There were two yourta set beside a small lake, so that at least the outcasts had water and even fish. There their luck ended, however, for nothing else about their existence could be described as good. These tiny houses were constructed of tree trunks fastened with wooden nails and covered with cow dung. the floor was earth. The single window in each was covered only with calico, providing little light, no warmth in winter, and scant air in summer. From the hungry mosquitoes and flies there was not protection to be had other than more cow dung and fish oil smeared over their bodies. I leave you to imagine the smell and the degrading appearance this gave to the lepers.
As we approached, a small crowd began to gather outside the hovels. Some came limping, some hobbled on sticks, others all but dragged themselves, their limbs and faces horribly affected by the disease which had cursed them to banishment. They peered at us with anxious curiosity, even amazement, those of them who still had their eyesight. I was given to understand, later, that they believed I had been sent by God, and certainly any who saw these poor abandoned people would never again question my having devoted body and soul to this work.
I ordered our things to be unpacked and we spread them upon the ground. The priest offered first a prayer of thanksgiving, and then one for her Imperial Majesty the Empress. As always, the local people were astonished to see the picture of their dear Tsarina, and revered it almost as if it were an icon. And who could chastise them for this? For without the assistance of Maria Feodorovna the help that I now brought for them, and the hope for their future, would not have reached them. While we distributed the gifts many of the faces showed clear delight, while others at last lost their look of fear and moved to expressions of confidence. Surely such a scene was worth all the hardships of my long journey. It was heartbreaking to think that some of the worst afflicted would not live to reap the benefits of the new hospital that I was determined would be built for them. They at least were comforted by the fact that others would, and this thought gave them some peace.
How to describe those yourta? I think it is best put by quoting from the documents of the officials who were sent to inspect them, the medical inspector, Mr Smirnoff, and the tchinovnick Mr Shachourdine. They both have much to say on the hardships the terrible living conditions imposed on people who were already suffering. They claimed that the dwellings were small, and almost devoid of light, and that the atmosphere was so infected by the conglomeration of lepers and the exhalations of rotten fish, that one would be quite suffocated upon entering them. Often the inspectors had been beaten back by the fearful stench coming from these hovels, as in many instances they housed dead bodies that had not yet been removed to makeshift graves outside. For if a person is scarce able to drag himself from one place to another, how can he bear the weight of another?
I saw for myself that the lepers were clothed in rags and rotting animal skins, all of which were infested with vermin and so bound with filth that they could not have been washed in years. These garments were given to them by the charity of villagers, but were only passed on when in a state of tatters. The recipients, having few fingers between them, had not the ability to mend their clothes, so could do nothing to improve their condition. They had no beds nor linen, but only boards placed on trunks, arranged around the inside of the yourta as tightly packed as could be, head to toe. There was no separation of the men from the women, nor from the children.
While we were there I asked about these children, and each had their own tale of woe to tell. Some had been declared lepers and sent into the forest, so one or both parents had come with them, refusing to be separated from their child. Others had been so small when their mothers had been diagnosed that they had been taken into exile also, and grown up knowing no other life. Others still had been born to the lepers in the settlement. Inevitably, most of those who began clear of the disease also caught it after many years of living in such close proximity with those who were already infected. It distressed me to think that, had they had proper sanitation, ventilation, and good nursing care, most of those same family members need never have fallen victim to leprosy at all. All were condemned to this pitiful existence for the ten or more years before the illness overtook them completely and they were released by death. My resolve to see them lifted out of this purgatory doubled in that very moment!
‘Are you sleeping still? Miss Marsden, are you awake?’
The voice is familiar to me, though I cannot immediately place it. Not a nurse, I am certain of that, for the tone is quite brusque, and without a trace of care. I blink against the light of the room, the sunshine glaring off the whitewashed walls. As soon as I can see the woman’s face I know who it is who has come to me, though I cannot imagine why she would trouble herself.
‘Mrs Hapgood,’ I make a point of speaking as strongly as I am able, though still I hear from my own mouth the voice of a feeble, elderly woman. My detractor, though I know her to have been dead some years, stands before me with any amount of lively vigour. ‘This is unexpected,’ I tell her.
‘You surely cannot think I would leave the matter unsettled,’ she says moving closer to my bed. She is dressed in a smart grey jacket and skirt. Tweed, I think, with not a scrap of silk or lace to soften the severity of the look. Even her hat was chosen for neatness rather than style, and sits pinned tightly onto her regimented curls. After all this time, all these many years, there remains about her an air of disapproval that I do not believe anything I have done warrants. Though it may be more what I am rather than what I do that so provokes the woman. I have never been certain which.
‘You all but achieved my ruin, madam. What more can there be for you to do?’ I ask.
‘I want to hear you admit to your misdeeds, all of them. I want to hear you speak the words.’
‘Ah, I see you still regard yourself as judge and jury where I am concerned.’ I shake my head, or at least, I try to do so, but I fear the movement is so slight it goes unnoticed. ‘I do not believe there is anything I have done that requires me to confess it to you.’
‘Oh, but you have.’ She holds up some pieces of paper. No, not pieces, but cuttings, from newspapers. ‘It is all here, all but your own word of confession.’
‘You have always contented yourself with the words of others in regard to my actions; why would that not be sufficient for you now?’
‘Here…’ she shakes out the pages until they are fully unfolded. ‘Listen. Listen to what was said and then, once and for all, I challenge you to deny it. For now I think you will not. I think you dare not.’ She searches down the columns and then begins to read. ‘Yes, here it is, in the Evening Post, dated October 1894. Exposure of Kate Marsden.’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘that is a plain headline indeed.’
Ignoring me, she reads on. ‘“The scandals in connection with ‘that sweet woman’ Miss Kate Marsden have at last culminated, I am thankful to say, in the complete exposure of the lepers’ friend.”…the Special Correspondent goes on… after your return to St Petersburg, how does he put it, ah yes, “laden with plunder from the Chicago Exhibition… decided to take action with regard to the charges against her.” And he cites, of course the letter from Reverend Francis. How you sought to dupe that poor man!’
‘I never lied to the good Reverend,’ I insist.
‘Indeed it might be he was one of the few to whom you eventually told the truth!’ Mrs Hapgood snapped. ‘Even if you did deny doing so later on. His own words condemn you, in this very article in this very paper. “Sir – An acknowledgement of the truth of the gravest of the charges against her has at last been made by Miss Marsden…” The correspondent then continues his own account. “For over eighteen months Miss Marsden travelled about the Continent, enjoying capital times, raising money for ‘my lepers’. Many great ladies were touched by her cheerful self-abnegation in wishing to bury herself forever in the wild north land to nurse loathsome lepers. Among others, the Empress of Russia granted the heroine an interview. This made Miss Marsden in Russia�
�”’
‘Dear Maria Feodorovna. Such a kind and gentle heart.’
Mrs Hapgood took no notice of my interruption. ‘“…and she had several more pleasant months both in Moscow and St Petersburg. Ultimately, however, it became necessary to at a least make a show of looking up ‘my lepers’, so in 1890 she visited Siberia.”.’
‘No, it was 1891.’
‘“In less than six months Miss Marsden was back in London, full as an egg of adventures and with quite a changed programme. Before, she said, the nursing of the lepers could be commenced, hospitals and a settlement would be necessary. For these she proposed to collect more funds. Some tiresome persons now began to ask what became of previous moneys given Miss Marsden. In lectures and interviews one heard any amount concerning Sister Kate’s adventures in the past and intentions in the future. What, however, one did not hear was how ‘my lepers’ had benefited.”’ Mrs Hapgood lowers the page for a moment. ‘From the very beginning you would not face these challengers, would not answer these questions. Instead, what did you do? You ran to Chicago!’
‘My time in Russia was over a year and a half, this journalist is playing fast and loose with the facts.’
‘Ha! That you should say so! And here is another who unearthed your secrets.’ She drops the first newspaper to the floor and unfolds another, jabbing her finger at the article she selects to read to me, and I am powerless to stop her. ‘This in the New Zealand Mail, dated March 3rd 1893, a letter published that was written by none other than your old friend – poor misguided creature – Ellen Hewitt. She denounces you, leaving not an inch of room for doubt at your true nature. Listen again, “I may state that I went home with Miss Marsden on the same steamer, that she lived with me in London, that I travelled with her on the Continent, and know far better than most people her true character. Believing her to be a truly Christian woman, I lent her several sums of money amounting to nearly £200, not a penny of which has been returned, and I am sorry to say that from what I saw of her on the Continent, and what I now know regarding her I cannot but grieve that so many good people in England have been guiled into believing her to be a modern Christian heroine, whereas she is, I am afraid, merely a self-serving woman.”’
‘You and I are, unusually in agreement,’ I say, ‘for I too think of Nell as poor, but not for the reasons you might put forward. I am sorry for her soft heart, and for her disappointment, but I never treated her badly.’
‘Others might see it differently,’ she goes on. ‘Not least the woman herself, were she here to speak. In her letter to the paper she said more: “Other people give their money, other people give their work, Russian sisters go to nurse the lepers, and Miss Marsden takes all honour and glory – for what? For having found 75 lepers in Siberia. Those who have known Miss Marsden since she took up the leper cause much agree with the opinion expressed in this paper previously that the lepers have done more for Miss Marsden than Miss Marsden has done for the lepers!”’ Mrs Hapgood throws this report onto my bed and glares at me. ‘What must you have done to this woman that she should wish to expose you so?’
I manage a smile now. Though I know it to be a lopsided, ugly thing, it is born of a memory of my fondness for Nell, and out of pity, too. ‘I failed to love her,’ I say.
She utters a note of mirthless laughter. ‘Love! And see here…’ she produces another from her apparently endless supply of vitriolic reports.
I give a sigh. ‘These were sufficiently painful when they were new for me not to require hearing them again all these long years later,’ I point out, but she is not listening.
‘This in the New York Evening Post, April 1893, where your book is referred to as “Philanthropy on Horseback.” Ha! “Anything more absolutely devoid of literary merit, grammar, or claim to attention from the intelligent public than this volume, it would be hard to find.”’
‘Fortunately, the public largely disagreed with that critic, as sales of my book attested.’
‘His concern was not only with the quality of your written work. He takes issue with its veracity on many counts. Here he says, “She complains of the wretched yourta where they occasionally passed the night… yet a folding bed was set up for her every night in a single room at the posting-stations all the way across Siberia reserved for her exclusive use…”’
‘What nonsense this all is. Where was this correspondent that he saw such things? Was he perhaps disguised as one of my guides? How else could he have known precisely what conditions I endured on that journey?’
Mrs Hapgood draws herself up now, a thin smile of triumph playing across her face.
‘He might not have been there himself, but he has quoted the words of one who was.’
‘Who?’
‘None other than Special Commissioner Sergius M Petroff. You cannot deny recalling him, surely?’
‘Monsieur Petroff? Certainly I remember him. I remember his wholehearted support during all the time he travelled with me. I remember how helpful, how conscientious he was. I remember also quoting from his very own reports on the conditions in which we found the lepers. He would say nothing other than the truth, which is what I recorded in my book. As you well know, he has put his name to the appendices I included in it.’
‘It seems he had a change of heart. Perhaps, like many others, he was unable to withstand the forcefulness of your character whilst in your company. Once returned home, however, it appears he was also returned to his senses.’
‘Monsieur Petroff was a serious minded, capable man, in a position of some trust, as tchinovnick to the governor. Do you truly believe he would allow himself to sign a document he did not regard as truthful, merely to please me?’
‘This article,’ here she holds up the newspaper once more, ‘makes it plain what he believed, and to what degree he disputed your version of events. The correspondent continues, “Miss Marsden complains that she could never undress herself during the months of the journey from Viliusk. Mr Petroff replies that her folding bed and mattress coverlet and clean sheets, pitcher, basin, brushes, combs, sponges, bags of clothes and other necessities were carried into her tent every day; that she had full opportunity to undress and rest; that she put on her best gown on several occasions…” Not the picture you painted us at all, that’s clear. As for the food… “Mr Petrol declares that Miss Marsden brought from Irkutsk bouillon, potted roast beef, reindeer tongues…”’
‘Reindeer tongues!’
‘“…dried vegetables for soup, prepared coffee, condensed milk… In Yakutsk she bought raisins by the box, prunes and grapes. They had also buck-wheat, wheat, pearl barley, mustard, spirits and cognac. In addition they bought wild game frequently, and often had so much duck and fish they were quite unwell from the eating of it.” What do you say to that?’
‘I say Monsieur Petroff seems to have been on an entirely different journey to the one I undertook. He appears to be describing a picnic, rather than an expedition!’
‘Why would he lie, Miss Marsden, tell me that?’
I feel a heavy weariness descend upon me. Such is the weight of attempting to convince someone of a truth they are resolutely determined never to yield to.
‘I am very tired,’ I tell her, my voice losing what little strength it earlier had. ‘Too tired.’
But Mrs Hapgood has not yet finished with me.
‘There is more.’ She shakes her head at me, and almost bestows an expression of pity upon me. Almost, but not quite. ‘Perhaps the most damning statement yet,’ she says. ‘The article concludes with this; “Mr Petroff denies most positively that they ever found a dead leper in any house among the sick, or even one near to death; that any lepers ever offered Miss Marsden their repulsive food, or that she controlled herself to the extent of eating it.” He goes on to note that you were so overcome at the sight of the first leper dwellings that you never, in fact, ventured into any thereafter, but sent him in to do so. Where is the brave and Godly Nurse Marsden in that account?’
‘Why d
on’t you leave me in peace? Your campaign to ruin me was a great success, after all. Can you not be content?’
‘I want to hear you confess! I want to hear from your own mouth that you are the fraud and adventuress I know you to be.’
I close my eyes. I have not the strength left to fight for my name. ‘Let history make of me what it will,’ I tell her. ‘I can do no more about it than I have done. God knows the truth.
Tonight I am utterly unable to sleep. I have often lain in the embrace of the dark hours alone, unheard, the nurses busy with louder patients. I would like to sip some water, but to reach the carafe beside my bed, lift it, and pour a glassful is as impossible for me as leaving this bed. I stretch out my one good arm. I can touch the glass, just, but… no, I cannot take hold of it.
‘Miss Marsden? Let me help you.’
It is the young nurse, the cheerful one. I am fortunate indeed. I mumble my thanks.
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