Along the Infinite Sea (5 page)

But I remembered how it was. My blood remembered: racing down my limbs, racing up to my brain like a cleansing bath.
Come down to the beach, I've found something,
Charles would say, and we would run hand in hand to the gritty boulder-strewn cove near the lighthouse, where he
might show me an old blue glass bottle that had washed up onshore and surely contained a coded message (it never did), or a mysterious dead fish that must—equally surely—represent an undiscovered species (also never); and once, best of all, there was a bleached white skeleton, half articulated, its grinning skull exactly the size of Charles's spread head. I had thought,
We're in trouble now, someone will find out, someone will sneak into the house and kill us, too, to eliminate the witnesses
; at the same time, I had cast about for the glimpse of wood that must be lying half hidden in the nearby sand, the treasure chest that this skeleton had guarded with his life.

Now, as I stumbled faithfully down the cliff path in Charles's wake, and my eyes so adjusted to the darkness that I began to pick out the white tips of the waves crashing on the beach, the rocks returning the starlight, I wondered what bleached white skeleton he had found for me tonight.

And then the path fell into the sand, and Charles was tugging me through the dunes with such strength that my slippers were sucked away from my feet. We made for the point on the eastern end of the beach, where the sea curled around a finger of cliff and formed a slight cove on the other side. There was just enough shelter from the current for a small boathouse and a launch, which the guests sometimes used to ferry back and forth to the yachts in Cannes or Antibes. I saw the roof now, a gray smear in the starlight. Charles plunged straight toward it, running now. The sand flew from his feet. Just before he ducked through the doorway, he stopped and turned to me.

“You
did
say you nursed in a hospital, right? At the convent? I'm not imagining things?”

“What? Yes, every day, after—”

“Good.” He took my hand and pulled me inside.

There were four of them there, Charles's friends, two of them still in their dinner jackets and waistcoats. An oil lantern sat on the warped old planks of the deck, next to the nervously bobbing launch, spreading just enough light to illuminate the fifth man in the boathouse.

He sat slumped against the wall, and his bare chest was covered in blood. He lifted his head as I came in—the chin had been tucked into the hollow of his clavicle—and he said, in deep German-accented English, much like the voice of Herr von Kleist, only more slurred and amused: “
Thi
s is your great plan, Créouville?”

3.

But his chest wasn't injured. As I cried out and fell to my knees at his side, I saw that he was holding a thick white wad to his thigh, around which a makeshift tourniquet had already been applied, and that the white wad—a shirt, I determined—was rapidly filling with blood, like the discarded red shirts next to his knee.

“Actually, it seems to be getting better,” he said.

I adjusted the tourniquet—it was too loose—and lifted away the shirt. A round wound welled instantly with blood. I said, incredulous: “But it's a—”

“Gunshot,” he said.

I pressed the shirt back into the wound and called for whisky.

“I like the way you think,” said the wounded man.

“It's not to drink. It's to clean the wound. How long ago did this happen?”

“About twenty minutes. Right, boys?”

There was a general murmur of agreement, and a bottle appeared next to my hand. Gin, not whisky. I lifted away the shirt. The flow of blood had already slowed. “This will sting,” I said, and I tilted the bottle to allow a stream of gin on the torn flesh.

I was expecting a howl, but the man only grunted and gripped the side of the leg. “He needs a doctor, as quickly as possible,” I said to the men. “Has someone telephoned Dr. Duchamps?”

There was no reply. I put my fingers under the injured man's chin and peered into his eyes. His pupils were dilated, but not severely; he
met my gaze and followed me as I turned my face from one side to the other. I glanced back at Charles. “Well? Doctor? Is he on his way?”

Charles crouched next to me. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Too much fuss. There's someone meeting you on the ship.”

“Ship? What ship?”

The injured man said, “My ship.”

“You're going with him,” said Charles. “You can still drive the launch, can't you?”

“What?”

“You're the only one who can do it. The rest of us have to stay here.”

“What? Why?”

“Cover,” said the injured man, though his gritted teeth.

I looked back down at the wound, which was now only seeping. Probably the bullet had only nicked the femoral artery, otherwise he would have been dead by now. He was a large man—not as large as Herr von Kleist, but larger than my brother—and he had plenty of blood to spare. Still, it was a close thing. My brain was sharp, but my fingers were trembling as I pressed the shirt back down. Another fraction of an inch. My God. “I don't have the slightest idea what you mean,” I said, “and why not one of you perfectly able-bodied men can help me get this man to safety, but we don't have a minute to waste arguing. Give him a fresh shirt. If he can hold it to his leg himself, I can take him to his damned yacht. It
is
a yacht, isn't it?”

“Yes, Mademoiselle,” the man said humbly.

“Of course it is. And if the police catch up with us, what am I to say?”

“That you know nothing about it, of course.”

I took the fresh shirt from Charles's hand and replaced the old; I took the man's large limp hand and pressed it to the makeshift bandage. “I'll take the gin. Charles, you put him in the launch.”

“You see?” said Charles. “I told you she was a sport.”

4.

On the launch, I took pity on the man and gave him the bottle of gin, while I steered us around the tip of the Cap d'Antibes and west toward Cannes, where his yacht was apparently moored. He took a grateful swig and tilted his head to the stars. The lantern sat at the bottom of the boat, so as not to be visible from shore.

“You are very beautiful,” he said.

“Stop. You're
not
flirting with me, please. You came three millimeters away from death just now.” The draft was cool and salty; it stung my cheeks, or maybe I was only blushing.

“No, I am not flirting. But you
are
beautiful. A statement of fact.”

I peered into the dark sea, seeking out the distant harbor lights, smaller than stars on the horizon. The water was calm tonight, only a hint of chop. As if God himself were watching over this man.

“Am I allowed to ask your name?” I said.

He hesitated. “Stefan.”

“Stefan. Is that your real name?”

“If you call me Stefan, Mademoiselle, I will answer you.”

“I see. And what sort of trouble gets a nice man shot in the middle of a night like this, so he can't see a doctor onshore? Argument at the casino? Is the other man perhaps dead?”

“No, it was not an argument in the casino.”

He tilted the bottle back to his lips. I thought, I must keep him talking. He has to keep talking, to stay conscious. “And the other man?”

“Hmm. Do you really wish to know this, Mademoiselle?”

“Oh, priceless. I'm harboring a criminal fugitive.”

“Do not worry about that. You will be handsomely rewarded.”

“I don't want to be
rewarded
. I want you to live.”

He didn't reply, and I glanced back to make sure he hadn't fainted. I wouldn't have blamed him, lighter as he was of a pint or two of good red blood. But his eyes were open, each one containing a slim gold
reflection of the lantern, and they were trained on me with an expression of profound . . . something.

I was about to ask him another question, but he spoke first.

“Where did you learn to treat a wound from a gun, Mademoiselle de Créouville?”

“I've never even seen a wound from a gun. But the sisters ran a charity hospital, and the men from the village got in regular brawls. Sometimes with knives.”

“The sisters? You are a nun?”

“No. I was at a convent school. I've only just escaped. Anyway, they made us all work in the charity hospital, because of Christ tending the feet of the poor. Hold on!” We hit a series of brisk chops, the wake of some unseen vessel plowing through the night sea nearby. Stefan grunted, and when the water calmed and I could relax my attention to the wheel, I glanced back again to see that his face was quite pale.

He spoke, however, without inflection. “You have a knack for it, I think. You did not scream at the blood, as most girls would. As I think most men might.”

“I have a brother. I've seen blood before.”

“Ah, the dashing mademoiselle. You tend wounds. You drive a boat fearlessly through the dark. What sort of sister is this for my friend Créouville? He said nothing about you before.”

“He has successfully ignored me for the past half decade, since we were sent back to France after our mother died.”

“I am sorry to hear about this.”

I tightened my hands on the wheel and stared ahead. The pinpricks were growing larger now, more recognizably human. I hardly ever ventured into Cannes, and certainly not by myself, but I'd passed the harbor enough to know its geography. “Where is your ship moored?” I asked.

He muttered something, and I looked back over my shoulder. His eyes were half closed, his back slumped.

“Stefan!” I said sharply.

He made a rolling motion and braced his hand on the side of the launch. His head snapped up. “So sorry. You were saying?”

I couldn't leave the wheel; I couldn't check his pulse, his skin, the state of his wound. A sliver of panic penetrated my chest: the unreality of this moment, of the warm salt wind on my face, of the starlight and the man bleeding in the stern of my father's old wooden launch. Half an hour ago, I had been lying on a garden wall. “Stefan, you've got to concentrate,” I said, but I really meant myself. Annabelle, you've got to concentrate. “Stefan. Listen to me. You've got to stay awake.”

His gaze came to a stop on mine. “Yes. Right you are.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I am bloody miserable, Mademoiselle. My leg hurts like the devil and my head is a little sick. But at least I am bloody miserable with
you
.”

I faced the water again and turned up the throttle. “Very good. You're flirting again, that's a good sign. Now, tell me. Where is your ship moored? This side of the harbor, or the other?”

“Not the harbor. The Ile Sainte-Marguerite. The Plateau du Milieu, on the south side, between the islands.”

I looked to the left, where a few lights clustered atop the thin line between black water and blacker sky. There wasn't much on Sainte-Marguerite, only forest and the old Fort Royal. But a ship moored in the protected channel between Sainte-Marguerite and the Île Saint-Honorat—and many did moor there; it was a popular spot in the summer—would not be visible from the mainland.

“Hold on,” I said, and I began a sweeping turn to the left, to round the eastern point of the island. The launch angled obediently, and Stefan caught himself on the edge. The lantern slid across the deck. He stuck out his foot to stop its progress just as the boat hit a chop and heeled. Stefan swore.

“All right?” I said.

“Yes, damn it.”

I could tell from the bite in his words—or rather the lack of bite, the dissonance of the words themselves from the tone in which he said
them—that he was slipping again, that he was fighting the black curtain. We had to reach this ship of his, the faster the better, and yet the faster we went the harder we hit the current. And I could not see properly. I was guided only by the pinprick lights and my own instinct for this stretch of coast.

“Just hurry,” said Stefan, blurry now, and I curled around the point and straightened out, so that the Plateau de Milieu lay before me, studded with perhaps a dozen boats tugging softly at their moorings. I glanced back at Stefan to see how he had weathered the turn.

“The western end,” he told me, gripping the side of the boat hard with his left hand while his right held the wadded-up white shirt against his wound. Someone had sacrificed his dinner jacket over Stefan's shoulders, to protect that bare and bloody chest from the salt draft and the possibility of shock, and I thought I saw a few dark specks on the sleek white wool. But that was always the problem about blood. It traveled easily, like a germ, infecting its surroundings with messy promiscuity. I turned to face the sleeping vessels ahead, an impossible obstacle course of boats and mooring lines, and I thought, We have got to get that tourniquet off soon, or they will have to remove the leg.

But at least I could see a little better now, in the glow of the boat lights, and I pushed the throttle higher. The old engine opened its throat and roared. A curse floated out across the water behind us, as I zigzagged delicately around the mooring lines.

“I see you are an expert,” said Stefan. “This is reassuring.”

“Which one is yours?”

“You can't see it yet. Just a moment.” We rounded another boat, a pretty sloop of perhaps fifty feet, and the rest of the passage opened out before us, nearly empty. Stefan said, with effort: “To the right, the last one.”

“What, the great big one?” I pointed.

“Yes, Mademoiselle. The great big one.”

I opened the throttle as far as it could go. We skipped across the water like a smooth, round stone, like when Charles and I were children
and left to ourselves, and we would take the boat as fast as it could go and scream with joy in the briny wind, because when you were a child you didn't know that boats sometimes crashed and people sometimes drowned. That vital young men were shot and sometimes bled to death.