reconnoitering? Or hunting? Had he been caught, too far from the church, in the midst of the storm, and was he stranded in the alien landscape?
Or had he come back, only to find the bolt on the door thrown back and the room empty? He would know that someone must have intruded on her. She felt a sharp pang, the pang she knew she'd have felt if their positions had been reversed � if she'd had reason to believe that Sinclair had been taken from her, God knew where. Ever since the day he had been brought back from the battlefield, and she had seen his name on the roster of the newly admitted, they had been united in a way that she could never have explained to anyone.
How could anyone else have ever understood?
She had found him in one of the larger fever wards. Stained muslin curtains hung from sagging rods, and since few of the doctors, or even the orderlies, cared to risk the chance of contagion, there was no one to ask about exactly where he had been billeted. Ignoring the piteous cries for water or help, from men dying of thirst or lost in some terrible fever dream, she had stumbled through the ward, looking everywhere � until she spied a fair-haired head lying on a straw bolster on the floor.
�Sinclair!� she'd exclaimed, running to his side.
He looked up at her, but said nothing�and then he had smiled. But it was a dreamy smile, a smile that told her he did not believe she was really there. It was the smile of a man consciously enjoying what he knew to be a reverie.
�Sinclair, it's me,� she said, falling to her knees beside his flimsy pallet and taking hold of his limp hand. �I'm here. Truly.�
The smile faltered, as if her touch was eroding, rather than reinforcing, his fragile dream.
She pressed her cheek to the back of his hand. �I'm here, and you're alive, and that's all that matters.�
He withdrew the hand�peeved�at this further intrusion.
Tears welled up in her eyes, but she searched the ward until she found a pitcher of stagnant water�the only water available at all� and returned to mop his brow and face. There were flakes of blood in his moustache, and she wiped those away, too.
The soldier lying on the floor behind her, a Highlander judging from what was left of his uniform, clutched at the hem of her skirt and begged for a drop of the water. She turned and poured some of
the water over his cracked lips. He was an older man, somewhere past thirty, with broken teeth and skin the color of chalk. He would not, she knew, be long for this world.
�Thank'ee, Missus,� he murmured. �But mind you, steer clear of him.� He meant Sinclair. �He's a bad �un.� He turned his pallid face away, suddenly overcome by a barking cough.
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.
���
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
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.
The Turks would have numbered him among the cursed. And he would not have disputed it.
Still, the next night, when Eleanor had come to his side, he had felt distinctly stronger. Revived. He felt that he could truly breathe again and see more clearly. Even his faculties seemed to have been restored.
Was that how it felt to be one of the damned?
But in Eleanor's face, he had detected something troubling; he had seen what he thought was the first glimmering of the mysterious Crimean fever, and he knew the signs well; he had noted them countless times in many others. His fears were confirmed when she swayed on her feet, spilling the soup, and the orderlies had escorted her from the ward. The following evening, when it was Moira, and not Eleanor, who came to assist him, he knew the worst.
�Where is Eleanor?� he had demanded, lifting himself on one elbow from the floor. Even that was painful; he suspected he had fractured a rib or two in the fall from his horse, but there was nothing to be done for a broken rib, and anything the surgeons might attempt would no doubt kill him.
�Eleanor's resting today,� Moira said, trying not to meet his eye as she set down the bowl of soup, still warm, and a mug of brackish water.
�The truth,� he said, clutching her sleeve.
�Miss Nightingale wishes her to gather her strength.�
�She's ill, isn't she?�
He could see the furtive look in her eye as she wiped a spoon on her apron pocket and put it into the soup bowl.
�Is it the fever? How far has it gone?�
Moira stifled a sob and quickly glanced away. �Eat your soup, while it's still hot.�
�Damn the soup. How far has it gone?� His heart seized up in his chest at the very thought of the worst. �Tell me that she's still alive.�
Moira nodded as she dabbed at her tears with a wretched excuse for a handkerchief.
�Where is she? I need to go to her.�
Moira's head shook, and she said, �That's impossible. She's in the nurses� quarters, and can't be moved.�
