The Rose of Sebastopol (48 page)

DERBYSHIRE, 1844

 

 

 

S
ir Matthew Stukeley was kinder to me
than he was to anyone else in the house and I loved him for it. Our lessons were irregular and depended on whether or not I could slip away, for instance while Rosa and her mother were engaged in the mutual endurance test that was Rosa’s occasional piano practice.

I liked going to the library. Being there was the closest I got to the feelings I had during that first walk in the rain with Henry up the garden at Fosse House under a shared umbrella—a quiver of excitement, a sense of being singled out, of having pushed myself beyond my usual boundaries. And I was soothed by the beautifully waxed wood of the library table, the slanting light that fell through the long windows, the view of green sloping lawns beyond the glass.

I treated the Latin language like an embroidery pattern to be filled in a stitch at a time. And as I ploughed through the translations and made a neat list of new words in a little notebook provided by Sir Matthew I appreciated the tranquillity of the room, his touching dedication to our work, the sense of order as the unknown part of the Latin poem shrank and the English translation grew. I liked the fragrance of cigar that hung about him, hiding the faintest whiff of the lead works. I associated him with the enchanted library, with spotless cuffs, with the sense that though he was as old as my father he was not my father, so was therefore both interesting and reassuring at the same time.

He sat at one end of the table with me on his right side. I liked the way his clean-nailed index finger ran along the words. I liked the neatness of the open book set at a precise angle on the wide, empty table. I liked the fact that in the library at least there was no danger of intrusion from anyone else, and that all I had to do was sit still and listen. His voice had a slight Derbyshire intonation and his sentences were well-formed and clipped, almost as if I could hear the full stops.

He and I were extremely polite to each other. When Rosa wasn’t looking I had made him a pen-wiper embroidered with his initials and he spread it out appreciatively and said he would make a point of always using it. “It is a miracle to me that you have made so much of two letters,
M
and
S
, and formed them into a monogram. Tell me again, what is the name of this stitch?”

“Satin stitch.”

“Well, I hardly like to think how long it must have taken those busy little fingers of yours.”

“Barely an hour, really.”

My hand rested on the table and he turned it over to study the fingertips. “As I thought. Poor little finger, covered with pricks from the needle.”

“I wear a thimble but I’m careless sometimes.” Nobody had ever given my hands this amount of attention, not even Rosa, and now I thought about it my pink-tipped fingers did look very capable and dainty.

He asked how I had spent the day, so I gave him an edited version which made no mention of our sorties into the village, to Rosa’s secret places, or to her wilder games with Max. He was interested in my father’s work and the houses he was contracted to build along the new railway lines, and he questioned me closely about Henry, whom he used to call my
adoptive brother
.

“He is a fortunate boy,” he said, “to have been taken under the wing of your parents. And to have found such an affectionate little sister.”

“Oh, I’m not his sister. I’m more a friend than a sister.”

“And what is the difference, Mariella, in the way a friend might behave, as opposed to a sister?”

That was a difficult question. “A friend is
chosen
. Of course I don’t have a sister or a brother but I should think I would feel the same way about them all the time. Whereas my friendship with Henry grows and grows. I never know how it will end.”

“And am I a friend, now, Mariella?”

I peeked into his eyes and my heart gave a little leap to think this important man might wish to be my friend. His smile was teasing and it occurred to me that I might be able to please him even more. “I’m not sure.”

“What would I have to do to prove myself your friend?”

“I couldn’t say.” I gave another little sideways peep. “I should have to think about it.”

He laughed aloud, something I’d never heard before, and pressed my hand. “Mariella, you asked me if you could see what is kept in those little drawers over there. Well, I’ll show you if you like.”

“Yes, please. If you don’t mind.”

“Come over here, then. Sit in this low chair.” He opened the top drawer, removed a folded linen cloth, and spread it across my knees, very tenderly, in the way that his footman might have tucked a napkin over my lap at dinner. The side of his head came quite close to my face and I noticed how the hair above his ears grew so thinly that I could see where each strand emerged from his scalp. “These things are very precious, so it’s important that we look after them.”

He then removed a drawer from the cabinet and placed it on my lap. I gave a little gasp, because though I had been expecting specimens of some kind, butterflies or moths, I was not at all prepared for
beetles
. But there they were, perhaps a dozen, pinned neatly onto the stretched cloth at the bottom of the drawer, each one with precisely arranged legs and a beady body.

He was laughing at me again. “Forgive me. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to see your reaction and you didn’t disappoint me. I was sure you wouldn’t scream, like most girls. But be brave now and study them carefully—aren’t they beautiful?” He perched on the arm of my chair and pointed out a rotund little specimen. “These are all water beetles, and this one is known as a whirligig. Oh, but just a minute, we don’t want your hair getting mixed up with the exhibits. Allow me.” He scooped back my hair until it was all behind my shoulders and held loosely at the back of my neck. “If you look very closely you’ll see that the upper part of his eye is designed to see above water, the lower part, beneath, and that’s because the poor little chap is destined to spend his entire life spinning about actually on the surface.”

Was it an accident, was Sir Matthew even aware, that his index finger was very softly stroking the back of my neck under my hair? The sensation was at once thrilling and disturbing. But after a moment he took the drawer from me. “Come and look over here. Take your pick and we’ll examine another.” I put aside the napkin and went closer. As he opened the drawers one by one he laid his hand on my shoulder, giving it a little squeeze each time I exclaimed over a row of spiders, caterpillars, and even frogs. A strange smell rose from the cabinet, both clean and dirty at the same time. I discovered that my shoulder got an extra-warm squeeze when I leant over and paid attention to a particularly colorful or strange specimen.

After a few minutes of this I grew flustered by the way that the routine of our lessons had changed so abruptly and I said I ought to go and find Rosa. At once he became much more formal. “Of course. Of course.” As usual we shook hands solemnly before I left, and I thanked him. But as I reached the door he held me back and beckoned me into the middle of the room, where I stood with my hand on a chair-back, waiting.

“Do you remember today’s poem?” He repeated in a low, slow voice: “
‘My lady says to me that there is none / with whom she’d rather spend the days than I...’
When I read that line, Mariella, I thought of you and me, and how little time we have together, and what fun we have.”

As usual I felt strange when I left the library. The fact that I still kept the lessons a secret from Rosa bothered me and I was a little frightened by the way Sir Matthew had spoken that bit of poetry in a throaty voice with his eyes very fond as he looked at me. So I resolved that I wouldn’t go back again, and that I would tell Rosa about the lessons straightaway.

Then I thought: But if I do, she’ll be angry with me so I’ll just drop the lessons, and she won’t find out. But then Sir Matthew would be offended and I badly wanted him to like me. And anyway, it had been gratifying to make him laugh and it would be interesting to try and do it again. And next time, or the time after, would be the one when I finally plucked up the courage and asked him to do me a very big favor.

THE CRIMEA, 1855

 

 

 

T
he latest batch of Russian deserters
brought news that their generals were planning an attack on the River Tchernaya, south-east of Inkerman near the Traktir Bridge, and that the entire Russian army was on battle alert. Reports from French spies and gleanings from Russian newspapers bore out this information, so that night after night the allied army was up in the small hours in preparation for a Russian offensive which we assumed would be their final attempt to rout us from our entrenched positions above Sebastopol.

No attack came, though the camp remained restless and battle-ready. The regimental hospitals emptied themselves of convalescents in case of front-line casualties and Nora reported that anyone who could be spared from the cholera wards was kept busy making beds for the anticipated influx of wounded. I had to audit my entire store and prepare a mountain of fresh linen, and supplies of lint and plaster were requisitioned for the coming onslaught. My sewing classes ground to a halt for want of pupils, who drifted back to the camps and waited there for something to happen.

On the night of July 15, we heard that there had been a massive movement of Russian troops from their positions on the hills to the east of the Tchernaya River and our beds were shaken by shell-fire from the trenches above Sebastopol. But then, in the small hours, there was a sudden volley of guns from the hills north of Balaklava and Mrs. Whitehead’s face, bedecked by a startlingly white night-cap—a gift from me—rose from the pillow. “That’ll be the Russians [Rooshans],” she said. “It’s begun [begoon].”

We got up and dressed hurriedly though I had no idea what for. The French and Sardinians who were positioned on the Fedoukin Heights opposite the Russian encampment above the Tchernaya would bear the brunt of an attack, so on the face of it we had no particular function in the coming battle, but then, as Nora said, it wasn’t human nature to sit still in one place while history was going on nearby. And in the end it was Rosa, of course, who made up my mind. O’Byrne’s story might well have been the fanciful ramblings of a syphilitic Irishman, but still, his sighting of a girl in a blue gown by the Tchernaya River was the last word we’d had of her.

Nora and I had a long trek up past the General Hospital at Kadikoi, behind the British and Sardinian camps and into the hills. An entire army of camp followers was on the move, the wealthier on horseback, the rest—wives, tradesmen, members of the ordnance teams, and navvies—on foot. Every face was turned to the incessant pummeling of the guns, some exhilarated, others full of dread, but the sense of common purpose raised the spirits, the lassitude of the last weeks was all gone, something was happening and we were part of it. When Nora stumbled I reached out my hand and then thrust my arm through hers. Once or twice I asked if she was strong enough to continue and she responded curtly: “I have faced a worse march than this in my time.”

“Have you, Nora? Was that in Ireland?”

Her silence was forbidding. “I suppose there are some things that we never forget,” I said.

“Nor should.”

“I have never forgotten Stukeley, though I was hardly there six weeks. Everything about it remains powerfully in my mind. Perhaps because we left so suddenly. Sir Matthew took against us, you see.”

“Well, that would be like him, he was often a harsh, unpredictable man.”

“I always felt for Rosa, that she had to nurse him at the end, when they disliked each other so much.”

“Do you know, Mariella, I sometimes think it was a deliberate choice on his part, to make her suffer by choosing her to be the only one he would tolerate in the sick room.”

“How terrible. Why would he do that?”

“He was forever trying to punish her for refusing to be the type of stepdaughter I presume he would have wanted. She was a fool to herself for agreeing to nurse him but then you know Rosa. If someone was needy she never could resist them, no matter who they were or how they’d treated her in the past. And he had few other friends at the end. Indeed, I could put it even more strongly than that. There are some who are convinced that his fall from the horse, in a crowded lane, was by no means an accident.”

“You don’t mean that he was pushed.”

“Oh, nothing so obvious. Perhaps he fell and wasn’t helped up in time to avoid those trampling hooves. Perhaps there was a little jostling round his horse. Either way, none of the witnesses could give a clear account of what had happened.”

The cannon fire was so close that the ground juddered and set little stones rolling on the track and the sky ahead was dark with smoke. “And your relation, Mrs. Fairbrother, what did she think of Sir Matthew?”