chuckle, then moved on to the next patient.

  A moment afterward, Maggie entered the dining room between her own pair of guides, and she sat down next to Lucy and patted her on the knee.

  "That was one hell of a night," Maggie said, her voice soft and reverent.

  Lucy stared down at the tea clutched between her hands and let the mug warm them. "I don't know what to do with myself," she said. "I can hardly believe that we survived. That it's over."

  "Oh, darling," Maggie said. "It's only over for all those poor people who aren't going to make it onto this ship. For us, it's just getting started. When we get back home, there's going to be such a ruckus. Just you wait and see."

  Lucy frowned. She understood why that might be. The unsinkable Titanic, the largest and greatest ship in the world, foundered on her maiden voyage? It would be too juicy a story for anyone to ignore. It would shock the world.

  "And wait until the congressional hearings begin. You think it's bad watching your Members of Parliament squabble over things? You haven't seen anything until you've borne witness to the organized insanity of the US Government, sweetie."

>   Lucy shuddered, and not from the cold. "I don't care about any of that," she said. "They can… I just want to know what happened."

  "To your friends?" Maggie gave Lucy a knowing look. "Those two strapping young men who brought you to the lifeboat?"

  Lucy lowered her eyes and nodded. "Do you think there's any chance they're all right?"

  "Well," Maggie said. "I'll be honest. I wouldn't lay a lot of money on it. Of course, before today I'd have given you long odds on anything horrible happening between England and New York City, so you obviously can't trust my judgment."

  Lucy forced herself to laugh at that. Otherwise, she was sure she would break down and cry.

  Maggie kept her company until another steward came back to find them and reported that he'd been able to assign them cabins. "Fortunately, we were heading back to Europe, and we don't normally have too many passengers going that way this time of year. Immigrants fill the ships coming over to the States, but not so many want to work their way back."

  "You think you'll have enough room for us each to have our own cabin?" Maggie said. "If you need to match me up with a roommate, do me a favor and stick me with little Lucy here."

  "I don't think that's going to be a worry, ma'am," the steward said, his face both grim and sympathetic.

  Lucy frowned at that. "No," she said, "I suppose it won't."

  Maggie patted her on the back of her hand. "Chin up, sweetie." She stood and helped Lucy to her feet. "Whatever happened to your chivalrous young heroes today, we don't have any control over any more. Maybe we never did. The best thing you can do is go take care of yourself now. You know that's what they'd want."

  "You speak as if they're already dead."

  "I couldn't say one way or the other about that, I'm afraid. All I know is those friends of yours put you on that boat – and they stayed off it themselves so that you and the rest of us on it could live. For that, I'll always be grateful, no matter what happened to them."

  The steward showed Maggie to her cabin and then came back to escort Lucy to hers. As she left, she scanned the dining room, hoping to see some hint of either Quin or Abe in the crowd of people assembled there, but she had no such luck. She spotted a few people from the lifeboat, but Brody Murtagh and the two women they pulled out of the drink were nowhere to be seen. Lucy wondered what might have kept them, and then she realized that they might well be in the second or even third class areas of the Carpathia.

  There hadn't been any lines marking out the classes on the lifeboat. The only thing that had mattered there was that you were human and needed help. Lucy missed that sort of honesty already.

  She stood in the drab cabin assigned to her and stared out the porthole, watching the people on the last few lifeboats get collected onto the Carpathia. She couldn't tell who any of them were, and after a while she became so tired she gave up trying. She sat on the bed and stared at the cabin's closed door, consumed with terrible thoughts.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lucy hadn't realized that she'd tipped over onto her pillow and gone to sleep. She awakened to a knock on the door, still in her clothes, lying atop the bedspread. The full light of day streamed in through the room's porthole.

  The knock came again, and she tried to ignore it. She was so worn, so tired, so overwhelmed she thought she might never rise from the bed again.

  "Miss Seward?" a voice said.

  "What is it?" She sat up on the bed now, struggling to not be irritated with one of the fine people on this liner that had rescued her from the wreck.

  "I'm sorry to trouble you, miss."

  "No." Lucy rose and went to the door. "It's no trouble. You've been so kind to me."

  She opened the door, and the steward who had escorted her to the room stood there, a look of contrition on his face. "My apologies, Miss Seward, but these two gentlemen insisted–"

  Before the man could finish, Lucy shoved past him to find Abe standing in the hallway just beyond. She threw herself into his arms and held him as if he might somehow try to slip away. He kissed her on top of her head and wrapped his arms around her and held her just as tight.

  "It's all right," Abe said. "We're safe now. We made it."

  "We?" Lucy pushed back so she could look up into Abe's face. "Do you mean you and me, or–?" She stumbled over her words, her voice thick with emotion.

  Abe held her by her shoulders and craned his neck down toward her. "What is it?" he said.

  "Quin." Lucy wiped her eyes, removing tears she hadn't realized were there. "What happened to Quin?"

  Abe grimaced, and Lucy felt her heart shrivel up and fall out of her chest. "What happened to him?" She couldn't force her voice above a whisper. "You were with him."

  "Oh," Abe said, surprised, "he's fine. He made it to the ship with me." He shrugged to explain. "Well, not exactly fine. He picked up a bit of frostbite. Doctor Griffiths, I think it was, wanted to get a better look at him."

  The tears flooded Lucy's eyes this time, blurring her sight. She broke down against Abe's chest, and he held her in his arms again, keeping her on her feet.

  "He's going to live, Lucy," Abe said. "The doc just wants to make sure he keeps all his toes. Do you want me to take you to him?"

  Lucy's throat had closed up, and she found she couldn't speak. She just nodded up at Abe, and he escorted her up through the decks to the first class dining room once again. The room was crowded and noisy with huddled and shivering survivors. They finally reached Quin sitting in a far corner of the room, wrapped in a thick blanket, his feet soaking in a tub of steaming water.

  When Quin spotted Lucy, he shot to his feet and staggered toward her, leaving a trail of small puddles behind him. She dashed forward and grabbed him in her arms, lending him what strength she had so that he might not topple over on whatever ruin the freezing waters had made of his feet. He held her tight and kissed her on her face, his lips still cold against her flushed cheek.

  Quin shuddered into her arms with a deep sigh. "Thought I might never see you again, Luce."

  "Thank God," she said. "Thank God."

  "God had nothing to do with it," Abe said from behind her. "You can chalk up our survival to our man Quincey here."

  Lucy gazed up at Quin. "What happened?"

  "Well," Quin said with a half smile, "it's a hell of a story."

  "Mr Harker!" the doctor called to Quin from across the room. "If you'd care to be able to count to ten on your toes again, I suggest you get your feet back into that tub."

  "Yes, sir!" Quin called back. He let Lucy and Abe help him back to the chair he'd been sitting on, and he slipped his feet back into the tub, wincing as they entered the hot water.

  "Does it hurt?" Lucy asked.

  "Only like I caught it in a bear trap. But it's really just the right foot, after all. I have a spare." Quin tried to reassure her with a smile, but she could see the pain in his eyes. She reached out to hold his hand, and he squeezed it with tender gratitude.

  They told each other then what had happened to them since they'd separated. Lucy went first and finished fast. The boys' story was more complicated, and they went on at length, with Lucy gasping in sympathetic horror for them at several points in their tale. When they got to the part at which they'd made it onto the overturned lifeboat, she interrupted them.

  "But what happened to Quin?" she said. She couldn't understand how it could have gotten so bad for him. If Abe had made it through the ordeal intact, how was Quin in danger of losing toes – and on just one foot?

  "Go ahead and tell her." Abe gestured for Quin to take over the story. "You're the hero, after all."

  Quin blushed. "I didn't do anything heroic. I just defended myself."

  Lucy's eyes widened. "Against who?"

  "More like what," Abe said.

  Quin shrugged. "There was a shark. It knocked up against the boat, and one of the men on top of it tumbled into the water. That's how we got from under the boat to on top of it. Everyone up there was too distracted watching the man fa
ll victim to the shark."

  Lucy covered her mouth with her hand. She hadn't considered the possibility of sharks. She wondered if it was natural for them to swim in such cold water, but perhaps the presence of so many bodies swimming in the open sea had called them there.

  "How horrible," she said.

  "Certainly," said Abe, "but we weren't too proud to take advantage of it. We got up on that boat in a heartbeat or less."

  "And after the shark had its fill, it went away?"

  "Not exactly," said Quin. "We'd thought we'd escaped it, but the boat kept sinking lower and lower as the night wore on. And then the wind picked up as the dawn crept toward us, and that brought waves with it as well. They started lapping over the top of the boat."