The Rose of Sebastopol (41 page)

THE CRIMEA, 1855

 

 

 

O
n Saturday, June 16, Newman turned up
with yet another badly ripped tunic and a wounded hand following a fall from his horse: “Idiot thing to do, Miss Lingwood. What a fool. Been riding all my life and now this. M’horse suddenly took against me and before I knew it I was on the ground and dragged half across the parade ground. Went to the medical officer but he patched me up double quick. Right as rain. Stiff arm is all but fit for service as usual. My uniform suffered more than I did.”

He looked utterly dejected and I pleaded with him to stay and drink a cup of tea to keep Nora company but he said he was in a desperate rush, too much happening back at the camp, no time even to tether the horse, so instead he hovered about, blood seeping through the bandage on his hand and his lower lip drooping while I examined the damage to his jacket. The horse, presumably the same that had thrown him the day before, stood peacefully by and looked about with mild brown eyes.

The material on the jacket arm was frayed and rubbed up to the elbow and the epaulette had been wrenched half off. “Wondered if you could manage to do it quite soon, Miss Lingwood. Wore that jacket back in the Quarries. Saw me through. I expect you’ve noticed the guns never stop firing these days. Must be getting ready for something. Need the old lucky jacket back again just in case.”

“Of course. It will be done by tomorrow. And how would it be, Lieutenant Newman, if you were to take me for a picnic to the fort, as you suggested? If you have time.”

“Absolutely. I should like that. Wonderful idea. Mrs. Seacole will provide.” He came very close and murmured confidentially, “Miss Lingwood, I was wondering—I’ve been asking a few of the men about your cousin, Miss Barr. They say there was a man who used to come and knock on the door of her hut. Very persistent. A doctor. Thought I should tell you. I’m so sorry. Must be difficult for you. He was the one she went away with.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Newman.”

“I’m sorry if this gives you pain.”

“Lieutenant Newman, you have told me nothing new. Not to worry. I’ll have this done for you by tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow. That’s it. What a fool, should have let go the reins but he sort of turned on me, the brute. I held on for dear life.” He was crying again and a dribble of saliva darkened the wool of the jacket on my lap. To save his dignity I didn’t look up. “Well, good-bye then, Miss Lingwood, Miss McCormack.” He stood at the hut door, peering into the gloom.

“That’ll be
Mrs.
McCormack,” said Nora’s voice from within.

“Beg pardon, of course, Mrs. McCormack.”

“You take care then, Lieutenant Newman. God bless you.”

Still he didn’t go but hovered about, casting his long shadow while his horse cropped the parched grass and I snipped away at the frayed ends of cloth and thought of Henry knock-knocking on the door of Rosa’s hut.

I delayed other work to finish Newman’s jacket but I need not have worried, because there was no sign of him all the next day. While I waited I sewed a soft inner lining for Mrs. Whitehead’s cuffs and collars to prevent her skin from being rubbed raw by the coarse fabric of her dress. The bombardment above Sebastopol seemed to have trebled in volume and force, so that smoke hung like storm clouds over the hills. By five o’clock Newman still hadn’t come.

The rhythm of hospital life continued and a couple of carts came trailing up the track bearing wounded. It seemed that the Russians were still able to return fire after all and were as capable as we were at lobbing rockets and cannon balls across the enemy lines. At six o’clock the nuns closeted themselves away for evening mass and I found myself envying their ability to cut off from the nervous tension in the hospital; when the guns went quiet momentarily, their steady voices could be heard intoning Latin prayers. Later on, at about eight, Mrs. Whitehead told us that it was rumored there’d be a major offensive the next day and that finally the allies would break through and reach Sebastopol. “Just think,” she said, “it’s amazing to even consider it, but it could all be over by this time tomorrow.” With her usual efficiency she settled on her bed, face to the wall, and tucked herself away into sleep so as to be fully prepared for whatever excitement or horrors the next day might bring.

Nora and I weren’t so lucky. Sharing a narrow bed was torture—we were hot and cramped and tormented by fleas. Far into the night I heard the click of her beads and a whispered litany of Hail Marys until, when the guns went silent at last, she relaxed and her breathing grew steady.

That was my loneliest time, when it seemed to me that I clung by my fingernails to the edge of the war, to Russia itself, and that nobody would care if I dropped off altogether. I tried to place everyone in my mind: my parents and Isabella in their beds in Fosse House; Henry, in his dim little room in Narni, yearning for Rosa; Max preparing for the battle in his camp up close to the enemy lines; Rosa. Oh, God. From the bottom of my heart I longed to know what had happened to Rosa.

I had discovered that in the allied camp every newcomer was a diversion, every unusual event endlessly discussed, so if Rosa was anywhere within a radius of twenty miles she would know that Mariella Lingwood and Nora McCormack had arrived in the Crimea.

So why didn’t she come to me? Unless she was too ashamed, or incapable, captured or lost. Or dead.

I dozed at last and woke in the small hours, pre-dawn. When a rat scuffled across my foot I hardly bothered to kick it away; I was merely irritated that its activities made it more difficult for me to hear what was happening outside. Silence, then the crack of a rocket. And another.

I slid off the bed, reached for Nora’s boots, tapped them sharply in case anything had nested in them during the night, put them on, and let myself out. The hospital huts were quiet although a few windows were lit by flickering lanterns carried from one bed to the next. A cold wind blew off the sea as I crept between the huts up the path towards the fortress. Dawn was breaking over the hills to the east above Balaklava and in the distance came the sharp rack-a-cack of gunfire and shells.

How quickly a place became haunted by disturbing memories. This fortress reminded me of the picnic I should have had yesterday with poor Newman, and of the woman with the striped orange-and-green skirt, whose child Max had buried in Kerch. As the sky silvered, the racket from the guns increased and the harbor woke up to another day of urgent activity. Even to my inexperienced ears the quality of firing seemed different from yesterday’s incessant bombardment. Instead it was sporadic and vicious, followed suddenly by the boom of cannons from the sea. There could be no doubt that this was the day of battle. I sat on the edge of the path, arms tight round my knees, watching the sky. The dawn was soon pinkish-gold and the air full of salt. The gunfire hurt me, it seemed to reverberate in my blood.

DERBYSHIRE, 1844

 

 

 

R
osa developed a fascination
for finding out more about Mother’s philanthropic concerns, particularly those connected with hospitals. One afternoon she brought pen and paper up to the bare little room on the top floor, which Mother and I used as a schoolroom, and asked if she could make a few notes. She wanted to know how she too might become a member of a hospital board of visitors and what exactly would be her responsibilities.

After a while I grew very bored with the conversation and slipped away, partly to see if either of them would notice. As I crossed the staircase hall I saw that the library door was open and sunlight was making rectangular patterns on the red-and-green rug inside. Of course this was the only room I’d not visited, because it was kept locked and Rosa was refused entry, so I crept right up and took a peek.

The library in that sudden blaze of light was both beautiful and bewildering. In places the books seemed to go on and on from floor-level to high ceiling, and on top of alternating stacks of oak shelves were gabled nooks in which had been placed marble heads of great men, or so I presumed; I didn’t recognize any of them. The symmetry of the rows of books, the careful arrangement of table and chairs in the window, the armchairs on either side of the hearth, the pillars of cupboards and tiny drawers ranked along the far wall were all enchanting to my tidy mind. Unlike the rest of Stukeley, which was filled with Aunt Isabella’s taste for anything floral, this room was austere and purposeful. I loved the smell so much that I crept further in, picked a book at random off the shelves, gave it a good sniff, took it to a table, and opened it.

Greek. I turned the pages sadly. There was nothing here for me after all.

“You should sit on the other side of the table,” said a voice behind me, “so you don’t cast a shadow on the page.”

I jumped and closed the book hastily. Sir Matthew Stukeley, to whom I’d barely spoken three words in the month since my arrival, stood in the doorway smiling at me. He was an unlikely spouse for my buxom aunt, being thin with a protruding lower lip, narrow face, and fearsome side-whiskers. His voice came from deep in his throat and Rosa said he reminded her, to look at and listen to, of an old nanny goat, an opinion perhaps influenced by the fact that the pair didn’t get on,
at all,
as Mother said. For one who worked in such a noisy place as a lead works he moved very quietly and I had found time spent in his austere company at dinner, even though he never spoke to me, quite an ordeal. That afternoon, however, when I risked a frightened peek into his eyes, I noticed that they were indulgent, even affectionate.

He gave the door a little tug so that it nearly closed, and with his long fingers turned to the title page of the book. Rosa said her stepfather’s family was from
nowhere;
our mothers were the daughters of a squire but the Stukeleys had only been lead miners until a couple of generations back. If this was really the case Sir Matthew had peculiarly fine hands, unlike my father’s, which were calloused and lumpy as a result of accidents with bricks and sledgehammers.

“Do you read Greek?” asked Sir Matthew.

“No. Sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I shouldn’t be here. I’m sorry. The door was open. I just wanted to see. I couldn’t help it.”

“You mustn’t be afraid of looking at books. You can come anytime. Books are for everyone. I’ve watched you at the table. You have wonderful manners. I know you will be very careful. It’s one of the great disappointments of my life that neither of my sons has turned out to be a scholar. Do you read Latin?”

“No. Oh, no. Rosa can, a bit.”

“Rosa can do everything,
a bit
. She infuriates me with her piecemeal attitude to things. Who is your favorite author? Perhaps I have work by him in here. I do have some novels.”

As I read very little apart from Mother’s periodicals I couldn’t name a single writer. Mother said I was too young for most novels and I daren’t mention that Rosa and I were reading
Oliver Twist
, in case he asked me questions about chapters we hadn’t yet reached.

“Poetry,” he said. “Do you like poetry?”

“Oh yes, definitely.”

“Well, who is your favorite poet?”

I couldn’t think of any poets either except for a name Rosa had mentioned recently. “Byron. I like Byron.” And then I scolded myself, because of course I really did know the work of one poet very well, Henry’s favorite, Keats. I could even have recited the song “Meg Merrilies” from start to finish.

Sir Matthew was laughing and I noticed that he had exceptionally fine teeth. “Do you indeed? Are you sure your mama knows that? Well, I’ve got plenty of Byron here. Which one of his poems would you especially like to read?”

I hung my head miserably.

“Well, listen, Mariella, you feel free to read any book you like, so long as you don’t take it out of the library. Let me show you where everything is. Poetry is on these shelves here, and I have a small collection of plays which may interest you. Here are reference books, mostly scientific, these are prose essays. Here are the Latin authors, here the Greek. In time I’ll get round to labeling all the shelves but for now you’ll just have to find your own way.”