Blood and Ice

by Robert Masello

  His hair was still wet in back, and he lifted his head for a second to rub it dry. His eyes closed, and he took a long breath to relax himself. Then he took another, slow and deliberate. But his thoughts were still teeming. He pictured Sinclair on the cot set up in the old meat locker-the condiments box had been moved to make way- with a battery of space heaters running and Charlotte tending to his wound. She had needed to put in six stitches. Franklin and Lawson were assigned to keep watch in eight-hour shifts. Michael had volunteered to share the job, but Murphy had said, “Technically, you're still a civilian. Let's try to keep it that way.”

  His mattress sagged in the middle, and Michael inched over toward the wall. Regardless of what Murphy thought, someone would eventually have to tell Eleanor about Sinclair. But how would she react? It should have been a simple question, but Michael wasn't so sure that it was. She'd be relieved, of course. Delighted? Probably. Passionate? Would she insist on going to him at once? Michael didn't know if it was wishful thinking, or some deeper insight, but he suspected that there was something in Eleanor that feared Sinclair. From what she had told him of their story-as fantastical a tale as any that he'd ever heard-Sinclair had taken her on a wild and dangerous odyssey… an odyssey that was still unfolding.

  But as much as she might love him, was she still as dedicated to that journey as she had been at the start?

  He pictured the brooch she wore. Venus, rising from the sea foam. It was appropriate, wasn't it? Eleanor had risen from the sea. And she was beautiful. Immediately, he felt disloyal even to have entertained such a thought-Kristin was barely in the ground.

  But there it was. He couldn't deny it any more than he could stop it.

  Eleanor's face haunted him. The emerald eyes under their long dark lashes. The rich brown hair. Even the ghostly pallor. She seemed as if she came from another world-perhaps because she had-and he feared for her entry into his. He wanted to protect her, to guide her, to save her.

  The bunk itself was as silent and black as any grave.

  He remembered his first sight of her, entombed in the ice.

  And then coming upon her, frightened and alone, in the abandoned church. But she had not cowered. There was a spirit in her that had never been extinguished, despite everything she had endured.

  What was it she played on the piano in the rec hall? Oh, yes, that sad old ballad-”Barbara Allen.” The plaintive notes tumbled through his head.

  The curtains at the foot of the bed stirred.

  He remembered the blush in her cheek when he had sat down beside her on the bench. The rustle of her dress, with its billowing sleeves. The tapered toes of her black shoes, touching the pedals.

  The mattress sagged… as if it were accepting some other burden.

  He thought of her scent, soapy but delicate… and the aroma seemed to envelop him now.

  He thought of her voice… soft, refined, accented…

  And then, out of the pitch black, he heard it.

  “Michael…”

  Had he just imagined that? The wind wailed outside.

  But then he felt a warm breath on his cheek, and a hand touched his chest, as gently as a bird alighting on a branch.

  “I can't bear it anymore,” she said.

  He didn't move a muscle.

  “I can't bear being so alone.”

  She was lying on top of the blanket, but he could feel the shape of her body, pressing against his. How on earth had she…

  “Michael… say my name.”

  He wet his lips, and whispered, “Eleanor.”

  “Again.”

  He said it again, and he heard her sob. The sound nearly broke his own heart.

  He turned toward her, and lifted his hand to her face in the darkness. He found a trickle of tears… and he kissed them. Her skin was cold, but the tears were hot.

  She burrowed closer, and he could feel her breath-shallow and hurried-on his neck.

  “You did want me to come to you… didn't you?”

  “Yes,” he murmured, “yes, I did…”

  And then he found her lips. They were soft and pliant… but cold. He longed to warm them. He kissed her harder, and held her close. But the blanket was so coarse, and it came between them.

  He shoved it down, and his hands groped in the dark for her body. She was slim as a sapling and wearing only a slip of some kind… something as sheer as a sheet, and as easily dispensed with.

  God, how good it felt to touch her. He ran his hand up her naked side, and she shivered. She was still so cold, but her skin was so smooth. He felt the knob of her hip, the flat plain of her stomach-the flesh quivering at his touch-then the soft swell of her breast. The nipple hardened like a button under his fingers.

  “Michael…” She sighed, her lips against his throat.

  “Eleanor…”

  He felt her teeth nibble at his skin.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered.

  Before he could ask why, he felt the teeth sink into his throat like ice-cold pincers. A hot wet stream-his blood? — coursed down his neck, and he tried to cry out. But he strangled on the sound of his own scream, and he kicked out hard, to free himself from the bedclothes. His hands pushed at her, and kept pushing…

  The bed curtains screeched back.

  He could see her, rearing back, naked, with his blood on her lips, her eyes blazing…

  Bright light shone in his face.

  He pushed again, to throw her from the bunk…

  And a voice was crying, “Michael! For God's sake, Michael… wake up! Wake up.”

  His hands were still pushing, but someone had grabbed hold of them.

  “It's me! It's Darryl!”

  He stared out from his upper berth.

  The lights were on. Darryl was hanging on to his hands.

  “You're having a nightmare.”

  Michael's heart was hammering in his chest, but his hands stopped flailing.

  “The mother of all fucking nightmares, I'd say,” Darryl added, as Michael started to subside.

  Michael's breath slowed. He glanced down. The sheet and blanket were twisted around his legs. The pillow was on the floor. He felt the side of his neck. It was damp, but when he looked at his fingertips, they were only covered with sweat.

  “You're lucky I came back,” Darryl said. “You might have given yourself a heart attack.”

  “Bad dream,” Michael said, his voice hoarse. “Guess I was having a bad dream.”

  “No kidding.” Darryl blew out a heavy breath, then turned to take off his wristwatch and laid it on the nightstand. “What the hell was it about?”

  “I don't remember,” Michael replied, though he could recall every detail.

  “You forgot it already?”

  Michael dropped his head back onto the pillow and stared numbly at the ceiling. “Yeah.”

  “For the record, I thought I heard you say Eleanor.”

  “Huh.”

  “But I'll never tell.” Darryl grabbed his towel off the hook on the door, and said, “Back in five. No matter what, do not go back to sleep.”

  Michael lay there, alone again, waiting for his heart to slow down and the last of the panic to pass… and seeing, in his mind's eye, Eleanor's long brown hair tumbling down over her pale white breasts, and her wet red lips, still open and wanting more…

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  December 23, 10:30 p.m.

  “I'm thirsty,” Sinclair said loudly, and Franklin got up off the crate he was sitting on, picked up the paper cup with the straw, and held it out to him.

  Sinclair, whose hands were cuffed, sucked through the straw, greedily. His throat was parched, but no amount of water, he knew, would ever quench it. He was sitting up on the edge of the cot. Ranged around him in the storeroom were mechanical devices the size of blacking boxes, capable of sporadically emitting waves of heat, even though they were supplied with no coal or gas source that he could detect.

  It was truly an age of wonders.

  There
was a nagging pain in the back of his head, where the bullet fragment had grazed his skull, but he was otherwise intact. Around his left ankle he wore an improvised shackle, a chain looped through a pipe on the wall and clamped with a padlock. The room was stacked with boxes, and on the floor off to one side he noted a broad russet stain, which could only have been caused by blood. Was this where prisoners were normally taken for interrogation, or worse?

  He had tried to engage his guard in conversation, but beyond learning his name-Franklin-it had proved hopeless; he wore something in his ears, connected by a string, and buried his face in a gazette with a half-naked girl on its cover. Sinclair had the impression that Franklin was afraid of his prisoner-justifiably so, if it came to that-and that he had been ordered not to exchange any information. But if the opportunity ever presented itself, Sinclair would very much like to repay him for that wound on the back of his head.

  The time crawled. His own clothes had been removed-he could see them neatly piled on a crate belonging to a “Dr Pepper,” whoever that was-and replaced with an embarrassing pair of flannel pajamas and a pile of woolen blankets. He longed to get up off the cot, reclaim his clothes, and go in search of Eleanor. She was somewhere at this encampment, and he meant to find her.

  And then… what? It was like running smack into the proverbial brick wall. What were their prospects, marooned as they were at the end of the earth? Where could they run? And for how long?

  There had been boats, he remembered, at the whaling station- a big one, the Albatros, that he would never be able to launch on his own. And smaller, wooden whaling boats that might, with some repair, prove seaworthy, but Sinclair was no sailor. And they were surrounded by the most perilous of oceans. His only chance would be to embark in decent weather, and hope to be rescued by the first passing ship they encountered. Apparently, there was some commerce, and if he and Eleanor could acquire modern clothing, and come up with some plausible explanation, they might be able to board another ship and be transported back to civilization again. To lose themselves among people who did not know, nor would ever learn, their terrible secret. Once that much was done, Sinclair could rely on his native wits to carry them along. He had become, of necessity, a great improviser.

  The outer door opened with the scraping of metal on ice and a burst of frigid air, refreshing after the stifling heat generated by the little heaters. Once all the coats and gloves and goggles had come off, Sinclair recognized him as the man-Michael Wilde-whom he had first encountered in the blacksmith's shop. There, he had seemed a fairly reasonable chap, though Sinclair remained determined to trust no one.

  He was carrying a book bound in black leather, with a gilded binding, in his hand.

  “I thought you might want this back,” Michael said, extending the book, but Franklin was up like a shot to intervene.

  “The chief said not to give him anything. You don't know what he could use, or how he could use it.”

  “It's just a book,” Michael said, letting it be inspected. “Of poetry.”

  That made Franklin frown. “Looks pretty old,” he said, riffling through the pages.

  “Probably a first edition,” Michael observed, with a glance at Sinclair, to whom he handed it.

  “It's by a man named Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” Sinclair said, accepting it awkwardly between his cuffed hands. “And so far as I know, it's never hurt a soul.”

  Michael recognized the need for all the precautions but was embarrassed by it, nonetheless.

  “So I saw,” Michael said, before reciting the few lines he remembered from school: “ ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn, a stately pleasure dome decree: Where Alph, the Sacred River, Ran, Through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea.’ I'm afraid that's about all the poetry that ever stuck,” he said, but Sinclair looked nonplussed all the same.

  “You know his work? Even now?”

  “Oh yes,” Michael was pleased to inform him. “The Romantic poets are taught in high school and college. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats. But I still don't know what the title of this book- Sibylline Leaves — means.”

  Sinclair was smoothing the cover of the book as if he were stroking the top of a dog's sleek head. “The Greek sibyls-seers? — wrote their prophecies on palm leaves.”

  Michael nodded. He'd been impressed that this should be the book Sinclair held closest to his heart; it had been packed in his gear by the door of the church. “And I saw that The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is in it,” he said. “That's still a very famous poem. It shows up on a lot of required reading lists.”

  Sinclair gazed down at the book, and without opening it, intoned, “ ‘Like one that on a lonesome road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned around walks on, And turns no more his head.’ “

  Franklin was looking utterly stumped.

  “ ‘Because he knows, a frightful fiend,’ “ Sinclair concluded the passage, “ ‘Doth close behind him tread.’ “

  The words seemed to silence the chamber… and chilled Michael to the bone. Was that, he wondered, how Sinclair perceived his own flight? A lonesome journey, dogged by demons every step of the way? The haunted look on his face, the hollows around his eyes, the cracked lips, the blond hair matted to his head as if he'd been drowned-they all testified that it did.

  Franklin, apparently afraid that the poetry recital might go on, said to Michael, “You mind if I take a break?”

  “Go ahead,” Michael replied, and Franklin, tossing his magazine onto the crate, left.

  When he was gone, Sinclair put the book aside and leaned back against the wall, while Michael removed the well-thumbed copy of Maxim from Franklin's perch and sat down.

  “You haven't got anything to smoke, do you?” Sinclair asked, for all the world like one gentleman, lounging in a club, idly asking another.

  “Afraid not.”

  Sinclair sighed, and said, “The guard didn't either. Am I to be deprived of tobacco for a reason, or do men no longer smoke?”

  Michael had to smile. “Murphy probably left orders not to give you anything like a cigarette or a cigar. He might have thought you'd try to burn this place down.”

  “With myself inside it?”

  “Granted,” Michael said, “it wouldn't be smart. But men do smoke-just not as much anymore. It turns out it causes cancer.”

  Sinclair looked at him as if he'd just seriously suggested that the moon was made of green cheese. “Well, then,” he said, “do they drink?”

  “Definitely. Especially here.”

  Sinclair waited, expectantly, while Michael debated what to do. He knew it would be a gross breach of Murphy's express orders to provide Sinclair with a drink, and Charlotte would probably tell him it was a bad idea, too. Hell, for that matter he knew it was inadvisable. But the man seemed so calm and so rational, and would there be any better way to gain his confidence and get him talking about the long and eventful journey he'd made? Michael still could not imagine how Sinclair and Eleanor had wound up wrapped in chains at the bottom of the sea.

  “At the club, we always kept a decanter of very fine port on hand for our guests.”

  “I can tell you now, we don't have that. Beer is more likely.”

  Sinclair shrugged amiably. “Beer would not be unwelcome.”

  Michael looked around the locker. Most of the boxes contained canned goods, or crockery, but somewhere there had to be some Sam Adams crates.

  “Don't go anywhere,” Michael said, getting up and going into the next aisle, where Ackerley's blood had left a stain on the concrete floor. Stepping around it-and trying not to think about it- he found a Sam Adams box and broke it open. He took out two bottles, and used his Swiss Army knife to pop the caps. Then he went back and handed one to Sinclair. He clinked his own against it, then moved back to his seat.

  Sinclair took a long drink, his head back, before studying the dark bottle with its bewigged man on the label. “There was once a great scandal, you know, over a bottle rather like this.”


  “A scandal?”

  “It was a Moselle, served in a black bottle about this size, and set at Lord Cardigan's banquet table.”

  “Why was that such a problem?”

  “Lord Cardigan,” Sinclair said, giving the nobleman's name an especially orotund delivery, “was very punctilious about such matters, and he had expressly ordered that only champagne be served.”

  “When was this?”

  “Eighteen forty, if memory serves. At a regimental dinner.”

  Michael found the conversation increasingly surreal. While Sinclair recounted the rest of the tale-”this is all, you understand, from the popular account, as I was still at Eton at the time”- Michael kept reminding himself that Sinclair and Eleanor had lived in an era, and a world, that was long gone. What was history to Michael was simply the news of the day to Sinclair.

  Sinclair took another drink, with his eyes closed, and then, slowly-very slowly-he opened them again.

  Had he just adjusted his vision?

  “Thin beer,” he said.

  “Is it?” Michael replied. “I guess the draft beer you were used to was heavier.”

  Sinclair didn't answer. He was looking fixedly at Michael. Pondering. He drained the bottle, and put it on the floor beside his shackled ankle.

  “Thank you,” he said, “all the same.”

  “No problem.” Michael was considering how to steer the conversation in the direction he wanted, when Sinclair took the wheel instead.

  “So,” he said, “what have you done with Eleanor?”

  This was definitely not where Michael would have wanted it to go. But he answered that she was well, and resting, which all seemed innocuous enough.

  “That's not what I asked.”

  The lieutenant's tone had abruptly changed.

  “Where is she?” he said. “I want to see her.”

  And Michael's eyes flicked, involuntarily, to the chain holding him to the pipe on the wall.

  “Why won't you let us see each other?”