A Paradise On Earth

PROLOGUE - 1855

PROLOGUE

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1855It was cold in the Barrack Hospital, but at least there was a roof overhead and oil lamps to cast a soft glow. To the wounded men who had endured the freezing voyage over the Black Sea from Balaclava to reach the hospital at Scutari, any shelter was welcome.

The man lying on the low bed barely felt the cold and the filth. Even his terrible pain seemed to reach him from a distance. He was dying, and he knew it.

He thought of his father and brother, both far away in England. He had never been close to them, but he would have liked to speak to them one last time. Now he knew he would never see them again.

He was vaguely aware of a woman kneeling beside his bed, drawing aside the tattered jacket of his uniform that proclaimed him an officer in the Light Brigade. Then the pain became overwhelming and he passed out.

When he came round his condition had improved. Somebody had cleaned him and dressed his wound, although the pain was still severe.

He gradually realised that someone was sitting by his bed, and after a moment he recognised him.

“Robert,” he whispered hoarsely.

“That’s better, Major,” said Sergeant Robert Dale.

He was a burly individual in his thirties, with a broad face that now bore a smile of relief.

“For a while I thought you were gone for good,” he said. “I have been thinking that for days now. But there you are, sir! I never thought you would survive charging the Russian guns.”

“So many didn’t survive it,” Major Milton muttered, his eyes closing as the painful memories converged on him.

Six hundred men on horseback, charging down a narrow valley to reach an impossible target! Nearly half of them had been cut down.

“And then when I found you on the boat,” Robert Dale continued. “I thought you were going to die at any moment. But I guess you are indestructible, sir.”

“I don’t feel indestructible,” John Milton murmured. “I keep expecting to fall asleep and not wake up. But never mind me. What about your wounds?”

“Not too bad, sir,” Robert replied, indicating his bandaged right arm and also his wounded left leg.

He was about to settle down to a discussion of wounds when he saw a woman approaching the bed. She was in her thirties with a thin face and a voice that was gentle but full of authority.

“You must go, now,” she ordered. “The Major needs to sleep. You may return tomorrow.”

Robert knew who she was. Everyone knew.

“But will he still be alive tomorrow, Miss Nightingale, ma’am?” he asked urgently.

“He will if I have anything to do with it,” she answered quietly.

Something in her manner reassured the Sergeant. He walked away without another word.

When he returned next day, it was to find Major John Milton still alive, but with a terrible grey look to his face. Robert began to talk to him in a voice of grim determination, as though, by doing so, he could keep him still in the land of the living. Sometimes the Major roused himself to speak.

“I thought the army would be such an adventure,” he mumbled. “I was even glad that I was the younger son, so that I could go off and have ‘fun’. I was just a boy then. I thought being in a cavalry regiment meant parading around in a glittering uniform, riding a fine horse, flirting with all the pretty girls.”

He fell silent and Robert was silent too, understanding what he could not say. The Crimean War had broken out between Russia and Britain. Eager young soldiers had been shipped out to the action. But, with terrible speed, dreams of adventure had ended in the mud.

“How could they have sent us into that charge?” the Major asked, more like his old self. “Like sheep to the slaughter.”

He closed his eyes as though trying to shut out the memory.

“Don’t think of it, sir,” Robert urged.

“You are right. Talk about yourself. I think you once told me that you come from a family of inn-keepers?”

“That’s right, sir. My father owns a Public House in London. He wanted me to go into the trade, but I ran away to join the army. Recently though I have been thinking that being a landlord might suit me.”

“Yes, the quiet life now starts to look very attractive,” the Major agreed. “If I come through this, I think I will do something peaceful, myself.”

He gave a faint grin.

“Maybe I’ll try my hand at being a landlord. It could be a good life, standing behind a bar being ‘mine host’.”

“Now you’re making fun of me, sir. Lords such as yourself don’t become landlords.”

“I am not a Lord.”

“I thought you said your father was an Earl?”

“And so I did. He is Earl Milton. And my brother George is Viscount Milton until our father dies, and then he will be the Earl. But I am just John Milton, or ‘the Honourable John Milton’ on letters.”

“But you were brought up as a Lord?” Robert asked, sounding anxious.

“Yes, I was.”

“With a big country estate?” Robert added hopefully. His ideas about Lords were being threatened.

“A huge country estate,” John reassured him. “Milton Park is a wonderful place, with a deer park and ancient oaks.”

“I wonder you could ever bear to leave it, sir.”

John did not feel able to tell him that he had fled his cold, dismissive father and his selfish arrogant brother. In their society he had felt excluded, and had been glad to leave them behind. In Robert Dale, a man he would once have been taught to despise as beneath him, he had found more true warmth and friendship than he had ever known in his family.

“It was big,” he murmured. “Too big. There was no chance to get to know anyone properly. An inn would be – friendly. And people would smile when they saw you.”

The Sergeant stared. Great Lords (for so he still thought of John Milton) were supposed to be above caring for such things. Then he realised that the Major must be feverish, which accounted for his rambling thoughts.

“I expect you would like to sleep now, sir,” he suggested, rising. “I’ll come again tomorrow.”

As he moved away he saw Miss Nightingale standing close enough to have heard his final words.

“I am afraid you may not return here,” she said softly. “We have an outbreak of cholera, and the fewer people who move around the hospital the better. But I expect you’ll be leaving soon anyway.”

She indicated his arm and leg, both wounded, but neither badly enough to incapacitate him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed, awed by the great lady.

“Then you are one of the lucky ones,” she said. “More people die of disease in this place than of their wounds.”

“The Major –” he exclaimed in alarm.

“Pray for him,” Florence Nightingale replied simply.

The following day Sergeant Dale was shipped out of Scutari and invalided home without seeing John Milton again, or being able to obtain any news about him.