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again. She writes from London. She is there for the season with your aunt…” Jennifer read the bright account of London’s social life, resumed with full vigor now that the terrible epidemic of Asiatic cholera, which had swept the continent and the slums of London that winter, had ended.
    It would be impossible to exaggerate the gratitude one feels everywhere at the abatement of the pestilence from which we have escaped. The death rate had risen to 3,000 a week at its worst—but only in the poorer sections of the city, of course.
    Mama and I attended a service of thanksgiving before ordering new gowns for Lady Royalston’s ball…
    Jennifer folded the letter and moved away quietly. Lieutenant Greyston was asleep.
    Three weeks later Florence Nightingale came into the tower rooms flushed with pleasure, waving a letter. “We have triumphed! Lord Palmerston has appointed his son-in-law Lord Shaftesbury to form a sanitary commission for the Crimea.”
    Perhaps only Jennifer, who had so often seen the light burning under the door far into the night and discussed their needs with Miss Nightingale, knew what persistence, repeated urgings, even demands, this victory had required. Palmerston, a long-time family friend of the Nightingales, could not refuse this indomitable woman.
    Florence read from the paper she held: ‘“Commissioners: The utmost expedition must be used in starting your journey… It is important that you be deeply impressed with the necessity of not resting content with an order, but that you see instantly, by yourselves or your agents, to the commencement of the work and to its superintendency day by day until it is finished.’ So run the orders for the Sanitation Commission.”
    All the nurses in the room applauded the clear official call to action. “At last,” Jennifer cried. “Do you think they might actually get rid of the rats?”
    “And the smell?” Edith Watson sniffed.
    The commissioners arrived less than two weeks later—two doctors of proven energy from the Board of Health, a civil engineer from London, and the borough engineer and three sanitary inspectors from Liverpool where a sanitary act had been in operation longer than anywhere else in the country.
    The commission had been in Scutari for only a few days when Jennifer was hurrying to her quarters, trying to be on time for curfew. She stopped at the sound of angry voices coming from one of the small, improvised kitchens. “…I know your game. You won’t get away with this….”
    A muffled growling voice replied with a string of curses.
    Jennifer moved back into the shadows. Should she try to slip past the open door or go around the other way and risk discipline for breaking the rules?
    Then one of the speakers erupted from the room at an angry lope. She did not recognize him, but his well-cut clothes identified him as one of the London commissioners. Jennifer stayed in her corner for another long moment, barely breathing. What could that mean? Then another dark figure, this one short and stocky, the dim light shining on his bald head, slipped down the hall without seeing her.
How odd. Dr. Pannier had been arguing with a commissioner. Was there to be trouble just when they could hope for success?
    The next day she was busy until afternoon accompanying Dr. Menzies on his rounds, administering a fever mixture of powdered nitre and carbonate of potash in antimonial wine and salving burns with Drover’s powder of mercury and chalk when bandages were changed. It was late in the day after a round of emptying slops that Jennifer heard the news.
    Edith Watson and Sister Mary Margaret were talking to two other nuns outside the nurses’ quarters. “You mean he was shot? Dead? Dear God.” Sister Mary crossed herself and then tugged at the rosary hanging from her belt. “Come.” She turned to the two sisters. “We will pray for his soul.”
    Near a battlefield where hundreds of men were shot dead almost daily, what was so alarming about