Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

At the same time, her heart was forever in her throat. At each ward they entered, and in every bed they passed, she was looking for Lieutenant Sinclair Copley-desperate to see him again, terrified of what she might find once she did. Each morning she checked the rolls, but she knew that they were fragmentary and sloppy at best, and Sinclair could be suffering and speechless, unconscious from a blow or delirious with fever, just a ward away. She had made what inquiries she could, and she had learned that his brigade, the 17th Lancers, had been dispatched under Lords Lucan and Cardigan to aid in the siege of Sebastopol. But news traveled slowly from the front, and even when it did come it was no more dependable than the hospital rolls.

They had nearly completed their circuit and were passing through the last of the wards, when Eleanor thought she heard someone mutter her name. She stopped, and so did Miss Nightingale, who obligingly lifted the lamp up to cast a wider glow. On iron bedsteads, a dozen soldiers raised their heads or turned their eyes, but none of them spoke. The voice came again, and now Eleanor could see, in the farthest reach of the ward, below a window whose empty panes were stuffed with rags, a figure lying under a soiled sheet, his face turned toward them.

“Miss Ames?”

His face was so filthy she would not have recognized him, but the voice she knew.

“Lieutenant Le Maitre?” she said, moving closer.

The figure chuckled, then coughed. “Frenchie will do.”

“This is an acquaintance of yours?” Miss Nightingale said, following Eleanor to his bedside.

“Yes, ma'am, it is. He is one of the Seventeenth Lancers.”

“Then I will leave you to visit,” she said, in a gentle voice. “We are nearly done, anyway.” Taking a candle stub from the windowsill, she lit it with the flame from the lamp and left it with Eleanor. “Good night, Lieutenant.”

“Good night, Miss Nightingale. And God bless you.”

Miss Nightingale modestly inclined her head, then turned away, her long skirt rustling as she navigated past the other cots and patients.

Eleanor put the candle on the window ledge and knelt by the narrow bed. Frenchie, who had always been so smartly groomed, was wearing a torn white shirt crawling with lice; his hair was long and unwashed, and hung down over his fevered brow. He was unshaven, and his damp skin, even in the feeble candlelight, displayed a greenish pallor.

Eleanor had seen hundreds of men in such condition, and she knew it did not bode well. Quickly, she dipped a clean bandage in the remaining water and used it to begin mopping the sweat from his forehead. She only wished that she had a clean shirt with her, so that she could rip the lice-ridden one from his limbs. The sheet clung wetly to his lower body.

“Is it a fever,” she asked, “or have you been wounded?”

Laying his head on the pallet, he drew the sheet away from his legs. The right one was scarred and bloody, but the left was worse- a yellowed bone protruded through the skin, and red striations ran up and down the shin. “You were shot?” she said, in horror… and in shame that her thoughts had immediately gone to Sinclair. Had he been in the same battle?

“I was shot at” he said. “But my horse plunged into a ravine and rolled over on my legs.”

She dipped the rag into the water again, and as she did so, he answered the question he knew she wanted to ask.

“Sinclair was not there. The last I saw of him, he was riding with Rutherford, and the rest of the company, toward a place called Balaclava.” He pulled the sheet back over his ruined legs and licked his lips. “My canteen,” he said, “it's under the bed.”

She rummaged around-something with many tiny legs scuttled over her hand-before she found it and unscrewed the cap for him. She could smell that it was gin inside. She held it to his lips and he took a swig, and then another. His eyes closed. “I should have guessed that you would be one of the nurses,” he whispered.

“What would you like me to do for you?” she said. “I'm afraid I don't have most of my supplies with me right now…”

He shook his head feebly. “You have already done it,” he said.

“Tomorrow, I'll come back on my rounds, and I'll bring you a fresh shirt, and a clean sheet, and a good razor…”

He raised one hand an inch from the mattress to stop her. “What I would like,” he said, “is to write a letter to my family.”

It was a common request, and Eleanor said, “I will bring a pen and paper.”

“Come as soon as you can,” he said, and she knew why he was in such haste.

“Rest now,” she said, touching his shoulder and rising from the bedside. “I'll see you in the morning.”

He sighed, his head still flat against the mattress, and blowing out the candle, she slipped quietly out of the ward.

December 16, 10 a.m.

Michael and Lawson were barreling across the ice at full throttle, but there had been no sign at all of Danzig, or the missing dogs. Michael knew he ought to slow down; new crevasses could appear at any time, anywhere. But motion-and speed-had always been his remedy of choice. Whenever anything threatened to overwhelm him, he went into action-physical action. So long as he was moving, and caught up in the split-second decision-making of rock climbing, or kayaking through rapids, or snorkeling through a coral canyon, he could leave the dark thoughts that haunted him behind. He was smart enough to know that he couldn't actually outrun them-how many times had he tried? — but the temporary reprieve was generally enough to let him breathe again.

Right now, for instance, he tried to anchor himself in the moment, focusing first on the bow of the snowmobile coursing across the barren landscape, then, as he approached the shoreline, the languid soaring of a large white albatross overhead. It had been accompanying him for a while, dipping and rising in lazy circles that kept perfect pace with the progress of the two machines. Lawson had fanned out to his left and was making a more direct approach to the whaling station, while Michael hewed more closely to the shore, passing between the beach, strewn with bleached bones, and the ramshackle factory buildings. The two snowmobiles came together again in the wide-open flensing yard, and when the engines were turned off, the silence fell like a blanket. It took a few seconds for the ears to adjust, then Michael could hear the wind blowing snow across the frozen ground and the distant cry of the albatross. As he looked up, the bird circled again on its wide, outstretched wings, but showed no sign yet of alighting.

Lawson slipped his goggles onto his forehead and said, “If the dogs were here, they'd have heard us coming-”

“And we'd have heard them by now,” Michael agreed. “But we've got some time before the storm comes in, so why don't you look around down here while I go up the hill?”

Lawson nodded, and taking hold of some ski poles for balance-Michael noticed that he was definitely limping-said, “I'll catch up with you in an hour.”

Michael checked his watch, then climbed back on his snowmobile and revved the engine. He shot down the bleak alleyway that ran between what were once the boiling rooms, then up toward the church, with its crooked bell tower. Rather than try to navigate through the tombstones surrounding the church, he stopped the machine halfway up the hill and marched the rest of the way to the steps. Putting his shoulder against the heavy wooden door, he shoved it open, stepping into a humble, stone-floored church, with worn wooden pews; at the end of the center aisle, a trestle table had been set up as the altar. A crudely carved crucifix hung on the wall behind it. He'd been in such a hurry to leave the base that he hadn't bothered to bring all his camera equipment, but he ran off a few quick shots with his trusty Canon, nonetheless; knowing he still had a couple of weeks left on his pass, he planned to come back again and do it right-especially as, even then, perhaps a century or more since the church had been built, the place retained a strange air of expectancy. Somehow he would want to capture that, the feeling that at any moment the pews might once again be filled with weary whalers and the pulpit with a preacher reciting Scripture by the light of an oil lamp.