No Place For a Lady

by Gill Paul

  Throughout the 6th and 7th June, Dorothea was by Mr Crawford’s side as casualties were brought by train and then by litter to the Castle Hospital. Patients on stretchers were left on the path outside to be carried in by porters as soon as the previous operation was completed. Soldiers who died during surgery were taken out the back way for burial, while those still under the effects of chloroform were taken to a ward to recover consciousness.

  They worked steadily, using the systems they had developed over the previous two months. Dorothea kept a pot of water on the boil to dip the instruments into between patients, using a large pair of tongs. She had to judge precisely how long she could leave them so that they would be cleansed of the last patient’s blood but Mr Crawford would not burn his hand when he came to use them again minutes later. She changed the blades on his ebony-handled amputation knives and sharpened his bone saw, checking that the forceps, bullet extractor and bone nippers were all in their correct places. She talked softly to each patient as she put the chloroform rag over his mouth and nose, saying, ‘Breathe deeply, this will make you sleepy.’ Outside, the shelling continued, but they existed in a bubble where the only thing that mattered was the patient they were operating on. Casualties tailed off as the light faded in the evenings and they returned to their rooms for a few hours’ sleep before starting again the following morning.

  On the 8th June, the British and French armies broke out of their trenches and charged towards the enemy, causing the casualty rate to multiply within hours. Normal systems soon broke down as the flow of wounded increased and twice that morning patients were brought to the operating table and given chloroform before anyone except a porter had checked if they actually needed an operation. Mr Crawford asked Dorothea if she would step outside when each new trainload of wounded arrived to assess the incoming patients, and select the ones most in need of surgery who might have a chance of living through it. As the queues grew ever longer, stretching the length of the hospital, she was daunted by the enormity of her task.

  ‘Use your best judgement,’ Mr Crawford told her, in his calm, measured way. ‘That’s all any of us can do.’

  It was a position of great trust and she had to put emotion to one side. There was no point in prioritising the gentle-faced young lad who had taken a shell in the stomach and was injured so badly that the slippery coils of his intestine were spilling out. He whispered to her, ‘Please, Ma’am, please,’ while clutching her hand with all his fading strength but she knew he had lost too much blood and would certainly have died on the operating table. She grabbed an orderly and asked him to administer opium then wash and shave the boy while keeping his wound covered so he could not look down and see it.

  ‘What’s the point in washing him? He’s dying anyway,’ the orderly said, and Dorothea felt like slapping him.

  ‘Just hope that some day someone does the same for you!’ she snapped. ‘And stay with him. Keep him company. Try to put yourself in his position.’

  There was an officer with his face shot off. His right eye socket was empty, the flesh of the cheeks shattered so the underlying bone was visible, and the mouth just a gaping hole. She gave instructions on how his wounds should be bandaged but knew there was nothing anyone could do to restore his features. Only time would tell if his face would heal into any semblance of a normal countenance. He must have been in excruciating pain but kept thanking her, over and over again, like a well-bred gentleman at a garden party, only adding, ‘Won’t I think of my friends the Russians whenever I look in a looking-glass!’

  One young soldier gave her his money and pocket watch, making her promise to get them to his brother, who was in the Lancashire Fusiliers, if he should die. She took them but told him she fully expected to hand them back the following morning after he’d had a good night’s rest and a warm meal.

  For surgery, Dorothea chose soldiers with bullets embedded in flesh, legs torn half away, or great gashes in arms or chest, clean wounds that Mr Crawford would have a chance of closing before gangrene set in. Where limbs were bleeding profusely, she applied tourniquets so they would not die of blood loss before reaching the operating table.

  ‘I am playing God,’ she realised, and found herself praying for His guidance in a way she had not prayed since her youth.

  When she had assessed each newly arrived batch of injured soldiers and given directions as to their care, Dorothea returned to the theatre to assist Mr Crawford. His face and hair were splattered with blood, his tweed suit drenched in it, but he worked without stopping, giving his entire attention to the patient on the table in front of him. Sawing through bone took great physical strength and the veins on his neck stood out with the effort but he didn’t once stop to rest between patients, so neither did Dorothea. The summer heat made the smells more intense – the metallic scent of blood, the acrid odour of men who had not washed in days, the sweet whiff of chloroform – and caused perspiration to drip down their faces as they worked.

  Towards evening, Elizabeth Davis brought them bowls of broth and set them on a side table, but by the time Dorothea got round to taking a spoonful it was cool and unappetising. She had never been squeamish but cleaning all the flesh and sinew and blood on the table and on the floor around it stifled hunger. The squeaky noise of sawing, the slipperiness of blood, the salty taste of perspiration on her lips put her off. No matter how hard she scrubbed her nails, it still felt as if there were scraps of human tissue stuck there. How could she eat with those hands?

  As the light faded, Dorothea lit white fanoos lanterns and positioned them around the operating table, with her left hand holding one directly above the patient while continuing to pass instruments to Mr Crawford with her right. Before long it made her arm ache but she tried to hold it steady.

  ‘Are there many more left outside?’ Mr Crawford asked around midnight.

  ‘Twelve,’ she replied. ‘Just twelve.’ The sound of shelling had died down. There was no news from the battlefield apart from occasional shocked comments from the men, which made little sense to Dorothea: ‘We’ve taken the Quarries, but there are too many in the Redan’; ‘The Zouaves have the Mamelon but were driven back from the Malakhov’; and the despairing, ‘How can the Russkies have so much fight left in them?’

  Rather than waste time going back to their rooms, Dorothea fetched blankets and Mr Crawford slept on the ground outside while she made herself a bed in a store cupboard. She snatched a few hours’ sleep then as dawn broke, she rose, washed her face and hands, and went back to the operating tent where she found a queue of stretchers had already formed and Mr Crawford was at his post.

  ‘You must be tired,’ she said. The previous day, he had operated for twenty hours.

  ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘When there is work to be done, I find a fuel in my veins that keeps me alert. If they could bottle and sell it, it would be more popular than whisky.’

  Dorothea agreed. She didn’t feel tired, didn’t feel hungry or thirsty. She felt she had never used her brain so fully as she did now, trying to do her best for each and every patient to give them a chance of survival.

  ‘And the lack of regular meals is probably rather good for me,’ Mr Crawford continued, patting his belly. He wasn’t exactly corpulent but the buttons strained somewhat on his grey striped waistcoat.

  Dorothea tactfully refrained from comment.

  Towards dusk on the 9th June, the trainloads of injured stopped arriving. Dorothea stepped outside to find there were no patients waiting for surgery. She walked round the back of the huts to see if a porter had mistakenly left anyone there, then wandered over to look out at the view over the sea. Suddenly she came upon a shallow pit full of bodies, blackened in the sun. At a rough guess there were perhaps twenty of them. Some were staring hideously. Arms and legs were tangled in each other, a few reaching out as if trying in vain to escape. She staggered backwards and gave a little scream. These men should have been wrapped in sheets and stored in a dignified fashion before prompt burial. Alre
ady she could detect the pungent scent of flesh starting to decompose. She supposed the sheer volume of casualties had overwhelmed the system but no one should suffer this indignity after death.

  Some movement make her look upwards and high in the sky she saw dark shapes circling. As she watched, a vulture dived at speed and landed on one of the bodies, where it began pecking at the eyes.

  ‘Get off!’ Dorothea screamed, her voice shrill with hysteria, her arms flapping uselessly. ‘GET OFF!’

  Mr Crawford hurried out the back of the operating theatre to see the cause of the commotion. He picked up a stone and hurled it at the bird, causing it to lift into the air, then he grasped Dorothea’s arm.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he urged. ‘Go back inside while I get an orderly to cover this pit.’

  When he returned, she was still badly shaken and he suggested, ‘Let’s go to the General Hospital for dinner, or whatever meal Miss Davis might be serving. It’s about time we had some sustenance.’

  As they walked he made conversation about the war, and she suspected it was in an attempt to take her mind off the horror of the mass grave.

  ‘The Russians still seem determined to hold their town. In wartime sieges, the aim is to starve the population but I hear the citizens of Sevastopol receive supplies by sea. Raglan has bungled every opportunity and it’s commonly thought he’s gone senile.’ This was a familiar theme in his conversation. ‘Did you hear he refers to the French as the enemy, as if we were back at Waterloo?’

  Dorothea didn’t respond, thinking that if Lucy was being held prisoner in Sevastopol, she was glad to think they were getting supplies.

  ‘Will you stay if the war is lengthy?’ he asked. ‘Or must you return to your family at some point?’

  ‘I’ll stay as long as the war lasts.’ For a moment Dorothea was tempted to confide in him about Lucy but decided against it; she didn’t want to impose on their professional relationship or make him feel he had to offer assistance.

  ‘Good.’ Mr Crawford nodded. ‘Me too.’

  In the kitchen at the General Hospital they found Elizabeth Davis running at full stretch, doling out platefuls of rabbit stew to all and sundry. Somehow Dorothea managed to eat, despite her head being full of images of those awful blackened corpses.

  After they had dined Mr Crawford walked her to her room. ‘It’s been a difficult day,’ he said. ‘I hope you are able to forget the sights you have seen and sleep soundly.’

  She thought it touching that he was so concerned for her wellbeing and said, ‘Thank you. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  She dozed for a few hours but was disturbed when Elizabeth came to bed around one o’clock and began snoring gently. Dorothea couldn’t get back to sleep and a restlessness made her open the door and walk outside in her nightgown into the balmy night air. The black sky was speckled with more stars than she had ever seen before, and she wondered if Lucy might be looking up at them as well. They were like the souls of the men who had died, twinkling brightly in heaven. She had witnessed sights that would haunt her to the grave but at the same time, she had never felt so fully alive.

  PART SIX

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  25th December 1854

  Early on Christmas morning, on a hill north of Sevastopol, the sun crept over the horizon, making the frost glisten, but the air temperature remained below freezing. Not a sound could be heard: no birdsong, no human voices or snuffling animals, no shelling, not even a breath of wind. It was a long time since Lucy had moved and she drifted in and out of consciousness, no longer feeling the knife-like cold slicing through her. She wasn’t thinking about anything except staying with Charlie. How could she leave him alone in this frozen earth? It would be too cruel. She didn’t intend to die with him but at the same time she couldn’t think what she would do without him, and so she continued to lie on his grave in a fuzzy state, somewhere between life and death.

  In the ear closest to the ground she became aware of a rumbling from deep within the soil. It got louder and now she could feel a vibration travelling through her cheek, like the rattling you heard on a railway track long before the train came into sight. She didn’t move but she listened as it became a clattering sound, getting closer and closer.

  ‘Aman Allahım! Bu ne?’

  It was a male voice, but she couldn’t understand what was being said. Next, Lucy felt her shoulders lifted from the ground and opened her eyes to see a man with caramel skin wearing a black fur hat. He exclaimed again then, still holding her with one arm, slipped off his heavy greatcoat and wrapped it around her. He sat down on the ground, cradling her in his lap, and began to rub her arms vigorously.

  ‘Are you English?’ he asked softly, his words clear but with a foreign accent, and she nodded. He squeezed his arms tightly around her, trying to transmit some of his body warmth into her. ‘Sizi böyle burada nasıl bıraktılar?’ he murmured to himself.

  He fished in one pocket of his greatcoat and removed a small leather flagon, unscrewed the top and held it to her lips: ‘Drink.’

  The liquid had a strong flavour; it didn’t taste alcoholic but it was warming. There was ginger in it, she guessed, and the sweetness of some kind of fruit. She could feel it beginning to revive her.

  ‘What are you doing out here? Have you been here all night?’

  She tried to talk but her jaw was frozen stiff and wouldn’t move. She opened her mouth wide and stretched her lips to loosen them. He held the flask for her to drink again, and she blinked. ‘My husband is here,’ she managed to mumble at last.

  The stranger stared at her with concern through irises so dark they were almost black. ‘Your husband would not want you to join him in the grave. This is not India.’

  Tears pricked her eyes and she looked away.

  ‘Let me take you back to your camp, where your friends can look after you. You need to warm yourself by a fire, eat some hot food …’

  She shook her head and cried ‘No!’ with such vehemence he looked puzzled. She expanded: ‘I can’t go back there. I want to stay here.’ Her words were slurred because her tongue, lips and jaw were so numb.

  ‘You will die if you stay here, and I am not going to let that happen. In five minutes we are leaving.’

  Lucy opened her mouth to argue, but was suddenly overwhelmed by an upwelling of emotion brought on by this unexpected kindness from a stranger. Tears began slowly at first but soon they were gushing down her cheeks, her nose dripping, her chest aching with the effort of gasping for breath. Her whole body shook with the release of pent-up grief. Instead of trying to stop her, the stranger held her tightly and rubbed her back through the greatcoat. She could smell a slightly fusty scent about him, which was not unpleasant.

  ‘You must have loved him very much,’ he said. His dark eyes were full of compassion, almost as if her grief pained him as well.

  She realised that in fact she had only known Charlie for a year but it had been the most wonderful year of her short, otherwise uneventful life, and the thought of all she had lost made her cry even harder.

  ‘I’m afraid I do not have a handkerchief,’ he apologised, so she fumbled in the folds of her gown and managed to find one of her own.

  When the sobbing began to abate, the man stood and lifted her in his arms, still wrapped up in his coat. She saw he had a horse nearby.

  ‘Please. I don’t want to go back to the British camp,’ she panicked. She wasn’t ready to face the hostile women who had called her husband a meater, who might hint that he’d been responsible for his own demise.

  ‘Very well. I know a place close by where you can get warm and rest a while. Would you like to go there?’

  For a moment, Lucy wondered if he was planning to kidnap her and sell her to the white slave trade but almost immediately she dismissed the thought. Her instinct was that he seemed a good man; besides, he had offered to take her to the British camp if she wanted.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she whispered.

  H
e put his hands around her waist and lifted her onto the horse’s back, then mounted, before pulling her around so that she was sitting in front of him, safely enclosed in his arms. This must have been how Charlie held Susanna, she thought.

  ‘Forgive me that I don’t have a side-saddle. I hope you are not uncomfortable.’ He kicked his heels and the horse began to move.

  She closed her eyes as they cantered across the bleak Crimean landscape in the pale light of dawn. It felt wrong to leave Charlie’s body in that cold grave, but if she kept him firmly in her thoughts, she hoped somehow he would sense it and understand.

  They rode for some miles without speaking. Sunlight was creeping slowly across the land but there were no signs of life except the stark outlines of trees against a grey sky. At least it wasn’t snowing. She began to feel guilty that her rescuer would be freezing since she still wore his coat, but he showed no sign of it as he focused on driving the horse forward as fast as he could while holding her securely.

  After twenty minutes or so they rode through a gateway and he helped her to dismount in front of a sturdy white stone house, two storeys high. She assumed it must be his family home and wondered if his wife would be there, but when he pushed open the door, still supporting her with his other arm, she saw that all the furniture was covered in dustsheets.

  ‘This is a dacha belonging to a wealthy Russian family,’ he told her. ‘They abandoned it last year when fighting came to the area.’

  When she realised they were alone in the house Lucy became alarmed. What did he plan to do with her? She shrank against a wall. She would not be able to run or even struggle if he tried to have his way with her, so weakened was she by the cold. How foolish she was to have come here with this foreign stranger! What on earth had she been thinking?