Chapter 1
What say you, Captain? Time’swasting. You come well recommended, and I agree with the Navy Board. The war is over, but we still need hospitals. Aye or nay?”
After twenty-five years at sea fighting in a global conflict, Surgeon Douglas Bowden, Royal Navy, wasn’t an easy man to surprise. He was surprised now. He sat back in Admiral Sir David Carew’s uncomfortable chair for guests—or was it a chair for uncomfortable guests?—and considered the offer.
Maybe he was silent too long.
“Starting tomorrow!” Sir David glanced at his calendar. “May 6, 1816.”
“Assistant superintendent here at Stonehouse?” Douglas asked and almost winced with the stupidity of his query.
“Where else?” the admiral snapped, his patience obviously at an end. “This Stonehouse, not the one in Siam! Don’t try me, lad.”
Maybe it was the “lad” that decided the matter.I am a full-grown man and a competent surgeon, Douglas thought,wishing the slight didn’t rankle, not after all these years.I am not your lad. My father was only a cooper in Norfolk, but I am still not your lad.
“I think not, Sir David,” Douglas replied, noting with silent glee that it was the physician’s turn to look startled. “I believe I will relinquish my warrant, instead.” He hadn’t forgotten all his manners. “Thank you for the offer.”
Evidently Sir David wasn’t accustomed to being turned down flatter than a ship’s biscuit. “Twice your current salary!” he sputtered. “A house on the row here!”
Douglas hesitated. Perhaps he had been hasty. He had nothing against making money, and a house on the row would certainly announce the habitation of a man at the top of his profession, someone worthy of note.
“You’ll be considered a gentleman!”
Sir David Carew had thrown out his final incentive. He sat back, folded his arms, and glared at Douglas.
That, you old rip, is the very reason I will never take this position, Douglas thought, his mind made up by Sir David’s last dangled carrot. Just the saying of it told him that prissy old Davey Care-Less would never consider him a gentleman and an equal, even if his surgical talents far eclipsed most physicians’ abilities.
Douglas stood up. “Alas, Sir David, I cannot oblige you, kind as your offer is. I will surrender my warrant to the Navy Board when I pass through London and be on my way tomorrow.” He extended his foot and made a proper bow to the physician. “Thank you for the consideration. Good-day.”
He closed the door while Sir David’s mouth still hung open in amazement. Douglas stopped by the yeoman’s desk, laughing to himself at the scribe’s equally wide-open mouth and staring eyes. He must have heard the whole exchange.
“Am I the first sea dog to lift my leg on Sir David’s shoes?” Douglas whispered, his eyes merry.
“Very nearly,” the yeoman whispered back.
They both ducked involuntarily when something—perhaps a medical text—crashed against the closed door.
Douglas put on his bicorn and walked into the main hall of the administrative block at Stonehouse, the Royal Naval hospital between Plymouth and Devonport. He glanced into various offices as he headed toward the main door, noting that many of them were empty now.
There was a time …He stopped, remembering the activity in the building when Napoleon stomped all over Europe, and nothing but the Royal Navy’s wooden walls kept him from jumping the Channel for more mischief. Boney had called England a nation of shopkeepers. Had he seen the paperwork flying about, he’d have called England a nation of clerks.
Douglas stood for a longer moment outside the main door, admiring the symmetry of the ward blocks, separate buildings on either side of Admin, connected by graceful colonnades. He had served a brief, involuntary six months at Stonehouse only because he was supposed to be recuperating from a falling mast after a nameless skirmish on the blockade. A month of pain between his shoulders was followed by more pain, as he rose up from his sickbed too soon and assisted the overworked Stonehouse staff. Such was war.
Thinking of his stay, he pulled his cloak closer against cold rain and hurried along the walk to Ward Four, where he had worked. The door wasn’t locked, so he went inside, sniffing stale air only, without the overlay of body stench and putrefaction.
“What are you doing?” he asked himself. He walked up the stairs to the first floor, scene of his own incarceration for a month because the officers’ block was crammed to overflowing, and his eventual residency for five more as he worked there.
The cots were still in place, and so was the ward nurse’sdesk. Douglas Bowden looked from empty cot to empty cot, remembering each wounded seaman—those who lived and those who didn’t. It was much the same ordeal he put himself through each night before he slept as he did a mental inventory of some of his more memorable cases and anguished over the men he could not save. And then the dreams followed.
He had asked a fellow surgeon once if he dreamed that way too. The surgeon’s reply was a deep sigh, followed by a massive change of subject. Douglas never asked again.
But everyone was gone now. “How about that?” he said out loud as he turned around and went more slowly down the stairs. No smells, no moans, no screams. Why did he still hear them?
Ward Block Five appeared to be occupied. He thought about going inside just to see if he knew the attending surgeon, but it wasn’t necessary.
“Doug! I see old Davey Carew did call you in. Aye or nay?”
Captain Owen Brackett stood in the doorway, umbrella in hand. He motioned Douglas inside. The rain pelted harder, reminding him that England in May was a saucy minx, teasing with the bloom of spring one day and striking back with cold rain the next.
