The Rose of Sebastopol (32 page)

“I won’t have you discussing my engagement with...”

“Why? What have you got to lose? Don’t you want the truth?”

“Of course I do. But not at any price.”

“So the bottom line is that you don’t care enough to know what’s happened to your cousin. Well, I’ll tell you something.
I’ve
not come here to waste my time hanging about while you make up your mind who you’ll talk to and who you’ll shun. I’m thinking of offering my services at the hospital. They can’t be that overrun with nurses. I’ve been thinking that while I’m away from England I should take the chance to live a little and it’s hardly living being here with you and pandering to your every need.”

“I’ve not noticed much pandering. It will make no difference to me whether you’re here or not.”

“Well, good then.” She began to sort through her possessions. “I’ll be sending for what’s important in my luggage later. Most of my things will be down in the hold. I had been feeling a touch responsible for you, having come with you this far, but you’re enough to try the patience of the blessed saints in heaven. I cannot stand it no more.”

“This is presumably what you intended all along, then, is it? You’ve had it in your mind since we left Italy to work in a hospital, like Rosa. Oh, yes. I see. I can’t think why you didn’t join Miss Nightingale’s nurses when they first advertised if that’s what you’ve been wanting all along.”

“I would have done had it not been for your aunt. But oddly enough I had a sense of loyalty and attachment to her and I was sorry for her sickness, which perhaps you’d never understand.”

“If I had known you’d been harboring these kinds of thoughts I would have got rid of you long ago. It’s unfortunate that you have been dishonest enough to allow me to pay your fare, under false pretenses.”

“Well then, now you know the truth about me. So you won’t miss me.”

“Of course I won’t miss you. But I forbid you to abandon me like this. If you leave me I shall be forced to write about you to Mother and Aunt and you’ll be turned off with no reference.”

“What good is their reference out here? Can’t you see? We are in a different place, where we have to think differently and find ourselves a new way of being.”

“You’re wrong. We cannot allow our standards to slip one inch. This is what I’ve been fighting all along. We must be what we have always been or we will be lost.”

“Your standards, as you put them, don’t apply out here. Use your brain, Miss Mariella. Think about it. But no, you can’t think because you’ve never really left the nursery in that Clapham house of yours. In all the last weeks you’ve not changed one iota or opened your eyes to nothing. How will you find Rosa if this is the way you carry on? It’s quite obvious that the poor girl has got herself into some dreadful scrape and we’ll have the devil’s own job to find her, especially if Max has tried and been unsuccessful.”

By now I was weeping. She seemed in such deadly earnest, folding up her nightgown, dropping spare hairpins into a little tin, unlocking the box containing our provisions and removing packets of tea and coffee. “I don’t understand. Why are you talking to me like this? It’s not my fault if nobody will help us.”

“Then whose fault is it? Look at you, sewing a frock while the world is at war. What do you care about your cousin Rosa or indeed anyone else out here?”

“I care. I do. All I want is to find her and then go back as fast as possible to Henry before it’s too late. He’s the reason I’m doing all this. And yet I’ve known all along that we should not have come. We aren’t wanted. Nobody is willing to help us find Rosa.”

“No. I’ll tell you what I think, really and truly. You don’t want to find Rosa. You’re not even prepared to try, because you’re too frightened to face the truth of why she came here and what has happened to her. Well, I’ll tell you why she came. You squeezed her out with your attachment to that smug doctor of yours. You couldn’t give her what she needed, you never could satisfy that terrible look of hers I’ve seen so often, of hope mingled with fear. Well, I don’t want to please you. Why should I? I’m not sitting another moment on this ship waiting for you or anyone else to tell me what to do. I’ve seen my chance and I’m taking it.”

I was sobbing freely, wiping away the tears with the length of ruffle. “What do you mean, squeezed her out? What are you talking about? And if you care about her so much, why are you going to the hospital? How will that help?”

“Oh, I expect to discover all sorts once I’m among the nurses.”

“Go then, if that’s what you want. Leave me alone. See if I care.”

A fatal mistake this, because of course she left. And there was I, left alone onboard the
Royal Albert
where a great many curious ears had probably heard every word of our argument. I was hot, hungry, tearful, bewildered, with no idea even how to acquire lunch.

N
ora still wasn’t back when I woke
the next morning, so I washed my face in yesterday’s stale water, drank a cup of coffee, and ate a piece of bread brought by the steward—or cabin boy, he can barely have been thirteen. It now seemed possible that Nora would not return immediately and that I had been right yesterday to suggest that she had been planning this defection for some time.

My eye fell on the calling card left the previous day. Apparently I had no choice but to throw myself on the mercy of this Lady Mendlesham-Connors.

The
Principle
was a private yacht, beautifully appointed with furled brown sails and highly polished brass fittings. As she was moored out in the harbor away from more workaday vessels, I had to pay an exorbitant fee to be rowed there. I wore my best pink silk gown and for once had gauged my dress correctly; Lady Mendlesham-Connors, or Lady Mendlesham, as I was invited to call her, a large lady perhaps a dozen or so years older than I, with staring eyes, a violently weathered complexion, and deep ruffles to her gown, watched my approach with approval.

She gave me tea under an awning and introduced herself as the wife of one of Lord Raglan’s closest aides and a friend of Lady George Paget, whose husband had played such a heroic part in the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaklava. In return I told her that while traveling in Italy I’d heard that my cousin, one of Miss Nightingale’s nurses, had strayed from her position in the hospital. Though I could only stay a few days in Balaklava, my attempts to find her had been blocked by officialdom.

“Oh, you don’t want to worry about any of that,” boomed Lady Mendlesham, “nobody really cares what anyone does out here. Where do you want to go? I can point you in the right direction.”

“But it seems rash to venture out of Balaklava on my own when I have no map and no idea where to go.”

“On your own? Surely your parents haven’t sent you out here unprotected? Someone said they’d seen you with a maid. What was the name of your cousin? Perhaps I’ve heard of her?”

“Miss Barr. Rosa Barr. Daughter of Lady Isabella Stukeley.”

A gleam of avid interest came to her eye. “Rosa Barr. Rosa
Barr
. But wasn’t she up with one of the Derbyshire regiments? Wasn’t she the one who disappeared into...? Well, I pity you, Miss Lingwood, you must be eaten up with anxiety.” She drew her chair nearer to mine, a tigress in for the kill. “Were you very close? My poor love. When was the last you heard from her?”

“You’re frightening me. You speak as if she were dead.”

“But my dear girl, you must bear up. For all we know she may be dead. Everyone talks about her. It’s said that she was last seen on her way to Inkerman way back in the early spring.”

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s dead, surely.”

“Oh, don’t cry. Oh, I’ve been very tactless. I’m known for my blunt speaking, ask anyone. Of course she may have survived. She might be anywhere. But you mustn’t raise your hopes.”

“Please tell me what you know. I’ve heard she was with her stepbrother’s regiment but what else?”

“That’s it. She broke away from the hospitals and went to join the Derbyshires. It’s turning out to be a common story unfortunately. Take dear Martha Clough. She was once engaged to poor Colonel Lauderdale Maule, who died of cholera almost as soon as he set foot in Varna last summer, and they think that grief might have turned Martha a little mad. She came out with Miss Stanley’s party and the next minute she’s upped and left the hospitals and is living among the troops. Miss Nightingale is very hard on those nurses who don’t toe the line. Quite rightly, in my view. We dine with the Nightingales twice a year; vital that the family name is not mired by all this nursing business. But as for your Rosa Barr, nobody is sure what happened to her, though there are all kinds of rumors flying about.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“I don’t like to spread gossip but it’s said she had a liaison out here. Just what Miss Nightingale feared. Apparently she went to the caves above Inkerman because she had an assignation.”

“An assignation...With...?”

“I can’t disclose a name. One learns to be careful, in my position. And as I say, this is all speculation but one way or another she was never seen again. It’s all very terrible.”

Henry. Oh God, she could only mean Henry. “Lady Mendlesham, what should I do? I am here for only a few days. I must try and find out for sure what’s happened to Rosa. At the very least I should like to visit the Derbyshires. Is there any chance that you would be able to provide me with a guide?”

She seemed to be calculating the status to be gained from finding out more about this marvelous scandal, because suddenly she said: “I can’t help thinking it might be nice to have a jaunt away from the harbor and I’m very intrigued by this situation with your elusive Miss Barr. There’s been little action up at the front for weeks, yet my husband keeps me on a very tight rein. Well, I’m sick of it. I don’t see why I shouldn’t take you up to the plateau where you can have a view of Sebastopol at least. We’ll go late tomorrow afternoon when the sun has lost a little of its heat. And in the meantime I’ll put the word out among the men in case there’s any more news of your poor cousin.”

The process of taking my leave, the need to retain my composure while being rowed the short distance back to the
Royal Albert
was intolerable. Had Rosa betrayed me then? Was she as guilty as Henry? I couldn’t believe it of her. And yet there had been an
assignation
.

But if she loved me, how could she bear to take him from me?

Lady Mendlesham was bound to find out that I was engaged to Henry Thewell. Then what? How could I endure her company tomorrow? And yet I had to go. Now that I had discovered a little, I must know more.

Then it dawned on me that there were other, more practical difficulties in the way of the proposed expedition, not least the fact that since my stay at Stukeley with Rosa more than a decade ago I had never ridden any distance at speed. The second problem was that I did not have a riding habit and even I knew that I couldn’t mount a horse in a muslin frock. The third was that I had been ordered by Barnabus to stay onboard ship.

In the end I chose to tackle the one problem I was equipped to solve. The only garments I possessed remotely suitable for riding were the tweed jacket which I had worn on the journey from London to Italy and a pair of stoutish boots. As Nora had deserted me I felt no qualms about using her clothes, so I sent for her box and unearthed a dark skirt and blouse in heavy cotton drill. Next I needed plain petticoats but when I burrowed deeper I uncovered disturbing signs of her true nature. Out came a book with worn leather bindings and wafer-thin, well-thumbed paper called
The Daily Missal
; a rosary made of green glass beads; a little wooden box with a hook clasp containing what seemed to be a handful of soil—surely some dreadful relic—and, most surprising of all, out came a sketch of Nora, signed by Rosa.

This last gave me a shock, because I found myself staring not at the taciturn Nora I had known in Clapham but the defiant creature who had revealed herself since we left Italy. In Rosa’s picture Nora was seated on a low stool and leant forward with her chin supported by both hands and her elbows on her knees, resolute and a touch amused.

This sudden discovery of Rosa’s work brought her abruptly close.
Rosa’s
slender fingers had executed the sketch,
her
hand had smoothed the page,
her
blue eyes had smiled on the subject.

Who are you, Rosa? Do I know you?