Where Love Shines (5 page)

T
he days sped by, muddling in Jennifer’s memory like the endless line of wounded men on straw pallets in the miles of corridors. On Christmas Day the nuns said extra prayers, and the nurses spent their short off-duty time singing carols to the men. But celebrations were sparse. Another boatload arrived from Sebastopol. Now the chilling cold was beginning to take its effect. The beds, emptied as often by death as by recovery, were filled with pneumonia and frostbite cases. Men arrived without overcoats, blankets, or even canteens, because in earlier days of choking heat they had been ordered by their officers to abandon their packs when scaling the heights above Sebastopol, and the supplies were never recovered. Now they must sleep unprotected on the frozen ground, wearing only light cotton shirts.

At Florence Nightingale’s request, 27,000 woollen shirts had been shipped from England. And they had arrived. But the aged purveyor said he could not unpack them until the Board of Survey inspected and released them. Miss Nightingale had simply purchased more shirts in Constantinople.

“Miss Nightingale, you have behaved in a most irregular and unmilitary manner,” the old officer had complained. “After all, you could have had the government shirts in three or four weeks.”

Jennifer ground her teeth at this further example of official ineptitude and turned to nurse men whose frozen feet had been amputated to prevent gangrene. There were 11,000 soldiers in the camp above Sebastopol—and 12,000 in the army hospitals. Still, boatload after boatload of sick continued to arrive at Scutari.

They again requested the withheld shirts. It seemed they had been released to some doctor. The signature was unreadable. And the shirts never showed up in Scutari.

Florence Nightingale shook her head as they prepared to receive yet another group for whom there was no room and yet for whom they must make room. “This is calamity unparalleled in the history of calamity,” she said, then turned to her work. Jennifer and the others followed her.

Somewhere in this endless stream of days and rounds of work, Jennifer had discovered herself adjusting to the pattern of it all—not just responding to orders because she had no other option or because she didn’t feel ready to return to London and Arthur. She had really become a part of the work. And in the rare moments when she had leisure to contemplate a future beyond the next round of duties, she knew she could never return to her former life of making social calls, doing embroidery, and taking food baskets to the poor. She might not continue with nursing, but she would not be idle.

Certainly there was no idleness at the Barracks Hospital. But there was little success. With Miss Nightingale’s better food for the men, better care of the wounded, and better cleanliness in the hospital, they should be saving more lives. Still, they were not. And of those who didn’t die, many, like Richard Greyston, continued to waver in an uncertain state from one upsurge of fever to the next.

“If only we could make them well,” Jennifer said as she helped Florence sort supplies a few weeks later. “It seems the men just come here to die. Something must be wrong. We’re doing our best, but we’re losing the fight.”

Her supervisor nodded. “There is certainly something wrong here.” Ever the careful record-keeper, she sorted again through her neatly marked bottles. “Oil of vitriol, emetic tartar, sal volatile, white arsenic…” Florence frowned at her accounts, then counted again. “Two bottles of each are missing. This cupboard is never to be unlocked by any but my own hand. Miss Neville, if you see anyone—anyone at all—around my supplies, you are to inform me immediately.”

“Yes, of course, Miss Nightingale.” They worked on, counting pots of calomel and spermaceti ointment, citron ointment and Boric acid for eye diseases. All were in order on this shelf, so Jennifer spoke again. “If only so many didn’t die under our care.”

Florence’s reply was businesslike. “Quite. Our death rate is 42 percent. That is unacceptable. Unthinkable. So I have informed our new prime minister, Lord Palmerston. He is an old friend of mine. I believe he will hear me. I have begged and pleaded with all the words at my command that he send out a sanitary commission. Have you noticed, Miss Neville, that this hospital reeks even outside?”

Jennifer moved from the ointments to number a box of rolled bandages—purchased, she knew, with Miss Nightingale’s own money. She set it on the shelf. “I have noticed. Only I thought perhaps it was just me—my clothes must be permeated with the smell—my very skin, I think.” She turned to another box. “But will Lord Palmerston respond?”

“He must. If he wishes to avoid complete catastrophe and save the British army, he must.” Florence Nightingale spoke the words calmly as she continued checking her records, but the determination in her voice chilled Jenny far more than the February air pouring through the broken window.

Jennifer finished her job at the supply cupboard and took a round of tea—which was in truth little more than sweetened hot water—to the men in three wards. Then she had a half-hour break. She thought fleetingly of how good it would feel to lie on her cot. Or how pleasant it would be to write a letter to her family. They had only heard from her once since Christmas.

Her mother wrote faithfully every week, amusing letters full of news of the London season and All Souls parish. Arthur wrote less frequently but more vigorously of the great good they should now be able to accomplish with Palmerston in office. The new prime minister was stepfather-in-law to the crusading Earl of Shaftesbury whom Arthur, a minor civil servant, idolized. It was clear from Arthur’s account of his many activities that he had every intention of removing the “minor” from this description. His letters abounded with reports of committees to deal with public health and factory laws.

We have had a great triumph with the model lodging-houses. Shaftesbury presented the facts to Parliament. In a season when more than 14,000 have died from cholera, there has been not one case in the model lodging-houses in George Street. Yet in Church Lane, which is but a stone’s throw away, the ravages are dreadful…

Jennifer dropped the letter with a sigh.

There were soldiers who needed her attention more than her family and friends did. Forcing a spring she did not feel into her step, she jerked open the door of her room. A stocky figure with a high, balding forehead pulled back sharply from the supply cup board in the hall. She started to scold him and then realized who it was. “Oh, Dr. Pannier. Can I help you with something?”

“My supplies of poppy syrup and catechu tincture are quite exhausted, and we have a new outbreak of cholera. I had hoped Miss Nightingale might have at least some linseed tea in her supplies.” The gravelly voice paused.

“Yes, of course. Shall I find her for you? She has the only key.”

“No. Never mind. I’ll deal with it myself.”

Jennifer nodded at his dismissal and turned her steps toward the upper ward. She had returned to Lieutenant Greyston two days after writing his letter and addressed it to his sister in Newcastle-Under-Lyme. Since then she had had a few hurried visits with him—enough to assure herself he was still alive in spite of the recurring fever. She did not know much about his injury, beyond the fact that it was a burn from cannon fire. And she had learned little about him beyond the fact that his brother George was heir to Greyston Pottery, which made the famous Royal Legend pattern of china, and that Lieutenant Greyston worried much over what had become of his horse named for that pattern. And the fact that all he had ever wanted was a career in the army, and he couldn’t wait to get back to his regiment.

Jennifer shook her head every time he expressed that desire. “I’ve heard enough about the charge of the Light Brigade that I cannot believe any man who survived would want to go back.” It was a miracle that even 249 of the 673 men survived. “That cannon fire must have put you out of your head.”

Jennifer plumped his pillow vigorously and straightened his blanket, for she had chosen to write a letter for him rather than to her own family. She would not admit that she was almost glad he had taken the fever, since it kept him off the battlefield. But then she felt guilty as her hand brushed his. He was very hot. His cheeks were flushed, and his skin felt dry. She was glad she had thought to bring him her portion of wine today. The water smelled as bad as the barracks walls. This place couldn’t be healthy for a sick man. She propped him up and held the tin cup to his lips, determining to get her ration to him more regularly.

“I received a letter yesterday,” he said when she returned his head to the pillow.

Jenny started to reach for his box, but he pulled the crumpled sheet from the pocket of his tunic and handed it to her. She smoothed the sheet. “Oh, it’s from your sister again. She writes from London. She is there for the season with your aunt…” Jennifer read the bright account of London’s social life, resumed with full vigor now that the terrible epidemic of Asiatic cholera, which had swept the continent and the slums of London that winter, had ended.

It would be impossible to exaggerate the gratitude one feels everywhere at the abatement of the pestilence from which we have escaped. The death rate had risen to 3,000 a week at its worst—but only in the poorer sections of the city, of course.

Mama and I attended a service of thanksgiving before ordering new gowns for Lady Royalston’s ball…

Jennifer folded the letter and moved away quietly. Lieutenant Greyston was asleep.

Three weeks later Florence Nightingale came into the tower rooms flushed with pleasure, waving a letter. “We have triumphed! Lord Palmerston has appointed his son-in-law Lord Shaftesbury to form a sanitary commission for the Crimea.”

Perhaps only Jennifer, who had so often seen the light burning under the door far into the night and discussed their needs with Miss Nightingale, knew what persistence, repeated urgings, even demands, this victory had required. Palmerston, a long-time family friend of the Nightingales, could not refuse this indomitable woman.

Florence read from the paper she held: ‘“Commissioners: The utmost expedition must be used in starting your journey… It is important that you be deeply impressed with the necessity of not resting content with an order, but that you see instantly, by yourselves or your agents, to the commencement of the work and to its superintendency day by day until it is finished.’ So run the orders for the Sanitation Commission.”

All the nurses in the room applauded the clear official call to action. “At last,” Jennifer cried. “Do you think they might actually get rid of the rats?”

“And the smell?” Edith Watson sniffed.

The commissioners arrived less than two weeks later—two doctors of proven energy from the Board of Health, a civil engineer from London, and the borough engineer and three sanitary inspectors from Liverpool where a sanitary act had been in operation longer than anywhere else in the country.

The commission had been in Scutari for only a few days when Jennifer was hurrying to her quarters, trying to be on time for curfew. She stopped at the sound of angry voices coming from one of the small, improvised kitchens. “…I know your game. You won’t get away with this….”

A muffled growling voice replied with a string of curses.

Jennifer moved back into the shadows. Should she try to slip past the open door or go around the other way and risk discipline for breaking the rules?

Then one of the speakers erupted from the room at an angry lope. She did not recognize him, but his well-cut clothes identified him as one of the London commissioners. Jennifer stayed in her corner for another long moment, barely breathing. What could that mean? Then another dark figure, this one short and stocky, the dim light shining on his bald head, slipped down the hall without seeing her.
How odd. Dr. Pannier had been arguing with a commissioner. Was there to be trouble just when they could hope for success?

The next day she was busy until afternoon accompanying Dr. Menzies on his rounds, administering a fever mixture of powdered nitre and carbonate of potash in antimonial wine and salving burns with Drover’s powder of mercury and chalk when bandages were changed. It was late in the day after a round of emptying slops that Jennifer heard the news.

Edith Watson and Sister Mary Margaret were talking to two other nuns outside the nurses’ quarters. “You mean he was shot? Dead? Dear God.” Sister Mary crossed herself and then tugged at the rosary hanging from her belt. “Come.” She turned to the two sisters. “We will pray for his soul.”

Near a battlefield where hundreds of men were shot dead almost daily, what was so alarming about this newest case?

Mrs. Watson explained to Jennifer. “It’s not a soldier. It’s Dr. Gavin, one of the London doctors come with the commission.”

“How did it happen?”

“Accident. His brother and some others were cleaning their guns and target practicing. Seems one of the guns discharged by mistake.”

Jennifer shook her head. At least it was an accident. Murder or suicide would have been an unthinkable complication. And yet she worried. Was this entire venture doomed? All their hopes were pinned on the Sanitary Commission. Would this be yet another official failure to add to the annals of the Crimea?

But Florence Nightingale had fought too hard for this breakthrough to accept failure now. She would write to London for a replacement commissioner before she attended Dr. Gavin’s funeral. And then the work would resume—full force.

A few days later a ship brought the building supplies the commissioners had had the foresight to realize they would need. This was followed by the quick arrival of the replacement commissioner. Then the coming of spring put new energy into all their work. Jenny’s workload didn’t decrease, but it seemed that she got through her duties faster, and sometimes she even found herself walking down the corridors singing.

If only she could transfer some of her new spirit to the men lying sick and in pain all around her. At least the warmer temperatures meant they should have received their last load of frostbite victims. But improved weather meant increased military action. And the ships continued to cross the Black Sea with their loads of wounded men.