Blood and Ice

by Robert Masello

  Michael could well imagine. Already he was wondering what he would say-or not say-to Gillespie the next time they talked.

  “So that's why I'm going to ask you, for the time being, to keep whatever you can under your hat. And while you're at it, do me one more favor.”

  “I'll do whatever I can.”

  “I want you to be the liaison, or whatever you want to call it, to Ms. Ames. Help Charlotte out, and keep me informed of what's up-how the patient's doing, what she's doing, what you think we need to address. I don't need to tell you, nothing that looks like this has ever happened before-anyplace or anytime-and I don't particularly want to broadcast that she's here to anybody who doesn't already know about it. I want to take that nice and slow.”

  “But do you plan to keep her completely confined to the infirmary?” Michael asked. “Because she could go stir-crazy in there. I know I would.”

  “We'll figure that out as we go, and as we get the info back from Darryl and Charlotte.”

  “And what about her companion,” Michael pressed, “the man she calls Sinclair? If the forecast's right, can we go back to Stromviken to find him?”

  “Tomorrow, if the weather does improve. Maybe then we can do a search party.” He sounded as if he'd just as soon not; Michael suspected he was hoping that this Sinclair-just another huge problem, from Murphy's point of view-would simply disappear.

  “I mean, one thing at a time,” Murphy resumed. “Assuming that she is who she says she is, and what she says she is-”

  “I'd be hard-pressed,” Michael interjected, “to come up with another explanation for all this. And believe me, I've tried.”

  “Yeah, well, keep trying,” the chief replied. “But granting, simply for argument's sake, that you're right, what if she was to catch something from somebody here, something that she has no immunity against?”

  Michael hadn't thought of that and let out a “huh.”

  “See?” Murphy said, throwing up his hands. “That's the kind of stuff I've got to consider. I mean, I'm no doctor. Hell, if I were, I might know what to do about Ackerley”

  Michael had been wondering about that, too. No announcement of his death had been made, and it was only a matter of time before somebody noticed that even the notoriously elusive Spook hadn't been seen in a while.

  “What did you do with his body?” Michael asked.

  “Cold storage,” Murphy replied. “I've notified his mother-he lives with her, back in Wilmington-but frankly, she didn't seem all there. I haven't put in the official report yet, because the second I do-coming so close on the heels of what happened to Danzig-I'll be lucky not to have a goddamned FBI delegation sent down here to investigate.” A sudden gust of wind shook the whole module on its cinder blocks. “And I asked Lawson to go in and clean up the botany lab, maybe try to preserve whatever he was working on.”

  That seemed like a good, and laudable, decision, but Michael wondered if anyone would know how to keep all the plants alive, especially the orchids on their long and delicate stems. Everything in the Antarctic seemed to conspire against survival, against life, and as he got up to go, he thought of the one thing, the one person, that the eternal cold had actually protected and taken to its bosom.

  “And don't forget what I said about the Ames woman,” Murphy called out. “Treat her with kid gloves, all the way.”

  On the chance that she might be awake and alert, Michael stopped off at the infirmary. He didn't want to look like the importunate suitor, but at the same time he was desperately eager to begin getting her story. In his backpack, he was carrying his reporter's pads, his pens, and a palm-sized tape recorder; he'd debated bringing his camera, but there was something too intrusive about it. He was afraid of discomfiting her. The pictures, he decided, could wait.

  But he sensed his timing wasn't great. He knocked on the closed door-the infirmary was generally left wide open-and he could hear Charlotte bustling about inside. “Yes?” she said. “Who's there?”

  He identified himself, and the door opened enough for him to slip in. Charlotte, in her green hospital scrubs, looked harried, and Eleanor was out of sight, inside the sick bay.

  “She awake?”

  Charlotte sighed but nodded.

  “Everything all right?”

  Charlotte cocked her head to one side and said in a low voice, “We're having what you might call some technical difficulties.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Psychological. Emotional. Adjustment problems.”

  He heard a sob from the sick bay.

  “I mean, it's not exactly a shock,” Charlotte said, “given the circumstances. I've just given her another mild sedative. It should help.”

  “You think it's okay for me to go in and talk to her before it takes effect?” Michael whispered.

  Charlotte shrugged. “Who knows-maybe the distraction will help.” But as he started for the sick bay, she warned, “As long as you don't say anything to upset her.”

  How, Michael wondered, could you talk to Eleanor Ames without saying something that might upset her?

  When he entered the sick bay, he found Eleanor standing in a fluffy white robe and staring out through the narrow panel window; much of its glass was covered with blowing snow and only admitted the palest simulacrum of sunlight. Her head turned quickly when he came in-scared, skittish, and plainly a bit ashamed at being seen in such bedroom attire. She hastily pulled the lapels of the robe closed, then went back to gazing out the window.

  “Not much to see today,” Michael said.

  “He's out there.”

  Michael did not have to ask whom she was talking about.

  “He's out there, and he's all alone.”

  A largely untouched meal sat on a tray on the bedside table.

  “And he doesn't even know that I left him unwillingly.” Eleanor paced back and forth in a pair of white slippers, her tearful eyes still riveted on the window. The transformation was strange; when Michael had first seen her, in the ice and later on in the church, she had looked so alien, so out of time and so out of place. It was never in doubt that he was talking to someone from whom he was unquestionably separated by an immeasurable gap of time and experience.

  But now, with the collar of the white robe gathered up about her face, her freshly washed hair hanging down, and the slip-ons scuffing along the linoleum floor, she looked like any other beautiful young woman newly emerged from the treatment room at a posh spa.

  “He's survived so much,” Michael said, choosing his words carefully. “I'm sure he can survive this storm, too.”

  “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I abandoned him.” She had a clump of tissues wadded in her hand, and she used them to dry her tears.

  “You had no choice,” Michael said. “How long could you have gone on like that? Eating dog food and burning prayer books to keep warm?”

  Had he spoken too precipitously? He was trying to comfort her, but her green eyes flashed in warning.

  “We have been through worse than that together. Worse things than you could ever know. Worse than you could ever imagine.” She turned away, her frail shoulders heaving beneath the terry-cloth robe.

  Michael put his backpack on the floor and sat down on the plastic chair in the corner. Part of him said that the sensible thing was simply to leave and come back later when she was calmer, but something else-was it wishful thinking? — told him that, despite her grief and confusion, she did not really want him to go… that she could still derive some solace from his being there. In the artificial environment in which she had been placed, he might actually provide a note of familiarity.

  “The doctor tells me I'm not to leave here,” Eleanor said, in a more tranquil tone.

  “Certainly not to go out into that storm,” Michael joshed.

  “This room.”

  Michael knew that that was what she'd meant. “Only for the time being,” he assured her. “We don't want to expose you to a
nything-germs, bacteria-that you might not have any natural defenses against.”

  Eleanor gave a bitter laugh. “I have nursed soldiers through malaria, dysentery, cholera, and the Crimean fever, which I myself contracted.” She breathed deeply. “As you can see, I have survived them all.” Then she turned toward him, and said, more brightly, “But Miss Nightingale, of course, has been making great strides in that realm. We have begun to air the hospital wards, even at night, in order to dissipate the miasma that forms. With improvements in hygiene and nutrition, I believe that countless lives can be saved. It is just a matter of persuading the proper authorities.”

  It was the longest speech he had ever heard her make, and she must have been surprised at her own volubility, too, because she suddenly stopped herself, and a faint flush came into her cheek. It was clear to Michael, though he would have guessed as much, that she had taken her duties as a nurse quite seriously.

  “What am I saying?” she mumbled. “Miss Nightingale is long dead. And everything I have just said has no doubt sounded foolish. The world has gone on, and here I am telling you things that you must know have been proven right, or utterly wrong, years ago. I'm sorry-I forget myself.”

  “Florence Nightingale was right,” Michael said, “and so are you.” He paused. “And you will not be confined to these quarters for long. I'll see what we can do.”

  She'd already been exposed to him, and whatever germs he might carry, so what harm, Michael figured, could further contact cause? And as for her being encountered by others on the base- grunts and beakers alike-well, there were probably plenty of ways to get around without too much interaction. Point Adelie was not exactly Grand Central Station.

  Eleanor sat down on the edge of the bed, facing Michael. The sedative must have started working, for she had stopped crying and was no longer wringing her hands. “It was after the battle,” she said. “That was when I caught the fever.”

  Michael ached to take out his tape recorder, but he didn't want to do anything that might puzzle her or disturb the fragile mood.

  “Sinclair-Lieutenant Sinclair Copley, of the Seventeenth Lancers-was wounded in a cavalry charge. It was while nursing him that I succumbed myself.”

  There was a kind of faraway look in her eye, and Michael realized that even the mildest tranquilizer might have an inordinate effect on someone who had never had one before.

  “But he was fortunate, really. Nearly all his fellows, including his dear friend Captain Rutherford, were killed.” She sighed, her eyes dropping. “From what I was told, the Light Brigade was utterly destroyed.”

  Michael nearly fell out of his chair. The Light Brigade? Was she talking about the famous Charge of the Light Brigade, the one immortalized in the poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson? And was she talking about it from firsthand experience, yet?

  Was she suggesting that her frozen companion-this Lieutenant Copley-was a survivor of that charge? Whatever all this was-a sustained fantasy, or an historical account of unimaginable, firsthand authenticity-he had to get it down.

  Slipping a hand into his backpack, he deftly removed his small tape recorder. “If you don't mind,” he said, “I'm going to use this device to keep a record of our conversation.” He pressed the ON button.

  She looked at it pensively, the little red light glowing to indicate that it was running, but she seemed otherwise unconcerned. He wasn't sure she'd grasped what he'd said, or what the machine actually did. He had the sense that so much was new to her-from black, female doctors to electric lights-that she chose only certain things, one at a time, to process and engage.

  “They were told to attack the Russian guns,” she said, “and they were annihilated. There were artillery pieces on the hills, on every side of the valley. The casualties were overwhelming. I was working night and day-so was my friend Moira, and all the other nurses-but we could not keep up. There were too many battles, and too many wounded and dying men. We could not do enough.”

  She was back there now, reliving it; he could see it in her eyes.

  “I'm sure you did everything in your power to help.”

  A rueful cast came over her face. “I did things that were beyond my power,” she said, bluntly. Her eyes clouded over at the recollections of events that manifestly haunted her still. “We were forced, all of us, to do things we could never have prepared for.”

  And then Michael could see she was swept away on that tide of memory.

  It was the night after she had found Sinclair-she remembered it well-and she had secretly appropriated several items, including a vial of morphine. The latter was more valuable than gold, and Miss Nightingale accordingly kept a sharp eye on the supply. It was after her rounds, when Eleanor was supposed to be in the nurses’ quarters, fast asleep, but instead she crept down the winding stairs with a Turkish lamp in her hand, and made her way back to the fever wards. Several soldiers, mistaking her for Miss Nightingale herself, whispered blessings in her wake.

  “This was after what battle?” Michael gently prompted her, his voice startling her from her reverie.

  “Balaclava.”

  “What year was that?”

  “Eighteen fifty-four. It was late October. And the Barrack Hospital was so crowded, the men were lying on straw, shoulder to shoulder.”

  The Highlander, she recalled-the one who had warned her, in his delirium, that Sinclair was a bad one-had been stowed close beside him. If he, too, was suffering too much, she had resolved to share out the contents of the vial between the two of them. But when she got to the ward, it was clearly unnecessary. Two orderlies with kerchiefs over their faces were bending over the Highlander's body, tossing the two sides of his filthy woolen blanket over him… but not before Eleanor caught a glimpse of his face. It was white as a whitewashed fence, and the skin looked like a piece of dried fruit from which all the juice and pulp had been sucked.

  “Evening, Missus,” one of them said. “It's me, Taylor.” She recognized his protruding ears, from the day of Frenchie's fatal amputation. “And Smith there, too,” he said, indicating the burly fellow hastily stitching the two sides of the blanket together. The filthy covering, she knew, would serve as both the dead man's shroud and casket, and his body would be heaped into one of the communal graves dug in the nearby hills.

  On three, they lifted the body from the floor, and Taylor laughed under his kerchief. “This ‘un's light as a feather.” They shuffled out of the ward, the blanketed body swaying between them, and she had knelt in the newly cleared space, to tend to Sinclair, who looked, to her relief, unexpectedly improved.

  “And you, and the other nurses under Miss Nightingale-how many of you were there?” Michael prompted her.

  “Not many-a couple of dozen at most,” she said, wearily. “Many fell ill and left. But Moira and I stayed. I had found a fresh shirt, and a razor, for Sinclair. I used the razor to cut his hair-the lice were running wild in it-then I was able to help him shave his face.”

  “He must have been very grateful.”

  “In my pocket, I had the vial of morphine.”

  “Did you give him that, too?”

  A doubtful look came over her. “I did not. I thought he looked so much recovered that I should save it… for fear he might have a relapse and need it more then.” She raised her eyes to Michael. “It was very hard to procure.”

  “It still is,” Michael said. “That's one thing that hasn't changed. But obviously he recovered,” Michael said. “You must have been very glad of that… and proud, too.”

  “Proud?” Proud of what? Eleanor would never have used that word. Once she knew his dreadful needs-and once she had actually helped him to satisfy them-she had never in her life felt pride again.

  And after she had come to share those needs, she had felt nothing but an all-abiding disgrace.

  “What did you do once he was well, and the war was over? Did you both return to England?”

  “No,” she said, her thoughts drifting away for a few moments. “We did not go hom
e, ever again.”

  “Why was that?”

  How could they given who-and what-they had become? For as Sinclair had recovered, she had declined. The fever ward had done its work, and by the next morning Eleanor had felt the initial symptoms. A slight dizziness, a sticky warmth to her skin. She did her best to dissemble, because she knew that once she was relieved of her duties, she would not be able to see Sinclair, but when she went to his side, carrying a bowl of barley soup, she had tripped over her own feet, spilling the soup and nearly collapsing on top of him. Sinclair had clutched her in his arms and called for help.

  A kerchiefed orderly had eventually shambled over, the stub of a cigar wedged behind one ear, but when he saw that it was Eleanor, and not just another dying soldier, who needed help, he'd picked up his pace.

  Sinclair had looked stricken, and she had tried, even in her own extremis, to assure him that she would be all right. She was escorted back to the nurses’ quarters in the tower, and Moira had immediately pressed a glass of port to her lips-where she was always able to find such things remained a mystery-and put her to bed. Over the next week, Eleanor would remember little of what transpired… apart from Moira's worried face, hovering over her… and, on one unforgettable night, Sinclair's.

  There was a low hissing sound from the machine that she only became aware of when she stopped talking. She had almost been unaware that she was talking.

  “Why,” Michael asked again, “did you never go back to England?”

  “We would not have been welcome there,” she finally said, leaning back on her hands. “Not then… not as we were. We became… what do you call them?” She was starting to feel hazy, confused; whatever substance the doctor had given her was clearly having its intended purpose. “People who have been banished from their own country?”

  “Exiles?”

  “Yes,” she murmured. “I believe that's the word. Exiles.”