I could picture him so clearly, with his gangly frame that concealed his superhuman strength and agility so well, one hand on his hat, a satchel in his other hand… possibly a briefcase, for all the papers. Oh, how I feared Dame Nightingale then, how certain were the moments when I thought Jack captured by her and imprisoned. I hoped if that were the case he would be important enough for Alexeevsky Ravelin.
The locomotive chugged and its whistle sounded one piercing note that became quickly muffled by the snow and the night. Clouds of steam fogged the windows and obscured the view, my heart jumped to my throat when I had to seriously consider that even if I waited three days, I might never see Jack again. The thought constricted my throat — I had lost too many friends lately, and to be completely honest I would’ve liked some company on such a perilous journey.
The locomotive was gaining speed and I felt restless. Unsatisfied by the view from my window, I went to stand by the door — I was in the last carriage, and the back of it was occupied by a door with a large square glass window. In the snow that seemed to fall faster as the train sped ahead, I could discern nothing but the endlessly receding rails behind us, glinting in the starlight. It was quiet, save for the train whistle and an occasional crow cawing. I glimpsed an intermittent palimpsest of one building or another — black against speeding dark — but had no hope of identifying them. Beyond the overwhelming feeling it was the second time in less than a year I had left behind everything I knew, I was so overcome by nostalgia and self-pity that at first I did not notice a quick shadow moving behind on the rails behind the train.
Curiously, the shape did not disappear from view but remained — as if it were impossibly following the train and matching its speed. Then it began to grow larger, and I realized it was gaining. It resolved from a dark speck into a figure of a man. I gasped, and clasped my hands to my throat. There was no one in the world who could run like that — except Jack.
He was close enough now for me to see his breath pouring out of his mouth in one continuous ribbon, the mad pumping of his arms. He had lost his hat, it seemed. As his feet struck the crossties, the frozen wood groaned and splintered, geysers of pebbles flew into the air.
He had almost caught up, and I struggled to open the door for him. Of course he could not see me — the train was dark inside, and he was too preoccupied to notice me struggling with the lock. He jumped, and I barely had enough time to get out of the way.
I threw myself into the empty compartment on my left, just as the glass shattered with the impact and Jack… There is no way to describe it. He did not fly or break through or do anything else comprehensible. For a moment, it felt as if time had stopped: jagged fragments of thick glass hung in the air, frozen, shining like Christmas tree ornaments. Jack was suspended amongst them, a sleepwalker with one foot in front of the rest of his body and the other behind, both of his arms folded in front of his face to protect it.
Then I heard the tinkling of broken glass as it rained to the floor. Time resumed its flow and Jack landed on his feet, crouching, not a yard away from me.
His gaze lingered on my prostrate form, confused and apprehensive, and I remembered he had not yet seen me in my hussar disguise.
“Jack, it’s me,” I said, and sat up on the floor.
He laughed, delighted. “Sasha?”
“Of course.” I stood up and waited for him to unwind from his crouch — he had remained in it since landing. “Now, let’s go — I have a compartment claimed, and the conductor has not yet come by.”
He looked behind him, at the shattered window. The look in his eyes struck me — he seemed confused and a bit apprehensive, disoriented. He was like a man who woke from a dream and found himself on the roof of his house in a nightgown with no idea how he got there. “What will I say about that?” He pointed at the jagged hole in the door, like a guilty child.
“If you come with me right now,” I said, “we can act as if you were in the compartment the whole time. There is no one else awake in this carriage, and the train is too loud for people to have heard the glass breaking.”
He followed me, his satchel clasped so tightly in his hand that — when I finally managed to pry his fingers open — I saw his nails had cut semicircles into his palm.
Jack seemed in a state of shock, and I wondered if that was common in cases of extreme exertion. I had not noticed it before, but then again, I never witnessed him chasing a train for miles. His first instinct seemed to be to retreat into himself, and I let him. I even went as far as to ask the conductor, when he finally came by, for two glasses of hot tea.
“Yes sir,” he said, and adjusted his billed cap, the red stripe going around it the only color on his entire person. He was dressed in a gray overcoat and even his hollow face looked gray in this light. “It is very cold in here, sir. Perhaps you would like to change cars? Some hoodlums seem to have broken the door.”
I nodded. “Yes, we felt a draft. Perhaps we will move later. My companion is feeling somewhat ill, so for now, my good man, just the tea.”
“I’ll see about some blankets then,” he said.
The conductor brought us tea and two woolen blankets. Jack drank his tea and soon resumed his customary demeanor, although he kept looking at me and my uniform.
“Unbelievable,” he said. “Who would’ve thought that the best disguise would be so… colorful?”
I shrugged my new masculine shoulders. “As long as it’s a change, it doesn’t matter what one changes into.”
We occupied a couchette carriage. Jack and I each claimed a seat, opposite of each other, and attempted to sleep the rest of the night. At first, I thought I would never fall asleep with the chugging of the train, its whistling, and the desperate cries of crows overhead. But before I knew it, I was in another train, in my proper clothes, and talking to Chiang Tse who drank his tea in a seat next to me. I dreamt of his knee accidentally brushing against mine, and woke with a start.
The sun was well up and the locomotive sped along the gleaming tracks, a black line singing through the expanse of white snow walled in by naked black trees. It was vertiginous, to think of my gigantic, flat, frozen country, crisscrossed with the black lines that connected Moscow to St. Petersburg to Sochi to Minsk, every single city in the empire. I imagined a multitude of metallic spiders weaving this web, ensnaring smaller and smaller towns, until no white snow was left.
“Sasha?” I looked up to see Jack, stretching and yawning on his bench. He sat up — or rather unrolled his long spine into a sitting position. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes,” I said. “And you… you are better?”
He nodded, still eyeing me cautiously. It seemed that with my disguise I had become a new person to him, and we had to get reacquainted. “I obtained everything we need last night,” he said. “Do you wish to see?”
Of course I did. He handed me a sheaf of papers from his satchel, and I leafed through copies of submarine diagrams and long letters detailing boring but apparently important diplomatic details. Much of it revolved around Nightingale’s instruction to her spies, and Herbert’s hopeful letters to Her Majesty back in England.
Some of the letters were private correspondence — these were tied together with an ice-blue satin ribbon that reminded me strongly of Dame Nightingale. Without even looking at the signature, I recognized the meticulous, precise handwriting as hers. Interspersed with her letters were offers written with loopy, generous, words running off the page — surely Mr. Herbert’s. As revolted as I felt about reading private correspondence, I peeked with one eye, and blushed. The letters were passionate — an emotion I could see in her, boiling and bubbling like a tar pit deep beneath the icy surface. They made me jealous, too — I wondered if I were capable of such love, not to mention detailing it so fearlessly on paper. Among the fiery confessions, the muffled cries of longing and desire, were references to the post of Secretary at War, to the Ottoman negotiations, and to war with Russia.