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complained. “After all, you could have had the government shirts in three or four weeks.”
    Jennifer ground her teeth at this further example of official ineptitude and turned to nurse men whose frozen feet had been amputated to prevent gangrene. There were 11,000 soldiers in the camp above Sebastopol—and 12,000 in the army hospitals. Still, boatload after boatload of sick continued to arrive at Scutari.
    They again requested the withheld shirts. It seemed they had been released to some doctor. The signature was unreadable. And the shirts never showed up in Scutari.
    Florence Nightingale shook her head as they prepared to receive yet another group for whom there was no room and yet for whom they must make room. “This is calamity unparalleled in the history of calamity,” she said, then turned to her work. Jennifer and the others followed her.
    Somewhere in this endless stream of days and rounds of work, Jennifer had discovered herself adjusting to the pattern of it all—not just responding to orders because she had no other option or because she didn’t feel ready to return to London and Arthur. She had really become a part of the work. And in the rare moments when she had leisure to contemplate a future beyond the next round of duties, she knew she could never return to her former life of making social calls, doing embroidery, and taking food baskets to the poor. She might not continue with nursing, but she would not be idle.
    Certainly there was no idleness at the Barracks Hospital. But there was little success. With Miss Nightingale’s better food for the men, better care of the wounded, and better cleanliness in the hospital, they should be saving more lives. Still, they were not. And of those who didn’t die, many, like Richard Greyston, continued to waver in an uncertain state from one upsurge of fever to the next.
    “If only we could make them well,” Jennifer said as she helped Florence sort supplies a few weeks later. “It seems the men just come here to die. Something must be wrong. We’re doing our best, but we’re losing the fight.”
    Her supervisor nodded. “There is certainly something wrong here.” Ever the careful record-keeper, she sorted again through her neatly marked bottles. “Oil of vitriol, emetic tartar, sal volatile, white arsenic…” Florence frowned at her accounts, then counted again. “Two bottles of each are missing. This cupboard is never to be unlocked by any but my own hand. Miss Neville, if you see anyone—anyone at all—around my supplies, you are to inform me immediately.”
    “Yes, of course, Miss Nightingale.” They worked on, counting pots of calomel and spermaceti ointment, citron ointment and Boric acid for eye diseases. All were in order on this shelf, so Jennifer spoke again. “If only so many didn’t die under our care.”
    Florence’s reply was businesslike. “Quite. Our death rate is 42 percent. That is unacceptable. Unthinkable. So I have informed our new prime minister, Lord Palmerston. He is an old friend of mine. I believe he will hear me. I have begged and pleaded with all the words at my command that he send out a sanitary commission. Have you noticed, Miss Neville, that this hospital reeks even outside?”
    Jennifer moved from the ointments to number a box of rolled bandages—purchased, she knew, with Miss Nightingale’s own money. She set it on the shelf. “I have noticed. Only I thought perhaps it was just me—my clothes must be permeated with the smell—my very skin, I think.” She turned to another box. “But will Lord Palmerston respond?”
    “He must. If he wishes to avoid complete catastrophe and save the British army, he must.” Florence Nightingale spoke the words calmly as she continued checking her records, but the determination in her voice chilled Jenny far more than the February air pouring through the broken window.
    Jennifer finished her job at the supply cupboard and took a round of tea—which was in truth little