She smiles at me, accepting my slurred words, propping me up against the pillows and then pouring water for me. With great care she puts the glass into my hand but does not let it go. Instead she wraps her fingers around mine and guides it to my mouth. I am able to sip, and not a drop is spilled. It is these tiny gestures, full of care, full of awareness of the needs of the patient for some control over a fading body, which mark out a true nurse. I am as comforted by her actions as I am revived by the water.
‘Thank you,’ I mutter again.
‘If you are not sleeping, shall I switch on your reading light?’ When I nod she does so, adding, ‘There, a little more cheerful than sitting in the dark, isn’t it? Only an hour or so until dawn. I shall call in on you again when I have finished my rounds.’
I watch her go. I cannot remember if she knows of my past. Some of the nurses do. I have heard them speak about me as if I were not present in the room at the time. I am, to some, an object of curiosity. I suppose that is preferable to the complete obscurity into which I have fallen in my later years.
Did you enjoy your notoriety then?
I did not. And yet, as long as I was in the public eye, so was my cause.
But there was a danger of damaging that cause wasn’t there? People, places, things connected to you might be tainted by that association. Other people – the ones who might have given you money or talked up your mission – well, they turned away because they did not want to risk their own good name.
Some did. Not all. Queen Victoria herself never forsook me.
Though her advisors dearly wished she would.
I was asked to court a second time, you know? That was such an honour, and quite without precedent. Her Majesty personally asked for me to attend.
You bought a special dress.
Yes, of course, I had to look my best. I could not stand before the Queen in something dowdy and poor, it would have been an insult. For my appearance at court, I bought a new dress. Navy blue it was, and very fine.
‘A very expensive one, no doubt,’ says a voice from the corner of the room.
‘Nell? Are you here?’
Only Nell would bring up the cost of the thing. Everything was always about money with Nell, wasn’t it?
‘No, that’s not true,’ I insist, forgetting for a moment that only I can hear Rose whispering in my ear. She will not speak to Nell. ‘Step forward so that I can see you. Won’t you come closer, Nell?’
She moves into the light of the little lamp. She has not changed since the last time I saw her, in Paris. Or was it Berlin? She is every bit as elegant and poised as I recall.
‘You look very well,’ I tell her.
Her face is set in a stubborn frown. I see she has not forgiven me yet.
‘Time did not mend,’ she says. ‘You left me and never looked back, and time did not mend, as you said it would.’
I know that there is nothing I can say that will change how she feels. Not now. Not after all this time. I could not return the feelings she had for me. I had been fond of her, but in the end she had come to see that fondness as a thing worthy only of her contempt.
‘I am sorry that I caused you so much distress,’ I tell her.
A sudden movement at the foot of my bed makes me start. ‘Jessy!’ I cannot keep the shock from my voice, for she appears to me as she must have looked after suffering a lengthy death from cholera. The ravages of the disease left her with red, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, and a blue tinge to her mouth.
She does not speak to me, but addresses Nell.
‘You were content to see me abandoned to suit your plans,’ she tells her. ‘You did not stop to think what would become of me when you gained Kate’s affection, and took her away from me.’
This causes a snort from Nell. ‘You cannot imagine that she would ever have loved you! You were only ever useful. Your house. Your money. The fact that you were a nurse and might join in her wild adventures. These were the reasons she gave anything of herself to you at all.’
‘And you believe you were different?’ Jessy strides forward as best she can on her weakened legs. She is full of rage, and does not flinch when Nell draws herself up to stand strong and proud in front of her. ‘She used you,’ Jessy hisses, ‘just as she used me. Just as she used everyone!’
Nell shakes her head. ‘We could have been happy together, she and I, if only she could have settled for an ordinary life. But no, she had to be off, charging across the world, seeking something that would make her name, that would finally elevate her in society, that would give her some proper standing in the world.’
My goodness, see how they loved you!
‘Please,’ I try to make myself heard, but the two women are shouting at one another now, both of them venting their fury, neither truly listening to the other. ‘Don’t quarrel,’ I beg them, ‘There is nothing to be gained by angry words after all these long years.’
Such fury! See what passion you still ignite, Kate.
‘Hush!’ I say, as much to Rose as anyone else. And now I can see another figure. Sitting in the chair on the other side of my bed. I turn with difficulty, for this is my stroke-ridden side, and these limbs will no longer respond to my urgings for movement. Now I can see who it is. ‘Mama! Mama, you should not have troubled yourself to come.’
‘Why would I not come and see my own daughter? What other daughter have I living?’ She sits with her chest puffed out and her stout arms crossed in the way she always did when she wished to show her disapproval. ‘I fail to see what business they have here,’ she says, wagging a finger at Nell and Jessy.
‘Mama, they are my friends.’
‘Friends!’ chorus all three of them, as if the word tastes of poison in their mouths.
Oh dear. I don’t think they wish to be soothed. I believe they are enjoying their rage. I don’t think you will part them from it, whatever you try.
‘I am too tired to try,’ I say, though in truth they are not listening to me any more than they are listening to one another. ‘Have you come here only to show your anger? Have you nothing else to say, after all this time?’
I feel a feather-light touch upon my arm and look up to see the beautiful, serene face of the Maria Feodorovna smiling down at me.
‘Tsarina!’
‘Now, now, Katerina,’ she says gently, her Russian accent softening the edges of her words and slowing them down. ‘You look so pale. Not at all like the brave Katerina who stood before me in St Petersburg and spoke with such excitement about her plans.’
‘I was young then…’
The Tsarina looks sad. No, not sad, disappointed. ‘Such a pity,’ she says, ‘that you were not as you seemed at first. How could I receive you at court again? Once your secrets were known…’ She steps back and begins to fade from view.
‘Wait!’ I reach out with my trembling hand. ‘I do so want you to understand!’
Beside me I hear my mother tut and huff. ‘Tsarina this and Queen that, what business had you mixing with such people?’
‘They wanted to help me, Mama. They wanted to do what they could to see that my mission succeeded.’
‘Your mission!’ Isabel Hapgood’s shrill tone is unmistakeable. ‘Your journey of whimsy and invention! You never took a single step but that it benefited yourself. Those wretched lepers were nothing more than a means to an end for you.’
‘That simply is not the case,’ I insist. ‘The hospital was built. The houses of my poor lepers, the church… it is there still. It is as I promised it would be!’ But no one is listening. They are all clamouring and arguing and speaking over one another, determined to make their point, covering old ground with their hurt and their spite. There is even the wretched Desmond Mackintosh here now too, waving a newspaper in my face, shouting his questions at me. Journalists never tire of their pursuits, least of all when they feel personally affronted. He likes to blame me for what happened to Jessy, thinks it makes him less culpable for her fate although he offered her no help when
she needed it. His mistake is in thinking he could make me feel any more guilty than I already do. Poor Jessy.
‘Tell us about your so-called accident!’ he demands. ‘Why did you take out not one but two insurance policies only a short time before you sustained your injuries? Why have you not fully answered charges of embezzling funds raised in the name of the lepers you claimed to care for? Why did you drop the libel case against your detractors? Was it because you knew they had found you out and you could not win? Tell us!’
The others seem to take up the chorus, shouting, bullying, their angry faces and aggrieved souls appearing to fill up the entire room.
At last I see Rose’s face, sweet and lovely.
‘Oh, Rose!’
She looks so very sad that I fear my heart will break all over again. I wish that it would, so that I might be released from this prison of a body.
You could have stayed with me, Kate. None of this need have happened, and I know we could have been happy together. You should have stayed with me.
It was many years after my trek that I returned to Yakutsk. My memory is so confused on so many points of my life, but that visit is as vivid, as clear, as true to me as if it had happened only a matter of days ago, rather than decades. Perhaps I should have stayed there. Lived out my years in obscurity, yes, but surrounded by my success, my gift to the outcasts, my monument to God’s will.
I arrived on a pellucid summer’s day, with air so pure it enriched one’s very soul with each breath. As ever in the far reaches of Siberia at this time of year, such perfection was blighted by the constant and unwelcome attention of myriad mosquitoes. If I had forgotten how bothersome they were, I was reminded the moment I stepped from my carriage, and thereafter constantly by their relentless biting and whining.
‘Sister Marsden, welcome! Welcome!’ The diminutive figure of Mister Mateev, the Minister for Health and Community, greeted me effusively, bobbing something between a bow and a curtsey at thirty second intervals. ‘Such an honour! Such an auspicious day for Sosnovka!’ he beamed, his imperfect teeth failing to dim the brightness of his smile is his nut brown, round face. An even smaller man shadowed his every move, working a horse-hair switch ceaselessly in a losing war against the mosquitoes.
‘The honour is mine,’ I assured him, shaking his hand, attempting to pay him deserved attention, but unable to keep my eyes from lifting to the spectacle of the buildings before me. It was not that they were grand, for they were not, it was what purpose they served and how they had come into being that made them so very important to me.
Mister Mateev uttered harsh words at his aide, evidently directing him to protect myself, so that thereafter I endured the tickling whiplash of the switch, which was at least a preferably irritation. My host babbled as he led me towards the hospital, keeping up a torrent of information regarding the extensive nature of the completed building works, the quality of the nursing staff, the high standards of care available to the lepers, and so on. I confess I heard little of what he said. My mind was taken up with coming face to face with what had for so long been nothing more than a vision. I felt my heart leap beneath my breast. At last I was to witness for myself the blossoming and fruition of that seed planted so many years before, so many thousands of miles distant.
Sosnovka is a village, nothing more, in the remote and little known region of Viliusk, with its eponymous town. The settlement comprised mostly of peasant farmers, with the bare minimum of amenities and attendant businesses. The landscape was more taiga than tundra, though the forests surrounding the village were not as dense nor extensive as most of those I had travelled through. Indeed, this was an important consideration when I had identified the spot as the ideal location for the leprosarium. The slender birches and feathery larches stood as shelter and provided lumber without being so vast and abundant as to encroach upon the clearing. The entrance to the settlement was proclaimed by a sign spanning the width of the road, held aloft by two wooden posts, at a height to allow the passage of laden wagons. The lettering, in Russian rather than the local dialect, proclaimed this to be the Sosnovka Leper Hospital, with an inscription beneath declaring it to have been gifted “…by the dedicated actions of Sister Kate Marsden, the gracious kindness of the Empress Maria Feodorovna, and the merciful will of God”. The scent of larch needles drifted up to me as I trod them underfoot. A small step through the modest portal, but the ultimate one of such a journey. My head swam with the excitement of the moment.
‘This avenue,’ Mister Mateev was telling me, ‘leads, as you will see, past the treatment room on the right, and the kitchens on the left. Here the afflicted may receive both medicine, nursing care, and sustenance. Behind these buildings are the patients’ own dwellings, and you will notice, Sister Marsden, the buildings on the other side of the stream which are the houses of our noble doctors.’
I followed the direction of his sweeping gesture. How delightful it all was! Had I not been told its purpose I could not have discerned it. This was no ramshackle, make-do place in which to deposit the unwanted and leave them to live or die as they might. This was a community, a tiny village in itself, planned and executed with great thought and care. The houses were of wooden construction, single storey, the logs of their walls sturdy and expertly hewn, and would withstand the wicked winters, while keeping out the worst heat of the summers. The doctors’ houses were only a little larger and smarter than those of the inmates, but had the advantage of being set at a slight distance on the other side of a sparkling stream. There was a broad wooden bridge connecting the two areas.
‘And here, Sister Marsden, if it pleases you, we have our school,’ said Mister Mateev a little breathlessly as he led me on, indicating a capacious building surrounded by a picket fence and boasting a bell. At that moment the door opened and two dozen children filed out, skipping and chatting happily as they made their way towards the kitchen building for their midday meal. Some bore the scars or disfigurement of the dread disease, but others appeared free of it. Seeing them was a salutary reminder of how the families of leprous adults would often have no option but to share their parents’ banishment, even if they themselves were not afflicted. Of course, the conditions in which they then lived meant that most would catch the disease, or else fall victim to the deprivations or starvation of their outcast existences. Here, those who needed it would receive treatment, and those who came with their stricken families would have a safe place to live and be raised healthy and educated. I clasped my hands together, my heart bursting with the wonder of it all, as a small boy passed by, pausing to smile quizzically at this tall, foreign lady who appeared to be on the verge of tears. As indeed I was!
And then I saw it. At the end of the curve of the avenue, positioned so that all led inevitably to its tall double doors, stood the church. Here the architects had allowed themselves the luxury of some beauty, even if on a modest scale. It was, I thought then and have not had my mind changed since, one of the prettiest places raised to God’s glory that I had ever seen. The timber had not been left raw as in the other buildings, but planed and smoothed and painted to give a more refined finish. There were two stories to the main section, with long, shuttered windows, also prettily painted. There was a section for the nave at one end, and a belfry at the other. Atop of each of these thirds was a golden poppy-head dome, finished with a golden cross, all glinting and flashing in the dazzling Siberian sunshine.
‘Oh!’ I whispered, to myself, perhaps, to Mister Mateev, certainly, but nonetheless to God. ‘Thank you!’
At that moment there came sounds of a commotion behind me. Turning, I found the avenue was now thronging with people. A veritable crowd was forming, with patients, children, nurses and general workers emerging from every door. Word of my visit had spread, and everyone, it seemed, wanted to get a good look at the curious English woman in their midst.
Mister Mateev called out to them, speaking in the impenetrable Yakuts language that seemed to fall over itself with each successive word.
The crowd listened, and then, hearing my name repeated, seeing the minister’s effusive gestures and expressions, they began to gasp and chatter and then to cheer. Gaining confidence they pressed forwards so that they surrounded me, though long practice had clearly taught them to keep from making physical contact with a stranger. At first glance there was much suffering – many bandaged faces and shortened limbs and people without sight or fighting pain. But closer inspection showed faces full of hope, of acceptance, devoid of fear, filled with contentment. Louder and louder they cheered, trying out the unfamiliar sounds that made up my name until their clapping was drowned by a happy chanting that lifted me heart and soul.
“Seester Moorsdyin! Seester Moorsdyin! Seester Moorsdyin!”
How we succeeded in entering the nurses’ dormitory without being seen I shall never know. My fear of being apprehended rendered me silent and cautious, but Rose appeared to find the whole business an adventure, and had to suppress giggles throughout. As we finally burst through the door into her own room she fell into gales of laughter which I was certain would be overheard.
‘Rose, for heaven’s sake, have a care. If someone were to hear us…’
‘They will not,’ she declared, taking off her hat and grinning at me. ‘And if they did, what is there to find objectionable in the sound of laughter?’
‘Objectionable, no, nothing, but surely at this hour a little… odd.’
‘Well, you might be right about that,’ she nodded. ‘And this room gives one very little to smile about, let alone laugh.’
She closed the curtains and lit a lamp on the table beneath the window. It was indeed a cheerless space. Aside from the small table there were two wooden chairs, a washstand with bowl and water jug, a wardrobe that had evidently been selected for its size rather than charm, a threadbare rug upon the floorboards, a mirror, and two narrow beds. Here and there an attempt to brighten the place had been made – a small vase of flowers, a picture of the sea, a scarf over the back of a chair – but it remained fairly grim.
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