Read Chapter 28: The List of Names

The Carpathia’s horn split the grey dawn like a blade. Élodie felt the shudder through the soles of her borrowed shoes—too large, a dead woman’s shoes, perhaps—as the ship slowed toward the pier. Around her, the survivors pressed against the rail in a silence that had grown heavier with each passing hour. No one cheered. No one waved at the crowds gathering on the dock, their faces a blur of black hats and white handkerchiefs.

She had not left the starboard side since midnight.

Her fingers curled around the railing, knuckles white, the torn locket pressed against her palm where she’d held it so long the metal had grown warm. The photograph inside—two children, a girl with dark braids and a boy with a gap-toothed smile—was creased now from her constant touching. Rose and Louis. The names beat in her skull like a second pulse.

“Miss Marchand.”

She turned. A young man in a Red Cross armband stood behind her, clipboard clutched to his chest, his face pinched with the particular exhaustion of someone who had been writing names for thirty hours straight.

“The manifest is being posted at the gangway,” he said. “You’ll want to check it before you disembark.”

“I’ve checked it,” Élodie said. “Twice.”

His face softened. Not with pity—she’d seen enough pity in the last three days to last a lifetime—but with something closer to recognition. He had told too many people the same thing.

“You should still—” he started.

“My children are not on the list.” The words came out flat, harder than she intended. “The officer already told me they were lost. But they were not in the water when we left. They were not in the water.” She said it again, as if repetition could make it true. “Someone took them.”

The young man shifted his weight. “Miss, I understand you’re in shock, but the rescue boats were accounted for. Everyone who was pulled from the water was logged. If they’re not on the list—”

“Then the list is wrong.”

She turned back to the rail before he could answer. Below, the pier swarmed with activity: doctors in long coats, porters hauling trunks, newspapermen with cameras hoisted on tripods. The living were being processed like cargo, sorted and tagged and sent on their way. Élodie watched a woman in a threadbare coat be led away by two men in dark suits—family, perhaps, or officials with questions. It was impossible to tell the difference anymore.

She had not seen Tom since they’d lowered him to the infirmary on a stretcher, his face the colour of newsprint, a doctor’s hand pressed hard against his shoulder where the blood had soaked through three bandages. They’d told her he was stable. They’d told her a great many things.

Élodie pressed the locket harder until the edge bit into her palm.

She had to find the children. She had to find them before the authorities sealed their records and shipped them to some orphanage in Queens or an institution upstate, before they became numbers on a different list, before the trail went cold and the cold went permanent.

A hand touched her elbow.

“Miss Marchand?”

She turned. An older woman stood beside her—perhaps sixty, with iron-grey hair pulled back so tightly it seemed to stretch her forehead, and eyes that had seen something terrible and decided not to look away from it. She wore the plain black dress of a widow, no jewellery except a cameo brooch at her throat.

“I overheard you,” the woman said. “Speaking to the young man about the children.”

Élodie’s throat tightened. “Do you know something?”

The woman glanced around, then leaned closer. “I was in Collapsible D. We were one of the last boats away. There was a woman—young, well dressed, fur collar. She had two children with her. A girl and a smaller boy.”

Élodie’s heart seized. She reached out and gripped the woman’s arm. “What did she look like?”

“Dark hair. Very pale. She wore a green hat, I remember, because it seemed absurd at that hour.” The woman paused, her brow furrowing. “She was not their mother. I could tell. The way she held them—too tightly, as if she was afraid they’d be taken from her. But she told the crew they were hers.”

“Where did she go?” Élodie demanded. “Which boat?”

“Not a boat.” The woman shook her head slowly. “She never got in one. I saw her at first light, after the ship went down. She was on a piece of wreckage—a door, I think, or a crate. The children were with her. A boat came back for them, one of the collapsibles that had room. But she wasn’t in it when we were picked up.”

“What do you mean, she wasn’t in it?”

“I mean.” The woman’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I saw her hand the children to the men in the boat. And then she stepped back into the water. She didn’t make a sound. Just—stepped back.”

Élodie stared at her. “She chose to die?”

“She chose something.” The woman’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I don’t know what. But the children—they were alive when they reached the boat. They were crying, and alive.”

The world tilted. Élodie steadied herself against the rail. “Which collapsible? Do you know the number?”

“I don’t. But the men in that boat—they’d been on the ship. Engineering crew, I think, from their clothes. One of them had a red beard.” She paused. “I saw him later, on the Carpathia. He was helping the doctor. He had the girl with him—she wouldn’t let go of his hand. The boy was with another man, a steward.”

“Where are they now?”

“The steward was taken below. The red-bearded man—he stayed with the girl on deck until morning. I saw her sleeping against his arm.” The woman’s eyes met Élodie’s. “I believe he wanted to keep her safe. I believe he didn’t trust the authorities to sort it out properly. And I believe he was right not to.”

Élodie’s mind raced. Engineering crew. A red beard. A steward. They could be anywhere on this ship, or already gone—the Carpathia’s passengers were being ferried ashore even now, and the crew would be questioned and released or held, depending on their role. If the children had been taken ashore by men who feared the authorities would lose them, then they might already be lost.

“The steward,” she said. “Can you remember anything else about him? His name, his voice, anything?”

The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry. I was too far away, and I was—distracted.” She touched the cameo at her throat. “I lost my husband. I was not attending to details.”

Élodie released her grip on the woman’s arm. “You’ve given me more than enough. Thank you.”

She turned and pushed through the crowd toward the gangway, the locket still pressed against her palm. The list of names posted there—typed now, not handwritten, someone had found a typewriter—stared up at her, row after row of the living, column after column of the dead. Her eye caught a name she knew: *Marchand, Élodie*. And below it, in the column marked “Rescued by Lifeboat 2”: *Marchand, T. — condition critical.*

Tom. She had to see him. But first—

She scanned the list for the engineering crew. Dozens of names, most of them dead. A few survivors. She memorized them. Pollard. Griggs. Hendry. She would find them. She would find the red-bearded man.

The crowd at the bottom of the gangway was thick with reporters. One of them, a man with a press card jammed into his hatband, caught her arm.

“Miss? Miss, were you on the Titanic?”

“Yes,” she said, without stopping. “I was. And I’m looking for two children.”