I was not prepared for what awaited us inside the Maddoxes’ dilapidated rooms.
As if she were a demon in the last throes of panic before being cast into the eternal pit, Isabel Maddox was shrieking at her husband, oblivious to the presence of two women and a man—who presumably lived in the upstairs portion of the house—who had come down and were watching in petrified silence. It was quickly apparent that this group consisted of a husband, wife, and the wife’s sister. The two women looked very much alike.
There was little time to worry about these housemates witnessing Isabel’s total breakdown. Maddox was inadequately defending himself, with his arms thrown up, as his wife assaulted him using both words and hands.
“How could you have so ruined us? We could have had a good life, a rich life, but every single thing you’ve done has been to destroy me. Your father, your brother, you.”
Those gray eyes glittered at her husband. Despite the heat of the day, I shivered at the sheer malevolence in them. Perhaps Isabel Maddox suffered from more than just cholera.
We all watched in frozen horror as she pummeled at her husband’s chest in frustration, but the effort was great, and it became too laborious for her to continue. She exhausted herself into a rasping cough.
“Bella, sweetheart, you cannot think—” George Maddox began, but his wife held out a hand to stop him. She was bent over now in her heaving, and her foul breath threatened to consume us all.
Isabel sank to the ground and I rushed to catch her. I dropped awkwardly to my knees to prevent her from hitting her head on the ground and found myself cradling her shoulders and head in my lap.
One of the two upstairs women gasped, but none of them moved toward the woman I held. Even George Maddox was paralyzed.
Astoundingly, Arthur had recovered to such a degree that he was sitting upright on a lumpy pallet in a corner of their tiny back room. He watched his mother cautiously through dark locks of hair that fell over his face. The boy was painfully thin and his face hollowed out and pale, but it would seem that he was going to live after all. I never could have predicted that he was strong enough to survive his illness.
Isabel looked at me piteously, all the fire gone from those once piercing gray eyes. One last time, she reached out one of those spectral hands to me, but she had no strength to do any more than graze the skin. My face was hot where she touched me. “I hated to do it,” she confessed in a ragged whisper.
“Mrs. Maddox,” I said desperately. “You must get well. For your son and your husband.”
Her eyes were closed now, and she shook her head. “Too much disappointment with him.”
I crouched on the dirty, crumbling floor, willing this dying woman to live.
She refused my urging, and with just a few final rattles of breath, Isabel Maddox died with a shuddering sigh.
With her head still cradled in my arms, I looked up at George Maddox. His face was twisted in grief and he stumbled past his neighbors into the front room. The neighbors followed him out, and I heard them assure Maddox that they would lay Isabel out, build her a coffin, and make her ready for burial the next day. Sobs exploded from the man as they made their condolences and offered their help.
I realized in that moment that Death, in his chaotic and turbulent manner, does not always conduct his business in the way that one expects.
CHAPTER 14
I was deeply shaken by Isabel Maddox’s death, not only because I had expected her to survive but because of the frightful manner of her demise as well. I confess I was also at a loss because I had wanted to question the woman further about what it was she had “accomplished” in her ostensible revenge action against persons unknown.
Mary must have sensed my disquiet, for she stopped me before we reached the Lion Brewery and took one of my hands in hers.
“Miss Florence, there was nothing you or anyone else could have done for that poor woman. Do you know what I think? I think she wanted to die, and cholera gave her a perfect excuse.” She turned to continue walking, still clasping my hand, but I shook her off and stopped again.
“Why do you say this?” I said sharply.
Mary’s expression was one of bewilderment. “Is it not as clear as the ink on a page? She despised her husband, took no notice of her son, and seemed to loathe the other members of her husband’s family. There was something deeply troubled in that woman.” She knowingly tapped the side of her head with one finger.
I resumed walking with her. How unsettling to think that a woman’s life might reach a state of collapse and death because of real or imagined slights, disrespect, or failures. How could her husband—or anyone—have even prevented what had happened?
I made a conscious decision to put the Maddox family woes behind me. I didn’t have the capacity to nurse anyone back to a sound mind, and there were many other duties at hand for me. Thus resolved, I entered the Lion Brewery once more.
Oswyn Davies was not overjoyed to see us, yet neither did he treat us with the same suspicion as before. He even poured us complimentary cups of India ale and invited us to sit at a private table removed from most of the rest of the tables in the brewery’s public house.
“Presume to see me is why you’re here?” he said as he sat down with us.
“I have been working at Middlesex Hospital to improve conditions for the cholera sufferers here. You mentioned Reverend Henry Whitehead on my previous visit. I visited him, and we are joining forces to try and determine how the cholera is spreading.”
“Two good occupations for a nurse, I suppose,” he said, bored.
I continued on brightly. “What of you, Mr. Davies? Have you had any recent developments here?”
“Developments? We sent out a hundred and eighty barrels of beer last week, about twenty-five more from the previous week. Is that the sort of ‘development’ you mean?”
I was fairly certain he was beginning to think me a lunatic. I pressed on. “Have you made any recent hires?”
“I brought on a new supervisor for the night shift,” he said.
“Oh!” I said in delight. “Would that be George Maddox?”
“How would you know that?” He was regarding me with interest for the first time.
“Mary and I had occasion to care for his family. His wife has just died of cholera.”
Davies’s eyes flickered briefly. “Sad for any man to lose his wife. But happens around here every day as of late.”
Satisfied that Mr. Maddox and his child would at least have some reliable wages to help them through their grief, I said, “Speaking of which, both Mr. Maddox’s wife and child contracted cholera, but he has not, and he is a frequent patron of the Lion, isn’t he? You said last time that none of your men has fallen ill to the disease.”
Davies looked at me strangely. “Are you saying that power over cholera the brewery must have? Imagine that posted sign: ‘Enter here for your magical cholera prevention elixir.’ Ha! Right out of business we’d put the laudanum men.” He shook his head.
“Oh, that reminds me,” I said, remembering another reason for my visit to Davies. “I brought you the salve I promised.” I reached into my pocket and brought out the tin for him. “Apply it to your ear twice a day. It should help immensely.”
He nodded his thanks at me.
I changed the subject. “Speaking of helping immensely, I thought you might be willing to take on another employee,” I suggested.
“Didn’t you hear me say I hired Maddox as night shift supervisor? That was the only opening I had.”
I waved a hand around the public house. “Do you not think you could use some help cleaning and serving? It would give you much more time to manage your brewery operations.”
His gaze followed my waving hand, and then he turned back to me. “You mean like an old tavern wench?” He shrugged. “Plenty clean in here it is. Besides, why would you want a job like that? Or is it for you?” He looked at Mary, who put a hand to her chest.
“No, I mean for a woman I
’ve met, who used to be in service until she fell on hard times. She lives nearby”—I didn’t really even know that that was true of Berenice—“and she is very eager for work.”
Davies shook his head. “Don’t need a woman around here distracting my workers.”
I pretended I hadn’t heard him. “She has a daughter, too, who can sweep and polish.”
“No,” he said curtly.
“The two of them will work for a single wage, and you will have twice the work accomplished.”
“No,” he repeated, more firmly this time.
“Her name is Berenice. She is very particular in her cooking, too. She makes the freshest loaves of herbed bread you’ve ever had.” I was lying rashly now, pulling from my memory of my family’s old cook.
“Again, a maid I don’t need,” he said, starting to rise.
“I will personally vouch for her,” I finished desperately. “If you are unhappy with her after a fortnight, I will pay her back wages from my own purse.” I had nothing else left with which to convince him.
He stared at me for several moments, then sat back down. “Fine. If she is unsatisfactory, you will pay for her.”
“I agree to your terms, sir,” I said.
“My terms?” Davies rolled his eyes. “In this little negotiation did I play any part? That was an expensive pot of salve, Miss Nightingale. I’m best served if you leave me to suffer unto death next time.”
“You survived the retreat in Afghanistan; I’m sure you find little threat in a tiny woman such as myself,” I said, biting back a smile over my accomplishment.
To my surprise, my flippant comment registered deeply with Davies. “The women of Afghanistan are much simpler and less difficult, Miss Nightingale,” he said, his tone more serious than I had ever heard it.
I wasn’t sure what that meant. “I meant no offense, sir. I was only—”
“Of the Afghan women I do not like to be reminded. They were the source of all the problems there.” His expression hardened.
“I thought it was the tribal rebellions that caused the problems leading to the retreat,” I reminded him.
Davies grunted. “It was what led to the rebellions that caused us to be slaughtered.”
I frowned and glanced at Mary, who shrugged in ignorance as she closed her notebook, as if she sensed that this conversation was not something to record.
Hadn’t he already said that the Afghans had risen up in order to remove the Britons from their country? Perhaps Davies didn’t remember. “You mentioned that the Afghans did not like having a government imposed upon them.”
Another grunt, accompanied with a shake of the head. “What they ultimately did not like was our pride. Make no mistake, they are a wild, ungovernable people. If they aren’t cutting down members of the British Empire, they are bludgeoning one another for minor insults. But what I saw …”
We three were silent for several moments, and then Mary said quietly, “Would you care to unburden yourself, Mr. Davies? What did you see?”
Mary was at her matronly best on occasions like this. I probably could have learned a bit of diplomacy from her, given that my tongue ran a hundred feet ahead of my self-control on most days.
Davies pressed the fingertips of his good hand to his forehead as though pushing away a headache. Finally, he dropped his hand and looked up at us both. “Will you not only heal my ear, but my soul as well?”
Mary reached out a hand and squeezed Davies’s arm. “If it is confession you seek, we will take you to Reverend Whitehead. If it is untroubling yourself, we would gladly serve you now.”
How I admired Mary at this moment, for Davies looked at Mary as though she were a cool drink of water waiting for him to soothe his parched spirit.
He began to talk. “It was an immense caravan of us that went into Afghanistan in 1839. The Army of the Indus, we were called. Not just twenty-one thousand British and Indian troops, but nearly forty thousand camp followers—victualers, washer women, wives, children, and so on. Thirty thousand camels it required to carry all the goods put on parade through the country. Never had much myself in life, but it was far more than the goat herders had, and even I was put out of sorts by the conceit of it all.
“I remember a pack of foxhounds one regiment took along. Another required two camels to carry all their cigarettes. One senior officer used sixty camels to carry his own personal effects into the field. Even junior officers were accompanied by dozens of servants. Turned into a royal palace it was as though the country was to be our kingdom.”
Mary, who had never removed her hand from his arm, gently squeezed again. “But this was not your doing,” she said softly.
“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed.
“And it was certainly no reason for them to cut you down so terribly,” she continued.
“That is a singular opinion shared only by a few, Mrs. Clarke. But the living excesses—the staged hunts, the lavish parties, the extravagant pleasure gardens—paled in comparison to what happened with some of the people. And it was what was done to the people that led to our devastation.”
I felt a sudden nervous prickling. “Surely you aren’t saying that we dragged the Afghans into slavery or anything,” I said.
I remembered my journey to Egypt, where men were essentially enslaved to work on temporary national building projects, such as roads, bridges, and palaces. We had eliminated slavery in Great Britain, but were we secretly employing it elsewhere, in countries where a blind eye might be turned?
“Not exactly,” Davies said. “You see, very beautiful the Afghan women were. Large, almond eyes with lithe bodies—begging your pardon for the frankness. But they were so very poor, and a British private could keep an Afghan woman in luxury even on his meager wages. Many of the women found this a temptation they could not withstand and were willing to visit the quarters of the Christian strangers in order to become rich. The British officers in particular were open about these relationships, even in full view of the Afghan tribal leaders.”
As much as I was in open admiration of Mary’s wise approach to Davies, I also feared his most recent statement would prompt her into an endless prattle about Milo’s virtues. I shot her a warning look as she opened her mouth. She snapped it closed and let him continue.
For his part, Davies was lost in his own reverie and not paying attention to Mary or me. “But just shameless was some of what went on, and it was prevalent among the British officers—those very men who represented the rest of us. The East India Company’s second officer, Sir Alexander Burnes, was noted for being particularly … insatiable. He would bathe with his Afghan mistress, and even invite two of his other lovers—both married to men within his command—to join in with them. Needless to say, many men followed suit and engaged in these sorts of wanton practices. After all, the camels had brought along plenty of wine, cigarettes, and opium to deaden any sense of wrongdoing.
“The Afghan menfolk became furious at the scandalous way the British were treating their women. Not only was this worthy of revenge in Afghan eyes; it is to be remembered that women are subject to honor killings for intimate relations outside of properly arranged marriages. Disappeared from British homes, some of the women did as a result of a brother, father, or uncle stealing her back, but it was of no matter to our officers. Another would soon arrive in her place.” Davies heaved a sigh.
I was spellbound by this story, horrific as it was. As much as I considered myself well traveled, having been to Germany, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, I had never heard of such oppressive treatment—and I had been spat upon by local men while in Egypt simply for being in public without a husband.
“But we British argued that we were not using them as poorly as the Afghan men were, as they held even their supposedly free women in virtual slavery,” Davies said. “Even married their concubines, some of our men did. Of course, to the Afghans, that was a double insult. First we used the women, then we kept them. In their humiliation, the Afghan men complained to on
e another that the women of Kabul would soon give birth to half-caste monkeys, bringing even more disgrace to their menfolk.
“Of all the aspects of British occupation that infuriated the Afghans, it was this wanton use of their women that blind with rage it made them. It was how they finally decided to plan their savage attack on us.” Davies compressed his lips into a thin line.
“Mr. Davies,” I said. “It sounds as though the treachery ran in both directions. Each side expressed cruelties.”
He ignored my assertion. “The Afghan women who married into the British ranks were not saved from the butchery, either. They were among those who attempted to flee Kabul, and because of their perceived treachery, they were cut down just as readily as any British citizen. Hanged for it all, those scruts Burnes and Elphinstone should have been,” Davies said, banging his fist on the table and wincing. The impact must have caused great pain to his already-damaged hand. “Those two, among others.”
“Your anger is deep,” I observed.
“Be blamed, can I?” Davies snapped. “And now our good and gracious government is sending men into another bloodbath in Crimea. The secretary at war is spilling good British blood to chase down filmy Russian specters. He should expect that someone will eventually be able to stop him.”
My blood chilled in my veins. “Are you—have you attempted to stop him?”
He did not directly answer me, but instead began another story. “There was an Afghan slave girl who belonged to a Pashtun chief. No doubt she was badly mistreated, and she ran away to a particular lieutenant-general’s quarters to put herself under his protection. He, of course, took her immediately to his bed and had one of the chief’s men beaten. A secret council of the Pashtun chiefs was held to discuss this violation of Pashtunwali, their unwritten code of law.”
“Oh dear,” Mary said. “I sense this is a tale of vengeance.”
Davies nodded. “They did not care about the slave girl herself, but about the contempt the British showed for their country, even going so far as to carelessly offend tribal leaders. The Pashtun chiefs decided then and there that they were justified in throwing off the English yoke, lest they lose all their customs and codes. They were ready for jihad. I tell you, that slave girl situation was a match struck to dry, aged tinder, and burned us all did the resulting fire.”
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