Alec crushes me to his chest, and for one perfect second, I feel the comforting illusion of safety sweep over me.
But only for a second.
“There aren’t enough lifeboats,” I whisper into his ear.
“I know.” Alec just keeps holding me, pressing his lips to my forehead and my cheek. “I’ve been trying to find you. To save you.”
“I’ve been trying to save you.”
But as I look past him and realize there are no more lifeboats close by, I wonder if we’ve found each other too late.
Chapter 27
“WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?” I CLING TO ALEC, SO tightly it must hurt him. “That can’t be all the lifeboats. Surely.” The decks are packed with people now—hundreds of us. Layton said there weren’t enough boats for everyone, but they wouldn’t even let a ship go to sea if they couldn’t save more people than this. Would they?
“We won’t find them waiting here,” he says. Alec pulls me closer and kisses my forehead. As his fingers brush my bruised temple, I wince. “Tess, you’re bleeding. What happened?”
“Mikhail came after me. He abandoned me once the ship hit the iceberg.”
“To come after me,” Alec says darkly. I realize that the corner of his left eye is puffy and shadowed; he’ll have a shiner tomorrow. “Really, to come after the Initiation Blade. He came in—wild, worse than wild. I only got away from him because he was more interested in ransacking our cabin for the Blade.” He holds open the heavy gray coat he’s wearing over rumpled trousers and shirt to reveal the Blade’s hilt glinting within an inner pocket. Mikhail will be looking for quite a while.
I take some satisfaction from the fact that Mikhail’s cruelty and greed will doom him to death, but there’s not much time for anything but the one most important fact I know: “We have to get off this ship.”
“Let’s keep moving along. It can only help our chances.”
I know from the way Alec says it that he, too, knows not everyone on board will have a chance to live. Unless— “Is help coming? They would have called for help on the wireless.”
“I don’t know. We won’t know unless we see the other ship actually coming to rescue us.”
Both of us look toward the dark horizon, but there’s nothing out there. Only a gleaming field of stars overhead and spars of ice in the water below.
Despair wells up within me, as cold and merciless as the water rushing into the Titanic. The countless hours I worked so hard, went without good food or decent shoes so that I could save money for a new life in America—they all seem to taunt me now. Only Alec’s embrace is warm, real, here. I kept thinking he was a diversion from my goals, that what I’ve felt for him could stop me from getting what I wanted. That there was no way a man like him would ever belong to a servant girl like me. Too late I realize that he was the only thing I ever wanted that I could truly have.
I hug him even closer to me, as close as I can with the life jackets around our necks. It’s as though the terrible danger surrounding us goes black—it doesn’t go away, it’s all around us, but it’s hidden the same way nighttime hides the shapes that are so clear by day. Right now there’s nothing but Alec’s warmth and his love. I want to believe that nothing matters as long as we’re together.
But that’s not true. That’s shock talking—making me numb, dragging us down with the ship. Even now I can feel the tilt of the deck increasing; the Titanic dips even lower in the front than in the back. Is the prow below water now? I can’t see. Around us, people are beginning to shout and cry as they realize what I’ve known almost from the moment the cold water touched my hand. The ship is doomed.
Alec and I have only minutes to save our lives.
Alec begins pulling me toward the stern of the ship—slightly up the slope. “Not all the boats are gone yet,” he says. “We can get you in one if we hurry.”
“Not without you!”
“Tess—it’s women and children first.”
“But after—” My throat closes around the words. There will be no “after” the women and children are loaded aboard the lifeboats. Not enough room.
Alec’s going to die.
Then a familiar face appears amid the throng: George, harried but still kind as he moves through the crowds, urging them to stay calm. His expression changes as he sees me, somehow becoming yet more desperate. “Tess! Why on earth are you still aboard? They told me Myriam was aboard one of the first lifeboats off; why weren’t you with her?”
“I was trying to get the Lisles to the boat deck. Have you seen them?” George shakes his head. Please, please, let Irene have gotten out at least. At least Myriam is safe. “And Alec—here, Alec, this is Myriam’s George. George, this is Alec. Is there no lifeboat for him?”
Alec looks both exasperated and fond. “I told her what ‘women and children first’ means, but she won’t listen.”
George hesitates only for the space of a breath. “There are a few extra lifeboats.”
My heart leaps with unexpected hope. “You mean—”
Stepping closer to us both, George whispers, “They’re collapsibles—emergency use only, so they ought to be launching them any moment. Can’t announce it—we’d cause a stampede, and besides, who the hell can hear over this din any longer—forgive my language, Tess. Both of you, get over there.” He points the way we should go, toward the collapsible lifeboats.
I give Alec a look that means he had better not choose this moment to get noble and self-sacrificing. Although I can see that he’s reluctant to take this chance not everyone will have, he, too, wants to live. He turns to George. “Are you coming with us? To make a try for it?”
“No. It’s my duty to remain aboard until the last—and I shall.” George’s voice remains steady and sure, even as he faces his death.
Fighting back tears, I stand on tiptoe to kiss George on the cheek. His answering smile is uneven. “Won’t you tell Myriam—I’m sorry not to have had more time with her.”
“Of course I will.”
Alec and George shake hands, and though they only just met, I see in the glance that passes between them that they might have been friends given the chance. But George is all out of chances.
Then Alec pulls me away toward the other side of the ship and our best shot at survival. Within moments, George is lost in the thickening crowd.
I can still hear the band playing—it’s “The Blue Danube” now, I think—but the crowd has become larger and louder. Third-class passengers have finally found their way up en masse, but most of them don’t speak English or still don’t understand what to do. Most everyone has their life jackets on now. Although some people are still laughing, the sound of it has become shrill, and there’s crying mixed in too. The chill of the night grows harsher with every minute; the brilliant, cloudless field of stars overhead almost seems to be mocking us in its perfection and serenity. As the slope of the deck deepens, people are increasingly likely to grab onto a railing or another person for support.
It haunts me, the people I see. The Strauses, sitting side by side in deck chairs and holding hands, apparently willing to die as long as they’re together. A frightened little girl, sobbing for her mommy—in the moment before I can stop to help her, a kindly red-haired woman does so, promising to help the child find her mother, though by now she must realize how difficult this will be, if it is even possible. Boys no more than twelve or thirteen, trying to look brave as they stand by their fathers’ sides, apparently already judged too much “men” to be boarded onto lifeboats as children.
Worse are the people I don’t see: the elderly Norwegian ladies from my room. Ned. Irene.
We pass through the ship—running into the first-class lounge, where men in tuxedos continue playing cards, mostly out of bravado. The group in there has become a more motley crew: Women are now smoking cigars, and at least one uniformed waiter for the first-class dining room has donned a top hat he found from somewhere. People are behaving strangely—laughing in the face of deat
h.
The sight of it shakes Alec too, but he doesn’t slow down. “We have to get you to a lifeboat.”
“We both have to get to the lifeboats,” I correct him.
“I can’t do it,” Alec says, though he keeps leading me. “I can’t get on a lifeboat when children are still here dying.”
“Your life isn’t worth less than anyone else’s!” When Alec glances over his shoulder at me, his mournful eyes tell me he doesn’t believe that’s true. Will his guilt for the steward’s death keep him from attempting to survive now? So I try again: “Alec, I need you with me. We’re going to be in a tiny boat on the ocean in the cold, in the dead of night—God only knows when or if help is coming. Don’t make me do it alone!”
Alec doesn’t reply, but he grips my hand more tightly and pulls me in another direction. I hope it’s a good sign.
We make our way past the magnificent grand staircase; one of the cast-iron cupids at the bottom is so tilted now that he seems to have taken flight. The angle of the ship makes running treacherous, but we keep going. As I glance back I see the first rivulets of water begin to trickle over the tile floor below.
Then I remember someone else I haven’t seen. “Your father! We have to go after him.”
“No. Dad’s already chosen to go down with the ship. He said he’d be ashamed to take a seat that could go to a lady.” He hesitates, and I know he’s fighting back a sob, though I can’t think it unmanly to cry when facing the death of a beloved father. “Dad said I should go after you. We—we said our good-byes.”
“Oh, Alec—we can’t leave him—”
“Don’t, Tess. I can’t go through it again. He won’t change his mind. You’re the only one left for me to save.”
My head whirls so that I nearly go into a faint, and I feel as though I might be sick. Is it just fear? Or is it Mikhail’s attack? That seems as though it happened in another lifetime, not mere hours ago.
I simply tighten my fingers around Alec’s. He’s with me. We’ll get aboard a lifeboat. Nothing after that will matter, because we’ll be together.
We burst through the doors farther down the deck. It’s far less crowded here, hardly anybody around but the crew. An officer stands near one of the lifeboat davits, and Alec calls to him, breath gray as fog in the cold air, “We need to get this girl into a lifeboat!”
“Both of us!” I shout, correcting him again.
It doesn’t matter, because the officer shakes his head, and my heart plummets. “The last boat just launched! Hardly seconds ago!”
Oh, God. We run to the side of the ship, as if the man might have lied to us, but of course he told the truth: The last lifeboat within sight is being lowered down and is already a couple of dozen feet below us. The water is closer to the deck—too close now. We’re trapped.
We’re going to die.
Alec and I look at each other, stricken. Then I fling my arms around his neck. As he holds me close, I choke out the words, “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“And I’m proud to stand by your side—no matter what comes.” Tears blurring my vision, I look up at Alec’s face. The tenderness of his expression melts my heart.
He frames my face with his hands as he says, “Tess. Only you could be brave enough to die with me. But I want you to live for me.”
We kiss, as desperate as though we were drowning.
When our lips part, Alec says, “Forgive me.”
Then he picks me up—inhuman strength lifting me from the deck as if I were half flying—and flings me over the railing of the ship, toward water, toward darkness, away from him forever.
Chapter 28
IT FEELS LIKE I FALL FOREVER.
Time slows down, dragging out the horror of every fraction of a second that I tumble through the cold dark. What I see is a mixed-up kaleidoscope of images, each horrifying in its own way: the sleek white side of the ship banging into me as I thud against it on the way down, the small lifeboat as a light-colored teardrop against the dark ocean, Alec’s face above me looking down. I want to reach out to him—I want to catch myself, climb back up, refuse to leave him—but there’s no stopping the fall.
I land hard. Board and bone and oar slam into my back, and my already-whirling head strikes something that makes the world go dim. Cold water sloshes over the side, further soaking my dress, and the chill is so deep and so strong that my marrow aches.
“Watch it, you!” a woman cries as hands shove me roughly against the side of the lifeboat, my back against the canvas. “You like to have drowned us all.”
“Stupid girl!”
“Lay off her, I’d have jumped too if it was me.”
And other cries in languages I don’t know. I try to tell them that I didn’t jump, I was thrown, but the breath’s been knocked out of me. As I try to focus, I see the lifeboat’s mostly filled with women—third-class women like me, to judge from their humble shawls and tatty nightgowns. There are men too, though: a couple of sailors, and one wealthy-looking fellow with a handlebar mustache and a dull, dead look on his face.
But it all fades away too quickly.
When the lifeboat tips precariously to one side, I rouse myself—and only then realize that I blacked out for a moment. I’ve been repeatedly struck and doused with cold water, and while I kept myself going for so long, I can’t go much longer. Nausea overwhelms me—the whacks to my head? Seasickness? I don’t know. But I manage to push myself up on my arms to look around, and what I see makes me cry out in shock.
The Titanic is rising from the waters—the back end of it, I mean. Its lights are still burning despite everything, and so we can see the horror silhouetted against the starry sky. The gigantic propellers are surfacing as the prow of the ship dips down beneath the waves. Though we’re farther from it than I would’ve thought—people onboard are rowing the lifeboat vigorously away from the ship—we’re close enough that I think I can still see Alec, hanging on to the guardrail as the deck slopes out from beneath him.
“Go back!” I shout—or I try to shout. My voice is hardly a croak. “We have to go back for Alec.”
“We’ve got to get clear, miss,” one of the sailors replies. He never stops rowing. “When she goes under, the suction will drag down anything close to her. We’d be pulled down sure as anything.”
I’m shivering so hard that my teeth chatter, and groggily I realize that there are a few inches of near-freezing water in the lifeboat. I’m getting more soaked by the second, and colder, but that doesn’t seem as important as the fact that the lifeboat is apparently sinking too.
Someone else sees it and cries, “We’re taking on water fast!”
“This is a collapsible,” the sailor replies, like that ought to answer everything. Maybe it does. Maybe the lifeboat will eventually collapse and we’ll be dunked into the water to freeze to death, or drown, whichever comes first.
There’s a place just past terror where it turns into calm. I can do nothing to save myself, nothing to save Alec or the others. And least of all can I turn from the terrible sight before my eyes.
The Titanic tilts farther forward, its nose sinking forever beneath the water as the ship rises to stand almost on end. And there’s this tremendous, unearthly sound—the crash of everything and everyone on board sliding forward at once. I imagine the grand first-class lounge with its carved wooden chairs and its crystal chandeliers, all of them falling from place and smashing into so many splinters and shards. My cabin with its humble bunk beds and my bag with all the few possessions I had in the world. That damned lockbox the Lisles made me carry. All of it is crashing down.
“My God,” whispers someone in the lifeboat. None of the rest of us can speak.
The ship’s lights flicker, shining on the still ocean for one moment more. I can see portholes of light underwater. Then they go out. The darkness around us is almost complete.
Then comes the most terrifying roar I’ve ever heard or will ever hear. It’s metal tearing apart. It’
s an earthquake. It’s nothing that seems to belong to this world. Vibration ripples through the water, through my body, as the dark silhouette of the Titanic against the stars suddenly changes direction. The back of the ship crashes down, propellers slicing back down into the water, as the front vanishes forever. For a moment it seems as though the rear of the Titaniccan float on its own, but within seconds it, too, is going down.
“Did it break in two?” I whisper. “How could it?”
“That’s impossible,” snaps the man with the handlebar mustache. “White Star vessels do not break in two.”
Whatever argument we might’ve had about it is silenced that moment, because that’s when we hear the screaming.
One person screaming is a horrible noise, but this is hundreds of people. Maybe a thousand people, all of them screaming at once, screaming for their lives, though there is no way to save them. We’re already more than a quarter of a mile off, but the screaming is so loud that it surrounds us. The women on the boat cover their ears, grimace, and cry. Yet the sailors never stop rowing farther away.
“Stop.” My voice is no more than a whisper now. I hardly have the strength to speak. “Please stop.” There’s no stopping. No saving them. No hiding from what’s happening.
They’re all dying. If they didn’t get out at the last moment, if they never boarded lifeboats—Mrs. Horne. Lady Regina. George. Ned. Layton. Irene.
Alec.
There’s a strange sound beneath the screaming, like the tide coming in. I think it must be the last of the ship sinking underwater. But I can’t tell anymore. I can’t see. I can’t even sit up. It’s as if I am dying too.
Everything after that is strange and distant. I hear someone say, “She’s in shock,” and something stiff is wrapped around me—sailcloth, perhaps, the closest thing to a blanket onboard. As I’m lying in a few inches of cold water, this does little to warm me.
The screaming stops after forever, and yet too quickly.
The only sound is women sobbing and the lifeboat oars slapping into and out of the water in a steady rhythm, over and over.