ELIZABETH SHORTLAND STOOD alongside a hammock, her hands resting on the canvas and rocking it gently. When her patient closed his eyes – he had said his name was Gramm – she covered her mouth with her arm to mask her nausea. She had soothing ointments and bandages but nothing that could stop his rash spreading. The pustules had become as hard as a thousand beads in his skin. When they leaked, crusted and flaked, she had nothing for that either.
The outbreak had unfolded in a series of waves, eventually claiming most of Block One.
There were protestations, but Magrath had reordered the block his own way. The dead and dying were put on the ground floor, the sick on the first and the few healthy remaining in the cockloft. Elizabeth was in what had once been, according to a nailed-on sign, Mess Nine on the ground floor. She blocked out the hellish noises of the diseased, their crying and their prayers, choosing instead the creaking hammock and the shouted commands of the newly inoculated soldier-orderlies. There were already five bodies by the door, wrapped in sheets and stacked like flour bags; they would be gone to the Dead House soon enough. Gramm, she knew, would join them before the day was out. Until a month ago, she had seen only two dead bodies – her grandmother when she collapsed at home, and a prison suicide the previous summer – now, she expected at least twelve a day.
‘Mr Gramm, I have water if you’re thirsty,’ she said. She might have added, ‘It’s all I have and I’m sorry I can do no more.’ He swallowed and winced, trying to speak. She leaned in close.
‘Pray for me,’ he breathed. ‘Pray for me.’
She nodded. ‘I will remember you in my prayers.’
A slight shake of his head. ‘No, you must pray for me now.’
Elizabeth thought she understood; he hadn’t the time to wait.
Magrath had given her a count of five hundred and fifty-three smallpox cases in One, with another two hundred in the hospital. It was an epidemic. Even now, she could see a score of patients awaiting her, but she rested a hand on Gramm’s shoulder. She would pray for him, she would pray for all of them. In spite of her doubts, her feelings of inadequacy, the words came easily. They were the words of her upbringing.
‘Remember not, Lord, our iniquities,’ she said, ‘nor the iniquities of our forefathers: Spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and be not angry with us for ever.’ Gramm’s lips cracked an amen. She found she had more. They were, she knew, words for a priest, but, from her lips at that moment, they seemed to have power.
‘Unto God’s gracious mercy and protection we commit thee,’ she said. ‘The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace, both now and evermore. Amen.’ Gramm was still now and Elizabeth stepped away. ‘Amen,’ she said for him, and moved on to the next hammock.
Tilson was raging. Bound with rope, he convulsed and kicked against his restraints, the hammock swaying precariously. Magrath stepped away, Elizabeth appearing at his side. ‘He has a fire inside him,’ she said. Magrath nodded. ‘And we cannot put it out, Elizabeth, cannot get close.’
Tilson’s face seemed to have disappeared, his skin now host to a hundred sharply raised orbs. His hands and feet, too, looked fit to burst.
‘But we have to get close,’ she said, and stepped towards the hammock. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Tilson,’ called Magrath.
Elizabeth grabbed one side of the hemp with both hands, and the wild rocking ceased. The crazed shouting calmed to a babble of unrecognizable words. She steeled herself, then looked directly into his bloodied, contorted eyes and smiled.
‘Mr Tilson,’ she said, her words fighting his delirium, ‘I’m Elizabeth Shortland, and Dr Magrath is here, too. You are not forgotten, and we are doing all we can for you.’
Magrath handed her the jug of water and she dribbled some over Tilson’s swollen, contorted lips. He swallowed some, coughed some up, then spoke again. This time, she recognized the words, but they came fast.
‘My Sarah is here somewhere,’ he said, his voice thin and rasping. ‘She needs me … she needs all of us … we must go to her … do you know her?’
‘Mr Tilson …’ began Elizabeth, but Tilson wasn’t to be stopped.
‘You must take me to her, she has gold, she has everything, have you seen her? Take me to her.’ The rocking was starting again, and Magrath stepped up to steady the hammock.
‘Hallucinations,’ said Magrath softly. ‘A wandering of the mind. Come, there are others who need us. Many hundreds …’
‘Can he hear me?’ she asked, holding on to Magrath’s sleeve.
‘I couldn’t say, Elizabeth, but let us assume that he can.’
Under the ropes, Tilson was beginning to twist and writhe again, his clothes tearing, his skin splitting.
‘I want Sarah!’ he screamed. ‘I need her now!’ Elizabeth had seen enough. She turned to Magrath.
‘I am vaccinated, yes?’ She saw his startled look.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I am safe?’
‘Yes, Elizabeth, but …’
‘What’s his first name?’
‘I don’t know.’
A voice from a nearby bunk. ‘It’s Jonathan. Jonathan Tilson.’
She reached out and laid her hand on Tilson’s forehead, the beads of his disease hard against her gentle touch.
‘I’m here, Jon,’ she said. ‘It’s Sarah. I’m here. You’re going to be all right. Everything will be all right.’
The writhing slowed, the hammock calmed, and the storm passed.
‘You sleep now,’ she said. Tilson closed his eyes.
And Elizabeth found she was saying her prayers again.
By the end of January, when new staff and supplies arrived, the epidemic appeared to have peaked. As more inmates took the vaccine, the death count started to fall. From a peak of thirty in one day, it tailed away to five, to one, and then, finally, a whole day, 7 February, passed without a fatality. By the end of the epidemic, they had buried two hundred and two American sailors.
‘When is it over, George?’ whispered Elizabeth in their cupboard office between wards A and B. ‘When can we say we are done with it all?’ They had both sunk to the floor, exhausted, barely able to speak, move or think.
‘When the last scab is gone,’ he replied quietly. ‘But we will not be truly free of it. Many who have survived will lose their sight; some are blind already. So it will always be here, Elizabeth.’ In the silence that followed, she heard him sigh so heavily she thought he might be expiring.
‘Containing it to one block was astonishing,’ she said. ‘It was a miracle it never spread.’
‘It was science, Elizabeth. It was medicine. If more had taken the vaccine early, or we’d had more supplies, who knows how many we’d have saved?’
She reached for his hand. ‘When this is all over, George,’ she whispered. ‘When this bloody disease is gone and the whole bloody war is over, then everyone will leave. But if you go, if you are posted somewhere else, the thought of …’
Magrath had never seen Elizabeth cry before, but now she sobbed with such fury, such intensity, he feared they might be discovered. He buried her head on his shoulder as her whole body convulsed with grief. She wept for the dead, the blind, the scarred. She wept for her marriage, her son and for her own limitless incarceration.