Gift Book 1

RA Williams

Description

The North Atlantic, 14 April 1912. Amid the chaos of the sinking Titanic, a young Eleanor Annenberg meets the eyes of a stranger and is immediately captivated. As the ship buckles around them, she follows him down into the hold and finds him leaning over an open sarcophagus, surrounded by mutilated bodies. She catches but a glimpse of what lies within before she's sucked into a maelstrom of freezing brine and half-devoured corpses. Elle is pulled out of the water, but the stranger - and the secrets she stumbled upon - are lost. Unintentionally, however, he leaves her a gift; one so compelling that Elle embarks on a journey that pulls her into a world of ancient evils, vicious hunters and human prey to find the man who saved her that fateful night.From trench warfare at Cape Helles in 1915 to a shipwreck in the tropical shallows off the Honduran coast, from a lost mine beneath the towering Externsteine in a Germany on the verge of war to the gothic crypts of Highgate Cemetery in London, Elle gets closer to a truth she has sought for most of her life. But at what cost? Gifts, after all, are seldom free.

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 09 décembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781913532963
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

First published in 2021 by whitefox Publishing
Copyright © RA Williams
The moral right of RA Williams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Registration No. : TXU 2-183-876
Service Request No.: 1-8417688381
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 9781913532956
Also available in:
Ebook: ISBN 9781913532963
Audiobook: ISBN 9781913532970
Typeset by seagulls.net
Cover design by kid-ethic
Maps by Uroš Pajić
Chapter heading artwork by David Pickford
Project management by whitefox
Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books
All my love to my wife, Daiana, and our blinder, Tommy. And for Mum, for being the window to a world long past, but never forgotten.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
In 1925, a humble essay appeared in the French sociology journal L’Année Sociologique.
14 April 1912: RMS Titanic, The North Atlantic
30 April 1912: Banana, Belgian Congo
12 July 1915: Cape Helles, Gallipoli
31 March 1929: St Dunstan’s, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
4 April 1929: Abaco Islands, Bahamas
8 April 1929: Islas De La Bahia, Honduras
27 April 1929: St Dunstan’s, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
14 April 1912: RMS Titanic, The North Atlantic
27 August 1936: St Dunstan’s, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
26 August 1939: Tor Externsteine, Teutoburger Wald, Germany
30 August 1939: The Strait of Dover
30 August 1939: Folkestone, Kent
10 April 1921: Kinuwai, Belgian Congo
31 August 1939: Folkestone, Kent
31 August 1939: Folkestone, Kent
1 September 1939: Folkestone, Kent
Acknowledgements
Books to Come in The Gift Trilogy
9 September 1940 Highgate Cemetery
About the Author
I n 1925, a humble essay appeared in the French sociology journal L ’ Année Sociologique . Written by Dr Marcel Mauss, a French ethnologist and socialist, ‘The Gift’ was considered by many in the fields of sociology and anthropology to be groundbreaking. Mauss – like many of his contemporaries – was deeply affected by the loss of both colleagues and family to the trenches of the Great War. As a result, he retreated from the known world, finding solace in research.
In ‘The Gift’, Mauss asked: ‘What power resides in the gift that causes its recipient to pay it back?’
He believed the giver of the gift does not merely give a physical gift, but also the soul of themselves. As a result, the gift indissolubly ties the giver to the recipient, creating a debt that must be repaid in kind. To not do so could have the gravest of consequences.
As a result of the horrifying mass slaughter Mauss bore witness to, he put forward a belief that sacrifice (some argue he in fact meant love) – more than anything else – was the gift compelling the recipient to ‘ do ut des ’. I give so that you may give.
In the end, nothing comes for free.
14 APRIL 1912 RMS TITANIC, THE NORTH ATLANTIC
‘B ollocks to Scotland Road,’ grunted Podgy Higginbotham, waddling along the corridor named after the working-class thoroughfare he hailed from. Used by both steerage passengers and crew to traverse Titanic unseen, Scotland Road was poles apart from the stately First Class corridors above. He paused. Something beyond the steady thrum-thrum-thrum of the ship’s engines caught his attention. Straining his ear, he heard it again. Distant and peculiar, it sounded something like the sweet canticle of an Anglican boys’ choir.
Titanic played tricks on him.
‘Enough your mithering, Podgy,’ he told himself. Further along the corridor, a steward emerged from the gentlemen’s lavatory.
‘Is that me auld fella Dougie?’ Higginbotham asked, squinting through his spectacles. ‘You heard something just now?’
Dougie Beedham put his mop and pail down on the wood-planked floor before wiping his hands on his apron. Looking up and down the eight-hundred-foot passageway, he shook his head.
Higginbotham sighed, the strange choir going quiet. ‘This ship is doin’ me head in.’
‘You want something to moan about, have a look in the loo. Atlantic’s calm as a boat pond and some auld bastard manages to be sick all over it,’ Beedham replied.
‘You wouldn’t be tidying up someone’s horrible mess if you was a Second Class steward.’
‘You wouldn’t be in a lot of bother about walking this great long passageway if you was better than a stores keeper.’
‘I seen enough of Scotland Road in Liverpool. Didn’t reckon I’d trudge up and down it on a White Star steamer thrice a bloody day,’ replied Higginbotham, tugging at the peacoat prickling the back of his neck.
‘You stout scouse.’ Beedham pointed to the coat, buttoned tightly about Higginbotham’s waist. The taut buttons looked as though they might shoot off at any moment. ‘You look like a grease-filled sausage in that clobber. I reckon you only visited Scotland Road’s pie shops.’
‘Who you calling a scouse, you blert? You is from Liverpool an’ all.’
‘I ain’t Titanic boiler-like, is I?’
Beedham wasn’t wrong – ‘Podgy’ wasn’t just a term of endearment. He was four stone over regulation for seamen employed with White Star Line, but his decades at sea offered value beyond his weight. White Star Line had the pick of the best, ensuring Titanic ’s maiden voyage was without incident, and had been happy to overlook his ample girth.
‘Have you a bifter?’ Beedham asked.
Higginbotham produced a tin of cigarettes, offering his friend one before sparking one up for himself.
‘What time is it?’
Retrieving the watch attached to his ring of keys, Higginbotham looked at the time. ‘Quarter past eleven,’ he said. ‘Bloody hell. I’m late on. Best get agate.’
‘Crikey,’ Steward Beedham said as he followed with his mop and pail. ‘I was meant to be off duty at eleven. Where you off to, then?’
‘Some First Class berk taking his motor car to the States. I’ve orders to inspect it thrice a day.’
‘Ain’t it your honest employment to inspect cargo?’
‘Marching up and down Scotland Road to check a motor car in these calm seas? Not a thing shifting down there.’
Stopping at a stewards’ staircase, Higginbotham heard a melody flowing faintly up from the labyrinth of companionways below. It was different from the canticle he’d heard before.
‘Right,’ he said, grasping the polished wood handrail. ‘I’m off.’
‘Me as well. Gagging for a pint. Come round the stewards’ mess when you’re done. The lads have a few fighting ales after duty.’
‘I’m on the ghoster shift. Won’t see my bunk ’til dawn,’ Higginbotham said. Descending a few stairs, he heard the singing more clearly. ‘Sounds as though someone’s holding up the bar down here.’
Pausing at F-Deck, Higginbotham gazed aftward. The singing came from the Third Class saloon – far from the ears of the nobility in their opulent staterooms above. Recognising the tune, he hummed along, My lady far away . It brought a smile to Higginbotham’s sea-worn face; he’d left home to the same tune, thirty-five years before.
Descending to G-Deck, he leaned against the stair railing, catching his breath. He was too heavy, his hips ached from rheumatism, and he needed the loo. From the moment he’d boarded Titanic , he had felt unsettled; the ship was unashamedly decadent. Too big. Too surly. Below decks, an ominous darkness concealed itself. A darkness more foreboding than the fathomless North Atlantic. It gave him the shivers.
With the cargo manifest under his arm, Higginbotham knocked on the door to the mailroom. He wasn’t surprised to find that the clerks weren’t answering at such an hour. Removing the ring of keys attached to a button on his trousers, he unlocked the door. Brass racks filled with bags of post cluttered the room on all sides. Descending an iron stairway to the orlop, a deck completely off limits to passengers and nearly at the bottom of the ship, he waddled across the mail storage hold brimming with registered post from the Continent. An unpleasant blast of stale air filled his nose as he swung open the hatch on Watertight Bulkhead C. Securing the handles behind him, he entered the icy gloom of the No. 2 Hold. He felt a thousand nautical miles from the lights and gaiety of the First Class decks far above. Down here, in the gloomy and dank holds, all that was left below was the keel, and the freezing blackness of the North Atlantic below it.
‘Baltic in here,’ he moaned quietly to himself, pulling his coat collar tight about his neck.
Mr Carter of Pennsylvania had insisted his new Renault motor car be inspected three times a day. If it were up to Higginbotham, he’d give it a single looking over in the morning and be done with it. However, orders came down from the ship’s captain, and nobody mucked about with Captain Smith.
The holds of Titanic were unheated and also sparsely lit. Making his way through the cargo stores, Higginbotham’s wellington boots squeaked against the iron floor. Carter’s Renault sat in the centre of the hold, strapped tightly to a wooden pallet. As ever, all was in order. Slipping the cargo manifest out from under his arm, Higginbotham ran a gloved finger down the list: mink coats from Russia, crystal from Venice, rugs from Persia, a Roentgen secretary – whatever that was – and one 1912 Renault.
‘Odds and sods,’ he muttered, looking forward to the end of his shift and a warm pot of tea.
The sound of a distant canticle broke the silence once more. Straining his ear, he heard it cease, then begin again. High-pitched and pure, a distant, sweet staccato ending in a curious fugue as other angelic voices joined in.
‘You’re