Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

Eleanor did know it, but it wasn't enough. Sinclair had lost his faith in everything, and he had profoundly shaken hers. What were they doing there? What had she hoped would come of it? It was a terrible mistake, and she'd known it the moment she crossed the threshold of the cathedral.

“Come,” he said earnestly, slipping a hand into the crook of her elbow. “Let's stand in the open.”

She tried to resist, but he pulled her out of the shadows, and afraid of causing any more commotion, she let him prevail.

“We have nothing to hide,” he said.

He drew her first into the center aisle, then out in front of the ornate and glittering altar itself. The stained-glass window, in brilliant blues and reds and yellows, glowed like a kaleidoscope that Eleanor had once seen in a London optical shop, and it was so beautiful she could hardly take her eyes away.

Sinclair clasped both of her hands in his, and in a soft voice said, “I, Sinclair Archibald Copley, do take thee, Eleanor-” He stopped. “Isn't that odd? I don't know your middle name-do you have one?”

“Jane.”

“Do take thee, Eleanor Jane Ames,” he continued, “to be my lawfully wedded wife. To have and to hold, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

Eleanor felt that they were being far too conspicuous, and she tried to lower her hands.

But Sinclair hung on. “I hope I remembered that correctly. If there's anything I missed, please tell me.”

“No, I believe you had it right.”

“Good, then once you recite the vows yourself, we can go and have a toast at that noisy cantina on the square.”

“Sinclair,” she pleaded, “I can't.”

“You can't?” he inquired, a brittle edge entering his voice. “Or you won't?”

Eleanor was sure that the priest had taken notice of them. He had a long white beard and sharp dark eyes under bushy brows. “Sinclair, I think we should leave now.”

“No,” he said. “Not until we have asked the assembled congregation-”

“What congregation?” The other Sinclair, the one she dreaded, was coming to the fore.

“Not until we have asked the congregation if any of them knows of any just impediment to our being wed.”

“That's meant to come before the vow,” she said. “Don't make any more of a mockery of this than we already have.”

She knew that they had to go. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, the priest disengaging himself from the Portuguese aristocrats.

“We are making a spectacle of ourselves,” she whispered, “and it isn't safe. You know that better than anyone.”

He fixed her with a dull glare, as if wondering how much further to go. She'd seen that look in his eye before; he could be tipped over-from mirth to fury, from kindness to callousness-in an instant.

He had just opened his mouth to speak when she heard a rumbling in the stone slabs beneath her feet, and from the wall behind the altar-a wall that had stood for centuries-she saw the heavy crucifix tilt, then sway. The priest, who'd been striding toward them, stopped and looked up in horror as cracks rippled through the plaster. All around her, people screamed, or threw themselves to the floor with their hands clasped in prayer.

As Sinclair and Eleanor stepped back, the cross broke free, ripping bricks from the wall and throwing up a cloud of white dust. Sinclair dragged her behind a column and they huddled there, expecting the earthquake to level the entire church around them. The great stained-glass window fractured like sheer ice on a pond, then crumbled into a thousand shining shards of glass. Dust and debris billowed out into the nave. Eleanor clutched her handkerchief over her mouth and nose, and Sinclair raised the sleeve of his uniform over his own. Through the cloud, Eleanor could discern the priest, crossing himself, but pressing forward… toward them.

“Sinclair,” she said, coughing. “The priest, he's coming.”

Sinclair turned around and saw the man waving the plaster dust out of his path.

“This way,” he said, leading Eleanor toward one of the side chapels. But a couple of men-the ones wearing fine velvet tailcoats-were standing there, aghast but stubbornly unmoving, and he had to suddenly change course. By the time he did, the priest had intercepted them, and was clutching at the gold braid on Sinclair's doublet and shouting angry words that they could not understand. His arms waved, as if indicating that the chaos had been brought on by some terrible sacrilege Sinclair had been performing.

Had it? Eleanor wondered.

Sinclair batted the man's hands away, and finally, when that didn't stop him, he drew back his fist and punched him hard in the belly. The old priest fell to his knees, then, gasping for air, toppled over into the dust. Clutching Eleanor's hand, Sinclair hurried down the nave and out a side door near the chapel of the knight in armor. The bright sunlight blinded them for a moment, and the earth gave another jolt. People were still fleeing from their shops and houses; dogs were barking and pigs were squealing in the street. They turned down a flight of winding steps and into a cobblestoned alley. Loose red tiles skittered off a roof and shattered in their path. A few minutes later, they had lost themselves in the mayhem of a panicked marketplace.

It was not the wedding day that Eleanor, as a young girl lying in a meadow in Yorkshire, might have imagined.

And now? Now she was standing in front of the squat white box-the fridge-her breath shallow, and the room in the infirmary fading to white before her eyes. She put out a hand to steady herself, but her knees were weak. She let herself sink and came to rest with her head against the cool surface of its door. Inside it, she knew, was what she needed, and without really willing it, her fingers found the handle. She opened the box, and took out one of the bags, with the blood sloshing inside. It said “O Negative” on it. She wondered what that meant, but not for long. With her teeth, she tore it open, and there on the floor, her soft white robe spread out around her, she suckled at the bag like a newborn babe.

December 22, 10 a.m.

Sinclair wasn't sure what had awakened him. He was slumped forward on a high stool, his head lying on the altar, the book of poetry under one hand and his other hand resting on a nearly empty chalice. A sputtering candle sent a thin trail of smoke into the air.

A dog, sitting on his haunches in the aisle, let out a hungry cry.

He'd been dreaming of Eleanor-what else did he ever dream of? — but it was not a happy dream. It was hardly a dream at all. He was remembering a quarrel that they had had, just before he'd gone off hunting. From the belfry, he had done some reconnoitering and determined that the coast bellied out to the northwest, promising perhaps some escape route. “We may not be so marooned, after all.”

“Sinclair,” she'd replied, softly and with great deliberation, “we are marooned as no two people have ever been before.”

“None of that,” he replied, tearing another hymnal into pieces and tossing it into the fire. “We've as much right to the world as anyone else.”

“But we're not like anyone else. I don't know what we are, or what the Lord intended for us to be, but this… this cannot be His plan.”

“Well, then, it's mine,” he barked, “and for the time being, that will have to serve.” He could feel the shortness of breath, the dimming of his vision, as he stared into the blazing grate. “I've seen God's plan, and I'll tell you this much-the Devil could have done no worse. The world's a slaughterhouse, and I've played my own damned part in making it so. If I've learned anything at all, it's that we must make up our own fate, from scratch, every day.” He ripped another hymnal in two and added it to the fire. “If we hope to survive at all, we must fight for every breath we take, every bite we eat, and every drop we drink.” Looking around for the nearest bottle, he'd concluded, “God helps no one.”