Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

Delirium, she thought, before turning back to Sinclair. But it was as if, in those few seconds, his mind had cleared somewhat; he was looking at her now with comprehension. “My God,” escaped his lips. “It is you.”

Her tears burst forth, and she bent to embrace him. She could feel his skin and bones through the thin nightshirt he had been issued, and wondered how quickly she could fetch some hot porridge from the kitchens. Or find him a proper bed.

He was weak and frail but able to speak a few words at a time, and Eleanor filled in the rest. She didn't want to exhaust him-and she knew that she had duties to fulfill-but he seemed to be gaining strength from her very presence and she dreaded leaving him, even for a few hours. When, finally, she had to do so, promising to return at her first opportunity, he followed her with his eyes until she was obscured by the muslin curtains billowing like shrouds.

Even as she looked at herself now in the spotless lavatory mirror, she could perfectly remember the look on his face, and see it as clearly as her own. She turned the shower handles as the doctor had shown her-and after piling the last of her clothes atop a wicker hamper, stepped gingerly into the hot spray. The water poured from a circular device, and seemed to pulsate as it rained down on her. A bar of soap-green, of all things-lay in a shallow niche on the tiled wall. And just as the paste she had used on her teeth had a taste of citrus, the soap had a fragrance, of evergreen trees. Did everything in this strange new world bear a foreign flavor or aroma? Eleanor let the hot torrent fall over her arms, then her shoulders. Unsure how long the miraculous cascade might last, she put her face up to the spray. Everything was so alien, and so unexpected, it was as if she had landed in the Crimea all over again.

The water felt like a thousand tiny raindrops drumming on her eyelids, coursing down her neck and breasts. Slowly, she inched forward, until the water was rushing over the crown of her head, draping her long brown hair down either side of her face. It was one of the most delicious sensations she had ever experienced, and she stood there for many minutes, leaning forward with her palms flat against the white tiles, steeping, she thought, like tea leaves, as the water made a shallow pool around her feet. For the first time in ages, her skin felt warm, all over, and she wondered, if she stood there long enough and the water did not run out, if its heat could finally penetrate as far as her heart and assuage the unremitting ache that had been her companion for so long.

December 17, Midnight

The bell in the steeple was ringing when Sinclair finally returned to the church, but it was only the wind banging the clapper. Still, the sound had helped him and the dogs to find their way through the storm. He staggered in, the dead seal draped around his shoulders, and the dogs, released from their harness, yapping wildly around his feet. In an instant he saw that the rectory door was ajar. Throwing the seal upon the altar, he crossed to the open door and looked inside.

The fire was dead in the grate, and Eleanor was gone.

He stood there, his arms extended to either side of the doorframe, breathing hard. It was possible, though unlikely, that she had found some way to unfasten the lock and escape. But where?

And why?

“Eleanor!” He shouted her name again and again, setting off a reciprocal chorus among the dogs roaming the aisles. He thundered up the stairs to the belfry and peered into the cyclone of snow and ice, but he could barely see the warehouses and sheds below. Even if he ventured out into the storm on foot, the blizzard was so intense he would not be able to orient himself or move in any consistent direction. If Eleanor had gone into it, he would never be able to find her… or his own way back.

There was nothing to do, he knew, but wait. He must bide his time until the storm abated. Though he hated to concede it, it was conceivable that she had done something rash and unforgivable… that she had chosen, of her own free will, not to go on. He was well aware of her despair, being no stranger to it himself… but in his heart he could not accept that she had done that. He scoured their humble quarters for a telltale sign of farewell, or a message of any kind, torn from letters in the hymnals perhaps. But there was nothing, and he knew that Eleanor, no matter how possessed by grief she might have been, would not have left him that way. She would not have left him without a word. He knew her too well ever to believe such a thing.

Which left only one alternative… that Eleanor had been taken.

Against her will.

Had men from the camp come in his absence and made off with her? Any tracks they might have left in the snow would have already been obliterated, and with the wet dogs in the church, it was impossible to see any footprints the intruders might have left there, either. But who else could it have been? And where else but their camp could she have been taken?

Finally-and that was where all his thoughts were tending- how could he best effect her rescue?

The obstacles to that were immense, especially because he could not see what the endgame would be. Even if he were successful at finding and freeing her, where could they flee on this ice-bound continent? He felt as if he were staring down a narrow defile to certain doom, just as he had done on that brisk October morning in Balaclava. But somehow, he reminded himself, he had survived that apocalypse, and even worse. Regardless of how black the page, he had always managed to turn it and move on to a new chapter in his life.

And he did have certain advantages, he reflected grimly. A cup of fresh seal blood rested like a chalice at his elbow, next to a book of poetry that had traveled with him all the way from England to the Crimea, and now to this dreadful outpost. He opened it, and let the pages fall where they would. His eyes dropped to the yellowed paper, stiff as parchment, and there he read…

Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide, wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:

And a thousand thousand slimy things

Lived on; and so did I.

Though there was precious little balm in the words for most men, for him they provided comfort. Only the poet seemed to guess the awful truth of his situation. The dogs howled, and Sinclair sawed off another slab of blubber from the dead seal lying on the table and tossed the pieces into the nave below. The dogs scrambled to get them, their claws scraping on the stone floor, their barks echoing up to the rafters.

From his tall stool behind the desecrated altar, Sinclair surveyed his empty realm. He could envision the faces of the whalers who had once occupied the pews, their faces smeared with grease and soot, their grimy clothes encrusted with dried blood. They had gazed up at that very altar, hats in hand, listening to the minister extol the virtues of the life beyond, the bounteous treasures they had laid up in Heaven to compensate them for the torments they endured day after day. They had sat there, in the desolate church- even the crucifix was rough-hewn and plain-in a frozen waste, surrounded by flensing yards and boiling cauldrons, piles of entrails and mountains of bones, and they had listened to stories of white clouds and golden sunlight, of boundless happiness and eternal life. Of a world that was not a reeking slaughterhouse… and oh, Sinclair reflected, oh, how they had been duped.

As he had once been duped by tales of glory and valor. Lying on his pallet in the Barrack Hospital, consumed with the mounting and inexplicable desire, he had been driven to a deed he had long regretted but could never undo. The bloodlust engendered by that unholy creature on the battlefield at Balaclava had proven too strong to resist, and he had preyed upon a helpless Highlander too weak to fend him off.