Vintage Love

by Clarissa Ross

  Taken by surprise, she said, “I’m not aware that I am.”

  He lifted a puffy hand. “Make no excuses. We got off to a bad start. But I would be a fool not to admit you are doing competent work here.”

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I do hope you will badger Miss Nightingale less about small things which have no true bearing on what we’re trying to accomplish.”

  He showed a hint of his old arrogant self. “You don’t understand! Proper records must be kept! I’m the officer who is responsible. Let me assure you most of the criticism of Miss Nightingale comes directly from the War Department in London. There is some high level person there opposed to her. I’m merely acting on my instructions.” And he bowed and went on his way.

  The news that someone in the War Office back in London was trying to undermine Florence Nightingale’s work in the Crimea was upsetting. Joy was not certain the Colonel had spoken truthfully, yet it nagged at her. The gossip she’d heard about Colonel Sanger’s behaviour with some of the wives of his fellow officers had disgusted her. His reputation as a notorious womanizer was growing.

  Then something happened which made her think the Colonel might have been telling her the truth after all. Florence Nightingale went above the Colonel’s head and directly contacted London, begging for more assistance. Her plea had been received coldly and nothing came of it.

  Meanwhile the nightmare of the war went on! Joy often found herself working all day and then far into the night. The horror of it all seemed greater at night. She was in a tense mood from not having heard from Colin since he’d gone to join his regiment in battle. But she had been given assurance he was alive and well by a fellow officer who had been sent back with a leg wound.

  The night was cold as she stood under the glare of several torchlights supervising the arrival of stretchers bearing the wounded. Somehow the stretcher-bearers remained stoic-faced as they delivered the victims of battle. Joy and her nurses moved among the moaning and the deathly still. Suffering and death had become constant companions for them.

  Joy crossed the aisle to a doctor who was examining one of the new stretcher cases. He glanced at her and said, “Head injuries! Bone splinters near the brain! We’ll have to operate!”

  The doctor then moved on to the next stretcher and lifted the blanket to study the patient. He dropped the blanket again and told her, “This fellow is dead!”

  “I’ll have him removed, Doctor,” she said. She went to the stretcher and saw the soldier’s face was dirty and bloodied.

  She stared at the face and it suddenly struck her that it was familiar. Then she knew! It was Rod! Rod, whom she’d tried to persuade to leave the army!

  Tears flooded her eyes. She remembered their meeting in London, the brief time they had spent together, and their goodbye. How long ago it seemed! Before she’d married Ernest Layton! Now Rod lay still and cold in death, to be buried in a foreign land far from his native Surrey.

  She bent and tenderly kissed the cold forehead. “Goodbye, Rod,” she said. Then her eyes still blurred with tears as she looked for orderlies to carry his body away.

  The mails came with maddening slowness. Joy managed to get a copy of the London Times, and was pleased to find the work of Florence Nightingale praised in its columns. But the other news of the war was grim. Correspondents wrote of the decline and decay of the great expedition. They suggested that England was on the verge of ruin, and the national reputation had been destroyed.

  The letters she received were also depressing. James wrote that the government under Lord Aberdeen was doomed, but there was none capable of taking its place. The country was shocked by the number of casualties and the flood of wounded returning.

  Florence Nightingale received a letter with some encouragement from the War Office. She told Joy, “They have agreed to allow me to enlist as many as two hundred nurses. So we’ll finally be able to set up field hospitals near the battle front.”

  “So badly needed,” she agreed.

  The older woman sighed. “Yes. Yet, there is a vagueness to this letter which troubles me. Also, several important questions which I asked remained unanswered. I do not understand it.”

  Joy made no comment but she decided this was probably because of the unknown enemy whom Florence Nightingale had made in the War Office. This feeling was underlined when she had a chance encounter with the bovine Colonel Sanger later that same afternoon.

  The Colonel halted and told her, “I’m glad we’ve met. I have had some documents arrive in the mail from the War Office in London. I cannot show them to Miss Nightingale. But I think she should know about them. They prove what I’ve been insisting. She is not in favor there.”

  “What do you plan to do about this?” she asked.

  He gazed at her through his monocle. “I’m going to risk turning the documents over to you and allow you to inform Miss Nightingale of their contents. It will give her a chance to defend herself.”

  She said suspiciously, “This is most generous of you.”

  “I’m not as unfeeling as you would like to believe.”

  “Is this not liable to place you in a difficult position?” she asked.

  The moon-face showed a wry smile. “Not unless you betray me. I do not expect you will since I’m trying to help your superior.”

  She was caught in a fever of doubt. She knew what he was saying could well be true. He also might be playing another of his miserable tricks on her. She decided she could not risk turning down his offer of cooperation.

  She asked, “When can I see the documents?”

  “Come to my quarters tonight at nine,” the Colonel said. “Be sure no one sees you. And don’t mention this to Miss Nightingale yet.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “We must be discreet,” was his final warning.

  All the rest of the afternoon and evening she worried. But she had promised to go through with the plan. After dinner she made her way cautiously along the dark, silent corridors to the upper floor headquarters of Colonel Sanger.

  She hesitated before the door, trembling. Then she knocked. After a moment the Colonel answered the door and said softly, “Come in! You mustn’t be seen here!”

  It was not until she was inside that she saw he was wearing a dressing gown. And her heart began to pound as he closed the door and turned the key in its lock.

  Uneasily, she said, “Please let me see those papers. I must get back to the hospital ward.”

  The Colonel nodded. “I understand. Come with me. They are in the next room.”

  She followed him and found herself in what was clearly a bedroom with a rumpled, unmade bed. He regarded her with a smile. “Forgive the state of my room. I was resting when you arrived.”

  Tautly, she said, “Please, the letters!”

  “Yes, the letters,” he echoed her. “The brown envelope on the bedside table contains them. Look at them for yourself.”

  She thought he was behaving oddly in not handing the envelope to her. But she went over and picked it up. She opened it to find it stuffed with newspaper clippings. At this she turned to receive another shock. To her horror the paunchy Colonel had taken off his robe and was standing before her naked!

  “No!” she cried and dropping the envelope darted for the door.

  He intercepted her, and breathing heavily clasped her to him. “I’ve been waiting for this! Tonight is my night!”

  She beat at him with her fists and screamed, “Let me go!”

  The Colonel struggled with her, gasping, “Damn it, give in! You’re no innocent virgin!”

  She clawed at his eyes and he let out an oath and released his hold on her for a second. It was enough. She eluded his grasp and made for the door again. But once more he caught her and now he began literally tearing the clothes off her! In a short time all her upper body was exposed!

  Joy fought on, clawing and kicking. Wailing, “Let me be!”

  “Vixen,” he gasped breathlessly, and he began a new ta
ctic. He began to deliberately pound her with his fists. He struck hammer-like blows to her face and body. A particularly nasty punch in her face stunned her. He carried her to the bed and ripped off the rest of her clothing.

  She came around and moaned, “Please!”

  It was useless, he was astride of her, pressing his sweaty body on her! About to take her! And then the unexpected! He was unable to fulfill his act of rape! Her fierce battling had robbed him of his ability to perform. Rage clouded his face and he got up from the bed cursing!

  Joy sprang from the bed and started for the door. But he caught her by the arm and whirling her around began to pummel her with his fist.

  She stumbled, sobbing, “No! No!” Trying to protect her lovely face.

  “You won’t be so pretty when I’m through with you,” he gloated, striking her again. This time on the cheek.

  She fell back against a chair and lay on the floor. She dragged herself up a little with him gloating above her. If only she had something to defend herself! A weapon of any sort! He moved closer and savagely kicked her in the ribs.

  She cried out in pain and scrambled away. At the same time she came against his sword in its scabbard, resting on a small table. She grasped the sword and drawing it from its sheath held it in front of her.

  They stood there, battered opponents, the naked woman and the naked man. Sanger ordered her, “Drop that sword or I swear I’ll kill you!”

  “Stay back!” she quavered, the sword pointed at him. Her head was reeling and she knew that at any instant she might collapse. Then he would have her!

  He chose not to listen to her warning. He plunged at her and she manipulated the sword so that he impaled himself on it. The weapon entered his rib cage for several inches, and he uttered a gurgling sound. His eyes popped alarmingly and he fell onto the floor with blood spurting from the wound. Soon he was stretched out with a pool of the sticky, red liquid surrounding him.

  She stared at him with glazed eyes. She stood there in a kind of trance. She did not hear the clamoring at the door or it being battered down. The room spun around her and she slid onto the floor.

  Joy regained consciousness in her own bed with a grim Florence Nightingale seated by her. She could see the weary lines of her superior’s thin face by the glow of the candlelight.

  Memory and horror crowded her mind. She raised herself on an elbow to lament, “I’ve disgraced the corps.”

  “Do not say that,” the veteran nurse said, pressing her down on the pillow. “You must not upset yourself, You have been through an ordeal.”

  “The Colonel?” she asked, suddenly aware of the pain in her own body.

  “Dead,” the older woman said.

  “I murdered him!” she moaned.

  “It was clearly self-defense,” Florence Nightingale said angrily. “He lured you there and beat you so brutally you’ve been unconscious for almost three days.”

  Joy murmured brokenly, “The disgrace!”

  “I hope there will be little talk,” the veteran nurse told her. “Colonel Sanger had a foul reputation. Everyone has heard stories of his philandering with any of the officers’ wives who were loose enough to engage in that sport with him. Shaming their husbands who were away at the battle front. When you were found in his room, the conclusions were fairly obvious. He tried to rape you, there was a struggle, and you accidentally killed him.”

  “I meant that sword to go through him.”

  “We’ll say nothing of your intentions,” her superior told her. “A hasty Court Martial was held the morning after you were found in his quarters. Perhaps I should call it a Board of Inquiry. The men who sat on the board were officers who knew him only too well. They weighed the facts and without your testimony found your defending yourself. So you have been absolved of the murder.”

  She stared at the thin, sympathetic face of the older woman, “You can’t mean I’ve been declared innocent of the crime?”

  “You have. The nursing service will not suffer from the unhappy incident. Colonel Sanger’s relatives will be informed he met his death through accident, and the report will omit the details.”

  “I don’t deserve such consideration!”

  “You most certainly do,” Florence Nightingale told her. “Now you must rest and get well as soon as possible. I cannot spare you long.”

  Joy recovered slowly. It was several days before she could leave her bed and then she walked unsteadily. Her body was a mass of bruises. When she looked at herself in the mirror she was horrified by the ugly blue bruises on her face. She was not a pretty sight.

  By the end of another week she had improved. Florence Nightingale called on her regularly, and kept her posted on all the latest developments. The good news was that the officer who replaced Colonel Sanger was far more cooperative. He even managed to locate needed supplies and beds for the hospitals. Joy began to believe that the villain in the London War Office had been a figment of the wicked Colonel’s imagination.

  But there was much bad news. The war was a continuous disaster for the English. Florence Nightingale said angrily, “Lord Raglan is stupid! Lord Lucan incompetent, and Lord Cardigan a little of both! And these are our leaders! The commanders of the expedition!”

  “Why doesn’t the War Office replace them?”

  “They have too many friends in high places. Heaven help the poor men under them! Enough have already been slaughtered. Lord Cardigan is commanding the war from his yacht in Balaclava Bay!”

  She said, “I’ve only had one letter from Colin. He said very little.”

  “What is there to say?”

  Joy sighed. “I wish he were here and safe. I so want to tell him about the Sanger affair before he hears about it from anyone else.”

  “Don’t worry yourself on that score,” the veteran nurse said. “He’ll understand.”

  “I hope so. I’m so frightened for his safety.”

  “Worry will do no good.”

  “I know. But I can’t help it.”

  “I’m sure he would be at your side if it were possible,” the veteran nurse said. “But that is impossible now. Not an officer or man can be spared from the battle lines.”

  “He mustn’t be killed,” she prayed. “He mustn’t!”

  Florence Nightingale sighed. “I can see that it is time for you to return to work. You’re only doing yourself harm alone here speculating on too many things.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “I want to begin nursing again.”

  The older woman looked grave. “I’m going to send you directly to the scene of battle. I have a new girl assisting me. I can manage with her. I’m setting up a large field hospital and you are the ideal one to head the new unit.”

  “Let me!” she begged.

  So the following day she left the comparative safety of Scutari for the battle lines. A small company of nurses and several doctors accompanied her. They were to journey to a tent hospital near the latest battlefront, and look after the wounded at closer range. Then the worst cases would be moved back to the main hospital.

  A storm had come up but their departure could not be delayed. Florence Nightingale came to see the forlorn party on their way. A shawl covered her head as the wind and rain lashed against her. She and Joy spoke in parting, but the sheer wildness of the wind made intelligible conversation impossible.

  As head of the Field Hospital, Joy rode in a wagon with a young Captain Morgan. He was boyish looking for a doctor, but already had proven himself an excellent surgeon. They sat huddled beside the driver of the first wagon. The covering gave them some protection from the heavy rain and wind.

  She turned to ask the black-bearded Captain Morgan, “Do you know exactly where we’re going?”

  “No,” he said. “I only know a battle is planned and we are to be near the action.”

  Joy said, “Captain Hill my fiancé is somewhere out there. I hope I may be able to get in touch with him.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it. The battle may have al
ready begun,” the young surgeon said. “We’re bound to be busy.”

  “I know,” she agreed and became silent.

  They finally arrived at the camp site as day ended. But she was not able to make out much about their surroundings. The tent to which she was assigned with one of the younger nurses, named Jane Ellman, flapped and admitted the rain, wind, and filth from the outside.

  She shook her head in dismay, “How can we sleep in this?”

  Pert Jane with auburn hair groaned, “I think I could sleep standing up!” And she threw herself onto the spread out blankets, and closed her eyes.

  Then Captain Morgan came and told her, “The General wishes to speak with you.”

  “Very well,” she said, following him and leaving the sleeping Jane behind.

  Captain Morgan took her by the arm and guided her through the darkness, stepping warily amid the filth and mud. At last they reached a stable. She had never seen anything like it.

  Captain Morgan murmured, “General Stackhouse has his headquarters at the rear.”

  Officers of the escort knelt before the embers of a small fire. Along the wall were many horses shivering with cold and whinnying their complaints! Hussars, in their long cloaks, stood staring gloomily at the rain. There were soldiers of a dozen regiments crowded about the place seeking warmth. They lit their pipes for small comfort and sat close together for body warmth. The wind continued to blow savagely, there was a hole in the roof through which rain dripped steadily.

  “This way,” Captain Morgan said.

  They went to the rear where some lanterns were hanging, and at a make-shift table they found General Stackhouse — a tall, white-haired man, and a half dozen younger officers standing near him.

  General Stackhouse nodded brusquely to her. “You are Lady Canby-Layton from the Florence Nightingale unit at Scutari?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We are a party of a dozen nurses and two doctors.”

  “Not enough,” the General said. “But you will be a help. The field hospital is in a tent almost a mile from here. You cannot reach it tonight. So you and your company will billet here in the hope the storm will ease by morning.”