The Rose of Sebastopol (56 page)

As we left the bastion we came up against the first evidence of authority—a British cavalryman on a lofty black horse. “Apologies ladies. Strict orders. No-one is to pass this way.”

“We had a message from Captain Max Stukeley, who we believe is inside the city.”

“Unlikely, ma’am.”

His horse was turned sideways to block the track and he gazed straight ahead, to quell any further argument. Back we went into the bastion and found another track leading down to the city. But here too our way was blocked by a cavalryman. By now we were accompanied by a furious posse of soldiers. “The French have gone in, the Turks have gone in. They’ll take everything. What about us?”

The officer remained impassive while the men retreated and stood at a distance. Nora, however, swore under her breath, took hold of my arm, dragged me behind the horse, and marched me on down the track, with the cavalry officer shouting after us and the band of soldiers yelling encouragement.

The track led past the pitiful remains of a domed church and into a deep ravine running down to the outer suburb of Sebastopol. Along this same scarred track hundreds of Russians must have marched each night at the start of their watch, heads full of the hours ahead, of the boredom and sudden shocks, the prospect of injury or death. Now the only Russians left were the dead. The street was paved with broken shells and shot that crunched underfoot and this sound was oddly clean and comforting compared to the sight of broken houses, the corpse of a man crawled into a doorway, another neatly propped against a wall, a dead horse lying on its side with its torn belly swarming with flies.

“Where do we go?” I cried to Nora. “How will we ever find them?”

It seemed like a violation to witness the city in this state, as if she had once been a gracious woman dressed in fine clothes but was now sprawled naked. The houses were reduced to doorways and window openings, the churches tumbledown and charred, no single building intact as the wind gusted along alleys and sent grit and rubbish skittering against piles of rubble. The deeper we got into the city, the more the streets teemed with French and Turkish soldiers laden with plunder stuffed under their arms or bundled on their backs: petticoats, bits of crockery, icons, garden tools, pictures, chairs, even bed-headboards. For a mad moment I caught an atmosphere of festival.

Beyond the stench of smoke and carnage there was a sudden whiff of brine and I realized that we must be almost at the sea. The road became deserted; no-one was frantically searching from house to house, no more allied soldiers with their armfuls of booty.

In fact a pall of silence had fallen and a few men were clustered round the door of a vast building that looked, from its ruined grandeur, as if it might once have been a civic hall.

A British officer was on the steps and held up his hand. “It’s the hospital,” he said. “You don’t want to be in there.”

“We are looking for Captain Max Stukeley,” said Nora. “Have you seen him?”

We didn’t wait for a reply. Inside were the remains of a grand lobby, the fragment of a balustrade, the shattered head of a plaster cherub. The few from the allied camp who had dared enter had covered their mouths and noses and peered about with outraged eyes; Mrs. Seacole was there, a reporter with a notebook, a couple of officers, an English doctor. Nora and I paused a moment, then stepped in among them.

DERBSHIRE, 1844

 

 

 

R
osa showed me her last secret on a hot, hot day,
when the lanes were coated with dust, even the flies were too crushed by the heat to raise themselves from the hedgerows, and the molten sky sank on the hills like a plump cushion.

She and I were listless and cross with each other because she had suggested a swim but when we reached the pool in the woods I refused to go in. The water looked cool and clean but you could never be sure, and when I dabbled my fingertips a water boatman skimmed away across the surface. “You can swim while I watch,” I said.

“It’s no fun by myself. I do things on my own all the time when you’re not here. We could race each other across if you came in with me.”

“I can barely swim. I only ever try when we go to the seaside.”

“Well, paddle, then.”

“Max will go with you.”

“I want to do things with you to make the most of you while you’re here.”

In the end we wandered off along the path through the birch wood and out onto the hillside.

“Where are we going then?” I said, when we had panted right to the top and could see down into the narrow valley on the other side.

Rosa had twisted her hair into a knot to allow the air to circulate more freely on her neck and her cheeks were unusually pink. She was looking dead ahead and her expression, both obstinate and nervous, frightened me.

“Where are we going?” I said again.

“You’ll see.”

“I’m very hot.”

“It’ll be cool where we’re going. And anyway, it’s not much further.”

But it seemed a very long way to me. The lane wove between dry stone walls to the valley bottom and then into a little copse with a stream rushing over stones. When I looked back I could see we had come far, far down and that it would be a steep climb home. The lane wound on for about another half-mile until we came to a little hamlet of stone cottages and on the left a much larger house, set well back behind high walls and locked gates, which of course proved no deterrent to Rosa.

“Come on,” she said marching down to the end of the left-hand wall and the next second had thrust her way through a gap between it and the adjoining hedge. As usual I had no choice but to follow, and there we were, looking onto the house from an oblique angle at the side of the garden.

“Do you know the person who lives here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Are we going to call on them?”

“We might.”

The house was very tidily built with six windows above and four below, arranged two on each side of a white front door under a little porch with three steps leading up to it, an unremarkable house set in what must once have been a well-stocked garden but was now a mass of poppy heads, delphinium, and willow herb gone to seed.

All the windows were firmly shuttered. “They’re out,” I said.

“Bound to be.”

She was very unlike her usual self, neither marching brazenly up to the front door nor making one of her forays into this private place by dashing down the garden. She just stood.

“If you think there might be someone about, could we ask for a glass of water?” I said. “I’m very thirsty.”

“There won’t be anyone. Can’t you tell? The house is locked up.”

“We could try.”

She now set off past a little stable block to a straggly lawn overgrown with dandelions, an ancient swing dangling from the branch of an apple tree, a slope down to the river.

“Where are you going?” I cried.

She didn’t answer, but stood stock-still, looking up at the house.

THE CRIMEA, 1855

 

 

 

T
he hospital was stone-cold,
because its windows had been broken during the bombardment. In the last few days of siege more and more mortally wounded men must have been dragged down here and left to die on pallets, trestles, and stretchers until every available inch of space was filled. They were lined up in their dozens, abandoned during the desperate escape across the floating bridge: the long-dead, the recently dead, and the just-alive, steeped in excrement and blood, some crawled up against pillars or walls in an attempt to separate themselves from the rest, some so long dead that they were in the same state as Newman’s corpse before the Redan. Others still twitched and groaned, their mouths gaped open from the pressure of their swollen tongues.

At one end of the room was a flight of steps leading downwards. We covered the lower part of our faces with our shawls and wove our way across the floor, which was sticky with blood. More bodies had been piled on the stairs and below was an even darker space lit by a pair of guttering candles.

In one corner a British officer sat on the floor with his legs stretched out and his back to the wall. His black, tortured gaze met mine across a waste of corpses. Max, Max. In his arms he held the body of a woman and in his hand, clenched against her shoulder, a crumpled envelope.

I took another step. Rosa in death was as demanding of attention as in life. She was wearing a stained apron over a torn blue dress and her head had fallen back on its slender neck. Her face was upturned, her mouth half open, her eyes wide, and her fair hair hung down like a flag across his red tunic.

“Rosa.” I knelt and lifted her cold hand.

Nora put her fingertips to Rosa’s throat where the pulse should have been. “She cannot have been dead long.”

Max raised her head a little to show us the wound in the back of her neck. “A shell, perhaps, or a rocket. One of our own, no doubt. I found her curled up here, still warm.” He shifted his hand and pressed the envelope into mine. “You were right. Trust Rosa to out-journey everyone else.”