“What about your ankle?” Murphy asked. “Looks like you’re favoring it.”
“Snowmobiling’s no problem. And if we do find them—the dogs or the bodies—at least I know how to drive the sled back to camp.”
“All right,” Murphy said, as if he could no longer argue the point. “But not tonight. Get some solid rack time, then, first thing in the morning, if the weather allows, I’ll log you in on a trip to the whaling station.” Reaching for the walkie-talkie fastened to his belt, he added, “I’ll tell Franklin to have a couple of snowmobiles at the flagpole, gassed up and ready to go, by nine a.m.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
December 16, 9:30 a.m.
SINCLAIR HAD BEEN GONE FOR HOURS, and while Eleanor’s greatest fear was that something would prevent him from returning at all, she also dreaded the state in which he might return. He had been in a black humor when he left, seething with rage at the endless storm and bristling at his confinement in the freezing church.
“Damn this place to Hell!” he’d shouted, his words echoing around the abandoned chapel and up to the worn beams in the roof. “Damn these stones and damn these timbers!” With one arm, he’d swept a candleholder off the altar and sent it spinning across the floor. Stomping down the nave, his bootheels ringing on the stone, he’d thrown open the creaking door to the graveyard outside and hurled his imprecations at the leaden sky. He’d been answered by a chorus of forlorn howls from the sled dogs, curled up in balls among the markers and tombstones.
She especially feared him when he was like that, when he chose to issue his challenges at the heavens. She was convinced that he’d already had his answer, in Lisbon, and she had no wish to hear that verdict again.
“Sinclair,” she’d ventured, leaning for support against the door-jamb of the rectory, “shouldn’t we bring the dogs into the church? They’ll die if left outside, unprotected.”
His head had whipped around, and in his eyes she could see that mad feverish gleam she had first seen at Scutari.
“I’ll warm them up,” he growled, and then, in his greatcoat, he’d stalked out into the storm, not even bothering to pull the door closed behind him; he seemed impervious to the hostile elements. A cloud of ice and snow had whirled into the church, and she had heard the barking of the dogs as Sinclair harnessed them to the sled.
Eleanor had gathered her coat around her, the one made from the miraculous fabric, and made her way to the open door. She had seen Sinclair standing at the back of the sled, swearing at the dogs as they ran down the snowy hillside. When they were out of sight, she put her weight against the rough wood and pushed it closed.
The exertion made her weak, and she slumped into the last pew. Afraid she was about to faint, she bent her head to the back of the pew in front of her and rested it there. The wood was cold but not entirely smooth, and she could see, very close up, some words—a name?—carved into it. But whatever it was, it wasn’t English and the letters were nearly worn away. All that she could discern were some numbers, in the form of a date—25.12.1937. Christmas Day—1937. And she simply let her gaze remain there, while her mind turned this information over and over. It had been 1856 when she and Sinclair had embarked on their ill-fated voyage aboard the Coventry. And if this inscription, these numbers, were indeed a date, then they had been carved eighty-one years after she had been cast into the sea.
Eighty-one years. Time enough for everyone she knew—and everyone who knew her—to be dead.
Then her thoughts leapt forward again, because the place had so clearly been deserted for years, probably decades, and how many more years did that suggest? How long was it, she wondered, that she had slept in the ice at the bottom of the ocean? Had centuries passed? What world was it that she now, however unhappily, inhabited?