Blood And Ice Part 33

"Which they can only get from other human beings?" Michael suggested.

"I'm not so sure about that. The species barrier should make that the case, but this is such a strange disease that I can't actually confirm it. Someone suffering from it would probably make no such distinctions. The anemia would become so great, they would try to rectify it with anything available, like a drug addict scrambling for any kind of a fix."

"But how can they keep going at all," Charlotte asked, perched on the edge of her folding chair, "without red corpuscles to carry the oxygen through the bloodstream? Their organs would stop functioning, and their muscles and other tissues would decay. Wouldn't they just run out of steam?"

"That's close to what Ackerley described in the notes he wrote in the meat locker," Michael interjected.

It was Charlotte's turn to look puzzled-what notes?-but Michael just gave her a wave to indicate he'd fill her in on all that later. There were way too many secrets still.

"He said he had the sensation of being oxygen-deprived," Michael went on, "as if his lungs weren't filling, no matter how deeply he breathed. And he said he needed to blink a lot, to clear his vision."

"Yes, that would make sense," Darryl said. "The ocular mechanism would be compromised, too. But I'll say one thing in favor of this blood-it is amazingly, stupendously recuperative. Per milliliter, it's loaded with more phagocytes than-"

"English, please," Murphy interrupted, and Lawson nodded in agreement.

"Cells that consume foreign or hostile particles," Darryl explained. "Like a little cleanup squad. So if you couple that feature with its ability to extract whatever it needs from any outside source, you've got a very neat and self-regenerating system. Theoretically speaking, as long as its raw supply is periodically replenished with new blood-"

"Its host can go on forever," Charlotte concluded.

Darryl simply shrugged in acknowledgment, and Michael felt as if a cold hand had reached inside his s.h.i.+rt to brush his chest. They were talking about these "hosts" as if they were the anonymous subjects in some medical experiment, but in fact they were talking about Erik Danzig and Neil Ackerley and, most important of all, Eleanor Ames. They were talking about the woman he had discovered in the ice, and brought back to life-a woman he had played the piano with, and interviewed on tape-as if she were some creature from a horror flick.

Another silence fell, as the revelation and its ramifications made themselves felt in the room. Michael himself experienced an odd twinge of vindication. If anyone had still been harboring any doubt about the validity of Eleanor's story, if they were still questioning how she might have survived for so many years, frozen beneath the sea ...

But it did leave another question-what, if anything, could be done to remedy the disease?-unresolved. Michael knew it was what they were all thinking.

Finally, the mood was broken by Murphy, who leaned forward, his fingers steepled on his desk, and said, "What's wrong with having her go cold turkey? What if she were confined and medicated and tranquilized-you guys have more drugs than you know what to do with-until the need just went away?"

Darryl pursed his lips and tilted his head skeptically to one side. "If you'll forgive the a.n.a.logy, that would be like denying insulin to a diabetic. The need wouldn't go away. The patient would simply go into shock, a coma, and die."

"Then how are we supposed to keep her adequately supplied?" Lawson asked, voicing the question they were all pondering. "Start a blood drive?"

Murphy snorted and said, "I can tell you now, it'd be a hard sell with the grunts."

"But transfusions, from our present blood supply, could address the problem on a temporary basis," Darryl suggested. He looked around at all of their faces. "Until we can figure out a cure- a.s.suming one exists-I don't see how we can avoid doing something like that."

"I think she may have a head start," Charlotte said, and Michael guessed that this was what she'd been holding back. "A plasma bag has gone missing. I thought I'd misplaced it, even though I couldn't imagine how. But now, well, I guess I know what happened to it."

Michael could hardly credit what he knew, in his heart, was probably true.

"That's just great," Murphy said in exasperation. "Just great."

Michael knew what was going through the chief's head-the endless reports he would have to write and the internal investigations he would have to conduct in order to account for all of this to his overlords. And how could he, really? They'd be carting him off to Bellevue in no time.

"And let's not forget that there's still another one out there," Murphy added. "And he's still on the loose."

The young lieutenant, Michael thought. Sinclair Copley.

"It's awfully dangerous out there," Lawson commented. "Unless he made it back to the whaling station, he's probably at the bottom of some creva.s.se by now."

"From your lips to G.o.d's ear," Murphy said.

But Michael wasn't prepared to give up so easily, nor did he feel it would be right. Given all that this man had already survived, who was to say he had succ.u.mbed to the storm, or the polar extremes? Glancing out the window at the clear skies and the low, drifting snow, he said, "We've got a break in the weather. We could use it to mount a search. If we know anything at all about the guy, it's that he's got a powerful will to live."

"And there's something else, too," Charlotte put in. "We've got the most important thing in the world to him. Someone he'll want to get back-no matter what."

The cold hand that had brushed across Michael's chest earlier suddenly brushed him again, and to his own surprise clamped down like a vise.

"Charlotte's right," Darryl said. "When it comes to bait, we have the best."

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE.

December 21, 11 p.m.

ELEANOR FELT LIKE A PRISONER who had been returned to her cell. Dr. Barnes had left her yet another of the blue pills and a gla.s.s of water, but she did not want to take it. She did not want to sleep anymore, and she did not want to hide in the infirmary any longer ... especially because the temptation in the white metal box was too great. (What, she pressed herself, had they called it? A fridge? Was that it?) Regardless, she'd seen the bags inside-clear like a haggis casing, but br.i.m.m.i.n.g with blood. And she could feel the need coming upon her, again. The very walls around her seemed drained of color, and she often had to close her eyes, then reopen them, simply to restore everything to its natural state. Her breath, too, was growing short and shallow. Dr. Barnes, she believed, had noted the change in her respiration, but Eleanor could hardly explain to her the cause-much less the remedy.

And here she was, alone again, or, as Sinclair had often recited from his book of poetry, "All, all, all alone, alone on a wide, wide sea!" Where is Sinclair right now? In the church, sheltered from the storm? Or lost in the snow and ice, searching for me?

She paced the room like a tiger she had seen in the London Zoo, back and forth, over and over again; even then she had felt for the poor beast's isolation and confinement. She struggled to keep her gaze from the "fridge" and her thoughts from straying into the same dismal channels. But how could they not? Her past life had been taken from her completely-her family, her friends, her very country-and her present life was reduced to a sick bay at the Southern Pole ... and a ravening need that it appalled her even to think of.

On that fateful night in the Barrack Hospital, after Sinclair had come to her, she had indeed rallied. By the next day her fever was nearly gone. Moira had exulted over her, and Miss Nightingale herself had brought her cereal and tea and drawn a chair up to her bedside.

"We have missed you on the wards," Miss Nightingale said. "The soldiers will be glad to see you back."

"I will be glad to see them, too."

"One soldier, I should think, in particular," Miss Nightingale said, and Eleanor had blushed.

"Isn't he the man who once barged into our hospital in London," Miss Nightingale went on, while holding up a spoonful of cereal, "and required st.i.tching up?"

"Yes, mum, he is."

Miss Nightingale nodded, and when Eleanor had eaten the cereal, said, "And an attachment has formed between you since?"

"It has," Eleanor admitted.

"My greatest fear, when recruiting my nurses, was that they would become too attached to certain soldiers in their care. It would reflect badly on the nurse herself, and more importantly, it would put our entire mission into question. You know, of course, that we have many detractors, both here and at home?"

"I do."

"Narrow-minded people who believe our nurses are nothing more than opportunists and worse?"

Miss Nightingale offered another spoonful of the cereal, and though Eleanor had not yet regained her appet.i.te, she was not about to refuse it. "That is why I must ask you to do nothing-and I cannot emphasize this strongly enough-that would bring your service here, or ours, into disrepute."

Eleanor signaled her a.s.sent with a mute tilt of the head.

"Good," Miss Nightingale said. "Then I think we understand each other." She got up, carefully placing the cereal bowl on the seat of the wooden chair. "I trust in your judgment and take you at your word." With a rustle of her skirt, she went to the door, where Moira was waiting. "I'm afraid there has been more bloodshed near the Woronzoff Road. I will need you both to report for duty tomorrow at first light."

Then she was gone. Eleanor's head fell back on the pillow and stayed there until the night came ... and with it, again, Sinclair.

He had studied her face in the candlelight as if he were looking for clues, but seemed happy with what he saw. "You're better," he said, putting his hand to her brow. "The fever's gone."

"It is," she said, resting her cheek against his palm.

"Tomorrow, we can leave this accursed place."

Eleanor didn't know what he was talking about. "Leave?" Sinclair was in the army, and she was to report for duty in the morning.

"We can't very well stay here, can we? Not now."

Eleanor was confused. Why not? What had changed, apart from the fact that they had both recovered?

"I'll manage to find some horses," he went on, "though we might have to make do with just one."

"Sinclair," Eleanor said, worried that his own fever might have returned after all, "what are you saying? Where would we go?" Was he delusional?

"Anywhere. The whole d.a.m.n country is a battlefield. Wherever we go, we shouldn't have any trouble finding what we need."

"What we need?"

That was when he had met her gaze most steadily, cupping her face between his hands, before speaking. He had knelt by the bed and, in a low voice, told her a story, a story so terrible she had not believed him-not a word of it. A tale of creatures that haunted the Crimean night, and preyed upon the dying. ("I see it in my dreams every night," he said, "and still I could not tell you what it was.") Of a curse, or a blessing, that defied death itself. Of a need that never stopped ... and to which she was now, like him, a slave. She couldn't believe it, and she wouldn't believe it!

But she could feel the wound just above her breast-it had left a telltale scar-which Sinclair said was the proof.

He kissed it now, contritely, and she felt the hot tears burning in her eyes. She turned her face to the wall, gasping for breath. The room, which had a tall window opening onto the sea, suddenly felt unbearably close and stifling.

Sinclair clutched her hand, but she withdrew that, too. What had he done to her? What had he done to them both? If he was lying, then he was mad. If he was telling the truth, then they were both doomed to a fate worse than death. Eleanor had been raised in the Church of England, but she had never been particularly devout; she left that to her mother and her sisters. But what Sinclair was telling her was even to her mind a sacrilege of such magnitude that she could barely contemplate it ... or dwell on the life that it would necessitate.

"It was the only way I could save you," Sinclair was saying. "Forgive me. Eleanor. Please say that you can forgive me."

But at that moment, she could not. At that moment it was all she could do to breathe the damp air of the Bosporus, and consider what she might do ...

Even now, it was a dilemma that offered no easy way out.

As she paced the floor of the infirmary, it was a struggle to keep her thoughts from the white metal box-with the blood inside it- that stood before her. All she had to do was reach out, open it, and take what she needed. There it was, beckoning to her.

She forced herself to look away and went to the window.

The constant sun imparted a dull glare that reminded her of the light in the sky on their ill-fated voyage aboard the Coventry. By the clock, it was getting on toward midnight, but she knew that there would be no proper night. Here, it was all a seamless unraveling of time, and she knew that she'd already taken, in the eyes of G.o.d, far more days than could ever have been her allotted share.

Michael. Michael Wilde. The moment he came into her mind, she did feel her thoughts lift. He had been so kind, and then, when he had taken the liberty of joining her on the piano bench, so mortified at his transgression. Importunate as his conduct had seemed, Eleanor did understand she was in a new world, where customs differed. There was so much she would have to learn. Symphony orchestras that played from little black boxes! Lights that came on and burned steadily with the flick of a switch. Women-and African women, to boot-serving as doctors!

Then she remembered how shocked her mother had been at the idea of her traveling to London-a single, unaccompanied young woman-to become a nurse. Perhaps everything that was once shocking eventually became routine. Perhaps the terrible toll of the Crimean War had startled the conscience of humanity and put an end to such mindless slaughter. Perhaps this world was a more enlightened one. A world where even ordinary things were made to smell sweet and nations settled their differences with raised voices but never raised swords.

She allowed herself to feel an unfamiliar ray of hope.

It had felt so good-so normal-to be seated at the piano again. Her fingers had so enjoyed touching the keys. It had brought back all of her lessons from the parson's wife, playing in the front parlor with the cas.e.m.e.nt windows flung open and the family's c.o.c.ker spaniel chasing rabbits across the wide green lawn. Mrs. Musgrove had a standing order with a music shop in Sheffield, and twice a year they sent her a selection of popular compositions. That was how Eleanor had come to fall in love with so many of the old, traditional ballads and songs, like "The Banks of the River Tweed" and "Barbara Allen."

Michael had seemed to enjoy the song, too. He had a sensitive face, but there was something haunted about it, too. He had borne his own tragedy, of some kind, and perhaps that was why he had elected to come to such a lonely place. Who would choose such a destination if it had not, in some way, been chosen for him? She wondered what it was that had befallen him ... or from what memory he might be fleeing. She did not recall seeing a ring on his finger, and in their time together he had certainly never mentioned a wife. Though she couldn't have said why, he struck her as a bachelor.

Oh, how she longed for sunlight-true sunlight, not an empty imitation. Sunlight as warm and golden as syrup, pouring over her. She had lived an eternity in the shadows, fleeing with Sinclair from one town to another lest they linger too long in one place and their secret be discovered. They had made their way from Scutari through the Carpathians, then on to Italy where Eleanor had held her face out the carriage window just to catch every ray she could of the warm Mediterranean sun. Often, she had suggested they stop and stay somewhere, but as soon as Sinclair felt any of the local inhabitants taking too much of an interest in who exactly this mysterious young English couple was, he insisted they leave again. He lived in dread of his desertion being discovered, and often said that he hoped his father would hear only that he had been lost on the battlefield at Balaclava.

As for Eleanor, she didn't know which she feared more-never seeing her family again or seeing them and knowing that they could sense she had changed in some ineffable way.

In Ma.r.s.eilles, Sinclair had spotted an old friend of his family strolling along the quay, and dragged her into an artisan's shop to escape detection. When the shopkeeper asked what he could show them, Sinclair answered, in perfect French so far as Eleanor could tell, that he was interested in the first thing his eye happened to fall on-an ivory brooch, with a gold rim, lying on a worktable.

The shopkeeper had lifted the brooch into the light from a window, and Eleanor had marveled at its execution. It was a cameo of a cla.s.sical figure-Venus rising from the waves.

"What more perfect theme could we have chosen," Sinclair declared, pinning it to her bodice, "than the G.o.ddess of love."

"It's lovely," she said, in a low voice, "but shouldn't we save what money we have left?"

"Combien d'argent?" Sinclair asked the shopkeeper, and settled the bill without question. Eleanor never knew where their funds came from, but somehow there was always enough to transport them to the next spot. She suspected that Sinclair, posing as someone he was not, managed to borrow funds from Englishmen they encountered abroad, and parlayed those loans into even greater sums at the gaming tables.

In Lisbon, they had taken a room at the top of a small hotel, overlooking the crenellated facade of Santa Maria Maior. The ringing bells of the cathedral were like a constant reproof, and one morning, Sinclair, perhaps intuiting her thoughts, said, "Shall we marry there?"

Eleanor did not know how to answer. Already she felt d.a.m.ned in so many ways, and much as she would have liked to be properly wed, the very thought of entering a church, and taking holy vows in her present state, was too daunting. But Sinclair prevailed upon her, saying, "At least let's go and look. From all accounts, it's a very beautiful church."

"But we cannot enlist a priest, not with all the lies we would have to tell."

"Who said anything about a priest?" Sinclair scoffed. "They speak Portuguese, anyway. We can stand there, if you like, and make our own vows. G.o.d can hear them without the help of some Papist intermediary ... provided, of course, that there's a G.o.d to hear them at all." He made it sound like a very dubious proposition.

And so she had put on her finest dress, and Sinclair his uniform, and arm in arm they had crossed the square to the cathedral. They had made a handsome couple, and she could see the impression they made in the eyes of pa.s.sersby The church itself had been built in the twelfth century, and though badly damaged by the earthquakes of 1344 and 1755, it had been repaired and rebuilt where necessary; its twin bell towers rose like a white fortress on either side of the high, n.o.bly arched entranceway Between the arches was a rounded window, through whose colored panes the sunlight lent a golden hue to the antique gilding and ma.s.sive columns of the interior. Marble tombs, each with its coat of arms, were ensconced in private chapels behind iron gates. On one tomb, Eleanor saw the figure of a rec.u.mbent n.o.bleman in armor, holding his sword and guarded by his dog; on another, a woman in cla.s.sical dress, reading a Book of Hours. The cathedral was vast, and though there were wors.h.i.+ppers in the pews, and visitors in the aisles, a hush prevailed over everything, and all Eleanor could really hear was the sound of their own footsteps echoing up the nave.

An elderly priest in a black robe, a white rope belted around his waist, was consulting with several well-dressed men and ladies at one end of the transept, and Eleanor instinctively moved in the other direction. Sinclair felt the tug on his arm and smiled.

"Are you afraid he's picked up our scent?"

"Don't make such jests."

"Do you think he'll chase us out?"

But she didn't answer him at all this time.

"We don't have to go through with it," he said. "I was only doing it for you."

"That's not a very becoming sentiment," she replied, pulling away, wondering what had possessed her to do this in the first place.

Sinclair came after her, clutching her sleeve. "I'm sorry. You know I didn't mean that."

Eleanor felt several people observing them-they were creating a scene, the last thing in the world she wanted to do-and she ducked behind the column closest to the altar itself, raising a handkerchief to conceal her face.

"I would marry you anywhere," he said, in a low but urgent voice. "You must know that. In Westminster Abbey, or in the middle of the forest with no one there to witness it but the birds in the trees."

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.