Brendan Graham - The Brightest Day, The Darkest Night

She then gave the two younger nuns a dressing down for their concealment. They would first have to go to Reverend Mother, then prostrate themselves before the entire congregation and profess their wickedness.

‘You have betrayed the moral rectitude with which our work amongst the fallen is underpinned. Without moral rectitude we are nothing. Nothing but chaff in the wind.’

Sister Lazarus then ordered the young nuns to ‘fall on your knees in the Oratory.’ She forbade them to attend upon Ellen until ‘Reverend Mother shall make known her decision.’

Reverend Mother, a solemn, no-nonsense nun whose singsong Kerry accent long flattened by years in America, spelled it out clearly and succinctly.

Firstly to Ellen.

‘When your eyes have been given whatever restoration God may decree, you must leave here … and may God grant you forgiveness for in what jeopardy you have placed His holy work.’

A certain sadness creeping into her voice, Reverend Mother then addressed Mary and Louisa; ‘Sister Mary and Sister Veronica, you have broken trust with God and with your Sisterhood. That there can be no scandal attached to the work which we do here is the rock on which we are founded. Therefore, can neither of you remain here.’

She paused, letting the import of the banishment sink in. Then raising her Reverend Mother’s voice, pronounced the full edict of what this would entail.

‘There is now a great calamity upon this, your adopted country – a “Civil” War, they name it. For its duration, whatever length that be, I charge you to bind up the wounds of those fallen in battle. You will carry out your duties without fear or favour to either side. You will at all times remember that those who oppose each other, irrespective of uniform, are God’s creatures and created in His eternal likeness.’

Again she paused before making the final pronouncement.

‘You will be dispatched South to the battlefields and may God bestow upon you both the necessary fortitude for that work – a fortitude which, thus far, you have so inadequately failed to display.’

Ellen was bereft. What ignominy she had now visited on Mary and Louisa. To be banished. Better they had never found her, left her there to die on the dunghill of Half Moon Place. She could not speak.

They, for their part, stood beside her, heads bowed in shame, dutifully accepting their banishment.

‘Not my will but Thine,’ Ellen thought she heard Mary whisper.

The audience brought to a conclusion, Sister Lazarus ushered them out informing the young nuns that, ‘In charity, Reverend Mother has decided that you both may remain here until your mother’s treatment is complete. In the meantime you will be restricted to within convent walls and in waking hours to within the Oratory itself.’

Both Mary and Louisa nodded in silent assent, awaiting what yet further there was to come. Sister Lazarus did not hold them in suspense for long.

‘You will undertake penance and fasting as directed and converse with none other than myself, or Reverend Mother should she require it.’ Reverend Mother did not.

When Dr Thackeray’s ‘month of days’ had run its course, Ellen returned to the oculist, shepherded this time by Sister Lazarus. Little was exchanged by way of conversation between them. Sister Lazarus, Ellen guessed, no doubt praying for a miracle – that the blind might quickly see and be sent forth!

Indeed Sister Lazarus’s rigor mortis-like countenance seemed to considerably soften when Dr Thackeray, upon examination of Ellen, professed himself ‘cautiously pleased’ at her progress. Though her eyes were still impaired, she could now see more and at a greater distance, during each test through which he had put her.

‘These will improve you further,’ he said, producing a pair of spectacles of a more lightly-shaded hue than those previously stolen.

He re-dressed her eyes, advising her to ‘continue the poulticing for a further uninterrupted period of two weeks.’

Behind her, Ellen imagined Sister Lazarus’s lips move in supplication to the Almighty – that a more immediate miracle might occur.

On their homewards journey, Sister Lazarus solicitously guided Ellen, thus avoiding any mishap which might befall her … and longer extend her time at the convent.

‘God is good … God is good,’ Sister Lazarus regularly repeated to no one in particular. Ellen herself was unsure if this acclamation served purely to acknowledge the restorative powers of the Lord, or was a thanksgiving for her own resulting departure from the convent which the healing itself would precipitate.

Two weeks to the day of her visit to Dr Thackeray, Ellen, along with Mary and Louisa were quietly exited from the grounds of the Convent of St Mary Magdalen and led to Boston’s railroad station.

From there the two nuns would travel to Richmond, Virginia, and await further instructions.

At Mary and Louisa’s insistence, Ellen accompanied them, her newly constructed spectacles perched snugly on her nose. All the better with which to see the fatal tides of civil war on which they were now cast.

Union Army Military Field Hospital, Virginia, 1862

Manual of Military Surgery for the Surgeons of the Confederate States Army

‘… the rule in military surgery is absolute, viz: that the amputating knife should immediately follow the condemnation of the limb. These are operations of the battlefield and should be performed at the field infirmary. When this golden opportunity, before reaction, is lost, it can never be compensated for.’

Wearing Dr Thackeray’s spectacles, Ellen read carefully the surgery manual. The spectacles had been such a boon to her, not that she could overdo it, but a world previously closed had now again been opened.

She paused, thinking about her eyes before continuing. They had troubled her less than expected. Not that they were perfect. At times she found herself looking slightly to the right of people, as if they had imperceptibly shifted under her gaze.

Reading was problematic. She laughed to Mary about, ‘How childlike my reading skills have become.’ But, in general, she found the condition of her eyes to be of little hindrance to her work.

Dr Sawyer had been marvellous, procuring a continuation of Dr Thackeray’s soothing balm. He had also today located for her a pair of more recently developed shaded spectacles, an improvement on those given her in Boston.

‘Developed alongside those new-fangled rifle sights,’ he had told Ellen. He, Dr Shubael Sawyer, rather brusque of manner but an efficient practitioner of his profession, was the operating surgeon in the field hospital in which she, Louisa and Mary now found themselves.

‘Maybe this war, after all, will bring some benefit to humanity … though such benefits will weigh poorly enough when the balances are writ,’ Dr Sawyer had added.

These she now substituted for Dr Thackeray’s spectacles and continued with reading the manual …

‘Amputate with as little delay as possible after the receipt of the injury. In army practice, attempts to save a limb, which might be perfectly successful in civil life, cannot be made. Especially in the case of compound gunshot fractures of the thigh, bullet wounds of the knee joint and similar injuries to the leg, in which, at first sight, amputation may not seem necessary. Under such circumstances attempts to preserve the limb will be followed by extreme local and constitutional disturbance. Conservative surgery is here in error; in order to save life, the limb must be sacrificed.’

So there it was, in black and white. The saw saved lives.

In the time she had been here, Ellen had lain hands on everything she could read on medical practise. Not that there was much available. Good fortune had brought her current reading, The Confederate Manual of Surgery . A prize of war captured from the enemy. But there was a shortage of nurses for the many hospitals the war had occasioned. They had received some training from a Sister of Mercy who had then been moved to some duty elsewhere. She, like Mary and Louise, had had to learn quickly. It had been trial and error, mistakes made, while assisting at the regular stream of operations and mostly amputations.