A student surgeon appeared, scarlet arterial blood spatters on his collarless shirt and old trousers, mute evidence of his attendance in the operating theater. He nodded at Callandra and passed by.

There was a smell of coal dust, the heat of bodies in fevers and sickness, stale dressings, and of drains and undisposed sewage. She should go and see the matron about nurses' moral discipline. It was her turn to lecture them again. Then she should see the treasurer about funds and the disposition of certain monies to hand, the review of charity cases. She would do these things first, then she would be free to go and see Krislian Beck.

She found the matron in one of the wards filled with surgical patients, both those awaiting operations and those recovering. Several had developed fevers during the night or become worse, their infections already well advanced. One man was comatose and close to death. Although the recent discovery of anesthesia had made all sorts of procedures possible, many who survived operations died afterwards of infection. Those who survived were a minority. There was no way known to prevent septicemia or gangrene, and little that would treat even the symptoms, let alone provide a cure.

Mrs. Flaherty came out of the small room where the medicines and clean bandages were kept; her thin face was pale, her white hair screwed back so tightly it pulled the skin around her eyes. There were two spots of angry color on her cheeks.

"Good morning, your ladyship," she said brusquely. "There is nothing you can do here today, and I do not want to hear anything more about Miss Nightingale and fresh air. We've got poor souls dying of fevers, and outside air will kill the rest if we listen to you." She consulted the watch hanging from a pin on her thin shoulder, then she looked back at Callandra. "I'd be obliged, ma'am, if next time you talk to the nurses about morals and behavior, you would particularly mention honesty. We've had more thefts from patients. Just small things, of course, they haven't got much or they'd not be here. Although I don't know what good you think it will do, I'm sure."

She came out into the ward, a long room with a high ceiling, lined on both sides with narrow beds, each blanketed in gray and with someone either sitting or lying in it. Some were pale-faced, others feverish, some restless, tossing from side to side, some lying motionless, breathing shallowly, gasping for air. The room was hot and smelled stale and close.

A young woman in a soiled overall walked down the length of the floor between the beds carrying an uncovered pail of slops. The odor of it, strong and sour, assailed Callandra's nostrils as she passed.

"I'm sorry," Callandra replied, snatching her attention back to the matron's request. "Lecturing them isn't the answer. We need to get a different kind of woman into the trade, and then treat them accordingly."

Mrs. Flaherty's face creased with irritation. She had heard these arguments before and they were fanciful and completely impractical.

"All very nice, your ladyship," she said tartly. "But we have got to deal with what we have, and we have laziness, drunkenness, thieving, and complete irresponsibility. If you want to help, you'll do something about that, not talk about situations that will never be."

Callandra opened her mouth to argue, but her attention was distracted by a woman halfway down the ward starting to choke, and the patient next to her calling out for help.

A pale, obese woman appeared with an empty slop pail and lumbered over to the gasping patient, who began to vomit.

"That's the digitalis leaves," Mrs. Flaherty said matter-of-factly. "The poor creature is dropsical. Passed no urine for days, but this will help. She's been in here before and recovered." She turned away and looked back toward her table, where she had been writing notes on medications and responses. The heavy keys hanging in her belt jangled against each other. "Now if you will excuse me," she went on, her back to Callandra, "I've got a great deal to do, and I'm sure you have." Her voice on the last remark was tight with sarcasm.

"Yes," Callandra said equally tartly. "Yes I have. I am afraid you will have to ask someone else to lecture the nurses, Mrs. Flaherty; perhaps Lady Ross Gilbert would do that. She seems very capable."

"She is," Mrs. Flaherty said meaningfully, then sat down at her table and picked up her pen. It was dismissal.

Callandra left the ward, walking along a dim corridor past a woman with a bucket and scrubbing brush, and another woman seeming no more than a heap of laundry piled up against the wall, insensible with alcohol.

At the end of the corridor she encountered a group of three young student doctors talking together eagerly, heads close, hands gesticulating.

"It's this big," one red-haired youth said, holding up his clenched fist. "Sir Herbert is going to cut it out. Thank God I live when I do. Just think how hopeless that would have been twelve years ago before anesthetic. Now with ether or nitrous oxide, nothing is impossible."

"Greatest thing since Harvey and the circulation of blood," another agreed enthusiastically. "My grandfather was a naval surgeon in Nelson's fleet Had to do everything with a bottle of rum and a leather gag, and two men to hold you down. My God, isn't modern medicine wonderful. Damn, I've got blood all over my trousers." He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket, dabbed at himself without effect, except to stain the handkerchief scarlet.

"Don't know why you're wasting your time," the third young man said, regarding his efforts with a smile. "You're assisting, aren't you? You'll only get covered again. Shouldn't have worn a good suit. I never do. That'll teach you to be vain just because it's Sir Herbert."

They jostled each other in mock battle, passing Callandra with a brief word of acknowledgment, and went on across the foyer toward the operating theater.

A moment later Sir Herbert Stanhope himself came out of one of the large oak doorways. He saw Callandra and hesitated, as if searching his mind to recollect her name. He was a large man, not especially tall but portly and of imposing manner. His face was ordinary enough at a glance: narrow eyes, sharp nose, high brow, and receding sandy hair. It was only with closer attention one was acutely aware of the power of his intellect and the emotional intensity of his concentration.

"Good morning, Lady Callandra," he said with sudden satisfaction.

"Good morning, Sir Herbert," she replied, smiling very slightly. "I'm glad I've managed to see you before you begin operating."

"I'm somewhat in a hurry," he said with a flicker of irritation. "My staff will be waiting for me in the theater, and I daresay my patient will be coming any moment."

"I have an observation which may be able to reduce infection to some extent," she continued, regardless of his haste.

"Indeed," he said skeptically, a tiny wrinkle of temper between his brows. "And what idea is that, pray?"

"I was in the ward a moment ago and observed, not for the first time, a nurse carrying a pail of slops the length of the room without a lid."

"Slops are inevitable, ma'am," he said impatiently. "People pass waste, and frequently it is disagreeable when they are ill. They also vomit. It is in the nature, both of disease and of cure."

Callandra kept her patience with difficulty. She was not a short-tempered woman, but being patronized she found exceedingly hard to bear.

"I am aware of that, Sir Herbert. But by the very nature that it is waste expelled by the body, the fumes are noxious and cannot be good to inhale again. Would it not be a simple thing to have the nurses use covers for the pails?"

There was a burst of raucous laughter somewhere around the corner of the corridor. Sir Herbert's mouth tightened with distaste.