Blood and Ice

by Robert Masello

Florence Nightingale? The lady with the lamp? From… when? History had never been Charlotte's favorite subject. It had to have been, what, a couple of hundred years ago? More or less?

  Concentrate, Charlotte reminded herself yet again. Concentrate. And don't do anything to alarm the patient, or-in a case like hers-upset a belief system that might be crucial to her mental stability.

  “Well, then, Miss Ames, you've come one very long way to get to a place like this.” Charlotte rolled up a sleeve of the dress-the fabric was coarse and stiff, and felt like a stage costume. “Even today, it's not easy getting here.” She swabbed a spot with alcohol. “Now you just hold real still-you're going to feel a little prick-and it'll be over in a few seconds.”

  Eleanor's eyes went down to the needle and watched the blood being drawn, as if she had never seen the procedure before. Had she, Charlotte wondered? Could she have? Out of curiosity alone, Charlotte planned to look up Florence Nightingale as soon as the exam was over. Purely, she told herself, for academic reasons.

  Just as she was removing the needle, Michael came in, carrying a tray on which he'd placed not only a cup of cocoa, but a blueberry muffin and some scrambled eggs under tight plastic wrap. While he looked for a place to put it down, Charlotte opened the minifridge, where the perishable meds and the red plasma bags were kept, and deposited the blood sample inside for safekeeping. Eleanor, she noticed, was still following her every move. For someone who claimed to be well into her hundreds, she was certainly looking more alive by the minute.

  But frozen, in an iceberg, for centuries? Hard as that was for Charlotte to believe, there was only one thing even harder-and that was coming up with some other explanation-any explanation-for who she was or how she came to Point Adelie, one of the most remote and inaccessible spots on the face of the earth.

  “Are you hungry?” Michael said, finally finding a place for the food on a standing instrument tray. He rolled it over toward the examining table, and asked, “Can you sit up?”

  With Charlotte's help, he was able to put his arm around Eleanor's frail shoulders and lift her into a sitting position, her back cushioned by the pillows. She regarded the food with a kind of polite disinterest, as if it were something she had seen once before but couldn't quite place.

  “Try the cocoa,” he said. “It's hot.”

  As she lifted the mug to her pale lips, Michael said to Charlotte, “Murphy's outside-he wants to talk to you.”

  “Good, ‘cause I'd like to talk to him, too.”

  Charlotte took her clipboard, on which she'd been recording the results of the exam, and left the mysterious Eleanor Ames to Michael. Truth be told, she was glad to leave. She'd been feeling a chill ever since entering the infirmary and she didn't think it was just a reaction to the patient's cold, clammy skin or her frosty clothes. It was as if, for all her years of training, she'd finally been presented with something utterly beyond her experience and beyond her scope.

  Apart from the wind whistling outside the window, it was silent in the infirmary. Eleanor took the mug away-a bit of white foam still on her lips-and with her eyes still downcast, said to Michael, “I'm sorry if I hurt you in the church.”

  He smiled. “I've taken worse hits.”

  When he and that other man-Lawson? — had tried to escort her out of the little back room, she had refused to go, and even remembered pummeling Michael on his chest and arms with a flurry of blows that wouldn't have injured a sparrow. A second later, after having expended her last ounce of strength in the attack, she had crumpled to the floor, weeping. Michael and Lawson had carried her, protesting but unable to offer further resistance, outside, and placed her on the seat of Michael's machine. Then they had set off back toward the camp with the storm coming on fast.

  “I know that you were only trying to help.”

  “That's all I'm still trying to do.”

  She nodded almost imperceptibly and lifted her eyes to meet his. How could he ever know, or even imagine, what she had been through? She broke off a piece of the muffin, then glanced around the room.

  “Where am I?”

  “The infirmary. At the American research station I told you about.”

  “Yes, yes…” she murmured, finally eating the tiny piece of the muffin. “But then, is this a part of America?”

  “Not really. This-Point Adelie-is a part of the South Pole.”

  The South Pole. She might have guessed as much. Apparently, the Coventry had been blown so far off course that they had indeed reached the Pole itself. The most unexplored place on earth. She wondered if the ship had survived the voyage, and if any of the men aboard had ever lived to tell the tale. And if they had, would they have been bold enough to tell all of it? Would they, for instance, have regaled their friends at the tavern with their story of binding the heroic soldier and the invalid nurse in a length of iron chain and hurling them into the ocean?

  “The eggs have some melted cheese in them,” Michael said. “That's how Uncle Barney-that's our cook-likes to make them.”

  He was trying to be kind. And he had been. But there was so much that he could never know, and she could never say, to anyone. How could they even believe what little she had told them so far? Had she not lived it herself, she would have thought it too fantastical to be true. She picked up the fork, and tried the eggs. They were good, salty and still warm. This Michael Wilde was watching with approval as she ate. He was tall, with an unshaven face and black hair that looked as wild and unruly as her younger brother's used to be when he'd return from flying his kite in the downs.

  Her younger brother who had been in his own grave for well over a hundred years already.

  Gone. They were all gone. It was as if a death knell were clanging in her head. It didn't bear thinking of. She took another bite of the eggs.

  Even though he was still brimming with questions, Michael did not want to interrupt her meal. Who knew how long it had been since she'd last eaten hot food? Years? Decades? More? Everything about her, from her clothing to her manner, suggested someone from another era altogether.

  How would he ever be able to wrap his mind around such a concept?

  In fact, it was Eleanor who broke the silence by asking, “And what do the people do here, at this encampment?”

  “Study the flora, the fauna, the climate changes.” Global warming? He'd let that wait. Something told him she'd already had enough bad news in her life. “Personally, I'm a photographer.” Would even that make sense? “I do daguerreotypes, sort of. And I write, for a magazine. In Tacoma-that's a city in the northwest United States. Near Seattle. People in Seattle like to make jokes about it.”

  He felt like he was babbling. But as long as he was talking, she was eating, and that made him happy. She wasn't exactly digging in, more just going through the motions… as if dining were a skill she was trying to remember.

  “And the negress? She is a doctor?” she said, with a note of incredulity.

  Okay, Michael thought, wherever and whenever Eleanor was from, there was bound to be a learning curve. “Yes. Dr. Barnes- Charlotte Barnes-is a very respected physician.”

  “Miss Nightingale does not believe that women should be doctors.”

  “Which Miss Nightingale is that?”

  “Miss Florence Nightingale, of course.” She'd said it as if she were pulling out her calling card, the reference that would legitimize her somehow.

  Michael wanted to laugh. It all just kept getting stranger by the minute. He wondered if she'd run this professional reference by Charlotte.

  “She is quite ardent in our defense as nurses, but she also believes, as do I, that there are distinct roles in which the two sexes should serve.”

  A long learning curve.

  Michael let her nibble at her food, and they talked, though with many hesitations, about other things-the weather, the mounting storm, the work done at the station-and he had to mentally shake himself from time to time, just to remember that he was talking to a woman who claimed-with little
evidence so far to contradict her- to have been born sometime in the nineteenth century. Someone who had clearly drowned-how else did you wind up frozen in an underwater glacier? He'd have liked to ask her directly about all that, but they'd just met, as it were, and the words weren't easy to come by, even for a journalist trained to ask tough questions.

  And he feared the reaction she might have. Could it trigger some sort of breakdown?

  Eleanor sipped her cocoa.

  “We were thinking that you could stay here, in the infirmary for now,” Michael did say. “You'll have complete privacy, and Dr. Barnes, if you need her, is right next door.”

  “That's very thoughtful,” she replied, dabbing her lips with the paper napkin, then glancing with curiosity at the floral motif that ran along its border.

  “We can even try to rustle up some extra clothes,” he said, “though I can't say they're gonna fit all that well.” Eleanor was slim and slight, and anything he borrowed from Betty or Tina or Charlotte was going to look like a tent on her.

  “What I have on will do,” she said, “though I would like the opportunity to launder them… and,” she said, blushing, “perhaps to bathe?”

  It was precisely such considerations that had persuaded Michael and Murphy and Lawson to house Eleanor in the infirmary under close wraps-not only for her own health and safety, but because she was bound to be an object of the most intense scrutiny if the other grunts and beakers got wind of her. She'd be the Miley Cyrus of Antarctica. And her life going forward, Michael knew, was going to be like no one else's had ever been. Once a supply plane carried her back out again, back to the world-to Dateline NBC and People magazine and her interviews with Larry King and Barbara Walters-she was not going to know what had hit her. And all Michael could do now was try to protect her as long as he could.

  Even when he'd carried Kristin down off the mountain, it had made the local news. That was enough. He wouldn't wish the media glare on anyone.

  Eleanor finished the cocoa and neatly folded up the paper napkin again, clearly intending to preserve it. Charlotte returned, carrying a fresh pair of hospital pajamas and a terry-cloth robe; she glanced at Michael, as if to convey that Murphy had filled her in on the game plan and she could take it from here.

  “Okay then, I'll see you both tomorrow,” Michael said, lifting the tray away. Eleanor looked just a little alarmed at his departure-not surprising, he thought, given that he had become her first friend in this world-but Michael smiled and said, “Fresh muffins again tomorrow. I promise.”

  From the bereft expression on her face, it appeared to be small consolation.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  October 26, 1854, past midnight

  How long he had lain there on the battlefield, Sinclair never knew. Nor was he sure what had awakened him. He only knew that the moon was out, and full, and the sky was filled with stars. A cold wind was blowing, making the torn pennants flutter and carrying the low moans of soldiers and their steeds, still unwilling, or unable, to die.

  He was one of them.

  His lance was still in his hand, and when he raised his head a few inches from the ground, he could see that its shaft was broken in two, though not, apparently, before it had skewered the Russian gunner. He had to put his head back down, to catch his breath- even with the wind, the air stank of smoke and decay. His jacket and trousers were stiff with blood, but he sensed that it wasn't his.

  When he could lift his head again, he saw his horse, Ajax, lying dead some feet away. The white blaze on his muzzle was stained with blood and dirt, and for some reason Sinclair felt it vitally important that he wipe it clean. The horse had served him well, and he had loved the beast. It wasn't right that he should be left in such an ignoble state.

  But he did not get up, nor could he. He lay there, listening to the night and wondering what had happened. And how it had all ended. And whether or not, if he called out, a friend would come to help him, or an enemy appear to finish him off. His eyes burned and his throat was parched, and he groped at his belt in the hopes of finding a canteen there. Then he searched in the dirt around him, and found a spur, then the boot to which it was attached. He rolled onto his side, and saw that it was a corpse. Using the leg as an anchor, he pulled himself up the length of the body. His bones ached, and he could barely move, but he felt inside the jacket-a British jacket-and discovered a flask. He managed to open it, then took a long swig. Of gin.

  Sergeant Hatch's favorite libation.

  He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes and leaned up to study the corpse's face, but the features were all gone, taken off by the blast of the cannon. He groped around the neck, and found a chain, and though the moonlight was not bright enough to read by, he knew that the medal dangling from it would commemorate the Punjab Campaign. He let go of the medal, drained the flask, and lay back again.

  He wondered how many of the brigade had survived the charge.

  A cold mist was coming up, spreading itself across the ground. In the distance he could occasionally hear the crack of a pistol shot. Perhaps it was only the farriers, putting the mutilated horses out of their misery. Or wounded soldiers, doing the same for themselves. An uncontrollable shudder ran down his frame, but despite the coldness of the ground, his skin was warm and clammy beneath his uniform.

  Before he heard any sound of the thing's approach, he felt a tiny vibration in the earth and forced himself to lie still. It was all he could do to keep his limbs from shivering. But whatever it was, it was coming toward him stealthily, moving under cover of the clinging mist. He had the impression that it was on all fours, head close to the ground… sniffing. Was it a wild dog? A wolf? He took a shallow breath and held it. Or could it be one of those unseen creatures that had haunted the campfires in the dead of night? The Turks had a word for them-Kara-kondjiolos. Bloodsuckers.

  It was lingering now over the carcass of Ajax, but all he could make out without raising his head was a pair of sharp shoulder blades hovering over the already rotting flesh. His saber was tangled at his side, still in its scabbard, and he knew he could never draw it out, much less wield it successfully, from the ground. He touched his holster, but it was empty; the pistol must have been thrown free in his fall. He reached out instead toward Hatch's corpse, felt for the leather of his riding belt, then traced his fingers along it until he found the sergeant's holster. The pistol, blessedly, was still in it. As silently as he could, Sinclair withdrew it.

  The creature made a low gabbling sound, something strangely between the cry of a vulture and a human utterance.

  Sinclair cocked the pistol, and the creature stopped. Sinclair glimpsed a sleek skull, with shiny dark eyes, rising from the mist.

  It crawled, carefully, over the dead horse… and stopped to inspect Sergeant Hatch's missing features.

  Then it came on, and Sinclair felt a hand-or was it a paw? — something with sharp nails in it, anyway, touching his leg. He lay still, as if dead, and felt an eager mouth lapping at the blood that covered his clothes. He knew that he might be able to get off only one shot, and he had to be sure that it counted. The beast followed the trail of blood onto his chest, and now he could smell its breath, like dead fish, and see its pointed ears. A hot tongue scoured the cloth-and even that he could endure-but when the teeth suddenly nibbled at his flesh, drawing his own blood, and the wet mouth suckled at the wound, he flinched.

  The creature's head sprang back, and for the first time he could see its face, though he could never have adequately described it. His first thought was that it was human-the eyes were intelligent, the mouth was bowed, the forehead was rounded-but the shape of the skull was oddly elongated, the leathery skin stretched tight over a gaunt, grimacing mask.

  He aimed the pistol, his hand wavering, and fired.

  The thing screeched and a hand flew up to its torn ear in shock. It looked down on him indignantly, but scuttled backwards. Sinclair struggled to sit up. The creature was still in retreat, moving in a slow crouch, but Sincl
air could have sworn that it had draped a fur pelisse around its shoulders, just as a cavalryman would do.

  What was this thing?

  He rolled onto his side and tried to shout, but his cries were barely audible. The mist swirled around the vanishing marauder, leaving only an empty pocket in the night. Sinclair held tight to the pistol grip and fired another round after it.

  And he heard footsteps warily approaching from another direction. “Who's firing there?” a Cockney voice asked.

  A lantern swung close to the ground.

  “Are you an Englishman?”

  And then the yellow light of the lamp fell on his face and he was able to mumble, through his ragged and bloody lips, “Lieutenant Copley Of the Seventeenth Lancers.”

  December 16, 6 p.m.

  If he had survived all that-the doomed charge of the Light Brigade, the night on the battlefield-Sinclair now reflected, then what could he not survive? Especially with Eleanor at his side.

  Driving the sled, he relied entirely upon the dogs’ unerring sense of direction to find his way back to the whaling station. It was all he could do to crouch on the runners, his face buried in his hood and his gloved hands clinging to the bars. The dogs twice made a wide turn around newly opened crevasses that Sinclair doubted he would have spotted on his own, but that the dogs seemed to sense. He would reward them with generous slabs of blubber and meat from the dead seal stored in the sled.

  He had gone as far north as he thought safe and wise, searching for any sign of further habitation, but he feared that they had truly been transported to the end of the earth. He remembered that the Coventry, long ago, had been sailing south, driven by the punishing winds, accompanied only by the lonely albatross circling above its yardarms, and from everything he had been able to glean of their present surroundings, he and Eleanor had arrived at a place so remote, so frozen, and so barren that it could only be the Pole itself… that most dreaded destination of all.

  But the seal might help. He had seen Eleanor failing, and he knew that what the bottles contained was old, and foul, and not nearly so potent as it had once been. He was surprised, given its origins, that it had any efficacy at all; on their journeys through Europe, he had been reduced to siphoning the blood from the dead he came across on battlefields and charnel houses. He had gone in search of fresh meat, fresh blood, even if it was only animal, and he had found it down among the bleached skeletons and wind-blasted rocks along the shoreline. There, the seals liked to bask in the cold glare of the sun, sprawled among the millions of broken bones, like so many bathers at Brighton Beach. He had avoided the larger ones, no doubt the bulls, one of whom had waddled toward him, trumpeting, and instead picked what was probably a female, with sleek brown fur and long black whiskers. She was off by herself, lying under the vast arc of a whale's backbone, and as he approached her, she showed no fear. Indeed, she showed little reaction at all, watching impassively as he shook his sword free of its scabbard. He stood above her, planting his boots to either side. She looked up at him with bulging, liquid eyes as he tried to judge where her heart might lie. He wanted the wound to be as small and precise as possible, so that the blood would remain inside the carcass rather than pooling across the ground. He touched the point of the blade to the spot he'd chosen-and only then did the seal look down at it, slightly curious-before he put all his weight into it and pressed down. The blade entered smoothly, and the animal buckled from both ends as the sword went clean through and struck the permafrost below. He did not withdraw it, but let it stand in order to stanch the flow, and within a minute, the seal had ended its contortions and lay still.