‘Where is your room-mate?’ I asked.
‘Working a night shift, poor thing. Don’t worry about her; she is the most conscientious of nurses and would not dream of leaving her post until eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We will not be disturbed,’ she said, as she gently removed my hat.
There was no stove in the room, so that what heat there was came from the hot water pipes that ran along its length. I felt myself shiver, but I was painfully aware that this was as much because of nervous excitement as it was because of the cold. Rose noticed my discomfort and took my hands in hers, smiling at me.
‘Rose, with you I am quite transformed.’
‘You cannot always be Sister Marsden, in charge of the world, responsible for everyone’s health and well-being,’ she laughed.
‘Indeed, in your company I am not!’
‘Good!’
‘I am reduced to a young girl, awkward and blushing.’
‘And that is what I saw in you, the very first time we met,’ she said. ‘I saw through all the starch and sternness. I saw behind the fierce gaze of the renowned nurse, and I saw someone lonely and tender. I see her still, that girl. Where everyone else sees only a woman, capable and efficient.’
‘That is what a nurse must be, after all. And I have a post that requires me to be… a certain manner of person,’ I said, my breath catching as she began to unbutton my coat for me.
‘Well here, with me, tonight, you are not a nurse at all. You must put all of that right out of your mind. In fact, I expressly forbid any mention of nursing, or mothers, or any kind of responsibilities. Here it is just you and me. The whole world has vanished. Only you and I remain. Together.’
She finished unbuttoning my coat and slid it off my shoulders. Even in the dreary surroundings Rose looked so very pretty. I had thought, at times, that my opinion of her was coloured by the hours we spent on picnics by the river, and that somehow my feelings for her could not thrive in the mundane everyday. Of course there was Rose the nurse, who brightened up the wards with her smile and her easy way with the patients. But that other Rose, secret Rose, my Rose – I had begun to think perhaps she existed only in that sunlit glade, beneath the leafy tree, beside the sparkling water. I was so moved to discover that this was not the case, that I felt tears spill from my eyes.
‘Tears, Kate?’
For a moment she was disconcerted, afraid, I thought, that I had changed my mind and did not want to be with her. I clumsily attempted to make my feelings clear.
‘I do not deserve such happiness,’ was all I could mumble.
She leaned forwards and kissed away my tears!
‘Does not everyone deserve to be happy?’ she asked.
The feel of her soft mouth against my face sent tremors of delight through me. Such sensations, such a response to her touch served only to make me feel more wicked, more sinful.
‘But Rose, how can we… how can I? It is wrong…’
She placed her hands on my shoulders and fixed me with her strong, beautiful gaze. ‘Is it wrong to be loved? Is it wrong to love? Kate, you give of yourself day in, day out, caring for others, tirelessly fighting for the weak and the sick. You have done so all your life. You have nursed soldiers in terrible wars, you have nursed your brothers and sisters to their very end, you have travelled halfway around the world for the sake of those who needed you.’
‘I only do what I believe God wants me to do.’
‘And is it part of God’s plan for you to be lonely and miserable? I don’t think much of your God if it is.’
‘But what we want, what I feel… it is a sin, Rose!’
She shook her head. ‘You once told me – when I asked you why you are so determined to seek out the most shunned, the most reviled, the most wretched of people – you said it was because someone needed to care for them, because it was the Christian thing to do, for we are all God’s children. All of us, Kate. And that includes you, exactly as you are, in every respect. Do you not see that?’
She waited for me to answer. The air about us seemed to crackle with the importance of the moment, and yet I could not speak. I could not. I thought about what she had said and more than anything in the world I wanted to believe that she was right. In the end, I had not the will to believe otherwise.
I remember the snow was silver beneath that arctic sun. A sun that had scarcely the will to raise itself above the ever distant horizon. Its rays washed not golden like the summer sun of childhood, but thin, cool, sharp, bathing the landscape in a chill light that did not warm or cheer. This silvery snow appeared to me not pretty, but sterile, spurning life and all living things. As clear a warning as any could be that this was not a place for frail, warm-blooded creatures
Will God forgive me? Have I atoned? I know Him to be merciful and loving, and because He can see into my heart He knows I am sincere in my love for Him. I am stripped bare before His eyes, and that is, if I am to be truthful, what terrifies me. For there beside my steadfast faith sits my greatest sin, for the same heart that loves my Lord so dearly has also loved where it should not. Oh, what it was to have been cursed with such a tender heart! And I have paid a high price for listening to the fluttering beat of it. I do not believe that my traducers acted only out of some professional jealousy, nor because they truly concerned themselves with the tiresome details of monies I might or might not have benefited from. Such vitriol as I was shown, such loathing, that was born of something altogether more personal. The men who vilified me I think acted out of fear, for a woman like me assails their treasured position in so many ways. And the women who set themselves against me? Ah, their reasons for doing so were more complicated. Did some rail against me, against the truth of me, out of an instinctive disgust? Did my behaviour shame our sex? Perhaps. Perhaps. But it seems to me there were others to whom I held up a mirror, and they did not like what they saw. To be so afraid of one’s own heart is a terrible thing. I would not, could not, deny my true nature. I kept up a pretence because there was no other course open to me, and yet I need not have troubled myself. In the end conjecture, speculation, gossip, slander, these were enough to condemn me. And Nell, of course. Poor unhappy Nell.
At last there is a peace in this room the quality of which I have not known here before. They have all gone, even Rose. Was she right? Could we really have had a life together? I do not believe so, for there were too many things against it.
They found her clothes on the grassy river bank, beneath the broad tree where we shared so many precious hours. She had eaten a picnic, all by herself. It was early summer – I can picture how pretty the place would have looked – and the river was full and fast-flowing. They found her body a little way downstream, caught in the eddy of a deep, cool pool. A tragic accident, was how it was reported. But Rose was a strong swimmer. I know why she went into the water that day and did not come out.
And now she has left me completely. All the others have gone too. I have seen the last of them all. I am to leave this life alone, it appears. No matter how I loved, or whom I loved, at the last I am alone.
The light of the room seems to me to be dimming, though I know it to be a sunny day. It is as if the very space is shrinking around me, blurring and softening. And into this twilight comes a figure, soundlessly, wordlessly. It is hard to make out who it might be, for my eyes are failing quickly now, and the visitor is shrouded in strange clothes. No, they are not clothes, rather they are rags. These ragged pieces of cloth and frayed garments are swathed about his head, half covering his face. It is his gait I recognise now. The shambling shuffle of a leper, one painful faltering step after another, arms held across his body to protect his fingerless hands. As I watch he makes his halting progress across the room and slowly, awkwardly lowers himself onto the chair beside my bed. For a moment he does not move, and the only sounds in the room are of his shallow breaths and my own whispering ones.
At last he turns towards me. Still I cannot see his face, but I know only too well what I would find
there if it were revealed to me. It is a blessing, a mercy perhaps, that his scarred and disfigured features are obscured. He does not speak. Carefully, slowly, he lifts his shortened hand, which is wrapped in a blue-grey remnant of fabric. As I watch he lays his hand upon mine. And I feel my body lighten, my own pain vanish, my sorrow melt away. In the end, I am not, after all, abandoned. And as I close my eyes, I am content.
Author’s Note
Reprinted by kind permission of The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
The hospital and refuge that Kate worked so hard to establish was indeed built in Sosnovka and opened in 1892. It was run by the Russian Sisters of Mercy, and provided care for lepers gathered from hovels such as those Kate found. For decades it was the place to where people afflicted with the disease travelled from all over Siberia. In Kate’s hospital they found treatment, companionship, and a place of safety. It closed in the 1960s once modern understanding of leprosy meant it was no longer needed.
Kate’s reputation never recovered from the scandal which dogged her footsteps wherever she went. Despite her work for the lepers in Siberia, being made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, helping to establish the Bexhill Museum, and setting up the
St Francis Leper Guild, she never found acceptance in her own society again. She died penniless in Wandsworth Asylum, her mind disturbed by dementia. Her grave in Uxbridge Cemetery has no headstone to tell of her achievements.
Her book, On Sledge And Horseback To Outcast Siberian Lepers, successfully raised both awareness of the disease of leprosy and funds for the hospital. In the town of Sosnovka there is a statue erected to her memory and a street named after her. In 1991 a 55 carat diamond found in Yakutsk was given the name ‘Sister of Mercy Kate Marsden’.
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First published in 2019 by Honno Press, ‘Ailsa Craig’, Heol y Cawl, Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, CF64 4AH
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Copyright: Mabli Roberts © 2019
The right of Mabli Roberts to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
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ISBN 978-1-909983-96-0
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