Her thoughts had become feathery and fleeting. She was thirsty and she was not; she was warm and she was not. Every now and then a swarm of spots would begin to burst along the edges of her vision. Whenever that happened, all she could do was hang her head, hoping for the best.
“We must get her aboard,” said someone in her ear, urgent. She thought they were likely talking about the crying infant and tried to agree, but her lips wouldn’t move. Her tongue was too clickity-dry, anyway.
The boat tossed, and she felt herself falling. Only she couldn’t fall. No one could. They were packed in too tightly; the falling was all in her head.
“Here, miss,” said a man with an English accent, and to her surprise, Madeleine found herself seated upon a swinging plank that seemed to be rising . . . rising . . .
She was holding onto the ropes beside her with both hands, buckled straps bound across her legs.
There was a ship at her back. There was an ocean ahead.
She was rising without her own will, without having to do anything at all to make it happen, the plank and ropes jerking. She rose and looked out over the curve of the earth laid out like a vivid blue cartographer’s map, dotted with white, with slow-spinning swirls of ice green and black.
*
In a shadowed chamber, Madeleine came back to herself, opening her eyes to a single electric lightbulb burning naked against the wall—
—that stormy night on the Noma, her father telling her to wake—
—but she was looking at that lightbulb and . . . linen. At the high climb of a fat pillow and wrinkled sheets.
It was not her pillow, scented with a fragrance she didn’t know. It was not her bed, with its downy wide comfort. This mattress felt too firm. A hard lump nudged up against her ribcage.
A glass of water sat before her on a nightstand. She reached for it, drained it, set it down again.
The bed and floor and all of it beneath her moved, a sluggish lift and fall. She’d spent so many hours at sea, she understood at once what it meant.
I am on a boat. A ship. I’m on—
She remembered. She remembered being guided aboard, the bosun’s chair swinging against the topsides of this new steamer until the crew had caught it up, pulling her safely back to the deck. She remembered them freeing her from the straps, helping her to a saloon, where a man who told her three times that he was a physician—she kept asking—gave her a quick examination before telling someone else that she needed hydration and heat and a decent place to rest. Somewhere quiet, and at once.
She’d wanted to protest that. The lack of the wounded-beast noise still haunted her, and she hadn’t wanted to dwell in it again.
But a uniformed man with a great deal of gold braid on his sleeves had come to her, along with Eleanor Widener and Carrie and some other women, and they had all led her to this room with its firm bed and plump pillows. Carrie had stripped away her coat and her lifebelt, her dress and corset and shoes, and Madeleine, stupefied, had let her. Had flopped down atop the mattress and surrendered to sleep for who knew how long.
She inched out of the bed now, her feet testing the rug. The seam of the stocking along the end of her right foot had ripped （hadn’t she been wearing two sets of stockings? where had the other gone?）; her big toe poked out. She stood, stretching the sore muscles all along her legs and arms and back.
The wall to her left had a series of curtained portholes, the cloth panels closed, sunlight outlining a pattern of navy chevrons against stripes. She eyed the curtains warily, wanting to part them and look outside. Afraid of what she might see if she did.
The door to the room clicked open. A caramel-haired woman who looked familiar—wasn’t she?—came in carrying a tray, balancing it on her hip as she turned to shut the door again. She was wearing a sequined velvet evening dress, despite the fact that it was clearly bright day beyond the portholes.
“Oh, you’re awake,” she said pleasantly. “Good. I’ve brought you something to eat. A simple soup for now, nothing too rich.”
Madeleine pressed a hand to her forehead. “Yes. I—my husband. I need to go—”
The woman, older and unsmiling, placed the tray on a low table in front of a settee. Her voice was gentle, cautious; she went to Madeleine and lifted her hand. Reflexively, Madeleine accepted it. She noticed that the woman’s gown was water-stained all along the hem, sequins missing, the velvet stiff and ruined.
“I am Marian Thayer. Do you remember me? We were introduced once in Newport, a year or so ago. And we spoke on the lifeboat, but I think you were in something of a faint by then.”