Band of Angel (45 page)

“We’ll look for them together.” Sister Ignatius helped her out of bed, but to her dismay, she felt too dizzy to stand.

“Here they are.” Lizzie’s green cloth bag still had a large seawater stain on it. There was a pair of glasses inside it, a piece of bread wrapped in a handkerchief, some writing paper with a few
squiggles on, and a penny dreadful called
Emmalina’s Secret
, which broke her heart. There had been no time to teach her to read.

“I’d like to keep them for a while,” she said.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Sister Ignatius, “it might look . . . people could think.”

“What?” She was almost shouting. “Scavenger? Thief?”

She thought of the vultures, fat and revolting, who sat on the rim of the hill near Scutari.

“My dear, please.” She felt herself being led quite firmly back to bed. “Lie down.”

“I don’t want to stay here.”

“Miss Nightingale says you need to rest and I agree. I know about these things. In Africa, where I was a missionary, one saw it all the time. It’s not a crime, there is no shame. The body and the mind simply shuts down for a day or two and will not admit any more horror or pain. Lie down, try and pray.”

She lay back for a moment, shocked at how exhausted she felt, but no prayers came, only memories of the day her mother died, of Deio at the door, and then pain flooded into her and she heard herself gasping and crying.

Sister Ignatius came back mid-morning with a sheaf of prayers for her to read.

“There,” she said, as if the whole matter could now be settled, “put yourself in God’s hands.”

The prayers stuck like a bone in her throat. Guilt, renunciation, suffering, paying back. Only words, nothing but words.

Sister Ignatius produced a letter from the folds of her habit. “This is for you. Is it from home?”

But the sight of the letter only brought another wave of sick panic—what pain she had brought them all, dragging them down into the darkness.

“There, there, there,” soothed the nun, helping her hold it up. “Come along, read it.”

She tried to take in the dancing letters, to fix Eliza’s face in her mind.

“My sister has a baby,” she said. The nun was looking at her curiously, waiting. “A new baby. I can’t remember how many months old, or if it’s been born at all.”

The room lurched. Surely she could, should. But something held in tight was coming undone, and if it came undone she would not be able to work at all, and if she couldn’t work she was done for.

Now she knew that Deio would not come to her door again to look after her. She was done for and he’d been right to mistrust all this. This tower, with its unlit fire, its damp walls, the howling wind outside, was her prison now, and Lizzie’s tomb. She got up and looked through the window; the lights in Constantinople looked so far away. For the first time she thought it might be better to die soon.

Everybody was out at work when Dr. Cavendish dropped by the next day. He said he was the duty officer and had heard about her illness and Nurse Smart’s death and naturally been concerned.

He talked to her gently for a while and asked her if she would like an extra blanket, or perhaps some soup for lunch. She felt so breakable that she almost found herself responding to his new kindness and for the first time thought she might really have misjudged him.

“Show me your tongue.” She didn’t like the sight of his big carved face so close to her, but he’d murmured something about typhus and she had poked out her tongue. She breathed a sigh of relief when he said, “I can see no sign of that illness,” his hands feeling the glands under her chin.

His big fingers touched the edge of her wrapper. “So how is your skin after our treatment?” he said easily. “Much better.” She shied away from him and pulled the blanket as high as she could.

“Nurse Carreg,” he said, “you
must
stop this silly and hysterical behavior, I am trying to get you well again.” Although he looked offended, he produced a bottle of his famous Poonga oil from his bag. He told her it was expensive and when she put it on herself she should rub it in well. “And please, Catherine,” he said with an uncle-ish, forgiving smile, “do stop acting like a ninny, otherwise we could lose you, too. Have you suffered with nerves before? I don’t think there is a soul here who hasn’t felt themselves at some point to be mad or going mad.”

“No, I have never suffered with nerves.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “What I most want now is to go back to work.”

“It was only a suggestion,” he said mildly. “You see it is my job as duty officer to decide whether you go back to work or stay here, and I do worry as much about your state of mind as I do about your scabies.” His eyes as expressionless as pebbles.

She looked at him again, trying to imagine what this would mean to her; she couldn’t bear more sessions with him and the Poonga oil.

“I do feel better.” She forced herself to sit up and smile.

“What I’m thinking is this,” he said, “I have two urgent cases to attend to in Constantinople tomorrow and I need an assistant. There’s a hammam near the Pera Palace hotel where they treat scabies very successfully.”

“That is a very kind suggestion,” she said, “but I don’t think Miss Nightingale would allow it, or at least if she did, permission would not be granted so swiftly.”

“I still don’t think you have quite understood the situation,” he said, still in the same mild voice. “You are my patient, I give the orders; besides, I can’t change my appointments to suit her. There are other sick people who need me, too.”

The thought of a whole day with him was indeed alarming, but the idea of a bath—and in Constantinople—was tempting. Lady Bracebridge had excited them all with her descriptions of the town’s mosques and palaces, the covered markets full of spices and gold, figs and fresh eggs, and wonderful silks, and she and Lizzie had dreamed about going there when the war was over.

Her heart tussled with her head for a brief moment.

“
Will
you make sure you ask Miss Nightingale?” she said. “We are not even allowed to talk to a man without her permission.”

“I am not a man.” He pursed his lips and attempted to tease her. “I am a doctor, and I’m quite sure she’ll only want what is best for you.”

She slept badly that night: the scabies ants were on the march again and her skin seethed with thousands of tiny pinpricks. Waking on
her own in the freezing room, she could hear the sea booming on the rocks below and she felt so alone she cried her heart out. Now Lizzie’s death felt like a physical blow that had left every part of her feeling bruised and fearful, and everything about the arrangement she had made with Cavendish felt wrong.

When morning came he appeared again, his face gray in the early-morning light. “I’ve got some good news for you,” he told her. “Miss Nightingale is in total agreement about you receiving treatment. We’ll leave in three hours time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” he said firmly. He handed her a long black woolen cloak and a veil smelling faintly of sandalwood.

“Wear these for traveling and in Constantinople,” he said. “A sizable portion of the population there would rather put themselves to the sword than gaze on an unveiled woman. No doubt the rules will change one day, as all unnatural rules do.”

She took the cloak and held it; she did not like the thought of him dressing her. She wanted to ask him again whether Miss Nightingale had really given her permission, but was wary of testing his authority.

“May I ask what your urgent cases are in Constantinople?” she asked instead.

“You may. One is rather an interesting case actually. One of the officers there has a fragment of shell-shot embedded in his ear. I’m going to see if I can move it with this.”

He took a small, trumpet shaped speculum out of his instrument case. “Sit down. I’ll show you how it works.”

She sat down very reluctantly on the bed.

“I’ll put it in his ear so, and then I’ll do this.” He gave her a curious smile as he rotated the speculum inside her ear.

“There are other ways, of course,” he said, withdrawing it. “A colleague of mine in Varna had a man with a small ivory ball stuck in his ear, it had detached from a pen of all things. He hit on the brilliant idea of dipping a small brush dipped in glue into the patient’s ear, allowing the glue to harden and then removing brush and ball together.” She liked him better when he spoke to her like this. He was said to be one of the best
surgeons in the hospital and she felt there was much she could learn from him.

“Good lord,” he said suddenly, looking at his watch. “Is that the time? I have some patients to see here, but I shall come back for you in three hours’ time. I have ordered an Araba to take us down to the pier; the driver is Turkish. Put your veil on before you leave. Speak to no one on the way out. If you’re stopped, pretend to be the wife of the driver.”

Some part of her must have sensed this was wrong, for when he said this, her stomach spiraled with panic and she saw in miniature: her capture, her humiliation, the ship home.

“Forgive me, sir,” she said, “but what time does Miss Nightingale want me back?”

“You are going to start annoying me, Catherine, if you continually second-guess me,” he said, his expression darkening. “Miss Nightingale is fully conversant with the chain of command. You’ll return when we’re finished.”

It wasn’t the right answer but it felt too late to turn back.

Three hours later they drove in silence down the muddy track toward the pier. Across the Bosphorus, shimmering like a dream, she could see the mosques of Constantinople and couldn’t help but feel excited. The storms of the night before had cleared and for once it was a beautiful day, brilliantly clear, cold and sunny. Down at the waterfront, a frisky green sea was making life difficult for the boatman, who was smiling and waving at them and trying to land.

“This is all a dream,” she thought as she stepped into the caïque and they cast off and watched the shore recede. She’d hardly slept for six nights, and the itching beneath her cloak gave some sort of comfort—at least that felt real, and provided the reason for being here.

The caïque slogged through the belt of rubbish and foul water that ringed the shore, then, suddenly, they were free of it and in the middle of the harbor where the sea was blue as a baby’s eyes and the wind cold and exhilarating. She pulled her shawl around her
and shivered. How Lizzie would have loved this, the adventure, the change of scene; she could practically hear her at her elbow saying “Strewth, Catherine, look at that!” as the mosques and the buildings took shape.

After about half an hour, Dr. Cavendish, who to her relief had been silent for most of the journey, turned to her and said. “We’re almost there. There’s the jetty where we land and after that we’re free as air.”

“Free as air?” She was anxious again.

“Don’t look so worried,” he said irritably. “The day is all planned.”

They docked near the Galata Bridge. A group of men at the end of the pier, who were drinking coffee and playing dice, gazed at them curiously. “Take no notice of them,” he said, “they all gawp.”

He bought her a cup of coffee, sweet and delicious and poured from a small copper pan. He asked her if she was hungry and she shook her head. It was all too strange. He said she must eat and that, later, he would bring her some food, or send her out to lunch to a place where she would be safe and where he was known.

So he might not be there at all, she thought. Good.

They went to the hammam in a carriage drawn by a skinny chestnut with bells around its bridle. Their driver sang as he took them up a high cobbled street, and as they lurched from side to side, she stared at a man with gold teeth selling snow-covered oranges and at a stream of curious carts dragged by donkeys and bullocks and the occasional fine-looking horse. It was all so fascinating and so new that she forgot to be so worried about Cavendish. On one street corner, when she was thrown awkwardly into his lap, they both laughed as they sprang apart and again she wondered if she hadn’t exaggerated her fears about him.

At the top of the hill, the carriage plunged into a series of side streets and then it stopped.

“We’re here.” He helped her down from the carriage and led her into the cobbled street and through a high wooden door that
was open. She was surprised to find her legs still felt weak and wobbly.

“Here we are,” he said, “the hammam. What will happen to you behind these doors might feel strange to you, but the women here will treat you with respect. They are Muslims and to show hospitality to a stranger is part of their religion.”

Now she was grateful for her veil—the idea of a man arranging to have her bathed filled her with a shyness.

He said she could wash her clothes here if she liked, and she was not to feel ashamed; the circumstances they all found themselves in were unusual to say the least. He handed her a cloth bag with something soft inside it.

“Change into this afterward,” he said. “It’s a dress.”

“You’ve thought of everything,” she said, alarmed.