The Daughters of Mars: A Novel Read online

  But the Archimedes had found its desired angle of glide and now entered the water fast and smoothly. It left steam and a mist of coal in the air. The wave, called the sergeant with the paddle. Hold on.

  The raft dipped by one of its corners, then conceded itself towards the ship’s suction. The vanished ship sought to drag them away by the legs. But there was a wave, high enough to be called surf, a strong swell at a beach. Sally held Honora by one arm. The wave did not break. They rose on it and a beam of wood broke down on the raft and bruised her shoulder but then swept away quickly. It lowered and pitched them and moved on with a tolerable smoothness to meet the floating faces of the Archimedes’s other orphans further out.

  Now that the Archimedes had orphaned them, there was a hubbub of conversation across the face of the water, echoing as in a cathedral, spiked here and there by howls of grief or fear or pain and desperate yells of insistent advice. Many voices rose in heated expressions of opinion. It seemed perhaps a thousand spoke at once. So many in the water? So much life thrown out of the Archimedes and fretfully determined to deal with the sea. A mule swam by with its glazed eye fixed on Sally. It found no succor there and blundered on. An Irish sergeant swam up with his chevrons showing below the armpit of the life preserver. He was a large, sandy-haired fellow with a sunny unpreparedness to let harm befall him and was hauling another man. He found one of the raft’s loops with his free hand. Thank Christ, he said as he attached himself to the rope. The soldier he held on to with a meaty fist had a spike of steel protruding from his face below his forehead. A man beside Honora said, Let him go up on top, Sarge. Your man there’s in a bad way.

  The feared Inniskilling Fusiliers. Feared by the nurses, anyhow—perhaps without necessity. For now the sea had taken all the male boast out of them. So the sergeant rose up into the raft and pulled the boy with the lump of steel for a face after him and—Sally supposed—laid the young man beside Mitchie. Nurse, the sergeant said, acknowledging Naomi like a gent. They saw an upright lifeboat nearby and Sally envied it its substance. But it was a target now for many swimmers who were dragged aboard until its leeboard was so narrow that the yearning of those who grabbed its sides tipped it over and hurled all in it back into the sea. Those now in the water gamely set themselves to get it the right way up again. They would by great heaving from sailors and nurses and soldiers manage it at last, and climb back in. But fewer chose to do that. Some had been stunned by the capsize. Some—whacked on the head by the gunwales—were floating away.

  From here advice could only be shouted. The amiable sergeant yelled to the population of the raft not to make the same mistake. There was after all a notice about capacity on the small rubber bulwarks and they had reached it. See there now, said the sergeant—who was their self-chosen captain—in his glottal voice. We can’t take on so many we go under. False mercy, you see. Defeats the purpose. We can change places later perhaps and those in the water have spells up here.

  Honora—hanging by her rope—began to pray. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

  The sergeant said, Keep at it, girl. That and a passing steamer will get us to dry land.

  She sounded as businesslike with her religion as with her sewing long ago. Do you know contrition, Sal? she asked. We should make our acts of contrition. O my God, I am heartily sorry . . .

  And who’s heartily sorry the Archimedes sank? asked Sally with a waterlogged fury she could not herself explain.

  A horse with bulging eyes came swimming up, the sort they might use to pull cannon. It floundered and wallowed—floundering being two-thirds of what it did. Holding on to its mane and trailing and riding it in so far as it would let her was that little prune of a woman Rosanna Nettice. Her drenched face—when Sally could see and judge it—was set. It no longer looked an indefinite thing as it had in Egypt and in the Archimedes’s wards. Nettice half-rode, half-clung to the mane with small, unrelenting hands. She seemed not to notice them, and Slattery yelled, Hey, Nettice! Stick to it like a plaster! And in fact Nettice looked more suited to the horse than they were to the raft. Her blue lips were tight but she seemed in charge of the terror-stricken beast. It was revealed by the horse’s plunging that she wore on her lower body a pair of soldier’s drawers. She looked as though she would ride illimitably past even though they were calling to her—except that the horse could not overtake the drift of the raft. The animal galloped and weltered but had no traction. The splashes created a sort of surf as it tried to renew its capacity to go forward by plunging harder. It was an honest horse for a hill but now began to scream and sink. The sound was horrifying and pitched Nettice into the water. She wore no life preserver and seemed all the more a mere fragment.

  Come, Nettice, yelled Sally. And Nettice swam quite functionally to the edge of the raft to be gathered in one-armed and attached to the rope that already held Slattery and her. Now there were eight people in the raft and sometimes a dozen hangers-on suspended in sea.

  Are you hurt? Sally asked Nettice. But Nettice needed to wait for breath.

  I got sucked down, she said, her lips beginning to shiver a little. I was very deep and gone. I was very deep.

  She paused for the breath she had not yet fully got back after her long fall through the layers of the sea.

  I was beyond what you could believe I could ever come up from. The horse was down there. It came up underneath me. It tangled its mane in my hand. It got beneath me and brought me up here to you. It was an instrument of God.

  Some yards off, the horse was laboring and still protesting.

  Save it, poor beast! called Nettice. It labored away and turned to give them one last flash of a panicked, unexpectant eye. Its neck sank and the nostrils tried to hold their place above the sea. It reached a point—fifty yards away or more—where its hindquarters began to drag it down backwards. So it went under, whinnying until choked off.

  It was God’s will for you, Nettice, said Slattery crazily.

  But Nettice howled for the loss of her pony. The suck of water was now what Sally heard above all. The hollow cries of others seemed to disperse somewhat as all the parties to the Archimedes’s disaster drifted further apart.

  • • •

  An unmeasured time passed in the water. Naomi was hushed, and reassured Mitchie still, and Honora chattered from an instinct that while she was full of talk she could not be consumed by the sea. The boy with the shrapnel spike cried out once and again. But those things were to be expected. What was not expected was that a soldier or sailor secure on the loops of rope would let go as if he had seen a better prospect nearby. The sergeant yelled after them but they were no longer regimental enough for him to stop them.

  Where are all the destroyers and troopships and such? Sally heard Naomi ask. We see them all the time when things are normal.

  The sergeant said, It may be they’re too frightened to come near. The U-boat, you understand.

  No one tried to paddle with that little plank. Where would they paddle to? They were on a sea lane, were they not? They were on a sea that was all sea lane.

  Patience, said Mitchie so clearly. Do we have water on this float, Nurse Durance?

  No, Matron, Naomi admitted.

  Mitchie should be raging with uncontained, overflowing pain.

  Well, said Mitchie, one wouldn’t expect . . .

  Naomi leaned over the side of the raft. She whispered to Sally. You come up here and I’ll go down there.

  Not yet, said Sally. I’m happy, she lied.

  She chose not to be up there with Mitchie’s great damage and be powerless before it. Honora—offered the same—said, Don’t know if I could manage it without showing the world my fat arse.

  The sergeant laughed but without prurience. The other soldier with the younger boy, the original occupants, were utterly silent.

  After a further interval, Naomi leaned over the side and confided to her sister that Mitchie’s pelvis was intact. The upper thighs though—hopeless. Compound fractures both. I�
�ve got a soldier’s belt on one and some of my blouse on the other.

  Sally leaned her forehead against the raft’s black rubber flank while Naomi began to lift Nettice, who was vulnerable for lack of a preserver. Nettice was light to lift and of surprising agility. The sergeant did not help but not out of ill will. After so much presence and command he had gone suddenly silent. The high intoxication of his reaching the raft waned in him. He lost his powers of command as awful surprise and cold entered him.

  When Nettice disappeared aboard Sally thought it grew suddenly cold in the water. Ridiculous to think such a thing. But you could believe the little woman—in rising to the deck of the raft—had shed off upon them the iciness of the depth she’d been to. In the surf back home, all you did was cry to your sister or to young Macallister, Getting cold! Going in! Into the golden strand where the sun was warm honey on quivering shoulders. She’d half-imagined till now that she had the same choice here. But now she knew by a reflection of her own coldness in Honora’s blue lips that she didn’t. One of the soldiers along the loops of ropes began to sing raggedly.

  Hail, Queen of heaven, the ocean star,

  Guide of the wanderer here below . . .

  Through lack of memory or life force he ceased.

  Thank Christ, yelled someone from the far side of the raft. Don’t need that papist shite!

  For the Inniskilling Fusiliers, it was known, were from a divided Ireland—though the sea was willing to accommodate them all equally.

  She could not separate herself from the cold. It seemed determined to be her. The idea of being incarnate cold put her in a panic she was hard-pressed to manage. She felt cheated that—with all it was cracked up to be—the Mediterranean could prove so bitter in the early or midsummer. Best not to say a word about it, though the useless words about the shivers pressed against her lower lip like a sneeze. Nor did she think that climbing aboard would help. She believed it would exhaust her more than give her warmth.

  Are we all here then? called Naomi. She made a graceful reconnaissance over the side. No doubt over all four sides. She was the authority. Yes, Naomi could be heard, checking the unseen side of the raft. Five handsome soldiers and a sailor this side. Are we holding on? Are we downhearted, boys?

  That was the stupid thing the troops always called: Are we downhearted? As their troop ships took them off to get minced.

  Two of them at least replied. We’re still having a committee meeting on the downhearted business, Nurse.

  Ragged half-witticisms.

  You’ve got the tay going there, have you, Miss? And, What time’s the shuffleboard start?

  A copper tank—a cube of about a yard each way—came cruising unevenly along. Two men held on by some sort of railing soldered to two of its sides. It seemed likely to roll at any encouragement but was kept steady by its two passengers’ life jackets.

  Holding one of its handles was Sergeant Kiernan and, grabbing the other, an orderly whom Sally had seen but whose name she did not know. They were twinned. Each relied on the other to keep their cube steady.

  Honora called to him. She seemed pleased to be able to make her complaint in person. This is nothing like what you told us, Sergeant Kiernan. All that Greek god claptrap. Never this cold at Clifton Gardens!

  Kiernan was actually smiling! Keep angry with me, Nurse, he suggested. Angry people have a lot of staying power.

  He made the water more habitable. A sort of hope floated up with him and raised the temperature for the moment.

  He asked who was aboard and Naomi told him. Two wounded men. And Sister Nettice. And our three soldiers here.

  Naomi—not quite in Sally’s line of sight from her position in the water—was doing a census for Kiernan. Apparently she inspected the young man with a steel fragment now.

  This young fellow . . . he’s dead, I’m afraid.

  The man’s sergeant roused himself, combating the decree. Are you right sure of that, Miss? he asked, sounding half hostile.

  Feel the pulse, Naomi suggested. There is none.

  Oh, Jamie, said the sergeant, doing his own assessment. Oh, Jamie.

  Ease him down then, said Kiernan. That’s my suggestion.

  Yes, said Naomi. I’ll take his life preserver first.

  “He will swallow up death in victory,” intoned the sergeant in a grievous voice, “and the Lord God will wipe away tears . . .” He’s my fookin’ nephew.

  What would you like me to do then? asked Naomi.

  Let him go, said the sergeant with resignation. Let him go.

  They could feel the jolting of Naomi and perhaps the sergeant dealing with the body. Naomi persuaded him to help her turn it over the rubber gunnels. A young body—but the face erased by a wedge of steel deck. Naomi and the sergeant operated on the reverent principle that he should not be simply dumped. Soldiers who knew him and who hung from the raft helped his descent into the sea. There for a number of consolatory seconds he floated, upright, face down, arms out. He waited until a decent space developed between him and the raft to raise his lower body and float in the posture of death. Then he gave up the surface and fell from sight. There was more discussion between Naomi and Kiernan. The ice now forming in Sally’s brain prevented her from grasping what was said. A delirious boy from further down the side of the raft was lifted aboard and Kiernan and his orderly abandoned their copper cube and took his place on the ropes.

  Chafe him a bit, Miss, one of his friends called. He hit his head when we jumped.

  They could feel rather than see Naomi rubbing the boy’s upper body as Mitchie, in shock, murmured half musically, “Wrap me up with my stockwhip and blanket, and bury me deep down below . . .”

  Naomi was so busy and so much in command. She leaned over the squat rubber bulwark and said, Sally, we’ll change places now.

  Sally desired it above all. But, No, she said, furious. Honora should go!

  Come on now, said Naomi, with a commanding testiness. This isn’t a game of tea parties.

  I’m here for good, said Honora, with stark blue-green eyes and clinging to her loop of rope. It was her pony or even her parent.

  Honora, Sally insisted. And so Honora was hauled aboard and chafed. But the rubberized sides of the raft now threatened by a squeak to fold it up like a closed book, and so Naomi slid into the water, her bare feet pointed to make the entry as accommodating as it could be to everyone around the craft. There was no gasp from her, no sense of the shock of the sea.

  So, are all you chaps awake? she asked after shaking the water from her hair. Their wakefulness had become her business.

  Around the raft there were strange and weary cries. Yes, Nurse. Yes, Nurse. They sounded so much like a ward that they evoked the idea in Sally of the steel plates of the Archimedes and its decks crowded with cots. There was in their voice the expectation of orderlies arriving with trays of cocoa.

  To Sally, her sister seemed above nature. Naomi conversed with Kiernan in tongues Sally could no longer grasp. They made their way around the raft to investigate the state of its passengers. On the raft, Matron Mitchie began singing again—this time in a finer contralto:

  They don’t plant potatoes, nor barley, or wheat

  But there’s gangs of them diggin’ for gold in the street . . .

  But for all that I found there I’d much rather be . . .

  Once she had made the mountains run down to the sea, a few soldiers gave her a raggedy cheer.

  Oh, God, she groaned artlessly.

  Kiernan—floating free of the raft—frowned as he surveyed Sally. He reached out with the sort of force allowed only here and lifted her into closer connection with the rope loop. Now, don’t daydream, Nurse Durance. The current would love to take daydreamers. You should be atop, you know.

  He turned in the water to see if Naomi was in reach to consult. There was no doubt at all that Naomi must be party to decisions. And it was not many seconds later that—as if to confirm Kiernan’s adage about daydreaming—a soldier simply let go o
f the side of the raft. He floated away a little with his head back and his face skywards. What are you doing? she heard Naomi call to him.

  I’m just . . . he called. See!

  He half raised a finger to the sky. That other one . . .

  No! Back here! Naomi called. But not even she had the strength to retrieve him.

  Indeed, there were other rafts but removed now by hundreds of yards from them. An upright boat could be seen—but too far away. Another—upside down—was further removed still.

  There is no other one than this one, called Kiernan. Come back!

  No, the other one, he called out in cheery exhaustion.

  Come back now, Ernie, one of his fellow soldiers called. But the current cooperated with the man’s intention. He spun in the water. His face grew smaller and it had a mutinous serenity on it. He laid his head back and his naked feet rose. He adopted the posture of resignation to the waters.

  Some wisdom prevented even the overactive Kiernan from trying to fetch him. Dear God, Naomi said. It’s starting, is it?

  She cried loudly, We’re all staying here. There is no other boat for us. Just this one.

  No one answered directly except that some communal discontent at her edict came out in groans. They speculated about the chances of something warmer and more mothering.

  In the raft Mitchie berserkly said, I don’t know where I’ve been, but I’m pleased to be home again.

  A large gray ship appeared and was seen first by Honora. In the north, she called out. Yes. The north.

  Leaning back a little way and her flesh blazing with ice, she could see the ship revealed by a swell. The men shouted and shrilled and whistled, and she bayed too. But it was set on finding its way to deliver more battalions to that terrible shore. Too busy delivering the dead to find the living.

  Bastards! yelled one of the Ulster men.

  Language, called Kiernan as if the rules here weren’t different.

  Go to hell, roared the Ulsterman back. When I’m dictated to by a fookin’ colonial . . .

  But he suddenly ran out of steam.