The Isle of Blood

“Stay with us,” she said. And then, as if she were correcting herself, “Stay with me. I know it may be too soon to call you ‘son,’ but if you stay, I promise I will love you as my son. I will protect you; I will keep you safe; I will let no harm come to you.”

I sat beside her. My hat in my hands, the envelope in her lap, and the absent man between us.

“My place is with the doctor.”

“Your place! William, your place is wherever the good Lord decides it is. Have you thought of that? In life there are the silly gifts we give one another and there are the real gifts, the gifts beyond all temporal value. It is no accident of circumstance that you’ve come to me. It is the will of God. I believe that. I believe that with all my heart.”

“If it’s God’s will,” I said, “wouldn’t he make sure I couldn’t

leave?”

“You’re forgetting his greatest gift, William. That gift does not imprison; it frees. I could refuse to let you go. I could hire a lawyer, report the matter to the police. I could truss you up like a turkey and lock you in this room, but I will not. I will not force you to stay. I am asking you to stay. If you like, William, I will fall on my knees and beg you.” Mrs. Bates began to cry. She cried like she did everything else, with great dignity; there was a stateliness about her tears, a grandness that transcended the mundane—operatic, I would call them, and I mean that in the best sense of the word.

I looked down at the hat. A silly gift, she had called it. Perhaps it was silly compared to the ultimate gift. What gift would not be? And perhaps I was silly to feel any attachment to it or to the man who had given it to me. Little good can come of this, Will Henry. I looked at the spot where my finger should have been. That was nothing, the smallest of losses. In the warm kitchen a woman bakes her little boy an apple pie. A man lies upon the floor, spreads his arms, and transforms himself into a ship of a thousand sails.

And in the arena are two identical doors

…

She reached out and laid her hand upon my cheek. She knew. She never doubted, in the spot where doubt matters, which door I would choose.

Jacob Torrance filled the majority of his time during the six-day crossing with three things: carousing, philandering, and poker—in that order, with the occasional argument with Dr. von Helrung thrown in to break up the monotony. I suppose he slept a bit as well, but he did not share my state-room. I bunked with the old Austrian monstrumologist, who, I quickly discovered, shed most of his dignity when he put on his nightshirt (he was quite bandy-legged and a little potbellied), though that is true of almost everyone.

I missed one or two of their opening skirmishes. Hardly had Lady Liberty slipped beneath the horizon than I came down with a horrible case of mal de mer, the bane of land-lubbers, forcing me to become more intimately acquainted with a toilet than any person ought to be. Von Helrung put me to bed, gave me some salt crackers, and suggested, very seriously, that the best cure for seasickness was dancing.

“No, it’s olives,” countered Torrance. “Or gingerroot. You should gnaw on a root, Mr. Henry.”

“On every voyage my wife would suffer the same as Will,” von Helrung returned. “We would go dancing, and all would be fine.”

“So you would like to take Will dancing?”

“It makes more sense for him to dance than to gnaw on a root.”

“Maybe he should do both—gnaw on a root while he danced.”

“I’d rather not dance or eat,” I croaked. “Ever again.”

On the second day I was feeling a little better—well enough to try out my sea legs, anyway, and left the stateroom to explore the liner. After an hour of wandering the labyrinthine corridors and miles of decks, I discovered von Helrung and Torrance on the upper promenade, sitting in rocking chairs, the ever-present tumbler of Scotch by Torrance’s elbow. He had an annoying habit of smoothing his perfectly trimmed mustache after every sip.

“… not consistent. Not consistent at all, Jacob,” von Helrung was scolding his former student as I approached. So engrossed were they in the debate that my presence at first went unnoticed.

“I’m not saying it is there, Meister Abram—merely that we should look into it.”

“And I ask again, why would Arkwright lie about all things except the most important thing?”

“He wasn’t lying about Warthrop,” Torrance pointed out. “Well, not on the third go around, anyway.”