He didn’t fight the pull of the ship’s displacement. He saved his energy and let the ocean have its way with him until it let him go. Then, his lungs rioting in his chest, he waited to feel the direction of his buoyancy. When he was oriented, he kicked hard and powered his arms through the freezing water, simply refusing to acknowledge that anything would happen other than he would break the surface and fill his lungs.
Which he did. The Titanic was gone. All around him were wailing, moaning, gasping people. And bodies. So many bodies. Men and women. Children. They floated on the surface, buoyed by their life vests.
Life vests.
William swam to the nearest body—a heavyset man in dinner dress. He checked for a pulse and found none. Using the vested body as a raft, he reached up and slapped the cold, blue face. Nothing. But in this cold, the man could be alive yet. Temperatures like this slowed the body’s working.
He maneuvered so he could see the man’s face completely. Open eyes, coated with ice.
Treading water, fighting against the need to let his teeth chatter and his fingers shake, William untied the dead man’s life vest. When the body fell away, sinking into the sea, he worked his way into the vest. He couldn’t manage to put it on properly, so he pushed his arms through and heaved himself into it backward. He’d have to hold tight.
Now, to wait for rescue. To keep awake and moving, to hold tight, and wait.
Help was sure to come. The lifeboats would come back, and then a ship would come. Help was on its way. He had only to stay awake, keep moving, hold tight, and wait.
He’d made a promise to Nora, never to leave her, and he meant to keep it. He would be with her again. He’d promised.
TWENTY-SEVEN
When the ship slid under the water, the scene had a strange, horrible grace, like a dance. The whole ship went straight up, the front part of the ship—the bow; she remembered William’s lessons during their walks, his answers to all her curious questions—sinking down, into the water, and the back part—the stern—reaching up to the starry sky, and then a huge, howling groan broke through the air, and the stern settled back almost as it was meant to be. Then it sank, too, tipping up toward the sky again, and turning, as if it meant to pirouette to the ocean floor.
And then it was gone. Great waves heaved at the lifeboat, and everyone around her screamed at the thought they might turn over, but Nora only watched the place where the Titanic had been. She sat with tears frozen on her face and stared.
The night was oddly quiet when the ship was gone. And black, so black. Above, around, below—black sky, black water, black world. Even the stars seemed to glitter darkly, like millions of jet crystals swirling across black silk.
William had been on the ship when it went under. She knew that as clearly as she knew her own name. She could feel the truth of it all through her. He hadn’t taken a lifeboat. He was in the water, perhaps under the water, perhaps trapped in the ship.
He’d promised he’d never leave her. But he’d let her be snatched away from him. Again.
As the shock of sudden quiet after the clamor of the dying ship passed, the night wasn’t so silent. The sounds of suffering and fear carried over the surface of the water, and Nora saw people bobbing in life vests. Life vests. He’d been wearing a life vest.
“We have to go back! We have to help them!”
Nora turned to the voice. The woman who’d taken her into the boat, who’d held her back and made her sit when she’d scrambled to get back to William, had stood. She faced the crew member with her hands on her hips. In her white life vest over a dark mink coat, she looked like a whale. Orca.
“We can’t, madam,” the crewman said. “This boat is full. If we take on more, we’ll sink, too.”
“But they’re freezing!”
“And we will be, too, if we go under,” another woman answered. “Sit down, Margaret! There’s nothing we can do!”
“How can we sit here and let them die?” the woman, Margaret, raged.
Nora clamped her hands over her ears. William couldn’t die. He couldn’t. He’d promised her. She couldn’t lose him in the middle of the ocean, this vast eternity between her past and her future.
Other boats, with room, would go back. They’d find the survivors. They’d find William, and save him.
She stared at the blank space where a massive, marvelous ship had once been, and she waited to see a boat returning to rescue survivors.
She saw none.
The screaming stopped first, and then the calls for help. Some time after that, the moaning ceased, and the world took on a perfect silence that deadened the ears. Not even the people in the boats made a sound. For hours, it had to be hours, they sat in silence. It was too cold for conversation, the pall of death too thick over the water. Too cold to express any emotion. Instead, the sorrow sank deep, like a ship to the bottom of the sea.
The world was so much vaster than ever she’d understood before. No chapters in books could describe the endless sea, the horizon that drew an unbroken circle, all around and eternally far, curved in exactly the same way no matter where one looked. For days and days, one could travel and never see evidence of humanity except the vessel one sailed upon.
She’d thought of miles as time. New York was three thousand, five hundred miles from London; that had meant nothing. New York was a week from Southampton; that, she’d understood. A week was nothing. The span between two Sundays. But this, this distance was endless. And lonely. With the ship gone, would they, could they ever be found? How could they?
William would know. If he were here, she could ask him, and he’d tell her. There was a way. The Titanic had sunk, but it—she—had not been lost. They had not been lost.
In the distance, where the ship had been, bodies, hundreds of them, bobbed like hunks of ice. That was all any of them were now, in lifeboats or life vests—tiny blips of humanity floating on an endless void.
They were not lost. They couldn’t be. They were not finished. They had a future to live. This was only the first step of her journey.
Shrugged inside her coat, Nora stared. She was too far away to see anything but the pale hunks bobbing gently, but she stared anyway, willing her eyes to find him. No lifeboat had gone back, as far as she’d seen. But the cold had made her tired, and her eyes kept shuttering. Only for a moment, then longer, then longer.
Nora came back to numb alertness when the boat began to rock. The women around her shouted “HERE! WE’RE HERE! HERE!” and bright beams of light flashed across the water. Unable to see more than that behind the wall of waving women, she stood, her frozen body creaking angrily, and saw an ocean liner. It wasn’t as big as the Titanic, with only one steam pipe—funnel—but it was sound, and it was coming. It blew its horn and flashed its lights, and all the women around her cheered and yelled and waved.
Nora looked back, to the bobbing bodies. She could see even less now, with the new ship coming, drawing all the light toward it. But the sea that had swallowed up the Titanic seemed still and lifeless.
“William,” she whispered. “They’re here. They came. We’re all right. Everything’s all right.”
The ship that saved them was the RMS Carpathia, of the Cunard line. Strong men with gentle hands helped Nora and the other women onto their ship, handling them as if they were made of spun glass. Once on board, they were wrapped in warm blankets and led to what she thought was a ballroom, though it had been fitted out as a hospital, with rows of tables and pallets, and crew members waited to check their health and take their names.
Wrapped in her blankets, with a cup of warm soup in her hands, Nora sat on a pallet and watched every survivor who came into the ballroom. Some walked in as she had, on their own feet, little more than weary and shocked. Some were badly injured. Some were unconscious. Many were so cold their skin had gone grey. But none of them were William.
A slender young man in a Cunard uniform worked his way down her aisle of pallets. He stopped before her and crouched to her
level. “How are you feeling? Are you injured? The doctor will be here soon to check you over, but if you’re injured, he’ll come sooner.”
“No, I’m not hurt. But I’m looking for someone. I need to find him.”
He gave her a wise smile and patted her shoulder. “Everyone is looking for someone, love. Once we get everyone aboard and get an accounting, we’ll do what we can to help you find your party. Your name?”
“Nora Frazier. Lady Nora Frazier. My husband is William Frazier.”
His eyebrows lifted at her title, and his tone changed from casual kindness to formal respect. “Milady. I’ll make a note about your husband. Do you need anything else?”
“Just him. I just need him.”
When the doctor came to her, a man, Nora couldn’t let him touch her. She’d thought the past was behind her, but when he tugged on her blanket so he could check her over, her head filled with the memory of the hospital and Dr. Brown, and she flinched away, barely holding back a scream.
“I’ll not hurt you, milady. I only want to be sure the cold and wet hasn’t made you ill.”
She clutched the blanket around her and shook her head vigorously. “I’m not ill. Please.”
He stood up and considered her. “Very well. If you’ll promise me that you’ll call for me if you start to feel at all poorly.”
Of course she felt poorly. They all felt poorly. But she nodded, and breathed again when he moved on to the next woman on the aisle.
She needed William. But no survivors had been brought into this room for at least an hour. The sun was high in the sky, beaming bright and cheerful, through the skylights and windows, as if the world hadn’t ended the night before. Because they were in the in-between place, where the things that happened were lost.
Shaking her head hard, she forced sense back in. Thoughts like that would send her mind to the place it had gone in the hospital. The night had shaken loose her moorings, let old memories in to cavort with new fears.
She had to find William.
Holding her blanket around her shoulders, more like armor than warmth, Nora stood and found a steward.
“Can I help you, miss?”
“I’m looking for my husband. Is this everyone you rescued, here in this room?”
“No, ma’am. We’ve survivors in several places. This room is for the strongest, the ones we picked up in the boats.”
Nora thought of the bleeding people who’d been brought in. They were among the strongest?
“Did you pull anyone from the water?” Her certainty that he’d gone in hadn’t abated.
He frowned. “Not many alive, miss, I’m sorry to say.”
“But some.”
“Yes, some.”
“Will you take me to them?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. No visitors there. They’re in a bad way. The doctors are trying to make them well.”
“I need to find my husband!”
Another crewman, this one an officer, came up and took her arm. “Madam, please. Everyone here is missing someone they love. We’re doing everything we can to bring families back together. Let us do our work. Please.”
He led her back to her pallet. Nora didn’t know what else to do but what he asked.
She came awake with a start and shrank away from what had woken her. Where was she? Where was William? All around her were beds and people; she could feel their bodies in the air. Oh God! She was in the hospital! Oh God!
It had all been a dream. William wasn’t real.
She clamped her teeth together and tried to make herself small inside her bonds.
Bonds—she wasn’t bound.
“Hush, milady, hush! I didn’t mean to frighten you!” an urgent voice whispered.
She looked around—the room was huge and dim, with circles of gold light here and there. Gold light right in front of her—a torch, and a man in uniform holding it.
Not Bedlam. The Carpathia.
Nora took a breath and tried to unlock her body from its frozen terror. And then she remembered why she was on the Carpathia, and sadness took terror’s place and made her droop. She’d been on the ship nearly a whole day, with no sign of William. Others had been reunited, and each happy moment she’d witnessed had broken her heart a bit more.
“It’s all right, milady. It’s all right. You’re Lady Nora Frazier, yeah? Wife of William Frazier?”
Lady Nora Frazier. Wife of William Frazier. She unclenched her jaw. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
“Come with me please, milady.”
“Is he here? Is he safe?”
“Come with me please. The doctor only asked me to bring you. I don’t know why.”
She took the hand he offered and let him help her up.
He led her out of the ballroom and down a corridor. Stopping at a door, he knocked. “I’ve brought her, Doctor.”
The door opened, and a man she didn’t recognise—if he was a doctor, he was a different one from the man who’d tried to examine her—stepped out and closed the door. “Mrs. Frazier?” He was American.
“Yes. Please, is he here?”
“He is, yes.”
“Oh thank God! Thank you! Oh God!” Nora slapped her hands to her mouth to stop her manic blather and the sobs of ecstatic relief that chugged up her throat.
“Mrs. Frazier—”
“It’s Lady Nora, Doctor.”
The doctor gave the crewman an irritated look for correcting him. Nora could not have cared less what he called her. She wanted William.
“Lady Nora, I need to prepare you. He’s very ill. He was in the water for a long time, and his body slowed down in the cold. We’ve got his temperature back up, but he’s very confused. I’m not sure there hasn’t been lasting damage.”
None of that made sense to her. All she knew was that William was just beyond that door, and they were holding her back from him. “Is he awake?”
“He’s in and out. As I said, he’s confused, and he’s weak. I want you to be ready. He might not know who you are.”
The doctor was wrong. He was alive, and he would know her. “Please, let me in.”
The doctor nodded and opened the door.
It was a small room, an office of some kind. William lay on a pallet on the floor, much like the one she had in the ballroom. A thick stack of blankets covered him. He was alone.
God, he was pale, so pale. The skin around his eyes was grey. His lips were grey.
She dropped to her knees beside him and brushed her hand over his cheek. “William. My love.”
His eyes fluttered open, but he didn’t seem to see her. She moved into his line of sight and tried to smile, but the tears taking her over warped her face. He didn’t recognise her. He showed no sign of knowing her at all.
Then his lips moved. He whispered something. She put her ear close and listened hard.
“Be with you. Be with you. I’ll be with you.” His voice was hoarse and weak, but she understood the words.
“Yes! William, yes! I’m here. You’re with me! You are!” His eyes slid to hers, but didn’t react.
“He repeats that. Is it meaningful to you?”
The doctor was in the room with them. Nora turned on him as if he were an intruder. “What?”
“The phrase he says. It’s all he says, since he regained consciousness this evening. Is it significant?”
She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “It’s the last thing he said to me when the lifeboat took me away.” His promise not to leave her.
“That’s good, then. That’s a link. You’re his link. If he can come back, it will likely be through you. But, Lady Nora—often, damage like this is permanent. Hypothermia slows blood and oxygen to the vital organs. Like his brain. He was in near-freezing water for hours.”
“He’ll come back. He won’t leave me.” She pushed her hand under the pile of blankets and found his—still too cold, despite the covers. It was fitting that she would be the link for him; he’d been hers, after all. Seeing him, touching him, ha
d grounded her in the reality of the Bath cottage.
She looked back at the doctor. “How did you know to find me?”
“He had his passport on him. We checked the lists of survivors brought on board and found you.”
Nora had forgotten about the passports—he’d made her carry hers as well when they’d dressed to go on deck. She hadn’t understood at the time but had been too afraid of what was happening to question him. “What can I do to help him?”
“Stay near. Talk to him. Be as you were together, to every extent you can be. His best chance is now, before the loss has time to take hold.”
Nora bent down and kissed his forehead. “I won’t leave him.” She turned back the covers and tucked herself in beside him, lifting his arm and setting it around her. She laid her head on his chest and heard his beating heart. Steady. Strong. He’d come back. “I’ll never leave him.”
They stripped her bare and wrapped her up from head to feet, binding her tightly, her arms pressed hard to her sides, her ankle bones grinding together, her head hooded, everything but her face. They put the thing over her mouth that held her jaw tight so she couldn’t open wide and scream. Dr. Brown floated above her, watching, giving instructions, but all she could hear was her fear. This was the worst thing, the worst thing.
She hit the icy water all at once, and shrieked at the pain and shock of it, forcing the sound over her torn throat, her swollen tongue, her clamped jaw. She screamed until the cold took her breath and turned her body to stone.
And then the room was gone, the world was gone, and all around her was black. Even the stars were black, like swirls of jet crystals on black silk. Screaming, inside her and all around her. Hunks of ice floating. Screaming and death and cold. Cold. Cold. Wind whispering.
“Shhh, shhhh, shhhh. Shhhh, shhh, shhh.”
Nora started awake, a scream frozen solid at the back of her throat. She was bound up, bound tightly, and she fought against the cold and dark—but there was light, and she was warm, held snugly in strong arms.
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