The Second Mrs. Astor

by Shana Abe

  “All right.” She tugged off the shawl, unhooked her coat, and wanted to untie the lifebelt, too, but as she began fiddling with the knots, Jack stopped her.

  “Better not. Captain’s orders are still captain’s orders. I know they’re not comfortable, though.”

  “Whatever are they made of? I feel as if I can hardly bend.”

  “Ah!” He smiled, produced a penknife from his trouser pocket. “I’ll show you.”

  He lifted the edge of his preserver, sliced carefully along the front of one of the lower rectangular blocks.

  “Should you?” she asked, anxious.

  “I’m not cutting more than an inch, and only the canvas itself. There. Take a look.”

  Madeleine and Carrie leaned forward together.

  “Why, it’s cork!” Carrie said.

  “Buoyant as anything. Not a chance of any of us sinking with one of these on.”

  Madeleine leaned back again, gripping the pommel and cantle of the saddle, rocking a little back and forth. Of all of Titanic’s miraculous innovations, it seemed somehow ominous that the very last defense offered to save their lives was something as simple as tree bark.

  * * *

  The list of the ship increased, but it had shifted from starboard to forward, from forward to port.

  The roar of the escaping steam finally ceased, which should have reassured her, or at least helped with the ringing in her ears, but it seemed the voices of everyone around them only rose to compensate for its sudden loss.

  From her perch on the electric horse, Madeleine watched the lumpish shapes of people moving past the teak-framed windows, bunching together, splitting apart, occasionally coming in or going out.

  “Did you hear that?” asked Carrie abruptly. “It sounded like gunfire.”

  “Just a distress rocket going off,” Jack said. “They have to shoot the rockets. It’s procedure.”

  But Madeleine hadn’t seen the deck beyond the windows flare with light.

  * * *

  The list grew steeper, the floor of the room slanting toward the bow. It became more troublesome to keep her balance on the horse so she slid off of it, leaned against it, as the figures past the windows grew sparser. Jack came to stand beside her, and she rested her head against his shoulder. Her eyelids drifted closed. It seemed entirely reasonable, in this moment, to go to sleep in his arms standing up.

  She resisted that sweet dragging pull. There was a map of the world framed on the wall behind them, the colors of the countries garish. She couldn’t look at it without wanting to shut her eyes again, so she turned her head away.

  She mumbled, “Shouldn’t we go out? To see what’s happening?”

  “It’s better to wait where they tell us. If no one comes for us soon, I’ll go find someone in charge.”

  “Colonel,” said Robins, just beside them. “Shall I go investigate?”

  “Yes, good man. Thank you.”

  A pair of older fellows in full evening kit and no life preservers stood nearby, discussing the iceberg and the lifeboats and the unfortunate nature of the weather.

  “I’m told the Olympic is nearing to assist.”

  “Is that so?” said the other. “But I’m sure Titanic won’t founder.”

  “Of course she won’t. In fact, I don’t know why we aren’t still steaming toward New York right now, even at half speed. Smith is putting the devil of a crimp in my schedule.”

  * * *

  A man poked his head in past the gymnasium door. It was George Widener, the collar of his overcoat turned up, his nose and cheeks red.

  “They’re ordering us below again! We’re all to go back to A deck.”

  A collective grumble rose from the crowd.

  When they walked outside, Madeleine was shocked to see the row of lifeboats that had been suspended there before from their davits were all gone, leaving behind only long snakes of ropes that disappeared down the side of the ship. Crewmen and passengers stood clustered at the railing, looking down. She joined them, peering past their shoulders.

  Below them—way below—the lifeboats floated atop the black waters, tiny pale cowrie shells dotted with dim lights, slowly rowing away.

  * * *

  She turned to her right, toward the stern of the ship, where there seemed to be a storm of people congregating along the edges of the very end of the deck. Their shouting swept over her but it was tinny distant, like trying to hear a phonograph playing from another room.

  She looked to her left, toward the bow, taking a few steps closer to be sure: the ocean was creeping, thick as oil, over the foredeck.

  “Port,” Jack said grimly, his arm clamped through hers. “We need to get to the other side of the ship.”

  * * *

  For all the havoc playing out at the end of the topmost deck, A deck below it was full of people looking as dazed as she felt. All the ladies and gentlemen seemed to be sleepwalking, their eyes glazed. In her hat and coat and shawl, she went from chilled to flushed and back to chilled; several of the glass windows enclosing the promenade had been unlocked and opened, letting in the arctic air. Behind her glowed the warm yellow lights of the ship’s interior, still filled with people and chatter and heat. But before her were only windows of stars, one after another, blazing in silence against the ebony night.

  But for the fact of the saltwater stealing up the prow, that the yellow light occasionally flickered, she would have cast her faith in everything waiting behind her, rather than that deep soundless sky ahead.

  A ship’s officer, trim and sweating, crouched atop a high, open windowsill, one foot planted on a stack of steamer chairs made into a ramp that reached to its ledge, the other inside the lifeboat that hung just beyond. He was helping women climb up the chairs to crawl through the frame, with men on either side below, pushing the ladies forward as needed.

  Madeleine turned away from the sight. Her breath frosted in front of her, short puffs of silver that flashed and dissolved. Behind her, Rosalie was muttering to herself in French.

  The officer steadied himself against the frame of the window, called out to the clutches of people hanging back.

  “Women and children! Women and children only! Any more women and children to board?”

  No one came forward. The lights dimmed, brightened again. The bowels of the steamship let out a long, metallic groan.

  “We must get on that boat,” said Carrie calmly. “Don’t you agree, colonel?”

  “Yes,” Jack replied, another shock. “Yes, you must.”

  Madeleine shook her head. “But—I thought—”

  “Listen to me,” he said, but then nothing more, only looked at her, that focused look, gray and absolute. She gazed back up at him, his lowered lashes, the straight slash of his brows, the determined set of his lips: half in gold, half in night, just like the rest of them.

  She grabbed his hands, holding hard. “I won’t go without you.”

  “It will only be for a while. A few hours, at most. We’ll see each other in the morning.”

  “No!”

  “Madeleine, you can’t think only of me right now. There are three of us in our family, and at this moment, you comprise the most valuable two of our three. The finest honor I’ve been given in this world—that I will ever be given—is the task of safeguarding you and our child. Take the boat.” He touched her cheek. “You’re a mermaid, remember? The sea is your element. You’ll be fine, and we’ll all be together again soon. New York, at the very latest.”

  “Last call!” the officer shouted. “For women and children, please!”

  Her husband said to her, very quiet, “You must. You know that you must, habibti.”

  “Ma’am.” Carrie took her by the elbow. “Ma’am, right this way.”

  Madeleine moved stiffly, her legs and feet numb, but she did move because Carrie was pulling her and Jack was pulling her, and her breath was flashing more quickly now because underneath her veil of acquiescence was a black feeling roiling so deep and d
ark she had no name for it. It was panic and fear and bleak desperation. It was anger and fear, fear, fear.

  She climbed the awkward ramp of chairs, Jack supporting her left arm, another gentleman supporting her right. The officer bent down, reached out for her.

  The black thing inside her enlarged, choking, closing her throat. She turned back to Jack.

  He met her eyes, smiled. “Nearly there.”

  The officer seized her right hand, plucking her the rest of the way up. The lifeboat outside dangled and swayed from its slender-thin lines, uneasily tilted, just like Titanic. Huddles of women inside it stared back at her as she balanced at the window’s edge.

  “Step here, madam, and mind the gap. Do you see the plank? Your foot just there, one and then the other. I have you.”

  Below her, so much closer than it should have been, the ocean whispered and flicked against the side of the ship.

  “Don’t look down,” advised the officer, and thrust her all the way into the boat. She collapsed next to a blond woman clasping a toddler, and then Carrie was beside her, and Rosalie after her.

  She heard Jack say, “Ladies, you are next,” and two more women climbed in.

  Madeleine sat unmoving, the numbness blossoming all the way through her body, freezing not just her legs but her arms and hands and heart.

  The ship’s officer was assisting the latest woman aboard, helping her to find a place to sit. It was Eleanor Widener, her face reflecting all the quiet horror Maddy was working so hard to keep at bay.

  Jack’s voice reached her again; she lifted her head. He was standing at the open window adjacent to the one they all had crept through, leaning out.

  “Sir. Might I board the boat in order to protect my wife? She is in a delicate condition.”

  The officer straightened. “No men are allowed in the boats until all the women are loaded.”

  “What is the number of the boat, then? So that I may find her afterwards?”

  “This is Boat Four, sir.”

  “Thank you.”

  She wanted to say something. She wanted to say anything, his name, a demand to be let off, but the last few women were jostling by her, and someone stepped on her foot, and someone else was crying by the prow, and the officer who had pushed her in had climbed back inside the promenade.

  Jack, still leaning out the window, stripped off his gloves.

  “Madeleine, catch!”

  He tossed them to her one at a time and she did catch them somehow, both of them, the leather still warm from his hands.

  Above him, someone called out, “How many women are in that boat?”

  “Twenty-four,” the officer called back.

  “That’s enough. Lower away.”

  “Lower away!” the officer shouted, lifting his arms, and the ropes creaked, and the boat gave a sudden hard jerk, pitching toward the stern before leveling out again.

  “Jack,” she cried, but the black thing had taken over her voice completely, and the only sound that emerged was a strangled whisper.

  The little girl next to her shifted in her mother’s arms to examine Madeleine curiously.

  Even now he waited, watching the lifeboat descend, resting on his elbows and smiling his warm, slight smile at her until the craft struck the water and began a gradual spin, and the distance between them erased him entirely.

  CHAPTER 25

  Those next few hours. Those next few wretched hours. Some nights still, I close my eyes and I’m trapped back inside them, flattened between the mirrored line of the ocean and the suffocating stars.

  Those are the nights that I don’t go back to sleep.

  I’m so grateful, son, that you will grow up with no memory of any of it. That by the time you’ll read these words, those hours, that godforsaken morning, will be nothing but recorded history.

  Despite my nightmares, I am merely an addendum.

  Monday, April 15th

  Alongside Titanic

  Lifeboat Four came out of her spin and Madeleine found herself looking directly into a first-class stateroom, the window almost near enough to touch. The lights blazed inside it, chairs knocked over, water surging over the sculpted feet of the furniture, splashing against the tables and bed. Amid a jumble of long-stemmed fresh flowers, a woman’s peach satin slipper danced along its surface, whirling for a moment or two before tipping and sinking down to the rug.

  “Hey there, Mr. Perkis!” shouted one of the crewmen manning the oars, his head thrown back, his hands cupped around his mouth. “Quartermaster, hey! We need another hand down here!”

  They all looked up. A thickset man appeared on the nearby ropes, descending clumsily hand over hand. His boots hit the lifeboat with a thump, and he turned, tugging at his coat.

  “The tiller,” said the same sailor.

  The quartermaster nodded, bent over the gunwale and shoved away a steamer chair that was knocking against their side. In just the few moments that followed, two more men clambered down the ropes, not sailors. They huddled, wide-eyed, against the keel.

  The quartermaster’s gaze raked them up and down. He shook his head, his mouth flattened, then looked back at the oarsmen.

  “We’re to go aft, lads, to the open gangway. We’ll pick up more women there.”

  The men dipped their oars into the sea; the lifeboat gained a steadier compass, gliding gradually away from the ship. A series of crashes still reached them from the inside, china breaking, doors breaking, wood breaking. The deeper innards of the liner grinding, balefully loud, steel against steel.

  A dog barked from up above. It took Madeleine at least ten seconds to recognize that it was Kitty. She lurched to her feet, prompting Carrie to latch on to her sleeve.

  Oh, God. She’d forgotten about her—in the dreamlike fright and calm of it all, she’d forgotten—

  “Down, miss,” snapped the quartermaster. “You must sit down.”

  She sank back to the plank of her bench, her hands over her heart. Kitty was barking from the boat deck, and if she craned her head—yes, Madeleine could see her, her familiar outline, so small and shadowed against the ship’s lights. The shape of a tall, spare man standing next to her at the railing, one hand on her head.

  Something large hurtled down from the sky. She cringed back only as it barely missed them, landing with an enormous splash that salted her with spray. The thing vanished beneath the surface before popping up again: a huge rolling barrel, Münchner Bier stenciled in black on its side.

  “Away and faster,” called out the quartermaster, and the lifeboat began to jerk more quickly along.

  Jack and Kitty, her barks still echoing, slid from her view.

  Madeleine moaned, thin and anguished. Carrie wrapped an arm around her shoulders to hug her close.

  * * *

  There were no gangway doors to be seen that were open. There was no one aft to pick up, only ghost lights glowing an eerie olive beneath the surface of the water. But as they came closer to Titanic ’s rising stern, a pair of men leapt from the poop deck high above, managing to entangle themselves in the dangling ropes from the davits and grab on. They began to slither rapidly down towards them.

  “Oy! Mind yourselves,” thundered the quartermaster, as the men at the oars attempted to maneuver them beneath the ropes.

  To the alarmed cries of several ladies, one of the men let go, managing to land heavily against the lifeboat’s prow, sending them rocking. The other man released his rope and missed the boat entirely, plunging like a stone into the ocean, hardly even a splash as he went down. The fellow came up again gasping, his hair plastered along his eyes, trying to paddle.

  Rosalie was closest to him. She cried, “Here!” and stretched out her arm, hauling him near. The woman behind her joined her, and together they wrestled him aboard.

  Both of the new men were dressed only in rough cotton shirts and trousers, covered in grime.

  “Blimey, that was close,” gasped the drier man, and together they crumpled against the starboard gunwa
le. Someone tossed a blanket over them both.

  “Get us away,” commanded the quartermaster, and the oarsmen, both of whom had been goggling open-mouthed up at the listing ship, bent their heads again and began to row.

  A new man rose up from the waves without warning, his head just reaching over the top of the craft; a young girl screeched with fright.

  “Give us a hand in!” the man in the water wheezed, and one of the oarsmen stood up, astonished.

  “Is that you, Sam?”

  “Yes!”

  The oarsman reached down, the women around him reached down, and between all of them, the man was dragged to safety, shivering.

  As the lifeboat turned again, floating away from the liner, Madeleine tried to find her husband once more. But they were too far aft. All she could see, all any of them could see as they slipped farther out, was Titanic’s stern slowly lifting free of the Atlantic, its three monstrous bronze propellers shedding rivers of water, platinum waterfalls against the glittering sky.

  * * *

  A flare shot up from the steamship, the first Madeleine had seen herself, even though in the back of her mind, it seemed she must have been hearing them all along, the hard cannon-crack of rockets or gunshots, or both. As the light streamed skyward, everyone in the lifeboat hung in its brief brilliance, black and white, sliding shadows; for a count of three, the canted top of Titanic shone almost as bright as day.

  It was only seconds. But when she closed her eyes, the image of the upper deck remained, dark frozen people against a dark tilted ship.

  Above the baritone groans of the liner and the cacophony of human cries, she thought she heard the orchestra still playing, sweet melancholy notes, a hymn she almost recognized.

  Titanic’s lights flickered, came back. Along what must have been the promenade’s windows, a sinister red glow began to spread.

  “Power’s fading,” muttered the quartermaster. “Surprised they’ve kept it going this long.”

  The stern rose and rose, and the ship’s iron groans ticked louder. People were plummeting alongside her hull, cartwheeling down into the water. Those who didn’t fall clung to the boat deck in antlike clusters, pressing against the railings.