“Is it a fever,” she asked, “or have you been wounded?”
Laying his head on the pallet, he drew the sheet away from his legs. The right one was scarred and bloody, but the left was worse—a yellowed bone protruded through the skin, and red striations ran up and down the shin. “You were shot?” she said, in horror…and in shame that her thoughts had immediately gone to Sinclair. Had he been in the same battle?
“I was shot at,” he said. “But my horse plunged into a ravine and rolled over on my legs.”
She dipped the rag into the water again, and as she did so, he answered the question he knew she wanted to ask.
“Sinclair was not there. The last I saw of him, he was riding with Rutherford, and the rest of the company, toward a place called Balaclava.” He pulled the sheet back over his ruined legs and licked his lips. “My canteen,” he said, “it’s under the bed.”
She rummaged around—something with many tiny legs scuttled over her hand—before she found it and unscrewed the cap for him. She could smell that it was gin inside. She held it to his lips and he took a swig, and then another. His eyes closed. “I should have guessed that you would be one of the nurses,” he whispered.
“What would you like me to do for you?” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t have most of my supplies with me right now…”
He shook his head feebly. “You have already done it,” he said.
“Tomorrow, I’ll come back on my rounds, and I’ll bring you a fresh shirt, and a clean sheet, and a good razor…”
He raised one hand an inch from the mattress to stop her. “What I would like,” he said, “is to write a letter to my family.”
It was a common request, and Eleanor said, “I will bring a pen and paper.”
“Come as soon as you can,” he said, and she knew why he was in such haste.
“Rest now,” she said, touching his shoulder and rising from the bedside. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He sighed, his head still flat against the mattress, and blowing out the candle, she slipped quietly out of the ward.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
December 16, 10 a.m.
MICHAEL AND LAWSON WERE BARRELING across the ice at full throttle, but there had been no sign at all of Danzig, or the missing dogs. Michael knew he ought to slow down; new crevasses could appear at any time, anywhere. But motion—and speed—had always been his remedy of choice. Whenever anything threatened to overwhelm him, he went into action—physical action. So long as he was moving, and caught up in the split-second decision-making of rock climbing, or kayaking through rapids, or snorkeling through a coral canyon, he could leave the dark thoughts that haunted him behind. He was smart enough to know that he couldn’t actually outrun them—how many times had he tried?—but the temporary reprieve was generally enough to let him breathe again.
Right now, for instance, he tried to anchor himself in the moment, focusing first on the bow of the snowmobile coursing across the barren landscape, then, as he approached the shoreline, the languid soaring of a large white albatross overhead. It had been accompanying him for a while, dipping and rising in lazy circles that kept perfect pace with the progress of the two machines. Lawson had fanned out to his left and was making a more direct approach to the whaling station, while Michael hewed more closely to the shore, passing between the beach, strewn with bleached bones, and the ramshackle factory buildings. The two snowmobiles came together again in the wide-open flensing yard, and when the engines were turned off, the silence fell like a blanket. It took a few seconds for the ears to adjust, then Michael could hear the wind blowing snow across the frozen ground and the distant cry of the albatross. As he looked up, the bird circled again on its wide, outstretched wings, but showed no sign yet of alighting.
Lawson slipped his goggles onto his forehead and said, “If the dogs were here, they’d have heard us coming—”
“And we’d have heard them by now,” Michael agreed. “But we’ve got some time before the storm comes in, so why don’t you look around down here while I go up the hill?”