Call Me Ismay (16 page)

“Lyons and Gidley are headed out west, for America, probably in April. They've no intention of staying here in Britain. They're going to claim Their fortune in a place called Utah. Bingham, Utah. They say They're going to claim Their riches in mining for silver and gold, and that They've already got a ranch with cattlemen prepared.”

Langston blinked several times, sitting in stunned silence. “Utah?” he asked, finally. “Utah, of the United States?” Langston was incredulous. “Out west, like you said in your letter?” Lillith silently nodded. “But that... that's extraordinary, that
has
to be nonsense. MPs are technically forbidden to resign, and Lyons has spent years building a powerful base of support in Kingston!”

“And He wants all of it to come with Him, Mr. Langston,” Lillith replied. “He now knows that His allies will turn on Him if the truth about Him comes out, and He could lose His hold on so many women; now He wants His followers to leave Our country with Him. It will be gradual, not all at once. I've already been notified that I will be among the first women to leave with Him. Apparently, I'm one of His many favorites. He tells me I'm the 'New Eve', but of course I don't believe Him.” She looked away, at once ashamed and resigned.

“Taking all of the support with him? Is that what you meant by... an independent republic?” Lillith nodded once more. “He's taking to America...” Langston struggled to do the political math in his head. “He's creating a republic of like-minded women with himself as head?”

Lillith stared into the distance, her eyes slightly moist, her young vulnerability heartbreaking to Langston. “I'm told that, in Utah, they are understanding if a man takes more than one wife.”

“Polygamy?”
he gasped
.“
Is
that
what Lyons is after?” Langston's eyes darted about, taking in the barren garden that surrounded them. “But your letters make no mention whatsoever of polygamy, it's only about vampires and necromancy...”

“The letters were to draw attention, and maybe some assistance, to the greater danger. People getting into plural marriage are not necessarily a threat to society, at least I don't believe so. Women having the right to vote isn't a danger either, but it's His methods and His reasons in supporting suffrage that frighten and sicken me. Maybe I wouldn't mind it so much if He didn't want women to vote for Him, and only Him alone. He thinks it's a realization of the Argued Prophecy, it's an idea that He and Gidley have been fighting over for years.”

“Lillith, please tell me what that information is about,” he pleaded in a whispering voice. “A
prophecy?
Does Edward Lyons really fancy himself as some sort of evil messiah?”

She stood up from the bench, adjusting the dark shawl upon her shoulders, then addressed Langston quietly. “There are now certain people no longer walking about because they disagreed with His interpretation of the Prophecy.” She paused. “Let me just say that the vampire...
problem
,” she whispered, “is only going to get worse if He doesn't start to get what He wants.”

“Worse?” Langston exclaimed. “Worse in what sense?”

“Whatever is necessary in accomplishing His goal. There's more than one way to gain followers, Mr. Langston,” Lillith visibly shuddered as she spoke. “That stupid bloody Argued Prophecy has brought nothing but destruction to anything that it touches. Ever since it was introduced it has brought confusion to both Our kind and to those not directly affected, but its effect has always been the same for anyone connected to Edward Lyons- they can either be uplifted and inspired to join Him, or seduced into destroying themselves along with Him. That's why I started to send letters to the
Chronicle
, writing them late at night whenever He was sleeping after one of Our little... sessions,” Lillith sighed. “He'd leave one of His rings on a night valet and I would dip that into candle wax whenever I sealed a message I had written.” Langston's eyes widened. “Such an ostentatious thing for a man to wear. I was hoping somebody would see it on His hand when He was out making one of His speeches, and make the connection.”

“Of course!” Langston leaped to his feet, taking a quick moment to glance around, ensuring that no one was within earshot. “Anglo-Saxon Lodge, Number 343, it's not recognized by the regular Freemasons, and you were trying to tell me- tell
someone-
that he is part of a fringe order! Dear Lord!” Langston put his hands to his head. “Miss, I admire your courage and your resourcefulness, really I do, but I must ask you- why have you subjected yourself to all this dreadful knowledge? Couldn't you have left the MP at some point? Certainly there's no shortage of politicians in our city who can't put off for one moment being waited on hand and foot...”

Lillith adjusted her shawl once more, her sad eyes never wavering from their fixation on Langston. “I just couldn't. I can't.”

“Miss, surely now, this man has been terrorizing not only you- and you are, no doubt, a true suffragette at heart- but also so many others; at some point couldn't you have approached us at the
Chronicle
in a much more direct fashion?”

“It is... it is too late for me, Mr. Langston,” she replied, one of her hands finding its way to her collar.

“Too late? Miss Lillith, I can directly confront Lyons with this specific knowledge, of him possibly abandoning his responsibilities here in Britain- you might not have to work for this beastly man much longer.”

“No, no, it's too late, sir,” she replied nervously, her hand starting to caress her collar.

“What do you mean? If we can prove that Lyons does in fact have intentions of abandoning his office, we can put a stop to this terror...”

“No no, you don't understand me, it is
too late
, sir,” she pleaded, her fingers slowly spreading across her neck in an odd fashion.

Langston hesitated. There was a terrible moment of silence as he gazed upon her, his hot agitated skin now creating an irritating contrast to the damp coldness that surrounded both of them. As she stood still, her hand clutching for her collar, he wondered, in horror, if she was about to reveal a bite mark on her neck. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Lillith threw her head back, her mouth open- and for an instant, Langston could plainly see two fangs descending down from the top row of her teeth, sharp and clearly defined by the blackness in her mouth- and then just as swiftly they retracted, out of sight.

Langston suddenly felt the old familiar pain in his intestines, and his knees buckled. Lillith began to weep.

“That, sir, is what I mean.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

April 19th, 1912

Deck chairs and frozen bodies were being pulled out of the cold and impersonal North Atlantic by the dozens on this Friday morning. Meanwhile, back on land, many respectable newspapers were circulating sentimentalized reports that
Titanic-
the greatest, most luxurious ship in the world- had foundered in a stately, dignified manner. Crew members on board the cable repair ship
Mackay-Bennett,
however, knew otherwise.

As one of the first ships chartered by the White Star Line to search for the remains of the deceased, they had recovered floating travel trunks, and blocks of carved wood that had been splintered from the
Titanic's
glorious Grand Staircase. Dozens of bodies were badly bruised and crushed beyond recognition. Those onboard the
Mackay-Bennett
carried out their duties in collecting
Titanic's
victims in horror and fascination. The disaster had claimed lives from all corners of the human experience while granting them a grim sort of equality. The bodies were disfigured from both the violence of the sinking, and the presence of sea-life. Many of the dead had rivulets of blood on their skin that had frozen from the cold, making them look as if they had been brushed by a crimson spiderweb.

In the few days since the sinking, J. Bruce Ismay, whether he knew it or not, had now become the disaster in humanized form. As public interest swarmed and swirled around anything remotely connected to the disaster with the greatest of intensity, Ismay now found himself literally surrounded by reporters standing shoulder to shoulder as he took a seat at a conference table of the East Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. He was to be the very first survivor officially debriefed on the sinking. Immediately after arriving in New York via the
Carpathia
, he had been ordered- under senatorial authority- to divulge anything that could shed light on the tragedy, and was now awaiting the arrival of the lawmakers who would be publicly questioning him. Although impeccably dressed in a dark blue suit, a close examination of his person revealed a waxy complexion, reddened eyes, a voice slightly hoarse- all signs of a personal elegance that had been unquestionably damaged. The newspapers spared no detail in describing Ismay, including how he occasionally stroked his moustache with a shaky hand that bore a glittering ring on his little finger. The room was packed with spectators, silent but urgently energized, their faces appearing to Ismay as angry and expectant.

As he remained seated in the hushed but very crowded room, Ismay felt a disquieting sense of hollowness, of nagging but unspecified despair. The enormity of the disaster had confounded and overwhelmed him to the point that he didn't know how to react, where to look, what to say. An occasional cold shudder in his bones had been bothering him ever since he had stepped into the Waldorf-Astoria that morning, and as the few senators that were to interrogate him finally arrived and sat at the opposite side of the table, the reason for his startling unease started to become clear. He gradually realized that the East Room, where he had been waiting, bore an uncanny resemblance to the first class dining saloon of the
Titanic
, with its gleaming white woodwork and crystal chandeliers. Indeed, the day the
Titanic
sailed from Southampton, Britain's
Guardian
newspaper had compared the ship's elegance to the Waldorf-Astoria, even going so far as to state that the
Titanic
actually surpassed the hotel in size and luxury.

Anything white in colour had been agitating him for days. The mere sight of a blank wall or a sheet of paper or even a handkerchief sent a jolt of pain coursing through his eyes, feeling as if it had crashed a wall of waves clear into the back of his head. He had mentioned this affliction to no one, fearing he'd be taken for a madman. While getting dressed for that morning's testimony, Ismay suffered through a deepening despair, wondering when- and
if
- this dreadful unease would ever lift. He could only assume that the pearly white icebergs of the North Atlantic- strangely beautiful in their own way- had seared their way into his memory, refusing to melt away. Until that previous Monday morning, Ismay had never actually seen an iceberg.

Senator William Alden Smith, the populist Republican from Michigan, was to be the first to question Ismay. Smith, as a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, had cynically been characterized by some as a shameless politician up for reelection seizing upon the opportunity to investigate the internal working of shipping trusts. In reality, his chances of not being victorious in 1912's elections were never in doubt. As he took his position as inquisitor, he was holding a few cards very close to his chest.

Unbeknownst to anyone at the proceedings, six years before the
Titanic
disaster, Senator Smith had taken a journey across the Atlantic on board the
Baltic
, one of the White Star Line's ocean liners. The captain of that voyage was none other than Edward James Smith- a man he had dined with onboard that vessel, a impressively experienced mariner who had given him a personal tour of the ship's bridge. The senator found it impossible to reconcile that the man he had once met had been at the figurative helm of such an awful catastrophe.