The Wild Rose Read online

  “I’d love to hear about the other girl,” he said to Jennie, when they’d left. He was glad the others had gone—glad for the chance to talk with her alone.

  “The other girl?” Jennie repeated.

  “The success story. You were starting to tell me about her when Joe came with the carriage.”

  Jennie smiled. “Yes, I was. Gladys Bigelow is a success story,” she said. “Truly. She was a student at our school. A very bright girl. Came from a dreadful situation—a drunken, violent father, who’s since died, and a very poorly mum. She was destined for some dreadful job in a factory, but instead she’s working for Sir George Burgess, second in command under Mr. Churchill at the Admiralty.”

  Seamie watched Jennie’s expression change as she talked about her former student. Her face became radiant.

  “She attended our little school, then went on to secretarial studies. I’d originally asked Fiona and Joe if they might have a place for her. They didn’t at the time, but Joe knew Sir George was looking for a capable girl and he gave him Gladys’s name. And Sir George hired her.”

  “That’s a wonderful story, Miss Wilcott,” a voice said from behind them. It was Max von Brandt. Seamie hadn’t been aware that Max was listening. He hadn’t even known Max was there. He’d thought he was still out by the curb, smoking.

  “Yes, it is, Mr. von Brandt,” Jennie said, turning toward Max. “That job has changed her life. Gladys was a bit shy. A bit withdrawn, you see. All she had in her life was her sick mother and her Thursday-night knitting group. And now, because of her studies, she also has a job she loves. At the Admiralty, no less! She has purpose and independence, and they mean the world to her. Why, she’s even become a suffragist. She attends the evening meetings. Isn’t it amazing? These are the things an education can do.”

  “Jennie! Over here, my dear!”

  It was the Reverend Wilcott. He’d finally found a cab.

  “Take my arm,” Seamie said. “I’ll walk you to the street.” Jennie did so. She said good-bye to Max, waved at Maud and Harriet, then Seamie led her toward the cab.

  “I wonder, Mr. Finnegan … I wonder if I might ask you to come and speak to the children. At the school,” she said as they walked. “Perhaps next week? You’re a very dashing figure, you know. You’ve achieved so much, done so many amazing things. I know they would be so excited to see you. And so grateful. And so would I.”

  Seamie had speaking engagements planned for the week, and a meeting with Sir Clements Markham at the Royal Geographical Society. Markham had rung him up at Fiona’s house and told him he wanted to speak with him about a position at the RGS. In addition, Seamie had long-standing plans with his friend George Mallory to go on a pub crawl. They were all reasons for saying no—but they weren’t the main reason. The main reason he wanted to say no to Jennie Wilcott was that he was afraid to say yes. He was afraid to see her again. She stirred something in him. Admiration, he quickly told himself. But it was deeper than that, and he knew it and it scared him. The other women he’d been with over the last few years … they’d stirred something in him, too—his lust. This was a different feeling. Jennie Wilcott, in just the few moments he’d known her, had touched his heart. No woman had touched that part of him for a very long time.

  Don’t do it, he told himself. You’ve just finished with Caroline. The last thing you need right now is some new entanglement. “I’m not sure I can, Miss Wilcott. I’ll have to look at my schedule,” he said to Jennie.

  “I understand, Mr. Finnegan,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment. “You must be incredibly busy.” She tried for a smile, but winced instead. “Oh! Ouch!” she exclaimed. “This eye’s so big and fat, it hurts to even smile now.”

  “That shiner’s getting worse, I’m afraid,” Seamie said. And then without thinking, he gently touched the bruised skin around her eye. “It’s going to swell a bit more and then, in a day or so, it’ll start to go down, though the bruising will last a bit longer, I’m afraid.”

  “I take it you’ve had a few black eyes yourself,” Jennie said.

  “One or two,” he admitted. “Good night, Miss Wilcott,” he said, handing her into the carriage.

  “Good night, Mr. Finnegan,” Jennie said. She sat down, then leaned toward the door before he could close it. “You will try to visit our school, won’t you? You’ll think about it at least?”

  Seamie looked at her, at her poor eye, nearly swollen shut now, at her blouse stained with blood. He thought of what she had endured in her fight to obtain the vote—beatings, imprisonment, force-feeding. He remembered how only days ago, at Cambridge, he’d felt that London, and everyone in it, was dull and gray, and wondered now if he’d been mistaken.

  “Yes, Miss Wilcott,” he finally said. “I will.”

  Chapter Four

  Willa Alden stopped her heavily laden yak. For several long minutes she did nothing but stare at the sight before her. She’d seen it too many times to count. She’d looked at it through a camera lens, a telescope, a theodilite, and a sextant. She’d photographed it, sketched it, mapped it, measured it. And still, it took her breath away.

  “Oh, you beauty,” she whispered. “You cold, impossible beauty.”

  Rising before her, all peaks, ridges, and sheer cliff faces, was Everest. A white plume swirled around the summit. Willa knew it was high winds blowing the snow around, but she liked instead to think it was the mountain spirit dancing around her high, remote home. Chomolungma the Tibetans called Everest—Goddess Mother of Mountains.

  From where she stood, a few miles south of Rongbuk village, on the Rongbuk Glacier, Willa could see the mountain’s north face rising. Time after time, her head told her there was no way up that bloody mountain, and time after time, as she looked at the north face, all forbidding rock and snow, her heart wouldn’t listen. What about that ridge? Or that spur? it said to her. And that cliff … it looks like a tough nut from here, but maybe if a very experienced climber were to tackle it, in good weather, a very gifted climber, one equipped with an oxygen tank … what then?

  There was no way up Everest, no way at all, without oxygen—of this she was certain. She had suffered badly from altitude sickness climbing Kilimanjaro’s Mawenzi peak, and that was only about seventeen thousand feet. What would happen to a human being at twenty-nine thousand feet?

  Willa knew the first symptoms of altitude sickness—the ceaseless nausea and vomiting; the swelling of the face, hands, and feet; and the crucifying difficulty of pulling air in and out of your lungs. She had suffered all of them. And as one climbed higher, the symptoms became more serious. Altitude sickness often attacked the lungs. A dry, hacking cough would set in, and then fever—both of which signaled fluid in the lungs. A climber might then find himself coughing up bright red froth. If the height didn’t get the lungs, it often got the brain. A nagging headache became a crashing one. Confusion followed, and then blurred vision. The climber started losing control over his hands and feet. If he didn’t get down, and fast, paralysis and coma were next. Then death.

  “Why?” people asked her, unable to understand that which made alpinists risk everything to achieve a summit.

  If only I could show them this sight, this magnificent Everest soaring into the blue sky. Untouched, pristine, wild, and fearsome, she thought. If only I could show them that, they’d never ask why again.

  And soon she would. Soon her pictures of the Himalayas would be published. She had almost all the shots she needed. Soon the world would see for itself what mere words could never adequately describe.

  “Come on, old stick,” she said to her yak.

  She pulled her fur cap down tightly around her ears and clapped her mittened hands together. A small, thin grimace stiffened her features as she and her animal started walking again. Her leg was playing up. Just a bit. But a bit often turned into something more, and she had no time for it today. She wanted to be well upon the Rongbuk Glacier and have her camp set up by early afternoon. She had a great deal o
f work to do.

  During the time she’d been in the Far East, she’d sent the Royal Geographical Society photographs—shots of India, of her temples and cities and villages. Of her mighty rivers, arid plains, her lush hills and valleys. She’d sent pictures of China and its Great Wall. Of Marco Polo’s Silk Road and Genghis Khan’s Mongolia. Sir Clements Markham had shown her pictures at the RGS. He’d turned them into books—books that had made her a bit of money.

  Two years ago, she’d written Markham with a new proposal—a book of photographs on the Himalayas. Of Annapurna. The Nilgiris. And Everest.

  A few months later, she’d received his one-line reply—Himalayas. Yes. How soon?—and ever since, she’d been working nonstop, pushing herself mercilessly in the pursuit of the perfect shot—a shot that would be stunning and beautiful, so good it would make people gasp, or quiet them into a reverent awe. She now had more than two hundred images for her Himalayas book—of the mountains in all their moods, the villages that surrounded them, the people who lived at their feet.

  And the route. She had that.

  She had pictures of what might be a way up Everest.

  And they would make her famous. Cement her reputation as an Alpine explorer. They would sell a great deal of books and make her money, which was something she desperately needed now. Her aunt Eddie had given her five thousand pounds when she was younger, but she’d already spent a good deal of it. On a passage to Africa. And then one to India. On her travels throughout the Far East. On bribes to officials to let her cross borders. On food and tea and shelter. On cameras and film, darkroom equipment, tents and cots, and the animals needed to carry it all.

  The route, the path, the way, she thought now, squinting up at the mountain as she trekked along. Markham wanted it. The Germans wanted it. The Italians and the French and the Americans, too. Alpinists were a competitive lot; being first was all that mattered to them. And being first up the highest mountain in the world—well, there was no prize greater than that. Willa knew that well enough. She’d been first once. First up the Kilimanjaro’s Mawenzi peak. It had cost her her leg and nearly her life. It had cost her her heart.

  “Hup, hup!” she said to her yak, urging him up the snowy shoulders of the glacier.

  They walked on, over the white vastness, for an hour, then two, until Willa had what she wanted—an unobstructed view of the north col. She stopped then, hammered an iron stake into the snow, and tied the yak. Slowly, methodically, she unloaded her animal and set up camp.

  It took her an hour to unpack her gear, pitch her tent, and build a fire pit. She always traveled and worked alone. She preferred it that way, but even if she hadn’t, there was no other choice. There were not many women who wished to live as she did, in a cold, foreign, and forbidding environment. Without any domestic comforts. Without a husband or children. Without any guarantee of safety or protection.

  And as for men … Willa would have gladly signed on to any number of expeditions sponsored by the RGS, but they would not have her. Their expeditions were conceived and executed by men, and it was still unthinkable for a woman to be included in an exploratory party to the North Pole or the South Pole, or down the Nile, or up Everest, because she would have to trek, climb, eat, and sleep with men. And that was unacceptable. Not to herself or the men she might be climbing with, but to British society, and it was British society that was footing the bill. They were the ones contributing monies to the RGS, and they were the ones financing its expeditions.

  When Willa finished setting up camp, she loaded her rifle and placed it on the ground beside her cot. The rifle was protection against wolves; the kind that went around on four legs and the kind that went around on two. When she was satisfied that everything was in its proper place, she fed her yak and then fixed herself a small meal of hot tea and sampa—a mixture of barley flour, sugar, and a pungent butter made from yak’s milk. She deliberately ate little to keep herself thin. The thinner her body, the less likely she was to suffer her menses—an encumbrance at the best of times, and even more so when one was a world away from flush toilets and running water.

  When she’d finished her meal, she decided to do a bit of trekking. It was late afternoon, she still had two, maybe three hours of light. She stood up to wash her dishes, and gave a small gasp. The yak bone prosthetic was lighter and more comfortable than the wooden one she’d had made in Bombay, when she’d first arrived in India, but after a long day’s trekking, it still hurt her. The pain was growing stronger now. She knew what was coming and she dreaded it. People talked of the feeling of a phantom limb, of the odd, unsettling sensation that the lost arm or leg was still there—people who hadn’t lost a limb, that was. Those who had knew of something different. They knew of the dull, hard aches that often turned into an unbearable agony. They knew of the lost days, the restless nights.

  How many times had she screamed herself awake? How many nights had she torn her sheets to bits, wept and shrieked and banged her head against the wall, nearly blind from pain? Too many to count. Dr. Ribiero, the man who’d amputated her leg, had given her morphine in the days following her surgery. She’d left Nairobi on crutches only a few days after her amputation, with a few bottles of the drug, and had traveled east. And there, after her morphine supply had run out, she’d discovered opium. She’d bought it in the markets of Morocco and Marrakech, from farmers in Afghanistan, and from peddlers in India, Nepal, and Tibet. It dulled the pain in her leg, and it dulled a pain that was even sharper—the one in her heart.

  She took some now. She reached into her coat pocket, for she always kept it close, drew out a small hardened chunk of brown paste, cut a piece off, and proceeded to smoke it in a pipe. Within minutes, the drug had beaten back the pain and she could walk again. She quickly cleaned her dishes, checked that her yak was tied securely, then set off.

  Untethered and alone, trekking across the pristine snows of the glacier, she felt as wild and free as a falcon circling, a winter fox loping across the snow, a wolf howling at the moon. As she approached the lower foothills of Everest, the trek became a climb, but still she went on over an ice field, across some jagged moraine. The terrain became more challenging, and her artificial leg more of a hindrance, but she could not stop. Everest, soaring high above the glacier, was glorious. It pulled at her, cast its spell upon her, and she was powerless to resist it.

  The low foothill became a proper slope, and still she pressed on, heedless and unaware, seduced by the mountain, refusing to remember that she could no longer climb. She used her good leg to push herself up the slope, and she used her bad one, too—jamming the carved, unfeeling toes into cracks and crevices, using the foot to pivot and the leg to hold her weight. She used her strong, sinewy arms to pull herself up to a hold, and her powerful hands to keep her there.

  Up she went, higher and higher, intoxicated by the cold whiteness, the sound of her own breath, the incredible feeling of ascending. Of gaining the slope. She was climbing, well and fast, and then it happened. She lost a handhold and slipped. Down she hurtled, screaming, as the fall jammed the edge of her false leg into her flesh. Ten feet. Twenty. Thirty. At forty, she managed to arrest the fall, clawing at the side of the slope. She ripped off two nails doing so, but she’d only feel those later.

  She clung there, shaking and sobbing, her face pressed into the snow. The pain of her injuries was terrible, but it wasn’t that pain that was making her cry. It was the terrifying memories of Mawenzi. This fall had woken them up and they rushed at her now, paralyzing her. They were so intense, so harrowing, that she could not move an inch, she could only clutch at the slope, eyes closed, sick with fear.

  She remembered the fall and the impact. She remembered Seamie getting her down off the mountain and then pulling her shattered leg straight. She remembered him carrying her for miles and miles. And the pain—she remembered the red, ragged, unspeakable pain.

  She’d been out of her mind from it—and from fever—by the time Seamie got her to Nairobi. The doctor t
here had taken one look at her and decided to amputate immediately. She’d begged him not to, begged Seamie not to let him. But the doctor had taken her leg anyway, right below the knee.

  Seamie had told her she would’ve died if he hadn’t allowed the operation. What he hadn’t understood is that she had died, at least a part of her had. She would never climb high again. She couldn’t. Her artificial leg didn’t allow the flexibility, the stability, and the fluid physical finesse that were required to undertake challenging ascents. In some ways, what had happened to her was worse than death, for all that was left to her now was working to ensure that others would one day climb the highest mountain in the world. It was a leftover life. A second best. She hated it, but it was all she had.

  She had hated Seamie, too. Almost as much as she loved him. She’d cursed him, and her useless leg. She’d blamed him, too. Because it was easier that way—having somebody to blame for what had happened to her, someone other than herself.

  She remembered leaving Nairobi, and taking a boat from Mombasa. Her wound was still seeping blood; she could barely hobble on her new crutches, but she was so wild with grief and anger, so overwhelmed by the conflicting emotions she felt for Seamie, that she’d wanted to put as much distance between herself and him as possible. She’d managed to get herself all the way to Goa, where she’d taken a small house on the coast. She’d stayed there for half a year, waiting for her leg to heal properly and mourning her lost life. When she’d gotten her strength back, she traveled to Bombay, where she’d found a doctor who could fit her with an artificial leg. She allowed herself a month in that city to learn how to walk properly on the new leg, and then, loaded with cameras, a few pieces of clothing, a chunk of her aunt’s money, and little else, she left Bombay. She could never climb again, but she could still explore, and she was determined to do so. She left the civilized world, hoping to leave her heartbreak behind as well, but it followed her. Wherever she went, whatever she saw, or heard, or felt—it was Seamie she ached to share it with—whether it was the breathtaking vastness of the Gobi desert, the sound of a hundred camel bells announcing the arrival of a merchant’s caravan, or the sun rising over the Potala Palace in Lhasa. She had tried to run away from him and had failed, for he was in her head and in her heart, always.