Carpathia (11 page)

  How could she report their deaths to their parents? She knew how heavy her heart already weighed with grief, and she suspected that the news would simply crush their families flat. If she could at least tell them that she'd seen the boys one last time, or if she could even make sure their bodies were recovered and given a proper burial, then maybe that could do some slight good in the face of this devastation.

  Lucy rested her tired arms for a moment and surveyed the waters around her as she let the long pole in her hands drift alongside the boat. The first hints of dawn were breaking behind her, and the light showed her just how many people the disappearance of the
Titanic
had left in its wake. Hundreds if not thousands of corpses floated on the surface of the sea. Some of them lay there flat, only their backs cresting out of the water. For others, their lifejackets held them upright, their heads slouched over into their chests, making them appear to be sleeping. The lack of any breath wafting from their mouths in the chilly pre-dawn betrayed their true state.

  "So many dead," Lucy said to herself. She wanted to weep. "So many gone."

  It was then she felt the shaft of the boathook move in her hands.

  Lucy looked down into the water and let out a little scream. A man floated there, icicles already formed in his unkempt hair, his skin as pale as the moon. He bore a small gash in the skin over his right eye, but it seemed to have stopped bleeding already. His eyes burned with life, red around the edges, and he had his hand on the far end of her boathook.

  "Please, miss." The man's voice was no more than a soft croak. Despite him being soaked to the bone, it sounded hard and dry. "Help."

  "We have another!" Lucy reached down with the hook and snared the collar of the man's coat with it, then used it to haul him closer to the boat.

  Maggie came to her side in an instant. It would have been easier if one of the sailors would have lent her a hand too, but Hichens still refused to have anything to do with the rescue efforts. The other man had kept his hand on the tiller, helping at least that much, and he was all the way at the far end of the thirty-five foot boat anyhow.

  "Grab him by the shoulders, sweetie, then just fall back into the boat," Maggie said. "Just like last time."

  While the women might not have been strong enough to haul a waterlogged man up into the boat on their own, Maggie had taught Lucy that they could use the entirety of their weight to manage it. All they had to do was get a good grip on the man first.

  Once Lucy had the man close enough, Maggie reached down to grab him by the arms and wedge her hands under one of his shoulders. Lucy put down the boathook and then did the same on his other side. Behind them, another woman grabbed them both by their collars and prepared to add her weight to their cause.

  "All together now, ladies!" Maggie said. "One. Two. Three!"

  On the last number, they all threw themselves backward. The combined weight and strength of the three women, along with whatever feeble effort the object of their endeavours was able to add, raised the man up and out of the water and dragged him over the gunwale and into the boat.

  Hichens snarled at them as they performed this operation, just as he had every other time. "Careful!" he said as he leaned out of the boat in the opposite direction, trying to provide some balance against the new passenger's weight. "You'll tip us all into the drink!"

  The women ignored him. As the boat stabilized once more, they dragged the half-frozen fellow into the middle of the boat's floor and swaddled him with as many blankets as they could spare.

  Lucy set to rubbing the man's exposed skin with her hands, trying to bring some life to it. It felt as cold as that of a dead fish, but she didn't let that stop her.

  "How is he?" Maggie peered down at the man from over Lucy's shoulder. "It's a miracle he's alive. He is alive, isn't he?"

  "He spoke to me," Lucy said, working his hands faster. "He grabbed the boathook."

  Maggie put a hand on her shoulder. "Oh, sweetie," she said. "He doesn't look good."

  Lucy ignored Maggie's fatalistic tone and kept working over the man with her fingers, rubbing his hands and his face until they started to show pink. She couldn't tell if that was from circulation returning to his skin or if she'd just managed to somehow bruise him, but she chose to count it as an improvement either way.

  After a moment, Maggie sat down next to Lucy. "You get back to working the prow and looking for others," she said. "I'll take care of our friend here."

  Lucy's hands stopped working, and she nodded at Maggie. She didn't want to give up on this man, but she knew Quin and Abe might still be out there. If this man had survived for so long in the freezing water, then perhaps she still had a chance of rescuing them too.

  Lucy got up to leave, but the man's hand reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. "No," he said, his voice as thin as smoke. "Don't go."

  "There might still be others out there," she said. Hichens snorted behind her in disgust, but she paid him no heed. "I have to keep trying."

  "Dear God!" The sailor at the tiller stood up and pointed off toward the east. "A light. It's a ship! We're saved!"

  Lucy looked down at the man who still had his hand clamped around her wrist. He was smiling.

  "You're going to make it," she said to him. "Just hold on."

  "I will if you tell me your name, angel," he said.

  "Lucy Seward." She stuck out her hand, and he shook it, his grip strong and tight.

  "Brody Murtagh," he said with a soft Irish lilt. "Very pleased to be making your acquaintance, Miss Lucy Seward."

 
 

 
 
 

It took them hours to get out of the ocean and onto the ship that had come to their rescue, the
Carpathia
. It hove within sight fast enough, but then it had to navigate gingerly through a field of icebergs to make sure that it didn't meet the same fate as the vaunted
Titanic
. Even then, a ship of that size couldn't maneuver about all that well, so the lifeboats had to row over to it.

  It seemed to take forever, but Lucy didn't mind it at all. She even took a turn at the oars herself to help keep fresh rowers in every seat. In between rounds at that duty, she checked in on the few people they'd been able to save. The two women were chilled to the bone, but they'd become more communicative by the moment.

  The man – Brody – on the other hand, had grown even more quiet. He sat there, huddled under his dripping blanket, and watched the
Carpathia
grow closer, but he didn't say a word for the longest time. When he did, it was only to inquire after the time.

  "It's nearly half after five now," Lucy said. Although she'd left every bit of her luggage on the ship, her watch had survived all the excitement intact.

  Brody glanced off toward the false dawn in the east. "Do you think they'll let us on board before the sun comes up?"

  "They certainly do seem to be taking their time," Lucy said, "but I don't think we'll be down here all that much longer."

  "That's good," Brody said with a weak smile. "Very good. Thanks, angel."

  Lifeboat number five had made it to the
Carpathia
first, and Lucy watched as they hauled the people in it up to the ship. They hadn't, as she had first suspected they might, tried to raise the entire lifeboat into the ship on its davits, people and all. Instead, they'd lowered a rope ladder to the boat and had people climbing up it.

  Not everyone was able to use the ladder. Lucy watched one elderly woman get hauled up in a sling chair, and a few children were even brought up by ropes attached to mail sacks. While it seemed unorthodox, Lucy had to admit she would have felt safer riding up to the ship in a canvas bag rather than being forced to brave the fragilelooking ladder.

  When it came their turn to leave their lifeboat behind, though, Lucy stood up and grabbed onto the rope ladder's wooden planks, already slippery from the fine spray whipped up as the winds increased with the coming dawn. Taking it one step at a time, she hauled herself up to the gangway door the crew there had opened for them, and when she got there, a pair of strong sailors pulled her over the threshold and onto the
Carpathia
's main deck.

  A pair of stewards dressed in Cunard Line uniforms approached her then, one with a dry blanket and the other with a mug of steaming hot tea. They took down her name and found her a place to sit in the first class dining room. A tall, well-dressed man came by to look her over.

  "I'm Doctor David Griffiths," he said. "I just want to check you for frostbite and the like." He had her show him her fingers and, after offering some polite apologies, he helped remove her boots so he could check upon her toes. She passed his inspection without a single hitch.

  "How do you feel?" he asked.

  Lucy hesitated before she answered. "Numb."

  "In your extremities?"

  Lucy shook her head and tapped at her heart, suddenly overwhelmed.

  The doctor sighed. "That's to be expected, I'm afraid. There's nothing I can give you for that. The best remedy is time. You just need to establish a little perspective, chronologically speaking."

  "I don't think a hundred years would give me enough room for that," she said.

  The doctor gave her an understanding chuckle, then moved on to the next patient.

  A moment afterward, Maggie entered the dining room between her own pair of guides, and she sat down next to Lucy and patted her on the knee.

  "That was one hell of a night," Maggie said, her voice soft and reverent.

  Lucy stared down at the tea clutched between her hands and let the mug warm them. "I don't know what to do with myself," she said. "I can hardly believe that we survived. That it's over."

  "Oh, darling," Maggie said. "It's only over for all those poor people who aren't going to make it onto this ship. For us, it's just getting started. When we get back home, there's going to be such a ruckus. Just you wait and see."

  Lucy frowned. She understood why that might be. The unsinkable
Titanic,
the largest and greatest ship in the world, foundered on her maiden voyage? It would be too juicy a story for anyone to ignore. It would shock the world.

  "And wait until the congressional hearings begin. You think it's bad watching your Members of Parliament squabble over things? You haven't seen anything until you've borne witness to the organized insanity of the US Government, sweetie."

  Lucy shuddered, and not from the cold. "I don't care about any of that," she said. "They can… I just want to know what happened."

  "To your friends?" Maggie gave Lucy a knowing look. "Those two strapping young men who brought you to the lifeboat?"

  Lucy lowered her eyes and nodded. "Do you think there's any chance they're all right?"

  "Well," Maggie said. "I'll be honest. I wouldn't lay a lot of money on it. Of course, before today I'd have given you long odds on anything horrible happening between England and New York City, so you obviously can't trust my judgment."

  Lucy forced herself to laugh at that. Otherwise, she was sure she would break down and cry.

  Maggie kept her company until another steward came back to find them and reported that he'd been able to assign them cabins. "Fortunately, we were heading back to Europe, and we don't normally have too many passengers going that way this time of year. Immigrants fill the ships coming over to the States, but not so many want to work their way back."

  "You think you'll have enough room for us each to have our own cabin?" Maggie said. "If you need to match me up with a roommate, do me a favor and stick me with little Lucy here."

  "I don't think that's going to be a worry, ma'am," the steward said, his face both grim and sympathetic.

  Lucy frowned at that. "No," she said, "I suppose it won't."

  Maggie patted her on the back of her hand. "Chin up, sweetie." She stood and helped Lucy to her feet. "Whatever happened to your chivalrous young heroes today, we don't have any control over any more. Maybe we never did. The best thing you can do is go take care of yourself now. You know that's what they'd want."

  "You speak as if they're already dead."

  "I couldn't say one way or the other about that, I'm afraid. All I know is those friends of yours put you on that boat – and they stayed off it themselves so that you and the rest of us on it could live. For that, I'll always be grateful, no matter what happened to them."

  The steward showed Maggie to her cabin and then came back to escort Lucy to hers. As she left, she scanned the dining room, hoping to see some hint of either Quin or Abe in the crowd of people assembled there, but she had no such luck. She spotted a few people from the lifeboat, but Brody Murtagh and the two women they pulled out of the drink were nowhere to be seen. Lucy wondered what might have kept them, and then she realized that they might well be in the second or even third class areas of the
Carpathia
.

  There hadn't been any lines marking out the classes on the lifeboat. The only thing that had mattered there was that you were human and needed help. Lucy missed that sort of honesty already.

  She stood in the drab cabin assigned to her and stared out the porthole, watching the people on the last few lifeboats get collected onto the
Carpathia
. She couldn't tell who any of them were, and after a while she became so tired she gave up trying. She sat on the bed and stared at the cabin's closed door, consumed with terrible thoughts.

 
 

 
 
 

Lucy hadn't realized that she'd tipped over onto her pillow and gone to sleep. She awakened to a knock on the door, still in her clothes, lying atop the bedspread. The full light of day streamed in through the room's porthole.