The Rose of Sebastopol (36 page)

The hut was arranged very like Rosa’s with two beds on either side and a narrow space between. One of the beds was empty but on the other lay Nora with her head roughly shaved so that tufts of hair stood up above her ears. Her face was turned away from me as she lay twisted on the bed with one knee drawn up. Her plump throat and upper arm were naked and her chest was covered by a strange darkness. At first I thought it was a crouched cat; then I saw that it had small, evil eyes and a disgustingly naked tail. A rat, eighteen inches long, had settled on Nora’s breast as if claiming her.

The beast turned its horrid head and gave me an insolent stare. Meanwhile a dreadful smell bit the back of my throat. Nora raised a feeble hand as if to bat the creature away and at last I came to my senses, gave a little scream, and threw the carpetbag containing Nora’s things towards the bed. Fortunately I was so weak and my aim so bad that I fell well short of hitting Nora but the sudden movement and clatter was enough to shift the creature, which scuttled off the side of the bed and into the shadows, its tail flicking out of sight like an afterthought.

Nora sank back into a torpor while I took another cautious step. Her flesh was hollowed and gray and her breathing so labored that she must surely be dying. Only two days ago, when she raged at me in the cabin, she had been indomitable; now she was so consumed by sickness that there was nothing left of the old Nora but this shell of a body. I remembered how ill I had felt the previous evening, vomiting into a washbowl, and was ashamed. Though I had been disgusted and frightened, it now seemed to me that, compared to this, I had been play-acting. I stumbled out of the hut and came upon a nun walking, head down, towards the hospital. “There is a sick woman in this hut,” I called. “She is obviously in considerable discomfort and needs clean linen.”

The nun looked at me with passionless eyes. “I beg your pardon.”

“My name is Miss Lingwood. The woman in there is my maid. She should not be left in that state.”

“I presume you must be the young lady from the boat. You’ve brought her things, have you? Well, I’ll show you where the linen might be, if there’s any spare, and the clean water, and you can sponge her down. If you need to empty the chamber pot you’ll find a line of trenches beyond the last hospital huts. Be sure to keep your hands washed. We insist on the strictest attention to hygiene here. If you follow me I’ll show you.”

I tried to tell her that unfortunately I wasn’t there to help, I was leaving on the next ship, but she ushered me back into Nora’s hut, touched her on the hand and throat, murmured that she had done well to last so long, and again told me to follow her.

“I cannot stay,” I said again. “My ship leaves at nine. I am not a nurse. There’s nothing I can do for Nora.”

She led me outside into the shaking dawn. “We warned her that she would probably get sick but she insisted that she would like to join us and proved to be an excellent nurse, for the very short time she was well. But now she is ill and there is nobody spare to look after this extra female. We’ve heard that there is to be a battle and there’s much to do. My sisters need to sleep, ready to face the troubles that are sure to come. The most likely thing is that your woman will be dead in a few hours, and then you will be free. If she lives, she may be of use to us again. Either way, you should do your duty.”

“But what if I am sick too?”

She brought her pocked complexion close to my face. “Were you responsible for bringing that poor woman out here?”

“She wanted to come. She insisted. It was nothing to do with me. I would not be here had it not been...”

“Whose money paid for the trip? If it was yours it seems to me that you are responsible.”

“But my father has arranged my passage home. I must go.”

“Then go. But I wouldn’t have your conscience for all the world if she dies.”

I fetched a bowl of hot water from the cook-house, as I had been told. Then I tore off the ruffle from one of my petticoats and tied it round my mouth and nose in the hope that it would protect me from infection. I had no idea how to handle a dying woman and was so nauseated by the task of cleaning her that at one point I had to leave the hut. When I went back to Nora I found her apparently wide-awake and trying to get out of the bed. In fact her eyes were staring, her flesh was burning hot, and she raved and fought me until I was actually leaning on her shoulders to hold her down.

“We have to get away,” she said, again and again. “There is no point in us staying. We have waited far too long. Now we must get away...”

“We’ll go just as soon as you’re well,” I said, but she clawed at my hands to push me from her.

“...I will not listen to you anymore. We shall carry them. I’m strong. I’ll take them both. You bring the cart...”

“Don’t worry, Nora. We’ll manage between us. When you’re well I’ll arrange...”

“...One on my back. One in my arms.”

“That’s it. That’s right. We’ll manage.”

“...Well, we must go from here. Come.” Each time she tried to get up I put my hand on her chest and held her down while she tugged feebly at my hands. “Give them to me,” she moaned. “I can take them all the way. I promise, they’re not heavy.” Her struggles grew more feeble but still she fought me until I caught sight of the bag I had brought up with me from the ship and pushed the contents into her hands one by one. She threw everything aside, the rosary, the missal, Rosa’s picture, until she came to the little box of earth, which she held against her cheek. I used the moment of calm to bathe her neck and forehead with a vinegary solution that had been left by her bedside, and to drop water between her cracked lips. She stared at me blindly for a moment then clutched the box and started rambling again. “Give them to me. Let me take them. They are light as a feather...” Again I had to hold her down by pressing on her chest. I tucked the sheet round her, bathed her head, and held her grasping fingers. This business of alternately soothing and struggling went on until I was in a fury of frustration and helplessness. I thought of Aunt Isabella, who had spent years reclining amidst laundered sheets, and I raged inwardly at her: You were a fake. This is proper sickness, this is a real struggle with death. How dare you waste our lives in that pretense of weakness?

I was horrified by the spectacle of a strong woman brought low by fever, and by the incessant quivering of the earth as the bombardment of Sebastopol went on and on. Something must surely break. And I was frantic, because my ship had left without me and everyone would be in a rage, and all because these sly Roman Catholics had left me alone with a dying woman.
Bring her things
, they had written, that was the lure; they had got me here under false pretenses.

It was now full daylight outside; the door had been left ajar and a shaft of sunlight revealed that the floor of the hut had been constructed so hastily that grass grew through the cracks in the boards. Shelves accommodated a motley collection of supplies: jams and pickles, tins, bottles, and bags of coffee, and despite the fact that it was morning the rats still worried under the floor and their claws scratched as they made a sudden dash from one side of the hut to the next. I had never seen rats so huge or so hungry, even down by the Thames, and I tucked up my skirts to stop them climbing up my legs.

I crooned words of comfort to Nora as she moaned and raged: “You’re safe now. There’s no need to worry. I’m here,” though I reflected that there could be few people in the Crimean Peninsula less qualified to care for her. After a couple of hours my efforts were at last rewarded when she gave a deep sigh and subsided so abruptly into sleep that I put the back of my hand near her lips to make sure that she was still alive.

I didn’t dare move in case I woke her. Instead I sat on the opposite bed with my feet off the floor. A wind got up and knocked against the roof, so it was like being onboard ship again and I felt shockingly lonely. If only Rosa would come. Whatever she had done, however much she had betrayed me, I would have given all I possessed to have her appear in the doorway, bright-eyed and powerful.

But when the door was suddenly pushed open a stranger came in, though dressed in a pepper-and-salt gown similar to the one Rosa had worn at London Bridge Station. She seemed unsurprised to see me but waited patiently while I got off the bed, then dropped onto it, turned her face to the wall, and fell into a deep sleep.

By late afternoon the wind had strengthened but Nora and the other mysterious woman slept on while I sat hour after hour at the foot of Nora’s bed. The idea that I could ever have thought of leaving on the
Wellington
had become a distant dream. In the meantime I was ravenous, not having eaten since before my ride with Lady Mendlesham, so I crept across to one of the shelves, took down a jar at random, unscrewed the lid, and dipped my finger.

Raspberry jam.

My mouth filled with saliva and my stomach was suddenly cavernously empty. The jam-maker, a Mrs. Prior from Morpeth, as stated on the label, had left whole fruits amidst the thick syrup and my teeth closed round a nugget of sugary succulence so that suddenly I was among the raspberry canes in the garden at Fosse House, juice on my lips and apron and with Henry’s shadow to protect me from the glare of sunlight. I watched his efficient fingers pluck fruit after fruit, as he pushed the back of his hand carefully through the leaves to avoid the thorns.

I took another mouthful and this time remembered Mrs. Hardcastle and her sale of work in the church hall. The ladies moved between stalls of cakes, bits of crochet, books, and knitted bed jackets, scrutinizing each item as if they were about to pay a small fortune instead of sixpence. The jams, more often than not produced by the expert hands of the ladies’ cooks, were arranged in ranks on the home-produce stall. Behind the fragrance of raspberries I smelt floor polish, stewed tea, and mothballs from the women’s winter skirts.

Another mouthful. Rosa: her pink, moist lips, her white teeth biting neatly on fruit, her childish kisses when we shared a bed at Stukeley, the scent of her breath.

I improvised a spoon with the lid of the jar and put a smear of jam between Nora’s lips. Her tongue came out and licked gratefully, so I fed her a little more, convinced that as she was dying anyway a last taste of perfection could do no harm.

Then I was so deathly tired and so sated with that sudden dose of sweetness that I took off my boots, lay down beside Nora, my head to her feet, fitted myself carefully into the spaces left by her curled body, and slept.

When I woke there was a distant rattle, as if someone was shaking dice in a box, then the sudden cessation of gunfire. The hut was pitch-dark and the rats were busier than ever. The jam jar was pressed to my bosom and I was cramped by the confined space created by Nora’s body and the hut wall.

Then I realized that in fact the night, or evening, or early morning, whatever it was, was filled with other sounds than just the rats: the rattle of cart wheels, men’s voices, snoring in the next hut. For the next hour or so I slipped in and out of sleep until I became confused about what was real and what wasn’t. Dawn was definitely breaking, a dim light was shining through the knot-holes of the hut, and I was alone with Nora, because the other woman had slipped away again. Then I dreamt that I was actually in my bed at Fosse House with the wind blowing the white curtains and my workbox so near at hand that I could reach out and touch the packet of new embroidery silks given me by my mother for my last birthday, all the shades of red from coral to burgundy, each with a name so evocative that I longed to thread my needle and transfer the color onto crisp white linen: Cardinal, Carnelian, Dawn, Etruscan, Garnet, Moroccan, Fire, Raspberry.
Raspberry
, that was the one to choose. Raspberry. But before I could slide out an end, carefully unfurl it from the rest, snip an eighteen-inch length, and separate three strands, gently, so that the other five didn’t knot, I realized that Henry was in the bedroom doorway holding the frame on either side, his face slightly illuminated because he had placed a lantern on the floor at his feet. In a moment he would reach out, put his warm, sure hand on my cheek and run it sweetly down the side of my face and neck.

The man swayed slightly but made no other move. When I held out my hand, by way of invitation, he spoke at last: “Well now, I swear, I shall never be surprised at anything again.”

This wasn’t Henry but someone so unexpected that I sat bolt-upright, with my blouse undone, my hair falling over my face, and my mouth dry and rank. I recognized those clipped vowels all right, the nasal drawl of the military officer faintly overlaid with a Derbyshire accent. This man, whom I saw ever more clearly, was taller than Henry, his uniform coat was slung over his shoulder, his beard was unkempt, and his dark hair uncombed—Max.

“Next minute you’ll be telling me you’re here on a pleasure cruise with your entire ménage and that my esteemed stepmother is adorning some yacht in the harbor.”

I swung my legs over the bed, stood up shakily, shook out my skirts, and clutched the edges of my blouse together. Fortunately at that moment Nora also stirred, so, to hide my embarrassment, I held a cup of water to her lips.

“What is wrong with her?” asked Max.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been told. It may be cholera.”

“Cholera? If Nora’s suffering from cholera I’m a Cossack. I’ve seen cholera, Miss Mariella, and trust me, cholera does not sleep peacefully in its bed like that.”

“Perhaps we should go outside. I don’t want to disturb her.”

“But it’s Nora McCormack that I came to see. I got back from Kerch, was collared by the boy Newman and told that he’d been summoned down to the harbor to meet a lady name of Miss Lingwood and my dear old friend Nora. I couldn’t believe my ears. Had I not been involved in a bit of a spat I might have come sooner. How is she?”

“I don’t know. They sent me a message to say she was dying but she seems to be a little better now. I’ve been here nearly a whole day and night and nobody pays us any attention. I’ve done my best.”