Had Kristian done that too? Was he the one she had gone to? As Marianne had? Funny, gentle, wise Kristian, with whom she had shared so many moments of understanding, to whom she did not need to explain the pain or the laughter of thoughts-Kristian, whose face she could see every time she closed her eyes, whom she longed to touch, though she knew she must never yield to the temptation. It would break the delicate unspoken barrier between a love that was acceptable and one that was not. To bring shame to him would be unbearable.
Shame! Could the man she knew possibly be the same man who would do what she had seen? And perhaps worse-far worse? The thought was sickening, but she could not cast it out of her mind. The picture was there in front of her every time she closed her eyes.
And then a thought came which was immeasurably more hideous. Had Prudence Barrymore known? Was that what he had begged her not to tell the authorities? Not simply the Board of Governors of the hospital, but the police? And had he killed her to keep her silent?
She leaned against the wall, overwhelmed with misery. Her brain refused to work. There was no one she could turn to. She dared not even tell Monk. It was a burden she would have to carry silently, and alone. Without realizing the full enormity of it, she chose to bear his guilt with him.
Chapter 6
Hester found hospital routine increasingly difficult. She obeyed Mrs. Flaherty because her survival depended upon it, but she found herself grinding her teeth to keep from answering back, and more than once she had to change a sentence midway through in order to make it innocuous. Only the thought of Prudence Barrymore made it possible. She had not known her well. The battlefield was too large, too filled with confusion, pain, and a violent, sickening urgency for people to know each other unless they had had occasion to work together. And chance had dictated that she had worked with Prudence only once, but that once was engraven on her memory indelibly. It was after the battle of Inkermann, in November of '54. It was less than three weeks after the disaster of Balaclava and the massacre resulting from the Light Brigade's suicidal charge against the Russian guns. It was bitterly cold, and relentless rain meant that men stood or marched in mud up to their knees. The tents were worn with holes and they slept wet and filthy. Their clothes were growing ragged and there was nothing with which to mend them. They were underfed because supplies were in desperate straits, and they were exhausted with constant labor and anxiety.
The siege of Sebastopol was achieving nothing. The Russians were dug in deeper and deeper, and the winter was fast approaching. Men and horses died of cold, hunger, injuries, and above all disease.
Then had come the battle of Inkermann. It had been going badly for the British troops to begin with, and when they finally sent for the French reinforcements, three battalions of Zouaves and Algerians coming in at a run, bugles blowing, drums beating and their general shouting encouragement in Arabic, it had become a rout. Of the forty thousand Russians, over a quarter were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. The British lost six hundred killed, the French a mere hundred and thirty. In each case three times as many were wounded. The whole battle was fought in shifting, swirling mists, and as often as not men stumbled on the enemy by chance, or were lost, and injured their own men in the confusion.
Hester could recall it vividly. Standing in the warm sunny London hospital ward, she did not even need to close her eyes to see it in her mind, or feel the cold, and hear the noise, the cries and groans, the voices thick with pain. Three days after the battle the burial parties were still working. She could see in her dreams their bent forms, huddled against the howling wind, shovels in their hands, heads down, shoulders hunched, trudging through the mud; or stopped to lift another corpse, often frozen in the violent positions of hand-to-hand fighting, faces disfigured with terror, and gored by terrible bayonet wounds. At least four thousand Russians were heaped in communal graves.
And the wounded were continually being discovered in the scrub and brushwood, screaming.
Hour after hour the surgeons had labored in the medical tents, striving to save lives, only to have men die on the long rough cart journeys to the ships, and then by sea to Scutari, where, if they survived that, they would die in the hospital of fevers or gangrene.
She could recall the smell and the exhaustion, the dim light of lanterns swaying, their yellow glare on the surgeon's face as he worked, knife or saw in his hand, striving above all to be quick. Speed was everything. There was seldom time for such niceties as chloroform, even though it was available. And many preferred the 'stimulant' of a well-used knife rather than the silent slipping away into death of anesthetics.
She could remember the numberless white faces of men, haggard, shocked with injury, the knowledge of mutilation, the scarlet, and the warm smell of blood, the neat pile of amputated limbs just outside the tent flap in the mud.
She could see Prudence Barrymore's face, eyes intent, mouth drawn tight with emotion, smears of blood on her cheek and across her brow where she had pushed her hair out of her eyes. They had worked in silent unison, too weary to speak a word when a glance would serve. There was no need to express an emotion which was so completely shared. Their world was one of private horror, pity, need, and a kind of terrible victory. If one could survive this, then Hell itself could offer little worse.
It was not something you could call friendship; it was at once less and more. The sharing of such experiences created a bond and set them apart from all others. It was not something that could be told to another person. There were no words with a meaning both could understand which would impart the physical horror or the heights and depths of emotion.
It brought an extraordinary kind of loneliness that Prudence was gone, and a driving anger that it should be in this way.
On night duty-which Mrs. Flaherty gave her whenever she could; she disliked Crimean nurses and all the arrogance and the change they represented-Hester would walk around the wards by lamplight, and past memories crowded in on her. More than once she heard a dull thud and turned around with a shudder, expecting to see a rat stunned as it dropped off the wall, but there was nothing except a bundle of sheets and bandages and a slop pail.
Gradually she distinguished the other nurses and spoke to them when she had a natural opportunity. Very often she simply listened. They were frightened. Prudence's name was mentioned often, to begin with, with fear. Why had she been murdered? Was there a madman loose in the hospital, and might any one of them be next? Inevitably there were stories of sinister shadows in empty corridors, sounds of muffled screams and then silence, and almost every male member of staff was the subject of speculation.
They were in the laundry room. The huge coppers were silent, no clanking of steam in the pipes, no hissing and bubbling. It was the end of the day. There was little left to do but fold and collect sheets.
'What was she like?' Hester asked with casual innocence.
'Bossy,' an elderly nurse replied, pulling a face. She was fat and tired, and her red-veined nose bore mute witness to her solace in the gin bottle. 'Always telling other people what to do. Thought having been in the Crimea meant she knew everything. Even told the doctors sometimes.' She grinned toothlessly. 'Made 'em mad, it did.'
There was laughter all around. Apparently, however unpopular Prudence might have been at times, the doctors were more so, and when she clashed with them, the women were amused and were on her side.
'Really?' Hester made her interest obvious. 'Didn't she get told off for it? She was lucky not to be dismissed.'
'Not her!' Another nurse laughed abruptly, pushing her hands into her pockets. 'She was a bossy piece, all right, but she knew how to run a ward and care for the sick. Knew it better than Mrs. Flaherty, although if you say I said that, I'll push your eyes out.' She put down the last sheet with a thump.
'Who is going to tell that vinegar bitch, you stupid cow?' the first woman said acidly. 'But I don't think she was that good. Thought she was, mind.'
'Yes she was!' Now the second woman was getting angry. Her face was flushed. 'She saved a lot of lives in this God-awful place. Even made it smell better.'
'Smell better!' There was a guffaw of laughter from a big red-haired woman. 'Where d'ya think yer are, some gennelman's 'ouse? Gam, ya fool! She thought she were a lady, not one o' the likes of us. A sight too good to work
