A sudden, fearful death (25 page)

"Oh! I'm sorry. It's just that
I get so furious!"

Callandra smiled, and said nothing.

* * * * *

The following two days were hot and
sultry. Tempers became short. Jeavis seemed to be everywhere in the hospital,
getting in the way, asking questions which most people found irritating and
pointless. The treasurer swore at him. A gentleman on the Board of Governors
made a complaint to his member of Parliament. Mrs. Flaherty lectured him on
abstinence, decorum, and probity, which was more than even he could take. After
that he left her strictly alone.

But gradually the hospital was
getting back to its normal routine and even in the laundry room they spoke less
of the murder and more of their usual concerns: husbands, money, the latest
music hall jokes, and general gossip.

Monk was concentrating his
attention on learning the past and present circumstances of all the doctors,
especially the students, and of the treasurer, chaplain, and various governors.

It was late in the evening and
still oppressively warm when Callandra went to look for Kristian Beck. She had
no real reason to speak to him; she had to manufacture one. What she wished was
to see how he was bearing up under Jeavis's interrogations and less-than-subtle
implication that Beck had had some shameful secret which he had begged Prudence
Barrymore not to reveal to the authorities.

She had still no firm idea what she
was going to say as she walked along the corridor toward his room, her heart
pounding, nervousness making her mouth dry. In the heat after the long
afternoon sun on the windows and roof, the air smelled stale. She could almost
distinguish the cloying smell of blood from bandages and the acridness of
waste. Two flies buzzed and banged blindly against the glass of a window.

She could ask him if Monk had
spoken to Mm, and yet again assure him of Monk's brilliance and his past successes.
It was not a good reason, but she could not bear the inaction any longer. She
had to see him and do what she could to allay the fear he must feel. Over and
over she had imagined his thoughts as Jeavis made his insinuations, as he saw
Jeavis's black eyes watching him. It was impossible to argue or defend oneself
against prejudice, the irrational suspicion of anything or anyone who was
different.

She was at his door. She knocked.
There was a sound, a voice, but she could not distinguish the words. She turned
the handle and pushed the door wide.

The scene that met her burned
itself into her brain. The large table which served as his desk was in the
center of the room and lying on it was a woman, part of her body covered with
a white sheet, but her abdomen and upper thighs clearly exposed. There were
swabs bright with blood, and a bloodstained towel. There was a bucket on the
floor, but with a cloth over it so she could not see what it contained. She had
seen enough operations before to recognize the tanks and flasks that held ether
and the other materials used to anesthetize a patient.

Kristian had his back to her. She
would recognize him anywhere, the line of his shoulder, the way his hair grew
on his neck, the curve of his high cheekbone.

And she knew the woman also. Her
hair was black with a deep widow's peak. Her brows were dark and unusually
clearly marked, and there was a small neat mole on her cheek level with the
corner of her eye. Marianne Gillespie! There was only one conclusion: Sir
Herbert had denied her—but Kristian had not. He was performing the illegal
abortion.

For seconds Callandra stood frozen,
her tongue stiff, her mouth dry. She did not even see the figure of the nurse
beyond.

Kristian was concentrating so
intently upon what he was doing, his hands moving quickly, delicately, his eyes
checking again and again to see the color of Marianne's face, to make sure she
was breathing evenly. He had not heard Callandra's voice, nor the door opening.

At last she moved. She backed out
and pulled the door after her, closing it without sound. Her heart was beating
so violently her body shook, and she could not catch her breath. For a moment
she was afraid she was going to choke.

A nurse passed by, staggering a
little from fatigue, and Callandra felt just as dizzy, just as incapable of
balance. Hester's words came back into her mind like hammer blows. Sir
Herbert's daughter had gone to a secret abortionist and he had maimed her,
operated so clumsily she would never be a normal woman again, and never be free
from pain.

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 with scrubwomen and domestics. Got
ideas about being a doctor, she 'ad. Right fool, she was, poor cow. Should have
heard what his lordship had to say about that."