Silence for the Dead (10 page)

Martha yawned. “Yes, and the inventory goes to Matron in the morning. She always checks, so you can't cut corners. Write a nightly report and leave it in the desk drawer; Boney takes it to her every day. Oh, goodness—I have to get up or I'll fall asleep where I'm sitting.” She moved to rise, but when she put her hand down on the mattress, she stopped. “What's this?” She picked up the locket and peered at it.

“I found it,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “It was under the bed. It isn't mine.”

“This was Maisey's.” Martha turned it over in her hands. “She must have left it.”

“Is that Nurse Ravell? The one who was here before me?”

Martha nodded. “Her initials are engraved on the back, just here.”

I looked closely as she showed me. “Martha, don't you think it strange that she left her boots and her locket behind?”

Martha frowned, uneasy. “Perhaps. She was an odd girl.”

“What did she say when she left?”

Now Martha looked away. “Nothing. She didn't speak to us, that is. We didn't see her when she left.”

“What does that mean?”

“She went on night shift one night, and in the morning she was gone.”

I could do nothing but stare.

Martha glanced at me, caught the look on my face. “I'm sure there was nothing strange about it. She kept to herself, that's all. Perhaps she'd just had enough.”

“Martha, for God's sake. She left in the middle of the night?”

“Not necessarily.” She bit her lip. “She could have gone at dawn.”

Something uneasy turned in my stomach. Portis House was far from anything, deliberately so. How would a girl get out of here alone, in the dark or in the first reaches of light? Had she walked all the way across the bridge? What made her want to leave so badly that she would walk out during a shift, leaving her boots, her locket, and her book behind?

After Martha had gone, I pulled the book from under my pillow again. A page at the front featured a drawing of Florence Nightingale treating the wounded in the Boer War, etched in ink. She was a female silhouette in long sleeves and Victorian skirts carrying a lantern across a battlefield, its light shining from the folds of her cloak. On the ground before her a wounded man reached up, begging for help, his gaze on her benevolent face.
The Lady with the Lantern
, the caption read. And beneath it:
The angel of the battlefield, which every nurse should aspire to be.

I looked at Florence for a long time. She was as perfect, as impassive, as the statue of Mary outside, but there was something about the way she stood, the confident sway of her cloak, that I found myself liking. They drew her as pretty, but I imagined her as tough as old leather. I scoffed at myself and turned back to the chapter on hypodermics.

The first time I read the chapter, I stumbled over words I didn't know, so I read it again. I stared at the diagrams, memorizing them, and then I read the chapter yet again, sentence by sentence. I'd never had much education, but education, in my experience, was no match for doggedness. If I wanted to learn something, I was capable of studying it in a book until I understood it, no matter how long it took. In the end it was a matter of winning over the words that refused to obey, of comprehending them through sheer determination.

No one had ever accused me of a lack of determination.

I hadn't thought I'd sleep, but as the faint sun vanished into darkness, as I heard the creaks and groans of the house around me, and somewhere below me the men sat to supper, my eyes drifted closed. I put the book under my pillow again, the image of Dr. Oliver's soft hands behind my eyelids, replaying the way those hands had handled the hypodermic, pushed the needle under the skin. The words from the pages pricking my brain like pins, I drifted to sleep.

Night shift was coming, after all, and I had to be ready for the dreams.

Night Shift

We don't want to lose you but we think you ought to go, For your King and your country both need you so. We shall want you and miss you, But with all our might and main, We shall cheer you, thank you, kiss you, When you come back again.

—“Your King and Country Want You,” 1914

N
ina woke me at ten o'clock, and as I was still dressed I had only to wash my face, tidy my braids, and don my boots. As the other girls went to bed, I descended the darkened spiral servants' stairs to the lower floors.

My first stop was the kitchen. The few hours I'd slept had strangely refreshed me, and I was ravenous. The entire house was dark; I had to feel my way down the corridor on the servants' level, but I found the kitchen lit with two paraffin lamps, one perched on a high counter and the other in the center of the wooden worktable in the middle of the room, around which sat four figures in the postures of people just recently off their feet.

“Hullo,” I said, recognizing Paulus Vries's large frame and the wide pot-bellied figure of the head cook, who I thought was called Nathan. “Is there any food?”

Nathan moved his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other and regarded me flatly. “You night shift?”

“Yes.”

“Might be something for you. Bammy, check the stew pot.”

The smallest figure rose from the table, and I saw it was a kitchen boy, no older than sixteen. He wore a greasy cap of fabric tied behind his head like Nathan's and a set of stained and well-worn cook's whites. He lumbered to the darkened stovetop without a word. None of the other figures moved; they sat with their hands resting on their thighs or on the tabletop, their fingers curled, their shoulders a little slouched. It was the timeless pose of a person first sitting down after an endlessly long shift on his feet, wanting nothing but to sit and not think and not be ordered somewhere for a few blessed minutes, and I recognized it well.

I pulled up a chair for myself. Bammy thumped a bowl of stew and a slice of bread down before me, even remembering a spoon. I thanked him and he responded only by dropping into his chair again, sprawling as if he'd just done an expedition to Kilimanjaro.

“So you're on night shift.” Paulus's accent sounded exotic in the humdrum English kitchen. “Did you sleep?”

“A little,” I said between bites. “Did you?”

“I'm finished,” he replied. “I'm off now. You have Roger tonight.” He nodded to the fourth figure at the table, a second orderly much smaller than himself. Roger was tidy, with brown hair slicked neatly back from his forehead. He looked at me with a flinty stare and nodded.

“All right,” I said. “Why are the lights out? Why the lamps?”

“Electricity goes off at night,” said Paulus. “We're not on the main lines all the way out here—far from it. The electricity runs off generators, and we turn 'em off at night.”

I stopped tearing my piece of bread. “There's no electricity all night?”

“No.” This was still Paulus. “We kept the generators on at first, but they kept malfunctioning at night—something kept getting into 'em, though we don't know what. We don't have the manpower or the supplies to repair them every day, so we decided to turn them off at night. No need to light this whole place anyway.”

“Well, that's wonderful,” I said, “except for the part in which no one can see.”

“We've lamps. We light 'em along the men's corridors—most of them don't like the dark. Roger gets one and so do you, to carry.”

The Lady with the Lantern,
I thought wryly. I had almost been in a good mood—something to do with the rest I'd had, and the fact that the doctors were gone. I was unsupervised for the first time since I'd arrived, and it felt a little like being a child left home when its parents are away. But at the thought of walking Portis House in the dark, my good mood drained away.

Nathan was still watching me. His expression looked like a cross between disinterest and reluctant amusement. “Your first night shift, I see.”

I tried to take another bite of stew. “Yes.”

“This house scare you?”

I wanted to sound bold, but thought of the black mold in the lav, the sounds in the walls, and said nothing.

“I hope you're not the susceptible type,” Nathan said. “Those don't last long in this place. Especially after night shift. It isn't just the nightmares. Most of the men say that something walks the halls, especially at night.”

“Nathan,” said Paulus in a warning voice.

“Oh, shut it. You know it's true. Every nurse goes running. We didn't even see the last one's tail.” He turned back to me. “Some say it's the ghosts that make the patients try to top themselves.”

“What?” I managed.

“A few have tried it,” Nathan said. “That spot outside the library, you know. That seems to be the spot they go to. The last one had stolen a blade.”

There was a long silence. I thought of that lonely door I'd seen while I sat on the lawn with Archie, how none of the men had gone near it. Bammy the kitchen boy looked at his shoes.

“They're just madmen,” Roger put in. He was perhaps over fifty years old, something I hadn't noticed when I'd first seen his dark hair. “I've done night shift plenty of times here. I never see anything walk but the sleepwalkers. These patients sleep tidy if you make 'em. We'll have a quiet night tonight.”

“You say that,” said Nathan, “but even you won't go near that library.”

“That's a bald lie,” said Roger.

“Why the library?” I broke in. I wouldn't think about suicides. I wouldn't. “Why isn't it closed with the rest of the west wing?”

“It's the isolation room,” Roger said. “They took the books out, of course. It's big, and it's secure. Keeps the patients in solitary confinement far away from the others.”

“Works like a top,” said Nathan. “Not a single man of 'em wants to go to the isolation room. Not for love or money. And not overnight.”

Dear God. “Is anyone in there now?”

“No. It's empty.” Nathan put his toothpick back between his lips. “Except for the ghosts.”

“There are no ghosts,” said Roger.

“So you say. The men know. It's getting worse, too. Did you hear the last one screaming? Said he could see something from the window.”

“He screamed because he was mad. They're all mad here, or didn't you notice?” Roger shrugged. “It's nothing to me. If they act up, day or night, they know me. They know me very well.”

“All right.” This was Paulus, who sat in his chair tilted with its front legs off the ground, rocking back and forth on his huge long legs. “Well-done, lads. You've tried your best to frighten the new night nurse. That's enough.”

“She didn't need any scaring.” Nathan grinned at me.

“Go on to bed,” said Paulus. “Bammy, you're dead on your feet. You're back on shift at six. Roger, just do your job tonight and don't tell tales. Got it?”

Paulus tilted the front of his chair back to the floor and rose. I could get no proper read on him; he'd defended me more than once, yet seemed indifferent to my existence. It didn't matter. He was large, and I wished he were on night shift instead of beady-eyed Roger.

I took the lamp Roger handed me and followed him down the corridor and back up the south stairs, thinking about the old library used as an isolation room. I could see now why Archie hadn't wanted to talk about it. I wondered why a man would try that spot in the grass, in front of the library door, to try suicide. Why more than one man would try it there.

Roger walked me to the nurse's desk. “I'll be around about,” he said. “I have duties to attend to. You may not see me, but I rarely go out of hearing distance. If one of the men gives trouble, just yell.”

He was small and slight, not much larger than me, but when I looked closer, I saw he was wiry, with nothing but gristle under his canvas shirt, and his knuckles were pitted and scarred. Another drifter from God only knew what walk of life who had found his way here. “All right.”

He smiled briefly at me with his narrow mouth, a smile that didn't reach his eyes. “If one of them has his dreams, don't go near him alone. But they'll be no trouble, I warrant. They know me.” He flexed his hands a little so the scarred muscles moved. “They know me very well.”

After he'd gone, I sat briefly at the desk, which was set in a nook in the wall and was long and thin as a toothpick. I slid open the first rickety drawer, pulling out the linens list and staring at its crabbed, inked columns. Already the words and numbers blurred. I put the list down again and pulled on the other drawers. One was empty, and the other was locked. Martha had given me a ring of keys and I pulled them from the loop at my waist, perusing them. The linen closets, Martha had explained, and the medical supply closets, and the food and tea stores. One small key fit the desk drawer, which opened to reveal a set of hypodermic needles.

They gleamed dully at me in the lamplight: four of them, set in wooden holders, detached from their syringes, the needles impossibly long. They were of wicked metal, lined up with precision, carefully waiting. Set in the compartment next to the needle heads were glass syringes, their silver plungers fully compressed, and four vials of brown liquid, unlabeled. I remembered the chapter I'd read before sleeping. A nurse would attach the needle head, draw the liquid into the syringe, and inject the patient. I shut the drawer and locked it again.

Portis House consisted of a large central section with a smaller wing tilting off on either side—the west wing, which was closed off, and the east wing, which housed all the staff rooms except the nurses'. The fenced garden was set between the curves of the two smaller wings, as if enclosed in a pair of hands. It was the central wing, easily triple the size of either of the smaller ones, that contained the men's bedrooms, with the nurses' old nursery on the floor above, the common and dining rooms on the floor below, and the kitchen and laundry in the basement.

I walked the long corridor of the main section softly in the quiet. Mullioned windows lined one wall, looking out over the front portico and the statue of Mary. The other wall had doorways to the men's bedrooms, and turns to secondary corridors lined with even more doors. I had been in this place a dozen times, but never in the dark and silence of night shift, and never alone. Pale light from the silver quarter moon gave only the faintest shimmer to the windows, the light giving up even before it hit the sills. From paraffin lamps in holders along the walls between the windows rose curls of pungent smoke.

Each man's door was, as per the rules, unlocked and open. Most had pushed their door almost closed, trying for as much privacy as possible. Perhaps, with a new night nurse on duty, they were testing how strict I'd be. I didn't much care. I wasn't of a mind to pick arguments over whether I could see into their rooms or not.

I approached the first door and read its wooden placard:

Thomas C. Hodgkins
D.O.B. 7 January 1890 Admitted 21 December 1918

Tom, the man with no memory of the war. He'd been in this place six months. I pushed the door open and looked in, noting the tidy room with its faint smell of used socks, and the heaped and snoring figure on the bed. I pulled the door to again and moved on.

It went like this, room by room. Each man was asleep, or at least pretending to be so. I moved as quietly as I could. I had just begun to hope my first “round” might be a success when from the room I was approaching came a moan and a thundering crash.

Oh, God,
I thought.
A nightmare already.
I pushed into the room to find Somersham, who'd been sedated during the afternoon session, on his knees on the floor, his bedclothes tangled around him. It looked as if he'd been trying to get up for some desperate reason.

“Somersham,” I whispered, but he didn't hear me. I raised my lamp and saw the glassy, sick look on his face and knew he was not having a nightmare. I swung around, looking in the dark for a basin. There was none, but I grabbed the pitcher on the washstand and, putting down the lamp, barely got it under his chin before he started vomiting.

He did so for a long time, though he had been asleep through supper and there was nothing in his stomach. The sound of it went on, torturous, until I was wincing. It paused only long enough for him to briefly take a breath, look up at me, and say, “I think it's stopping,” before he was bent over helplessly again.

“Somersham,” I said to him in a low voice when he stopped again. “What in the world is the matter? Is there anything I can do?”

He straightened. His hair was on end, his face slick with oily sweat. He was only twenty-one or so, and the stubble on his cheeks was sparse. His eyes rolled back, the lids closing. He threw up—or his body made the motions—one more time, and then he slouched back against the bed frame, his legs still tangled in his blankets, his fingers dropping the jug into my waiting hands.

He closed his eyes again. I stared at him, crouched and ready, imagining every kind of incurable fever. “Somersham? Are you ill?”

He moaned a little, raised one hand in a weak effort, and let it fall. I leaned forward, took his shoulders gently. “Let's get you back into bed.”

It took some doing, as even though he was young and small, he still weighed much more than I did. He tried to help, but his eyes kept rolling back in his head in that alarming way, the lids fluttering open and closed. I touched his forehead, the only thing I knew how to do. It was the sedative, I figured, wearing off and tearing him apart as it did so.

My hands were cold as I pulled the bedclothes up from the floor and tried to tuck them around him. Was this what sedatives did? Was this normal? I knew nothing—nothing. Was there something I should be doing? What if he died on me? For the first time, alone on a dark floor with a semiconscious patient, I was struck by what I had done, what monstrous thing I was pretending. He could die in an instant and I could only look on, helpless.

What had been in that injection?

He seemed to settle, the drug sucking him back into sleep again. “He's coming,” he said to me with the voice of exhaustion, unable even to open his eyes. “He's coming. I can hear him.”