The Rose of Sebastopol (54 page)

Rosa had stood here, holding her hands to the warmth of Henry’s fire, cornered by his frantic demand to be loved. And in that moment, filled with my own new love, I saw through her relentless eyes the possibilities of that ribbon of water with the road running alongside on its way to Sebastopol.

“Max.”

He held my arm and followed my gaze. “No. Not even Rosa would be that rash.”

“She wouldn’t have seen it as rash.”

“Sebastopol?”

“She hated the war. She longed to make a difference. To work with the Russians would have been an obvious choice.”

“She would never have got past their pickets.”

“Knowing Rosa she just gave her name and walked on.”

“Why did Henry let her go?”

“Perhaps he was sleeping. Perhaps she told him where his duty lay and made him go back to the camp.”

We stood side by side and watched the river coil away under a fuzz of mist. Then I followed Max down the path, past the little church, and into the valley. At the bottom there was a parting of the ways; one track led between boulders and scrubland to the road beside the river, the other to the camp.

He and I had no choice. We turned our backs on the river and rode towards the allied camp. I kept my eyes on Max, whose high-stepping horse walked confidently ahead, and on the sky swimming with pale light, and tried not to be startled by every cracking twig, every rattle of artillery from the trenches, or to think that in two hours, an hour, half an hour, I would be parted from him.

Soon we were riding into more and more company. This time the pickets were alert and nervy and we were challenged again and again. The camp was wide-awake but furtive with scurrying forms moving from tent to tent, campfires quenched, the rattle of arms.

By the time we reached the Castle Hospital it was almost broad daylight. Max dismounted and we kept out of sight between the horses as he kissed me, his eyes soft with love. “Walk away,” he said. “I’ll watch you.” He was so new to me; the miracle of our night together was still within reach. And I remembered all too clearly another good-bye, Newman’s tears darkening the cloth of his jacket, his body splayed on the abatis.

At last I let Max go. When I looked back he was still there. All I could see of his face was the gleam of his pale brow.

Neither Nora nor Mrs. Whitehead was in the hut and I stood in the familiar, creaking darkness straining to hear hoof-beats as Max rode back down the hill. Then I thought again of Rosa, and how she must have left Henry while he was sleeping, or said a firm and final good-bye, picked up her skirts, and hurried down the rocky path to the valley below.

E
arly the next day, on the morning of September 5,
the final bombardment of Sebastopol began with a vehement burst of fire that rattled the hut, shook the boxes on the shelves, and had even the rats scuttling for shelter. Usually such a violent bombardment was soon followed by a pause, but this time it went on and on as if some fatal ague had broken loose on the earth. After a few minutes a pall of smoke rose in the blue sky and even though we were several miles away our jaws clenched with the racket.

But I couldn’t any longer see myself as separate from the city; allies on the outside, enemy within. What must it be like to inhabit a quiet suburban house, say a Russian version of Fosse House, with airy rooms, tasteful furnishings, a lifetime’s belongings, and then have it shattered like an eggshell? I thought of the morning room with my mother’s writing desk and my sewing table neatly set out for a new day’s work. Those bits of furniture were as constant as the earth itself, immutably there. But to stand among the rubble, to creep from one broken building to the next, to be sure of nothing except that the next second the city would suffer another strike. Is that really what Rosa had chosen?

Meanwhile I discovered that a note had been pushed under the door summoning me to the presence of Mrs. Shaw Stewart.

I washed my face, brushed the dust from my hair, changed my skirt and blouse, and put on a clean cap and apron even though it grieved me to set aside the clothes I had worn to Inkerman. Then I marched down to the hut in which Miss Nightingale had once languished. I couldn’t help noticing that my progress attracted more attention than usual from passing orderlies and walking wounded, so I knew that I had certainly been found out—my expedition to Inkerman with Captain Max Stukeley, not to mention my delayed return to the hospital, were known to all.

This time Mrs. Shaw Stewart stood up and placed one hand on her desk when I appeared in the doorway. She wore a black bonnet tied with recently pressed ribbons, her skirts must have been supported by half a dozen petticoats, and she wore no apron. I assumed that this was the garb she wore for dispensing bad news.

“Miss Lingwood. I sent for you yesterday but you were not to be found.”

I sighed, anticipating explanations, pleading, a packing of bags, and a search for accommodation in Balaklava.

Her voice was normally soft and refined but that morning she had to raise it above the clamor of the guns. “If you choose not to disclose your whereabouts I shall not press you. In some sense it is no business of mine as you are not one of my nurses, though common courtesy, after all I’ve done for you, might have suggested that you owed me an explanation.” Long pause while I studied my dirty thumbnail. “The reason I wanted to see you was that recently you requested to be allowed to work on the wards. Unfortunately, since then no less than three of our women have been stricken with cholera. Had you been among us yesterday you’d have known that Mrs. Whitehead, who has been a stalwart in the cholera wards, has herself become a victim. If you are still willing you may undertake to help with the nursing of her. It is hardly ideal but of course my nurses must be attended by women, and as we have been notified that hundreds of wounded could arrive at any moment, I have no-one experienced to spare. You will take directions from Mrs. McCormack, and the usual rules governing all nurses will apply to you, though as yet I am not prepared to give you a formal contract.”

Her gray eyes were disdainful. There was no doubt that she too had a very good idea of where I had been the previous day, and with whom. In fact, it occurred to me that allowing me to work on the cholera ward was perhaps a form of chastisement.

“Of course,” I said. “Yes. Of course. Gladly.”

“You understand the dangers, I’m sure. I should like you to write to your family that this decision was entirely voluntary and instigated by you. And obviously it is for a probationary period only. After that we shall see.”

She sat down at her desk and took up her pen. Thus dismissed I backed away but then, driven by some reckless urge to redeem Rosa in her eyes I said: “Mrs. Shaw Stewart. About my cousin, Rosa Barr. I believe that she has gone to Sebastopol.”

She was too well-bred to show surprise other than by a lift of an eyebrow. “Sebastopol. Whatever for?”

“To nurse. After all, that was all she ever wanted to be allowed to do.”

“What proof do you have?”

“No proof, except what I know of Rosa.”

“As if we don’t have enough sick men of our own. How could she think of going over to the enemy?”

“It would make no difference to Rosa whose sick men they were.”

She smiled faintly. “Well, Miss Lingwood, if she is really in Sebastopol, I think we must keep her in our prayers more than ever.”

The cholera wards were set apart from the rest and at that time, just before the final assault on the Redan, the hospital was sufficiently empty to allow the small number of women patients to be kept in a separate hut from the men. When first I opened the door and crept inside I was nearly blown back by the stifling atmosphere. Windows and doors were shut to exclude the flies, camphor was burning to clear the air, but nothing could conceal the stench of sickness.

My first patient, Mrs. Whitehead, who had been so girlishly excited about my trip to Inkerman only two evenings ago, had worn herself out working with the cholera victims and been found lying in a heap on the way to the latrines, her normally spotless gown soiled and her complexion the telltale livid gray that marked the first phase of cholera. By the time I arrived at her bedside she was vomiting back every mouthful of rice water that was dribbled between her lips and a doctor had prescribed the usual medicines: calomel to make her expel the toxins, opium to bind her stools, water and saline to ensure that a supply of fluid was retained in the blood. On this treatment she had begun to fail.

Nora took me aside and muttered: “We owe it to this woman to save her. I have been down to the British Hotel and taken advice from Mrs. Seacole, who has seen more cholera cases on her travels than most of these doctors have treated head colds. This is what you will do. Leave all those wretched medicines to one side, especially the opium, which will take the fight out of her, and give her nothing but lime juice squeezed into the rice water. You must dose her every five minutes. Do not move from her side. When she begins to get the cramps call me.”

After she’d gone I sat hunched over my patient as if only by keeping my eyes on her could I be sure that her life wouldn’t slip away. Sometimes I found myself retreating to the cave above Inkerman, sometimes I followed Rosa into the valley and along the river to Sebastopol. Sometimes Nora came, held Mrs. Whitehead’s hand, prayed over her and crossed herself, but mostly I was left alone with my patient while the distant guns roared along the allied front.

By now I understood exactly the source of every burst of fire, and that when there was a brief interlude it was only because the guns had to cool and the men to rest. An orderly, sent to wash the floors, told me that there was so much smoke over Sebastopol that it was hard to tell what was going on inside the city, although someone had reported that the great buildings were being reduced to rubble and that during a lull in the firing the bastions swarmed with enemy soldiers trying to repair the damage before the bombardment began again.

When the cramps came Nora helped lift Mrs. Whitehead up and we rubbed and rubbed her back and arms with eucalyptus oil to keep the blood circulating and stop them turning blue. I remembered Henry telling me that the chief cause of death in cholera patients is a thickening of the blood as vital serum is drawn to the intestines in order to remedy the infection there, hence a chilling and cramping in the extremities. To escape the agony Mrs. Whitehead tried to curl herself in a ball and hurl herself onto the floor but we pressed poultices to her neck and chest and fed liquids into her resistant mouth.

“So,” said Nora, as we laid our patient on her stomach and began the process of oiling her feet and hands again, working her calf muscles and kneading heat into her cold, sweating flesh. “You say Rosa has gone to Sebastopol.”

“It’s what I think. I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s true that girl could never keep her nose out of anything, especially if it didn’t concern her.”

“But if I’m right how will she survive this bombardment?”

“I shall pray for her. And if need be, if things get too bad, you and I shall just have to go in there and pluck her out.” Our eyes met for a moment and she raised an eyebrow—a challenge or a promise—then we bundled Mrs. Whitehead up in blankets and put hot bricks at her feet.

When the chaplain wound his cautious way along the ward I muttered: “But she’s not dying yet.”

He shook his bald head, in far too much of a hurry to argue. “Nevertheless, I shall anoint her so the job is done in case.” Stooping over the lamp he read from the page a text that he must have known by heart.

 

I didn’t join in his prayer because it seemed to me that he was sealing her fate. I had already seen quite enough of men being returned to dust, so I resorted to the only cure I knew by stitching Mrs. Whitehead back together in my head. Hadn’t I spent all my life disguising the human form with my frills and lace, my crochet, appliqué, and embroidery? I had cut yard upon yard of fabric and shaped it with gathers, darts, and seams until I had turned myself into a walking gown with head and hands. And now here was the cholera unraveling Mrs. Whitehead faster than I could bind her up again, shearing the hair from her head, stripping her naked, shedding flesh from her bones, intelligence from her eyes, the smile from her lips.