Authors: Jennifer Donnelly
And then her senses came back, flooding her body with such violent
intensity that her legs gave way and crumpled on the porch steps and she
had to grab the wooden railing to keep herself from falling to the
ground.
Sid stood, hands clenched into fists. He made no move to help her.
"Damn you!" she cried. "Damn you! Damn you!"
He stared at her, saying nothing, then he wiped the tears from his face.
"Freddie said you were dead! The newspapers all said it!"
"I faked my death. I had to. Your husband was going to hang me."
"How could you do it, Sid? How could you let me think you were dead? Me?"
He smiled a hard, bitter smile. "How could you let me think you loved me?"
"I did love you!"
"Is that why you married Lytton? Because you loved me?"
"I had reasons for doing what I did. Reasons you know nothing about."
"I'm sure you did. Comfort. Money. Safety..."
India was on her feet in an instant. She walked the few yards that
separated them, raised her hand, and slapped him as hard as she could.
She almost told him then. Almost told him that she married a man she
despised and endured his rules, his demands, and his cruelties, all to
protect her child. Their child. She almost told him. But she didn't. His
anger was too much. It frightened her. So did her own. Instead she
turned away from him and strode to her horse. She was in the saddle in
an instant, reins in hand.
"You can't ride now," Sid said. "It's getting dark. It's not safe. Wait until morning."
"And do what?" she spat. "Spend the night here? With you? I'll take my chances."
She was about to spur the mare on when Sid said, "You've ruined me by
coming here, do you know that? Ruined my life all over again. I'd found
a measure of peace here. Some small happiness."
India shook her head. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She
couldn't believe any of this. She got down from her horse again and
strode back to him.
"I what, Sid? I what? I ruined your life? I ruined your life?" she
shouted. "What about my life? I was waiting for you! Not knowing where
you were. Not knowing what had happened to you. I found out you were
dead on the streets of Whitechapel from newsboys yelling that your body
had been found in the Thames. From newsboys!"
"It wasn't supposed to happen that way. That fast. The body came up again quickly. Too quickly."
"Oh, well, that's all right, then, isn't it? That explains bloody everything!"
The look in Sid's eyes, the look of fury and pain, softened at her
words and he became uncertain, but his voice did not. "Your grief over
me didn't stop you from marrying Freddie, though, did it? How long did
you mourn me, India? One day? Two?"
"I told you I had my reasons for marrying Freddie," she said.
"Yes, you did. And I told you what they were."
India backed away from him, wounded to her very soul. "Thank God you
did it, you bastard. Thank God you spared me a life with you. With a man
as heartless and cruel as you are."
She climbed back into her saddle. As she did, Sid said, "Don't come back here, India. Keep away from me. Please."
"Don't worry, Sid. There's no chance of that," India said. She looked
down at the reins in her hands, then at him. There were tears on her
own cheeks now. "Do you really hate me so much?" she whispered brokenly.
He shook his head. "No, I don't. I don't hate you at all. That's the whole bloody problem, isn't it? I love you, India. Still."
Seamie stopped dead, placed his hands on his knees, and gasped for
breath. He looked around himself frantically, hoping to spot a
landmark--
a familiar boulder, a gnarled tree, anything. His lungs were screaming for air, but he knew he could not rest.
Willa lay on her back in their tent, thousands of feet above him,
semiconscious, her right leg smashed. The falling boulder had knocked
her off
the couloir. She had fallen a good hundred feet, hitting hard on her
right side, then rolling and sliding another twenty before she was able
to grasp a jutting rock and stop herself.
The fall had taken only seconds, yet to Seamie it had seemed as if it
would never stop. He remembered shouting to her over and over again.
And finally she'd shouted back. She was alive, thank God! He came down
fast, slipped, and nearly lost his footing. "Slow down, you idiot!" he
yelled at himself, knowing that if he fell, too, there would be no one
to help her. No one to help either of them. They would die on the
mountain.
"Jesus Christ, Willa," he said when he got to her. He didn't ask if
she was all right. She wasn't. Her face was covered in blood; there were
long gashes on her head and hands. But they were nothing compared to
her right leg. It lay twisted at a sickening angle to the rest of her
body.
"It's buggered, isn't it?" she said in a ragged voice.
"It's bad," he said.
"How bad?"
He couldn't answer her.
"Seamie, how bad?"
"The bones are through the skin."
She banged her head into the snow. Again and again and again.
"Stop. Stop it, Willa. You can't come apart on me."
"I'll never climb again."
"We're not going to worry about that. Not now. All we're going to worry about now is how to get you off this mountain."
He knew she couldn't do it by herself, and he was afraid to carry her
the rest of the way. They still had to get down the rest of the
couloir, over an icy ridge, and down the snowy northwest corrie. What if
he slipped?
Willa still had the rope coiled over her chest. He knew what to do.
He quickly dug a seat in the snow at the base of the couloir. Then he
tied one end around her waist, the other around his own. His hands were
blue again, the rope was icy and wet, and it took him a long time to tie
the bowlines.
"What are you doing?" she'd asked weakly.
"I'm going to lower you down the couloir."
"Then what?"
"I have no idea. I'll work it out when we get there. Let's get you onto your back."
Willa tried to roll over. The broken bones jostled and ground against
themselves. She screamed. Seamie almost lost his nerve, but didn't. He
couldn't. He had to bully her or they'd never get down.
"Come on, Wills," he said, helping her. "Keep going. Scream if you have to, but keep going. That's a girl."
She did scream, but she got onto her back. He helped her pull her
knees up to her chest and hook her hands behind her thighs. He sat in
the snow seat he'd dug, braced himself with his feet, and began to let
out the rope. The weight of Willa's body took her down the couloir. She
screamed again at every rut and bump. The rope ran out before they
reached the bottom and he had to shout for her to lower her good leg and
dig in with her crampon to keep herself from sliding while he descended
to her, then they repeated the whole process. By the time they got to
the bottom she was gray with pain.
From there it only got worse. He thought about leaving her tied to
the rope, climbing up the ridge by himself, and then pulling her up
after him. She weighed about 125 pounds, though, and he knew there was
no way he could pull up that much dead weight at this altitude, so he
decided to carry her on his back. He made her clasp her hands together
around his neck, then he looped the rope around his shoulders and under
her bottom, making a crude sling. Every time he moved, he jostled the
break again. Gravity pulled on it. Willa was in agony; he knew she was.
Several times he felt her teeth on his back as she bit down to keep from
crying out. And once he felt her grip release around his neck and he
knew she'd blacked out. He'd had to dig in with his feet, grab for her
hands, and shout at her until she'd come around again.
The effort of climbing a ridge at fifteen thousand feet carrying
extra weight was harrowing. Every step took all his strength. He'd had
to pause after each one, trying to breathe, trying to shore up his
strength, before he could take the next one. When they reached the top,
he'd had to sit down for some time before he had the strength to lower
her again, this time to the top of the corrie. From there the slopes
eased and the snow and ice began to give way to rock. Relieved, he
hurried his pace, desperate to get Willa to camp. It was a mistake. He
slid in some scree, stumbled, and fell. Willa, still on his back, fell
with him, banging down on her broken leg. The pain was so bad, she'd
blacked out again. He got up, cursing himself, and half-walked,
half-staggered his way back to camp.
It was nearly evening by the time he got Willa into their tent. He
laid her down on a bed, got a fire started, and got busy cleaning her
wounds. She had a deep gouge on her brow. Another on her palm. The rest
were scrapes. He washed them with melted snow, then poured whisky from a
flask they'd packed into the cuts. It stung, he knew it did.
"How about the leg?" she said, in a voice worn thin by pain.
"I'm getting to it," Seamie replied. He took a clasp knife from his
pocket and cut her trouser leg open. He knew she was watching his face,
so he worked to keep it blank. He had to work hard for he had never seen
jagged bone ends sticking out of a person before. He didn't know what
to do. He thought about trying to set the bones, but it was impossible.
He would never be able to set the edges together properly; she needed a
surgeon for that. He thought about trying to splint them, but he knew
that merely touching the leg would cause her unbearable pain. He finally
decided to douse the fracture with whisky.
"This is going to hurt," he said.
She nodded, then went rigid as he poured the alcohol into the wound.
When she could speak again, she said, "Is it hopeless?"
"I don't know. Perhaps if we could get to a doctor, get it set, you'd have a chance at it healing."
Willa laughed bitterly. "Mombasa's one hundred and fifty miles away.
Nairobi's about the same. I can take my pick, I suppose, since I'll
never make it to either."
"Yes, you will."
"How, Seamie? It's impossible. I can't walk and you can't carry me. Not all the way to Mombasa."
"I'm going to go down to the base camp. Get the porters," Seamie
said. He'd been formulating this plan all the way down the mountain.
"They won't come. They're afraid."
"They will come. I'll offer them all our gear. Compasses, field
glasses, tents, the whole lot. They'll take it. I know they will. They
can get a fortune for it. And in return I'll get them to fashion a
stretcher. We'll put you on it and take turns carrying. When one gets
tired, another can relieve him."
"And you'll walk all the way to Mombasa like that?"
"No, we'll walk to Voi. If we can just make Voi, we can get on the train there and ride the rest of the way to Mombasa."
He quickly set about making her a plate of hard cheese and tinned
sardines, then filled her canteen with water from the stove and set it
by her bed together with a lantern. When he finished, he covered her
with both their sleeping bags.
"I'll be back tomorrow," he said, slinging his own canteen across his chest.
"Seamie, if something happens..."
"Nothing is going to happen, Willa. Nothing."
"But if it does...I just ...I...well, I love you."
He'd seen the fear in her eyes, though she'd done her best to hide
it. He'd knelt beside her, taking her hands in his. "I love you, too.
We'll have the rest of our lives to talk about this, I promise you. Do
you believe me?"
"Yes."
"Good. Rest now. You're going to need all your strength for what's to come."
She nodded. He kissed her and left. It was already seven o'clock and
he was desperate to put as much ground behind him as possible before
nightfall. He half walked, half ran down the mountain. The moon was
almost full and shone brightly, illuminating his way. He had no pack to
weigh him down, no snow or ice to slow his steps. His trip to Antarctica
had made a navigator out of him, and he managed to stay on a
south-southwest track by the stars alone, stopping only a few times to
check his compass.
Shortly after three o'clock in the morning, after he'd been walking
for more than eight hours, he was nearing the place where he thought the
base camp should be. He knew it would be quiet because of the hour, but
he expected to see the light of a fire, to smell its smoke. He thought
he might be greeted by one or two of the porters who'd heard him coming.
Tepili and his men slept lightly, always attuned to the sounds of the
night.
And then he did smell something--something so strong, so foul, that
it doubled him over and made him retch. It was the smell of death, of
human bodies rotting. Seamie grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket and
pressed it over his face. He stumbled on toward the camp, dreading what
he would find.
He saw the tent; it was shredded. A trunk was opened and up-ended.
Boxes and crates were smashed. The entire site had been ransacked.
"Tepili?" he called out. "Tepili, are you there?"
There was no reply, only a low, menacing growl. He looked to his
right; a leopard was standing over what was left of a body, baring his
teeth. Bones and fangs glinted whitely in the moonlight.
"Get out of here!" Seamie shouted. He picked up a rock and threw it
at him. The animal ran. Seamie stumbled through the camp. He found
another body and another. They had arrows in them. Leopards didn't shoot
arrows. The Chagga did, though--poison-tipped ones.
Boedeker had told him the Chagga could be hostile. Tepili had, too.
Their chieftain, Rindi, was not fond of outsiders, Tepili had said. He'd
tolerated the Germans and British at times, fought with them at others.
His son Sina was the same. And it wasn't only whites who angered the
Chagga; they clashed with the Masai, even with members of other Chagga
villages.
Seamie had thought Tepili a bit of an old woman, seeing trouble where there was none, but now he saw that he was right.