In the Shadow of the Lamp (22 page)

All the while we sat chatting idly, I wondered when the reckoning would come about Emma. Miss Nightingale didn’t meet my eyes when I looked at her. She was no doubt thinking of other things, as usual.

But as soon as we’d finished our supper and were about to settle in our temporary lodgings, Miss Nightingale called to us. We stopped. The others continued on, probably thinking one or both of us was going to be sent away.

“Well, Nurse Fraser. It seems your example has been followed—with or without your sanction.”

I opened my mouth to say something but Emma stopped me. “It was without, Miss Nightingale. Molly ’ere—Nurse Fraser, I mean—didn’t know nothing.” I was grateful to Emma for that. She didn’t have to take all the blame. I was the one who kept her out of Miss Nightingale’s sight on board and lied to the other nurses.

“Nonetheless, I believe I know what brought you here. I have taken the trouble to ascertain that your young soldier is far off in the trenches and not easily reached. So your journey was wasted, if that was your intent.”

How could she have known which soldier it was that Emma was carrying on with? My surprise must have shown in my face.

“You nurses think you have secrets from me, but you don’t. You know I’ve sent home a dozen women of greater years and more experience than you—mostly for drunkenness and incompetence, but some for flirtation. If I hear of any doings with either of the young soldiers you are both acquainted with, you shall not only return to Scutari immediately but be sent back to London on the next available steamer. Is that understood?”

I was ashamed. Not so much because she assumed I was there to see Will, but because I was glad she’d not mentioned Dr. Maclean. Was I becoming devious? What did I mean, “becoming”? It was deception that had got me there in the first place. I’d no right to expect anything but suspicion from Miss Nightingale.

“Well, could’ve been worse,” Emma said as she walked with me to the tent we shared with the other nurses.

It could have been worse, but I had a funny feeling that wasn’t the end of everything. I knew Emma, and nothing would stop her from doing whatever she could to find her Thomas once she’d set her mind on it.

The other nurses had already undressed and pulled their blankets up as far as they could, trying to get warm. And no wonder. The wind blew right through the canvas. The stove was no match for it, smoking a lot and heating a little. Emma and I hopped out of our clothes fast and got under the covers before you could say spit. I shivered and rubbed my feet against each other, but they were still frozen through.

“I’m ready to go and hammer in the nails myself to get those huts built!” Emma exclaimed through her chattering teeth. I would have laughed except the same thought had occurred to me too. I didn’t know how we’d be able to dress wounds if our fingers were stiff as ice.

“Emma,” I said. “I was that cross at you for hiding away like that.”

“I know, Moll. But you’ll understand soon, I promise.”

“Whyever you did it … I’m not half glad you’re here now. I missed you as soon as we set sail.”

At first Emma said nothing. Then after a bit I heard a sniff, and she reached her hand out from under her blankets to me. I reached back and held her hand tight. Whatever it made Miss Nightingale think about me, having Emma there made all the difference.

And I thought it was probably a good thing I was there too, to stop her from being too rash about her Thomas. But just then, I didn’t care. We were in the back of beyond, but we were together.

C
hapter 22

Unlike when we first came to Scutari, the very next day we got to work in the field hospital. It was a different sort of place, with a different rhythm of working, than the hospital I was used to—the wounded came in alone or in twos or threes, not in hundreds. And most of the men were sick. Some had lost fingers from frostbite. A good many had low fevers. One or two had their wives with them even here, and they sat by their husbands’ bedside and knitted or mopped their brows. These men were lucky to have someone who cared about them by their side. They were like safe little islands in the midst of a stormy sea.

I was curious about the wives. What would make them come? They lived on board ships full of vermin, coming ashore when there was a battle or some action. I saw several of them that first day mounted on horses, their dresses dirty and torn, going off to get as near as they dared to where their husbands were fighting. These were not like the fine ladies on the ship with their spy glasses, drinking wine. They knew what fighting meant, that one day their husbands might not come home, or come home no longer the same men. One of them came into the field hospital to be treated herself, with a graze from a bullet on her arm. I thought that if the army would let women fight, they would do well and be as brave as anyone, especially if they had charge of protecting their own.

The wives weren’t the only women in the camps, though. Over a ways from the British tents was a very orderly place where the French had their own camp and hospital, with a whole flock of Sisters of Mercy as nurses. Those weren’t too surprising to see, but I was amazed one day when I saw several other women, not in nuns’ habits but in uniforms. Their uniforms weren’t exactly like the men’s, but versions of them, with skirts that ended just below their knees and breeches the rest of the way. They even had swords slung at their sides and ribbons of rank.

“Who do you s’pose they are?” I asked Emma on our way to the field hospital our second day there. She just shrugged. I stopped and stared.

A lady rode up on a horse. Not one of the raggedy women, but well dressed and clean, in a very nice black riding habit. “They’re vivandières,” she said, pointing with her riding crop. “They serve wine and food to the men in the French army. It’s their job.”

I curtsied. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“I see you’re with Miss Nightingale,” she said. “I have the advantage. Nothing so interesting happens here without everyone in town knowing. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Mrs. Duberly—most everyone calls me Fanny. My husband, Captain Duberly, is paymaster of the Eighth Royal Irish Hussars.” She touched her riding crop to the brim of her hat. “I’m afraid I can’t stay to chat but I’m certain we’ll meet again.”

She wheeled her horse around, spurred him into a canter and was soon out of sight.

“I didn’t expect to see ladies here at all,” Emma said. “There’s more English and French ones here than in Scutari, what with the ‘veevondeers’ and all.”

“We’d better be going,” I said and pulled her along toward the field hospital. “In Miss Nightingale’s view, there’s only one role for women in a place like this.”

When we got to the hospital, several new patients had been admitted, one a sick soldier being tended by his wife. “You’d think they’d want to stay in England with friends and family, safe from bullets and cannonballs.” I said.

“I understand why they’re here,” Emma said. “I’d go wherever my Thomas went if I thought I could protect him. Like that Mrs. Duberly we met.” She put her hand on her stomach. “Listen, Moll.” She turned to me with a quick look round to make sure no one was listening. “You got to help me find him. I have to speak to him. Soon!”

She squeezed my arm so hard it hurt. “What is it?” I asked. But Nurse Roberts walked in then and Emma didn’t answer.

It took me until we were getting ready for bed that night to figure it out. I don’t know why I’d not seen it before. The signs were there plain as day. I watched Emma after I lay down on my cot. She moved slowly and deliberately, not seeming as if she was really there at all. Her mind was far away, in time and place. I’d seen that look in other women’s faces, starting with my mum and Lucy.

Emma wanted her Thomas because she was pregnant. Not married, but pregnant nonetheless. If Miss Nightingale found out, she’d be packed off home and maybe never see him again.

I made her tell me the next day at a quiet moment, when we had our tea break. “Are you sure?” I asked her first of all.

“As sure as a girl can be,” she said. Her eyes had that faraway look in them, a softness that wasn’t like the Emma I knew.

“How could you let it happen? I thought you had … experience.”

“Even them what has experience gets into trouble. But I’m not going to go to no witch to have it dug out of me. I love Thomas. I want ’is child.”

“What if you can’t find him? What if something worse happens? What then?” I knew she didn’t want to think about those things, but she had to. Emma was the sort who would do something right at the moment she wanted to, without thinking of the consequences—good or bad.

She put her hands over her ears. “That’s not possible. I got myself here. That was the hardest part. Now all we need’s a chaplain.”

“But first you have to find Thomas. And Emma, I know you’re sure of him, but what if he isn’t—”

“No! He loves me. He said so before he left. And he made promises. The kind of promises a gentleman don’t go back on.”

Well, if she had a promise from him that was something. But war had such a strange effect on everyone. The men we saw here and at Scutari had pieces missing inside them. Like the constant hardship, the guns with their deadly cargoes that hit willy-nilly made them shut down and live from moment to moment. Thomas might easily have made promises when he was getting well and far away from the fighting. And he might just as easily not see the future as something much to think about while he faced the possibility of death every day.

The fact didn’t change, though, that Emma was going to have his baby, and it would be better for all of them if they could be married.

I wanted to help Emma but I didn’t know how. I told myself that was the only reason I went to find Dr. Maclean at the end of that day. I’d caught sight of him only once since we’d landed in the Crimea, just after we got on shore. I looked away from him, just like I had on the ship. I figured there’d be plenty of opportunities to talk to him once we were settled, back in the routine of hospital work.

But I never saw him in the hospital. I couldn’t think where he went. Then I heard something about doctors going right up to the front lines, and it frightened me.

I summoned my courage and went up to one of the orderlies. “We brought some doctors with us from Scutari,” I said to him. “But I don’t see them in the hospital. Do you know where they are?”

The orderly first shrugged and started to turn away. “Dunno. Got things to do.”

I caught his sleeve. He turned back to me, this time with a faint spark of interest in his eyes. I was ashamed of myself, but I figured the only way I would get an answer would be to make him think there was something in it for him. I opened my eyes wide and stared into his—bloodshot and yellowish as they were. “Please. It’s important that I find out.”

“Well, Miss …” He wanted me to tell him my name, but I pretended I didn’t understand. “Well, some of the doctors went up to the heights, to be near the trenches in reach of the Malakoff and the Redan and other Russian positions. There’s sickness up there, and more wounded. I heard at least one of the new doctors was with them.”

“Thank you,” I said and smiled. He tried to grab for me but I was fast and hurried out of the hospital to the nurses’ hut.

Dr. Maclean had gone to the front lines, to the trenches. I was certain of it. We couldn’t see them from Balaclava, but they weren’t above ten miles away. Each day, troops mustered and started the climb to go and relieve those who had been there for five days. The ones who returned were barely able to stand. After so much time crouched in the mud and with no hot food, it was a long way to walk.

But
, I thought,
it wasn’t so long on a horse.
There were plenty of horses in Balaclava, but most of them were as sick and tired as the men returning from the trenches. We nurses didn’t have need of horses, though. We could walk easily enough anywhere to get provisions, the only difficulty being the mud. Besides, Miss Nightingale kept as close a watch as ever on us here. And we were busy. Not the relentless, round-the-clock busy we’d sometimes be in Scutari when a ship carrying hundreds of wounded docked, but busy every day, all day long. I supposed that was more what it was like in a hospital back home, which seemed odd to me. It just didn’t feel right that more wounded didn’t come to the hospital nearest the fighting. Where did they go?

One older soldier who came in with a broken arm but was otherwise in good health was very nice to me. “What’s a sweet young girl like you doing in this godforsaken place?” he asked as I fixed his sling. And he didn’t ask it like some of the other men, who said such things with desire in their eyes.