Carpathia (8 page)

  "That's exactly what I'm talking about," Justin said. "At least we'll be spared the horrors of that prospect. It's one hell of a day when you have to count freezing to death or drowning among your blessings."

  "That it is, friend," Brody said, moving straight toward the man now. "That it is. But perhaps we can help you with that problem."

  Justin barked a short, bitter laugh. "How? Do you happen to have a submarine under there that you're standing on."

  "You misunderstand me," Brody said. "I can't offer you salvation."

  "Of course not," Justin said. "That is in no man's power."

  "No, you're right." Brody reached for Justin and held his face between his ice-cold hands. Despite having been in the frigid water for so many minutes, the man's skin still burned with life, and Brody could feel that fading heat leeching into him through his long-dead skin.

  Justin's eyes grew wide as a sharp terror sliced through him. He brought his hands up to try to pry Brody's fingers from his head, but he found them to be as strong and unforgiving as steel bands. "No," he said softly, his voice trembling from far more than the cold.

  "But," Brody stretched open his jaw, exposing his long, white predator's fangs, "I can allow you the blessing of an even quicker release."

 
 

 
 
 

"The ship is gone!" Lucy shouted at the sailor in charge of their boat. "We have plenty of room aboard our boat! We must go back!"

  Her fellow passengers murmured at her outburst, some of them agreeing with her and others clinging to their fears. With one exception, though, none of them proved willing to stand with her against the sailor that had been placed in charge of the boat. He'd refused whatsoever to return to the ship, even when Captain Smith himself had shouted an order through a blowhorn for the man to do so.

  "Mr Hichens," Lucy said. "We only have twenty-four people on board, and this boat can hold three times that without issue. It is a crime against our fellow passengers and against humanity itself that we were put out to sea when so many were still aboard the
Titanic
, and you compound that error every minute that you refuse to return to the scene of that crime."

  Hichens leaned back against the lifeboat's prow and glared down at Lucy. She had been complaining to him for over an hour, and the bald-headed sailor had ignored her pleas as if they were little more than the wailings of a small child. As the grand ship finally disappeared beneath the waves, frustration got the better of him, and he shouted back at the woman.

  "How many times do I have to spell it out for you idiots?" he said. "If we return there, it's death for every last one of us!"

  Lucy turned to look back at the other sailor in the boat, a Mr Fleet, who sat in the aft with his hand on the tiller. He hadn't said much all night. He just continued to nod his head in glum agreement with Hichens.

  "But the ship is down now," Lucy said. "The so-called suction you warned us about hasn't formed a gigantic whirlpool there waiting to pull us to the bottom of the sea." She stabbed a finger toward where the
Titanic
had been until just moments ago. "There are people out there! They're swimming about in that freezing water while you insist we do nothing at all but sit back and listen to them die!"

  Lucy wouldn't admit it to Hichens or any of the other passengers, but she knew exactly who she meant when she said "people." It tore at her heart to think that Abe and Quin might be out there somewhere, still alive and floundering about in the wake of the
Titanic
's absence. She knew they might already be dead, that it was not just possible but even likely, but she hadn't yet been able to give up hope.

  Lucy hadn't explored the depth of her feelings for her two friends. There had always seemed like there would be plenty of time. They were young and heading to America, and she was going off to college, far away from her parents and her home, so that she could learn about the wider world and how it worked. Despite pressures from her parents and her female friends, she hadn't time for things like romance or marriage.

  She supposed that was the reason she'd accepted Abe's request to court her. She had already been spending plenty of time with him and Quin, and it put the endless badgering about her romantic plans to rest, at least for a while. She had hesitated at first, unsure if it was fair to lead Abe on in that way, but he'd been so insistent and so sweet that she had decided to go through with it.

  While she had allowed outside pressures to force her into producing a suitor, she had sworn to herself that she would not allow that to build into the kind of inertia that would transform her into a young bride. She had no designs on Abe's wealth or his title. The notion of someday becoming the next Lady Godalming held no allure for her.

  Even the idea of the nobility – that one person was inherently superior to another by nature of his birth – rankled her. That sort of notion was cut from the same cloth as the idea that women were second class citizens, the kind who could work and pay taxes and contribute to society in a myriad of ways but were unable to vote. She'd become an outspoken suffragette to fight against such injustices, and she had zero desire to become part of a similar problem.

  And then there was the way that Quin looked at her, with the sort of burning intensity that the callow Abe had never been able to muster. She had long wondered if he'd had feelings for her, but he'd never once given voice to such longings. So she'd settled for Abe, who seemed content to give her as much space and time as she required, which suited her well.

  Now she'd let the boys put her on a lifeboat and send her off to live without them while the two of them suffered a noble death. It galled her that she'd permitted them to get away with that, and now that the
Titanic
had slipped beneath the waves, she felt a terrible guilt squeezing her heart. She already worried that it might never go away.

  That fact had prodded her to protest Hichens's behavior, and she had vowed to herself that she would not stop until either he gave in or the point had been rendered moot. As far as she could tell, they were still a long way off from that moment. People still splashed about and screamed and bellowed and called and begged for help out there in the darkness. There had to be not just scores of them but hundreds.

  "There isn't enough room!" Hichens said. "Not for all of them. If we go anywhere near that mob, they'll pull us under. They'll swamp and sink us for sure."

  "Then we go back and save the ones we can," Maggie Brown cut in. She had been arguing for Lucy's points the entire time, and that fact had given Lucy the resolve to carry on, even in the face of the fear-ridden apathy evinced by the rest of the boat's passengers.

  "Right," said Lucy. "If we save even one more person, isn't that worth it? Don't you think he'll be grateful? That his family will be thrilled to see him delivered safely from this disaster?"

  Lucy turned to the rest of the passengers, appealing to them. Perhaps if she could get enough support, they could override the cowardly Hichens. "Think of that," she said. "Every person we save is one less family left bereft."

  "She's right," said Maggie. "We're almost all women here in this boat. Where are your men? Your husbands? Your boys? Are you going to just let them all die?"

  "By the time we'd get to them, they'd already be dead," Hichens said. "The water's filled with nothing but stiffs, and there's nothing you can say or do to make me row through that God-damned graveyard out there!"

  Lucy stood straight up in the boat now and glowered at the repulsive man. "If you're not going to help, then get the hell out of the way," she said. "We can pull those oars as well as anyone!"

  "You touch those oars, and I'll toss you overboard with my bare hands!" Hichens said, the veins on his neck popping out as he bellowed his threat.

  Maggie stood up next to Lucy now and put a hand on her shoulder. She scowled straight into Hichens's hateful eyes, and in a voice filled with quiet menace said, "I'd just like to see you try that."

  Hichens tensed up, and Lucy braced herself for the man's attack. Would no one, she wondered, come to her aid?

  There were two men on the boat besides the sailors: a yachtsman named Major Peuchen and an older Arabian gentleman, named Mr Leeni, who seemed to have sneaked on board. Would they stand by and watch Hichens murder two women? Would the other women scream in horror and cower from the man's actions as much as they had from his threats?

  Lucy was about to find out.

  Hichens stood halfway up and then sat back down again, curling up against the bow on his other side. "Fine," he said, shaking his head. "Do whatever the hell you like. It's a fool's errand. It's too damned late for any of them anyhow."

 
 

 
 
 

"There's no room here," one of the bedraggled crewmen already on top of the overturned lifeboat said. "Go find your own bit of flotsam."

  Quin glanced around and saw that there were precious few things to find this far out from where the
Titanic
had sunk. Most of the people must have been too exhausted after escaping the wreck to swim the distance required to reach the lifeboat, but Quin and Abe – who'd had a head start on most of them – had managed it. Now they'd found that their effort might have been made in vain.

  "But there's plenty of space on top of there." Abe pointed to the other end of the boat, on which Quin could see a few open stretches of whitewashed wood. "Be a good chap and give us a hand up."

  Exhausted men lay stretched out across the rest of the overturned vessel. Many of them wore the uniforms of the
Titanic
, while others were dressed in cheaper, unadorned clothes, the kind that indicated they'd either been working below decks or traveling in steerage. No matter their class, though, Quin hoped they were trying to catch their breath and weren't in fact already dead.

  The man who'd accosted them shook his head and brandished an oar at both Abe and Quin. "I can't make any exceptions. Stay back. Don't force me to use this."

  "No one's forcing you to do anything," Abe said, anger rising in his voice. "Least of all, trying to kill us. You swing that thing at me, and I'll make you eat it!"

  "Forget it." Quin tugged at Abe's shoulder. "There's nothing we can do about it."

  Quin tried to keep his voice resigned, but his mind had already started working on an alternate plan. He just needed Abe to play along with him for it to work.

  "Are you insane?" Abe spun about in the water and slapped Quin's hand away. "There's nothing else out here. Either we get on top of this lifeboat, or we're done for. We can't make it back there," he said, pointing at the raucous thrashing about of the hundreds of people who'd gotten free from the wreck. "Even if we did, all the decent bits to grab on to are sure to be taken. We have to make our stand here!"

  Quin had seen this same look in Abe's eyes before. The man's sense of honor and righteousness had been insulted, and he wasn't about to back down from that without a fight. In the past, Abe had called it his
noblesse oblige
. Quin recognized it as Abe being bullheaded.

  When faced with an insurmountable wall, Quin backed down, reassessed the situation, and found a way around it. Abe, on the other hand, beat his forehead against it until either the wall or his skull cracked. This obstinacy had landed Abe in police custody on more than one occasion, but his father's money and influence had extricated him from those situations without any further ill effects. Once Abe explained to his father why he'd refused to back down, Lord Godalming always gave his son a proud slap on the back and then sent him back out into the world to sin in exactly the same way over and over again.

  In the past, Quin had contented himself with watching Abe go through this noble pantomime of his, often to the point that he'd been willing to be arrested alongside him. In each case, Lord Godalming had extended his pull to helping Quin out of the resulting troubles too. Quin's parents, however, had not been nearly so understanding of their son's behavior.

  This time, though, Quin knew that Abe's refusal to try another way might get them both killed, and he had to do something to stop it.

  "You
will
let us on this boat!" Abe shouted.

  "Or what?" the crewman said. "You'll report me to the captain?"

  Abe launched himself toward the boat, and the crewman brought the oar down at him hard. Abe saw it coming and tried to catch it, but the flat of it smashed into his arm instead and drove him back.

  "You unbelievable bastard!" Abe said.

  "Bugger off!" The crewman raised the oar again, this time turning it so he could strike with the edge of the paddle instead.

  One of the other crewmen atop the boat leaned over to his side. "What's this then, Amos?" the man said.

  "Our little lordship here thinks he deserves a seat next to us." Amos held the oar in front of him, never taking his eyes off Abe.

  "Sorry, gents," the second man said. True regret tinged his voice. "We're full up here. Off with you then, and best of luck to you."

  "Luck?" Abe growled and splashed armfuls of freezing water at the men. "We need help, not luck!"

  Amos drew back the oar to attack Abe once more.

  "Forget it," Quin said, grabbing Abe by the arm. He pulled his friend back, out of range of Amos's length of polished wood.

  "Forget it?" Abe threw up his arms as he struggled to get free. "You can't be serious."

  "Abe." Quin pitched his voice low and serious, but soft enough that he hoped the men on the boat couldn't hear. "I have a plan."

  Abe snarled. Quin couldn't tell at who, but he held his friend's arm fast, even when Abe tried to pull away.