by Gill Paul
Miss Nightingale finished her letter and blew on the ink before placing it to one side. ‘Miss Gray?’ she asked, and Dorothea affirmed that she was. ‘I understand you were treating patients today, although you have not been authorised to work in this hospital. Explain yourself.’
She was staring directly at Dorothea, her eyes black as coal in the lamplight and her gaze unwavering. Dorothea returned the stare and decided to speak her mind. ‘There were men lying on stretchers at my feet, their wounds festering under grimy, blood-soaked bandages and their suffering apparent to all. Since I learned how to care for the sick, it has never been my habit to walk past anyone in need of my skills. I think we have a responsibility to help where we can, and today I saw that your nurses were stretched to the utmost so I stepped in, simply to clean wounds and wash the patients. I cannot believe that you, or any other experienced nurse, would not have done the same in my situation.’ Dorothea surprised herself with the passion of this speech; it was not in her nature to argue in that way, but she felt her case very strongly.
For a moment, she thought a slight smile curled Miss Nightingale’s lips but her words were neither amused nor tolerant. ‘I cannot have my authority questioned and my rules flouted in this hospital. I’m afraid I am going to have to ask you to leave.’
Dorothea had not been expecting that. She gasped in utter shock. ‘What do you mean? Where do you expect me to go?’
‘I’ll see you get on a ship back to England as soon as possible.’
‘No!’ The word burst from her lips, almost a shout. ‘I won’t go back. There are men here who need my help. I am a good nurse, Miss Nightingale, and I can ease their suffering and perhaps, God willing, save lives.’ She was devastated to have made such a poor impression on the woman she so admired. How could she prove herself if she were not to be given a chance? An idea occurred to her: ‘If you don’t want me here, which is of course your prerogative, I beg you to send me to Crimea, where the soldiers are sustaining their injuries. By the time they reach Scutari they are much weakened and gangrene has often set in, but if I am allowed to care for them within hours of them being injured I know I can make a difference. I hear they are establishing hospitals up there. Could I not work in Crimea, Miss Nightingale? Please will you send me?’
Miss Nightingale picked up her pen and tapped the end on the desk for several seconds, considering. ‘As it happens, I have received a request from Lord Raglan to send eight nurses to the hospital in Balaklava. But I would be doing him no favours if I sent him someone quite so insubordinate.’
‘Please send me,’ Dorothea begged. ‘I promise I will obey orders to the letter. You don’t know me, Miss Nightingale, but I am a volunteer at the Pimlico Charitable Hospital and have glowing references from my matron there. I can show them to you.’
‘Come over here, Miss Gray.’ Dorothea walked towards her. ‘Let me smell your breath.’ Dorothea opened her mouth and Miss Nightingale sniffed loudly, then asked, ‘You did not have wine or brandy with your dinner tonight?’ Each nurse was allowed one glass of either during the evening.
‘I don’t like to drink,’ she answered truthfully.
‘You have probably heard that I am a great believer in cleanliness. Tell me, Miss Gray: what is your opinion?’
Dorothea decided a little flattery would not go amiss. ‘I have always sought to make the wards where I work clean and tidy, with plenty of fresh air, and I was pleased to see you have done the same here. I have heard of the appalling conditions when you arrived and think it is miraculous that you have achieved such a remarkable transformation in such a short time.’
‘And yet they die. We are losing one in two of the soldiers who come here.’ She seemed sad, the cares of her position weighing heavy.
‘I’m sure that’s because of the delay in the start of treatment. If they can be nursed in Crimea until they are strong enough for the journey to Scutari, I’m convinced the death rate would fall drastically.’
Miss Nightingale gave a deep sigh. ‘Perhaps that’s so. Well, I suppose I will send you to Balaklava,’ – Dorothea drew in her breath sharply – ‘but first of all you must understand that you will no longer be under my protection.’
‘I understand,’ Dorothea said, unable to stop a grin spreading across her face.
‘The party will sail on the Melbourne on the 23rd January, the day after tomorrow. See if you can stay out of trouble until then.’ She picked up her pen and a fresh sheet of paper and it was obvious to Dorothea that her interview was over.
She hesitated. ‘Thank you so much, Miss Nightingale. I hoped to have this opportunity to tell you how much I admire all you are doing …’ She tailed off, as Miss Nightingale did not appear to be listening.
‘That will be all,’ she said. ‘Shut the door on your way out.’
Dorothea left the room but stopped outside in the corridor to cover her face with her hands, momentarily overcome with emotion. She was on her way to Lucy. She couldn’t wait to get to Crimea so the two of them could be together, so they could be close again, the way they were when Lucy was a little girl, long before Charlie Harvington came on the scene.
Chapter Twenty-two
25th January 1855
As the Melbourne approached the Crimean coast, its passengers could have no doubt they were getting close to the war. Distant explosions rumbled like thunder and smoke spiralled into the air from a town Dorothea was told was Sevastopol, the place the British and French armies were besieging. Her chest felt tight with nerves: would she be up to the huge challenges ahead? She hoped not to betray the trust Miss Nightingale had placed in her but those explosions sounded very alarming.
There were eight nurses and two surgeons in their party, all of them very affable. Elizabeth Davis had managed to wangle a place in the group and before they reached Balaklava she had extracted the life story of each travelling companion and told them of her own colourful background. For some reason that was never explained, they were not allowed to moor in Balaklava until the following Thursday and the days hung heavy as they listened to the shelling but could do nothing to help its victims. For Dorothea, it was particular agony to be stuck at sea, knowing that Lucy could be just a mile or so away.
They eventually docked in Balaklava, scraping between dozens of other moored vessels, to find a hamlet lined by rows of derelict cottages that seemed little more than a rubbish tip, a sea of mud, ice and dead, frozen-stiff horses with rictus grins and staring eyes. It was snowing lightly and there were few people in sight. Elizabeth trudged off to ask at the harbourmaster’s office for directions to the hospital while the others stood on the quay by their luggage, and soon the chill was eating into their marrow. Dorothea thought it seemed a godforsaken place.
Elizabeth returned with a man leading two mules; seemingly this was the most practical method of transport on slippery ground. He tied their luggage to the animals with practised ease but indicated they would all have to walk. Slipping and sliding, they tramped up a steep hill to the top of the cliffs, from where it was but a short distance through the hamlet to Balaklava General Hospital.
Dorothea had been expecting something similar to the Barracks Hospital but perhaps a little smaller; instead they were taken to two parallel rows of buildings on a hillside which, even at a glance, were in a poor state of repair, with at least one of them lacking a roof and several others missing windows. Piles of rubble indicated walls that had collapsed altogether. Alongside there were a couple of windswept tents, a house made out of stone and four wooden huts, which appeared to be still in the process of erection.
‘Is this it?’ one of the surgeons asked, his tone expressing a gloom that was shared by all. At least it didn’t have the putrid stench of the Scutari hospital, but wispy snowflakes were swirling in the wind and the ground was hard with frost, so it would have been preferable to find the walls and roofs intact. They left their luggage just inside one of the entrances and made their way down a corridor, trying to find someone to whom the
y could report their presence.
The first person they saw was a doctor, and when he heard these were the nurses he had been promised he gave a great sigh.
‘I don’t suppose you could start immediately? We have almost four hundred patients and only a handful of staff.’
Elizabeth grumbled to Dorothea that a cup of tea and a wash might have been nice but they slipped off their outdoor clothing and pulled on aprons and caps.
Dorothea was shown to a ward in which men lay on rows of bunks with no mattresses, just a scratchy grey blanket beneath them and an old brown rug on top, their coats serving as pillows. As at Scutari, the beds were jammed so close together there was scarcely room to move between them. She stopped at the first bed and asked the occupant how he was feeling.
‘It’s me toes,’ he said. ‘Got so painful I couldn’t walk. I came here three days ago and someone put on a dressing but I’ve not seen a doctor since.’
Dorothea unwound the dressing carefully, bracing herself for more maggots. The final turn of lint came off and, to her utter horror, two of the man’s toes came with it, like withered slugs. The remaining ones were swollen and blackened with frostbite. He didn’t have any feeling in his foot so didn’t seem to realise what had happened. She managed not to convey her shock but wrapped the lost toes in the old bandage for disposal and cleaned the rest of the foot. She checked the left foot and it was also frostbitten, although not quite as severely.
‘When can I get out of here, Sister?’ he asked. ‘They need me back at the front. I’m the best sharpshooter in my company.’
She decided not to tell him he would have to practise walking with fewer toes; she would leave that to the doctor. Instead she spoke cheerfully: ‘I’m going to apply mustard poultices to your feet to encourage the blood supply – always assuming I can find mustard here. It’s an old family remedy that works wonders. I’ll return shortly.’
She asked the way to the store cupboard and after some rummaging, found what she was looking for: flour, grease and mustard powder. In London, she used this remedy for a variety of ailments from gout to bronchitis, and as relief for her father’s sore back. It warmed the flesh and seemed to promote healing. She mixed equal quantities of flour and mustard with water to make a paste which she applied to the inside of her cloth then she gently smeared grease on the patient’s swollen feet before wrapping a poultice tightly around each.
‘I’m lucky it’s nothing more serious than frostbite,’ he told her. ‘I’ve lost dozens of friends. We’ve dug into trenches facing out towards the Russian redoubts, and shells come crashing down when you least expect it. No man ever knows when his number might be up.’
‘You rest now and I’ll ask the doctor to come and have a look at your toes.’ She smiled, and was about to proceed to the next bed when she saw a tiny black dot moving on the rug that covered him. She pinched the louse between thumb and finger and it was only then she realised the whole bed was crawling with them. As she watched, one scuttled across the man’s forehead. He was obviously so used to the itching sensation that he didn’t react.
‘Would you like me to shave you later?’ she asked, and he agreed gratefully. ‘That would be grand, nurse.’ She decided she would talk to the other women about boil-washing the blankets and cutting the men’s hair. She had caught lice from a patient in Pimlico once and could remember all too well the maddening itch that no amount of scratching could relieve. Every night for weeks she had to comb her hair vigorously, removing the creatures one by one, until all were gone.
The next bed was also crawling with lice, and she had to clean maggots from an arm wound that went deep to the bone; there was no putrefaction so she dressed it carefully, hoping there might be a chance to save the limb. There wasn’t a lack of will; there simply weren’t enough medical personnel to care for these men.
Dorothea worked tirelessly until it was too dark to see and her belly was growling with hunger. She followed a food cart across to another building and found the kitchen, where Elizabeth Davis appeared to have appointed herself head chef and was stirring huge copper vats of soup. Elizabeth passed her a bowl of soup and she sat down, her knees feeling as though they wouldn’t hold her up a moment longer.
‘This is the best I could do by ransacking their store cupboards: potato and onion soup with some wild thyme I found on the hillside. I’ll have to go foraging for supplies in the morning.’
‘This is simply awful,’ Dorothea said, taking a sip. She caught Elizabeth’s expression: ‘No, I don’t mean your soup. I was talking of those poor men, who are in a shocking state of neglect.’
‘Well, thank goodness we’re here,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘We’ll soon have it all shipshape. Mrs Shaw-Stewart is going to take charge of the laundry, and Miss Langston is working out a duty rota. She seems an efficient type – if rather bossy.’ Both of these were ladies who had accompanied them on the voyage from Scutari.
‘There’s so much to do, it’s hard to know where to start.’ Dorothea felt overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge, but then she remembered that Florence Nightingale had faced much worse when she first arrived in Scutari. If she could prevail, so could they.
‘There’s strength in numbers, my dear …’ Elizabeth began, but stopped as a doctor came in and collapsed heavily into a chair as if the very last spark of the day’s energy had left him. Elizabeth quickly ladled out some soup and handed it over, and both women regarded him as he took a spoonful. His brown hair was striped with grey and there were deep pouches under his eyes that made him seem older than he probably was.
‘Excuse my rudeness, ladies,’ he said. ‘I’m Dr White. Have you recently arrived?’
‘We disembarked today,’ Dorothea replied. ‘Have you been here long?’
‘I’ve been with the army since Varna, and in the Crimea since September last year. It feels like a lifetime.’
Dorothea remembered that White was the name of the doctor Mrs Roberts had mentioned, the one who had spoken of Lucy. Could there be two of the same name? ‘I don’t suppose you know Captain Charles Harvington of the 8th Hussars, do you?’ she asked. ‘My sister Lucy, his wife, is travelling with him.’
Dr White put down his soup bowl, his brow furrowed with compassion. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘Captain Harvington died just before Christmas. I’m attached to the 8th Hussars, so I knew him quite well. I believe your sister has sailed home. What a shame you missed her!’
Dorothea stared at him. Tears sprang to her eyes. Of course, the thought had occurred to her that Charlie might have been killed in one of those awful battles she’d read about, but she’d assumed she would have heard the news before now.
‘A Russian sniper caught him when he was out on patrol. I hear he died instantly. I’m so sorry for your loss.’ He produced a handkerchief and handed it to Dorothea.
It wasn’t Charlie she was crying for but poor, dear Lucy. How dreadful to be a widow at the age of eighteen. She had been so much in love and now she must be suffering terribly. Dorothea hoped she’d been supported by the women friends she had mentioned in her letter from Malta, and that she’d had company for the sad voyage home.
‘I wonder if you know who looked after her when she received the news? Did anyone accompany her to the ship?’
Dr White did not have any further information but said, ‘She must be well on the way now, perhaps safely home already.’
Dorothea hoped he was right. It was best for Lucy to be back in London where she could grieve in peace, with their father for company. Selfishly, she was disappointed that they would not be reunited sooner. To travel all that distance only to miss her was a crying shame. But Dorothea was needed in Crimea. There was no question of turning for home.
Chapter Twenty-three
The women were allocated rooms in an old Russian house adjoining the hospital, with two cots and a coal-burning stove crammed into each. Dorothea and Elizabeth decided to share. They hurried across from the hospital building using a fanoos to light
their way. Snow was falling harder now, turning the landscape white against a black sky, and the cold was unforgiving. Elizabeth made up her bed and climbed straight into it, bone tired, but Dorothea retrieved a pen and paper from her bag and began to write to Lucy in the lamplight.
‘I’ve just heard the news about Captain Harvington and I’m so desperately sorry,’ she wrote. ‘He was too young and full of life to be taken, but I hope it is some comfort to know that he died serving his Queen and country.’ She said she prayed that Lucy’s trip home had been smooth, then explained that she had travelled out to nurse in the Crimea. ‘Please write to me care of the Balaklava General Hospital, so that I will know you are safe.’ Already Dorothea had decided to stay for the duration of the war. She couldn’t do otherwise; these men needed every ounce of her skill and knowledge to ease the appalling situation in which they found themselves.
She extinguished the lamp and lay down to sleep but her thoughts were all with poor Lucy. How had she coped with the crushing pain of the loss? Dorothea remembered her at their mother’s funeral, like a broken bird, far too young to have her world collapse. Underneath her sorrow had been a simmering anger at the universe that had allowed her mother to die – and in time, it came to be directed at Dorothea. It hadn’t been a logical anger that she could articulate in words. She was cross when Dorothea tried to take a mother’s role, but she’d had no choice because at thirteen, Lucy needed a mother. And there was something else: she was cross that Dorothea hadn’t been able to save their mother. It was unfair because Dorothea had tried every single technique that modern medicine had to offer. She had read learned papers on cancer, procured the latest drugs and tried every treatment known to man. Anything she could possibly do, she had done – all to no avail. Tears pooled and she cried herself to sleep on her first night in that cold, war-torn land.
In the early hours of the morning, Dorothea awoke from a dream, disturbed by a scratching sensation on her arm. She moved the arm and a dark shape leapt to the floor, landing with a soft thud. There was just enough light to make out a long tail as it disappeared behind her trunk. Dorothea screamed from the depths of her lungs. ‘A rat! Elizabeth, there’s a rat in here.’
