The Rose of Sebastopol (46 page)
Read The Rose of Sebastopol Online
Authors: Katharine McMahon
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Literary, #Historical
I sat a little longer by Max’s bed, stupefied by the hot, fly-infested air, the presence of so much mutilation in an enclosed space, and the way the men twitched under their sheets when there was a burst of shelling above Sebastopol. The hut was haunted by all the sick men who had passed through it in the foul Crimean winter, and by Henry and Rosa who had, at separate times, worked in these wards. I imagined them pursuing each other from bed to bed, he in his stained frock coat, she neat and lithe despite her bulky dress, united in their frantic belief that given enough strength of will and the right conditions, everything could be changed for the better.
Max never stirred, though when I held my palm half an inch from his lips I felt a faint warmth which proved he was alive. Nora’s beads had been pushed half under his pillow and before I left I wound them back round his fingers.
Two
Narni June 20, 1855
Dearest Mariella,
You will probably be as surprised to receive a letter from me, the sick man of Narni, as I am to be writing to you, Mariella Lingwood, in Balaklava, of all places. Your letters astonish me. There you are, actually in Balaklava Harbor, a place that haunts me, waking and sleeping. Though I have read and re-read them both many times I am thwarted by the usual Mariella restraint. She writes of the Crimean Peninsula as she might write of Clapham Common. My dear girl, I simply cannot imagine you there. When I think of you in your wonderful gowns, neat, precise, shy, I cannot see you at Balaklava where everything is the opposite of you. How did it come about? You were here, I remember, though I was so feverish at times I scarcely knew the difference between dream and reality but Lyall assures me that it was indeed you, my little Mariella, with your maid, that we went for a picnic among the ruins and that you then rushed off to the war to look for your cousin Rosa. Still I would not have believed it had I not received those letters, marked Balaklava.
As I say, I have been very ill but now I feel so well I wonder what I am doing here, languishing in the heat of Italy when I could be in the Crimea, or at home, perhaps of some use in the hospital. Lyall is with me still and very hopeful of my complete recovery before long, though he thinks it unlikely that I’ll be joining you at the war. He assures me there’s not much wrong with my chest now. Only general weakness in all muscles, and especially my stomach, which I’m sure will improve with time. I remember your visit to me in Narni with some anxiety. Your father has written to me in considerable irritation about your sudden decision to go to Russia. He blames me. Dear Mariella, if I said anything to disturb you, please forgive me. Lyall tells me that sometimes in my delirium I rave like a madman.
When I saw your handwriting I was suddenly overwhelmed by a flood of memories. The strongest? The turret room in The Elms: your gray eyes full of trust and affection and hope. And now the memory tortures me. I should have taken you in my arms and claimed you but you were my Mariella, my innocent sister-cousin, and I felt that to touch you would be to shatter you. But now I regret that moment, as I regret so many. How lovely to feel an English wind and see rain falling on an English lawn. I would give all I possess to stroke your cool English cheek and hold your undemanding hand in mine.
By the way, I am wondering if you have yet managed to meet up with Miss Rosa Barr. When I saw her she was living in one of the camps, I believe, among the men. If you are with her, please send my regards. Remember me also to the doctors in the General Hospital, if you go there, particularly Radley and Holloway.
The heat is trying here. My room is airless and I am still not strong enough to walk far. A carriage ride shakes up my wretched bones. I spend a great deal of time at the window and know the habits of everyone in the street. In the afternoon they bring out their rickety chairs and sit in the shade. They watch me and I watch them. I find it hard to imagine the Crimea in sunshine. I hope the wounded are decently dressed in hospital clothing. In January the men lay in the leaky hospital bell tents, covered by their filthy uniform coats, because we had nothing else to give them. Rosa told me that there were flannel nightshirts and waistcoats in the stores, which hadn’t been issued because we doctors were unaware of their existence so hadn’t put in a requisition. I wish to God I had known before.
Lyall is determined to stay with me here, though I certainly no longer need a doctor. He says that to be in the presence of so many antiquities more than makes up for the lack of excitement I provide. He can’t walk five paces in Narni, he says, without falling over a Roman step or raising his eyes to a Roman arch. Perhaps we will both be back in England by autumn.
But really, what I should love to do most of all is return to the Crimea. I cannot bear to think that everyone is there without me. I feel so powerless. And perhaps your cousin Rosa is still lost. Have you any news of her, my dear?
Mariella, I hardly know how to sign off this letter.
God Bless You,
Henry Thewell
Three
THE CRIMEA , 1855
W
hen Nora sent me back to the General Hospital
two days later I found Max in much the same condition as before, whereas the patient in the next bed, who’d been shot during the same assault, was sitting up with the remains of his arm swathed in a bloody bandage and supported by a stump pillow, cracking jokes about emulating that most famous amputee of all, Lord Raglan, who had lost his right arm at Waterloo but lived to command an army in the next war. If only I hadn’t intervened, Max might be on the mend too. As it was, the infection in his ruined leg was probably poisoning him, inch by inch.
hen Nora sent me back to the General Hospital
two days later I found Max in much the same condition as before, whereas the patient in the next bed, who’d been shot during the same assault, was sitting up with the remains of his arm swathed in a bloody bandage and supported by a stump pillow, cracking jokes about emulating that most famous amputee of all, Lord Raglan, who had lost his right arm at Waterloo but lived to command an army in the next war. If only I hadn’t intervened, Max might be on the mend too. As it was, the infection in his ruined leg was probably poisoning him, inch by inch.
I leant over and hissed into his ear: “Get better. Now. Please, Max. Don’t die...” and then started back as he opened his eyes.
“Hoped you’d gone home,” he said. “How’s Nora?”
“Nora is improving all the time.”
“Glad to hear it.” He dozed while I stood at a distance, a little flower of joy opening inside me because he was better. After a few minutes he woke up again. “Still here.”
“As you see.”
“I suppose I have you to thank that I have two legs. You and your Dr. Thewell.”
“I only said...”
“Odd thing, I try to get rid of you, but back you come. Bloody persistent. Well, let me thank you properly, Miss Lingwood.” I gave him my hand but instead of shaking it he kissed it on the underside of the wrist near the palm. His black, morphine-stung eyes never left my face and I felt my pulse beat against his lips.
“You must recover,” I said. “The doctor assures me that amputation was the only possible way of saving you. If you don’t get well, I’ll be to blame.”
“Right, then, can’t have that. Will live.” He seemed to be fading into sleep but as I withdrew my hand he said: “Besides. There’s Rosa.”
After that Nora’s fever returned; there was a fresh bout of cholera in the camps and the nurses were too busy to keep an eye on her. When I was at last able to visit Max again I found that his bed was now occupied by a lieutenant with a bandaged shoulder.
Although the poor sick man was sleeping I gave his hand a shake and hissed: “What are you doing here? Where is Captain Stukeley?”
He couldn’t speak. In a frenzy I ran the length of the ward and found an orderly. “What happened to Captain Stukeley?”
“Captain Stukeley?”
He was so stupid and slow I didn’t wait to ask again. A nurse in a pepper-and-salt gown was walking between the huts. “Captain Stukeley. Please, do you know what happened to him?”
She shook her head and walked on. I raced from hut to hut and at last found the elegantly bearded doctor I had seen on my first visit. “Please, sir, what happened to Captain Stukeley? Did he...?”
“Somewhat recovered. So much so we sent him to Skutari, and I’m hoping from thence he may go to our new hospital at Renkioi, and so on home. He didn’t want to go, kicked up the devil of a fuss, but he’s far better away from here with that leg. Less chance of infection. And he’ll be no more use to the war, in any event. By the way, I have Dr. Thewell’s books for you, if you’d like them.”
While he made his ponderous way along the row of huts I paced up and down in an effort to regain a little composure. Had Max thought that I failed to visit him again because I didn’t care whether he lived or died? He’d left no message, even for Nora. How typical of him to be so ungrateful and perverse.
The doctor returned a few minutes later with a large and weighty parcel, loosely wrapped in brown paper and string. “Some important medical volumes here,” he said. “I’m sure Dr. Thewell will be missing them.”
The afternoon was very hot and the parcel awkward to carry but I struggled down as far as Balaklava Harbor, where I sat on a crate near the water. Half a dozen or so ponies were tethered close by in a little compound, and a heap of baskets due for transportation up to the trenches was being unloaded from a cart by an Armenian peddler. After a few minutes, as a ship began her slow withdrawal from her tight-packed mooring, I realized that I had attracted quite a little crowd of spectators, so I got up and walked on towards the Castle Hospital. The parcel of books remained on the crate where I had left it and I turned a deaf ear to the voices shouting after me in a variety of tongues.
Four
L
ord Raglan died, some said of a broken heart
because of his role in the calamitous assault on the Redan, others that he’d been struck with cholera, though Nora said he’d lingered too long for that to be true. His coffin was carried on a nine-pounder gun, escorted by the grenadier guard of honor who would accompany him from the British headquarters to Kazatch Bay, near the French-occupied harbor of Kamiesh, whence it would be taken by steamer to England.
ord Raglan died, some said of a broken heart
because of his role in the calamitous assault on the Redan, others that he’d been struck with cholera, though Nora said he’d lingered too long for that to be true. His coffin was carried on a nine-pounder gun, escorted by the grenadier guard of honor who would accompany him from the British headquarters to Kazatch Bay, near the French-occupied harbor of Kamiesh, whence it would be taken by steamer to England.
So Lord Raglan, at least, was going home. Nora was well enough to get up and watch the gun carriage begin its journey past a mile-long line of troops, fifty men and three officers from each regiment, and behind them dense crowds of silent British and allied soldiers. “This is the best bit of organization we’re like to see for a long time,” she said. “These men may well weep. Word among the nurses in the hospital is that Raglan was the best the British military could provide, so heaven help us.”
We all waited for something else significant to happen but nothing did. The allied generals seemed to be licking their wounds after the calamitous defeat of June 18, and despite their besieged state the Russians were defiant as ever: their bastions were all but impregnable and the Russian spirit, as demonstrated by the cheerful, well-groomed officers who had paraded by the barricades while we collected our wounded, was undaunted. Raglan’s replacement, Major-General Simpson, was widely known to have pleaded not to be given the promotion; it was said that those in government opposed to his appointment thought him a raving lunatic and that he and the French commander, Pelissier, had no respect for each other at all. So there was stalemate.
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