Band of Angel (33 page)

“Good morning, everybody!” she sang out.

“Good morning, Lady Bracebridge!” they chorused back, one or two of them smiling foolishly. Lady Bracebridge had innocently become the butt of many jokes on board the
Vectis
. Prostrate with seasickness for most of the voyage—despite being given the highest, safest cabin—she’d made the mistake, even during bouts of illness, of trying to improve their minds, and appeared at intervals, staggering and green, to talk on a wide variety of subjects: the movement of tides, the exact Latin name for stars, sea birds, the best way to hem a skirt, French art.

Nurse Clara Sharpe, a wicked mimic, had her down to such a “T,” that Emma Fagg had wet her drawers one night listening. “And another great theeng about Beetlegerst,” Clara would say, screwing up her face and gazing intently at a star, “ees eet . . .” and then she would clap her hand over her mouth and rush downstairs retching.

But still, Catherine thought, Lady B at sea was nothing like as chilly or as snobbish as she’d been in London at Sidney Herbert’s house. She’d sat with them several times on deck and told spellbinding stories of her extensive travels. Now she stood in the prow of the
Vectis,
her penetrating eyes trying to pierce the mist and find signals.

“Constantinople,” she told them, “is quite one of my most favorite cities on earth.” She explained that they were sailing down a stretch of water called the Bosphorus, and that the Bosphorus neatly divided Asia
so
(a jab of her parasol to the right of the boat) and Europe (a jab to her left). “Shut
it,
” whispered Emma Fagg to Clara Sharpe, who was starting to wobble her head and purse her lips. “I’m
listening and you listen, too, it’s
important.
” Lady B said that Constantinople had, for thousands of years, been a crucial part of British sea routes to India, which was one reason why the Russians had to be kept away from it.

“Lady Bracebridge,” asked Catherine when she had finished, “on what side of the water is Scutari and the Barrack Hospital?”

“It used to be called the Sulemin Barrack Hospital,” she said, “and as far as I can remember, it is over there, on the European side of the Bosphorus. Nothing to see yet, but all will be revealed as morning advances. We will have to check with Miss Nightingale.”

She pointed her parasol over the port-side railings. The shapes of four blackbirds wheeled in the sky against the fog, and they could hear men’s voices speaking what Fagg whispered to Sharpe was “gobshite and jabber jabber.”

Lady B swiveled her parasol back toward Constantinople, then her poodle started to retch. She put it down, turning her back on it while it was being sick, and continued. “Over there is the Byzantine church of St. Sophia; the gates of Felicity, the walls of the Grand Seraglio where the sultan keeps his harem . . . ignore it! ignore it!” This to the nurses who wanted to watch the poodle. “No water, and nothing I can do. It’s a marvellous city,” she carried on, “quite one of my favorites.”

“But where are the soldiers, my lady?” Sarah Barnes was gazing solidly into the white mist. “I want to go and nurse them.”

Before Lady B could answer, the door was flung open. Miss Nightingale, conspicuous by her absence since Boulogne, now burst onto the deck looking pink and bustling and with no trace of the seasickness that had kept her confined to her cabin. She wore a black silk dress and a white goffered bonnet so well starched she must have kept it for this moment.

“May I ask what on earth you are all doing up here?” she said, with an exasperated look in Lady B’s direction.

“I was showing them the sights.” Lady Bracebridge had taken the poodle by the scruff of its neck and was trying to stuff it into the folds of her dress. It was unusual to hear her voice falter, but Miss Nightingale did seem on the verge of quite a bad temper.

“The sights!” Miss Nightingale glared at her. She stepped around
the pile of yellow foam the poodle had spat up. “Have you quite taken leave of your senses? Lord Napier, the secretary to the British ambassador to Constantinople, will be coming aboard soon to welcome us. All of you”—her eyes traveled with a look of strained impatience over the nuns, Lady Bracebridge, Sarah Barnes, Lizzie, and the rest—“go downstairs at once, wash your faces, change your clothes, and do your hair.”

“But there is no water, Miss Nightingale,” said Emma Fagg in her irritating nasal whine.

“There is rainwater in the canvas on the deck.” Miss Nightingale rapped out each word. “I shall have it brought down.”

They went belowdecks as quickly as possible to their tiny cabin, where half a bucket of rainwater had been left for them all to share. Nobody said too much; they were still very much in a mind to love, even to worship, Miss Nightingale. But when they got down there, bumping into one another in the narrow, foul-smelling cabin, they did grumble about how they were expected to clean up in a cabin whose floors were still awash with vomit and slops from the water closet. Still, they spat on their hands and scrubbed with their hems and did the best they could. Everyone was so relieved to have survived the voyage and to know that their work would soon begin. They combed each other’s matted hair, they straightened bonnets. Morale was high. Two of the Norwood nuns, Sister Agnes and Sister Etheldreda, began to sing beautifully in low voices, and in unison, a lovely skidding song with a refrain of
In Excelsis Gloria, Gloria, Gloria.
For once, nobody complained about the Latin. They were all so happy to be alive.

A while later, they heard a shrill sound coming from the decks and then feet thundering above their heads. A French deckhand knocked on the cabin door, half torn off its hinges during the last gale and, jerking his fingers upwards said, “Hup now, lady say.” Spit had only just shifted the top layer of salt and dirt from their faces and there was nothing to be done about filthy, damp-smelling, uniforms. They clattered upstairs again, staying very close to one another in case Miss Nightingale was cross. She was standing alone
on the deck, silhouetted against the white sky; a light sprinkling of snow delicately iced her bonnet. She ordered them to stand in a straight line, not to slouch, and to keep their mouths closed. Her eyes were very black and bright. They had never seen her so nervous before.

A shrill blast of whistles sent seagulls screeching away, then Lord Napier appeared out of the sky, brilliant as a tropical bird. He wore a bright scarlet uniform crisscrossed with gold braid and jangling medals, and high, shining boots; a high, plumed hat increased his considerable height by a foot or more. The splendid caïque he had arrived in, lined with red scarlet and carved with gold leaf, bobbed on the water like a jewelry box.

The nurses and nuns stood at one end of the deck; he at the other. He walked down the deck toward them, a veritable cockerel among muddy hens and, to judge by his first swift glance, not a happy cockerel. He put a monocle to his left eye and let it travel for a while up and down them. All around her, Catherine could feel women with their eyes down, but as Lord Napier passed her she looked at him directly, saw his gray careful eyes, his well-trimmed mustaches, his ludicrous hat.

Miss Nightingale had an instinct for how to make occasions out of unpromising moments—it was part of her brilliance. And now, looking small and suitably awed but determined, she placed her two hands together as if in prayer, touched her hands to her lips, let them fall in a humble supplicating gesture to her waist, and told Lord Napier she was quite certain she spoke for every one of them when she said how honored and grateful they were to be there. Napier allowed himself a wincing smile that he quickly shut off.

“My orders, Miss Nightingale,” he said in a barking voice, “are to extend personal greetings to you from the ambassador, Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, and to ask you to proceed with me at once to the Barrack Hospital at Scutari.”

In the same staccato voice, he told them that while they had been at sea an important battle had been fought at Balaclava and the wounded were expected within hours. They all looked nervously toward Scutari as he said this. The sky had lightened, the
mist lifted; now they could see the outlines of a huge square building with a tower in each corner.

“That is the Barrack Hospital,” said Lord Napier, “where we will soon find out if you can help us.” He flexed his jaw under his chin strap. “And if you cannot, I am quite sure you will not hinder us in our quest for peace.” He stopped and removed his monocle. The feathers from his hat flared out in the stiff, smelly breeze from the shore. Miss Nightingale waited patiently beside him until she was quite sure his speech was over. She shook his hand. There was a loud jangle of spurs, medals, sword, and his short and disappointing visit was over.

After he had gone, they looked at Miss Nightingale. Then one of the nurses, the pale and intense Harriet Erskine, spoke up. “Oh, Miss Nightingale,” she pleaded, “when we anchor, don’t let there be any red-tape delays. Let us get straight to nursing the poor fellows.”

But Miss Nightingale, watching Lord Napier’s caïque thrusting through the water like an exotic fish, shook her head and frowned and said, “The strongest of you will be wanted at the washtub.”

It crossed Catherine’s mind briefly that this was an odd thing to say, but there was no time to think. A few moments later, ten caïques drew up alongside, and the sailors came and lowered the nurses over the side, four to a craft. There were screams at this: the caïques at close quarters looked frail as leaves, and the water that swirled around them was dark and sinister and littered with rubbish. A Turkish family rowed as close as they could to the ship to look at them. The women, dressed in ferigees and yashmaks, stared at them from black eyes, jabbering and gesticulating; then some boys in bright woolen hats rowed up to them, shrieking and dropping coins and pretending to juggle and dive. But the nurses felt too anxious to indulge them. By now the mist had gone entirely; on top of the hill the hospital had taken shape.

As they grew closer to the shore, the fishy-smelling water grew more foul and their oarsman had to use all his skill to negotiate the piles of rubbish and broken crates flung into the sea. For a while they drifted on, trying not to breathe, then a ferocious barking and growling from the shore drew their attention to a pack of mangy dogs, fighting over what, from a distance, looked like a large, waterlogged rabbit. The boatman paddled as close as he could toward the thing washing backwards and forwards in the water.

“
At,
” he repeated several times, “
olu at
.”

Through a stretch of scarlet water, Catherine saw the remains of a gray horse, still in its bridle, its eyes pecked clean away. All chatter in the boat gave way to an appalled silence; some of the women put their faces into their handkerchiefs.

Now the mists had cleared, the scene of desolation was complete. Beyond the shoreline, sitting on a muddy beach, was a row of fat buzzards. On the top of the hill, the hospital—huge and dark and with faint lights shining dimly in its windows—looked both human and terrifying: like the skull of a skeleton lit from within, or the kind of monster’s castle a child would draw.

For a while, Catherine’s mind tried to hold off the idea that this really was the place, but when one of the nurses shouted “Is that it?” from their boat across to Miss Nightingale, she turned and silently nodded her head.

They were docking. The Turkish skipper threw stones at the dogs, then steered them between the dead horse and a sagging pier.
A small crowd of people in rags were watching them; one of them was barefoot, with bandages stuck over legs so badly ulcerated they looked chewed. Catherine thought at first they must be locals, but then she heard one of the men speaking English, and saw that under the grime he wore a cherry-colored tunic. A woman with bad teeth, wearing a dirty green dress, tottered around for a while like someone about to propose a toast, but raised her hand instead in a tired salute.

“Welcome to Scutari,” she shouted.

Miss Nightingale went ashore first. She was spirited away by two high-ranking officers who appeared and scattered the small crowd away as if they were no more than stones. Then a young officer, with ginger muttonchops, came to deal with them. More people arrived to stare and marvel at them, while the drunken woman shook her head and called them “stupid buggers” for coming. Captain Muttonchop’s mouth opened foolishly; he seemed to have no idea what to do with the nurses, but eventually he said to follow him, quick sticks and on foot, to the hospital.

“Halt! To the right face! Advance,”
he shouted. A freezing cold wind had got up and the ground was slippery underfoot, but they tried weakly to obey. Catherine, trembling and sweating, could still feel the pitch of the waves inside her head, and the wild lurching of her stomach. They were all seasick and worn out by sleepless nights and not enough food. Up the hill they went, some of the crowd following. She could hear someone playing “Cheer, Boys, Cheer” on a squeaky pennywhistle, and although nobody actually laughed out loud at them, there was suppressed mirth in the air, and when one man in the crowd called out that “them Amazons will need some drilling,” she could see the young officer smirk.