Alice looked shocked, it was awfully salty talk from a nun, but the Reverend Mother had much worldly experience, and perhaps the situation called for it. Alice was learning a lot. Fast.
Katie, still half-asleep, stood up and rubbed her aching limbs. ‘You’ve got to be wrong,’ she said to Florence Nightingale. ‘I mean, you were sent by the government. Can’t they just tell the doctors to use you?’
Miss Nightingale almost laughed. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ she explained. ‘There are systems . . .’
‘We will defy the systems,’ James cried. ‘We will break down the systems.’
‘No,’ said Miss Nightingale. ‘We must work within the system. I have offered my nurses and my supplies. They have been refused. I must win the confidence of the doctors. I must show them that we are completely subservient to them.’
All this confused Katie. It was obvious to her that Florence Nightingale had great power in this world, and probably in other worlds as well. What was all this subservient woman stuff about? ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she interrupted. ‘I mean, I know what happens with you, the lady with the lamp, blah, blah, blah. There’s no way you have to . . .’
Florence Nightingale shot her a look that proved Katie was right about something at least – she was indeed one tough broad.
‘No one knows what happens,’ she barked. ‘Do not presume.’ And in a softer, though still steely, voice she added, ‘By joining my corps of nurses you are under my authority. And by my authority I am telling you: we will do nothing more until we are asked. I have ordered the nurses to sort the old linens. The nuns will organize the packages and provisions we can find.’
Katie just couldn’t believe this. ‘But there are men dying in the corridors,’ she replied, a muttering resentment in her voice.
Miss Nightingale pinched her lips. ‘I am more than aware of that. A few must be sacrificed that the army might be saved. We will wait; and they will need us. The crisis will come soon enough.’ Miss Nightingale folded her arms against her chest. Her face looked stoic, resigned, but one foot tapped with repressed anger. She had a great knack for controlling herself, and those around her.
Katie glanced at James. He was staring downwards, grinding his heel into the floor. He too resented this line of action, or non-action. Katie tried one last time. ‘Are we really just going to sit here, sorting out rags?’ she asked, with her best New Yorker sarcasm.
Florence Nightingale looked her up and down. It was a piercing look, not one that Katie liked at all. She shivered slightly, as the silence grew long. ‘No, we are not,’ Miss Nightingale finally replied. ‘At least we are not. You and I have other things to do. The Reverend Mother will take temporary charge of Scutari. On top of the sorting and mending, I suggest she organize some alternative kitchen to the rancid stewed meats the men receive now. We’ll cook what they need, and if they decline to serve it, so be it.’ The Reverend Mother looked more than up to this challenge.
Miss Nightingale then turned her attention to James. ‘Since you are male, you might have more luck with those other men, the doctors. Perhaps the superior merit of your sex will help them see sense.’
The Reverend Mother laughed, loud and warm, a laugh that wouldn’t sound out of place in a public house. But Princess Alice turned pink. This type of conversation made her uncomfortable. ‘What shall Katie and I do?’ she asked.
The moment Miss Nightingale turned to Alice, her expression softened. ‘Sister Agnes, you will take charge of correspondence. Miss Katherine Tappan is right on some counts – I do have influence with the government, and they will help me, but it will take time. You must write to Mr Sidney Herbert in the War Office. I have outlined the points to be made here.’ She passed Alice a dozen closely written sheets of paper. Katie realized she must have worked through the night.
‘Shall I help?’ Katie asked.
Florence Nightingale smiled, a thin-lipped affair. ‘Miss Tappan will travel with me,’ she replied.
‘Travel!’ They were all astonished.
‘This very morning,’ Florence Nightingale continued. ‘We board the fast steamer for the battlefront. If I cannot be of immediate help here, I will try to aid the field hospitals. I have a colleague there, already hard at work. There is someone I wish Miss Katherine Tappan to meet – and someone Miss Tappan will wish to meet herself.’ It was a strange course of action, sudden and quixotic.
The Reverend Mother shook her head. ‘You do speak in riddles, Miss Nightingale, but you always make sense in the end.’
Despite the chill of the hospital, Katie broke into a sweat. She didn’t want to be separated from her friends, and she definitely didn’t want to steam ahead to the battlefront. A battlefront meant a battle; the three of them – the Tempus – on the field of battle. Was she being guided to a terrible destiny? ‘You must trust me,’ Miss Nightingale had said. But to Katie, none of this seemed trustworthy. ‘Couldn’t I just stay with Alice – I mean, Sister Agnes?’ she asked.
Miss Nightingale tried to reassure her. ‘You had best stay with me,’ she said. ‘And your friend had best stay here. James O’Reilly will guard her fiercely, and you can see the Reverend Mother is far from stupid. Sister Agnes will do much good in this war. But aid is needed in another war. I loathe the idea of setting out to sea again, but at least this voyage will be a short one.’
‘Always the riddles,’ the Reverend Mother laughed again, but no one else felt quite so comfortable. Katie feared what she was hearing. If she was not to be a nurse, was she to be a soldier – a warrior in an otherworldly war?
Mary Seacole
When Florence Nightingale acted, she did so decisively. She left Alice sitting at the table, inkwell and pen in hand. James was bundled off to try and befriend the stubborn, blinkered doctors. The nurses were sorting and mending linens while the nuns were counting and recording their unused supplies. And Katie was once again on board ship, heading for the battlefront. They left the Bosporus, sailing across the Black Sea to Sebastopol, and the actual site of battle.
By morning, the ship anchored in the port of Balaclava, a small enclosed basin, so filled with ships it looked like a forest of masts; a tiny nook of bustle, hidden from the quiet gloomy sea. As Katie and Miss Nightingale were rowed to land they could see dozens of figures lying prone on the wharf: these were the sick and wounded, unloaded from mules and ambulances, waiting to be transported by sea to the hospital at Scutari. ‘Our return cargo,’ Miss Nightingale said grimly, ‘shipped to a hospital where they are certain to die.’
This time there were no doctors to stop Florence Nightingale. The moment she alighted she was among them; turning a body to a more comfortable position, easing a stiff dressing. ‘They are too far from help,’ she murmured. ‘Why cannot the main hospital be placed closer to the battlefeld?’ She looked up to Katie, standing open-mouthed beside her. ‘Look there, that row of pannikins contains tea. Raise the men when you can and help them to drink.’
Katie ran forward, and fumbling in her carpet bag found her own tin cup. Filling it with tea, she knelt beside a young man, who was groaning in pain. God help him! He had been hit in the forehead by shrapnel and the dressings around his head oozed blood. As he groped and fumbled with his fingers, Katie realized his sight was gone. She raised his head. ‘Tea,’ she said, and he stopped groaning and smiled. ‘There is nothing I would like more,’ he whispered. Katie swore, there and then, that she would never again ridicule the English love of tea. ‘Is it really the voice of a woman?’ he said, and then his fragmented brain wandered. ‘Is it you, Mother?’ he asked.
They stayed with the men until the sun rose high, giving off a wavering autumnal glow. ‘There is much to do here,’ Florence Nightingale said, ‘but we have further yet to go.’ She set to work, negotiating with the Turks and Greeks that swarmed the harbour. Katie could see she was a canny businesswoman. Soon Miss Nightingale had procured two mules: old and bony, but with life in them yet. Loading their provisions, she then grabbed one
animal by the mane and swung up over its sagging back. ‘Come along,’ she barked over her shoulder.
Katie did ride – and in the best English tradition. Mimi thought riding lessons were posh, ‘very Ralph Lauren’, as she put it. But all that posing and posturing was useless when faced with a very old, very stubborn mule. There were no reins, no stirrups and no mincing English ‘riding master’ to help Katie now. She circled the animal, and then took a running leap at it. The mule gave her a sour look, and stepped aside, leaving her face down in the mud.
‘Really,’ Miss Nightingale commented drily, and signalled to an orderly, who was moving pallets of the wounded nearby. Without ceremony he flipped Katie, stomach down, over the mule. The animal bolted and Katie just had time to scramble onto its back and follow Florence Nightingale – who was not only sitting bolt upright, but riding side-saddle – without the saddle. Katie didn’t bother to ask where they were going. Miss Nightingale was not one for explanations, and besides, Katie wouldn’t have understood the answers anyway.
Katie had pitched and rolled through two sea voyages. She’d only had a couple of hours’ sleep. Now she was scrambling to stay on top of a very unhappy mule. She knew that if she fell off, Florence Nightingale might leave her there, all alone, in the mud. So she clung on with every muscle in her body. Long after nightfall they came to a halt in front of a long, low-roomed building – still and dark, except for a brightly coloured Union Jack waving over the door.
Miss Nightingale did not dismount, but called into the darkness, ‘I am in need of Miss Mary Seacole of Jamaica.’ The stillness exploded into racket and confusion. A dozen boys burst from the house and tugged open a corrugated iron gate. They swatted the mules, who, with a final stumble, passed into a yard crowded with horses, sheep, goats, stables, huts and pigsties. The sheep tried to bolt and the boys threw themselves on their woolly bodies. The pigs squealed loudly.
‘Mary Seacole be within,’ one of the boys shouted. ‘We not be help’n you ladies; we’s here to be guarding de pigs.’
This reasoning seemed perfectly civilized to Florence Nightingale. ‘Fresh pork, such a delicacy in an outpost like this,’ she commented with sympathy. ‘I’m certain every man within a ten-mile radius would like to get his hands on your pigs. Guard them well.’ She leapt easily from her mule. With a groan, Katie let go and landed with a thud.
Candles flared behind the rough-hewn windows, and voices could be heard within. The door flung open, and silhouetted in the light was a most amazing woman. She wore a bright yellow dress with a red calico scarf tied firmly around the neck. On her ample bosom a large golden amulet shaped like a flask swung from a chain. Her flapping Leghorn hat was royal blue and sported several sweeping feathers. Under the brim was a reddish, brownish face, with kindly eyes and a broad freckled nose.
The woman ran forward and, taking Katie by the arms, supported her up the stairs. ‘Child, you do look half-dead,’ she cried in a sunny, sing-song voice. ‘And you,’ she said, turning to Florence Nightingale, ‘don’t you know better than traipsing through a battlefield in the dark of the night?’
Miss Nightingale took the rebuke calmly. ‘So, Mary Seacole, this is your establishment?’ was her only response.
The woman gave a little skip and, throwing her arms wide, exclaimed, ‘Welcome to de British Hotel!’ To Katie, sick with exhaustion, it could have been the Ritz.
It was more of a storehouse than a hotel. The long iron room was chock-a-block with counters, closets and shelves; all heaped with burlap bags, rusting tins and knobbly paper packages.
Mary Seacole pulled a wooden chair up to the metal camp stove and Katie sank into it gratefully. ‘Now child, you just warm your bones. I’ll get you a bite to eat. It’s rice pudding day, nice and hot.’ The camp stove, though small, gave out a great deal of heat, and Katie began to doze off. She could hear Mary Seacole bustling about, yelling to the boys in the yard and scolding Florence Nightingale.
After a while, Katie was given a strong cup of tea and a tin bowl of thick rice pudding. Florence Nightingale seated herself nearby, with her own tin bowl. ‘I don’t know how you manage it,’ she said to Mary Seacole. ‘A lovely nutritious pudding and you say it’s made with no milk?’
‘Cow’s gone dry,’ Mary Seacole replied. ‘Poor old Bess. No milk to be had there. I’m thinking of making her into a curry; Tuesday next if you’re still about.’ Giving Katie a long curious look, she turned to Florence Nightingale. ‘Is this the one?’ she asked.
‘It is one of them at least,’ Miss Nightingale replied. ‘The only one to which we have access. It was Bernardo DuQuelle who found her. Much against his will, he called her back. A stroke of luck for us.’
‘Yes,’ Mary Seacole agreed. ‘We are lucky to get our hands on her, before she falls into less caring hands. Now let’s see what we can do with her.’
Katie shook herself awake. ‘I am sitting right in front of you,’ she protested. ‘I have a name, other than her. I am Katherine Tappan – really Katie Berger-Jones-Burg, but you probably know that.’
The two women frightened her. They spoke a kind of coded language and seemed to have some master plan – but they were not choosing to share all the details. She should have put up more of a fight to stay in Scutari. Why had she ever left Alice and James? For that matter, why had she left New York City? It seemed a hundred years since she had held the walking stick high and chanted the strange words. She could have walked away then, and simply gone back to bed. Instead she’d taken up the challenge and left her warm bed, left Mimi sound asleep . . . would Mimi still be sleeping?
Mary Seacole was rummaging through Katie’s things. She took the walking stick, examined it closely and pushed it aside. ‘There must be something here,’ she muttered, plunging into the carpet bag. ‘Something that links her to . . . ahhh . . . this looks about right.’ She pulled out Katie’s yellow flannel pyjamas, patterned with the orange and green frogs. The Nightingale nurses had been under strict instructions about packing: four cotton nightcaps, one umbrella, modest and functional underclothing. Katie had instinctively taken the stick, then jammed the pyjamas in at the last minute, along with her fuzzy slippers. They were certainly functional, if a bit too garish to be modest.
Florence Nightingale fingered the garments with distaste. ‘They quite set my teeth on edge,’ she said, ‘but the design is excellent in terms of comfort and warmth. There is some type of material in the waistband that allows the trousers to expand with such ease . . .’
‘It’s elastic,’ Katie explained sheepishly. ‘Sometimes I eat too much pizza at night, so it’s handy.’ She reached for her pyjamas, but Miss Nightingale held onto them tight. Searching the pockets, she pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.
‘This might make things easier,’ she said, sniffing the paper, ‘it has that acrid smell, from the friction of travel.’
Mary Seacole took it, and sniffed it too, then rubbed it against the amulet hanging around her neck. Pushing back her hat, she held the paper against her forehead. ‘Yes,’ she breathed, ‘this will do.’ Turning to Katie, she smiled and, nodding encouragement, handed her the paper. ‘Now, child,’ she said in her husky sing-song voice. ‘You’ve had your supper, and warmed yourself. So now you just sit yourself down and read your letter to yourself. That’s all you have to do.’
Katie had no idea what the letter was. She could have scrunched it up and jammed it in her pocket at any time. As she unfolded the paper, Mimi’s swirling, girlish hand leapt out at her.
Katie-Kid – I’m off to the Hamptons!!! Yeah, I know, suntan equals skin cancer, but I’m gasping for sun. And there’s a big rave in the works – bongos on the beach – so the bikini and I have split. Talking of bikinis – NO CARBS FOR YOU WHILE I’M GONE . . . !!! Take care, be cool, but stay out of the refrigerator!!!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Mimi
It was classic Mimi: careless, selfish, unthinkingly cruel; but also warm, vibrant, adventurous and funny. Instead of the usual resentment buildi
ng up, Katie felt a surge of affection. And then she could see Mimi, hear her, smell her distinct scent of patchouli and chamomile. Mimi was in front of her. She was still asleep, exactly as Katie had left her, her pink velvet eyeshade firmly in place, the earplugs with purple tassels stuck in her ears. Time obviously didn’t move in the same way when you journeyed back several centuries. Katie had travelled far, but Mimi continued to sleep through one night.
She still had chocolate crusted around her mouth, a hangover from her doughnut binge. It must have got colder though, because she had wrapped the beige cashmere duvet round and round her. She looked like a large slumbering caterpillar. One arm was flung outside the duvet. Katie could see age spots on the back of her hand. Poor Mimi! When she saw this, there would be a worldwide search for the perfect anti-ageing cream. The panic over the onslaught of age would ratchet up a notch. But for now, Mimi was asleep. Her world was at peace.
The only sound in Mimi’s room was her own soft snoring. But something else was going on in Apartment 11C. There was a kind of scratching and clicking. Katie’s mind wandered down the hall, she could see the front door. It was moving slightly, rattling gently on its hinges. With a final sharp click, the door swung open. A figure stood on the threshold, dressed entirely in black. Katie knew with dread this wasn’t Dolores. She made a point of barging in after her Sundays off, bringing the virtuous bustle of a Baptist church meeting into Mimi’s scandalous life. No, it couldn’t be Dolores. A stray beam of street light reflected on a pair of oval metal spectacles. A wispy grey goatee was divided into three braids. ‘No!’ Katie cried out. It was Professor Diuman. He was back and he was breaking in.
He crept down the hallway and through the living room. But this wasn’t his destination. Softly opening one door after another, he rejected the kitchen, the guest bathroom, the den. Opening a fourth door, he nodded slightly, and entered silently. Over his shoulder Katie could see her own bedroom. A wad of pillows under her duvet looked like a sleeping body. The light from the bathroom that had transported her to another time was gone. It wasn’t exactly dark, as the city lights meant New York was never really dark. Professor Diuman could see quite easily – the large pink bed, the painted white chest of drawers, the wide closet with the fold-back doors. With a drawn-out creak, he pushed back the closet door and began to methodically search through Katie’s things. She had a good idea of what he was looking for – the walking stick.
The Queen at War Page 16
