The friendship between shy Mariella Lingwood and her
wild-child cousin, Rosa, lies at the heart of this novel
which takes place during the Crimean war. The war, fought
between the Russian empire and Western Allies during the
mid-nineteenth century, touches each girl
differently. Rosa, who has a need to save people, wants to
travel to the front as part of Florence Nightingale's
nursing corps. After her request is refused, she sets out
with another group of women, hoping to run into Henry
Thewell, notable surgeon and Mariella's
fiancée. Mariella, who has led a sheltered life, is
content to view the war from afar. She spends her time
creating a scrapbook of the war's events, and sewing for the
soldiers and a house for retired governesses.
Mariella's life changes when she hears that Henry is gravely
ill in Italy and Rosa has disappeared. She travels to
Henry's side but he begs her to find Rosa. Mariella and her
maid, Nora, make the journey into the war-torn Crimea to
question soldiers in hopes of following Rosa's trail.
McMahon's drama takes readers from Derbyshire where young
Mariella met young Rosa, to London where the two meet 10
years later, to Italy, and to the Crimea. McMahon brings
her characters and landscapes to life with vivid
descriptions. Her picture of war-torn Crimea rings
devastatingly true with riveting images of soldiers
without limbs, huge rats, and the ever-present threat of
cholera. Victorian London also comes to life under her
deft hand, complete with an evil industrialist.
Though the story was epic, at times I felt Mariella was too
sheltered and too timid, and Rosa too stubborn and
adventurous. McMahon's tale moves forwards and backwards in
time through letters and descriptions of past events in
Derbyshire. While I found the jumps back and forth between
eras easy to follow, I'm not sure they were necessary to
maintain the suspense of the story. I found the ending to
lack a clear resolution which might bother some readers,
though the likely outcome is clear.
The #1 international bestseller about love, war and
betrayal from the author of The Alchemist's
Daughter
In 1854, adventurous Rosa Barr
travels to the Crimean battlefield with Florence
Nightingale's nursing corps. For Mariella Lingwood, Rosa's
cousin, the war is contained within the letters she receives
from her fiancé, Henry, a celebrated surgeon who also has
volunteered to work in the shadow of the guns. When Henry
falls ill, Mariella impulsively takes an epic journey to the
ravaged landscape of the Crimea and the tragic city of
Sebastopol. What she finds there, as her world beings to
crumble, is that she has much to learn about secrecy,
faithfulness, and love...
Excerpt
Italy, 1855
We arrived in Narni late on a Sunday evening. Although the
door to the Hotel Fina was locked the driver roused a
servant who stumbled out with creased shirt tails, brought
in our luggage and showed us to a bedroom that smelled of
unwashed feet. Nora took away my cloak and bonnet, then I
snuffed the candles and lay down. A man was shouting in the
distance, perhaps the worse for drink. Instead of sleeping I
rode through the night as if still in a carriage jolting
over badly made roads across the plains of Italy. Eventually
I heard a clock strike five and the rumble of a cart in the
square outside and I fell asleep to the sound of women’s
raised voices and the clash of a pail against stone.
I woke to a blade of sunlight sliced between the shutters –
it was nearly mid-morning. Nora was standing over me with a
breakfast tray and a letter from Mother which I didn’t read.
None of the clothes in my portmanteau was fit to wear, being
too crushed, so I put on my travelling dress again and said
we would go out at once. In the lobby I struggled to make
myself understood by the proprietress, who was dressed in
black and whose mouth was pulled down at the ends, as if
from despair, but when I showed her Henry’s address she drew
us a rough map.
Narni was an ancient town built near the top of a hill and
the Hotel Fina was at its centre, in a little square. What
with the bunch of women round a fountain and the confusion
of streets and shopfronts there was no telling which
direction was the right one so we set off at random up a
flight of steps and under an arch. The sun was very hot, the
street oppressively narrow and our travelling clothes too
heavy so we stopped under a shady porch while I consulted
the map.
A cluster of children formed around us, I asked one of them
for ‘Via del Monte, Signora Critelli?’, and he set off back
the way we’d come. We followed him, recrossed the little
square, and this time plunged down a steep street with the
houses built so close on either side I could almost touch
them. Washing of the most intimate nature hung from
balconies or was suspended like dingy carnival flags from
wall to wall. I was surprised to find Henry lodging in such
a poor quarter.
Eventually the child paused in front of an open doorway
where there was a smell of wet stone and flowers because
someone had just watered a pot of narcissi. I hovered at the
entrance, my resolve gone, wishing that I had never left
England or that at the very least had sent Henry a note to
let him know I was on my way. Now that I was here I wondered
whether he would think it appropriate. I was also afraid of
seeing him ill. What if he didn’t recognise me, or I him?
Unlike Rosa, I never knew what to do in the face of
sickness. I glanced at Nora but she raised an eyebrow as if
to say: You got us into this; don’t expect any encouragement
from me.
In the end I crept along the passage to a kitchen where a
woman stood with her arms immersed in a wash bowl. She
squinted at me through the droplets of water that trickled
into her eyes.
‘Dr Henry Thewell?’ I asked.
She gaped, dried her face first on a towel then on her
skirt, leaned her hand on the door frame and let fly a
torrent of Italian which ended at last in a question.
I shook my head. ‘Non capisco. Inglese. Mi chiamo Mariella
Ling-wood. Ma-ri-ella. I am engaged to be married to Dr
Thewell. Dov’e Henry Thewell?’
I had learned from watching my father that it is better, in
moments of crisis, to speak quietly rather than to shout.
Certainly Signora Critelli calmed down; she went on talking
but less rapidly, wiped her hands again, gestured that I
should get out of the way and led me up a narrow flight of
stairs to the first floor where she knocked sharply on a
door, flung it wide and announced me with the words:
‘Signorina Inglese.’
I took a step further, and another.
The room was in semi-darkness because, though one shutter
was half open, a drab blue curtain covered the window.
Through the gloom I saw that the room was small and
contained a narrow bed, a washstand, a table heaped with
books and a low chair with a rush seat upon which an
untouched tray with a roll, a jug and a cup had been left.
There was a smell of cold coffee and damp linen.
Henry was in bed but he’d raised himself on one elbow and
even in the darkness I saw the eager brilliance of his eyes
and that his hair had grown so long it flopped over his
brow. We stared at each other. Then I stumbled across the
room, knelt by the bed and held him.
My bonnet was knocked sideways as he covered my face with
hot kisses. I wept and seemed to flow out of myself when I
felt his lips on my hair, ear and neck. Though I was
distantly aware that the door behind us was closed abruptly
and that we had been watched, I didn’t mind. I clasped his
too thin arms as his hands caressed my back and I helped him
with my bonnet ribbons, wondering how I could ever have
doubted that I did the right thing in coming here. I
realised that I had waited most of my life to have Henry
kiss my throat, even to let him fumble with the buttons of
my gown and pull loose the neck of my shift. My skin
contracted as his lips closed on my breast. His breath came
in rasping pants between kisses.
I fell back on the pillow, smoothed his hair and felt him
grow heavy in my arms. Astonishingly, he slept. For perhaps
half an hour I didn’t move though I lay half off the bed, my
bonnet dropping from my neck, a draught swaying the curtain,
the clop of a mule’s hooves on the street below. Because my
hair was caught by the weight of his head all I could see
was a fragment of cracked ceiling, a broken frieze and the
shifting blue-grey curtain. I kissed him again and again,
tiny, weightless kisses on his hair, which was far softer
than I had ever imagined, like a cat’s fur, and I thought:
All these weeks he has been alone, watching that curtain and
waiting for me. I was afloat in the miracle of his touch,
the strangeness of a male body half covering mine, the fact
that this was Henry who I had missed so much in the past
months that even the blood in my veins ached for him.
Then I tightened my hold because although never in my
wildest imaginings had I expected such a loving, needy
reception as this, nor had I really thought to find him so
weak that he was confined to bed. I had always relished his
energy and the hardness of his arm under my hand but now he
was as frail as a bird. And he smelled entirely different to
the Henry who never failed to delight me with his scent of
good soap, balsam or camphor. Instead the odour of confined
flesh reminded me of the governesses’ home. As he woke his
breath grew uneven on my neck. When he moved his head my
skin was damp and hot from where his cheek had rested on me.
I closed my eyes as my breast tightened under his circling
fingertip.
This is Italy, I thought, no one will know. And anyway, what
do I care?
‘My dear love,’ he whispered, ‘I thought you would never
come.’ His finger was making a diminishing spiral on my
nipple so my words were disjointed: ‘I wasn’t sure you would
want me here. And yet I wouldn’t be stopped, even by you, so
I thought it best just to come without letting you know.’
‘You are my love, my love.’
‘Your letters sounded so lonely I thought I must come.’
He nuzzled his cheek into my bosom and pressed his face to
my neck, drawing me closer and closer under him. I didn’t
mind that he had the smell of fever on his breath; I was
scarcely conscious of anything except the heat of him as he
murmured, ‘I thought I might never see you again. I thought
you were gone.’
‘Of course you’d see me again.’
‘But you never answered me. You never said a word. It was
killing me.’ He laid his head beside mine on the pillow and
reached out to turn my face towards his. I had time to see
how pale his skin was and that because his moustache had
been shaved off his mouth was as full-lipped and boyish as
when I first knew him. Then he said, ‘Let me look at you at
last. My Rosa. My dear love. Dearest Rosa.’
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