In the Shadow of the Lamp (26 page)

“Do you, William, take Molly to be your lawful wedded wife?”

“I—”

Will was interrupted by a
boom
so loud I felt it inside my ears, coming from behind us over the earthworks.

“Watch out!” It was Dr. Maclean. Before I could think, he ran toward us, pushing us down hard. I landed on my hand with my wrist bent back and felt something snap. But I didn’t have time to think about it because another boom came, as loud as the first.

“Those bloody Russkies! It’s not even dawn.” Thomas jumped up and away from Emma, who reached out for him. “Gotta get back to me mates.” He took off across the open ground, zigzagging and crouched, hands over his head.

“Thomas, no!” Emma screamed out, but it was too late. Just before he reached the relative safety of the trench, another shell fell a few feet away from him, exploding into fragments. He lay still on the ground. “Thomas!” Emma jumped up and started to run toward him. Will grabbed hold of her. She fought with all her might. “Let me go! He needs me! I must help him!”

The chaplain clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. I looked at Dr. Maclean. He didn’t hesitate, but took off at a run to reach Thomas where he lay.

“No!” I cried. The chaplain shot out one hand and held me back. He was quicker and stronger than I guessed he’d be. I could feel the tears on my face.

Although the shells were coming fast in a great bombardment, miraculously Dr. Maclean reached Thomas. I saw him scream something toward the trenches, and a moment later two men came out with a stretcher. With stops to duck and cover their heads, they managed to get Thomas on the canvas strung between two long poles.

“Molly.”

It was Will. In my anxiety I had almost forgotten he was there. I turned to him. His eyes were full of sadness. “Why didn’t you say?”

Say what exactly? When I wasn’t even sure myself. “I don’t know, Will. I don’t know anything.”

In that moment where I turned my attention away from Dr. Maclean and the two men carrying Thomas on the stretcher, another shell landed, just on the other side of the earthworks where we stood. Emma ran to me and clutched me, sobbing. “What will I do? What if he’s dead?”

I couldn’t say anything. I feared the worst, but that was unthinkable. While we stood there, the two men bearing the stretcher with Thomas on it came around to the protected side of the earthworks. His eyes were closed, but he didn’t have the pallor of death. Nonetheless, his legs were twisted in unnatural positions and I feared many of the bones were shattered. I kept Emma’s face turned away, but I’d already seen enough wounds to know that these were serious, and that his legs likely would both be taken off. He might live, but he would never be able to walk. Would that be living?

Emma must have sensed me staring at him because she broke free of me, looked at Thomas, and screamed. She flew to his side. “Get him to the hospital. Quick!” Emma took off her cloak and laid it over Thomas. Where was Dr. Maclean? I ran to where I could get a better view of the stretch of ground from the trenches to the earthworks, the space where Thomas had fallen.

“Don’t go any nearer, Molly!” Will said.

But I didn’t pay any attention. I saw him. He was clutching his side and limping toward us. I ran out to him, let him put his other arm over my shoulders and took his weight. A moment later Will was there, propping him up from the other side. Together we walked him the ten or so yards to safety.

“I’ll have to operate on that young man,” Dr. Maclean said, his teeth clenched.

“You’re hurt,” I said. “Let the other doctors do it. You need help.”

“No!” he yelled. He took his arm off my shoulders. “Not from you.” He turned to Will. “Or you.”

The chaplain came over. “I’ll see he gets to the hospital tent.”

I watched the two of them make their way slowly over the rough ground, down to where the hospital tent was now clearly outlined against the rising sun.

“I have to go back,” I said.

Will nodded. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

I didn’t want to say yes, but mostly because I never thought it had begun—whatever it was he wanted to be between us. Everything was so strange, so mixed up. “I don’t know, Will. I don’t know anything.”

“This place changes you. It makes things clearer.”

Did it? Not for me. Everything was cloudier and murkier than ever. I didn’t even know now what the day would bring. At least, beyond me facing Miss Nightingale with the truth of everything that happened that night.

“I’ll be seeing you, Moll,” Will said, then turned away. The bombardment had let up. Later I found out that after they fired all their guns, they had to reload. I watched Will walk slowly back across the open ground, now chopped up fresh from the shells that had hit there in the last hour.

I turned and went down to get the donkey and ride back to Balaclava alone.

C
hapter 27

When I reached the hospital tent there was lots of activity. Thomas and Dr. Maclean weren’t the only ones wounded in that early bombardment. There were some killed too. Their bodies lay in a row, covered with whatever dirty cloth could be found.

Some of the less badly wounded sat or stood outside the hospital tent, smoking if they could, holding bleeding arms or gingerly touching quickly patched up faces and heads. Those able to walk without too much trouble headed down the hill, I guessed to Mother Seacole’s, where they could get clean bandages and probably some whisky to dull the pain.

“Nurse! Come lend a hand!”

It was Dr. Hastings who, with two other doctors I didn’t recognize, was going from soldier to wounded soldier, checking them and triaging. I knew I should get back as soon as I could, but there was a good deal of work to be done here, and we weren’t so busy down in Balaclava. I fell in behind the doctor, helping the men who needed it into the tent, where they mostly had to sit on the ground since there were only one or two beds.

Thomas lay on one of them with Emma at his side, gazing into his face. His eyes were still closed. I left them alone.

It took two hours to get the wounds dressed that weren’t too serious and for the doctors to decide about the others. In that time the Russians had started up their pounding twice more, but the men were prepared, and not so many new casualties came in. Three or four of the worst cases had already been sent down to the hospital in Balaclava, on a wagon pulled by an ox. One was so bad they decided that moving him would be pointless. If he couldn’t be operated on here, he wouldn’t make even that short journey. That man was Thomas.

Once I finished helping I went in to find Emma. She sat just as before, her hand on Thomas’s forehead.

“Emma, dear,” I said, “shouldn’t you come with me?”

“Dr. Hastings says they may be able to save one leg. They’ll take off the other as soon as he … wakes up.” Emma kept her eyes focused on Thomas. “Where is Dr. Maclean?” she asked.

I’d been so occupied assisting Dr. Hastings that I didn’t have time to wonder anything, and now I realized there was no sign of him in the hospital tent or anywhere around. Then I knew. “I expect he went to Mother Seacole.”

“He’d do nothing of the kind!” Dr. Hastings came in just in time to hear what I said. “She’s a charlatan of the worst sort. She may be a decent enough nurse, but she sells the men medicine and whiskey and claims to have healing powers.”

I fingered the sachet around my neck.

“Then where is he?” Emma asked.

“I sent him down to Balaclava. He didn’t want to go, but up here we wouldn’t be able to deal with his wound. Too much chance for infection.”

I looked up at Dr. Hastings. “What sort of wound? I thought he had some shrapnel in his leg?” Dr. Maclean had shrugged off our help like he was only slightly hurt.

“In his leg and his side. I’m afraid there may be internal injuries.”

My mind was a jumble of unconnected thoughts. I must go. I must stay. What should I do? “I must return to the hospital in Balaclava. With wounded coming in they’ll need all the nurses they’ve got.”

Dr. Hastings nodded his head toward Dr. Maclean’s horse. “You might as well ride her down.”

I didn’t wait, but hiked my skirts up and climbed onto the beast’s back. I wasn’t much of a rider, but I figured I could manage. As I was about to turn the horse, Emma came running out, hair down around her shoulders, her face dirty and splotchy where tears had dried. “You tell Miss Nightingale that I won’t be coming back no more! That I’m staying here with my husband, like Mrs. Duberly!”

I nodded and sighed as I rode off. She had such hope in her face. Yet Thomas was likely to die, and soon. Only a miracle—or Emma’s love—might save him.

Balaclava seemed much closer in the daytime. I passed the huddle by the door of Mother Seacole’s dispensary—as I thought, several of the wounded from the trenches had apparently decided they’d be better off here than in the hospital tent—and the stationary engine at Kadikoy. The way was easy to find: there was only one road, and a sign pointed to Balaclava at the only turn off of that.

It was altogether too quick a ride for me to decide what I would say to Miss Nightingale. With luck, I wouldn’t see her at all. Sometimes she was so occupied with her meetings and inspections that she didn’t come to the hospital. The others must have raised the alarm though, when Emma and I weren’t there in the morning.

How did everything go so badly wrong? Our plan was to get back before anyone was awake so that nobody need know we’d left at all. Now I knew how foolish we had been. Even if we’d just got there and turned right round and come back, it would have been difficult to make it in time. I wasn’t sorry I’d stayed to help the wounded. I just wasn’t sure Miss Nightingale would see it like I did.

I went directly to the hospital, deciding that if I came in with the wounded from the trenches the others might have more sympathy for me. In addition to the wagon that had gone down earlier, three more arrived around the same time I did.

I didn’t know what to do with the horse, so I tied the reins to a fence nearby. I went up to the orderly who was admitting the men. “Who’s on the wards today?” I asked in a low voice.

“Don’t you know? I thought ye was in there with the rest of them,” he said.

“I had business to attend to,” I said, putting on my most superior expression.

“Eh, well,” he said, pointing to two stretcher bearers the way to take their cargo, a man with what looked like a serious head wound. “The usual lot, and Miss Nightingale herself. Didn’t look too pleased if you ask me.”

I didn’t ask him, and wished he hadn’t said.
Better sooner than later
, I thought. I went to check the roster. I was supposed to be in the admitting ward today, which meant I’d see the men from up above. I wondered if Dr. Maclean would be there, or if he’d been moved somewhere. I didn’t know who I dreaded seeing more: Dr. Maclean or Miss Nightingale.

“Nurse Fraser.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a command. And I would have recognized the voice anywhere.
At least I’ll get it over with
, I thought, preparing myself for the worst. I wouldn’t be any worse off than before I came, at least. “Yes, Miss Nightingale?”

“I wish a word with you, after we have finished seeing to the comfort of these men.”

So she was going to let me do my job a while longer. There was relief in that. I went from bed to bed, checking dressings, giving drinks of water, cleaning off faces. One bed was curtained off. That usually meant surgery, or a wound too bad to deal with easily. We weren’t to go behind curtains unless asked. It reminded me of the curtain I had pulled around when Dr. Maclean and I saved that soldier with appendicitis.

I was about to skirt around the curtained bed when Miss Nightingale beckoned me closer. “Nurse Fraser, there’s an unusual case I would like you to see.”

Though I was surprised she asked me after what I’d done, I followed her around the screen, and my heart nearly stopped. It was Dr. Maclean. His wounds had been revealed in all their ugliness, and he was propped up on pillows, talking through clenched teeth and sudden sharp breaths, discussing the problem with the other doctor.

“I think it missed the liver. If we keep it packed, I may live.” His face went white as the doctor probed inside the wound. So far he hadn’t noticed me.