Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

The Turks would have numbered him among the cursed. And he would not have disputed it.

Still, the next night, when Eleanor had come to his side, he had felt distinctly stronger. Revived. He felt that he could truly breathe again and see more clearly. Even his faculties seemed to have been restored.

Was that how it felt to be one of the damned?

But in Eleanor's face, he had detected something troubling; he had seen what he thought was the first glimmering of the mysterious Crimean fever, and he knew the signs well; he had noted them countless times in many others. His fears were confirmed when she swayed on her feet, spilling the soup, and the orderlies had escorted her from the ward. The following evening, when it was Moira, and not Eleanor, who came to assist him, he knew the worst.

“Where is Eleanor?” he had demanded, lifting himself on one elbow from the floor. Even that was painful; he suspected he had fractured a rib or two in the fall from his horse, but there was nothing to be done for a broken rib, and anything the surgeons might attempt would no doubt kill him.

“Eleanor's resting today,” Moira said, trying not to meet his eye as she set down the bowl of soup, still warm, and a mug of brackish water.

“The truth,” he said, clutching her sleeve.

“Miss Nightingale wishes her to gather her strength.”

“She's ill, isn't she?”

He could see the furtive look in her eye as she wiped a spoon on her apron pocket and put it into the soup bowl.

“Is it the fever? How far has it gone?”

Moira stifled a sob and quickly glanced away. “Eat your soup, while it's still hot.”

“Damn the soup. How far has it gone?” His heart seized up in his chest at the very thought of the worst. “Tell me that she's still alive.”

Moira nodded as she dabbed at her tears with a wretched excuse for a handkerchief.

“Where is she? I need to go to her.”

Moira's head shook, and she said, “That's impossible. She's in the nurses’ quarters, and can't be moved.”

“Then I'll have to go there.”

“Seeing her like this… she don't want it. And there's nothing you can do to help her.”

“I'll be the judge of that.”

He threw back the ratty blanket and staggered to his feet. The world spun around him, the dirty walls, the muslin curtains speckled with flies, the wretched bodies lying in disorderly rows all across the floor. Moira threw her arms around his waist and steadied him.

“You can't go there!” she protested. “You can't!”

But Sinclair knew that he could, and that Moira would help him to do so. He groped around the straw he'd fashioned into a pillow and pulled out the jacket of his uniform, wrinkled and soiled though it was. With Moira's reluctant help, he finished getting dressed, then lurched toward the door. It opened out onto two endless corridors, equally dim and cluttered, but leading in opposite directions. “Which way?”

Moira took his arm firmly and led him to the left. They passed room after room filled with the sick and the dying-most of them silent, a few softly muttering to themselves. The ones who were in such agony or delirium that they could not be kept quiet were given a blessed dose of the opium, and it was simply hoped that they would not awaken again. Occasionally, they passed orderlies or medical officers who gave them a curious glance, but by and large the hospital was so vast, and everyone working in it so overwhelmed by their own duties and responsibilities, no one could spare any further concern.

Since the hospital had originally served as a barracks, it was built as an enormous square, with a central courtyard sufficient for mustering thousands of troops, and towers at each of the four corners. The nurses’ quarters were in the northwest tower, and Sinclair had to lean heavily upon Moira's ample arm and shoulder as they mounted the narrow, winding stairs. When they came to the first landing, they saw the glow of a lantern descending toward them, and Moira had to usher Sinclair quickly into a shallow recess. As the light came closer, Moira stepped forward and said, “Evening, mum,” and from the shadows Sinclair saw that it was Miss Nightingale herself, lamp in hand, a black lace handkerchief draped over her white cap, whom she had greeted.

“Good evening, Mrs. Mulcahy,” she replied. The white collar and cuffs and apron she wore stood out in the lantern glow. “I expect you are returning to your friend's side.”

“That I am, mum.”

“How is she? Has her fever abated at all?”

“Not so's you'd notice, mum.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. I shall look in on her when I have finished my rounds.”

“Thank you, mum. I know she would appreciate that.”

As Miss Nightingale trimmed her lamp, Sinclair held his breath in the dark corner.

“As I recall, the two of you enlisted in this mission together, did you not?”

“We did, mum.”

“And you shall return from it together, too,” she said. “Just be sure that the bonds of friendship, however strong, do not divert you from our more general purpose here. As you know, we are-all of us-forever under a magnifying glass.”

“Yes, mum. Indeed, mum.”

“Good night, Mrs. Mulcahy.”

And then, in a rustle of black silk, Miss Nightingale continued down the steps, and when the light from her lamp was gone, Sinclair stepped out of the shadows. Moira said nothing, but beckoned him on. At the next landing, he heard the voices of several nurses, wearily exchanging the news of the day-one was describing a pompous officer who had demanded that she stop dressing an infantryman's wound in order that she might fetch him a cup of tea- while others were washing up. Moira put a finger to her lips and led him up yet another flight, to the very top of the tower, where he found a tiny alcove with a tall window overlooking the dark blue waters of the Bosporus.

Moira, lifting her skirts from the floor, hurried to the side of the bed and whispered, “Look who I've brought you, Ellie.”

Before Eleanor could even turn her head on the pillow, Sinclair had knelt by the bedside and taken hold of her hand. It was limp and hot, damp to the touch.

Her gaze was unfocused, and she seemed strangely annoyed at the interruption; he doubted that she had actually registered his presence. The fever, as he well knew, could blur the line between fancy and reality.

“If the instrument is out of key,” she said, “then it ought not to be played.”

Moira met his eye, as if to confirm that Eleanor went in and out of sensibility.

“And put the music back in the bench. That's how it gets lost.”

She was back in England-perhaps at her family home, or more probably at the parsonage, where she had told him she once used to go to practice the piano. He pressed the back of her hand to his lips, but she pulled it away and whisked it above her blanket, as if trying to scatter a horde of flies. They were everywhere in the hospital wards, but here, he noticed, so high up in the tower and facing the sea, there were none.

How, he wondered, could he get rid of Moira? To do what he needed to do-what had to be done to save Eleanor's life-he would need to be alone and unobserved. Moira was wringing a cloth in a bucket of water, then dabbing at Eleanor's face with it.

“Moira, can you get some port wine, do you think?”

“More easily said than done,” she replied, “but I'll try.” Moira, no fool, handed him the cloth, then tactfully withdrew.

Sinclair studied Eleanor's face in the moonlight. Her skin had a hectic flush, and her green eyes glittered with a mad delight. She was not aware of her own suffering; for all intents and purposes, she wasn't even there. Her spirit had left her body and was traveling in the Yorkshire countryside. But her body, he feared, would soon go, too. He had seen a hundred soldiers rant and rave, mutter and laugh, just like this, before suddenly turning their heads to the wall and dying with a single breath.