by Lark, Sarah
Kevin took a deep breath. “Johanna has died,” he reported honestly. “But the others are all in the other camp here. Miss Nandi, I—”
“Brother also dead,” she said—with a fearful glance at her guards.
One of them was just then negotiating with a man who wanted to enter. Cornelis seemed to catch a few words. He looked disgusted. Nandi looked away in shame.
“What happened? Was he sick?”
Nandi shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes.
“I would bet those two had something to do with it,” Cornelis remarked, nodding to the men at the entrance. “Take a look around, Doctor. This isn’t anyone’s living quarters. This is where the blokes put their goods on display. No doubt, her brother was not willing to let them sell the girl.”
Nandi made a choked noise. And Kevin saw what Cornelis meant. There was no place to cook or any bedding other than the straw where Nandi lay on a filthy blanket. In broad daylight, although the hut itself was dark and stuffy, stinking of paraffin oil, and crawling with flies. Nandi looked awful, but not so weak she could not leave the bed.
Kevin stood up.
“Nandi, we’re going to take you with us to the white camp,” he declared. “And I’m going to see to this whole camp, beginning with a sort of census. We need to find out how many people live here. Furthermore, we’re going to offer work—not just to the men, but first of all to the women. After all, we’re shorthanded on everything, and since the Boer women don’t want to help . . . Nandi, if you like, I can offer you work cleaning my house. And we’ll take ten other women right away to help Dr. Greenway in the hospital and clean the guard posts. Nandi, are there more, uh, girls like you?”
Nandi lowered her eyes. She was clearly scared to death, but Kevin had gotten to know her bravery and pride at the van Stouts’. When Kevin helped her up, she pointed the way to two more huts like hers. One of the girls was burning up with fever and no longer responsive. The other, no more than seventeen, could stand only with great effort. Kevin sent Cornelis to retrieve a few guards to escort the women to the gate.
“We’ll have these women picked up with the workers,” he informed the guards. “I’ll send the military police for the two rats who imprisoned them.”
“But, sir,” complained the corporal who had let them in, “the womenfolk can’t just go back and forth between the camps every day.”
“They won’t need to. We’re going to house these women and their children in the whites’ camp.”
The watchmen and Cornelis gasped.
“That’s out of the question, Doctor,” Cornelis sputtered. “You can’t keep the Kaffirs together with the white families. You—you just can’t.”
“You won’t believe what all I can do,” Kevin informed his assistant fiercely. “Anyway, blacks and whites lived next door on your Boer farms. We’ll give the black women their own tents, of course.”
By that afternoon, two hay wagons had carried more than thirty volunteer workers and their children to the whites’ camp, as well as a few seriously ill people Kevin thought stood a chance with treatment. But Dr. Greenway shook his head decidedly when Kevin explained he wanted to requisition two of the whites’ tents for them.
“Drury, the Boers would revolt. You won’t get any support from the military command either. There are reasons they keep the camps separate.”
“But you’re—” Kevin looked at his colleague in disbelief. “And aren’t you happy to finally have help?”
Greenway pursed his lips. “If you insist, let’s bring the sick into the hospital first, in the smaller rooms, please, even if it gets crowded. But for the love of God, think of somewhere else to house the black workers, Dr. Drury. Otherwise, more lives could be lost.”
Sobered, Kevin helped the women from the wagon, enduring threats and jeers from the camp’s white inmates. He gave up the idea that the white women might make some room for their former servants, and asked the volunteers to wait in his own quarters until he found a solution.
Next, Kevin telephoned Vincent.
“Stable tents?” the veterinarian echoed. “I need to ask, but I assume the larger cavalry units have some. Do you need them now? I’m in the middle of something.”
“Vincent, I have thirty women and children here.”
“I’ll need a few hours. For now, the best you can do is hope—and pray, if that’s something you do—while I take care of this horse. It belongs to the commander of the supply station, and it’s his favorite.”
“Vincent,” whined Kevin.
“What I mean is, he’ll be grateful to me if I save his horse. So grateful, in fact, that he’d surely be happy to do me a favor. And if anyone has tents, it’s him.”
A few hours later, an extremely relieved Major McInnes personally delivered a spacious stable tent to the camp, as well as a shipment of victuals.
“These are donations,” he explained, “from New Zealand. More should be arriving soon, along with clothing and toys. And three nurses.”
“Three nurses?”
“Well, one is a teacher, I think,” McInnes corrected himself. “Which—well, maybe she can make herself useful, nonetheless.”
Kevin could hardly believe his luck.
What’s more, the Boer women did not protest when the cavalrymen pitched the stable tent in a far corner of the camp, even though its ventilation was considerably better than in their own soldier tents. They were merely content with the knowledge that the blacks were sleeping in a place meant for animals, befitting their lower status. An extra share of provisions further soothed tensions—and in the morning, a clean and tidy office awaited Kevin. Nandi must have gotten up in the dead of night to sweep and make him breakfast. Still, she seemed weak and febrile.
“Nandi, you can take your time with the work,” he assured her. “You need to get better first—the best thing would be for you to come with me to the hospital now, and we’ll give you a proper examination. Maybe you’d also like to see Doortje and her family. Though, first, we need to do something about getting you clean clothes and a bath.”
“Afraid going to river,” she explained with embarrassment. “White women—”
“You can wash in the river outside of camp,” Kevin said. “You’re workers, not prisoners. If you want to go, go.”
Nandi did not need to be told twice—and wept with happiness when Kevin gave her a precious bar of soap. Kevin had wanted to give Doortje a bar, but the Boer woman declined any preferential treatment.
Nandi had no such compunctions. She was back again in a flash, in soaking wet clothing but smelling like lilacs.
“All better,” she announced, but Kevin nonetheless insisted on taking her with him to the hospital.
The next surprise awaited him there. The hospital had already been rid of dust and the sickrooms scoured to a shine. The sick black women and children lay in cleanly made beds.
“It looks good,” Kevin praised Dr. Greenway who sat in his office, sorting patient files. “Like a proper hospital.”
The doctor snorted. “Only without any patients.”
Dumbfounded, Kevin realized Greenway was right. Aside from the handful of black women and children he’d brought over, the hospital was cavernously empty. The Boer women must have carried their family members back to the tents—for the most part, women and children with highly contagious diseases.
“But what—?”
“I told you,” Greenway said. “The Boers won’t mix. They don’t want to be tended by them either, since they see the black women as traitors. You can have a hospital here for whites or one for blacks. Not for both at once.”
Kevin was distraught and disappointed—but now anger was rising within him. There was plenty of space in this hospital. And what was more, there were now willing nurses. If the Boers would rather see their children die . . .
“We won’t give ground,” he decided quickly. “This hospital is open to everyone. If the women won’t come, I can’t help them. But our next job is
to inspect the camp, Greenway. And we won’t shy away from compulsory admittance when an extreme danger of contagion exists.”
The inspection took a toll on Kevin and Dr. Greenway, as well as on the watchmen, who had to drag contagious children out of their tents, and Cornelis, who had to explain it all to the women. All were cursed and spat on—and in the end, only thirty children lay in the hospital again, crying with fear, their mothers no longer allowed to visit.
“We can’t keep this up,” Dr. Greenway said wearily.
The volunteer workers had performed exemplarily. Everything was clean, and a tasty stew awaited the hospital occupants. However, the Boer children would not eat any of it, no matter how hungry they were. The older children repeated the refrains about broken glass in the soup, and the younger ones did not dare to cross them.
“There’s no forcing these people. The best thing would be to send the blacks back to work in their own hospital.”
“As doctors?” Kevin scoffed. “Greenway, these women are extremely capable, but they aren’t medical professionals. No, you and I will be riding to the blacks’ camp every day from now on. We’ll have more time since the women are assisting us.”
“And since no patients will come here anymore,” Greenways retorted just as biliously. “I don’t know of any solution either, Drury, just that we can’t tie children to the beds and force-feed them.”
Chapter 10
The Boer women were obstinate, but then Kevin remembered his thick Irish skull. He kept the hospital open, continued to carry out compulsory admittances—and achieved the minor success of at least getting the sick children to eat. It was pure coincidence that one of the black assistants had worked for little Matthes Pretorius’s family all his life. Ten-year-old Matthes greeted her cheerfully and ravenously ate up all his porridge when she brought it to him. When he did not die—and moreover, to the doctors’ relief, quickly recovered from his pneumonia—the other children also dug in.
For the doctors, however, the work remained all-consuming. Kevin was ashamed that he hadn’t yet managed to return for a full inspection of the black camp. Until, on the fourth night since the black women had been employed, when the pitter-patter of naked feet in the hall awakened him. Instinctively, he reached for his gun, but it no longer lay next to his bed as it had in his months with the Rough Riders. Kevin cursed and readied himself to fend off an attack with his fists. Then, however, he heard a shy voice.
“Mijnheer Doctor, sir?”
“Nandi?”
Kevin felt for the matches and lit the gas lamp next to his bed. The young woman entered nervously, wearing a high-necked, lace-trimmed nightgown. It was new, having come from a donation of secondhand clothing that had arrived the day before. The black women had sorted through the items for distribution to the Boer prisoners, and Nandi had been unable to contain her excitement about the dream in lace. Surely, Kevin decided, he was acting in the spirit of the donors when he told her to keep it. Nandi was, after all, no less needy than the Boer women. Now, however, the business made him nervous. Did Nandi think she was now required to “thank” him for the gift?
“Is everything okay?” he asked carefully. “Why aren’t you in the tent with the other women?”
Nandi shook her head. “I hear, baas doctor, sir.” The young woman imitated moaning to illustrate. “At door.”
“Door? What door? Where exactly were you when you heard this, Nandi?”
Nandi looked sheepish. “Here. Kitchen.”
“You were sleeping in my kitchen?”
Nandi nodded. “Not be angry, not punish, sir. But such pretty dress, like white baas. Want to keep clean.”
Kevin winced. There was no way he could allow Nandi to sleep in his house. He dared not imagine the rumors that would result from that. On the other hand, the kitchen was an outdoor annex, hardly more than a space for grilling.
“We’ll talk about that later. Now, go on. You heard a moaning at my door? And now it’s gone?”
Nandi shook her head. “No, not gone. Want to run away when see me, but child too heavy. Now to hospital.”
“A woman with a child?” Kevin climbed out of bed, his bedsheet wrapped around his waist. “I just need to get dressed. You can tell the woman—”
“Baas Doortje not speaking to Nandi.”
Doortje was the patient? Something must be terribly wrong if she was stealing away to him in the middle of the night.
Kevin threw on his breeches, leaped into his boots, and ran out, shirt in hand. Nandi, who had been waiting in the hall, followed close behind.
“Go to bed with the others, Nandi,” he said as they rushed past the stable tent. “I’ll head to the hospital on my own.”
“I help?” she asked.
Kevin wrestled with himself. He really could need some help, and being alone with Doortje could compromise him just as much as the business with Nandi.
“Send the two women who help Dr. Greenway,” he decided. The doctor had chosen two especially bright women to help with the daily care of the sick. He hoped soon to be able to send them as “nurses” to the black camp.
Doortje’s dingy bonnet sat crooked on her blonde hair. The ties hung loose. Nothing could be seen of the young woman’s face. She was pressing it into the damp, sweaty locks of her youngest brother’s hair. With the child in her arms, she was crouching in front of the hospital entrance.
“Doortje—Miss van Stout. For heaven’s sake, did you carry him all the way here?” Kevin rushed to the young woman and took Mees’s limp body from her. He was burning up with fever. Doortje looked at Kevin—with a cool look between hope and disdain. “And why didn’t you knock if you wanted my attention?”
As he spoke, Kevin carried Mees into the tent and straight to the treatment area. Doortje watched him rapidly light the lamps.
“I did not want to bother you,” she said stiffly. “Since you were not alone.” She spat out the last words.
Kevin saw all of his fears confirmed. Not just with reference to the business with Nandi, but also to the suffering of the child on the couch. Mees’s upper body showed characteristic reddening. Typhus.
“Of course I was alone. What nonsense is this?”
He looked for a stethoscope. He had to at least act as if he could help. But the boy’s chances at this stage in the illness were poor.
Doortje snorted contemptuously. Then she changed the subject. “Is there anything you can do?” she asked, and stroked Mees’s sweat-damp hair. “He’s been sick for two weeks.”
Kevin nodded. “You needed to bring him earlier.”
Doortje looked up at him, and for the first time her gaze became soft. “My mother, Dr. Drury, you know my mother. She prayed and washed him in the river to cool him and—”
“Typhus is caused by bacteria, which likely swim in that same river where he was bathed. And no doubt he drank from it before.” Kevin went to take Mees’s temperature. He already knew the number would be dizzyingly high.
Doortje nodded. “The river is so close. Water is water. Mother filtered it too.”
Kevin groaned. “Cornelis would have gladly brought you drinking water every day if you weren’t constantly calling him a coward and traitor. He no longer dares get close.”
“His place is with his unit,” Doortje insisted. “He should not be here.”
Kevin undressed the boy and began to wash him. Cold vinegar water could bring some relief. He could also try compresses, and above all, the boy needed liquid.
“Cornelis isn’t here of his own volition. He was taken prisoner,” Kevin began, and cast an eye at the thermometer. One hundred four.
Doortje threw her head back. The soft expression had disappeared. She was again the truculent Boer.
“Then he failed. My father was not taken prisoner. Martinus DeGroot was not taken prisoner.”
“No,” Kevin blurted out. He loved Doortje, but her stubbornness tested his patience—and now exhausted it. “Your father and your fiancé were killed. I’m
sorry you’re learning about it here and now, but I was present when Martinus died. Regarding your father, you’ll have to ask Cornelis the circumstances. But Martinus did not die in battle. He had surrendered, but a commander had his men fire anyway. I protested against it. That’s why I’m here now. I quit the service. Under protest. Not that you’re likely to believe me. Now, you’ll probably hate me and the British even more, and I even understand that. But you shouldn’t hate your cousin. It was pure chance Cornelis survived. Now, help me and hold the lamp. I’m going to lay your brother in a sickbed and give him fluids artificially, since he probably can’t drink anymore.”
“Not for two days,” Doortje whispered. All the color had drained from her face. “My father is dead, and Martinus—”
“Was taken prisoner and shot during an attempt to blow up railroad tracks,” Kevin repeated. He was beginning to feel guilty for his rash confession. “I’m truly sorry, Doortje. But please don’t refuse to let your brother be treated in this hospital. He might lie in a bed next to a black child, but skin color isn’t contagious. Typhus, on the other hand, is. Your other brother and your mother could get sick, too, if they haven’t already.”
Doortje’s silence provided the answer he feared.
Kevin picked up the little boy. “I’m going to take him to a sickroom now. You can stay with him, give him cooling poultices, and clean him if he has more diarrhea. Or you can leave that to Sophia.” He indicated one of the black assistants entering just then, dressed in a clean nurse’s apron in spite of the hour. “Honestly, it’d be better for you to go back to your tent and bring your other brother and your mother, too, if possible. Maybe we can still save them, at least.” Kevin squeezed shut his eyes. That, too, had been a mistake. He should not have said how bad Mees’s condition was. On the other hand, he did not want to lie to Doortje anymore. Kevin looked her directly in the eye. “I’m going to do everything I can to keep him alive. But I can’t promise. You should pray for him.”
“Pray?” Doortje asked, her voice thick. “What about the ‘wonders of modern medicine’?”