A Terrible Beauty (Season of the Furies Book 1) (45 page)

Epilogue

Yorkshire, West Riding

Katherine Rutledge, formerly known to greater society as Lady Katherine Saunders, folded Belle’s last letter carefully and placed it atop the others on the table. Her shoulders slumped in defeat and although she could hear her mother’s voice ringing through her head admonishing her for her scandalous lapse in posture, she couldn’t bring herself to care enough to correct it – not this time. If he’d wanted to hurt her, deal her a near fatal blow, then he’d succeeded. She gathered the letters and tucked them into the pocket of her worn apron. Everyone was safe now. Thank God for that.

“She needed me and I wasn’t there,” Katherine whispered, though she might as well have been speaking to herself. No one around her cared about the obvious distress in her voice. He’d made certain of that – her tormentor, her husband. He’d taken everything away from her that he could – her pride, her life as she knew it. Now he’d taken away one of the few people who loved Katherine and who’d needed her.

The letters were months old and come to find out, they’d all been in danger because Seaton had come bent on his revenge. Katherine had never even known it, had never been told so that she could be on her guard. Worst yet, her husband had known, but hadn’t cared enough about her to offer her protection, or to even warn her against potential danger. A darker thought came to her. Had Jonas hoped Seaton would find her? Katherine drew in a long, shaky breath.

The last letter included an invitation to Belle’s wedding to the Earl of Stowebridge, a small affair by special license, a wedding long since past. Her husband had sent these letters on now as a taunt, another casual piece of cruelty like so many others he liked to inflict upon her. After all, in his mind she deserved them because of her utter failure as his wife.

“I hate him,” she said between her teeth, “He’s cold and heartless and if I could....”

“That’ll be enough out of you, young woman. I’ll not let you speak against the master within my earshot.” The sound of a large hand slamming against the table made her jump. She’d spoken aloud to herself having momentarily forgotten the presence of her keepers. A dangerous thing to do. The tall, older man who sat at the head of the kitchen table glared at her. “He provides the work that fills our bellies and if you want to be eating again this day or the next you’ll keep a respectful tongue in your head.” He stood up and pointed his meaty fist at the basket setting by the back door of the cottage. “You’ve chores to see to and you’d best be getting to them.” Katherine nodded, rising from her rough, wooden chair. She’d learned to heed his warnings and to stay her tongue around this man. He could make her life here easier, or far more difficult.

“And remember, lass, that as punishments go, holding up your mail for a few weeks is nothing compared to what he can do to ye. He is your master as well as mine and he can put ye in places a lot harsher than this one if he’s a mind. You keep up your sass and he just might do it.”

Katherine scurried for the door, snatching up the basket along her way. She had to remember that every one of her actions, every word she spoke was reported back to the beast she’d married. Ben was right. Her husband could do whatever he wished with her and no one would challenge him. He’d told her he’d teach her her place one way or another and Katherine knew that he hated her enough to do it. She wiped a stray tear from her cheek. She would not give in to them
.
A lady never shows her distress not matter how difficult her situation
.
She took a deep breath. He would not win. One day she would be shed of this miserable place and of Jonas Rutledge as well.

Author’s Notes

Much of my information regarding the conditions during the Crimean War came from the personal accounts of Mary Seacole, Florence Nightingale and Fanny Duberly, as well as dozens of historical articles and texts. I highly recommend the following books
:
“The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands,
”
by Mary Seacole
;
“Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Isn’t,
”
by Florence Nightingale an
d
“Mrs. Duberly’s War - The Journals and Letters from the Crimea of Fanny Duberly.
”

Florence Nightingale met with a great deal of resistance in attempting to take nurses to the Crimea and not all of it from the War Office. It was only after William Howard Russell’s harrowing accounts of the battles and the hospital conditions appeared in print that the public’s outrage forced the British government to request Miss Nightingale take a contingent of nurses to Scutari, an area of Constantinople, Turkey (now Istanbul). That was merely the beginning of her fight. The military command didn’t want her there and neither did the doctors and the existing hospital staff. Miss Nightingale found herself mocked in cartoons, in the halls of the Admiralty and in officer’s dining halls as well.

While we revere the profession of nursing today, we must remember that was sadly not the case in Miss Nightingale’s time. The only female ‘nurses’ available in the military before her intervention were untrained women, either soldier’s wives who were few and far between on the battlefield, or camp followers, women who survived by serving the needs of the soldiers as cooks, domestics and prostitutes. All of those roles were interchangeable. Nursing duties in the home were usually provided by a family member, a loyal retainer, or perhaps even a close, personal friend. Florence Nightingale looked into the future and saw nursing as a viable career option for women without family, or the means to honorably support themselves. She was passionate, even driven about this idea.

Before taking her nursing corp to the Crimea, Miss Nightingale served as the superintendent of nursing at the Harley Street Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen, the place Duncan take’s Belle after Seaton’s assault. There Belle would have seen nursing as Miss Nightingale envisioned it – the care of patients performed by trained and dedicated women, neatly dressed and well-mannered. Unfortunately, the sigma attached to the nursing profession at large took longer to eradicate.

The description of Barrack Hospital in November of 1854 in historically accurate, though I coined the phrase, ‘four mile hell.’ The accounts were disturbing to read and must have been appalling to witness. On top of the horrors of the wards, Miss Nightingale found 150 English women – the wives of soldiers abandoned per military order at the staging area of the war and told to return to England as best they could – living like animals in the basement of Barrack Hospital. After months in these conditions they were little more than living skeletons ravaged by disease and vermin. I don’t think enough can be said about the heroism of the women who faced such shocking conditions, risking their own lives to provide aid for their troops. They laid the groundwork for combat nursing throughout history.

I learned of Mary Seacole while researching Florence Nightingale’s time in the Crimea and soon became captivated by this flamboyant, ingenuous woman who by rights should never have been able to accomplish a third of what she did. Granted, there are historians who say she never did a third of the things attributed to her. Nevertheless, she had a solid reputation as a second generation herbal healer in Jamaica who gained notoriety for her work during outbreaks of cholera. Mrs. Seacole, or Mother Seacole, as she was known, preformed one of the first autopsies on a young cholera victim to determine what the disease actually did to the human body. She was lauded for her work during the Panamanian cholera outbreak of 1850 and is without a doubt one of the period’s more colorful and controversial figures.

Mary Seacole’s detractors call her little more than an opportunistic tavern owner while her supporters declare her to be the ‘Angel of the Battlefield,’ often helping to remove the fallen soldiers and administering first aid to them in the field hospitals. As with all matters in history, the truth lies somewhere between these two perspectives. Mary did attend the wounded soldiers on the wharf at Balaklava who awaited evacuation to Barrack and Buyukdere hospitals. She also treated men out of her business establishment, The British Hotel and while Mary was there during the Siege of Sevastopol, it’s hard to know the extent of her involvement at the actual battle sites. I think it’s important to remember that Mary was a simple, working woman and not independently wealth. She did not have the sanction of the crown to nurse men in the Crimea. She traveled there of her own accord. Mary Seacole was a woman of color in a predominantly white, male oriented world and responsible for making her own living. She also had friends in surprising places and was well respected among officers and among certain levels of British society. While non-military ships were routinely refused permission to unload at the Port of Balaklava, Admiral Boxer granted Mary’s personal request to do so simply because she had known his son in Jamaica.

It is tempting when reading about women such as Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole to measure their actions and accomplishments one against the other, but that’s like comparing apples and oranges. Both of these women were strong-willed, both driven to care for the sick and the infirm to the best of their abilities. They were courageous, but they followed different paths and with entirely different goals in sight and both of them are assured of their own place in history for their accomplishments.

Michael and Jules had their work cut out for them lobbying for the Medical Act of 1858. The purpose of this act was to standardize the qualifications for competent medical practitioners. It created a “Registry of General Medical Council.” A watered down version of the act passed during what came to be known as ‘The Summer of the Big Stench.’ The weather was unseasonably hot that year and Parliament remained in session due to haggling over several bills. The Thames reeked in the humid summer air and many of the nobles who were unable to leave the city for their country estates received a firsthand look at what London’s poor dealt with every year. Sheets soaked in bleach were hung up in front of windows and doors in an effort to keep out contagions and smell. It would take several more years and many new medical discoveries before the reforms sought in 1858 were completed. It is interesting to note that Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman physician to have her name entered on the Medical Register in 1859.

As we know now Lady Stowebridge suffered from Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, a form of child abuse caused by a rare mental illness. A parent, grandparent or guardian suffering from Munchausen’s will make the child in their care ill to fulfill their own need to be important, even heroic. Lady Stowebridge, caught in a loveless marriage, craved the attention of her husband and her illness led her commit acts of abuse on both Drew and her daughter-in-law.

I enjoyed writing “A Terrible Beauty,” and introducing readers to many historical figures along the way. I encourage you to read more about the Crimean War. The internet is a treasure trove of information, my friends. Those of us who enjoy historical novels know better than most that if we do not learn from our history, we are doomed to repeat it.