Three Fates (2 page)

Bad choice, as his temporary partner had broken another primary rule. Never steal what isn’t easily, discreetly fenced. Greed had blinded old Two-Pint Monk, Felix thought with a sigh as he let himself into the Wyley stateroom. What had the man been thinking, laying sticky fingers on a diamond-and-sapphire necklace? Then behaving like a bloody amateur by getting drunk as a sailor—on his usual two pints of lager—and bragging over it.

Well, Two-Pint would do his bragging in jail now, though there’d be no lager to loosen his idiot tongue. But the bastard had chirped like the stool pigeon he was and given Felix’s name to the coppers.

It had seemed best to take a nice ocean voyage, and what better place to get lost than on a ship as big as a damn city?

He’d been a bit concerned about the war in Europe, and the murmurs about the Germans stalking the seas had given him some pause. But they were such vague, distant threats. The New York police and the idea of a long stretch behind bars were much more personal and immediate problems.

In any case, he couldn’t believe a grand ship like the
Lusitania
would cross if there was any real danger. Not with all those wealthy people on board. It was a civilian vessel after all, and he was sure the Germans had better things to do than threaten a luxury liner, especially when there was a large complement of American citizens on board.

He’d been lucky indeed to have snagged a ticket, to have lost himself among all the passengers with the cops two steps behind him and closing.

But he’d had to leave quickly, and had spent nearly all his wherewithal for the ticket.

Certainly there were opportunities galore to pluck a bit of this, a bit of that on such a fine, luxurious vessel filled with such fine, luxurious people.

Cash would be best, of course, for cash was never the wrong size or the wrong color.

Inside the stateroom, he let out a low whistle. Imagine it, he thought, taking a moment to dream. Just imagine traveling in such style.

He knew less about the architecture and design of where he was standing than a flea knew about the breed of dog it bit. But he knew it was choice.

The sitting room was larger than the whole of his third-class accommodations, and the bedroom beyond a wonder.

Those who slept here knew nothing about the cramped space, the dark corners and the smells of third class. He didn’t begrudge them their advantages. After all, if there weren’t people who lived high, he’d have no one to steal from, would he?

Still, he couldn’t waste time gawking and dreaming. It was already a few minutes before three, and if the Wyleys were true to form, the woman would wander back before four for her afternoon nap.

He had delicate hands and was careful to disturb little as he searched for spare cash. Big bucks, he figured, they’d leave in the purser’s keeping. But fine ladies and gentlemen enjoyed having a roll of bills close at hand for flashing.

He found an envelope already marked STEWARD and, grinning, ripped it open to find crisp dollar bills in a generous tip. He tucked it in the trouser pocket of his borrowed uniform.

Within ten minutes, he’d found and claimed nearly a hundred fifty dollars and a pair of nice garnet earbobs left carelessly in a silk evening purse.

He didn’t touch the jewelry cases—the man’s or the woman’s. That was asking for trouble. But as he sifted neatly through socks and drawers, his fingers brushed over a solid lump wrapped in velvet cloth.

Lips pursed, Felix gave in to curiosity and spread open the cloth.

He didn’t know anything about art, but he recognized pure silver when he had his hands on it. The lady—for it was a woman—was small enough to fit in his palm. She held some sort of spindle, he supposed it was, and was garbed in a kind of robe.

She had a lovely face and form. Fetching, he would have said, though she looked a bit too cool and calculating for his personal taste in females.

He preferred them a bit slow of wit and cheerful of disposition.

Tucked in with her was a paper with a name and address, and the scrawled notation:
Contact for second Fate.

Felix pondered over it, committed the note to memory out of habit. It could be another chicken for plucking once he was in London.

He started to wrap her again, replace her where he’d found her, but he just stood there turning her over and over in his hands. Throughout his long career as a thief, he’d never once allowed himself to envy, to crave, to want an object for himself.

What was taken was always a means to an end, and nothing more. But Felix Greenfield, lately of Hell’s Kitchen and bound for the alleyways and tenements of London, stood in the plush cabin on the grand ship with the Irish coast even now in view out the windows, and wanted the small silver woman for his own.

She was so . . . pretty. And fit so well in his hand with the metal already warming against his palm. Such a little thing. Who would miss her?

“Don’t be stupid,” he muttered, wrapping her in velvet again. “Take the money, mate, and move along.”

Before he could replace her, he heard what he thought was a peal of thunder. The floor beneath his feet seemed to shudder. Nearly losing his balance as the ship shook side to side, he stumbled toward the door, the velvet-cloaked statue still in his hand.

Without thinking, he jammed it into his trouser pocket, spilled out into the corridor as the floor rose under him.

There was a sound now, not like thunder, but like a great hammer flung down from heaven to strike the ship.

Felix ran for his life.

And running, he raced into madness.

The forward part of the ship dipped sharply and had him tumbling down the corridor like dice in a cup. He could hear shouting and the pounding of feet. And he tasted blood in his mouth, seconds before it went dark.

His first wild thought was, Iceberg! as he remembered what had befallen the great
Titanic.
But surely in the broad light of a spring afternoon, so close to the Irish coast, such a thing wasn’t possible.

He never thought of the Germans. He never thought of war.

He scrambled up, slamming into walls in the pitch black of the corridor, stumbling over his own feet and the stairs, and spilled out on deck with a flood of others. Already lifeboats were being launched and there were cries of terror along with shouted orders for women and children to board them.

How bad was it? he wondered frantically. How bad could it be when he could see the shimmering green of the coastline? Even as he tried to calm himself, the ship pitched again, and one of the lowering lifeboats upended. Its screaming passengers were hurled into the sea.

He saw a mass of faces—some torn, some scalded, all horrified. There were piles of debris on deck, and passengers—bleeding, screaming—trapped under it. Some, he saw with dull shock, were already beyond screams.

And there on the listing desk of the great ship, Felix smelled what he’d often smelled in Hell’s Kitchen.

He smelled death.

Women clutched children, babies, and wept or prayed. Men ran in panic, or fought madly to drag the injured clear of debris.

Through the chaos stewards and stewardesses hurried, passing out life jackets with a kind of steady calm. They might have been handing out teacups, he thought, until one rushed by him.

“Go on, man! Do your job! See to the passengers.”

It took Felix one blank moment before he remembered he was still wearing the stolen steward’s uniform. And another before he understood, truly understood, they were sinking.

Fuck me, he thought, standing in the middle of the screams and prayers. We’re dying.

There were shouts from the water, desperate cries for help. Felix fought his way to the rail and, looking down, saw bodies floating, people floundering in debris-strewn water. People drowning in it.

He saw another lifeboat being launched, wondered if he could somehow make the leap into it and save himself. He struggled to pull himself to a higher point, to gain ground was all he could think. To stay on his feet until he could hurl himself into a lifeboat and survive.

He saw a well-dressed man take off his own life jacket and put it around a weeping woman.

So the rich could be heroes, he thought. They could afford to be. He’d sooner be alive.

The deck tilted again, sent him sliding along with countless others toward the mouth of the sea. He shot out a hand, managed to grab the rail with his clever thief’s fingers and cling. And his free hand closed, as if by magic, over a life jacket as it went tumbling by.

Muttering wild prayers of thanks, he started to strap it on. It was a sign, he thought with his heart and eyes wheeling wild, a sign from God that he was meant to survive this.

As his shaking fingers fumbled with the jacket, he saw the woman wedged between upturned deck chairs. And the child, the small, angelic face of the child she clutched against her. She wasn’t weeping. She wasn’t screaming. She simply held and rocked the little boy as if lulling him into his afternoon nap.

“Mary, mother of God.” And cursing himself for a fool, Felix crawled across the pitched deck. He dragged and heaved at the chairs that pinned her down.

“I’ve hurt my leg.” She continued to stroke her child’s hair, and the rings on her fingers sparkled in the strong spring sunlight. Though her voice was calm, her eyes were huge, glazed with shock and pain, and the terror Felix felt galloped inside his own chest.

“I don’t think I can walk. Will you take my baby? Please, take my little boy to a lifeboat. See him safe.”

He had one moment, one heartbeat to choose. And while the world went to hell around them, the child smiled.

“Put this on yourself, missus, and hold tight to the boy.”

“We’ll put it on my son.”

“It’s too big for him. It won’t help him.”

“I’ve lost my husband.” She spoke in those clear, cultured tones, and though her eyes were glassy, they stayed level on his as Felix pushed her arms through the life jacket. “He fell over the rail. I fear he’s dead.”

“You’re not, are you? Neither is the boy.” He could smell the child—powder, youth, innocence—through the stench of panic and death. “What’s his name?”

“Name? He’s Steven. Steven Edward Cunningham, the Third.”

“Let’s get you and Steven Edward Cunningham, the Third, to a lifeboat.”

“We’re sinking.”

“That’s the God’s truth.” He dragged her, trying once more to reach the high side of the ship.

He crawled, clawed his way over the wet and rising deck.

“Hold on tight to Mama, Steven,” he heard her say. Then she crawled and clawed with him while terror raged around them.

“Don’t be frightened.” She crooned it, though her breath was coming fast with the effort. Her heavy skirts sloshed in the water, and blood smeared over the glinting stones on her fingers. “You have to be brave. Don’t let go of Mama, no matter what.”

He could see the boy, no more than three, cling like a monkey to his mother’s neck. Watching her face, Felix thought as he strained for another inch of height, as if all the answers in all the world were printed on it.

Deck chairs, tables, God knew what, rained down from the deck above. He dragged her another inch, another, a foot. “Just a little farther.” He gasped it out, without any idea if it were true.

Something struck him hard in the back. And his hold on her slipped.

“Missus!” he shouted, grabbed blindly, but caught only the pretty silk sleeve of her dress. As it ripped, he stared at her helplessly.

“God bless you,” she managed and, wrapping both arms tight around her son, slid over the edge of the world into the water.

He barely had time to curse before the deck heaved and he pitched in after her.

The cold, the sheer brutality of it, stole his breath. Blind, already going numb with shock, he kicked wildly, clawing for the surface as he’d clawed for the deck. When he broke through, gasped in that first gulp of air, he found he’d plunged into a hell worse than any he’d imagined.

Dead were all around him. He was jammed into an island of bobbing, staring white faces, of screams from the drowning. The water was strewn with planks and chairs, wrecked lifeboats and crates. His limbs were already stiff with cold when he struggled to heave as much of his body as possible onto a crate and out of the freezing water.

And what he saw was worse. There were hundreds of bodies floating in the still sparkling sunlight. While his stomach heaved out the sea he’d swallowed, he floundered in the direction of a waterlogged lifeboat.

The swell, somehow gentle, tore at the island and spread death over the sea, and dragged him, with merciless hands, away from the lifeboat.

The great ship, the floating palace, was sinking in front of his eyes. Dangling from it were lifeboats, useless as toys. Somehow it astonished him to see there were still people on the decks. Some were kneeling, others still rushing in panic from a fate that was hurtling toward them.

In shock, he watched more tumble like dolls into the sea. And the huge black funnels tipped down toward the water, down to where he clung to a broken crate.

When those funnels touched the sea, water gushed into them, sucking in people with it.

Not like this, he thought as he kicked weakly. A man wasn’t meant to die like this. But the sea dragged him under, pulled him in. Water seemed to boil around him as he struggled. He choked on it, tasted salt and oil and smoke. And realized, as his body bashed into a solid wall, that he was trapped in one of the funnels, would die there like a rat in a blocked chimney.

As his lungs began to scream, he thought of the woman and the boy. Since he deemed it useless to pray for himself, he offered what he thought was his last plea to God that they’d survived.

Later, he would think it had been as if hands had taken hold of him and yanked him free. As the funnels sank, he was expelled, flying out on a filthy gush of soot.