Isabella Rockwell's War

by Hannah Parry

  The docks next to the bridge were so crowded, it looked to Isabella as if she could have walked from one side of the river to the other, on ships’ decks alone. All she could see in either direction were the black spires of their masts, glistening with rain and reminding her of the pine forests where she would camp with her father in the hot summer months. A man stood down on the dock in the midst of the chaos shouting orders at others who now swarmed over the boat, climbing the rigging and attaching themselves to the hull.

  There was a thump and a crack making them both jump as ropes, as thick as Isabella’s leg, were thrown from the decks to the stevedores waiting below; great muscled men who pulled and heaved, until they’d fastened the ropes to the dock and made the ship safe.

  Isabella stood shivering next to Mrs Trotter on one of the lower decks. They would disembark after the first class passengers.

  Mrs Trotter was in a froth of excitement.

  “Four long years since I’ve seen my darling Tilly, the first time I shall see Archie and another on the way. Really… it’s too much!” She patted and rearranged her hair for the thousandth time.

  Isabella said nothing. There was to be no excitement for her. No faces to eagerly search out in the crowd.

  Mrs Trotter patted her shoulder.

  “Chin up, dear. Here’s the purser now.”

  Lifting her head, Isabella gazed at London Bridge spanning the great width of the river. It was lined with buildings and, occasionally, through the gaps, she could see people and carts and carriages bustling along it. Roads led back and forth from the docks; carts piled high with exotic fruits and fabrics; even animals appeared to be on their way to market.

  Clearly, if you wanted to buy it, London would sell it to you.

  She drew closer to the railing to watch the crew lower the gangplanks, the man on the shore shouting at the heaving crowd to move back. A voice close to her ear made her jump.

  “Quite a sight, isn’t it?”

  Mrs Trotter patted her hair again.

  “Ooh, Mrs Jolyon, you gave us a start.”

  Mrs Jolyon placed her gloved hand gently on Mrs Trotter’s arm.

  “I’m so sorry Mrs Trotter, I didn’t mean to creep up on you. There’s just so much noise, I don’t think you’d have been able to hear anything at all.” She laughed, showing her pretty white teeth. Her hat and cloak, though plain, were clean and well pressed and she carried a neat carpetbag. Her brown eyes were merry, and the skin of her cheeks bloomed with health, despite their six-week voyage during which time there wasn’t one passenger who hadn’t suffered with some kind of sickness or another. Her breath smelt of mint.

  “You must be so excited, Mrs Trotter, to see Tilly and Archie… isn’t it?”

  Mrs Trotter blushed and simpered.

  “I am indeed, Mrs Jolyon. How clever of you to remember their names. And you? Are you to be met or do you travel onwards?” They all grabbed the handrail as the ship gave a momentary lurch. Isabella felt it was a little late for Mrs Trotter to start making friends.

  Mrs Jolyon pulled her cape back around her throat with a slim hand.

  “Well I hope,” and here she raised her eyebrows, “to be met from here. I am taking up a position of governess.”

  Mrs Trotter looked impressed.

  “How wonderful. Have you experience already?”

  “Oh yes,” Mrs Jolyon smiled. “In India, after my husband died I took a position with the Earl of March at Cawnpore. I taught his children for three years before being offered this position.”

  “You preferred to come home?”

  “Well no, actually, I prefer India,” she said with a gentle smile, endearing herself to Isabella forever. “But they made me, shall we say, an exceptional offer.”

  Mrs Trotter nodded.

  “I see.”

  Though Isabella could tell she didn’t.

  “Still, the Earl of March… that must have been a very formal household,” Mrs Trotter continued.

  Isabella raised her eyes to heaven, but had to hide her smile as Mrs Jolyon winked at her before replying, “Oh it was, very. Never less than three changes of dress a day for the ladies.”

  Mrs Trotter’s eyes widened.

  “Really?” There was another lurch and then a loud bang as the gangplank from their deck of the ship was lowered.

  Mrs Jolyon held out her arm to Mrs Trotter.

  “I think it’s our turn now. Shall we make our way forward? They will send our trunks on from our cabins.”

  Mrs Trotter looked relieved at not having to take control.

  “Well, yes, of course. Let us go.”

  Holding tightly to Mrs Jolyon’s other hand meant Isabella’s head could swivel at will. She felt she’d never be able to take it all in. Most of the first class passengers had been taken from the dockside by their carriages, pulled by fine, matched horses. As soon as they reached the bottom of the gangplank, a footman in a pale blue satin livery presented himself to Mrs Trotter.

  “Madam. Lady Molesey has me convey her best wishes to you, and bade me escort you to her carriage for your continued journey to her home at Mayfair.”

  “By all means.” Mrs Trotter turned to Mrs Jolyon. “Thank you so much Mrs Jolyon, but we must now away to meet Lady Molesey, who has kindly offered us lodging for the night. Good luck with your new position.”

  Mrs Jolyon smiled.

  “Thank you, Mrs Trotter and a bon voyage for the rest of your journey.” She gave Isabella a kind smile and disappeared into the crowd around them. Isabella and Mrs Trotter moved toward Lady Molesey’s carriage.

  “I thought Mrs Jolyon was very nice, didn’t you?” Isabella asked, but Mrs Trotter was looking vague.

  “Well I did… yes… charming.”

  “And yet you didn’t speak to her at all during the voyage, when actually her company would have been very pleasant.”

  Mrs Trotter was, by now, eyeing the steps up to the carriage with some nervousness.

  “Yes, I suppose it would have been.” Isabella sighed. Sometimes, watching Mrs Trotter think was like watching spilt water roll across a table. At that moment, a huge black coach rolled swiftly past them, causing the carriage horses to nearly shy and unsettle. Mrs Trotter stood, with her skirts pulled above her ankles, in preparation to mount the steps to the coach.

  “Well really…”

  But, it was too late and Mrs Trotter overbalanced, and so had to enter Lady Molesey’s coach with skirts covered in mud and a hat with a broken feather.

  The journey from the port to Lady Molesey’s home took an hour, and there was no part of it during which Isabella found she could drag her eyes away from the scenes outside. Their carriage, though often given right of way over less grand vehicles, still took some time to thread its way through the narrow alleys and byways which led from the City of London to the West End.

  “Well, what do you think of London, Isabella?” said Lady Molesey, plainly so excited to be home, she was willing to overlook her dislike of Isabella.

  “I think, so far, it is beautiful,” she replied carefully. “But I wish it were warmer.”

  Lady Molesey laughed.

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  Isabella doubted very much that was the case. Her homesickness was increasing with every mile the horses covered, but she was intrigued by this city, its energy and its size. The horses were moving more swiftly now, and yet houses and shops were still all around them. The roads were well-made and laid with straw, and there were carefully constructed gutters down each side to collect the rainwater.

  And the rain!

  How much could one country contain? It hurled itself against the glass, crept under the doors making her hair curl with its dampness; wetness, which seemed absorbed by everything around it. Even the coach, upholstered in velvet and polished wood had a smell about it, a musty smell, a hint of tiny things growing beneath the seat cushions. She pulled her cloak tighter, feeling a tickle in her throat. She was well-used to rain, but the m
onsoon had been warm rain that the parched Indian ground sorely needed. This cold creeping damp was something else. She couldn’t imagine even the Indian sun able to dry up such all-encompassing wetness.

  Still, the well-lit shops broke up the morning gloom looking far more sophisticated than any Isabella had ever seen before. Ladies’ dresses were far more opulent here, their hats and wigs so large Isabella wondered how their heads remained upright. Some of the men were also wigged, though only the ones descending from grand carriages and whisked inside graceful buildings by footmen carrying umbrellas.

  There were poorer people too.

  It was strange; she’d thought London to be a city paved with gold, when she’d heard others speak of it, but she could see, all too clearly, starving children clumped in threes and fours, huddled for warmth. As the carriage sat at a junction, Isabella saw one boy dart out and take a bun from a bakers cart, just missing being caught. Catching the scent of the just baked bread, warm and sweet, Isabella didn’t blame him. At least in India you could be warm whilst you starved to death. Here, looking at the children’s blue feet and lips, it would be a race as to whether cold, or starvation, got you first.

  Lady Molesey snorted.

  “I can see they still haven’t sorted out the street children problem. It’s just as bad as it was when I was here last.”

  “When was that, Lady Molesey, remind me?” Mrs Trotter twittered.

  “Back in 1815. Five long years, before Sailor Bill was crowned. I wonder whether he’ll be able to clear up any of the mess his father left.”

  “What sort of mess, Gertrude?”

  “Well, all that mess with his sons and their high living – all those,” and here Lady Molesey’s voice dropped “ illegitimate children…. Still,” she continued in a more normal tone, “we’re settled now and let’s hope that’s the end of it. Very bad for the empire.”

  “What is?” Mrs Trotter was looking confused.

  “Instability,” bellowed Lady Molesey, putting Isabella in mind of a she-elephant protecting her calf. “If there’s trouble at home, there’s trouble abroad, you mark my words. Why do you think we’ve had so much trouble from Russia?”

  Poor Mrs Trotter. Isabella could see her struggling.

  “I don’t know, er, have we?”

  “Yes we have, and all because we had no king,” Lady Molesey bashed the arm of the seat. “Just that pea-brained Prince Regent without a thought in his head for anything other than his own amusement.” Mrs Trotter nodded in agreement. “Ahh, about time. Here we are!”

  The carriage drew up in front of a beautiful cream cake confection of a house. They were ushered inside by a manservant, who then showed Isabella to a room on the fourth floor with a sloping roof and a bed with a maroon counterpane. The wooden floor had a worn patterned rug on it and the wood around the rug had been painted black. There was a knock and a maid with a mobcap on put her head around the door.

  “Pardon me miss, but Lady Molesey says a luncheon tray will be brought to you, but you are to have dinner with Mrs Trotter in her apartments on the second floor.”

  Isabella nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  Isabella took off her cape and hat and hung them carefully on the back of the door. Then she unpacked her bag into the chest of drawers. Lying at the bottom of her bag, tightly enclosed in an old sari was her father’s satchel. As she unwrapped it, the sari brought unexpected warmth to the room, its colours almost too bright for the gloom of November.

  She sat on the bed and held it close, and then she opened it and spread its contents out on the bed. Though there wasn’t much, it was still worth a king’s ransom to Isabella.

  She ran her fingers over the rough wood of the picture frame gazing at a pair of eyes, so very like her own, which smiled up at her from her mother’s face. The frame had two sections and had once contained two pictures. The first, a drawing of her mother just before Isabella had been born. The other, now missing, presumably on some far Afghan hillside, a picture of her with her father, sketched in a blustery moment at the regimental mounted games. Her father had carried the picture of her mother, ever since she could remember and had added the one of the two of them as soon as it had been done.

  How fortunate she was to have this one with her now.

  The next thing she took out was her silver locket, worn smooth with love and polish. But it was the third object, in a way her most precious possession, though she’d have fought to the death for any one of them; Abhaya’s medicine pouch.

  It was a battered and stained cotton roll, worn soft with use and tied with four leather laces. When unrolled it revealed one hundred small pockets, all labelled in Hindi in Abhaya’s graceful script. Here were the herbs Abhaya had collected over the years, cultivating them in her herb garden when she couldn’t find them growing wild. Isabella pressed the pouch to her nose and inhaled deeply, memories of her childhood rushing back helter-skelter. There wasn’t one ailment which Abhaya hadn’t been able to treat from this pouch. Wounds, fevers, even broken bones, once set, would heal quickly and without incident. There had always been a steady stream of people trickling through Abhaya’s bungalow.

  “What are they here for?” she would ask, irritated by their monopoly of Abhaya’s time.

  “Many things, Isabella-Bai.”

  “But they don’t look ill, Mama-gi.”

  “No, but there are many ways to be sick. Some illnesses can not be seen at all, but they are just as deadly.”

  Isabella was wide-eyed.

  “How so, Mama-Gi?”

  “The mind can break as well as the body.”

  “Really?”

  Isabella had thought for a moment remembering a lady in their compound who’d lost her husband in battle, and thereafter changed, from an ample mother of four, to a wasted wraith, who joined her husband in the afterlife after a scant three months.

  “Is that what happened to Mrs Sampson?”

  Abhaya had held her close.

  “That is it, exactly, the poor woman. You will make a good healer one day for you have the gift of seeing.”

  Isabella at only nine years old hadn’t known what Abhaya had meant by this, but instead found herself drawn to watch Abhaya at work.

  “How does that work?” Isabella would ask a thousand times as Abhaya chopped, ground and mixed plants together, occasionally thrusting a handful of leaves under Isabella’s nose.

  “Smell,” she would command. “What does that smell of to you?”

  “Mmm, lavender,” replied Isabella.

  “Yes, but what else?”

  Isabella breathed again, eyes closed.

  “Umm, sort of like iodine, just at the end,” she hazarded a guess.

  Abhaya nodded vigorously.

  “Exactly. We can use it to clean wounds. And smell this. What does it make you think of?” The leaves this time smelt sweet and her mouth started to water.

  “Yum, I want to eat them.”

  Abhaya smiled.

  “Again you are right. If you had an upset stomach you could eat this and it would be soothed. Now, what about this?” The leaves this time were black with a faint tinge of red and when Isabella inhaled she jerked her head back quickly. They smelled bitter and sulphurous.

  “Ugh! What is that?”

  “What does it make you think of?”

  “That I’m going to be sick.”

  Abhaya nodded again.

  “If you’d been poisoned I would give you this – Ipecac – which would cause you to vomit all the poison up before it would have a chance to kill you. And here – this one?” Abhaya crushed a small white flower, shaped like a bell.

  Isabella breathed in again.

  “Why, that smells like chalk, like Miss Parson’s blackboard eraser.”

  “This is Comfrey, also known as Knitbone and it makes bones grow. Bones and chalk are made of the same thing, hence the smell.”

  From that time on, Isabella could be found helping out in Abhaya’s impromptu
clinics, helping to set Grandfather Bilraj’s broken ankle, and trying not to be sick as Abhaya neatly stitched together head wounds before plastering with a thick paste of guar gum, which set hard and helped the wound to heal without a trace.

  Once, when she’d been eleven Abhaya had woken her in the night.

  “Come, child, you must help me. I need another pair of hands.”

  Quickly they had trodden through the velvet night, past the parade ground, to the home of one of the Risaldurs of her father’s regiment. A young woman lay white and silent on her bed, though sweat beaded her brow. Isabella never forgot the look of relief on the woman’s face when she saw Abhaya. Abhaya poured some water onto a cloth and dropped essence of mint onto it, wiping down the woman’s face and then her whole body.

  “So then Sari-Bai, this naughty baby, where is she?” The woman despite the pain of the contraction, which rocked her, smiled.

  “I do not know Mother. The pains continue, but with no result.”

  Abhaya felt Sari’s stomach, handing the cloth to Isabella who tentatively wiped the woman’s brow.

  “These babies have their own timekeeping, but let us see if she might arrive before the dawn. Isabella,” she gestured towards her pouch and said, “mix me a tincture of four dops of the black Cohosh and seven of the blue.”

  Isabella’s fingers moved swiftly, though she was nervous. It was vital not to get the doses wrong, such was the strength of the two medicines. Abhaya held the woman’s hand as she swallowed the mixture, then Isabella helped the woman to turn on her side.

  “Now try and get some rest.” The woman was asleep in an instant. An hour later Sari-Bai shuddered.

  “Quickly Isabella, help Sari to sit up.”

  Isabella put all of her weight behind Sari-Bai so she would have something to push against and, just for a moment dared to glance down to where Abhaya’s hands waited under a clean towel. A tiny dark head was emerging, and with one more triumphant shout from her mother, a baby, purple and slippery shot into Abhaya’s hands. Abhaya rubbed her briskly, and the baby let out an enraged howl, the purple cast driven from her skin with every breath of air she took. Wrapping her tightly, Abhaya handed the baby to her mother.