Blood and Ice by Robert Masello
For Laurie
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing any book, especially one of this scope, you often have to call upon the wisdom of friends and experts. I would like to thank Fran?ois Sauzey, Carol Weston, Professor Roberto Véguez, Susan Williams, and James Donlan. I would also like to thank Brooks Peel of the State Climate Office of North Carolina, and Captain George Galdorisi, U.S. Navy (Ret.). I am in debt, too, to the noted historians Cecil Woodham-Smith, whose landmark book, The Reason Why, was such a help to me in writing about the Crimean War, and Gillian Gill, whose Nightingales provided invaluable research on Florence Nightingale and her nurses. The nurse’s quotation about her cap, which appears on Chapter 29, was drawn from Gill’s book, which cites Letters from the Crimea as its original source.
Any mistakes are, of course, my responsibility alone.
I also happened to be blessed on this book with a great editor, Anne Groell, and an agent who, as always, kept encouraging me whenever my confidence flagged. Thank you, Cynthia Manson.
PROLOGUE
ABOARD HM BRIG COVENTRY, IN THE SOUTHERN OCEAN.
LAT. 65 DEGREES 28 MINUTES S.,
LONG. 120 DEGREES 13 MINUTES W.
December 28, 1856
Sinclair bent low over the wooden bunk where Eleanor lay. Though she was snugly wrapped in his greatcoat and buried under every blanket and sheet he could lay his hands on, her teeth still chattered and her breath fogged in the dank, freezing air. By the flickering light of the oil lamp, he could see that her eyes were rolling up under her lids, and her face was as white and cold as the ice that had surrounded the ship for weeks.
With his own numb hand, he stroked her brow, brushing a wisp of her dark brown hair away from her eyes. The skin felt as lifeless and implacable as the blade of a sword, but underneath it he could still detect the slow coursing of her blood. She would live, somehow, but he would have to see to her needs, and soon. There was no way around it, anymore; he would have to leave the cabin and go below to the stores.
“Rest,” he said, gently, “and I will be back before you know I’ve gone.”
She sighed in protest, her pale lips barely moving.
“Try to sleep.” He pulled the woolen cap more tightly around her head, kissed her cheek, and stood up, as much as the low ceiling of the stifling cabin would allow. Holding the lamp in one hand—its glass was smudged, and only an inch or so of whale oil remained at its bottom—he listened at the door for a moment before easing it open to the black passageway outside. He could hear the muttering of the crewmen somewhere in the hold. He didn’t need to hear their words to know what they were saying. Ever since the ship had been blown off course, driven farther and farther toward the southern pole by unrelenting storms and wind, he had overheard their curses and seen the growing enmity in their eyes. Sailors were a superstitious lot, even at the best of times, and he knew it was their mysterious passengers—Eleanor and himself—that they had come to see as the source of their present calamity. But what, he wondered, would they choose to do about it? He did not like to leave Eleanor alone for even a few minutes.
He had long since removed the spurs from his boots, but it was impossible to move down the corridor without the creak of the timbers underfoot. Sinclair tried to take a step only when the ice battering the hull was especially loud, or the sails up above flapped in the night wind; but as he passed the galley the light from his lamp fell on Burton and Farrow huddled over a bottle of rum. The ship pitched to starboard, and Sinclair had to reach out and steady himself against the wall.
“Where you off to?” Burton growled. There were ice particles in his gray beard, glinting like diamonds, and a large gold hoop through one ear.
“The stores.”
“What for?”
“That’s none of your affair.”
“We could make it that,” he heard Farrow mutter, as the ship righted itself with a thundering groan.