After a brief stop at Malta, the Vectis steamed up the Bosporus. As sea turned to river, the ship calmed. Katie was able to rise, and her friends led her on deck. They dropped anchor in the centre of the river, as the rain poured down. Constantinople stood on one bank, its minarets piercing the rain. On the opposite shore stood the great barrack hospital of Scutari.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Alice exclaimed. A tiny fleet of gondola-like boats, the painted caiques, bobbed next to the Vectis, ready to take the nurses to their new place of work. Other small crafts followed in their wake, the boatmen shouting out the virtues of their boats. ‘I cannot wait to be of help – to nurse the poor wounded,’ Alice added.
Florence Nightingale slowly walked across to them, her black silk dress sweeping the deck. Katie could tell by her thin pinched face, she’d had a very bad crossing. ‘Yes, Constantinople is beautiful. Even Scutari is beautiful,’ Miss Nightingale agreed with Alice. ‘They are beautiful from here. With closer inspection you will find Scutari a less than lovely site.’ She turned to Katie. ‘Sea-sickness does sap one’s energies, but do not worry, it is a short-lived illness. You will regain your strength. And trust me, we will need it. From the look of that hospital, many strong arms will be needed at the washtubs.’
The Vectis now became a hub of activity, as it disgorged its weary, sickly passengers. The nurses were lowered into the waiting caiques with their carpet bags and umbrellas. Katie and Alice shared one, while James travelled with Miss Nightingale. The other passengers scrambled into whatever small vessels they could find. Up on deck, the Vectis’s crew both helped and hindered this exodus. From her little painted boat, Katie could hear the sailors laughing and swearing above her. With great sweating effort, they were using ropes to hoist a very large woman into a very small boat. The woman’s hair stood on end, and her skirts flew in the whipping rain, showing a length of red flannel petticoat and ragged satin boots.
‘Anchor ’er firm now,’ a crewman shouted as the woman swayed above the little rowboat. Her pea-green shooting jacket flipped up, exposing an expanse of stomach and she cried out.
‘Thar she blows, Miss Modesty,’ another crew member shouted, and the rest howled with laughter. The woman grabbed the ropes, and swinging herself upwards, threw a punch at the roaring men. She was lurching perilously. At any moment she could have toppled into the murky Bosporus.
Still on deck, a pretty dark-haired girl held her arms out to the woman below. ‘Calm yourself, dear mother,’ she called. She turned to the sailors on deck. ‘Please help her. Show her the respect she deserves. The woman you jest at is the Countess Fidelia. In her time, she has played the finest theatres of Europe, and has been saluted by royalty. She has come to entertain our soldiers in the Crimea. You should be ashamed of yourselves.’
The sailors might not have felt much shame, but they were struck by the girl’s fine beauty. With greater care they lowered the Countess Fidelia into the little boat, and then helped the lovely girl to join her.
‘It must be the theatrical troupe,’ Alice commented, watching the scene with interest. ‘Do you really believe they’ve performed before the crowned heads of Europe? They don’t strike me as mother’s type of entertainment.’ Katie felt more worry than interest. She recognized the Countess Fidelia with her green shooting jacket held together by one button and her hair like a haystack. She remembered the lovely girl, her enormous eyes ringed round with long lashes. The girl was older now, thinner and even more beautiful. It was the Little Angel. Though Katie had never spoken to her, she knew they were connected. Katie had met her on the streets of London, on her first visit to James and Princess Alice; she was somehow connected to Katie’s time travels. But even more worrying, Katie had seen the Little Angel many, many times since – in terrifying visions of battle.
The Little Angel reached the rocking boat, and wrapping her slender arms as far as she could around the Countess Fidelia, comforted her adopted mother, soothing her indignation. Looking up, she caught Katie’s eye, and jumped, her arms tightening around the large woman.
‘She knows me too,’ Katie thought. ‘I wonder if I’m in her dreams. Does she have visions? Does she see the battle too?’ A shiver ran from the top of Katie’s head down her spine, like an electrical current running through her body. There were three of them, the Tempus: there was Katie, Felix, and now possibly this girl. All three in the Crimea. Katie struggled to understand, but a cold wave slapped over the little boat, soaking her feet. The here and now demanded her attention. They were nearing the shore.
The slopes leading to the hospital at Scutari were steep and slick with mud. As the caiques approached the shore, Alice shrank back and Katie pulled her cloak over her nose and mouth. The grotesque bloated carcass of a large grey horse washed backwards and forwards on the tide. A pack of starving dogs howled from the rickety landing, desperate to get to the horse and a meal. A few drunken soldiers lay in the mud, while some wretched-looking women shivered in thin tawdry finery on the shore.
It was a difficult end to a very testing journey. The sea-sickness, the stench, the shock of seeing the Little Angel; it was too much for Katie. She leaned over the edge of the brightly painted little boat and vomited, yet again.
It was delicate Alice who maintained her composure. ‘We have to stay strong,’ she whispered to her friend; ‘just as Miss Nightingale says. The strong will be needed.’
The nurses disembarked and struggling up the muddy slope, walked under an enormous gateway, into the hospital of Scutari. As Miss Nightingale passed through, she leaned against James. ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,’ she said to him. James wasn’t certain whether she was joking.
The hospital at Scutari was vast, built in a great quadrangle, with echoing corridors forming a square around a courtyard. ‘There must be four miles of beds in here,’ Miss Nightingale muttered as they straggled along behind her. The walls streamed with damp, the floors were filthy, and the tiles broken. Peering through a narrow window, Katie could see and smell the inner courtyard. It was a sea of mud and garbage. She remembered there had been a garbage strike in New York when she was little. No one had collected the rubbish for weeks. Rats ran everywhere and the city reeked. But it hadn’t been half as bad as this.
They were escorted to their rooms – four rooms in all, for forty nurses. Katie counted two beds and three chairs. There were no tables, and no food. It wasn’t exactly a heroic welcome. ‘The nurses will sleep in the largest room; the nuns in the other two,’ Miss Nightingale rapped out, all vestiges of her sea-sickness vanishing in a flash. ‘The few men with us – the male medical assistant and the courier-interpreter – will take this small closet.’
Katie watched in despair as Princess Alice was led off with the other nuns, but within minutes the nuns had returned. The Reverend Mother spoke for them. ‘Excuse me, Miss Nightingale, but there is a man in our room.’
Miss Nightingale looked impatient. ‘Really, Reverend Mother, we are crowded enough in our quarters. Do not loiter on courtesy. I suggest you ask him to leave.’
The barest flicker of a smile hovered around the Reverend Mother’s lips. She had seen much in her time. ‘I would, Miss Nightingale,’ she responded, ‘but I fear he is dead.’ It was the body of a general, taken ill with dysentery. He’d been given some privacy because of his status, but after his death had been forgotten by the hospital staff.
‘The doctors seem to have remarkably short memories.’ Miss Nightingale spoke calmly, but with a tinge of exasperation in her voice. ‘We will have the body moved in the morning. There is a sheet in my carpet bag. Take it, and cover the poor man. You will have to sleep as best you can,’ Miss Nightingale relented slightly at the tearful glances of the nuns. ‘The very youngest of your nuns may bed down with me, in the supply cupboard – goodness knows it’s bare enough. Sister Agnes, Miss Katherine Tappan, follow me.’
They were packed tight in the storage cupboard. Katie, bone-tired, spread her woollen cloak on the floor and, lying down, r
olled over to make room for Alice. ‘I think something just bit me,’ she whispered.
‘That will be fleas,’ Miss Nightingale replied, helping to settle the young nuns. ‘I suggest you do not complain. It could have been worse – it could have been the rats.’
Alice was far whiter than her wimple. Between the corpse and the fleas and the stench of the hospital, she was finally undone.
‘Now sleep,’ Miss Nightingale commanded. ‘Today has been easy, compared with tomorrow.’
Princess Alice had spent her entire life sleeping on a feather bed, while Katie had the best mattress Bloomingdale’s could provide. But still, within seconds they were asleep, lying on the bare floor with the fleas and rats.
It didn’t last nearly long enough. Katie woke in the chill of early morning. The fleas hopped high in the air and rats scurried beneath the floors. She could hear the men groaning in the dank, dark corridors outside. Her first thought was of Princess Alice, and how hard this must be for her. But Alice was already up, dressed immaculately in her nun’s habit, and deep in conversation with Florence Nightingale, James and the Reverend Mother.
Katie sprang up and, dusting the filth from her nurse’s dress, spoke with remorse. ‘I’m such a waste of space,’ she said. ‘You’ve all been working while I’ve been sleeping. I’m so sorry. I’m an idiot.’ The little group before her was silent for a moment.
Then James burst out. ‘No, you’re not a wasting space – whatever that means – and you’re not an idiot. It’s the doctors here that are the stupid ones.’
Miss Nightingale put a warning hand on James’s arm. ‘The doctors have refused our help,’ she told Katie; ‘all our nursing skills, all our stores and supplies.’
‘And there is nothing here,’ Alice added sorrowfully. ‘We have examined the hospital, floor to floor, room to room. There are no medical supplies and no proper food or water.’
‘As for the nursing,’ the Reverend Mother shook her head, ‘the wounded are cared for by the soldier orderlies – uncouth, useless and clumsy, the very scum of the army. They are the worst of soldiers, so they use them here, to nurse the sick. Nurses, my eye! I have faith there’ll be better nurses in hell.’
Alice looked shocked, it was awfully salty talk from a nun, but the Reverend Mother had much worldly experience, and perhaps the situation called for it. Alice was learning a lot. Fast.
Katie, still half-asleep, stood up and rubbed her aching limbs. ‘You’ve got to be wrong,’ she said to Florence Nightingale. ‘I mean, you were sent by the government. Can’t they just tell the doctors to use you?’
Miss Nightingale almost laughed. ‘It doesn’t work that way,’ she explained. ‘There are systems . . .’
‘We will defy the systems,’ James cried. ‘We will break down the systems.’
‘No,’ said Miss Nightingale. ‘We must work within the system. I have offered my nurses and my supplies. They have been refused. I must win the confidence of the doctors. I must show them that we are completely subservient to them.’
All this confused Katie. It was obvious to her that Florence Nightingale had great power in this world, and probably in other worlds as well. What was all this subservient woman stuff about? ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she interrupted. ‘I mean, I know what happens with you, the lady with the lamp, blah, blah, blah. There’s no way you have to . . .’
Florence Nightingale shot her a look that proved Katie was right about something at least – she was indeed one tough broad.
‘No one knows what happens,’ she barked. ‘Do not presume.’ And in a softer, though still steely, voice she added, ‘By joining my corps of nurses you are under my authority. And by my authority I am telling you: we will do nothing more until we are asked. I have ordered the nurses to sort the old linens. The nuns will organize the packages and provisions we can find.’
Katie just couldn’t believe this. ‘But there are men dying in the corridors,’ she replied, a muttering resentment in her voice.
Miss Nightingale pinched her lips. ‘I am more than aware of that. A few must be sacrificed that the army might be saved. We will wait; and they will need us. The crisis will come soon enough.’ Miss Nightingale folded her arms against her chest. Her face looked stoic, resigned, but one foot tapped with repressed anger. She had a great knack for controlling herself, and those around her.
Katie glanced at James. He was staring downwards, grinding his heel into the floor. He too resented this line of action, or non-action. Katie tried one last time. ‘Are we really just going to sit here, sorting out rags?’ she asked, with her best New Yorker sarcasm.
Florence Nightingale looked her up and down. It was a piercing look, not one that Katie liked at all. She shivered slightly, as the silence grew long. ‘No, we are not,’ Miss Nightingale finally replied. ‘At least we are not. You and I have other things to do. The Reverend Mother will take temporary charge of Scutari. On top of the sorting and mending, I suggest she organize some alternative kitchen to the rancid stewed meats the men receive now. We’ll cook what they need, and if they decline to serve it, so be it.’ The Reverend Mother looked more than up to this challenge.
Miss Nightingale then turned her attention to James. ‘Since you are male, you might have more luck with those other men, the doctors. Perhaps the superior merit of your sex will help them see sense.’
The Reverend Mother laughed, loud and warm, a laugh that wouldn’t sound out of place in a public house. But Princess Alice turned pink. This type of conversation made her uncomfortable. ‘What shall Katie and I do?’ she asked.
The moment Miss Nightingale turned to Alice, her expression softened. ‘Sister Agnes, you will take charge of correspondence. Miss Katherine Tappan is right on some counts – I do have influence with the government, and they will help me, but it will take time. You must write to Mr Sidney Herbert in the War Office. I have outlined the points to be made here.’ She passed Alice a dozen closely written sheets of paper. Katie realized she must have worked through the night.
‘Shall I help?’ Katie asked.
Florence Nightingale smiled, a thin-lipped affair. ‘Miss Tappan will travel with me,’ she replied.
‘Travel!’ They were all astonished.
‘This very morning,’ Florence Nightingale continued. ‘We board the fast steamer for the battlefront. If I cannot be of immediate help here, I will try to aid the field hospitals. I have a colleague there, already hard at work. There is someone I wish Miss Katherine Tappan to meet – and someone Miss Tappan will wish to meet herself.’ It was a strange course of action, sudden and quixotic.
The Reverend Mother shook her head. ‘You do speak in riddles, Miss Nightingale, but you always make sense in the end.’
Despite the chill of the hospital, Katie broke into a sweat. She didn’t want to be separated from her friends, and she definitely didn’t want to steam ahead to the battlefront. A battlefront meant a battle; the three of them – the Tempus – on the field of battle. Was she being guided to a terrible destiny? ‘You must trust me,’ Miss Nightingale had said. But to Katie, none of this seemed trustworthy. ‘Couldn’t I just stay with Alice – I mean, Sister Agnes?’ she asked.
Miss Nightingale tried to reassure her. ‘You had best stay with me,’ she said. ‘And your friend had best stay here. James O’Reilly will guard her fiercely, and you can see the Reverend Mother is far from stupid. Sister Agnes will do much good in this war. But aid is needed in another war. I loathe the idea of setting out to sea again, but at least this voyage will be a short one.’
‘Always the riddles,’ the Reverend Mother laughed again, but no one else felt quite so comfortable. Katie feared what she was hearing. If she was not to be a nurse, was she to be a soldier – a warrior in an otherworldly war?
Chapter Sixteen
Mary Seacole
When Florence Nightingale acted, she did so decisively. She left Alice sitting at the table, inkwell and pen in hand. James was bundled off to try and befriend the stubborn,
blinkered doctors. The nurses were sorting and mending linens while the nuns were counting and recording their unused supplies. And Katie was once again on board ship, heading for the battlefront. They left the Bosporus, sailing across the Black Sea to Sebastopol, and the actual site of battle.
By morning, the ship anchored in the port of Balaclava, a small enclosed basin, so filled with ships it looked like a forest of masts; a tiny nook of bustle, hidden from the quiet gloomy sea. As Katie and Miss Nightingale were rowed to land they could see dozens of figures lying prone on the wharf: these were the sick and wounded, unloaded from mules and ambulances, waiting to be transported by sea to the hospital at Scutari. ‘Our return cargo,’ Miss Nightingale said grimly, ‘shipped to a hospital where they are certain to die.’
This time there were no doctors to stop Florence Nightingale. The moment she alighted she was among them; turning a body to a more comfortable position, easing a stiff dressing. ‘They are too far from help,’ she murmured. ‘Why cannot the main hospital be placed closer to the battlefield?’ She looked up to Katie, standing open-mouthed beside her. ‘Look there, that row of pannikins contains tea. Raise the men when you can and help them to drink.’
Katie ran forward, and fumbling in her carpet bag found her own tin cup. Filling it with tea, she knelt beside a young man, who was groaning in pain. God help him! He had been hit in the forehead by shrapnel and the dressings around his head oozed blood. As he groped and fumbled with his fingers, Katie realized his sight was gone. She raised his head. ‘Tea,’ she said, and he stopped groaning and smiled. ‘There is nothing I would like more,’ he whispered. Katie swore, there and then, that she would never again ridicule the English love of tea. ‘Is it really the voice of a woman?’ he said, and then his fragmented brain wandered. ‘Is it you, Mother?’ he asked.
They stayed with the men until the sun rose high, giving off a wavering autumnal glow. ‘There is much to do here,’ Florence Nightingale said, ‘but we have further yet to go.’ She set to work, negotiating with the Turks and Greeks that swarmed the harbour. Katie could see she was a canny businesswoman. Soon Miss Nightingale had procured two mules: old and bony, but with life in them yet. Loading their provisions, she then grabbed one animal by the mane and swung up over its sagging back. ‘Come along,’ she barked over her shoulder.
The Chronicles of the Tempus Page 37