In the Shadow of the Lamp

by Susanne Dunlap

  The moment passed quickly and we were righted. My heart calmed a bit, as if contemplating death, made everything else seem easy. A lull in the waves came, and I breathed slow and deep, then let go of the rail, and ran.

  Emma was still at the hatch, and she reached out her arms for me. I almost made it to her, but a powerful gust of wind and a wave hit at the same time, sending me sliding back across the slick deck. I couldn’t get my footing, and something told me to crouch down low and cover my head.

  Emma shrieked so loud it pierced right through a thunderclap, and before I knew it a pair of strong hands had me by the arms. Next I was lifted off my feet, scooped up and carried to the hatch.

  I thought it must be one of the sailors, but when I looked up and saw the man’s smooth, pale face I knew it wasn’t. As soon as I was far enough down the steps my rescuer slammed the hatch closed behind me. My legs shook and I slid down the stairs on buckets of water that had washed in already in that short time.

  “I thought you was dead for sure!” Emma cried and held me close to her.

  “I did too. I’m ever so sorry; I didn’t notice the storm coming.”

  Emma’s hug was warm—like she had a fever. When she let go of me I felt cold. I wanted to put my hand out and touch her, keep that connection between us that made me feel everything would be all right, but I knew she’d think it strange of me.

  “It ain’t been so quiet down here, neither,” Emma said once she’d calmed a bit, smoothing down her skirt and hair—such a funny thing to do with everything rolling all over the place. “Looks like you an’ me an’ one or two of the nuns are about the only ones what aren’t sick from the storm,” she said, sweeping her arm around at the bunks.

  I could hardly believe what I saw. Almost every bunk was full with a green-faced, retching nurse or Sister of Mercy. Two of the Sellonites looked well enough, though: their leader, Mrs. Langston, and the one called Sister Sarah Anne who spoke to us on the train.

  “Where are Miss Nightingale and the Bracebridges?”

  “They took ill too. Miss Nightingale disappeared to her cabin soon as we left port!”

  Miss Nightingale was ill like the others? She seemed so strong until now, just like what they said about her in the Times and the Morning Chronicle. I wished I dared to go to her. But it was clear we’d have our hands full looking after our own.

  “I’m not half freezing,” I said.

  “I think you can wear your other clothes. No one’s like to notice in this blow.” We had been told that we were supposed to wear our nurses’ uniforms at all times. It wasn’t a very nice uniform, and mine didn’t fit properly—it was too big and too short. Black serge, a coarse apron, and a sash with SCUTARI HOSPITAL embroidered on it. And a cap hid all our hair, like the nuns’. Though I worried about disobeying, I saw no sense in making myself ill before we even reached Turkey by sitting in my cold, wet clothes. I quickly slipped out of my uniform and into dry togs.

  That’s when the gale really began, and I was glad I’d got myself belowdecks. The boat started pitching and lurching, the wood creaking like it was about to break apart. The violence of the storm made everyone retch, and there was swill all over the floor, sea water and bits of old meals. The bitter smell nearly made me sick too.

  “Oh God, help me!” said one of the older nurses, Mrs. Drake, who’d been a bit frosty with me on the train and in Paris, like she knew my whole story and didn’t approve. I rushed over to her. She rolled on her side. I picked up one of the tin basins the crew had left down below for that purpose and held it for her, smoothing her hair out of the way. When she’d finished her eyes were watering, and I could see she felt bad.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “No sense worrying about something you can’t do nothing about. I’ll get a cloth.” Most of the water in the basin they’d put out so we could wash had sloshed away and there was very little left. The drinking water was in corked vessels tied into shelves, but I didn’t want to waste that on mopping foreheads. I blotted up what I could and gripped the edges of the bunks so I wouldn’t topple over on my way back to Mrs. Drake.

  “Oh no, here I go again.” Someone else began to be sick just as I passed.

  “I’ll go,” Emma said, and I continued on to Mrs. Drake.

  The poor lady’s face was a yellowish green. “Thank you,” she whispered, once I finished wiping the corners of her mouth. “You’re a good girl.”

  For a moment I got a little knot just above my stomach, not because I felt unwell, but because it was what my mum said to me just before I left on my half days to go back to the Abington-Smythes. At least here I wasn’t a disappointment to anyone, not yet anyway.

  “Give us a ’and here!” Emma called, breaking into my daydream.

  From that moment, Emma and I, and anyone else who wasn’t too ill to get up, tended to the others. I watched what the experienced nurses did and copied them.

  “Molly’s your name, right?” murmured Mrs. Drake after I mopped her face and fanned her a little for a second time. She closed her eyes. Maybe she would sleep.

  Emma and I began to empty all of the full basins into the latrine before they tipped over and made even more of a stinking mess of the cabin. Every so often a huge wave would crash and send water pouring in through the hatch. It was covered with canvas, but water seemed to find its way around anyway, and we were up to our ankles in no time.

  At some point after we’d been working for hours Emma stretched out on her own bunk. “I’m knackered!” she said to me. “Maybe they’ll send some of the hands down to clean after the storm.” She yawned.

  I turned back to tell Emma that we couldn’t wait for that to happen and had much better do it ourselves, but she was already fast asleep.

  I was dead tired too, and a little before dawn I let myself lie down. I discovered then that the bunk was alive with lice and other crawling creatures. I crushed them and swatted, wanting to stay awake so I could battle them, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

  Chapter 10

  The next morning the storm worsened. Up above on deck we heard awful crashes and thumps, like the whole steamer was breaking apart. The noise woke everyone up, and suddenly there was wailing and praying and crying all around.

  “I’ll go up and see what’s the matter,” Mrs. Langston said. She was one of the only ones who stayed calm. Whenever I felt myself getting panicked or feeling tired, I’d just look at her and think, If she can manage, so can I.

  Emma and I helped her open the hatch. Water gushed down the stairs until we were up to our calves standing there, and it almost reached the bottom of the lower row of bunks. Miss Langston didn’t stop, but climbed out before we could say anything to prevent her.

  “Better leave the hatch open so she can get back in quick!” I yelled to Emma over the din of the waves and wind.

  A huge splash came and drenched us and Sister Sarah Anne.

  “Close it ’fore we all drown!” Emma screamed, trying to grab the rope to pull the hatch back into place.

  I latched onto one of her arms and Sister Sarah Anne took the other. “No! Wait just a bit longer!” My heart raced too, though, and I wanted to close us up tight again, but the thought of Mrs. Langston out there stopped me.

  A moment later, a soaking wet foot stepped on the top rung of the ladder. We reached up and helped Mrs. Langston back in. She tugged the rope and closed the hatch almost on her own head.

  She heaved and shivered with cold. All around us the nurses and nuns were crying. Mrs. Langston held up one hand and put the other to her ribs. “Shh!” I said to everyone. I wanted to hear what she had to say.

  “It’s all right,” she gasped. “Nothing to worry about. It sounds much worse than it is. There’s some damage, but it’s a good boat and we’re fine, so the captain says.”

  I didn’t know if she was telling the truth, but it was enough to quiet everyone down.

  The constant vomiting stopped by the third day, partly because although the storm continued
it wasn’t quite so fierce, but mainly because no one had any food left in their stomachs. I was afraid some of the worse ones might die. One or two looked so pale and thin I couldn’t see how they would live. There wasn’t as much for us to do with everyone mostly sleeping quietly, so Emma and I sat on our bunks and talked some.

  “You weren’t writing to your mum, were you?” Emma asked me later that night after we’d eaten a little supper of cold salt cod and stale bread. If I’d ever written more than one letter in my life, I might not have known what she was talking about. I wasn’t sure what to say. The last thing I wanted was to tell Emma my story—even though she had already told me about her father who beat her and her mother who was always drunk, and that she’d run away when she was my age and the only job she could get that wasn’t on the streets was nursing in a hospital. Something about how she told it all made it sound like a story, like even that wasn’t the truth. It was the way she looked sideways during the most dramatic parts. But if she had secrets to keep, who was I to stop her?

  “I was writing to a friend,” I said at last. Since the envelope was directed to Lucy, I hoped she wouldn’t suspect anything more.

  “A man friend, I’d guess.”

  I tried hard not to, but the way she said it made me blush. “It’s not what you think at all. Will’s just a friend who helped me get to Folkestone,” I said in a way that I was sure would end her line of questioning.

  “Oh, don’t be shy with me! I won’t tell anyone.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. After what Mavis did to me at the Abington-Smythes, I didn’t think I’d ever trust a girl again. And Miss Nightingale had made it very clear that she wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense of that kind. That philandering, as she called it, would be cause for immediate dismissal. Emma could get me fired just like Mavis did. “There’s nothing to tell. I just wanted to thank him and let him know I was on my way to Turkey.”

  We sat quiet for a minute or two, me listening to the creak of the wooden walls around us, wondering just how long they might hold up if the storm kept on, Emma picking at the damp blanket on my bunk.

  She leaned in a little closer to me. “Can you keep a secret?”

  I shrugged. “I expect so.” No one ever asked me that, but there was plenty I knew that didn’t tell anyone.

  “I weren’t really no nurse before I came.”

  That surprised me so much I almost fell off the bunk. How many of the other stories she had told were lies? “What were you then?”

  She screwed her mouth up, like it had something bad tasting in it. “Nothing good. But it weren’t my fault.”

  “Were you in service?”

  She laughed silently, her shoulders shaking. “I s’pose you could call it service.”

  “Did you work in a great house then?”

  “A house. Not so great. And they beat me if I didn’t do as they said. Serious, Moll, don’t you know what I’m sayin’?”

  She worked in a house. A— “Oh my God!” I almost shrieked out the words. One or two of the others shifted, but no one woke.

  “Shh! You’re the only one what knows. I ran away. Got one of the gents to write me a reference, saying I was a nurse.”

  This was ten times worse than what happened to me. “How did you manage it? I’ve heard tales that girls who ended up in those houses were kept like slaves and never got out till they died.”

  “Like I said. One of the gents, he was a doctor. I just told him I’d rat on him at the hospital, and he was willing enough to write me a letter. Then we pretended like we was going out on the town for a lark, only I skipped and got myself signed up for this.”

  So Emma was running away too, and from something much worse than what I was running away from. “What about your mum and dad?”

  “Never knew ’em. I was brought up in a orphanage, turned out to make my own way when I was thirteen. Now, I’ve been straight with you. What about this young man of yours?”

  I sensed this time she had told me the truth. Who would make up such a thing? Nonetheless, I still wasn’t ready to tell her my story. “Like I said, he’s just a friend.” No matter how she questioned me after that I wouldn’t say more. I wouldn’t tell her that every time I saw something new, or learned something by listening to Mrs. Langston or Sister Sarah Anne, who’d been trained proper as nurses, not just done it—every time something important happened, the only person I wanted to share it with was Will. I wouldn’t tell her that each morning on that pitching and rolling boat I woke up feeling as though Will had just kissed me on the forehead again, and brushed my lips with his. And that sometimes, in my restless dreams, I imagined what it would feel like for Will to put his arm around my waist, or hold me close to him, or even kiss me long and hard on the lips. Then I’d wake up so suddenly with an ache right in my middle, longing to be back in London.

  I imagined all that before I remembered where I was, and that I was going off on an incredible adventure with Miss Nightingale. Then the excitement of what was ahead would overcome my feelings, and I’d fall asleep again.

  The storm stopped on the fourth day, and several of the others began to feel well enough to get out of bed and come up on deck with Emma and me. The sea was calm and the sky bluer than anything I’d ever seen, like it was trying to make up for treating us so badly before.

  The other nurses were all a little nicer to us than they’d been at first, calling us by name, saying, “Molly, dear, could you fetch us a cup of tea?” or “Emma, give us a hand with this, will you?” I hadn’t done much more than just be there—like the lowest housemaid. But I began to see that it somehow made a difference.

  Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge were up on deck too, looking not too poorly, though I guessed they’d had their bit of sickness. Mrs. Bracebridge shared a private cabin with Miss Nightingale. I overheard Sister Sarah Anne say Miss Nightingale was violently sick. I imagined Mrs. Bracebridge had spent all her time looking after her.

  “Molly, I hear you got some practice nursing in the past few days,” the lady said to me after our salt cod and biscuit breakfast.

  “Don’t know as I’d call it that, exactly,” I said. “I was just helping out.”

  She looked over at Mrs. Drake, who smiled at her. “That’s not what I heard.”

  The praise made me feel strange. If being able to stand people around me who were sick and trying my best to ease them a little was nursing, then it was a powerful lot easier than being a parlormaid and I hardly deserved to be thanked for it. In any case, I was glad the storm was over, and when the sailors told us we’d be coming into the Dardanelles the next day, with port just a day or two after that, I found I was relieved. Caring for the others had distracted me. Although the storm hadn’t made me ill, it did frighten me. Doing something, working, was what made the fear bearable.

  Chapter 11

  A very pale, rather wobbly Miss Nightingale came up on deck as we passed through a narrow channel into a wider stretch of water that was smaller than the Mediterranean. She stood a little away from us. No one dared go near her. Something in her face told us she was thinking private thoughts or maybe of someone far away. Perhaps she’d been at that place before, perhaps not alone. Mrs. Bracebridge told us that despite her seasickness, Miss Nightingale traveled a lot, even to Egypt, and that her Christian name was Florence after the city in Italy where she was born. And there were whispers among the nurses that she turned down a marriage proposal from Mr. Monckton Milnes, a very good catch.

  “This passage is called the Dardanelles,” Mr. Bracebridge called out to the lot of us who had come on deck to see the land so close again. “It’s very famous. It was called the Hellespont by the ancients. This is where the Trojan War took place. Many ships have been wrecked here. Easy to understand, with the weather we’ve had!” It was still blowing hard, and some of his words were torn away by the wind. I moved a little closer so I could hear all he had to say. “It leads us to the Sea of Marmara. Our destination is to the east, at the mouth of the Bosporu
s, which leads to the Black Sea.” Mostly everyone just nodded and leaned on the rail, maybe glad to be near shore but not so interested in the particulars of what was there. I wanted him to tell me more, not just about the water, but about the strange buildings that crowded the shore, with their odd shapes and fancy decorations like a lady’s lace collar. I didn’t dare ask, though, afraid the others would think I was trying to make myself special, be a pet of some sort. Emma was the one who gave me that fear, dropping hints the night before when I’d got that praise from Mrs. Bracebridge about nursing.

  I couldn’t help wondering what Will would make of this. I wished I could paint a picture to send to him. With my bad spelling and handwriting a letter wouldn’t really say it all. Words are so different when you speak them than when you write them. What’s easy and natural when you say it comes out all lumpy and awkward when you try to think it onto paper. Still, I’d have to try if I didn’t want to wait until I saw Will again—if I ever did see him again. Perhaps they’d hire a new maid, and she’d be pretty and young, and Will would like her and forget all about me …

  No use thinking about that. Here I was, so far away. Did my mum even imagine I could be where I was right then? She’d never been outside London her whole life. I hoped Will told her what I did, where I’d gone. The next letter I wrote would be to her. The man across the street could read it for her. She’ll hardly believe it, I thought.

  And at that moment, even without seeing a penny of my wages or setting foot near the wounded British soldiers, I was glad I came, alone as I was. I would never, ever have been able to see anything like this if I’d gone to work in a dark factory. My eight shillings a week was near double what I earned as a parlormaid, and I’d be able to pay Will back and bring home money to my mum.