Hope - Lesley Pearse [187]
But for days Hope was too awestruck by the sheer volume of soldiers – someone said there were over 70,000 – and the chaos and intense activity going on all around her, to make any real sense of how they were being organized, if at all. One minute men were in full uniform on parade, their tents and kits under inspection. The next they would be lounging on the ground smoking or drinking, only to be galvanized later by some unseen force into moving tents, unloading equipment or collecting wood.
She heard the laughter of soldiers’ wives washing clothes in the river, and when she saw them splashing around like children she was tempted to join them, for it was terribly hot, but she knew such behaviour would be noted, and disapproved of.
Without Queenie she would have been dreadfully lonely, as Bennett was part of a team of both French and English doctors who were supervising the overhaul of the hospital in Varna town. He said it was a far more hopeless case even than Scutari, full of fleas and vermin, with no drainage, more suitable for cattle than the sick. But Queenie had many of Betsy’s attributes, and was just as saucy, opinionated and full of life. Her cooking skills were non-existent and she had no idea of hygiene, but she was a very good scavenger, able to get practically anything Hope wanted or needed. She was also great fun to be with.
‘The water is getting terribly muddy,’ Hope said as she and Queenie approached the river to wash some clothes. They had been in Varna for a month now, and though it had seemed a very pleasant place to camp at first, now, with so many thousands of men living here, it was fast becoming very squalid.
‘It would do, wouldn’t it, wif all those great horses trampling about in it,’ Queenie replied. ‘S’pose you expects ’em to line up like gentlemen and drink one by bleedin’ one?’
Hope laughed. Queenie’s squeaky little voice amused her even when she wasn’t trying to be funny. ‘No, I don’t expect that, but they could all drink further downstream and leave this part clear for us to drink. And what’s that floating in there?’ She pointed to what looked like animal innards floating by.
‘Looks like someone killed a sheep or sommat,’ Queenie replied. ‘Filthy bastard chucking it in the river!’
Bennett had already pointed out that the camp’s position by lakes surrounded by marshland was unhealthy because of the hordes of mosquitoes that drove them all mad at night. Now that the river, which had been crystal-clear when they arrived, was looking so dirty, both he and Hope were afraid the troops might become sick, for in this heat they were drinking the water copiously.
‘In future we’ll get our water from right up there.’ Hope pointed further up, where no one bathed and horses rarely quenched their thirst. ‘And we’ll boil it for drinking.’
Queenie rolled her eyes with impatience. ‘Oh, come on, Mrs Meadows, I can’t be doing wif trekking right up there in the hot sun! The water’s the same wherever we gets it from.’
‘It isn’t,’ Hope said firmly. ‘There’s already enough men complaining of diarrhoea, we don’t want anything worse appearing.’
But a month later something far worse had appeared.
Cholera.
It was only in the French camp so far, and the English troops had already moved camp further away from the marshes as a precaution, but there was unease everywhere.
Hope, who probably knew this disease better than anyone else in her immediate circle, was very frightened. She knew it could decimate a whole regiment, and although every single soldier knew he might die in a battle, that at least was a noble end.
She’d got to know many of the men now; she’d dressed the backs of those who had been flogged for drunkenness, she’d reproved some for stuffing themselves with unripe fruit and giving themselves stomach aches. She’d written letters home for two or three who couldn’t read or write, and pleaded and cajoled others to