Band of Angel (43 page)

He was wearing an operating gown, and his boots glistened with blood. He asked if her finger was all right now and she said it was fine.

“Hang on, hang on,” he said as she tried to walk away, “are you all right, Catherine?” She hated him using her first name and felt preposterously shy. He told her he’d come to relieve Perrett. “He’s had enough, poor fellow.” He seemed gentler, more respectful than before. “Here give me those.” He took half the bandages from her pile. Two orderlies went by them carrying an empty stretcher and they were pushed together. She could feel his hand against her back.

“I’m taking this medicine to a boy near the tubs,” she babbled. “We took his bandage off, his arm is very bad.”

“I’ve seen it,” he said. “Sister Patricia called me over on my way here. You’d better come with me to the dispensary; I’ve got something better for it.”

They walked back down to the doctors’ room together. The medicine bottles were scattered in a sticky pile, the chair on its side. Dr. Perrett had gone. She could hear herself breathing strangely. He closed the door behind them.

“Do you know what Perrett’s problem is?” He was sorting through the bottles with his back to her.

“No, I would not presume to.”

“He’s been up to his neck in blood for the past year and now he’s drowning in it. He can’t stop work, he never sleeps, and he’s as stricken as his patients.”

“But how can you turn your back on this?” She was longing for the door to open.

“You must,” he looked at her. “It’s like coming up for air. Does Miss Nightingale give you time off?”

“Chaperoned walks, prayer meetings, but it’s the last thing on our minds.”

“Silly,” he said quietly. “A day away refreshes the mind, helps you work better. What’s that scratch on your neck, Catherine?” He pointed to where she’d attacked last night’s fleas with her nails, and drew back her hair.

“It’s nothing, we’re all itchy,” she said.

“I had a day off in Constantinople only last week,” he spoke as if he wasn’t holding her hair and looking in a professional way at her neck. “A caïque first thing in the morning across the Golden Horn, breakfast at Mimars, hot rolls, coffee. A carriage down to Sultanamet for . . . I’m not sure if this is fleas or scabies, Catherine, but there is something I can do about it.”

“I’m all right.” She stood still as a statue.

He drew back the hair on the other side of her neck.

“Supper that night with the ambassador, yes, a very nice day, and no I’m sorry but it’s not all right. If I can cure it, I will.” He locked the door.

With a light touch on her shoulder he led her toward the cupboard and opened its door. She could see their distorted reflections in the black bottles, his black and gray hair over her cap, his eyes protruding, and the light gleaming back at them from purple-colored medicines.

“I’ve got some stuff in here for scabies,” he said. “It’s called Poonga oil, I heard about it in India and it works a treat. Now draw your wrapper down to your waist, Catherine.”

“Sir, please, for the love of God.”

His friendly smile died, and his big carved face grew severe.

“Draw your wrapper down to your waist. Do as I tell you. They use it for lamp oil as well as for scabies over there.”

She unbuttoned her woolen wrapper, and then her bodice, then his big hands moved swiftly around her breasts, and she could feel the wet of the ointment. It was shockingly intimate and she hated it.

“Yes,” he said casually, as if the rubbing of her breasts was the last thing on his mind. “Don’t for goodness sake make the mistake Perrett’s making. The human heart can only take so much and you are every bit as important as every one of those poor wretches lying out there. Fight for your life, break rules if you must. There. Does that feel better? I would guess you’ll need about three or four treatments. You should also have baths, lots of baths, a thorough soaping, lots of scrubbing.”

“Please.” She was unable to bear it. “Please, I want to go back now.”

“Of course.” His eyes when he looked as her seemed as blank as pebbles. “I’m operating this morning. We’re all busy, Catherine. Do your dress up now, there’s a good girl.”

There was a knock on the door, then the muffled voice of an orderly through the door saying he wanted that day’s operation list. “Dr. Menzies says that Captain Perrett will not be back on duty today, so if you please, sir, would you do his—he will send a written order to that effect.”

“Oh, how they do love their written orders,” Cavendish whispered impishly to Catherine, making her a colleague in the know.

She stared at him, bewildered and ashamed: had he been kind
or funny with her, it was so hard to tell? The itching did feel better.

“And Powell,” Cavendish shouted through the door, “could you check with Ware we have a supply of chloroform, the last batch we had was bad.”

“Damn,” he said when the orderly was gone. “I meant to ask for more Poonga oil for your scabies. But don’t worry dear, we’ll get you well.”

The day after Deio arrived, he was put in the care of two soldiers: Private Arkwright, a tall sour-looking man who the men called The Silent Friend, and a man called Chalk who, although bent and prematurely aged, had a cheerful, confiding manner.

They took him down to “the stables,” a large ramshackle shed on the edge of a sea of mud. Two sides of the shed were broken and almost entirely exposed to wind, rain, and snow, of which there seemed to be a lot in Balaclava. Inside this miserable dwelling fifty or so horses were huddled together, some the same handsome chargers who had pranced through London a year or so before. Their bones stood out like coat hangers, their coats and eyes were dull and, where there was room, they stood with their heads close to the ground.

“What happened to their tails?” he asked.

Chalk said they’d been eating them because they were hungry.

“How many have you lost?”

“Hundreds,” said Chalk, “thousands if you count the ones left to starve at Varna; there were five hundred alone killed in the Light Brigade’s charge.”

“Listen to that one coughing,” said Deio. His dander was up. “A flu would sweep through this lot like a fire. I tell you something, man, I won’t leave mine here.”

It was a calculated risk. He already knew how much they needed him.

“Now look here!” Chalk’s confiding manner was an ordeal—he
was in the early stages of scurvy and his breath stank. “You’re a free agent here, so you’re not bound by army regulations. What do you need?”

Deio thought for a while, made a quick sketch on the back of an envelope.

“A drier site than this; some straw. Eight or ten thick upright poles, a hammer, some solid timber.”

Arkwright’s gray face collapsed in despair. “Not possible. Wood is only to be used for firewood now.”

“Shut up you big, pregnant gel,” said Chalk, who seemed to enjoy sparring with Arkwright, “and use your head. As I said, he’s a free agent. Have you got your own nails? Any rope?”

“Both.”

“A hammer?”

“Yes, and a saw.”

“Capital, capital,” said Chalk. “We could ride out this morning and see what we can find.”

He asked if Chalk could leave the camp without permission, and Chalk said he had it.

“They’ve told us to keep you happy, if you see what I mean.” Chalk’s yellowing eyes winked, his breath was almost unbearable.

Pride flared up inside Deio. He had lots of cards in his hand and was confident that he could make it work here.

They ate breakfast in Arkwright and Chalk’s foul and drafty little tent. It was just about big enough to lie down in if you lay on the diagonal. There were no chairs, and two muskets had to be put outside in the mud so they could sit down. They ate stale eggs, hard biscuits tasting of tar, and a poisonous cup of coffee that took Arkwright a good half hour to make, first roasting the green beans over a sulky fire that filled the tent with smoke. Hungry as he was, Deio wanted to shout with impatience, he was longing to see his horses settled, and decided that from now on he’d eat with them.

“My pleasure,” said Chalk, when he thanked him for the coffee. His gums were bright scarlet and spongy when he smiled. Chalk said that Arkwright could do with a decent meal himself. He said they were lads together and had grown up in the same
small village in Kent, and that Arkwright had been very talkative himself then.

After breakfast Deio got out his grooming kit and, whistling softly through his teeth, gave Midnight, his best-looking horse, a proper grooming. The horse enjoyed the attention, standing in a trance while his handsome head was brushed. All the sweat and rain marks were at last brushed away, and finally his mane was damped and combed to one side. When he was done, Deio sweated, the horse gleamed, and Chalk and Akrwright’s eyes stood out on stalks. You didn’t see horses like that in the Crimea nowadays.

Then Deio polished up his good saddle with some saddle soap and neat’s-foot oil. He cleaned his bridle, slipped a bit through Midnight’s mouth, and swung up into the saddle. Chalk, thrilled by this unexpected diversion, followed behind him on Magic, and with two pack animals behind them, they left the camp.

A bitter wind blew down from the hills. The freezing rain, which had fallen earlier, had not drained away but left the track they rode on rock solid in some places and treacherous. Deio was prepared. Under waxed chaps he wore a thick pair of breeches and the long greased stockings Meg knitted, which kept him dry on the Welsh hills. Two wool shirts, a coat, a black wide-awake hat, and, in front of him, rolled up like a cigar and tied to the D rings of his saddle, a large tarpaulin with a hole in it for his head.

Chalk was impressed: “Compare yourself to those poor blighters,” he said, and pointed at a group of men coming toward them, shoeless and dressed in damp rags; they looked like whipped animals. They’d been up all night on trench duty.

“What do you reckon on this then?” said Chalk to the bedraggled soldiers, preening on his horse.

“Sight for sore eyes,” mumbled one man, “beautiful.”

Deio could hardly bear to look: he wasn’t ready yet. This was his first day in the Crimea. His biggest test yet. He felt excited, released, anxious to feel on top of the new world he had entered.

Halfway through the morning he realized he hadn’t thought of Catherine once, and he was glad.

* * *

The first blow to his confidence came as they rode toward the village of Kadikoi, which Chalk thought had been recently ransacked, and where he thought they might find themselves a big pile of wood. They were crossing a bridge on the outskirts of the village when a group of twenty or so British soldiers, uniformed and on horseback, appeared from the other side.

Their officer asked them who they were and what they thought they were doing. Chalk had looked guilty, fumbled for his papers, made them both look like arses.

“I’ve brought some horses here to sell,” Deio sat calmly on his horse. “Private Chalk has been assigned to show me around.”

“Oh, indeed?” Midnight was cantering on the spot, delighted to be free again after being confined on the ship.

“How long are you here for?” Compared to Midnight, the man’s horse was a joke—skin and bone and swan-necked, so maybe it rankled. He snatched the papers from Chalk’s hand and addressed Deio like a servant.

Deio said he would stay as long as he had to. There was a pause while the officer waited for him to say “sir,” but he didn’t.

“A week? A month?”

“However long it takes.”

“So what is the going rate for a thing like that?” The officer pointed at Midnight with his whip.

“A hundred pounds.” He named the highest price he could get away with. “Bred to race and trained at the cavalry school in Pimlico.”

The other men were clattering across the bridge, eyes lighting on his horses like flies on fresh meat.

“The man’s a horse dealer from Wales,” the officer told them, “reckons he’ll get a hundred pounds for that one.”

They muttered among themselves and rode away without a word, except he heard one say, “He just might.” But that didn’t please him.

“Who were they?” he asked Chalk. He felt ruffled by the encounter, as though he’d been tested and failed.

“They’re from the Eleventh, they’ve been on an outlying piquet,” said Chalk, who was saluting and grinning.

“What’s that?” Deio didn’t like not knowing the language, it made him feel small.

“Well”—Chalk rode up beside him—“a piquet is a group of men who go out four or five miles in advance, or in the rear of the army, to keep watch on any approach of the enemy. It’s a sod of a job—they’re often gone for twenty-four hours at a time.”

Deio felt a little envious. He could do that. He could do it well.

“And your vidette,” Chalk said, lighting a furtive pipe, “is the lot who detach from the piquet to give notice of any Cossack bother.”

He asked how often they met a Cossack.

“Oh every day, once or twice at least,” said Chalk, blowing out smoke. “We could meet them now, round the next corner.”

Without thinking, Deio tightened his hand on his shotgun. So it could happen at any time. He felt a quickening in himself, as though all his nerve endings were closer to his skin, and he was almost disappointed when Chalk pointed around the next corner at the small village where he said they should stop.