On a Cold Dark Sea(23)
“Distress rockets,” he muttered.
Sabine was pressing her intertwined hands against her mouth, trying not to cry. For the last six weeks, Esme had treated her maid like a puppy or doll: something to be played with when it suited her and otherwise ignored. But Sabine was a person, with thoughts and feelings, terrified and far from home. Esme remembered Sabine’s father, and the way he’d thanked her for giving his daughter a better life. Until now, Esme hadn’t thought it was possible for the hulking liner to sink. But Sabine’s fear had ignited her own, and dread crept like a poison through Esme’s bloodstream. If Esme didn’t get in a lifeboat, Sabine wouldn’t either. And they both might die.
What had felt like a choice a few minutes earlier had become a necessity. Esme reached out for Sabine’s hand and brought her forward.
“Venez,” she said. “Come along.”
The officer in charge of loading the boat was strutting around imperiously, but he didn’t seem to have a clear idea what to do. Two crewmen stood at either end, fiddling with the ropes, while others leaned against the davits, waiting for orders. The officer pointed to the female passengers gathered around him with a simple “In you go,” and Esme saw more than one woman frown disapprovingly at his far-from-deferential tone.
This can’t be how it ends, Esme thought with growing panic. How could she say goodbye to Charlie in front of all these people? It was all happening too fast: Sabine stepping gingerly into the boat; Hiram’s hand against Esme’s shoulder blade, nudging her on; one last glance over her shoulder at Charlie. He gave her a solemn nod, granting her permission to leave. He looked resolute, and tragic, and unbearably handsome.
Esme turned away, swallowing the misery that threatened to engulf her. A man was reaching out to her from the lifeboat, a common seaman by his uniform, and she grabbed hold of him, half climbing and half stumbling inside. She mustn’t look back—that would have destroyed her—so she looked outward, at the stars glittering on the horizon. They were the only indication of where the sea ended and the sky began.
“Any more ladies?” the officer called out.
There was no reply. Esme glanced around at her companions in the boat. They numbered no more than a dozen, women of various ages, scattered on four benches with ample space between them. Esme saw a man and a woman on deck, engaged in a heated conversation; the woman eventually stepped back, out of sight. Esme couldn’t see Charlie, but Hiram was still there, pacing back and forth, looking exasperated. She wondered if this would be the last time she ever saw him.
“Might the gentlemen board?” Esme called out. “We have room.”
The officer shook his head stiffly. “Captain’s orders. Lower away!”
The crewmen at the davits went to work, but the lifeboat didn’t budge. After another false start, one of them told the officer it was jammed.
“How?” the officer asked, incredulous, and Esme felt a sickening lurch of fear. What if the boat went crashing into the water? Suddenly, a rope loosened and one end of the lifeboat jerked down. Terrified, Esme clutched the bench to stop herself sliding off. A little boy fell with a thump into the bottom of the boat but was quickly scooped up by his mother, who pulled the child into her lap and clutched him tight with both arms.
A rope on the other side shifted, and the boat evened out, then continued its unsteady progress downward. Esme looked up and saw Hiram at the railing, curiously calm. The creases in his forehead had smoothed out, and she remembered their first meeting, how he’d struck her as an old-fashioned courtly gentleman. A gentle man, she thought wistfully, as he gave Esme a look that said both thank you and goodbye. Esme held up one hand—a gesture of affection? of dismissal?—and he lifted one of his in response. Esme knew she should say something, but she couldn’t think of the right words, and all of a sudden, she was staring at a line of rivets drilled into the ship. The deck was out of sight; the moment had passed.
They were passing a glass-enclosed promenade when Esme was startled to see a face staring back at her. It was a woman wrapped in an oversized dark coat, her large, arresting eyes holding Esme’s attention. The man next to her was wearing a garish, flashy suit and banging his fists against the glass. The sound was muffled, but Esme could sense his near panic.
“Stop!” the younger crewman called up to the deck. He carried himself with the dignity of an officer, despite his common sailor’s uniform. “We’ve a woman here!”
The boat jolted to a halt, and Esme and her fellow passengers tilted forward.
“What now?” the other crewman barked. He was the kind of sailor usually kept out of passengers’ sight; his face and beard were smeared with coal dust, and his clothing was dark with soaked-in grime. “Is she going to walk through glass?”
“We must do our duty,” the first crewman said. He hollered up to the deck, and when the officer leaned over the railing, he shouted out his request that another woman be allowed to board.
The woman in question was looking at Esme with a determined sort of expectation. There was something about the woman’s stare—those penetrating blue eyes—that commanded Esme’s attention. Esme tried to smile reassuringly, but her face froze midway, because suddenly there was Charlie, on the other side of the window, running up to the woman and talking to her with intent concentration. Then Charlie looked out, at the boat and at Esme, his expression bright with purpose.