Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

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?”

“That's just the way the Chief of Operations wants it for now.”

Sinclair snorted. “You sound like some conscript, reduced to following orders.” He took a deep breath, then loudly exhaled. “And I've witnessed what comes of that.”

“I'll see what I can do,” Michael replied.

“We're just a humble man and wife,” Sinclair said, trying another tack, and in a more conciliatory tone, “who have come a very long way together. What possible harm could there be in our seeing each other?”

Man and wife? Michael hadn't known that, and he was sure he would have remembered it if Eleanor had said they were a married couple. Sinclair blinked again, slowly, and Michael noted that he seemed short of breath.

“Does that surprise you,” Sinclair said, “that we are husband and wife? Or hadn't she mentioned it?”

“I don't think it came up.”

“Didn't come up?” He coughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Or you didn't want to know?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm no fool, so please don't take me for one.”

“I'm not taking-”

“I'm an officer in Her Majesty's service, Seventeenth Lancers,” he said, a steely resolve in his voice. Lifting his cuffed hands and rattling the chain secured to the wall, he added, “And if I were not at such a disadvantage, you'd soon regret trifling with me.”

Michael stood up, surprised again at Sinclair's sudden change of tone. Was it the beer? Did alcohol have some unforeseen effect on him, because of his condition? Or were these mercurial moods a part of his everyday nature? Despite the chain, Michael backed a few more feet away.

“Do you want to call back the guard?” Sinclair taunted him.

“I think it's the doctor you should see,” Michael said.

“What?” he said. “The blackamoor again?”

“Dr. Barnes.”

“That bitch has already tapped me like a barkeep taps a keg”

What had happened here? What had gone wrong? Sinclair had gone from calm to crazy in a matter of minutes. And there was an unwholesome gleam in his bloodshot eyes.

Franklin ambled back in, his bushy moustache covered with frost. “You two still reading poems to each other?” he said.

Then he saw Michael standing back, and the look on his face, and knew that something was off. “Everything all right?” he asked Michael, and when he didn't get an immediate reply, he said, “What do you want me to do?”

“I think you should get Charlotte. Maybe Murphy and Lawson, too.”

Franklin gave Sinclair a wary glance, then went right back out.

Michael had never taken his eyes off Sinclair, who sat on the edge of the cot, staring back with red-rimmed eyes.

And then, returning to the same measured voice he had used to recite the earlier lines, Sinclair intoned, “ An orphan's curse would drag to hell, A spirit from on high; but oh, more horrible than that, Is the curse in a dead man's eye!’ “ The look in his own eye was nothing short of murderous. “Do you know the lines?” he asked.

“No. I don't.”

Sinclair rapped his knuckles on the cover of the old book. “You do now,” he said, chuckling grimly. “Don't say you weren't warned.”

December 24, 8:15 p.m.

Even though she had taken great care to hide the dreadful evidence, Eleanor soon knew that her secret had been discovered. No one had said anything to her, but all the other bags of blood had been removed from the infirmary. And there had been a wary look in Dr. Barnes's eye.

Eleanor was ashamed-mortified, truth be told, by her dreadful need-but she was also scared. What was she to do when the urge, the terrible thirst, came upon her again? And it would-she knew that it would. Sometimes she could go days, even perhaps a week, without it… but the longer she waited, the more urgent it became, and the more she was driven, even against her own will, to slake it.

How could she ever confess to such a desire? In whom could she confide?

She stared out the window of her tiny room, at the frozen square with the flagpole at its center. A tall man in a bulky coat and hood was standing there, looking up at the pewter sky, with something in his gloved hand, something that looked like several strips of bacon.