Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (49 page)

Her dark hair, parted in the middle, was tied back severely under a bonnet.
 
Though intensely weary, she walked with fluid movements, like a ghost carrying an eerie spectral light.
 
Her expression softened with compassion as she looked at all the miserable soldiers.
 
In a low voice she soothed those men who were conscious and could look at her.
 
She promised to write a letter home for one, gave a cup of water to another.
 

When she came to Nemo, she looked at him in surprise.
 
“You’re not one of the British troops.
 
Do you speak English?
 
Can you understand me?”

Nemo nodded.
 
“I am French, but I speak English.”

She brightened, then spoke to him in his own language.
 
“What are you doing here, Monsieur?
 
You were wounded on the battlefield.
 
This hospital is full of the survivors of the British Light Brigade.”

“I was . . . with them, at the wrong time, Mademoiselle,” Nemo said.
 
“I didn’t have any choice.
 
A lieutenant said he would shoot me if I didn’t ride in as part of their foolish charge.”

A look of disgust crossed the woman’s face, making her appear much older.
 
“All officers should be forced to spend a day here in the hospital.
 
They would see what destruction their stupidity causes.
 
I have written repeated requests for additional supplies.”
 
She gestured helplessly.
 
“There aren’t enough medicines, or beds -- not even rags for bandages.
 
How can I tend the sick under these conditions?”
 
She took a deep breath, as if forcing back her despair.
 
“Who is your commanding officer?
 
We must report you to the French forces.”

Nemo let out a bitter sigh.
 
“Every contingent here is so confused with bureaucracy, I’m surprised they can find the latrines by themselves.”

He explained what he had been doing to improve the conditions, and the woman raised her eyebrows appraisingly.
 
“So you’re not just one of the killers, then?
 
Very good, Monsieur.
 
What is your name?”
 
He told her, and then asked the nurse to introduce herself.
 
The other men watched, envying his conversation with her.
 

“I was born in Florence, so my father gave me that name -- Florence Nightingale.
 
I was shipped to the Crimea by the British Secretary of War to help, and not long after I arrived, that idiotic attack at Balaclava happened.
 
Now there are more wounded than I know what to do with.
 
I have thirty-eight nurses and, just in one day, close to five hundred wounded in a hospital that was never meant to be used as such a facility.”

Florence Nightingale frowned again, stealing beauty from her beatific face, then she smiled in such a generous way that it struck to Nemo’s heart.
 
“We shall tend you as best we can.
 
Many others will die here, and I can’t help that, but I will give comfort wherever I can.
 
I promise not to let anyone travel that long, dark road due to neglect on my part or on the part of my nurses.”

Nemo touched his injured side.
 
She looked at the old dressing, her face awash with despair, but she drove back the emotion.
 
“You’ll survive, Monsieur Nemo.
 
Your wound is serious, but not life-threatening unless it becomes infected.
 
Of all the casualties I’ve seen in this endless war, three-quarters have died from disease or ill-treatment, rather than the wounds themselves.”

Florence Nightingale stood straight, her face hard again.
 
“But that will change.”
 
She touched the bandages and shook her head.
 
“This needs a fresh dressing, but I have no more cloth.
 
In fact, we are boiling uniforms cut from dead soldiers just so we can tear them into strips for bandages.
 
I will do what I can.”
 
She gave him a wan smile, indicating the conversation was over.
 
“Thank you for allowing me to practice my French.”

Stern again, she pointed a finger at him.
 
“My main command for you, André Nemo, is to get better -- but not completely well, because they will send you back to the battlefield.
 
Since your own commanding officers cannot keep track of you, I need you to heal so you can help me clean this place and tend the other soldiers.”

He smiled back, then winced as another bolt of pain shot through his ribs.
 
Her orders made more sense than anything he’d heard from true military commanders.
 
“I will do my best to obey you, Mademoiselle Nightingale.”

v

Sitting with other wounded men in the crowded hospital, Nemo ate a thin gruel, drank copious amounts of tea, and tended his own injury.
 
The smelly air was heavy with the sounds of coughing, groaning men.
 
The nurses couldn’t possibly do enough to help their patients -- and given few resources, supplies, materials, or even personal vigor, Nemo could think of little he could do to help.

After his days aboard the
Coralie
, then living alone on the rugged island, and even during the balloon trip across Africa, Nemo had learned some first aid.
 
As a healthy 26-year-old, his stamina worked to his advantage.
 
Most of the other injured men had lived in trenches for months during the siege of Sevastopol, and were much worse off.

Soldiers in the infirmary rooms smoked cigarettes, a paper-wrapped form of tobacco that had recently come into fashion during the war.
 
But the acrid smoke did little to mask the hospital’s sour stench of sickness, chemicals, and death.

One night, the man with two splinted arms unexpectedly died from a blood clot.
 
His one-legged companion wallowed in such deep depression that Nemo was convinced the man wanted his stump to fester with gangrene.
 
The peripheral horrors of war continued to dismay him, and he did not understand why people had to do such things to each other.

When Nemo attempted to walk, he could feel the bones and skin knitting in his side.
 
Since he was more mobile than most, he gave up his hard pallet to a more seriously injured soldier.
 
Still, he limped around like Victor Hugo’s famous hunchback.
 
Every evening Florence Nightingale took her lamp and walked the halls of the huge barracks hospital, one floor after another, speaking softly to the wounded soldiers.
 
She did it without complaining.
 

Nightingale’s nurses were as devoted as she, and worked just as hard.
 
The driven women took shifts sleeping for a few hours apiece, then continued their duties.
 
The soldiers called them “angels.”
 
Indeed, the dark-dressed women were the only spot of brightness in the gloomy hospital.

Nemo and other half-healed victims rinsed and boiled rags for bandages, swept the floors, and removed bodies.
 
Piles of corpses were stacked downwind from the hospital windows, and daily funeral pyres blazed high.
 
Nightingale insisted that rapid disposal of cadavers and amputated limbs was crucial to prevent the spread of disease.

Sitting at her wobbly, splintered desk, she wrote dozens of letters and pleas for supplies.
 
She even sent notes via the new telegraph lines used by war correspondents and army commanders.
 
When she insisted that her demands be transmitted back home, no telegraph operator dared to stand in her way.

The nurses had sent the required documentation to the French commanders regarding Nemo’s injury -- unfortunately, the old Napoleonic veterans had not even noticed the loss of a lone engineer.
 
If he’d been killed on the battlefield at Balaclava, no letter of condolence would have been written, no death certificate signed.
 
Caroline would never have known his fate.

Forgotten, Nemo was content to remain here helping the nurses. . . .

On November fourth, the Russians again attempted to break the siege, this time striking toward the village of Inkerman.
 
The British, French, and Turks once again drove them back, but it was an expensive victory for a relatively minor battle.
 

After the horrific fighting at Inkerman, wagons hauled bleeding men to the giant hospital barracks where there were no more beds.
 
Nightingale appealed to the army commanders for supplies and assistance, but they refused to lend any of their troops.
 
Nemo and a few volunteers worked harder, but he didn’t mind.
 
The toil drove back boredom and made him forget the twinges of pain.

In the midst of this chaos, a tall, lean man came in search of Nemo: the green-turbaned Turkish commander who had noticed him building siege towers.
 
With a retinue of burly personal warriors, the haughty caliph marched through the hospital, asking questions until he tracked down the engineer.

Florence Nightingale and her nurses were too occupied with emergency duties and triage to waste time with these Turks who, unlike their fellow countrymen, did not lift a finger to help in the frenzied emergency.
 
The caliph discovered Nemo himself, however.
 
Five armed guards stood behind him, dressed in white garments, with ceremonial sabers in their sashed belts and rifles over their shoulders.
 
None of them seemed interested in the war or the politics.

“You are the engineer?” the caliph said in passable French.
 
He studied Nemo’s features.
 
“I have come to take you away.”

“I am busy.”
 
Nemo continued tearing strips of cloth for bandages.
 
“You have no right to command here, sir.
 
I don’t even know who you are.”

The Turk’s skin flushed darker, making the lightning bolt scar on his cheek stand out.
 
“This is a British hospital.
 
You are a French soldier.
 
I have obtained papers to take you to your appropriate assignment.”
 
The caliph held out a sheet of paper that was written in unintelligible Turkish.

“I have work to do.”
 
Nemo gestured around him.
 
“Can’t you see all the wounded?”

“They should have died on the battlefield.”
 
The green-turbaned man jabbed a finger against Nemo’s bandaged ribs.
 
“You have been deemed sufficiently healed and should no longer take up space in this hospital.
 
You will come with me.”

Florence Nightingale bustled in, her sweat-soaked hair in disarray, her gray dress spotted with blood.
 
She hurried over, wearing a stern expression.
 
“What do you want with this man, sir?
 
I need him here.”

“The engineer is to come away with me.
 
The British Hospital Administrator has given orders that no French soldier may be tended here.
 
British supplies are to be used only for British victims apparently.
 
No French, or Sardinians, or apparently Turks.”

“We’re supposed to be allies,” Nemo said, digging in his heels.

“We’re supposed to be a
hospital
,” Nightingale snapped.
 
“We tend the wounded without regard to which flag they salute.
 
This man is too badly wounded to go back to the battlefield.”

“Nevertheless,” the caliph said, squaring his shoulders.
 
His bald guards put their hands on the hilts of their scimitars.
 
“He does not belong here.
 
It is simply a bureaucratic matter.”

Florence Nightingale sagged.
 
Like Nemo, she was all too familiar with the paperwork and ineptitude that characterized this entire war.