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Kate Royston
Kate kept her head down. If she did not look up, she could hold on to a moment of hope. A few minutes ago, she had caught a glimpse of a man on horseback threading his way through the trees toward the church. Although her heart beat a little faster in wild and unreasonable expectation, she told herself it was not him. The visitor was surely someone who had ridden out from town to see the Reverend Mr. Dayton. The road up onto Royston Heights was not yet sufficiently clear of debris for an automobile or a pony and trap. To reach the church, it was necessary to either walk or ride one of the remaining horses. Logic told her that the new arrival was probably Cecil Huygen the banker or Josiah Cartwright, who had been foreman at the mill, or maybe some other man from town who had come to visit the grave of Philip Royston and mutter his own apology.
Her hands shook as she knelt beside the grassy mound to arrange the daffodils. So long as she did not look up, she could still keep a flicker of hope alive. She no longer clung to her self-righteous indignation that Danny McSorley had saved his own life by finding a place in a lifeboat. Now that she was away from Washington and the heated rhetoric of the senators and the witnesses, she had managed to put Danny’s actions into some kind of perspective. She wished she had asked him what had happened instead of walking scornfully away. No, not walking, running. She was still running.
This was foolish. She could not ignore the visitor forever. His shadow fell across her, and she raised her eyes a little and studied his well-worn boots. For one brief moment, she tried to keep hold of the idea that these were Danny’s boots. He had somehow seen through the defensive wall she had built around her heart, and he had come to forgive her for doubting him. At last she looked up.
Her heart had no idea what to do. It plummeted and swooped and hammered against her ribs in shock. The daffodils fell from her hands and spread a carpet of yellow across the grave. Her shock seemed to be mirrored by the stunned expression on Joe’s face. Was he surprised to see her? No, that was not possible. Surely he had come here to find her. What other business could have brought him to Royston?
“Is this your father’s resting place?”
She hardly understood the question. His gravelly voice had transported her back to the rain-soaked deck of the Carpathia and her first sight of the tall, craggy man with dangerous gray eyes. What was he doing here? Had she been recalled to Washington? No, she could not go back there to the endless questioning that reduced the horror of the sinking to mere recitation of facts. She could not go back to the Willard, and she would not go back to Eva Trentham.
“Miss Kate?”
He was expecting an answer.
“Yes, this is my father’s grave. We buried him quietly without a headstone. The Reverend Mr. Dayton thought it would be safer ... thought I would be safer ... if we did not draw attention to his resting place. My mother is buried just a short distance away. I left here immediately after the burial.”
Joe frowned. “Are you safe here?”
Kate stood up, leaving the daffodils scattered where they had fallen. “Yes, I’m safe. There was an investigation, and it turns out that the engineer my father hired—”
“Petrov,” Joe said.
Kate stared at him in amazement. “You know about him?”
“Myra Grunwald told us your story.”
“Well,” Kate said, “Petrov lied. He was the one who changed the plans for the dam. He was to blame, not my father.”
She looked down at the grave. She could feel nothing now for her father except a distant sadness. He, too, had been a runner. She was his daughter in every way, running instead of waiting. If he had waited, he would have been present to see Petrov taken to jail. If she had waited, she would have been here to help him rebuild the house and the mill, and she would not have been on board the Carpathia on the night of April 14, when Harold Cottam had received the Titanic’s message.
She considered the tall figure of Sheriff Bayliss. She would never have met him or seen the danger in his eyes turn to a new questioning sadness. She leaned down and picked up one of the daffodils. “I found them growing around what is left of my house,” she said. “My mother planted them, and they came back every year. They’re still coming back, although now there’s no one to enjoy them.”
“What will you do?” Joe asked.
“Well,” Kate said, “I was absolutely penniless when you found me on board the Carpathia, and that is no longer the case. Back then I had some wild idea of leaving the ship at Gibraltar and making my way across Europe to England.”
Joe raised his eyebrows, and Kate found a sudden ability to laugh at her former self. “Ridiculous, I know. Eva Trentham explained quite clearly what kind of trouble I would be in if I tried that on my own.”
“Why England?” Joe asked.
“My mother’s family is there. I had no welcome from my father’s family, so I thought I would try my luck with them. It was an absurd idea. I should have stayed here, although I would have missed a great adventure. I would never have met you, Sheriff, or Mrs. Trentham, or Wolfie, or ...” She fell silent. There was no point in saying his name.
Joe looked past her at the ruined house, only half-hidden behind a screen of budding trees. “Are you going to rebuild it?”
Kate struggled to find an answer for him. Did she really want to rebuild the mansion? Did she want to stay in Royston and see the restoration of the pulp mill and the return of the sulfurous odor that was the perfume of success for Royston?
“My father had a safety-deposit box at the bank,” she said. “It survived the flood and the fire.”
Joe nodded. “That’s what they’re designed to do.”
“Mr. Huygen, the banker, is an honest man,” Kate said. “He stood his ground and would not allow anyone access to the contents, even when the workers from the mill threatened his life. Of course, when they found out that the dam collapse was not my father’s fault, everything changed. They were looking for me, Sheriff. For months now, Mr. Huygen and Mr. Dietrich the lawyer have been looking for me. They finally traced me to Pittsburgh, but I had already left by the time they wrote to my great-aunt Suzanna, not that she would have helped them.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I could not be found, she would be my father’s heir. You would have to meet Suzanna Royston in person to understand how awful that would be.”
“And so you will stay here?” Joe asked.
The answer came surprisingly easily. Her head had been spinning for the two days since Cecil Huygen had told her about the money, but now she knew. “No, I can’t stay here.”
“What about the mill?”
“Mr. Dietrich says I can deed the mill over to the town.”
“So you’ve already talked about leaving?”
Kate nodded. “Yes, I have.”
“Will you go to England, as you originally planned?”
A little bubble of amusement rose in Kate’s throat. “Well, I won’t sign on as a governess in order to get there. I am not cut out to be a governess. Maybe I’ll just travel around until I find a place I like or until my money runs out.”
She regretted the words as soon as they had left her mouth. “Travel around until I find a place I like” was just another way of saying that she would run.
Joe regarded her curiously. “Have you thought of Michigan?” he said.
Michigan! The thought had never crossed her mind. What did she even know about Michigan? She imagined pine trees and snow and a great gray lake that stretched across the horizon. Obviously, Joe loved the place, but why would he imagine that she would find it worth visiting? Surely she had seen enough of cold gray water.
She shook her head. “I was thinking of somewhere a little more exotic.”
A shadow fell across Joe’s face. “Of course you were. It was a foolish idea.”
She heard such regret in his voice that she wondered if she had said something truly offensive. Of course he was proud of his home state and his position as sheriff of Chippewa County, but he surely didn’t think that it was a place where someone like Kate could ever settle down to a life of ... of what? What was he really asking?
No, surely not. He was old enough to be her father.
Joe reached down and picked up a daffodil. For a long moment, he stared into its sunny yellow center. He lifted his head and smiled at her. “Have you thought of Newfoundland?”
She could not stop the rush of blood to her cheeks or the tremble in her voice. “All the time,” she whispered. “I think of it all the time.”
Joe gestured to the brown horse, who had his head down and was happily grazing on the new grass along the fence line. “He’s a sturdy animal,” Joe said, “and you don’t weigh more than a bag of feathers. We’ll ride out together, and I’ll set you on your road, now that you know where you’re going.”
“I’m not sure.”
Joe shook his head. “Yes, you are.”
“But he never said anything.”
Joe grinned, and the shadow of sadness retreated from his eyes. “He said plenty. You weren’t listening.”
“But he’s gone,” Kate said. “He’s in Newfoundland by now. I don’t know how I’d get there.”
“It’s easy,” Joe said. “Think of how far you’ve already come. We’ll ride back to Knox and take the train to New York. From New York you can take a packet steamer to St. John’s.” The shadow returned briefly to his eyes. “You’ll have to make that voyage on your own.”
“But he won’t know I’m coming,” Kate said.
Joe smiled and shrugged his shoulders as though he had just released a heavy burden. “He’s a Marconi operator at the world’s most important relay station. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble sending him a message.”
May 27, 1912
The Home of Senator William Alden Smith
Washington, DC
Senator William Alden Smith
Nana walked quietly into Bill’s study and laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s late, Bill. You have to come to bed.”
Bill gestured at his wastebasket, stuffed with crumpled papers—the innumerable false starts he had made on his speech for tomorrow.
He rested his head in his hands. “I don’t know how to say it,” he groaned. “I don’t know how to do justice to the survivors. I’ve failed, Nana.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“I thought I could bring it all down to questions and answers, but I can’t.” He swept his hand across the desk, knocking the scattered papers to the floor. “It’s too big, too much—a thousand individual tragedies.”
Nana bent down a picked up a sheet of paper. She studied it for a moment. “Are these the new laws you’re recommending?”
Bill nodded. “That’s the easy part. It’s obvious what has to be done in the future.”
Nana moved into the pool of light cast by a gilded lampstand. “‘New regulations to be imposed on passenger vessels wishing to use American ports,’” she read. “‘Ships should slow down on entering areas known to have drifting ice and should post extra lookouts. Navigational messages should be brought promptly to the bridge and disseminated as required. There should be enough lifeboats for all on board.’”
She looked up from the paper. “This is good, Bill. This is what needs to be done. When I saw those lifeboats on the deck of the Olympic, I was horrified. So few boats for so many people, and Captain Fowler said that even those few were more than was required by law.”
Bill lifted his head from his hands. “It will apply to all ships that want to use American ports. We can’t fix the whole world, but we can make things safer for people coming to America.”
“Have you written anything else?”
He handed her another sheet of paper. “These are just regulations. I wish it hadn’t taken a tragedy like the loss of the Titanic to make us realize what we have to do.”
Nana took the paper and continued to read aloud. “‘All ships equipped with wireless sets should maintain communications at all times of the day and night. Rockets should only be fired by ships at sea as distress signals and not for any other purposes.’”
She set the paper back on his desk. “If you can push this law through, you will save thousands of lives. Nothing like the Titanic will ever happen again.”
Bill shook his head. “It won’t be enough. I’ve tied up the Senate for weeks. I’ve alienated the British, and I’ve turned a tragedy into a circus. And at the end of all that, what have I really achieved? I am expected to point the finger of blame at someone.”
“What about Captain Lord on the Californian? Surely he can be blamed.”
“Oh, yes,” Bill said. “I have that piece already written, and you’re quite correct, my dear. I will draw attention to his lies. He contradicts himself at almost every turn. I have no doubt that he was within easy reach of the Titanic and he knew she was there. I can’t know why he failed to act. He was either drunk or a coward—I can think of no other explanation—but his fate will have to be determined by the British. I will say what I think, but they will have to act upon it. Whatever else he did, however cowardly his behavior, he did not cause the Titanic to sink.”
“Then who did?” Nana asked. “What about Ismay and the way he saved himself?”
“That’s not a crime.”
“He gave instructions to the captain. He wanted to achieve a speed record. He wanted the Blue Riband.”
“Did he?”
Nana sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know, Bill.”
“You go up to bed,” Bill said. “I’m going to place a phone call.”
“Don’t be long.”
“I won’t.”
Bill lifted the receiver, cranked the handle, and instructed the operator to connect him with Bruce Ismay at the Willard Hotel. As he sat and listened to the unfathomable clicks and buzzes of the telephone system, he added an addendum to his list of new regulations. On the night of the sinking, a dozen or so ships had been sending messages back and forth across the ocean in a chaotic chorus with no assessment of what was urgent, what was private, or even what was frivolous. The ice warnings for the Titanic and even the SOS from the ship had been sandwiched in between messages of congratulations, greetings of relatives, and messages from one businessman to another. Things would have to change. Priorities would have to be established. No ship should ever have to sink because a wealthy socialite was telegraphing instructions to her servants.
“Ismay here. What can I do for you, Senator?”
The crackling had reduced to a background murmur, and Ismay’s voice was clear. Bill would like to have done this in person, but his time had expired. He would have to read what he could into Ismay’s tone without seeing his face.
“I have to ask you one more time, Mr. Ismay. Did you have any talk with the captain with reference to the speed of the ship?”
“Never, sir.”
“Did you at any time urge the captain to greater speed?”
“No, I did not.”
“Do you know of anyone who urged him to greater speed than he was making when the ship was making seventy revolutions?”
“No, Senator. It is really impossible to imagine such a thing on board ship.”
Bill found himself nodding, although he knew Ismay could not see him. He sighed. Ismay would surely hear him sighing. For the very first time, he used Ismay’s title. “Sir Bruce, I am sure you are aware that I was a friend of Captain Smith. I sailed with him several times.”
“As did I,” said Ismay. “He was a fine fellow.”
“And brave,” Bill said.
Now it was Ismay’s turn to sigh. “Yes, Senator. He was a brave man.”
Bill allowed a moment of silence to pass as he remembered the jovial captain, with his neat white beard. Finally he spoke. “Sir Bruce, what can you say as to your treatment at the hands of the committee?”
“I have no fault to find,” Ismay said. “Naturally, I was disappointed in not being allowed to go home, but I feel quite satisfied you have some very good reason in your own mind for keeping me here.”
“Would you now agree that it was the wisest thing to do?”
Ismay’s voice was firm. “I think that under the circumstances, it was.”
“Thank you, Sir Bruce. You are free to go home. I believe the British tribunal is waiting to hear from you.”
“I’m afraid they are.”
“Good night, Sir Bruce.”
“Good night, Senator.”
Bill set down the telephone receiver and shuffled through the papers on his desk until he found what he needed. He spread the papers out and read them in chronological order. He began to write.
May 28, 1912
The Senate Chamber
Washington, DC
Senator William Alden Smith
Bill rose to his feet and surveyed the chamber. Weeks of interrogation, sleepless nights, and tears cried in secret had brought him to this moment. He set his notes on the podium. This first part was the easiest. For this, he had the words.
“Mr. President, my associates and myself return the commission handed to us on the eighteenth day of April last, directing an immediate inquiry into the causes leading up to the destruction of the steamship Titanic, with its attendant and unparalleled loss of life, so shocking to the people of the world. Mindful of the responsibility of our office, we desire the Senate to know that in the execution of its command, we have been guided solely by the public interest and a desire to meet the expectations of our associates without bias, prejudice, sensationalism, or slander of the living or dead. To this end, we immediately determined that the testimony of British officers and crew and English passengers temporarily in the United States should be first obtained.”
He caught sight of the British ambassador, seated in the spectator gallery. His disapproval no longer mattered. Ismay and the White Star witnesses were already on their way home.
As he continued speaking, he was aware of every eye on him, every muttered word, and every audible gasp of surprise. He took his time and told his story. He drew from the testimony of every person, rich and poor, who had come before him and his committee. The longer he spoke, the more details he gave, the quieter the chamber became. They were waiting with bated breath for an answer to the question that had consumed their thoughts for weeks. Who was at fault? Who would he blame?
“I think,” Bill said at last, “that the presence of Mr. Ismay stimulated the ship to greater speed than it would have made under ordinary conditions.” He paused and looked around. “But,” he continued, “I cannot fairly ascribe to him any instructions to that effect.”
He was certain that he heard a collective sigh of disappointment. For weeks now, the newspapers had vilified the sullen, haughty Englishman. They wanted him to be at fault. They wanted to see him suffer. But he will suffer, Bill thought. Whatever I say here will make no difference to the way history will treat Sir Bruce Ismay. His crime did not lie in urging the Titanic to greater speed. His crime lay in saving himself while others died.
Bill moved on. Might as well say it now and be done with it. “Captain Smith knew the sea, and yet overconfidence seems to have dulled his faculties. With the atmosphere literally charged with warning signals, the stokers in the engine room fed their fires with fresh fuel, registering in that dangerous place her fastest speed. And when disaster struck, there is evidence to show that no general alarm was given, no ship’s officers formally assembled, no orderly routine was attempted, or organized system of safety begun. We have to conclude that Captain Smith’s indifference to danger was one of the direct and contributing causes of this unnecessary tragedy, while his own willingness to die was the expiating evidence of his fitness to live.”
He looked up. The deed was done. Despite everything the witnesses had told him, and despite every accusatory newspaper article on both sides of the Atlantic, he had not given them a living criminal—only a dead captain who had gone down with his ship.
He reached into his pocket and brought out a small bundle of Marconigrams. He spread them on the desk in front of him. He looked up and spoke slowly, his eyes roving around the chamber, looking for the moment when the spectators would abandon their need for a scapegoat and truly understand the unspeakable hubris that had led the builders to claim that their ship was unsinkable and they had no need of lifeboats.
“In our imagination,” he said, “we see again the proud ship, its decks swarming with musicians, teachers, artists, and authors, soldiers and sailors, and men of large affairs—brave men and noble women of every land. We see the lowly and unpretentious turning their backs upon the Old World and looking hopefully to the New. At the very moment of their greatest joy, the ship suddenly reels, mutilated and groaning. With splendid courage, the musicians fill the last moments with sympathetic melody. The ship wearily gives up the unequal battle.”
He picked up the first Marconigram and read aloud. “‘Titanic to all ships. Sinking head down. Come as soon as possible.’”
He set the paper down and looked around the room again. Were they listening? Did they really understand?
He spoke softly into the smothering silence. “Only a vestige now remains of the men and women that but a moment before quickened her decks with human hopes and passions, sorrows and joys.”
He picked up the next Marconigram. “‘Titanic to all ships, we are putting the women off in boats.’”
He read on, picking up the papers and setting them down again reverently, as though they were precious artifacts.
“‘Baltic to Titanic, we are rushing to you.’
“‘Olympic to Titanic. Am lighting up all possible boilers as fast as we can.’”
He paused, hoping that the spectators could now see what he could see. He wanted them to be with him on the deck of the Titanic, struggling to believe the great ship would truly sink. He wanted them to imagine the cries for help crackling and sparking through the radio rooms of so many ships, all so near and yet so far.
“‘Titanic to all ships. Engine room getting flooded.’
“‘Baltic to Caronia. Please tell Titanic we are making towards her.’
“‘Titanic to all ships. We are about all down. Sinking.’
“‘Cape Race to Virginian. We have not heard from Titanic. His power may be gone.’
“‘Carpathia to Titanic. If you are there, we are firing rockets.’
“‘Olympic to Virginian. Keeping strict watch but hear nothing from MGY Titanic.’
“‘Ypiranga to all ships. Have not heard Titanic since 11:50 p.m.’
“‘La Provence to Celtic. Nobody has heard the Titanic for about two hours.’”