Blood And Ice Part 10

"I'll have to check with Murphy and make sure that it's okay."

"Don't bother," Michael said, springing off the stool. "I'll do it." He was out the door before he'd even finished zipping up his coat, and Darryl wondered if he'd just made a smart call or an utterly insane one. Did Michael have any idea what he was getting into?

But Michael did know. Whenever a new challenge presented itself, and he felt even that slightest flicker of hesitation-sometimes confused with the instinct for self-preservation-he immediately overruled it. The adrenaline rush was what he lived for-and these days, he knew no better counteractive than that to the depression that was always, subtly, tugging at his sleeve. If he let his mind wander, it would invariably, by Byzantine routes he could never have traced, find its way back to the Cascades ... and Kristin. And it was only by losing himself in some extreme challenge, or tortuously wrestling his thoughts in another direction, that he could find any real peace.

The night before, when he'd found himself descending into that bottomless pit, he'd mustered up his courage and called her younger sister's cell phone. Though he was a world away, the base had a powerful satellite hookup, courtesy of the U.S. military, and apart from brief bursts of static and a telltale delay, the connection was pretty good. Karen sounded amazed.

"So you're calling from the South Pole?" she'd said.

"Not exactly, but d.a.m.n close."

"And are you freezing to death?"

"Only when the wind blows ... which is always."

There was a silence on the line, while the words made their way to her-and they both wondered what to say next.

Michael finally broke the impa.s.se by asking, "Where are you right now?" and Karen laughed. d.a.m.n, it was so much like Kristin's laugh.

"You won't believe this," she said, "but I'm at the skating rink."

Michael could instantly picture it. "Are you in the Skate and Bake?" That was the coffee shop attached to the rink.

The connection faltered, then came back as Karen was saying "... hot chocolate and a bear claw."

He could see her in his mind's eye, in a bulky cable-knit sweater, in one of the tiny booths.

"Alone, or are you on a hot date?"

"I wish. I've brought along a book on William Rehnquist. That's my hot date."

Michael wasn't surprised. Karen was every bit as bright and blond and pretty as her older sister, but she'd always been something of a loner. And even though plenty of guys asked her out- and she sometimes went-she never went out with anyone for very long. It was as if she put up books as a barrier to intimacy, a way of steering clear of emotional entanglements.

They talked for a bit about her cla.s.ses, and whether or not she'd have time to work at the Legal Aid clinic, then she turned things back to Michael's adventures on the way to Point Adelie; he told her about the voyage on the Constellation, and getting to know Darryl Hirsch and Dr. Barnes. When he described the albatross cras.h.i.+ng through the windscreen of the aloft con, she said, "Oh, no! That poor bird!" and Michael had to laugh, ruefully. It was just what Kristin would have said-her concern for the bird immediately superseding any worry about the people involved.

"Don't you care about what happened to me?" he said, feigning exasperation.

"Oh, yeah, that, too. Were you okay?"

"I lived, but the Ops officer got hurt, and she had to be taken back to civilization."

"That is too bad." There was a pause, or else it was just a transmission delay. "But I really do worry about you, Michael. Don't do anything too dangerous."

"Never do," he said, then regretted it instantly, because it had brought them around, at last, to the one thing they had both been avoiding ... and the one occasion when he had indeed let something dangerous, and foolhardy, happen.

Karen must have felt it, too, because she said, "Not much new with Krissy I'm afraid."

Michael had expected that.

"But my parents are very big on this new stimulation and arousal program. They bang wooden blocks together next to her ear, or s.h.i.+ne a flashlight right into her eyes, on and off and on and off. The worst is they put a drop of Tabasco sauce on her tongue- I know for a fact that Krissy hated Tabasco-to see if it would make her swallow, or spit."

"Did it?"

"No ... and even though the doctors and nurses all encourage my folks to keep on trying, I think it's all just to give them a sense that they're doing something."

Michael could really hear-even over the thousands of miles- all the resignation and sorrow in her voice. Karen was just not a sentimentalist, or a believer. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson were Lutheran, and went to church regularly, but their daughters had long since abandoned the faith. Kristin had defied their parents outright and made sure that every Sunday morning she was off kayaking or rock climbing somewhere, but Karen had simply let things slide, tactfully, until they stopped asking her to go and she stopped having to come up with excuses. And that same gulf was evident when it came to Kristin's predicament. Her parents, despite what all the tests might show, would keep on battering away, while Karen would look hard at the CT scans, discuss the latest findings with the doctors-frankly and plainly-and come to her own conclusions.

Michael knew what those conclusions were. And after they'd hung up, he found that he couldn't sit still-not an uncommon problem for him-or even stay indoors. He put on his heavy-weather gear, and his deep green eye goggles, and went outside, alone. The chief was strict about the buddy system-you were never to go very far unaccompanied, or without entering your itinerary on the blackboard, but Michael intended to stay close to the base ... and he definitely did not want company.

A hard wind was blowing, the American flag snapping so hard it sounded like gunshots. Michael made a trip around the encampment, which was laid out in a rough square; there were the main modules-the administration and commons, the dorms and infirmary-then upslope, and lying just outside the central quad, the outlying structures. These were the labs-marine biology, glaciology geology, botany-and the equipment sheds. The base had snowmobiles, boats, graders, all-terrain vehicles called Sprytes that looked like Jeeps with tractor treads, and G.o.d knows what else, all housed in tin-roofed shacks with double doors closed by unsecured padlocks. Who was going to steal anything? Where would you go with it? In a separate shed, with a hard-packed earth floor, covered with straw, there were a dozen huskies with bushy gray fur and ice-blue eyes. Sometimes at night, their howls would mingle with the constant wind, and swirl, like the cry of forlorn spirits, around the outside of the dorms.

As Michael pa.s.sed by the narrow windows of the rec hall, he could just make out the sound of the upright piano. He looked inside and saw one of the grunts-a guy whose name he thought was Franklin-barreling his way through a ragtime number, while Betty and Tina, the st.u.r.dy glaciologists, swatted a Ping-Pong ball back and forth with the regularity of a metronome. Both of them, he'd learned, had winter-overed-meaning, they'd stayed at the base over the long, dark austral winter, when the sun never shone and the fresh supplies seldom came and the outside world might as well have been another planet. You actually earned a medal for doing that, and he'd seen one on Murphy's lapel, too. It was a badge of honor, a kind of street cred, that the grunts and the beakers alike all respected.

But once he turned the corner of the rec hall, the wind suddenly hit him full in the face, so hard that he could lean into it, almost falling, and yet be kept standing. He picked his way carefully across the loose scree, the wind tearing at his clothes, and down toward the icy sh.o.r.e. It was never clear where the ground ended and the ice entirely took over, but it hardly mattered. It was all rock hard and equally unforgiving. In the distance, he could see a flock of penguins skittering down a frozen hill, then sliding on their bellies into the freezing waters. With a mittened hand, he fumbled for the drawstring on his hood and pulled it so tight that only his goggles remained uncovered. The sun, as cold and silver as an icicle, hovered slightly higher in the sky than it had the week before, making its slow but inexorable progress toward the southern horizon, and oblivion. The temperature, the last time he'd checked, was twenty below zero ... but that didn't take into account the infamous wind-chill factor.

A gray-and-white blur shot past his face, and he instinctively raised a hand against it. A second later, it shot past again. It was a skua, one of the scavenger birds of the Antarctic, and he realized he must be standing too close to its nest. Knowing that the birds always aimed for the head, the highest point of any intruder, he lifted one arm above his hood and, as the bird buzzed his mitten, looked around. He didn't want to step on anything. A few yards behind him, there was a tiny hillock, which afforded some protection from the raging winds. The skua's mate was tending to two chicks there. She had a live krill in her beak, one she must have just plucked from the water. Its many legs were still waving wildly. Michael stepped a few paces back, and the papa bird, apparently satisfied by his retreat, returned to the nest.

The two chicks were both crying for the food, but one was larger than the other, and every time the little one chirped, the bigger one whipped round and pecked at it. Each time that happened, the littler bird was driven farther from the protection of the nest, but the parents seemed completely unperturbed. The mother dropped the krill from her hooked bill and, while the little chick looked on forlornly, its sibling s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and wolfed down the entire thing.

Michael wanted to say, Come on already, share and share alike, but he knew that no such rules were in play here. If the little chick couldn't fend for itself, its parents would simply let it starve. Survival of the fittest, at its most unadorned.

The little chick made one last try at returning to the nest, but the bigger one flapped its wings and pecked again, and the little chick retreated, its head down, its pale gray wings clutched tight around its body. The mama and papa stared impa.s.sively in the other direction.

And Michael took his opportunity. He stepped forward, and before the baby bird, not yet fully fledged, could scuttle away, he bent down and scooped it up between his mittens. Only its white head and the black b.u.t.tons of its eyes poked out from his hands. The papa bird screeched, but not, Michael knew, at his kidnapping the chick; it was only because he'd come too close to the nest and the fat heir apparent.

"Get lost," Michael said, holding the baby chick close to his chest. Then he turned around, the wind at his back, and let it blow him halfway up the slope and toward the warmth of the rec hall. What, he wondered, would Kristin have named the little foundling in his mitts?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

July 6, 1854, 4:30 p.m.

ASCOT. For Eleanor, it had always been just a word, the name for a place she would never get to see. Not on her meager salary, and certainly not unaccompanied.

But there she was, leaning close to the wooden rail as horses- the most beautiful she had ever seen, with gleaming coats, colorful silks draped beneath their saddles, and white cloths wrapped around their lower legs-were led from the paddock to the starting gate. All around her, and in the grand pavilion above, thousands of people-more than she had ever seen in one place in her whole life-were shouting and milling about, waving racing calendars and arguing loudly about things like sires and dams, jockeys and muddy tracks. Men drank from flasks and puffed on cigars, while women- some of them, she felt, of rather dubious aspect-paraded about, showing off their costumes and twirling pink or yellow parasols in the sun. Everyone was laughing and gabbling and clapping each other on the back, and all in all it was the merriest, and noisiest, scene she had ever been a part of.

She felt Sinclair's eyes upon her a moment before he spoke. "Are you enjoying your day?"

She blushed at how transparent she probably was to him. "Yes," she said, "I am," and he looked quite pleased with himself. He was dressed in civilian clothes, a deep blue frock coat and crisp white s.h.i.+rt with a neatly tied, black silk cravat. His blond hair curled just over his collar. "May I suggest a rum punch? Or some cold lemonade?"

"No, no," she quickly said, thinking of the additional expense. He had already paid for a private carriage to take them all the way to the racecourse, and for admission to the park-for three. Eleanor, for the sake of propriety, had not wanted to travel alone with the young lieutenant, and he had been very gracious about inviting the nurse with whom she shared a room at the boarding-house-a Miss Moira Mulcahy-to join them for the afternoon. Moira, a chubby Irish girl with a wide smile and an outgoing, though occasionally coa.r.s.e, nature, had been only too quick to accept.

And she accepted the offer of a drink with the same alacrity.

"Oh, sir, I would quite enjoy a lemonade," Moira said, barely taking her eyes from the grandstands behind them, where a teeming mult.i.tude had gathered for the most celebrated race of the afternoon, the Ascot Gold Cup. "This sun is positively"-she paused, as if looking for the most aristocratic way of saying it-"parching." She smiled broadly, happy at her choice, and Sinclair excused himself to go and fetch the drink. Once he was gone, Moira nudged Eleanor with her elbow, and said, "That chicken's already in the pot."

Eleanor professed incomprehension, but as with most of Moira's aphorisms, the point was plain.

"Haven't you seen the way he looks at you?" Moira scoffed. "Or, to be sure, the way he looks at naught else? And such a gentleman! Are you sure he's not a lord?"

Eleanor was not sure of much. The lieutenant was still a man of mystery in many ways. After she had st.i.tched his arm at the hospital, a box of raspberry marzipan had arrived for her the next day, with a note addressed to "Nurse Eleanor Ames, My Sweet Angel of Mercy." Miss Nightingale had intercepted the package at the door, and when she pa.s.sed it along, it was with a distinct expression of disapproval.

"This," she had said, "is what comes of precipitous conduct," as she swept back toward the garden, where she cultivated her own fresh fruits and vegetables. But Eleanor was hard-pressed to see the crime, and Moira didn't even pause long enough to look for one. She had pulled the lavender ribbon off the box, tucking it into her pocket-"it's too beautiful to waste, and you don't mind, do you, Ellie?"-and then waited, bouncing on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet, for Eleanor actually to open the box. When she did, Moira dug right in, while Eleanor simply marveled at the smooth beauty and the sweet fruity aroma of the candy. The lid of the box, which she held in her hands as if it were a fine painting, had a gold fleur de lis stamped upon it, and the words CONFECTIONS DOUCE DE MME. DAUPIN, BEL-GRAVIA. No one had ever sent her candy before.

A few days later, Lieutenant Sinclair had sent by messenger a note, asking when it might be convenient for him to call upon her, but she had had to reply that, apart from Sat.u.r.day afternoon and evening, she received no time off; on Sunday morning, at 6:30, she again resumed her usual duties at the hospital. To which he had replied that he would request her company, then, on the Sat.u.r.day next, at noon. He said he would brook no denial, and Moira, who'd read the note over her shoulder, said she should by no means offer any.

A bugle sounded, and Moira said, "Look, look, Ellie!" as the horses were rounded up and settled into place behind a long, thick rope that was stretched between two poles on either side of the oval track. "Is the last race about to begin?"

"It is," Sinclair said, reappearing through the crowd, with two gla.s.ses in hand. He gave one to Moira, and one to Eleanor. "And may it please you, ladies, I have taken the liberty of entering a wager on your behalf." He gave Eleanor a paper chit, with several numbers scrawled on one side, and the name "Nightingale's Song," on the other. Eleanor did not entirely understand.

"The name of the horse," he said, as Moira leaned closer to see, "seemed especially lucky, don't you think?"

"How much have we wagered?" Moira gleefully asked, though Eleanor wished she hadn't, and Sinclair said, "Ten pounds ... to win."

They were both aghast at the very idea of wagering ten pounds on anything. Their salaries were fifteen s.h.i.+llings a week, and one meal a day courtesy of the hospital commissary. That you might lose ten pounds, in a matter of minutes, on nothing but a horse race, seemed well-nigh incomprehensible. Eleanor knew that to her family-a barely solvent dairyman with five children and a long-suffering wife-it would be worse than that; it would be sinful.

Moira, in a quieter voice now, said, "And what do we win, if she does?"

"At the present odds, thirty guineas."

Moira nearly dropped her lemonade.

A portly man in a red cutaway strolled past the starting line, then up to the top of the judging scaffold, draped in red and gold velvet; a Union Jack rippled from a very tall flagpole behind him. "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced through a speaking trumpet in stentorian tones, "we are now honored to welcome you to the running of Her Majesty's first Ascot Gold Cup!"

There was a chorus of huzzahs and hooting and clapping that momentarily perplexed both Moira and Eleanor. Sinclair bent toward them and said, "Traditionally, this race has been known as the Emperor's Plate, after Czar Nicholas of Russia."

They immediately understood.

"But given the situation in the Crimea," Sinclair added, "the race has been renamed this year."

The clamor died down, and the bugle sounded again, a trill of rounded notes aimed at the topmost balconies in the pavilion, and the horses paced impatiently, as if anxious to stretch their long legs and run at last. The jockeys stood high in their stirrups to keep their weight off the horses' backs until the last possible second, with their whips tucked under their arms, the silken sleeves of their jackets billowing out in the afternoon breeze. The portly man in the cutaway pulled a pistol from his c.u.mmerbund and raised it in the air. Two stable hands untied the rope wrapped around the poles and threw it in a coil onto the gra.s.s. The jockeys fought to maintain control of their steeds and keep them behind a chalk line in the dirt.

"Riders, prepare!" the judge called out. "And on the count- one, two ..." and instead of saying three, the gun fired, and the horses, b.u.mping and jostling for position, stumbled or leapt forward onto the open track. There was a brief skirmish, as each horse and jockey vied for position, and then they were galloping off.

"Which one is ours?" Moira cried, jumping up and down at the rail. "Which one is Nightingale's Song?"

Sinclair pointed at a chestnut filly, currently running in the middle of the pack. "The crimson silks."

"Oh, she's not winning!" Moira cried in despair, and Sinclair smiled.

"It's not even the first furlong," Sinclair advised, "and there are eight in all. There's plenty of time for her to catch up."

Eleanor took a drink of her lemonade and hoped to appear composed ... but inside she was as excited as Moira. She had never wagered on anything, even if it was with someone else's money, and until then she'd had no idea what that might feel like. But now she knew, and it felt oddly-wonderfully-exhilarating. The idea that thirty guineas was at stake-which, if she won, she would surely return to Sinclair, their rightful owner-was enough to make her head spin.

And again, she could tell that Sinclair had intuited her excitement. In her feet, she could still feel the vibration of the thundering hooves, and from the grandstands she could hear a chorus of voices cheering and jeering and crying out instructions that no jockey would ever hear.

"Keep to the inside rail!"

"Use the b.l.o.o.d.y whip!"

"Whatcha waiting for, Charger!"

"Ascot," Sinclair confided to Eleanor, "is a hard track."

"How so?" To Eleanor it looked like a wide and inviting oval, with a center expanse of deep green gra.s.s.

"The dirt is hard-packed. It takes a great deal out of the horse, more so than Epsom Downs or Newmarket."

But unlike those racecourses, which Eleanor had never heard of, this one had the royal imprimatur. When she had come through the towering, black wrought-iron gates, she had noted the golden crown mounted in relief at their crest, and it was as if she were entering Buckingham Palace itself. There were rows of concession stands, selling everything from barley water to toffee apples, and all manner of customer, from well-dressed gentlemen with their ladies on their arm, to scruffy young boys hawking and s.h.i.+lling-and once, she could swear, stealing-from the carts and stands. Sinclair, with Eleanor on one arm and Moira on the other, had navigated through the crowds with absolute a.s.surance, and taken them to this spot, which he a.s.sured them provided the best viewing of the race.

It certainly seemed so to Eleanor. The horses were rounding the first curve, and together they made a beautiful blur of black and brown and white, colored by the s.h.i.+mmering costumes and silks of the jockeys. The summer sun beat down on the field, and Eleanor had to fan herself-and beat away the persistent flies-with a program Sinclair had purchased for her. He stood close, much closer than any man would customarily stand to her, and it seemed only in part due to the pressing crowd. Moira was leaning halfway over the railing, her plump arms planted on either side, calling out encouragement to Nightingale's Song.

"Move along!" she cried. "Move your a.r.s.e!"

Eleanor stole a glance at Sinclair, and they shared a private smile. Moira turned, abashed.

"Oh, do forgive me, sir! I forgot myself."

"It's quite all right," Sinclair replied. "It wouldn't be the first time such a sentiment was uttered here."

Indeed, Eleanor had already heard far worse, and working in a hospital-even one that was dedicated to the care exclusively of women with some breeding-had inured her to both grisly sights and desperate oaths. She had seen people whom she knew would have been perfectly upright and respectable if she had met them in the normal course of their lives, reduced to violence and rage. She had learned that physical anguish-and sometimes merely mental perturbation-could warp a person's character out of all recognizable shape. Meek seamstresses had screamed and writhed and forced her to tie their hands with bandages to the bedposts; a governess, from one of the finest houses in the city, had once ripped the b.u.t.tons off her uniform and hurled a dirty bedpan at her. A milliner, from whom a tumor had had to be removed, had scratched her arms with sharp nails and cursed her in language Eleanor thought only sailors might use. Suffering, she had learned, was transforming. Sometimes it elevated the spirit-she had seen that, too-but more often than was generally admitted it simply ran roughshod over its helpless victims.

In words as well as in actions, Miss Florence Nightingale had taught her that lesson. "She is simply not herself," Miss Nightingale would say, overlooking whatever transgression had just occurred.

"Look! Look, Ellie!" Moira cried. "She's gaining! She's gaining!"

Eleanor looked across the racecourse, and yes, she could see a flicker of crimson, like a tiny flame, beating its way, slowly but surely, toward the front of the pack. Only two other horses-one black, one white-were running ahead. Even Sinclair seemed excited by the turn of events.

"Good show!" he shouted. "Nightingale, come on! Come on!" He squeezed Eleanor by the elbow, and she felt as if her whole arm-no, her whole body-was galvanized. She could barely focus on the race at all. Sinclair's hand stayed where it was, though his eyes were on the horses charging around the far post.

"The white one, she's faltering!" Moira called out with glee.

"And the black one looks f.a.gged, too," Sinclair said, rapping his own rolled-up program nervously on the rail. "Come on, Nightingale! You can do it!"

There was something so boyishly charming about Sinclair just then-the rapt enthusiasm, the pale moustache made nearly transparent by the direct sun. Eleanor had not failed to notice the attention he drew from other women; when they had come through the crowd, parasols had twirled brightly, as if their owners were hoping to catch his eye, and one young woman, on the arm of an elderly gent, had gone so far as to drop a handkerchief in his path-which he retrieved and returned, with a half smile, while moving on. Eleanor had become more and more conscious of her own attire, and wished that she, too, had something more colorful, or stylish, or becoming to wear; she had but this one fine dress, and it was a rather somber forest green, of ribbed taffeta, with old-fas.h.i.+oned gigot sleeves. It b.u.t.toned firmly up to her throat, and on a day like this especially, she might have wished for something that bared at least a bit of her neck and shoulders.

Moira had simply opened the collar of her own dress-a peach-colored affair that neatly matched the color of her hair and complexion-and was even then pressing the cool but empty lemonade gla.s.s against the base of her throat. Still, she looked about to faint from the mounting excitement.

The horses were barreling around the near side of the oval track, and the white one had indeed faltered. Its jockey was whipping it mercilessly, but the horse was falling farther behind every second. And the black one, a frisky colt, was simply holding its own, hoping to make it to the finish line without any greater exertion. Nightingale's Song, however, was not spent at all; indeed, the horse seemed only then to be stretching itself to its utmost. Eleanor could see every sinew and muscle in its legs pumping and its head bobbing up and down as the jockey, sitting uncustomarily far forward on its withers, spurred it on, the chestnut mane flying into his face. "By G.o.d," Sinclair cried, "she's going to do it!" "She is, isn't she?" Moira exulted. "She's going to win!" But the black colt hadn't given up yet. As often happened with racehorses, this one suddenly felt himself being beaten-saw out of the corner of one eye the contender keeping pace-and unleashed a last burst of energy and drive. They were in the final furlong, virtually nose to nose, but something in Nightingale's Song, some reserve that had still been held in check for this critical moment, was released, and as if she had been borne forward by some sudden wind, she burst ahead of the colt, the crimson silks rippling like flames along its flanks, as she flashed across the finish line, streaming with sweat, and the judge on the scaffold waved a golden flag back and forth and back and forth.

There was a tumult in the crowd, cries of disappointment from the losing horses' bettors, but here and there a whoop of joy and astonishment. Eleanor gathered that Nightingale's Song had not been favored to win, which, even she knew, was what stood so much to their advantage. She studied the paper chit in her hand, and as Moira danced in place, from one foot to the other, Sinclair took it from her.

"Will you allow me to go and collect your winnings?" Eleanor nodded, and Moira simply beamed. Paper chits, torn in half by the losing bettors, wafted like confetti from the grandstands and swirled in the air overhead. As Eleanor and Moira looked on, three of the jockeys walked their winded horses to the circle beside the judging scaffold. Each of them took off his colorful silk jersey, and one of the stable hands tied it loosely to the rope of the flagpole. Then the silks were raised-a yellow one at the bottom , a purple one in the middle, and at the very top, signifying its win for all to see, the crimson-and-white colors of Nightingale's Song. Eleanor felt, silly as it seemed, a surge of pride, while Moira seemed utterly beside herself at the prospect of her newfound riches.

"I'll not tell my father about the whole of it," she said, "or he'd surely come to town and beat it out of me."

At least Eleanor knew that her father would do no such thing.

"But I will tell my mam I come into a bit o' luck, and send some home to ease her days. The good Lord knows she do deserve it."